My apologies, but the city of Amsterdam gives us a righteous take-down of Bill O’Reilly and His Evil Minions’&trade talking points on legalized weed in the Netherlands.
H/t Boing Boing.
BTW, in the comments there, you can find this ditty, Netherlands to close prisons for lack of criminals….Some hellhole, huh.
N.J. Judge Retains Case Over Estate of Formosa’s Wang
It’s really not a particularly interesting story, but the hed is prize.
Calculated Risk flags a survey showing that about 63% of all home sales are distressed in one manner….Look at the graph, and it appears that ¼ of these are “trashouts”. (!)
This is confirmed by the fact that foreclosures hit a new record in July.
CR also notes, citing a report from Campbell Communications, (PDF, and also the source of the pie graph) that only 29% of purchases are being made by current home owners…..The rest is new home buyers and investors, so there is very little “move up” buying too.
Doug Manchester, hotelier and big money backer of “traditional marriage” defender in California, he spent big on proposition 8, is getting a divorce from his wife of 43 years.
What’s more, it appears that he is doing his level best to play hardball with his soon to be ex, draining joint accounts, concealing assets, and stiffing some of his grand children on private school tuitions.
Now, there is some marriage that we can stand behind.
*Yeah, I can’t believe that I said that either.
Letter to Karl Rovecomplaining that US Attorney David Iglesias was “missing in action” during the 2002 and 2004 elections (see pic below), and Harriet Miers fingers Karl Rove calling for his dismissal for explicitly political reasons:
The House panel focused most of its attention on Iglesias, a rising star in New Mexico who came to displease his political patrons. Miers told investigators that Rove called her in September 2006, “agitated” about the slow pace of public corruption cases against Democrats and weak efforts to pursue voter-fraud cases in the state. In the call, Miers said, Rove described Iglesias as a “serious problem” and said he wanted “something done” about it. Miers testified that she called then-Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty to pass along the concerns.
But when you see clear evidence of corruption and a deliberate attempt to undermine the role of the Department of Justice as a non-political enforcer of laws, what do we get from Obama and Holder? Crickets.
We need a special prosecutor. Because until people are prosecuted for crap like this, it will continue.
Trade Deficit Graphs Courtesy of Calculated Risk
The lede today is that the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) med and has issued its report.
Rates are staying where they are, but they are winding down their bond purchase program, and they seem to be seeing a light at the end of the recession tunnel.
You can read their full statement here.
Unsurprisingly, their upbeat attitude pushed the prices down, and hence the yields up, on 10 year US treasuries.
Me, I’m not the optimistic type, and with home prices declining 15.6% year over year, as foreclosures push down prices, and there is also tremendous amount of Shadow inventory out there, where banks are not listing houses on the MLS in order to support prices.
In any case, mortgage rates are on the rise again, which has depressed mortgage applications, particularly those for ReFis.
In addition, further indicators of what is going on in the real economy, specifically back to school sales and pay raises are both trending in the direction of awful.
On the trade deficit, there has been an increase in the US trade deficit, (see graphs) but this is not an artifact of increased demand for goods and services, but of rising oil prices, which, by the way, were up today.
We are also seeing a deflationary spiral in Japan, where wholesale prices fell by 8½% year over year in July.
Still, it appears that the Fed’s optimism has driven the dollar up today.
Here he interviews and Jon Cohn on healthcare reform:
It appears that Rick Santorum* is making the pilgrimage to Iowa, indicating that he is looking to run for President in 2012:
Add former Sen. Rick Santorum to the list of potential 2012 Republican presidential candidates.
POLITICO has learned Santorum will visit first-in-the-nation Iowa this fall for a series of appearances before the sort of conservative activists who dominate the state GOP’s key presidential caucuses.
While this might not be good for the nation, or for the caucus goers of Iowa, or any attempt to have sanity return to the Republican party in 2012, it is good for late night talk show hosts, columnist Dan Savage,† and anyone interested interested in heaping scorn on nonsensical quotes from Republicans, like yours truly.
This promises to be as entertaining as the Fred Thompson Clown show of 2008.
Of course, it could go horribly awry, as my father illustrated in 1968, when he noted, “Those stupid bastards nominated Richard Nixon! There is no way that we can lose now.”‡
*The definition of Santorum is, “That frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex”.
†Who coined said definition of “Santorum.”
‡Piss poor political forecasts run in my family, so do not take my predictions as gospel.
I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!The House Judiciary Committee has released documents relating to the US Attorney firings, and they indicate that Bush and His Evil Minions™ were hip deep in the process, and that it they were pushing this for electoral advantage. (also here)
They specifically went after prosecutors who they felt did not pursue bogus politically motivated charges.
So, when is Barack Obama going to look into the matter of Don Siegelman?
Bernie Madoff’s former CFO, Frank DiPascali, has pled guilty to 10 counts regarding the Ponzi scheme. (see also here)
What makes this interesting is that he is “cooperating with authorities.”
Madoff simply pled guilty, and asked for nothing, and has refused to talk to prosecutors, which implies that he’s protecting someone, most likely his family, but DiPascali appears to be ready to dish dirt, which likely means that his wife Ruth, or his children who worked with him in the business, are going to have some interesting days ahead.
That’s Favelas to my Brazilian* friends.
It looks like an increasingly large number of municipalities have started offering services to tent cities erected by the homeless on public land, as opposed to the old policy of evicting the residents, because they have no resources to address the explosion of the newly homeless.
*If you are asking how many is a “Brazilian”, you must have been a senior Bush admistration official.
We have some pieces of good news. The 1st is that non-farm productivity rose at a 6.4% annual rate, the highest rate since 2003, the 2nd is that wholesale inventories fell at more than twice the predicted rate, and the 3rd is that the Hotel Industry’s Pulse index (HIP) rose in July, for the first time in 19 months.
Both of these numbers are generally positive, though the numbers for productivity include a reduction in hours worked and worker pay, and a reduction in inventories is only a good thing to the degree to which we get to the end of that process.
On the less encouraging side of the spectrum, we have demand for US Treasuries increasing, which indicates a return to risk aversion, and the Baltic Dry Index has fallen for a 9th straight day, which indicates a big drop in international trade.
In energy, we have oil falling below $70/bbl, and in currency, the dollar fell, particularly against the Yen.
Don’t Make Me Get Out of this Chair!Columnist and deputy editorial page editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Jay Bookman notes a contradiction in the arguments of the “Obama will engage in Nazi-style euthanasia™“.
It appears that one of the widely circulated canards is that if Obama gets his way, he will kill the sick and infirm, and Mr. Bookman, being on the mailing list for retarded libertarian magazine Human Events,* received this missive titled Grandmas and Unborn Babies Face Extermination by Obama’s “Health” Care Plan, which cited an editorial in Investors Business Daily, which claimed that:
People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.†
The problem here, as Mr. Bookman so ably notes, is that Stephen Hawking lives in the UK, and has lived there his entire life, and furthermore, he has, since the age of 6½, had his medical care covered by that very same National Health Service that is allegedly chomping at the bit to kill him.
The folks writing about this are stupid and evil beyond belief.
That being said, while Jay Bookman is an engaging writer, this is not the “Best Snark Evah!!!!“, that distinction is left to the comments on his blog post, specifically the first comment, from one Brad Steel:
I think that I broke something laughing.
*Thankfully, I have avoided this fate.
†You won’t find it there any more, though there is a note there noting the “correction“.
Temporary Help Numbers, H/T The Big PictureI was going to post, but thunder storms came through, and even with a surge protector, I shut down.
It was a big day for central bank news, with reports that the Federal Reserve sending signals that it will stop purchasing Treasuries, which means that while rate hikes are not on the horizon, that quantitative easing (printing money) will be ended over the next few months.
Meanwhile, the granddaddy of zero interest rate central banks, the Bank of Japan, has decided to keep its rate at 0.1% (basically 0%), as the Bank Governor, Masaaki Shirakawa, says that he does not see a strong recovery once stimulus measures fade, “I can’t be confident about the strength of final demand after inventory adjustments and policy measures run their course.”
The Bank of Korea is of the same mind, with it keeping its benchmark rate at 2%, an all time low for the institution.
In employment, the decline in temporary workers seems to be moderating a bit (see graph).
In real estate, it looks like commercial real estate (CRE)is on a path to crash more catastrophically than residential real estate, Fitch Ratings predicting that delinquencies could exceed 5% by year’s end.
Basically, CRE is in a worse place than residential, because they typically take out 5 year mortgages that they have to refinance at the end of the term. If real estate prices go down, they cannot refinance, while in residential real estate, once you have a mortgage, you have one until the loan is paid off.
In China, exports have declined for the 9th straight month, and new loans fell, indicating that they are not out of the woods yet.
Meanwhile, in currency, there has been a flight to safety, driving up the US dollar, and to an even larger degree, the Japanese Yen.
In energy, oil fell, though it is still above $70/bbl, and gasoline prices have spiked, up 15¢ in the past two weeks.
He has come out in favor of Ben Bernanke being reappointed as Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Krugman’s argument is that Bernanke has been largely successful and effective in his efforts in battling the recession.
There are a number of other notables, such as Nouriel Roubini and Mark Thoma, who agree with Krugman, while Joseph Stiglitz and Calculated Risk suggests that his replacement be seriously considered, and Anna Jacobson Schwartz unequivocally calls for his removal.
Fundamentally, they base this decision on his performance, and it is reasonable to say that each of them have a better grasps of the details of this performance, but it misses the bigger picture: That both as an economy and as a democracy, the United States cannot afford to have another “Rock Star” Fed Chair.
The time of Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan has conclusively demonstrated that.
Ex-performance, the main argument for keeping Bernanke is that not doing so would be too disruptive, and it is the one most frequently made.
This fact demands his replacement at the end of his term.
The issue is not economics, nor his performance, but that a world in which an almost completely unaccountable figure is deemed crucial is simply not acceptable.
Frank Rich asks, “Is Obama Punking Us?,” with regard to health care.
What he is really asking is whether Obama is more concerned with having something that he can claim as an an accomplishment to sign than he is with actually fixing things.
You see the same thing with Geithner/Summers and the financial crisis.
There is a real and deep aversion to meaningful change here.
This has been another episode of simple answers to simple questions.
I need a screen cleaner.
