He was there to vote in favor of the F-22 boondoggle Raptor, and this means that the Dems, at least theoretically, have 59 votes for cloture, though I think that Ted Kennedy, who has also been absent for health reasons, would be down to the floor for anything short of a coma for the health plan.
Month: July 2009
Economics Update
It appears that Ben Bernanke has a mentioned a secret plan to win the war in Vietnam protect the US dollar from inflation,* which will prevent inflation when the economy recovers, and this has driven Treasuries higher, and their yields lower:
Fed officials said in a report submitted as part of Bernanke’s testimony that policy will be “tightened” when the labor market improves, an economic recovery takes hold and pressures holding down inflation “diminish.” The comments follow a rally in stocks and a rebound in corporate earnings that have stoked speculation the worst recession in half a century is ending.
I’m not an economist, but I still think that one way to get out of this mess is to inflate our way out of this, which will have the effect of devaluing the debt which is holding back our economy.
I understand that it can (*cough* Zimbabwe *cough*) get out of hand, but it seems to me that too many people are under water for any recovery now.
Considering the fact that Americans are paying down their debt at the fastest rate since 1952, I do not see an alternative.
IMHO, We are in a deflationary trap, and creating inflation is the way out of it.
In any case, Bernanke’s statements about inflation boosted the US dollar, and his statements about recovery boosted crude oil prices.
*It’s a “Tricky Dick” Nixon reference, OK?
The Two Best Snarks of the Week
Senate Kills F-22
Amendment approving it being stripped from the Defense Appropriations Bill passes passes 58-40.
I’m with SecDef Bob Gates on this. The push behind this is to have the USAF be able to achieve air supremacy against any potential future foe, and the costs end up killing men on the ground, and citizens in the streets, now.
We still maintain the ability to achieve air superiority against any potential future foe, and air supremacy against any probable opponent, and it saves money for better readiness in a counter-insurgency scenarios that are the most likely future conflicts for the next ¼ century.
Additionally, it frees up money to provide for things like vaccinating and educating our children.
The F-22 was about ensuring that in the worst possible conflict the USAF would be at virtually no risk of air to air casualties, at the expense of everyone else.
While that might be nice for the fighter jocks, the marginal utility of air supremacy vs air superiority means very little to the guy on the ground, or the tax-payer.
Buzz Aldrin Punches Jerk Who Deserved It
At about 2:45 into the video, he lays one on a lunar landing denier.
Jon Stewart is a F%$#ing Genius, Part 7734
In this case, it’s really not about laughing stock South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, but rather about the media whores who sucked up to him for the possibility of an interview.
Inspector General Says Insufficient Oversight for TARP
Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the TARP, is saying that oversight by the US Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve is woefully inadequate, and he also places the price tag for the bank bailouts at as much as $23.7 trillion.
By way of perspective, the whole US economy (GDP) is about $15 trillion, and the the world GDP is is listed at $65.82 Trillion.
To quote the Bloodhound Gang:
The roof the roof the roof is on fire
The roof the roof the roof is on fire
The roof the roof the roof is on fire
We don’t need no water let the motherf#$%er burn
Burn motherf#$%er burn
We need to amputate the current banking system, and replace it with something that works.
Cool
Continental drift animation.
Someone Who Gets Goldman Sachs
He calls them “scum”.
Massachusetts Looks to Revamp its Healthcare
They are looking to move from a fee for service to a flat fee per patient.
I do not expect this to work. I think that the individual mandate is flawed, but it is the only thing that states are allowed to do under ERISA, so that is everyone’s solution.
Just eliminating the preemption clause from ERISA would go a long way toward solving the problem, because states would compete on the quality and cost effectiveness of their health care for businesses, as opposed to competing on tax giveaways.
Economics Update
The obvious lede here is that the leading economic indicators have risen for the 3rd straight month.
3 straight months is supposed to indicate that that a recovery is likely.
I’m not sure just what the recovery is supposed to be, as in the nonsensically titled article, “Commercial property price drop may signal bottom,” which takes the position that a -7.6% price decline in May, which followed a -8.6% decline in April, (-16.2% in 2 months!!), a -29% year over year decline, and -34.8% decline from peak is not the next tsunami in real estate and banking.
The fact that commercial mortgage defaults have hit a20-year high would seem to mitigate against any recovery any time soon in the commercial real estate sector.
In any case, commercial lender CIT, not to be confused with Citi, managed to cut a deal which staved off bankruptcy, and this calmed investors, which increased their optimism and appetite for risk, which
pushed the dollar to a 6 week low, and drove oil prices up, though retail gasoline, which lags oil prices, fell to an 8 week low.
The Eagle Has Landed
40 years ago today.
Quote of the Day
I love this quote from Harold Feld’s Tales of the Sausage Factory:
More and more, I’m feeling like a volunteer for the “Mark Sanford in 2012 Committee” finding out what “hiking the Appalachian Trail” really means.
What he is talking about is the fact that the broadband stimulus package is being manipulated by the incumbents and the regulators to make it next to impossible for non incumbents to compete.
Basically, the stim money is to go to “unserved” and “underserved” census blocks, but only the incumbent carriers will be able to use the actual broadband penetration to document this, because such data is “proprietary.”
Catch-22.
One Very Big Plus to the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill
It appears that the legislation, which creates a Co2 cap and trade regime, also bans naked credit default swaps, and could be construed as banning all credit default swaps:
Here’s the key passage from Waxman-Markey, buried on page 1,070 of the 1,428-page bill introduced in the Senate on July 6:
“It shall be unlawful for any person to enter into a credit default swap unless the person:
1) owns a credit instrument which is insured by the credit default swap;
2) would experience financial loss if an event that is the subject of the credit default swap occurs with respect to the credit instrument; and
3) meets . . . minimum capital adequacy standards…”
Basically, a credit default swap is an insurance policy on a financial instrument, and a naked swap is an insurance on a policy in which one has no interest in its continued existence.
This section of the bill is clearly intended to ban naked swaps, but some people are arguing that the specific language of the bill actually bans all CDS, because the person selling the swap does not have own, “a credit instrument which is insured by the credit default swap,” but by selling the insurance they are “entering into” the CDS.
My guess is that the courts will not view this as a ban on all CDS instruments, and if Waxman-Markey bans nakes swaps, this is enough to justify support the bill on its own, as weak as it is.
By background, in insurance, it’s forbidden to, for example, take out insurance on things like your neighbor’s home, and has been for some time:
In 1746, Parliament passed the Marine Insurance Act, requiring anyone seeking to collect on an insurance contract to have an interest in the continued existence of the insured property. Thus was born the insured-interest doctrine. The indemnity doctrine, which precludes a buyer from insuring property for more than it’s worth, soon followed. The point of these rules is to limit insurance contracts to trading existing risks and not to create new risks by giving buyers of insurance incentive to destroy property. The doctrines have been part of insurance law in both England and the United States (which in 1746 were colonies under English common law) ever since.
Unfortunately, in the Greenspan/Rubin/Summers America, it was decided that this 263 year old lesson could be ignored, and so we have trillions of dollars in casino bets masquerading as insurance, but isn’t insurance, because then the contracts for naked swaps would be unenforceable as insurance policies.
H/t Kevin Drum
The Best Press Release Ever
Cyclone Power Technologies issued the following press release regarding rumors of it creating flesh eating zombie hordes:
PRESS RELEASE
Cyclone Power Technologies Responds to
Rumors about “Flesh Eating ” Military RobotPOMPANO BEACH, FL, July 16, 2009. In response to rumors circulating the internet on sites such as FoxNews.com, FastCompany.com and CNET News about a “flesh eating ”robot project, Cyclone Power Technologies Inc. (Pink Sheets: CYPW) and Robotic Technology Inc. (RTI) would like to set the record straight: This robot is strictly vegetarian.
On July 7, Cyclone announced that it had completed the first stage of development for a beta biomass engine system used to power RTI ’s Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot (EATR™), a Phase II SBIR project sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Defense Sciences Office. RTI ’s EATR is an autonomous robotic platform able to perform long-range, long-endurance missions without the need for manual or conventional re-fueling.
RTI ’s patent pending robotic system will be able to find, ingest and extract energy from biomass in the environment. Despite the far-reaching reports that this includes “human bodies,” the public can be assured that the engine Cyclone has developed to power the EATR runs on fuel no scarier than twigs, grass clippings and wood chips – small, plant-based items for which RTI ’s robotic technology is designed to forage. Desecration of the dead is a war crime under Article 15 of the Geneva Conventions, and is certainly not something sanctioned by DARPA, Cyclone or RTI.
“We completely understand the public ’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population,but that is not our mission,”stated Harry Schoell,Cyclone ’s CEO.“We are focused on demonstrating that our engines can create usable, green power from plentiful, renewable plant matter. The commercial applications alone for this earth-friendly energy solution are enormous.”
(emphasis original)
Somehow, I do not think that this press release will help much. They just cemented their position in the public view as a manufacturer of Cannibal Zombdroids™.
If Leno, O’Brien, Letterman, Colbert, or Stewart’s writer’s hear about this, it will be how your company is introduced to mainstream America.
H/t Noah Shachtman.
No
Cenk Uygur asks, “Will Eric Holder actually hold Bush admin. accountable for torture?”
This has been another episode of simple answers to simple questions.
Old News
But it’s nice that the fact that we tortured Uighurs at the request of the Communist Chinese government at Guantanamo is now hitting mainstream news orgs, the link is MSNBC, is a good thing.
Background here.
That Sound is George Orwell Spinning in His Grave at 4800 RPM
Amazon sold copies of 1984 and Animal Farm in E-Book format for use on its Kindle reader, and when the publisher objected, it removed the books from its store, and from the Kindles of people who had already purchased the books.
The people bought these books, and thought that they owned them, albeit without the option of donating them at a later time, etc., but they were wrong, and all traces were removed from their readers.
As both David Pogue and Boing Boing note, this mirrors a number of concerns that people have with the new IP regime, and how it will apply to digital data.
Of course, the fact that these books were consigned to the “memory hole”, a term created by George Orwell in his book 1984, the irony here is obvious:
In the walls of the cubicle there were three orifices. To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages, to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of Winston’s arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. This last was for the disposal of waste paper. Similar slits existed in thousands or tens of thousands throughout the building, not only in every room but at short intervals in every corridor. For some reason they were nicknamed memory holes. When one knew that any document was due for destruction, or even when one saw a scrap of waste paper lying about, it was an automatic action to lift the flap of the nearest memory hole and drop it in, whereupon it would be whirled away on a current of warm air to the enormous furnaces which were hidden somewhere in the recesses of the building.
As I am wont to say, “Who says that irony is dead?”
Proof of God’s Existence
He has a Facebook page.
Zimbabwe Update
Well, the drafting of a new constitution is a complete mess, with ZANU-PF busing in thugs to disrupt the charter meeting.
In a darkly humorous development, it appears that ZANU-PF did not think it out fully, as they did not include transport back home for their thugs, who were stranded for a few days at the hotel at which the meeting is being held.
From the other side, there have been threats of boycotts from civil society groups, who claim that they have not been fully included in the process, and that parliamentarians have complete control of the process.
As a historical aside, this sort of stuff makes the US Constitutional convention, which was conducted in secret, look awfully attractive.
In terms of the current government, it appears that ZANU-PF is engineering trumped up charges against MDC members of parliament, in order to get them suspended, which, if done in sufficient quantities, would flip control of the chamber back to the ZANU-PF.
Notwithstanding the rhetoric about an inclusive government, I really don’t think that there will be any progress without a some external entity, and South Africa is the entity best suited to this, having a boot on Mugabe’s neck to coerce “good faith” moving forward.
Finally, it appears that the situation in the Zimbabwean diamond mines is getting worse. While the government has agreed to remove the army from the mines, “in phases”, but the army has refused to leave.