94-2, but no vote on Holder yet.
Part of the delay on Eric Holder is because the ‘Phants want to bash Bill Clinton over pardons again, but it’s also because they want him to promise not to prosecute torture.
Month: January 2009
Obama Opposes Cram-Down in Stimulus
Dumb move. With mortgages sliced and diced amongst dozens, if not hundreds, of investors, you cannot renegotiate terms in many cases, which means more defaults and foreclosures.
He’s not opposed to allowing bankruptcy judges to rewrite mortgages, he just does not want it in the bailout package.
That’s because he’s still pursuing the asinine goal of getting 80 votes in the senate.
He won’t get 80 votes for a bill that works, because Republicans cannot afford fiscal stimulus to succeed.
Israel’s Supreme Court Revokes Party Ban
No surprise. It’s happened before, and now Supreme Court has again revoked a ban of Arab parties by a Knesset committee.
Everyone who voted to the ban the party knew that this would happen, but they also saw political benefit in doing so, because some of the more prominent Israeli Arab politicians are viewed as assholes.
My previous post on this was called, “Stupid and Damaging Electioneering,” and I stand by that.
This is kind of the polar opposite of Dukkakis and the pledge of allegiance in the 1988 campaign. He vetoed the bill, even though he knew it would be unpopular, because he knew that it was unconstitutional.
Israeli politics sucks.
Financial Quote of the Day
From an interview with Barney Frank:
FRANK: I have friends who said ‘well, Bank of America’s too big, shouldn’t we stop them from buying Countrywide?’ … [M]y answer was, I would have been happy if Syria bought Countrywide, because it was one of the most irresponsible institutions out there. Bank of America has done a very good job … I did not know until you just told me that Fannie and Freddie were doing that and I can pretty much guarantee you that we will have put an end to that within a few days.
ROTFLMAO
Barney Frank is a funny, funny guy.
UN Rapporteur Says Obama Bound by International Law to Prosecute
Courtesy of the ever reliable Scott Horton (Harper’s Magazine)
In an interview on Tuesday evening with the German television program “Frontal 21,” on channel ZDF Professor Manfred Nowak, the United Nations Rapporteur responsible for torture, stated that with George W. Bush’s head of state immunity now terminated, the new government of Barack Obama was obligated by international law to commence a criminal investigation into Bush’s torture practices.
“The evidence is sitting on the table,” he stated. “There is no avoiding the fact that this was torture.” He pointed to the U.S. undertakings under the Convention Against Torture in which the country committed that it would criminally prosecute anyone who tortured, or extradite the person to a state that would prosecute him. “The government of the United States is required to take all necessary steps to bring George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld before a court,” Nowak said.
I wanna see them in the Hague, because I think that you will have too many people willing to be a mole in the jury in the US.
Figure 20%+ dead-enders, that’s two per jury, and, because it’s going to be a long and complex trial, people who aren’t die hard Bush supporters won’t want to sit on the jury.
What is the Difference Between Iceland and Ireland?
One letter, and six months.
Antarctica is warming, not cooling: study | Environment | Reuters
Another nail in climate change denier’s coffin, it turns out that Antarctica is warming, not cooling.
Real Estate Implosion
David Crowe, or the National Association of Home Builders, the folks who generally try to paint a bright picture of housing predicts that house prices will further collapse in 2009.
In addition to a 25.3% in the Case/Shiller Home Price Index drop since the peak in March, 2006, he is saying that house prices will fall a further 29% in 2009, for a total drop from peak of 47%.
Ouch.
Though I would also note that this likely a lead in to a pitch for some sort of Federal aid.
H/T Calculated Risk
Howard Dean’s 50 State Strategy is Dead
I agree with Chris Bowers’ assessment.
They are looking at more centralized control (under Howard Dean’s 50 state strategy, the money was sent to the state committees to hire organizers), and more focus on swing states.
Not surprising. The first thing that a new president does is take control of the party apparatus and direct it toward his reelection.
That being said, it appears that with the new strategy, Ted Stevens would be returning to the Senate, having handily defeated Begich, as would Norm Coleman.
Paterson to Announce Clinton Replacement By Saturday
And he has said that, “he has all but decided“.
I really Hope that it isn’t Caroline Kennedy. Notwithstanding the issues, she reminds me a lot of her cousin Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (KKT), who was incompetent enough as a campaigner to lose a race for Governor in Maryland.
Economics Update
Most of the news today seems to involve currency and other nations, with the dollar rising against all major currencies, particularly the British Pound, which fell to its lowest level since 1985.
Considering the fact that the U.K. jobless rate and budget deficit has grown significantly, this should be no surprise.
On the other side of Europe, Russia is pulling back from Ruble support, engaging in what is called a “dirty” float, because they are burning through their currency reserves.
Meanwhile, S&P cut Portugal’s debt rating 1 step, from AA- to A+.
If you want to know the effect of this, you need only look at Greece, where the the rates that they have to pay on their bonds jumped following a similar downgrade. The spread over similar German debt went from 55 basis points (0.55%) to 325.1 basis points (3.251%).
In US real estate, the NAR index of builder confidence fell to 8, below the prediction of 9, with 50 being neutral. (!)
In energy, Oil is up.
Sen. Kennedy Released From Hospital After Seizure – NYTimes.com
He’s OK, but it appears that occasional seizures are a likely side effect of his surgery, and he may have more.
White Power Mailed to Wall Street Journal Offices
The mail was postmarked in Kentucky, and received sent to people working on the 11th and 9th floors of the office building, which are, “shared by executives, editorial and opinion-page employees.”
Hmm…I wonder what it can all mean, with white powder being bailed to floors 9 and 11….9-11…How convenient.
I smell wingnut.
A Good Start
Obama has ordered a halt to the implementation of the Bush last-minute regulations pending a review and he has suspended the Gitmo kangaroo courts pending a review.
Pay Per View Review
It was movie night, and Sharon* chose the 2008 remake of Get Smart.
Steve Carell … Maxwell Smart / Agent 86
Anne Hathaway … Agent 99
Dwayne Johnson … Agent 23
Alan Arkin … The Chief
Terence Stamp … Siegfried
Terry Crews … Agent 91
David Koechner … Larabee
James Caan … The President
Bill Murray … Agent 13
Patrick Warburton … Hymie
Masi Oka … Bruce
Nate Torrence … Lloyd
Ken Davitian … Shtarker
David S. Lee … Ladislas Krstic
Dalip Singh … Dalip
Of all the returns to this series, I think that this was the best, and that includes the 1970s “The Nude Bomb”, which was really pretty lame.
The character is definitely not the late Don Adams’, but Steve Carell of Smart as an overeager crackerjack analyst who has a knack for screwing up generally works.
I think that the weakest of the performances were by Alan Arkin as the Chief, and Terence Stamp as Sigfried.
Arkin’s Chief is a hot-head, as opposed to the reserved, and aggrieved Chief of the late Ed Platt, and I think that had he been played closer to the original, it would have worked better.
Stamp, who makes a marvelous heavy, was simply wrong as Sigfried. He was too evil. The original Sigfried, played by Bernie Kopell, who had a cameo, was more of a sort of mirror image of Adams’ Smart.
I also miss the German accent.
For both of these, I blame the script writer more than anything else.
Anne Hathaway, as 99, did a very good job capturing the extreme competence of the character, as well as the playful sexiness of Barbera Feldon, from the original series.
Dwayne Johnson, aka “The Rock”, was surprisingly good, but more details would be spoilers.
It does touch on all the bits from the original, the cone of silence, “Missed it that by that much”, “Would you believe….”, “In KAOS, we don’t…”, he drives both the sunbeam and the Karmann Ghia, the shoe phone, “The old $$$$ trick”.
The core of the movie, as it was in the series, is the relationship between Max and 99.
There is real comic chemistry there, though the development of the romantic aspects of the relationship were too compressed.
This is not a surprise, as the development of the relationship in the original went from toleration, to amusement, to affection, to love over about 4 seasons, and 110 minutes is just not enough time.
Recommended
*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.
Bush’s Top 10 Monents
Letterman
Still No Oversight on the Tarp
So Timothy Geithner will be free to do exactly what Hank Paulson did for TARP round 2.
Lovely.
Rwandan Troops Congo
They are huntind down the genicidal Hutu Militias that fled Rwanda in the 1990s.
These folks, and in particular the refugee camps that serve as their logistical bases, should have been shut down a decade ago.
Effectively Insolvent
That is what Nouriel Roubini is saying about the whole US banking system:
“I’ve found that credit losses could peak at a level of $3.6 trillion for U.S. institutions, half of them by banks and broker dealers,” Roubini said at a conference in Dubai today. “If that’s true, it means the U.S. banking system is effectively insolvent because it starts with a capital of $1.4 trillion. This is a systemic banking crisis.”
Note that he has the training to calculate this stuff, all I have is my gut.
My gut says that his prediction is optimistic, and as bearish as he has been, he has actually underestimated the scope of this problem by a bit so far.
By way of perspective, the US economy in 2007 was about $13-¾ trillion. This is a big number, though less than the roughly 8-½ trillion that the Treasury and the Fed have “lent” out in the past year or so.
Submitted to Marketplace
They allows people to submit short (>400 word) commentaries for broadcast, so I sent them the following missive.
It’s highly unlikely that they would publish it, I have no professional background in the field, and I’m just not that good a writer, but what the hell.
Amputating the Financial Industry
It is clear that the economy is sick, and it is also clear that the two things that are most directly responsible for this are the finance industry, and real estate.For real estate and construction, we have a classic bubble, where prices outstripped values, and the only real solution is for time and no small amount of inflation to put borrowers back above water.
The finance industry is a different matter. Between the Treasury Department and the Federal reserve, trillions have been spent to recapitalize this industry without a real thaw in credit.
If the economy is a body, it is clear that there is a serious illness in the financial industry, and the question is whether this is simply a bad infection, illiquidity, or whether this is gangrene, insolvency.
I would argue for the latter, and with advanced gangrene the only option is to amputate.
So, how can you amputate, when the finance industry is essential to the functioning of the rest of the economy?
The answer is that it’s not essential. Reasonable access to credit that is essential.
The question is not how to preserve Wall Street, it is how to make sure that businesses on Main Street can continue to operate.
The numbers to do this are actually relatively small, GM and Chrysler got $18 billion to continue to operate, which is a drop in the bucket compared to the more than 8½* trillion that has been allocated to the finance industry.
Even just using the $350 billion remaining in the TARP to set up a lending facility for small and medium businesses would go a long way.
In fact, it would go much farther than throwing more money at the Wall Street.
You could recruit a workforce quickly from the hundreds of thousands of rank and file financial professionals who have been laid off in 2008.†
This would have the effect of providing the grease to ease the wheels of the economy, without enormous expense of supporting what are walking dead zombie institutions.
Obviously, you would not want this as a permanent solution, but our economy is more like an octopus than a person, and so lost limbs regenerate over time, so if one were to add a small surcharge, which would render this facility irrelevant and unnecessary once a new finance industry, springs from real market needs.
Footnotes:
* Economic rescue could cost $8.5 trillion
† Layoffs in U.S. up 59% from 2007
Thoughts?