Year: 2008

On January 20, Have Her Walked Out of Her Office By Security

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Well, it looks like political hack Mary Beth Buchanan will not be submitting her resignation to Barack Obama as US Attorney for Pittsburgh on January 20, as is customary.

I’ve document a few of her partisan abuses of power here.

This is a woman who literally made a 45¢ fax a federal case, because the person in question, Cyril Wecht, was a Democrat.

She also prosecuted comedian Tommy Chong for selling bongs, went after a California erotica company, and was hip deep in the US Attorney firings scandal.

Seriously, this woman is a clear and present danger to justice, and she should not be allowed in the building without an armed escort.

I Think that Someone is Stuck in a Do Loop

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Because it looks like Treasury’s latest plan is to lower mortgage rates to 4.5% for new home buyers, to stop the slide in home prices.

First, you can’t re-inflate the bubble…The speculative frenzy that was at its core is over.

Second, why would someone buy a house at 4.5%, when whoever you sell the house to 20 or 30 years later would buy at a more normal rate, driving the price down.

Basically, it’s an attempt to get people to knowingly buy overpriced homes.

Does it come with a kick me sign for buyers to wear on their back?

Fundamentally Corrupt

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Well, some good news for municipalities, Stnadard and Poors (S&P) has upgraded their debt significantly, which should lower their borrowing costs.

This is not a recognition of economic changes, after there is no one who is safer to loan to than they were a year ago, and the municipalities in question have seen the basic metric of credit worthiness, things like “unreserved general fund balance” and “debt per capita” have actually headed in the wrong direction.

What has happened is two things:

  • The monoliner insurance companies who used to rent their credit ratings to municipalities, at taxpayer expense, are effectively defunct.
  • People have noticed that government bonds have been routinely rated lower than commercial ones based on the same criteria, and are looking at investigations and/or regulations of the ratings agencies.

What has been going on for years is that the ratings agencies have systematically underrated state and municipal debt, because it’s how their buddies with the monoliner insurers got business.

It’s why I suggest that the current financial system may need to be amputated.

Election Update

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So, we still have about 133 ballots missing in Minnesota, but now we have some twists, with the Coleman campaign claiming that they never existed, and election officials saying that they most certainly do exist. Given the circumstances, I’d go with the election officials:

Minneapolis elections chief Cindy Reichert explained yesterday that the ballots were placed in envelopes numbered 1 to 5 — and they’re missing the “1” envelope, probably still in storage at the warehouse. The precinct has obtained a waiver from the Secretary of State to keep their recount officially open while a thorough search goes on.

If envelope “5” were missing, Coleman and His Evil Minions™ might have a case, but not for envelopes 1, 2, 3, and 4.

This entire thing gets even crazier when you discover that elections officials just found another envelope of missing ballots, but only 12-20 uncounted absentee ballots, not the 133.

Franken campaign is saying that they are up by 4 votes, but considering how random things are when the count is this close, it’s really flipping a coin, I just hope that the coin isn’t “Two Face’s” coin, because if it’s Two Face, Norm “Two Face” Coleman wins.

The Onion is a National Treasure

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I’m Really Gonna Miss Systematically Destroying This Place

Oh, America. Eight years went by so fast, didn’t they? I feel like I hardly got to know you and methodically undermine everything you once stood for. But I guess all good things must come to an end, and even though you know I would love to stick around for another year or four—maybe privatize Social Security or get us into Iran—I’m afraid it’s time to go. But before I leave, let me say, from the bottom of my heart: I can’t think of another country I would’ve rather led to the brink of collapse.

Brilliant.

Well, at Least the New York Post Is Calling Rubin a Crook

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They are saying that Citi was at the center of a “Ponzi Scheme”, and yes, they are using the term “ponzi scheme” to describe the interlocking network impenetrably complex investment vehicles that has Citi in a government bailout:

Director Rubin and ousted CEO Prince – and their lieutenants over the past five years – are named in a federal lawsuit for an alleged complex cover-up of toxic securities that spread across the globe, wiping out trillions of dollars in their destructive paths.

I’m not sure how much of this is the Post’s predilection for hysterical screaming headlines, and how much is because Bob Rubin is a former senior Clintion official, but I agree with them: former Treasury Secretary Robert Ruben is a crook.*

The mainstream media is, of course, much too polite to say something like that about a titan of banking, though Jonathan Weil in the Bloomberg OP/ED that he is extremely concerned about the lack of transparency regarding what toxic investments that Citicorp is writing down.

At the center of this whole mess, at every stage, is Robert Rubin, either in the front, or in the room, and while some argue that the problem is systemic, so is poverty and deprivation breeding crime, this should not stop us from either imprisoning Robert Rubin or the guy who boosted your stereo.

*I would also note that current Treasury Secretary Henry “Hank” Paulson is a bigger crook.

Australian MRTT Tanker Delayed

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This is actually fairly significant news, as it is Australia’s A-330 MRTT tanker is the airframe that won the US tanker competition. Stephen Trimble hhas the official reasons for the delay:

  1. the mutual decision by EADS and RAAF to take the aircraft to the Paris air show;
  2. the RAAF directed changes to the MRTT configuration following contract award which has served to extend the development and testing program (including modifications to the refueling and avionics systems);
  3. the RAAF has requested additional flight testing to ensure a more robust mission system when delivered.

If these are the all the reasons, then it really has no bearing on the viability of the airframe for the tanker competition, but I tend to be cynical on such things, so my guess is that EADS was finding it difficult to meet the schedule.

Additionally, Australia’s currency has generally been falling, which may create budget pressures that might lead them to defer purchases.

See also here.

Blow Up UAVs

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It looks like the folks at U.S. Army Research Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground have come up with concepts for inflatable structures for UAVs.

The folks at the lab believe that the use of inflatable structures would allow for lighter weight, which translates into slower flight speeds and less noise, both of which are optimal for the use of UAVs in an urban scenario.

Goodyear did actually develop and fly an inflatable aircraft, the Inflatoplane, in the 1950s, but the army decided it was too vulnerable to ground fire, and shelved the project.

Still, it has always surprised me that someone in the ultralight community did not go further forward with this. An ultralight made using this technology could fit in the trunk of a midsized car.

About a decade ago, I put an inqwuiry into Goodyear regarding the Airmat, basically balloon material with threads running between opposite walls to provide rigidity when inflated, material they used for the structure, but there was nothing left there.

Why go Bullpup

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In what should be a surprise to no onw, the Israeli Defense Forces have adopted the MTAR-21 Micro-Tavor as their weapon of choice.

Once again, it allows us to look at why the M4/M16 needs to be replaced in US service.

In addition to its gas tube operation requesting excessive cleaning, it’s just too damn long:

Overall Length

Barrel Length

TAR-21

725 mm (28.5 in)

460 mm (18.1 in)

MTAR-21

590 mm (23.2 in)

330 mm (13.0 in)

M16

1000mm (39.5 in)

508 mm (20 in)

M4

838 mm (33 in) (stock extended)

757 mm (29.8 in) (stock retracted)

368 mm (14.5 in)



While it’s clear that the both MTAR-21 and the M4 having 13½ and 14 inch barrels respectively, will have lethality problems at range. The 5.56 mm round is light and uses high velocity to carry to provide lethality, but the M4 is much more extensively used, because for any urban situation, the M-16 at 1m long is simply unmanagable, while the TAR-21, the normal rifle for the IDF with an 18 inch barrel is shorter than the M4.

The additional 4 inches of barrel also get the mussel velocity high enough to avoid the lethality issues at 100 m or so.

That is an very small package though.

The Real DDG-1000 Cancellation Reason?

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Both of the US Navy’s new combat ships, the DDG-1000 Zumwalt and the Littoral Combat Ship are designed to minimize crew size to save cost.

However, the LCS is a conventional hull form, and it has lots of open space in, both for modules, and for a lot of reserve bouyancy.

The Zumwalts, however, appear to be much more tightly packed, with less reserve bouyance relative to their size, and a tumblehome hull form for stealth that is suspected of having stability issues.

Galrahn at Information Dissemination suggests that perhaps the crewing and hull form created a ship with a serious glass jaw, much like the British battlecruisers at the turn of the last century:

More than any other form of damage control, flooding is best known for being managed by active means best represented in manpower. The reduction in crew creates an unstable situation in this regard, and while we are on this subject, let me note that I believe one of the real unspoken reasons Roughead wants to cancel the DDG-1000 is specific to the absence of flood control capabilities with that platform that has a relatively tiny crew. Ever read Friedman about ship design? If so, consider the hull form of DDG-1000 as you reflect upon the thoughts I’ve noted below.

If his analysis is correct, and I think it is, I find it interesting this is repeating almost in an almost exactly 100 year cycle.

Quote of the Day

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The ever entertaining Barney Frank:

“I’m a great fan of the president-elect, but I think it’s probably the case that he’s going to have to be more assertive than he’s been,” Frank said, addressing the Consumer Federation of America’s annual financial services conference. “And I know what he says is ‘Well, we only have one president at a time. My problem is, at a time of great crisis and [massive] mortgage foreclosures. … I am afraid that overstates the number of presidents.”

(emphasis mine)

I need to clean my screen now.

Where is Stiglitz?

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At Newsweek, Michael Hirsh asks this important question.

Joseph Stiglitz has a Nobel prize in economics, and he called the financial crisis, and made the correct policy recommendations about how to prevent it, for well over a decade.

Unfortunately, Obama is turning marginally enlightened Chicago School types like Austan Goolsbee, and people with a lineage that traces its path from Wall Street kleptocrats *cough*Robert Rubin*cough*, like Larry Summers, and neither of these groups are particularly interested in someone who has been consistently proved right, because he has also proveds them wrong.

This is the best endorsement of Stiglitz being brought in I can think of:

Like Keynes himself, who fought successfully to block “hot money” at the postwar Bretton Woods conference in 1944, Stiglitz understood the problem of international capital flows like few others of his era. As his longtime collaborator Bruce Greenwald—another Columbia professor who, by the way, is a conservative Republican—puts it: “You need radical global reform” to correct chronic imbalances in capital flows, all of which Stiglitz has laid out in his book, “Making Globalization Work.”

This is precisely our problem, and this man has gotten a Nobel plotting the solutions.

Quite my solution, in the broadest terms, is to recognize that Wall Street (and the Street in London, and the rest of the financial markets) have become gangrenous, and need to be amputated, but Stiglitz, has the specifics as to what is rotten.

Interesting Juxtaposition in the Media Coverage of Africa

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We have this story alleging that Rwanda is behind the insurgency in the east of Congo, and we have this story discussing negotiations between the governments of Rwanda and Congo to disband the FDLR militias.

The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), are the genocidal criminals who massacred a significant portion of the Rwandan Tutsi population, and once driven from the country, set themselves up in “refugee camps” where their basic food and nature needs are provided for by the UN and NGOs, and have continued to wage genocidal campaigns against Tutsis, both in Congo and Rwanda.

A first step to fixing this is to close down the camps, and considering that the Tutsis have not engaged in mass reprisals in the 18 years since the genocide, these camps are not needed.

As to how to close down the camps? That’s simple, just stop delivering supplies.