I gotta call out Steven Weisman on his article saying that the dollar is showing signs of strengthening after a 6 year trend down. I
It’s very basic. The dollar has been heading down for 6 years…It’s been heading up for 2 weeks.
Please wait at least a few months before declaring the trend over? At this point it is likely still a dead cat bounce.*
*No cats were harmed in the preparation of this blog post.
Basically, it comes down to the Poles wanting money, billions of dollar, to upgrade their defense forces as a condition for hosting the missile base.
One wonders how much of this is plain old extortion, and how much is the Poles trying to avoid signing the deal while Bush is still in office.
In any case, Congress has voted $10 million to the Poles, and they want around $10 billion.
About 3 months ago, I noted that the NAHB was putting a moratorium on political donations to punish Congress for inaction.
Well, it looks like they are back in the bribe campaign donation business again.
They are claiming that it is because they have a tax credit to lobby on, but in reality I think that it’s because no one in Congress really cared that much.
The lesson to be learned is that members of Congress are less concerned about your donations to them than they about the potential of you donating to their opponent.
It appears that non only will they miss the election deadlines, but that the trials will not have started by the time that Bush leaves office either.
This affair is a complete cock-up. We already have the former prosecutor saying that administration officials were demanding convictions because an acquittal would be inconvenient, and , “and one high-ranking Pentagon officer has been quoted talking about the “strategic political value” of doing so before the November elections,” so it looks like this mess will be dumped on whoever is sworn in in 2009, as Will Bunch notes.
Well, if that was the purpose of Indiana’s restrictive voter ID policies, it appears that they have succeeded.
The nuns in question were turned away from the polling place.
There are now statements from representatives in the breakaway Georgian province of Abkhazia that Russia will be taking over full control of military operations, and the Georgian foreign minister is claiming that they are near to war with Russia.
Again, let me say that much of this* is a direct result of NATO’s expansion eastward, in violation of agreements, which has fed Russia’s long tradition of xenophobia and paranoia, and hence has led to these actions.
*Though there is an aspect of Russia attempting to create a sphere of influence in the area too.
It appears that people under investigation in what appear to be politically motivated cases, and those who whistle blow on the same, are being systematically targeted with arson, break ins, and attempts to force their car from the road.
Cases in point:
I want my country back.
*Mongoose Gang reference is here. I went on vacation to Grenada a number of times as a kid, and the name given to Eric Gairy’s group of thugs and bully-boys used to enforce political intimidation always stuck in my head.
After raising the limits for loans that purchased by Fannie and Freddie, which carry a lower interest rate, in February, Barney Frank is now looking into why so few of the new “non-jumbo jumbo” loans have been made.
The raising of the cap from $417,000 to $729,750 was intended to help property move in high cost markets, like Frank’s district.
The simple reason that he is not seeing much in the way of these loans is because banks are not lending to anyone.
We are seeing an unprecedented tightening in mortgage lending standards, and so very few loans are being made.
John Murtha, chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, has proposed an additional $20 billion to develop FCS* technologies, while canceling the program.
Basically, he’s looking at canceling the most ambitious aspects of the program, and the $20 billion would be used to redirect the program towards nearer term technology.
When I worked on the FCS‡, it was an article of faith that the systems, at least the manned systems, would never be fielded in large numbers, but that the underlying technology would be a part of an upgrade to legacy systems, and it looks like Murtha is of the same mind.
There is a lot to admire in the way of technology, the article mentions the use of robots to investigate IEDs and advanced communications systems, for example, and the initial release of this technology could benefit the troops now, as opposed to the full up system, which may not benefit the troops ever.
*Full disclosure, I worked on the Future Recovery and Maintenance Vehicle, FRMV, “wrecker” variant of the FCS-MGV† from 2003-2006 at United Defense (later BAE Systems after the Carlyle Group sold me to buy Dunkin Donuts.
†Future Combat Systems-Manned Ground Vehicle. These are the ones that are the tanks and APCs. As opposed to the various unnmanned vehicles, networking technologies, etc. that form the full FCS along with the MGVs.
‡Yes, I have worked everywhere. Maybe I can’t hold down a job, but more likely this has been my role as “technical hit man”, where you are parachuted in to take care of a specific need.
The expected results.
Sorry for the light posting today, my son had an IEP meeting today, and between that, and the fact that my I was playing Mr. Mom this evening, not much chance to get to the computer.
Northrop is now saying that Boeing lost largely because they cannot be trusted to deliver on time or on budget. From their press release:
….
Past Performance
A contractor’s past performance on related projects is a critical element in the Air Force’s assessment of competing proposals. Because replacing America’s fleet of aerial refueling tankers is the number one acquisition priority for the Air Force, it paid special attention to Boeing’s assertions that it could complete the contract on time and on budget. While Boeing likes to claim that it has a better track record than Northrop Grumman in building tankers, the Air Force determined that Boeing’s past record actually meant it was riskier to do business with Boeing than Northrop Grumman.
According to an Air Force document assessing the two bids, in program management ” … There was a notable difference between the two offerors. Northrop Grumman received a rating of ‘Satisfactory Confidence,’ while Boeing received a rating of ‘Little Confidence.'”
A rating of little confidence means the Air Force concluded that “Based on the offeror’s performance record, substantial doubt exists the offeror will successfully perform the required effort.” The reasons for the Air Force’s poor rating of Boeing were redacted for business competition reasons.
The Air Force stated that Northrop Grumman received a superior rating because of its “Excellent and satisfactory (risk) ratings on six (other) contracts.” The Air Force document concluded “The higher confidence rating for Northrop Grumman … was a discriminator” because “This difference in the program management provides better overall confidence. Northrop Grumman (was) more advantageous.”
It is worth noting that while Northrop Grumman has built, flown and tested a prototype aircraft and conducted a successful fuel transfer through its boom, Boeing has not yet built, flown or tested its proposed new design KC-767 aircraft. In addition, Boeing has been late in delivering tankers to Italy and Japan. These aircraft are significantly different from the design proposed to the Air Force.
…
If this was said in a bar, fists, and possibly beer bottles would fly.
People are now shocked that Fannie Mae has posted a $2.51 billion loss and cut its dividend. Do I need to quote Claude Raines in Casablanca?
Oil set another new record, $122.73, before settling at $121.84. Any bets on when we hit $130 for the first time?
Finally, we have this tidbit from the Wall Street Journal
And in a more-worrisome trend, borrowing from these retirement plans is surging. At the end of last year, 18% of workers had loans outstanding from their plans, up from 11% in 2006, according to a survey of 2,011 full-time employees released in February by the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, a nonprofit corporation funded by Aegon NV’s Transamerica Life Insurance Co. With home prices falling nationwide, the loans may be a sign that cash-strapped consumers are raiding their nest eggs to stay afloat, no longer able to tap their houses for cash and up against their credit-card limits.
This is a foreseeable consequence of defined contribution plans, and notwithstanding the Randroid utopian claims, it has always been the problem with having people make a bet in which, if they die young, they win.
It’s the YOYO (You’re On You’re Own) society.
With all the hooplah over Congressional action to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make more and larger loans, the financial press is just starting to notice that maybe it will mean larger, and perhaps a quicker problems for the GSEs.
I said this when they originally expanded their services to some “Jumbo” mortgages that this was ill advised, and with them controlling about 80% of the mortgage loans bought by investors, this is going to get ugly.
No predictions, but the conventional wisdom is that Obama wins NC, and Clinton Indiana.
If the conventional wisdom is wrong, things either get really quiet (Obama sweeps), or even louder (Clinton sweeps).
One of the consequences of the bellicose and incompetent foreign policy put forth by Bush and His Evil Minions™ is the increasingly paranoid and militaristic foreign policy of Russia.
Perhaps the most extreme example is the return of missiles and tanks to the May Day (Victory Day) parade.
I have concluded that this is not a result of incompetence on the part of Republicans. This is actually one of their goals, because by restarting the cold war, they can create a climate that benefits themselves politically.
Let’s see, we add another carrier to the gulf to threaten Iran, call them the “Axis of Evil”, accuse them of supporting the Mahdi army and fomenting civil war in Iraq, and we should be surprised that when we suggest negotiations about how to make Iraq a safer place for Americans that they tell us to go Cheney ourselves.
It will take a generation to undo the damage done by Bush and His Evil Minions&trade.
And so are the US diplomats that they interviewed, because they find it somehow culturally alien that an envelope of cash won’t make everything better with regards to the Blackwater massacre in Baghdad.
As Spencer Ackerman so eloquently states:
If an unaccountable band of politically-connected soldiers-of-fortune shot my mother as she was trying to flee from a traffic circle, and the State Department offered me $5,000 in order to make the incident go away, I would not only be angry, I would be exploring my options for revenge. You don’t have to be an Iraqi to understand this.
If this happened in America, you would have family members demanding the death penalty
$5000 and a meaningless apology does not mean anything them, and it does not mean anything to us.
We are treating them like easily bought off sub humans, and they have legitimate cause to take exception.
The problem is that some of the soldiers in Iraq will die for what the mercenaries did in Iraq.
This time, it’s Lockheed Martin formally protesting the BAMS UAV award by the navy.
I predicted a challenge, but that does not require Kreskin. The stakes of these contracts are high enough, and the costs of challenges are low enough, that challenges will be pressed even when there is no merit, on the off chance that something will turn up.
There has been some disorder, but voting proceeded relatively smoothly.
Of course, there is the whole matter of the vote being delayed by the Bolivian electoral commission, so we will see what that means.
While some of the portions of the referendum seem to be fairly standard, at least bu US standards, others, such as the right to control federal land and to sign treaties seem to me to be more of an attempt to dismantle the Bolivian state for the benefit of Exxon-Mobil than anything else.
Most of the rest of Latin America is observing this with undisguised horror, because if this sticks, it lays the groundwork for the dissolution of the existing states.
But American bankers should get some good deals out of all this chaos.
Well, I’ve been predicting for some time that the BoA Contrywide deal would go south, and now we have the analysts suggesting that BoA may cut the price, and suggestions that they should drop the deal entirely.
It appears that my predictive powers are getting less sucky.