So, I needed to get gravy and lamb off the roof of my car (long story), and so I needed to through the car wash.
It’s something to share with the kids, so I took them through the car wash, one of the little ones that you can get at some places with a fill-up.
My kids enjoyed themselves.
So it looks like the SEC has more insider trading cases that it’s looking into in addition to the Galleon case, which has had Raj Rajaratnam being frog marched before cameras in handcuffs.
What can I say but, “Pass the popcorn.”
I know what I can say, “Don’t stop until every person who was in on these deals has been caught, thrown off of Wall Street, and left destitute.”
Yes, Man, the Main Stream Media Just Ate it Up
So it looks like the the activist/guerrilla theater team, the Yes Men, along with the Avaaz Action Factory, hoaxed the main stream media by getting them to cover a phony press release,and phony press conference, where the chamber reversed themselves on CO2/global warming legislation, saying that, “Without a stable climate, there will be no business.” (see also here and here)
And about the only thing that could make this episode more cruelly embarrassing for the US Chamber of Commerce? Why, that would be demanding a for a criminal investigation of the hoax, which, of course, is exactly what the chamber is doing:
“We will be asking law enforcement authorities to investigate this event. Beyond that, the Chamber will simply continue to focus on a positive vision for getting people back to work and growing our economy.”
So, Major Pwn36e* followed up by self Pwn36e*, but that’s not all:
The U.S. Chamber is the world’s largest business federation representing more than 3 million businesses and organizations of every size, sector, and region.
Ummm….You are only over-reporting your membership by a factor of 10, as has been revealed by numerous sources, and stipulated as true by the Chamber itself.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of running-dog Republican lackeys.
*Ownage.
So, Chris Christie is running for Governor of New Jersey, and we know that he made a $46,000.00 loan to his close aid, Michele Brown, that he neglected to mention on his disclosure forms, but he claimed that she had done nothing for his campaign.
Oops, maybe she did a little:
But interviews with federal law enforcement officials suggest that Ms. Brown used her position in two significant and possibly improper ways to try to aid Mr. Christie in his run for governor.
In March, when Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s campaign requested public records about Mr. Christie’s tenure as prosecutor, Ms. Brown interceded to oversee the responses to the inquiries, taking over for the staff member who normally oversaw Freedom of Information Act requests, according to federal law enforcement officials in Newark and Washington. The requested information included records about Mr. Christie’s travel and expenses, along with Ms. Brown’s travel records.
In mid-June, when F.B.I. agents and prosecutors gathered to set a date for the arrests of more than 40 targets of a corruption and money-laundering probe, Ms. Brown alone argued for the arrests to be made before July 1. She later told colleagues that she wanted to ensure that the arrests occurred before Mr. Christie’s permanent successor took office, according to three federal law enforcement officials briefed on the conversation, presumably so that Mr. Christie would be given credit for the roundup.
So, it’s clear that she has been a mole for Christie in the US Attorney’s office, someone who he mentored and who repaid the favor, but though reporter, David Halbfinger, does imply that there might have been a bit more was going on:
Those records, which the Corzine campaign has parceled out to news organizations, have already proved embarrassing to Mr. Christie. News stories last week said the records showed Mr. Christie often stayed at expensive hotels on the taxpayers’ dime, routinely exceeding per diem rates set for Justice Department officials.
Additional records provided in raw form by the Corzine campaign and analyzed by The Times show that Ms. Brown accompanied Mr. Christie on 16 trips, the bulk of them in 2007 and 2008. They were often accompanied by a junior prosecutor, Kevin O’Dowd.
I really do not care about who Chris Christie f%$#s, but it is clear that he did his best to use his position as US Attorney for maximum partisan advantage, including the fact that he, “Discussed a run for governor with Karl Rove in 2006,” an action which which is expressly forbidden under federal law.
I’m not sure if this will drive voters to Jon Corzine, but if this doesn’t, it’s likely to drive people to independent candidate Chris Daggett, and Christie has already frittered away a double digit lead on this.
So, now we know that once he is presented with overwhelming pressure, and the threat of a withdrawal of support, which would end with him being hung from a lamp post, Hamid Karzai will observes the cosmetic niceties of a democratic government:
Karzai welcomed the ruling by the government-appointed Independent Election Commission (IEC) after hours of closed-door meetings with western diplomats and mounting international pressure to accept the need for a second round.
He’s welcoming this ruling in the same way that you or I would welcome a prostate exam…With a bowling ball.
Bend over, this won’t hurt a bit…..
‘Moby-Dick’ to be Rewritten in Emoticons
Someone needs to get a f$%#ing life.
Two Republican county chairmen in South Carolina penned an editorial praising Senator Mike DeMint.
Of course, they chose the most sensitive terms to rebut the accusation that Senator DeMint had not brought home enough in earmarks:
There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves. By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation’s pennies and trying to preserve our country’s wealth and our economy’s viability to give all an opportunity to succeed.
(emphasis mine)
A note to my Republican Jewish friends. They aren’t wearing stylish hoodies, they are Klan robes.
*Refers to the concentration camp prisoners who were made trustees, and put in charge of other prisoners. Their brutality frequently shocked the SS guards.
In just one headline:
Private Capital Looks To Cash In On Carbon Trading
Yep, letting the hedgies in on this is such a good idea.
He was acquitted of slashing his girl-friend’s face, not surprising, given that she was testifying on his behalf, but, “convicted of misdemeanor assault for dragging her through the lobby of his apartment building, which was caught on the building’s security cam.
It should be noted that some members of the State Senate, mostly Democrats, are calling for his ouster, while the Republicans are largely silent on this.
It’s not surprising, as Republicans would still be down by one vote 31-30 if Monserrate were to leave, and so, unlike the national Republicans, they are keeping their mouths shut, knowing that this is a lose-lose for the Democrats.
So, it turns out that the ECC threw out nearly 1/3 of the ballots cast for Karzai, and the US government is saying that it cannot make a decision about more troops until the matter is resolved.
My guess is that Karzai will accept a runoff, and that he will probably win, as he has extensive support from the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, as well as a bureaucracy that will be firmly supporting him in the balloting.
Someone else can filk the rest of the song, but it appears that even the Blue dogs are starting to get a clue:
At this moment, all Democratic politicians, even the most conservative, are realizing that their voters will blame them, not the insurance companies, if the policies the voters are required to buy are so expensive that premiums consume over 20 percent of those voters’ annual incomes. Suddenly, more generous tax subsidies to cover middle-class premiums seem like a good idea. And if the public option can bring down the cost of premiums those subsidies have to pay for, then the overall size of the reform price tag can be kept under control – a long time demand of moderate Democrats.
(emphasis mine)
Yeah. It took a while, but the Blue Dogs now realize that most people hate their insurance companies.
Hoocoodanode?
Will Bunch notes that a number of so called liberal pundits have gone after Barack Obama:
Kind of reminds me of all those conservative columnists who gave Bush a honeymoon in those early months of 2001 but eventually went after him when it became clear that he’d invaded another country for bogus reasons, was assaulting the civil liberties of Americans and bankrupting the national treasury with unnecessary tax cuts at a time of proflagate spending.
Remember those columnists?
Me neither.
(emphasis mine)
Too true.
It turns out that, despite the protestations of the banks, that they were hip deep in the subprime mortgage debacle.
It wasn’t just all those evil mortgage brokers, etc.
The banks protesting that they were leaving money on the table, is like claims made by WWE that pro wrestling is real.
Commercial Real Estate Prices
Home Builder Confidence Graph Pron Courtesy Calculated Risk
Ummm…If you think that the real estate implosion is done, then you haven’t been following commercial real estate (CRE), where prices fell 3% in August, about a 42% annual rate,* though the year over year decline was “just” 32%, and it’s down 41% from its peak in 2007.
Remember, commercial mortgages typically come due after 5 years, so we are going to see a lot of folks defaulting on CRE mortgages as their time comes up, because they will be under water.
It’s no wonder that the National Association of Home Builders’ Confidence Index has fallen, particularly when juxtaposed with the expiration of the let’s reinflate the bubble first time home buyer’s tax credit at the end of November.
Note that to qualify for the credit, you must close before November 30, which means that if you buy now, you are starting to cut it close.
Still investors seem to be sanguine about economic prospects, as they are pulling out of US Treasuries and the dollar while crude oil hit a 1-year high.
*The joys of compound interest. 3% a month over 12 months is not 36%, it’s 1.0312=1.42=42%.
A Rich Guy Being Frog Marched in HandcuffsIt appears that US Attorney for New York has come up with a new way to enforce the laws against stock fraud, by going after them as if they were members of organized crime, with things like court ordered wiretaps, which were used to bring an indictment against Raj Rajaratnam, the head of the Galleon Group hedge fund.
The thing is, it is organized crime, it requires an enormous amount of…well…organization to pull off insider trading schemes:
Mintz said the alleged $20 million scheme is the most elaborate insider-trading ring discovered since the 1980s when the government began using criminal laws to prosecute such allegations.
“This was an extensive web of insider trading built upon years of contacts and strategically placed people,” the former prosecutor said. “Typically, insider trading cases are much more narrowly focused on some significant deal that’s leaked from one or two sources. The more people who have knowledge, the more potential that the scheme will be uncovered.”
There are dozens of people involved who have to know what is going on, and who must either actively aid, or actively ignore the activity for it to go forward when it is much more than an individual who has foreknowledge of a single event and then buys or sells based on this, as was the case, for example, with Martha Stewart.
One thing to be noted here is that this is about what would be considered pennies, it amounts to about $20 million for a man worth well over a billion dollars, and so, on a deep level, it makes little sense: Why risk decades in jail for something that might net less than 2% of your total net worth.
Here is what going on, I think. Rajaratnam, and Galleon made their money through insider trading, and simply, he continued to do so once he was a made man.
One hopes that as prosecutors dig into this, they get more people to roll over, and they expand their investigation.
RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, as well as an aggressive use of aggressive asset forfeiture laws would spread the net further and wider.
The days of a Michael Millikan doing his 22 months and leaving prison fabulously wealthy should be a thing of the past.
Let’s add Dylan Ratigan to the list of people who belong in in the Legion of People You Really Do Not Want To F%$# With (LOPYRDNWTFW), which so far includes Rachael Maddow, Roger Ebert, Stephen Colbert, the folks at 4Chan, Alan Grayson, Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart, and (of course) Jon Stewart.
Here he completely owns US Chamber of Commerce head, and right wing hack, Tom Donohue.
As I have noted before, now that Congress is looking at having an agency dedicated to protecting consumers from the worst excesses of the banking industry, and the Federal Reserve Feels believes that this role belongs to it.
Of course, the history of the Fed over the past 40+ years is that they believe in dismantling consumer protections, so their record is less than stellar.
In response to numerous proposals which would make consumer protection more formal in financial markets, which they see as a reduction in their bailiwick, they have continued to make “a day lat and a dollar short” regulations in an an attempt to convince Congress that they do not need to assign this task to some other agency.
Case in point, is how, after decades of skyrocketing fees and increasingly punitive “overdraft protection” schemes, Bernanke and his merry band have decided to clamp down on overdraft fees:
The Federal Reserve is likely to soon pass new rules making it harder for banks to hit customers with fees for overdrawing their accounts, a top official told a Senate subcommittee Wednesday.
Note that it appears that these rules will require that banks have customers positively affirm their desire to opt in to overdraft protection.
It’s amazing what the prospect of some regulatory competition will do to a bureaucracy.
Earlier posts on the subject here.
Courtesy of Talking Points Memo:
I’m going to go way out on a limb here: Professional wrestling and necrophilia have never come up together in a political campaign before today.
Josh Marshall discussing the storied past of current Republican Senatorial candidate, and former WWE CEO Linda McMahon.
During her tenure as head of WWE, there were sketches featuring, “wrestlers engaged in a simulated rape, a public sex scene, and one depicting a wrestler having sex with a corpse.”
The only possible defense to the accusation that Ms. McMahon is a purveyor of smut and perversion would be that she has no control over the content because pro wrestling is real.
Good luck selling that.
So, Charlie wanted help with instructions on how to construct a 4-braid Challah, a braided bread that is traditionally a part of festive Jewish meals, and I had no clue on how to do this.
So, I Googled it, and not only did I find instructions, I found a video.
Kewl.
This is why I never got into high energy physics, because this is too weird for me:
Two physicists recently suggested that the Large Hadron Collider may have malfunctioned because a Higgs boson particle, travelling back in time from a future experiment, wrecked the machine.
I hate when that happens.