That Mark Penn is a self important, greedy, incompetent asshole who should never hold a job again (Details the knives out for him in the Clinton campaign).
His “skip 10 primaries strategies” had to be one of the stupidest campaign strategies ever.
Mark Penn is an overpaid jerk.
Rollcall has a poll (subscription only) giving Foster (d) about a 5% lead over Oberweis (R) with a 4.5% margin of error
It’s been tied up recently, and the special election is Saturday.
I did not read the article, it’s subscriber only, bur rather heard the results on CSPAN’s Washington Journal driving in this morning.
It’s an interesting theory. Basically, he believes that in order to cope with the financial drain from the war, the Fed was forced to slash interest rates, leading to a speculative bubble, higher energy prices, and reckless lending.
While I agree as to the consequences of the the Fed’s (really Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan’s) policies, I do not think that the ultra low interest rates were from the war.
They were a function of Greenspan wanting to remain Fed chair when dealing with a president who had publicly stated his dislike of him during the campaign in 2000.
Bush blamed Greenspan for his dad loosing in 2002, you may recall McCain joking about doing the “Weekend at Bernies” thing if “Bubbles” died, and so when Bush came in, he whored himself to Bush and His Evil Minions™.
The Fed was slashing rates before 911, and even more between 911 and the Iraq invasion.
Representatives of Treasury Department, SEC and Fed told Congress that it was crucial to the economic health of the United States to all sovereign wealth funds to have free reign to purchase US companies.
Congress is concerned after Abu Dhabi bought a significant portion of Citi, and other sovereign wealth funds have done so with other financial institutions, as a result of fall out from the credit implosion.
The regulators basically said, without foreigners buying this stuff, we’d be flat broke.
What they neglected to say is that we are flat broke anyway, from years of budget and trade deficits.
My guess is that they decided that it was better to ask to have the suit dismissed than it was having millions of internet users going through their records with a fine toothed comb.
My guess is that they will be moving an offshore registrar.
The have released a joint statement on this, and it seems to be backtracking on the part of Crist, who originally made noises about reholding the primary.
I’m not clear on the politics involved, I assume that Granholm is a Clinton supporter, and Crist, being a Republican, may just want to piss in the proverbial punchbowl, since the delegates mean nothing at the Republican convention as McCain has already clinched.
Then again, this may just be pandering to the local electorate.
Duncan Black asks:
Does the Washington Post have a policy of only publishing complete morons?
Yes.
This has been another episode of simple answers to simple questions.
Yawn, another day, another all time low for the Dollar vs. the Euro, breaking the $1.53:€1.00 barrier.
The expectation of a major fall in the dollar is one of the major causes of oil prices rising again today, though the fact that OPEC his telegraphing that there will be no production increase, contributes to this.
The job market is looking increasingly grim, with
nonfarm employment declining by 23,000, and, in a good indication of an incoming recession, productivity growth is declining.
We do have some good news, the appraisal standards for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not officially implemented.
It would have been better news a year, or 5 years, ago.
I have this rule of thumb when looking at the economy, which is when something happens in high finance that is truly bizarre, start by assuming that it is bad news.
That’s the case with yields falling below 0% on Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS).
TIPS are government bonds in which the principal appreciates along with the consumer price index. They are sort of inflation proofed as a result.
They are less riskier, because if inflation shoots up, you will get that back in the end, so the interest rate, which are set by auction, is lower.
Only for the past three days, the interest rate has been bid to less than zero, meaning that the bidders expect significant increases in inflation.
Paulson Sees New Capital Markets Proposals in ‘Weeks’
Bush’s Treasury Secretary is, after months of prodding by Democrats, coming up with a plan to close the barn door after the cow is gone, saying that, “We’re looking at the mortgage-origination process, we’re looking at the securitization process, we’re looking at rating agencies, we’re looking at disclosure issues, we’re looking at capital issues and regulatory issues in the weeks ahead.”
If it were done by honest decent and competent people, it would still be too late, but in this case it’s being done by Bush and His Evil Minions™, which means that it’s primary goal will be two fold, preventing meaningful regulation, and benefitting Bush, His Evil Minions™, and his campaign contributors.
The auction bond failure rate is nearly 70%, and appears to be getting worse, which means that at this critical time, with revenues falling, cities and states will find raising money for projects much more difficult.
In real estate, we now have mainstream press using phrases like, “Housing in ‘deepest, most rapid’ decline since Great Depression“, the alt-A crash is well and truly starter (Alt-A are not quite prime, typically credit scores over 700), and we have Ben Bernanke saying that housing woes could persist for years.
Additionally, we are about to see the revenge of the 2005 bankruptcy law, with filings up 18% from January, and 28% from the year before.
We are about to see the negative effects of the law, which were predicted when it was initially proposed.
BTW, all is not quiet in the ever entertaining world of the monoliner bond insurers. Ambac has announced a reorganization, where it will exit the mortgage securities market and raise $1.5 billion in new capital.
This time it’s upper executives at Washington Mutual, with CEO Kerry Killinger rating a $3.65 million on a base salary of $1 million bonus according to the board, after WaMu had lost $1.87 billion in q4 of 2007.
To Mr. Killinger’s credit, though not that of the board, he turned down his bonus in 2007.
It’s a rare thing when you can put the term together the term defense* procurement with humor in a coherent manner, but this press release from the Australian Department of Defence regarding the cancellation of the Seasprite Helicopter program, which was 5 years late, well over budget, and simply did not work:
SEASPRITE HELICOPTERS TO BE CANCELLED
In late 2007 the Rudd Labor Government initiated a review of the Seasprite helicopter project, in line with the promises made prior to the election.
After careful consideration of all the issues involved, the Government has decided that it intends to cancel the project. Discussions will be commenced immediately with the contractor in relation to the legal and financial arrangements to facilitate this.
The Government will announce the details of arrangements with the contractor once mutual agreement on these matters has been reached, subject to any confidentiality issues.
Minister for Defence Joel Fitzgibbon said the decision was not one taken easily, but the Government was left with little option.
“Today’s announcement demonstrates our determination to make tough decisions whenever required for the security of the nation and the safety and capability of our Defence Force,” Mr Fitzgibbon said.
“The decision taken by the Rudd Labor Government is one that should have been taken by the Leader of the Opposition, Brendan Nelson, when he had the opportunity last year, but his Government decided to put its own political interests ahead of the national interest. Consequently, the responsibility of cleaning up the mess they created falls to us,” Mr Fitzgibbon said.
To ensure the Navy maintains an effective naval aviation capability, the Government has decided on two measures. First, our interim approach will focus on improving the operational availability of the current Seahawk fleet. Second, the Government will investigate the planned replacement of the Seahawk during its White Paper deliberations.
“The new Government will continue to work through the long list of Defence capability nightmares it has inherited from the former government. We are determined to ensure that the Defence Force receives the capability it needs, and Australian taxpayers receive value for their money,” Mr Fitzgibbon said.
(Emphasis mine)
*DefenCe for those down in Oz.
This is just bloody unbelievable.
Each time that I think that Bush and His Evil Minions™ can’t do any worse, they exceed my lowest expectations.
No, not for president, for their respective congressional seats. It was not close for either.
Remember it wasn’t just presidents on the ballot in Ohio and Texas.
Yes, I know misleading hed.
From Crooks and Liars:
Given the complexities of the process, it’s even possible, hard as it may be to believe, that when the dust settles on the March 4 contests, Obama may have lost three out of four contests, and managed to gain delegates — proving, once again, that this is a very silly process in need of reform.
The New York Times reports on the case of a British Travel Agent living in Spain, who had his domain names seized by his US domain registrar at the request of the Treasury Department.
They felt that he, “helped Americans evade restrictions on travel to Cuba”, so they seized the sites, including one about Earnest Hemingway, and two in Italian and French.
A whois shows that the Pirate Bay uses Key-Systems GmbH?
Perhaps they are in a country of laws, and not men.
Members of the Senate Banking committee just grilled regulators and accused them of being, “Asleep at the switch” on the housing debacle.
One wonders why it appears that Alan Greenspan’s name never came up. He was aggressively working towards dismantling financial protections and ignoring basic regulations during his tenure at the Fed, pausing only to bail out fat cat investors when they got into trouble.
With her victories in Ohio and Texas, Hillary Clinton is in through Pennsylvania, which means that he national political press is descending on your state like flies on……bad analogy, I do not mean to insult the great commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I used to live there.
How about Piranhas on a swimming cow…Better.
That being said, I have two thoughts, first that this is good, not bad, for the Democrats, the only major news that McCain can get from now until the Democratic nominee is decided is going to be bad news (the lobbyist thing and the bigot Hagee), while the Dems have a platform to put forward their ideas to an engaged publid.
My second thought is that I agree with Terry McCauliffe: Mark Penn should STFU. With every success, it’s Penn’s campaign, with every failure, he’s just an adviser.
I have to argue that his $10 million in fees has been money poorly spent.
McCain Sweeps it, he’s over the top for delegates.
Obama wins Vermont, Hillary wins Rhode Island, and CNN is calling Ohio for her.
Texas is too close to call, and I’m getting some sleep, for once.
So I’m reading an article about the vulnerabilities of Windows-based ATM machines.
Really, Really, Really, bad idea. When the BSOD* means that they empty your bank account, I’m less than enthused.
*Blue Screen of Death
Writing for The Hill, Markos Moulitsas, founder and proprietor of Daily Kos pens, “GOP’s flesh-eating zombie candidate.”
It’s a great title, and it is largely factually accurate, and this guy is contributing to the suffering of severe burn victims all over the country.
Go read it.
I bumped into him at a cafeteria at Gen Con in 1980, but never talked to him or anything.
He and Dave Arneson invented D&D, and ye,s I played, a lot, when I was younger.