Year: 2009

I REALLY Do Not Want to See Your Vacation Pictures

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Least inspired promotional sweepstakes ever!

If you win the CBS Cares® Colonoscopy Sweepstakes:

Welcome to the CBS Cares Colonoscopy Sweepstakes!

This is an actual sweepstakes and, if you are the grand prize winner, we will fly you and a companion to New York where you will receive a free colonoscopy. You will also be given three nights’ accommodation in a suite at the luxurious Loews Regency Hotel, which will include the night before you are “awarded” the colonoscopy.

…….

This is just wrong on so many levels.

People over a certain age should get regular colonoscopies, and they should be checked for polyps, but this contest is the worst idea since the little Johnnie home root canal kit.

Norm Coleman May Go To Jail

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There has now been testimony that Nasser Kazeminy, a close friend of Norm Coleman instructed his CFO to pay $100,000.00 to Coleman’s wife’s insurance agency for nothing in the way of services.

The money quote is from TPM:

Now the Star-Tribune has obtained a March 19 deposition from the lawsuit that first surfaced the scandal. The deposition is from B.J. Thomas, the chief financial officer of the company that paid out $75,000 to a firm where Laurie Coleman worked as a consultant — even though he found no evidence of actual work.

Thomas was asked: “In that conversation that you had with Mr. Kazeminy, did he tell you, quote, United States senators don’t make sh#$, close quote? Or words to that effect?”

Thomas answered: “Yes, sir.”

Kazeminy is boned, unless he roles on Coleman, and Coleman is a rat, so you gotta figure so is Kazeminy.

Pass the popcorn

Anatomy of a Right Wing Hysteria Campaign: HR 875

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HR 875 is a fairly innocuous bill, trying to make sure that food, both domestic and imported, is safer, but a campaign by the National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association (NIFCA), which opposes any regulation of food, and a couple of right wing conspiracy theorists, and suddenly the bill is an attempt by Monsanto to shut down every farmers market in the nation.

Well, it’s not. Go read the article for the full scoop.

Remember When I Said that Cap and Trade Sucks

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Well, it looks like the Europeans are wising up to the China option of creating false offsets for greenhouse gasses:

The European Union, frustrated that its 11,000 factories and power plants are failing to adequately reduce greenhouse-gas pollution, will seek tighter emission rules that may raise the price of burning fossil fuels.

The 27-nation bloc wants to curb access to a program run by the United Nations that rewards companies more for funding emission-reduction projects in China and India than for decreasing their own gas output in Europe. New limits are needed to force extra pollution cuts at home, the EU said in proposals for climate talks starting in two days in Bonn.

My original post on the subject.

Economics Update

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So, we have some mixed news on the state of consumers, consumer sentiment improved slightly, though it is still near historic lows, and incomes have fallen.

Since consumers are generally deleveraging, I would place more importance on the latter, case in point, is February automobile sales continuing to drop, with the replacement for the US auto fleet, fleet size divided by monthly sales, hitting 27 years.

Obviously, this is not a sustainable number, and I would expect car sales to improve at some point, though whether this in time for the Big 3 (Big 2½) is anyone’s guess.

In any case, it apperas that Japan is heading back toward a deflationary situation, with their January CPI figures showing no change.

In energy and currency, the dollar is up and oil and other commodities are down.

IMF Economist Compares US to Argentina and Russia

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Desmond Lachman, former deputy director of the International Monetary Fund’s Policy and Review Department writes an OP/ED in the Washington Post todaysays what I have been saying for some time, that we are not tossing out the incumbents who created the mess, and that we are treating an solvency crisis as a liquidity crisis.

Mr. Lachman, a fellow at the right wing American Enterprise Institute (!) basically says that both Paulson and Geithner are handling the situation in a manner consistent with the most corrupt 3rd world nations.

Your mouth to Barack Obama’s ear, dude.

New EU Scraps Net Neutrality

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It appears that the new EU telecommunications rules are likely to scrap network neutrality completely.

The big incumbent Telcos there are very much in support of this, because milking money out of their monopoly is really their only skill, same as in the good old USA, and the regulators believe that the market will cure everything, “This approach is backed by the European Commission, which argues that if consumers feel their content is somehow being compromised, they will switch to other providers.”

Because competition in such matters has worked so well in the most free market telco environment in the industrialized world, where the speeds are the slowest, and the rates are highest, and ISPs lie about their policies.

Tell Me How This is Not Fraud and Theft of Services

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It appears that the senior managers at AIG’s Paris division of AIG’s Financial Products, Banque AIG, wrote $234 billion in derivatives contracts so that they would likely be technically be in default if they left the firm:

The executives at Paris-based Banque AIG, Mauro Gabriele and James Shephard, have resigned in recent days but have agreed to stay on for a transition, according to people familiar with the matter. In the wake of their resignations, AIG must replace them to the satisfaction of French banking regulators.

If they don’t, French regulators may appoint their own designee to manage the bank — an outcome that could trigger defaults under the bank’s derivative contracts. The private contracts say that a regulator’s appointment of a manager constitutes a change in control, according to a person familiar with the matter; the provision is often included in derivative contracts where parties want to preserve a way out if something about their counterparties changes.

Seriously, this is fraud. They essentially cooked to books to maximize the possibility that, if they left, there was a real risk of the a technical default.

We need to start throwing these folks in jail by the hundreds, and not a “white-collar resort prison,” they should be going to a, “POUND ME IN THE ASS prison,” to quote Office Space.

Why Cap and Trade Sucks

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Because if there is a sign that a regulatory strategy is ill conceived, it is when you end up paying farmers not to grow crops, and this appears to be one of the new cash crops for the American farmers.

This is a fraud foisted on the American consumer and the environment, much like the construction of unneeded hydroelectric plants in China for carbon credits on the European cap and trade system is a fraud on the European consumer and the environment.

The solution, which is cheaper for the consumer, and keeps the Wall Street types from gaming the system, is the straight carbon tax.

Economics Update

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So, the US economy contracted at a revised 6.3% annual rate in the 4th quarter of 2008 and initial jobless claims rose to 652,000 from 640,000 last week, with continuing claims jumped to 5.56 million, another record.

Additionally, we saw New York City’s jobless rate jump by 1.2% in February, from 6.9% to 8.1%.

On the other hand, truck tonnage rose in February, which implies that the requirements for goods and services increased, and the 30 year fixed mortgage rates dropped again.

Meanwhile, in energy, retail gasoline broke $2/gal for the first time this year, and oil hit a 4 month high of $54.34/bbl.

In currency, the dollar rose today.