Yeah, and there is a spoiler or two.
I haven’t seen the movie, but this is funny.
Month: May 2009
Make Your Money Multiply
ND+SFW, at least not if you are into Origami.
This iPod Thing is Getting Out of Hand
OK, out of nose, but still…..
Ebay Discovered to Have Socially Redeeming Value
It turns out that stealing artifacts from archeological sites is expensive and time consuming, and eBay allows these folks, who already know a fair amount about the artifacts to to make their money more easily by peddling counterfeits:
A little over a decade ago, archaeologists experienced a collective nightmare–the emergence of eBay, the Internet auction site that, among other things, lets people sell looted artifacts. The black market for antiquities has existed for centuries, of course, with devastating consequences for the world’s cultural heritage. But we could at least take some comfort that it was largely confined to either high-end dealers on one end of the economic spectrum or rural flea markets on the other. The sheer physical constraints of transporting and selling illegal artifacts kept the market relatively small. But the rise of online auction sites promised to drastically alter the landscape. And so it did, just not in the dire way we had anticipated.
Back in the pre-eBay days, the cost of acquiring and selling an antiquity was high. The actual looter was usually paid little, but various middlemen down the line added huge costs. During my 25 years of working in the Andes, I have often seen this dynamic at work. In years past, transporting an object was a big expense, even for portable artifacts, and the potential for arrest added to the total cost of doing business. In addition, the expense of authentication, conservation, and occasional restoration of the pieces, made buying and selling quality antiquities a wealthy person’s vice.
Our greatest fear was that the Internet would democratize antiquities trafficking and lead to widespread looting. This seemed a logical outcome of a system in which anyone could open up an eBay site and sell artifacts dug up by locals anywhere in the world. We feared that an unorganized but massive looting campaign was about to begin, with everything from potsherds to pieces of the Great Wall on the auction block for a few dollars. But a very curious thing has happened. It appears that electronic buying and selling has actually hurt the antiquities trade.
How is it possible? The short answer is that many of the primary “producers” of the objects have shifted from looting sites to faking antiquities. I’ve been tracking eBay antiquities for years now, and from what I can tell, this shift began around 2000, about five years after eBay was established. It is true that fakes have been around for centuries. In 1886, the celebrated Smithsonian archaeologist W. H. Holmes described countless bogus antiquities in Mexico. A few decades later, Egyptologist T. G. Wakeling noted that many ancient Egyptian artifacts were, in fact, fakes. In the 19th century, American and European museums purchased large numbers of “Etruscan” ceramic vessels and sarcophagi that came straight from the kilns of rural Italian farmers. But these were usually the really good fakes, labor-intensive pieces that required lots of work and skill. Today, every grade and kind of antiquity is being mass-produced and sold in quantities too large to imagine.
…
The interaction between technology and society is indeed weird.
Lying Two Faced Rat Bastard!
I have a joke for you:
Q:What’s the difference between Barack Obama and Dick Cheney?
A: I have no damn clue, because Barack Obama is restarting the military tribunals:
Military Tribunals Will Resume, Obama Says
By Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 15, 2009 1:55 PMPresident Obama said today he will revive military commissions but with greater legal safeguards for defendants to try some terrorist suspects held at the military base in Cuba.
The decision, which follows an intense internal debate, represents something of a reversal by the president who said during the campaign that military courts martial or the federal courts offered a better route to successful prosecution because he said military commissions had been an “enormous failure.”
In recent weeks, however, the administration appears to have bowed to fears articulated by the Pentagon that bringing some detainees before regular courts presented enormous legal hurdles and could risk acquittals.
Risk acquittals? You are doing this because of a Risk of Acquittals?
That’s the F$#@ING POINT OF A F$#@ING TRIAL, YOU F$#@ING ILL CONCEIVED F$#@ING SON OF A F$#@ING WOMBAT!
If you don’t have a “risk of acquittal”, it’s a F$#@ING show trial. So you are pre-announcing that the military commissions are a fraud, because, you don’t want to “risk acquittals”
He’s claiming that they will be fairer than the commissions that Bush came up with, because….Because, He’s Barack Obama, and he’s just so F$#@ING awesome.
Wrong! We are the United States of America, our whole system of government is about not relying on our leaders being, “so F$#@ING awesome,” it’s about the F$#@ING rule of F$#@ING law.
I don’t care how F$#@ING awsome you F$#@ING think you are, that’s not how Americans do things.
That weren’t bad enough you also have this:
The administration is still grappling with how to handle the cases of detainees that are deemed too dangerous to release, but that some in the Pentagon fear cannot be prosecuted in any legal forum. That could lead to the creation of a system of indefinite detention without charge backed by some form of regular court review.
Well, there’s another wonderful bit of accepting who we are as a nation: If there is anything that defines American jurisprudence, and the things that our founding fathers, commie pinkos like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Ben Franklin, it was that they found the very idea that someone could use the state could detain someone forever without any recourse to legal process to be an anathema.
It’s wrong, it’s stupid, and it’s un-American.
Glenn Greenwald, who is far kinder than I am, or perhaps more well spoken (better writer is a given), calls this “Obama’s kinder, gentler military commissions.” He quotes many people who are now serving in the Obama administration, as well as President Obama when he was candidate Obama, noting that the problem is not just that the processes were wrong, but that the entire idea of a special court with special procedures is wrong.
What is most pernicious, quoting a letter in response to Greenwald’s article is this:
The other aspect of it, and you hinted at this the other day, is this: Under Bush, half the country was trained to recite all sorts of dangerous propositions about how important it is to vest The President with all sorts of powers to keep us safe, how vital it is that he keep things secret to protect us from the Terrorists, how we can trust in our leaders to exercise in ways we don’t understand because we know he’s good at heart.
And now, with Obama, a significant portion of the other half of the country is being trained to recite the same things.
Once again proving that almost any person on the Internet can write, and think, more clearly than I can.
And then there’s what Digby said:
By the way, I have to wonder why it’s taken centuries to come up with the civilian and military justice systems? Apparently, creating a new one is piece of cake. Why all the sturm and drang with appellate court challenges and legislation? Just put it in a presidential memo and carry on.
What has been announced today is disgraceful.
Why Obama Suppressed the Torture Photos
Economics Update
Grim news out of Europe, with Euro zone GDP collapsing by 2.5% in the first quarter…That’s a quarterly decline, not a year over year decline, and largest decline for the Euro zone in at least 13 years. Before that there were no Euro zone statistics. (It should be noted that the YoY number is 4.6%, which is merely scary, as opposed to a terrifying double digit annual decline)
Not surprisingly, this pushed the dollar up relative to the Euro.
As bad as this was, it was even worse in Eastern Europe, because their recent growth was driven by exports and foreign investments looking for high returns, which are both gone.
Again using the quarterly numbers, Hungary -6.4%, Slovakia -5.4%, the Czech Republic -3.4, and Romania -6.4%.
A lot of this was driven by Germany’s contraction, which was among the largest in Western Europe, because they have a Hooverite as Chancellor, which was -3.8%, the biggest decline in Germany since the end of WWII.
Seriously we are talking end of the world numbers, he said, citing experts:
Dr Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath of God type stuff.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Exactly.
Dr Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling!
Dr. Egon Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes…
Winston Zeddemore: The dead rising from the grave!
Dr. Peter Venkman: Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!
Of course you have to go to Russia for a really scary number, -9.5% in the first quarter….Annualize that.
The news from the US was relatively mild, with the Empire State Manufacturing Survey showing only a modest decline. The index was up, but still below zero, so it still indicates contraction, and the Fed’s report on capacity utilization showed a marked decline.
We are still seeing the largest year over year decline in consumer prices since June 1955, but month to month indicates that there was no change, which eases deflationary concerns…A bit.
In banking, we are seeing further signs of easing with both the LIBOR and TED spread falling.
The easing of credit may be why the FDIC is walking away from its plan to guarantee 10 year bank bonds, though there are also indications of push-back from Treasury.
Meanwhile, the horrible GDP numbers from Europe, and the stronger dollar drove oil down, though retail gasoline is moving in the opposite direction, up 12% over the past 17 days.
Am I The Only Person Left Not Applying for TARP Money?
Because it’s beginning to feel like my geek days in high school*, when I though that I was the only virgin among the 1200+ students at Woodrow Wilson High School, because we have yet more people scrambling for TARP money.
First, we have major insurance companies getting major commitments of money:
The Treasury yesterday granted preliminary approval for some of the nation’s largest insurance companies to receive capital infusions under the government’s Troubled Assets Relief Program, Treasury spokesman Andrew Williams said.
Recipients are Hartford, Prudential, Allstate, Ameriprise, Lincoln National and Principal Financial Group, he said. The insurers notified yesterday are among hundreds of financial institutions in the pipeline “that are being reviewed and funded as appropriate on a rolling basis,” Williams said.
In addition we have YRC Worldwide, one of the largest trucking firms in the world, applying for bailout money to shore up its underfunded pension plan.
They are a big player, over 20%, in the “less-than-truckload” market, where loads amongst multiple customers are consolidated onto one truck.
How do I get my hands on some free money? I gotta start me a bank……I’ll pay myself just $500,000 a year, along with a $½ million bonus.
*I was more than just a geek. I wasn’t just a wargamer who played Dungeons and Dragons, but I founded the wargaming club at the school. I was the king of the geeks.
Talk About the Odd Couple
By which I mean Representative Ron Paul, Libertarian icon, and Senator Bernie Sanders, socialist are have both submitted bills calling for a full audit of the books of the Federal Reserve System, both the board, and the 12 regional banks.
I think that their motivations are different, Paul has long opposed the Fed because it sees it as an unwarranted intrusion by the government into the market, and Sanders sees it as being a tool of the big banks, but knowing what the Fed is doing would be a good thing, for everyone but Federal Reserve members.
Note that there is a general bipartisan consensus towards opening up the fed, as evidenced by the Senate’s passage of a bankruptcy reform bill with an amendment that expands oversight of the Federal Reserve.
I think that it’s clear that the role of the Fed in the current crisis shows that its role should be significantly restricted. I understand why there needs to be an institution which is insulated from political winds to manages monetary policy, but in their roles of bank regulator and bank rescuer, this “insulation”, is a level of opaqueness that does not serve society.
Pelosi Says that CIA Is Lying
I’m inclined to agree, since, as I have already noted, both Senators Rockefeller and Graham confirm her account of CIA briefings.
In any case, Nancy Pelosi has upped the ante now, and she has specifically called the CIA out as liars:
At a contentious news conference Thursday, Mrs. Pelosi said that during the 2002 briefing, “we were told that waterboarding was not being used.” Mrs. Pelosi acknowledged that as the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, she was briefed on Sept. 4, 2002, about waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning that critics, including President Barack Obama, call torture. But she said CIA officials told her and other lawmakers only that the Justice Department had concluded the procedure was legal.
This is interesting, because it may force Obama, whether he likes it or not, to put his support behind an investigation of the torture issue, as opposed to his desire to cover it up put it behind us.
It would be amusing if ‘Phant attacks on Pelosi end up precipitating a full investigation of this matter.
BankUnited It Looks Like Bank Failure Friday on Thursday
BankUnited is in trouble. Regulators have called “critically undercapitalized”, and so they are looking for a buyer.
Only one problem, it appears that the bidders are demanding that BankU be placed in receivership, i.e. taken over by the government and the common shareholders wiped out, before they buy into it.
This won’t be pretty.
Hank Paulson and His Evil Minions&trade Strong Armed the Banks into Taking TARP
And, BTW, Paulson’s Evil Minions™ include the then president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, one Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner.
Judicial watch is a bunch of nuts right-wing, or maybe they are a bunch right-wing of squirrels who collect nuts, but every now and then amongst their nuts (FOIA requests) they turn up a gem, and this time, it appears to be a doozy.
Basically, they have the memos about the initial TARP, and it is clear from them that Hank Paulson told the banks that they had no choice about letting the US government buy equity in them(See also here and here):
“We don’t believe it is tenable to opt out because doing so would leave you vulnerable and exposed. If a capital infusion is not appealing, you should be aware your regulator will require it in any circumstance,” the document said, citing Paulson talking points.
One of the things of interest here (see the Scribd Window) is that Hank Paulson’s chief of staff did not know who the “big 9 banks” were….The Secretary of the Treasury‘s chief of staff did not know who the big 10 banks were?
Great googly moogly.
Treasury CEO Talking Points v1
Publish at Scribd or explore others:
Note that the Scribd link is from Market Ticker, who also notes that according to AIG President Edward Liddy, the Federal Reserve insisted that all Credit Default Swaps at 100¢ on the dollar (CSPAN video Link at about 2:25:00)
The Smoking Gun For Dick Cheney
And no, this is not from the Smoking Gun, it’s from The Daily Beast, and it’s a big one.
Specifically, Robert Windrem, formerly a senior investigative producer with NBC News, has uncovered information that the office of the Vice President specifically requested that the a senior Iraqi official be waterboarded so as to extract a statement that Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were in league and cooperating on terrorism:
At the end of April 2003, not long after the fall of Baghdad, U.S. forces captured an Iraqi who Bush White House officials suspected might provide information of a relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s regime. Muhammed Khudayr al-Dulaymi was the head of the M-14 section of Mukhabarat, one of Saddam’s secret police organizations. His responsibilities included chemical weapons and contacts with terrorist groups.
…
In his new book, Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq, and in an interview with The Daily Beast, Duelfer says he heard from “some in Washington at very senior levels (not in the CIA),” who thought Khudayr’s interrogation had been “too gentle” and suggested another route, one that they believed has proven effective elsewhere. “They asked if enhanced measures, such as waterboarding, should be used,” Duelfer writes. “The executive authorities addressing those measures made clear that such techniques could legally be applied only to terrorism cases, and our debriefings were not as yet terrorism-related. The debriefings were just debriefings, even for this creature.”
Duelfer will not disclose who in Washington had proposed the use of waterboarding, saying only: “The language I can use is what has been cleared.” In fact, two senior U.S. intelligence officials at the time tell The Daily Beast that the suggestion to waterboard came from the Office of Vice President Cheney. Cheney, of course, has vehemently defended waterboarding and other harsh techniques, insisting they elicited valuable intelligence and saved lives. He has also asked that several memoranda be declassified to prove his case. (The Daily Beast placed a call to Cheney’s office and will post a response if we get one.)
(emphasis mine)
This isn’t about a ticking time bomb. This isn’t about ongoing plans. This is a request to torture someone until they say something that benefits you politically.
Can we put him on trial now?
Yes, I know that OVP does not necessarily equal Dick Cheney, but we also know that his office would not make such a request without his tacit or explicit approval.
Great Google Moogly!
So, I go off to hear the Franklin High School strings festival, which includes stuff from Franklin Middle, where my daughter goes, and plays violin, in addition to Timber Grove and Chatsworth elementary schools, and when I get back, all hell has broken loose.
Looks like about ½ dozen things developed.
Go figures.
Schadenfreude: That is Not a Natural Skin Color Edition
It looks like former Countrywide Mortgage CEO Angelo Mozilo is going to be sued by the SEC for, “insider trading and failing to disclose to shareholders the risks the company was running”.
At this point, it appears to just be a civil suit, but it appears to me that this is the first step toward a criminal prosecution.
Needless to say, this is a development that puts me in a Nelson Munz state of mind.
The SEC cannot put Mozilo in jail, but a separate federal criminal probe of Countrywide, begun last year, is continuing, one of the people familiar with the SEC case said.
…..
The agency’s staff also is recommending fraud charges against other former Countrywide officials, according to one of the people familiar with the probe, who was not authorized to discuss it publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
In the old days, following the excesses of the 1920s, one of the big players did his jail time, and spent the rest of his life earning a modest living running a farm.
If that were to happen to people like Mozilo and Miliken, it would be a good thing, because it would deter those who would be like them.
Another Day, Another Obama Backdown on a Campaign Promise
So now Barack Obama is saying that they just don’t have the votes to pass the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA):
President Barack Obama said there aren’t enough votes in the Senate to pass “card-check” legislation sought by labor unions and only a revamped measure would have a chance getting through Congress.
“There may be areas of compromise to get this bill done,” Obama said today a town hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque.
Suck it up man!
You are the President of the United States of America! Your job is to find the votes for this.
He thinks that by not pushing this, he’ll get cooperation from the ‘Phants healthcare or his other initiatives. He’s wrong.
And, BTW, I am sick and tired of all these people claiming that he’s playing some sort of ten dimensional chess, he’s not.
He figures that labor has no where else to go, so he will not work for them.
US Looking at New Regulations on Finance Industry
I find this hard to believe, coming as it does from Timothy “Regulatory Capture” Geithner, but we now have reports that the Treasury is looking at new regulations on bank executive compensation, with the appropriate squeals of protest from the pigs who get the pay and bonuses.
There is also a proposal to regulate derivative trading by requiring that most of them be traded on open and transparent markets, as opposed to the “black pools” in the shadow banking system.
Additionally they are looking to implement a reporting system on these trades based on the “Trace” system on bond prices, which halved the spreads between buy and sell prices that banks charged to purchasers by about ½.
Now, if they could only remember the lessons the Marine Insurance Act of 1746, and require that people who buy insurance, including swaps, must have a material interest in the underlying asset.
Unfortunately, Geithner, Summers, and Their Evil Minions™ still have their heart set on making the Federal Reserve the “systemic risk regulator, which is bad for a number of reasons:
- The Fed has been captured by Wall Street.
- There is no accountability at all, with its members appointed to very long terms by Congress, or by the banks themselves.
- The organization is opaque and secretive.
My guess is that these proposals are going to be half measures designed to forestall real change, but I’m a pessimist realist.
Normy’s Going to Jail
It looks like the FBI probe of Norm Coleman’s bribe taking is expanding.
He’s dirty, and with a bit of luck, he’s going to go to jail.
Things being what they are though, he might very well finish serving his sentence before the election is resolved.
Credit Card Reform May Relax Rules for Retailers
Specifically, the bill in the Senate is likely to contain regulations that would relax the regulations on retailers for charging to use credit and debit cards:
The law allows merchants to charge less for using cash, but card companies’ contracts with retailers can make it difficult. Merchants say they’re required to post two prices on every product if they want to charge more for credit card use, and that the credit card price be more prominent. Retailers can face penalties if they don’t.
The legislation would allow discounts for debit cards and ban retaliation against retailers who charge less for transactions that don’t involve credit cards. [merchants and credit-card costs]
“The extra charges the establishment has to pay for the use of a credit card are kind of hidden inflaters in the cost of the product,” said Sen. Richard Durbin (D., Ill.), who is pushing the measure with Sen. Christopher Bond (R., Mo.).
Needless to say, the banks and other credit card issuers are aggressively lobbying against this.
Your Liberal Media
You may have heard a minor media sh%$storm about an OMB report that says that global warming is a farce, and that it will wreck the economy.
Only the report is not a report, it’s just a collection of various opinions from other agencies that the OMB passes on without comment, and it’s just one comment.
And the comment, it came from the Small Business Administration’s Office of Advocacy, an office whose only job is to lobby for small businesses, and which has no professional staff, only political appointees.
In this case, the political appointee in question was Joseph Johnson, a former member of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, which is another right wing funded front. See also here if you can stomach a Glen Beck video.
Needless to say, this did not prevent the New York Times from mindlessly echoing all the spin (also here), along with the rest of usual suspects.
Of course, it took a bunch of couple DFH* bloggers at The Atlantic and Media Matters about a half day to get to the bottom of this, but our main stream media?
Not so much.
*Dirty F%$#ing Hippy.