Word is that Jim Tedisco has run the numbers, and realizes that even with his attempts to selectively object to absentee ballots, he’s going to lose, and unlike Norm Coleman, does not want to stretch it out, so he will concede to Democrat Scott Murphy in the next few days.
Your mouth to God’s ear.
The big news is that the Firebird is dead, as GM will eliminate Pontiac, though it is keeping GMC.
I wonder if they will look for a legislative fix to minimize the costs of winding it down, as GM had to pay billions to dealers when it wound down Oldsmobile a few years back.
Additionally, they gust got $2 billion more lent to them, which implies that the folks looking at this on the automotive task force think that they are getting their sh&% together.
June first???
That’s eight months after the elections that the Minnesota Supreme Court will begin to hear arguments. It will probably be at least 2 weeks before they issue an opinion.
Jeebus.
Because the EU is proposing a cap on executive compensation:
Bankers’ bonuses and golden parachutes would be capped in all European Union countries under a draft policy circulating in Brussels that amounts to one of the broadest responses yet to concerns about executive pay.
No BS about, “If you participate in this program, you are limited,” it applies to everyone.
They are saying, “Just so much and no more never more than a spot or something may happen, you never know what.”
Even if the bankers were doing a good job, that level of remuneration is immoral, whether its a lawyer or a football player.
Obama has stated his intention to shut down federal subsidies to private student loan lenders and go exclusively with direct federal loans.
It should save $5 billion a year for the taxpayers and lower interest rates for students, so everyone wins….Except, of course for the private lenders, who are basically parasites anyway, so it doesn’t bother me.
I believe taht he can do most of this through executive order, which is a good thing.
So, Timothy Geithner will beginning to report the results of the stress test to the banks, and I do not know the results, but the estimate is scary:
“The headlines, not the details, seem to be driving the markets,” said Frederick Cannon, who is in charge of equity research at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, a boutique investment bank.
Analysts are already betting that the stress tests will show that banks need to raise significant amounts of new capital, as profits made in the first three months of the year give way to more losses, tied to credit card, commercial real estate and corporate loans. An assessment by Mr. Cannon’s firm, which calculated its own stress test for the industry, concluded Thursday that United States banks might need as much as an additional $1 trillion in capital.
I don’t know this guy from Adam, but $1T is a lot of money. US GDP is about $15T.
I would also note that the economy is already doing worse than the worst case in the stress test, so I would expect the final number is likely to be at least twice as much as this.
This report is preliminary, but it makes sense.
The ‘Phants have everything to lose, and nothing to gain with a well done reform of the US healthcare system, and even if you play nice, they will offer no cooperation.
The British economy just posted its largest quarterly loss since 1979, 1.9 % for the quarter, and 4.1% year over year.
We had Moody’s downgrade American Express debt from A2 to A3, because of lower earnings from fewer purchases made with its cards, and more bad loans.
Unsurprisingly, the same thing is happening with the stress tested banks, where PNC Financial says that bad assets are expected to triple.
We do have some good news with Ford Motors beating expectations, though the numbers are still awful, and corporate borrowing costs falling below last October’s numbers.
In currency, the dollar weakened again, and this had traders bidding up the price of oil.
What the hell is wrong with everyone in Washington?
Meeting with the Democratic leadership on Wednesday night, Mr. Obama said a special inquiry would steal time and energy from his policy agenda, and could mushroom into a wider distraction looking back at the Bush years, people briefed on the discussion said. Mr. Obama, they said, repeated much the same message on Thursday at a bipartisan meeting with Congressional leaders.
The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and other top Senate Democrats endorsed Mr. Obama’s view on Thursday, telling reporters at a news conference at the Capitol that they preferred to wait for the results of an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee expected late this year.
It should be noted that senior Senators on the Intel Committee have already been described as having signed off on torture, and as such Rockefeller, Feinstein*, Roberts, etc. have a vested interest in burying this.
The fact is that the American public wants this, the Republicans are going to fight you every step of the way on your agenda anyway, but still, you are determined to kick the can down the road long enough that people will forget.
This is not partisan politics, it is, as Krugman says, a battle for America’s soul, and it appears that the folks inside the Beltway just don’t give a damn
And the only way we can regain our moral compass, not just for the sake of our position in the world, but for the sake of our own national conscience, is to investigate how that happened, and, if necessary, to prosecute those responsible.
What about the argument that investigating the Bush administration’s abuses will impede efforts to deal with the crises of today? Even if that were true — even if truth and justice came at a high price — that would arguably be a price we must pay: laws aren’t supposed to be enforced only when convenient. But is there any real reason to believe that the nation would pay a high price for accountability?
Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, wouldn’t be called away from his efforts to rescue the economy. Peter Orszag, the budget director, wouldn’t be called away from his efforts to reform health care. Steven Chu, the energy secretary, wouldn’t be called away from his efforts to limit climate change. Even the president needn’t, and indeed shouldn’t, be involved. All he would have to do is let the Justice Department do its job — which he’s supposed to do in any case — and not get in the way of any Congressional investigations.
Why this scramble not to investigate. It makes no sense.
*Full disclosure, my great grandfather, Harry Goldman, and her grandfather, Sam Goldman were brothers, though we have never met, either in person or electronically.
I’ve included some graph pr0n to show just what the innumerate folks in the 4th estate have been doing.
We have a rather good article by Diana Olick, who explains that the bump in house prices reported yesterday were a mirage.
Basically, at different times of the years, different people look for different homes, and these different people buy different sorts of houses:
All that said, the Realtors, in a twist, decided to give the month-to-month home price changes today, because it offered, as chief economist Lawrence Yun suggested, hope of a possible “green chute.” Existing home prices rose 4 percent from February to March, according to the Realtors. Now, if you were listening before, you would say, ok, that’s because the families are getting into the spring game. But Mr. Yun points out that the usual bump up in spring prices is about 1 percent, so the 4 percent monthly bump up should be a good sign. I’m not going to argue with that, because it makes sense to me
But still, we get crap like, “New home sales down, but show sign of revival“,and “Drop in new U.S. home inventories offers hope“, which ignore basic facts.
New home inventories are down because developers cannot compete against foreclosures and short sales, which are nearly half the market, and the fact that the numbers dropping, but “exceeding” forecasts generally ignores the fact that the forecasters have gotten the entire housing market wrong.
As Barry Righoltz notes, the real number is that new home sales fell 41% YoY in February 2009, though the margin of error is ±7.9%, it’s indisputably a drop.
The 4.7% month to month increase against an ±18.3% margin of error (!) means nothing. (link to the Census Bureau Data)
BTW, the top graph, the one that even the most mathematically inept person in journalism could use to figure this out, is in the Census Bureau report.
And then we have this report on durable goods orders, which again claims that, “Orders for U.S. Durable Goods Fall Less Than Forecast,” using a different set of data from the Census Bureau, but using a similarly clueless group of economists to show that it “beat expectations”
http://img141.imageshack.us/img141/7573/headsmashkeyboard112129.gifOnly, as you can see from the graph, new orders are down 27% year over year, (graph courtesy of Bonddad) but we still have to see that, “Prosperity is just around the corner.”
Gah!!!!!
It now appears that the sale of GM’s main European division is a done deal, and it also looks possible that they will essentially give the car company away, “According to a person familiar with GM’s thinking, an investor will be asked to pay at least €500m ($652m) in equity but the carmaker will realise no financial gain as the money will be injected directly into Opel.”
I note without surprise that Cerberus, the private equity firm that owns Chrysler, is not interested in getting a piece of this deal.
When Cerberus bought Chrysler, they expected to hold onto it for perhaps 6 months, and then sell it to GM. Their model was flip and flee, not sensibly operate a company as a going concern.
Meanwhile, on the worker benefits front, it looks like GM Sand the UAW will be renegotiating their benefits deal, replacing much of the cash promised with an ownership stock in GM.
There is very little that I am sure of, but one is that when employees get an ownership stake in lieu of payment, they get the shaft.
In other GM News, it now appears that the normal 2 week end of year shutdown will be extended to 9 weeks, which makes sense when you look at how moribund car sales are, and they spooked the market by saying that was unlikely that they would be making a $1 billion debt payment in July, though they are saying that this is because they will have restructured the debt.
There is also a report that the US government will move to convert GM’s debt to it into equity, which will likely make the taxpayer the largest shareholder of the automotive giant.
Meanwhile, the Treasury is directing Chrysler to prepare for a bankruptcy filing, and not because, as the chattering class is so fond of asserting, the union is being unreasonable, but because the banks and other debt holders are.
Chrysler lenders offer to cut debt, take stock – Apr. 21, 2009, see here,
here, here, and here.
Basically, the market value on their debt is about 15%, and they want something north of 85%.
She links torture to political needs, as opposed to security needs. (13:23)
This may explain why Karl Rove is flipping out on Fox News about a possible criminal investigation: If this was done for political reasons, then he had to be actively involved in pursuing the policy.
Politics and electioneering went through his office.
It looks like the former Treasure Secretary, and the current Chairman of the Federal Reserve pressured Lewis to ignore the normal disclosure requirements to the SEC and his shareholders:.
Bank of America Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis told the New York attorney general he believed former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke wanted him to keep quiet about the worsening terms of the bank’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch, according to testimony reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
This is actually a big deal, and while I still think that Lewis is an idiot who should be fired for buying Countrywide Financial, it casts a far more sinister light of the involvement of the people who were then two most senior finance officials in the US.
I would note that Paulson has denied this, though the circumstances seem fairly clear:
The Journal said in Thursday’s edition that Lewis doesn’t say in the transcript that he was told specifically to remain silent about Merrill’s burgeoning losses. But the paper quotes Lewis as testifying that disclosing that information “wasn’t up to me,” and that he was warned by Paulson and Bernanke that failing to complete Merrill’s takeover would “impose a big risk to the financial system.”
Citing a person familiar with the matter, the newspaper said Paulson told the NY AG’s office last month that Lewis may have misread some remarks about Treasury’s disclosure requirements as instead pertaining to his bank’s obligations.
The “person familiar with the matter,” is Hank Paulson or one of His Evil Minions™, and, “he misheard me,” is awfully week tea by way of a denial.
As the the Bloomberg article notes:
The allegations in Cuomo’s letter suggest Paulson and other policymakers may have resorted to breaking securities laws in order to protect a fragile financial system, according to Peter Sorrentino, a senior portfolio manager at Cincinnati-based Huntington Asset Advisors, which has about $13.3 billion under management and doesn’t own Bank of America Corp. stock.
It’s actually more than that. Just by instructing Lewis to keep his mouth shut, Bernanke and Paulson engaged in a criminal conspiracy, and possibly, because of the power that they held in their positions, racketeering and abuse of power.
The Wall Street Journal has released selected transcripts, and if Lewis’ allegations are true, we have a criminal Chairing the Fed:
Mr. Lewis: I remember, for some reason, we wanted to follow up and see if any progress — as I recall, we actually, had not agreed to call a MAC after the conversation that we had, and so I tried to get in touch with Hank, and, as I recall, I got a number that was somebody at the Treasury kind of guard-like thing. He had a number for Hank, and Hank was out, I think, on his bike, and he — this is vague; I won’t get the words exactly right — and he said, “I’m going to be very blunt, we’re very supportive of Bank of America and we want to be of help, but” — I recall him saying “the government,” but that may or may not be the case — “does not feel it’s in your best interest for you to call a MAC, and that we feel strongly,” — I can’t recall if he said “we would remove the board and management if you called it” or if he said “we would do it if you intended to.” I don’t remember which one it was, before or after, and I said, “Hank, let’s deescalate this for a while. Let me talk to our board.” And the board’s reaction was one of “That threat, okay, do it. That would be systemic risk.”
…
Q: Why do you say it wasn’t up to you? Were you instructed not to tell your shareholders what the transaction was going to be?
Mr. Lewis: I was instructed that “We do not want a public disclosure.”
Q: Who said that to you?
Mr. Lewis: Paulson.
Seriously, this sounds like gangsters making threats, and I would suggest that a criminal investigation is in order.
Seriously, Shepard Smith of Fox News pounding the table and saying, “We don’t f&^$ing torture?”
Interestingly enough, the big issue here is not Shepard Smith showing common decency, but the fact that we are all using the word “torture”.
It changes the dialogue to use that word, and makes it clear just how repulsive the whole concept is.
As I’ve said before, I’m glad that Harman is not House Intel Chairman, but tht latest from Jeff Stein, who broke the story, is a classic case of the CIA screwing itself up, and f%$#ing itself over:
Frustrated and angry at Gonzales for aborting the investigation, intelligence officials let Pelosi know about the wiretap and its contents, according to the three former national security officials.
‘She knew. We made sure she knew,’ said one of the former officials, chuckling.
The officials would discuss the matter only on terms of anonymity, because even the existence of the wiretap remains classified.
These guys want to be unshackled from the Frank Church era restrictions, and they pull crap like this.
You are going to have Congressional committees investigating you in a way that is far less pleasant than an unlubed proctology exam now, and you are to blame for this.
Morons….We should have outsourced you lot’s job to the ex-KGB when the wall came down.
Well, we have the new jobless claims out, and again, they are grim, with initial claims raising from 613K to 640K, though the 4 week moving average, which is a better indicator, dropped to 646,750 from 651,000.
Continuing claims hit another record, up 93K to 6.137 million, worse than the forecast.
The fact that mass layoffs, more than 50 people, hit a record, with 2,933 in March, probably had something to do with this.
In world finance, we have Moody’s downgrading the debt of the Baltic Republics Lithuania and Latvia, indicating a bumpy way ahead.
In real estate March existing home sales fell, and with mortgage rates inching up, I would not expect a significant improvement in the situation.
Meanwhile, oil is up, and the dollar is down, for reasons not clear to me.
He belonged to 2 copyright advocacy organizations that one of the witness headed:
Norstrom is a member of The Swedish Association for Copyright, an organisation whose board includes Peter Danowsky, who represented the music and film industry in the trial, the group said on its website.
Norstrom said he did not believe his memberships had made him ineligible to preside over the trial.
Yeah, sure…..The head of the organization to which you belong is the lawyer litigating in front of you….
In any case, the defense is now asking for a new trial, and they are likely to get it.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is expressing concern over the wiretapping of house members, of course it wasn’t a problem when ordinary people were spied on, but not that it’s you and yours, there must be an investigation:
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday he had “great concern” over news reports that Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) was wiretapped during a federal probe into Israeli agents, and he vowed to personally look into whether there should be an investigation into wiretapping of Members of Congress.
“The stories that I’ve read give me great concern. I’m going to be in the process personally of finding out more about it and then, with the Speaker, determining what action, if any, needs to be taken,” Hoyer said Wednesday during a meeting with reporters.
Wanker.
And his allies in creating universal health coverage are pissed off:
More than 70 House Democrats recently warned party leaders that they will not support a broad health reform bill that does not offer consumers a government-sponsored policy, and two unions withdrew from a high-profile health coalition because it would not endorse a public plan.
“It’s way too early” to abandon what it considers a central plank in health reform, said Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union. He said the organization pulled out of the bipartisan Health Reform Dialogue because it feared its friends in the coalition were sacrificing core principles too soon. “You don’t make compromises with your allies.”
So he’s looking at compromising on what should be one of the goals of the program:
Many Republicans and industry executives say that any program modeled after Medicare — with its power to set prices — would have an unfair advantage over private-sector competitors and eventually force some companies out of business.
Destroying private health insurance companies in the US should be one of the goals.
They are in large part responsible for the problem, and taking them down has the overwhelming support of everyone who has had to deal with them.
If there is not a public insurance option, I will contact my Congressman and ask him to vote against it.
