Α Δ Φ vs. Westboro Baptist Church
Α Δ Φ: 1
Westboro Baptist Church: 0
Year: 2009
Al Franken Rests His Case
Thank God! It looks like the Minnesota Senate contest is finally in the end game.
Hopefully, the election judges can rule shortly, though since the ‘Phants are paying Coleman lots of money to string this out, I would be surprised if Al Franken is sworn in before the end of March.
Someone Who Gets it
David Leonhardt, who notes in the New York Times that the banks took outrageous and stupid risks because they expected to be bailed out by the taxpayer:
….
The economists were George Akerlof, who would later win a Nobel Prize, and Paul Romer, the renowned expert on economic growth. In the paper, they argued that several financial crises in the 1980s, like the Texas real estate bust, had been the result of private investors taking advantage of the government. The investors had borrowed huge amounts of money, made big profits when times were good and then left the government holding the bag for their eventual (and predictable) losses.
In a word, the investors looted. Someone trying to make an honest profit, Professors Akerlof and Romer said, would have operated in a completely different manner. The investors displayed a “total disregard for even the most basic principles of lending,” failing to verify standard information about their borrowers or, in some cases, even to ask for that information.
The investors “acted as if future losses were somebody else’s problem,” the economists wrote. “They were right.”
On Tuesday morning in Washington, Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, gave a speech that read like a sad coda to the “Looting” paper. Because the government is unwilling to let big, interconnected financial firms fail — and because people at those firms knew it — they engaged in what Mr. Bernanke called “excessive risk-taking.” To prevent such problems in the future, he called for tougher regulation.
….
Do you remember the mea culpa that Alan Greenspan, Mr. Bernanke’s predecessor, delivered on Capitol Hill last fall? He said that he was “in a state of shocked disbelief” that “the self-interest” of Wall Street bankers hadn’t prevented this mess.
He shouldn’t have been. The looting theory explains why his laissez-faire theory didn’t hold up. The bankers were acting in their self-interest, after all.
….
In effect, the bankers had siphoned off this bailout money in advance, years before the government had spent it.
About the only thing that I disagree about is that he does not suggest real and deliberate criminality.
Go Read.
UN Discovers that Its War On Drugs Fueled the Drug Cartels
Anti-narcotics drive fuelled drug cartels: U.N. | International | Reuters:
A U.N. anti-narcotics drive has backfired in part by making drug cartels so rich they can bribe their way through West Africa and Central America, U.N. crime agency chief Antonio Maria Costa said on Wednesday.
The 10-year “war on drugs” campaign had cut drug output and the number of users, he said. But it had a “dramatic unintended consequence” — profit-gorged trafficking gangs destabilizing nations already plagued by poverty, joblessness and HIV-AIDS.
Hoocoodanode?
You mean that increasingly draconian strategies against illegal drugs increases the profit margin for the suppliers who survive, which gets them more sophistication, and influence, and increases corruption and violence in society?
They could have just asked Al Capone’s ghost, and he would have told them that.
Neel Kashkari Shut the Hell Up!
It appears that the last member of the association of bald white incompetents, Neel “Cash & Carry” Kashkari is warning against excessive “micromanagement” of banks by the government.
Kashkari, the Assistant Treasury Secretary for Financial Stabilization, and a hold over from Hank Paulson, because no one wants to be tarred with the brush of Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner, has decided that it would be a bad thing for US officials to 2nd guess senior bank executives.
Because, you know, they’ve already done such a bang up job in managing their banks…..not!
Iraq is Fracked
Because it appears that the State Department is sending in Citi to help modernize their banking sector.
This is not the Onion, really, it isn’t.
Greenspan: Fed Didn’t Cause the Housing Bubble
So, Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan is trying to claim that while he was Fed Chairman, he did nothing to create the housing bubble.
Well, even if it weren’t a Wall Street Journal OP/ED, we would know that this was a lie.
He lowered rates to the bone, endorsed things like CDOs, but he is claiming that since mortgage rates (lending long) drove the home price bubble, and not the Fed Funds rate (lending short), it’s just not his fault.
Except, of course, the good monetarist he is, he always claimed that the Fed Funds rate did have an effect on home mortgage rates, and the low short term rates drove people to real-estate backed securities in search of a decent return.
Furthermore, this had a worldwide effect, because it forced other central banks to lower rates, because otherwise their currencies would have appreciated against the $US, killing their exports.
Then there was his endorsement of ARMs, because housing never went down, and his steadfast refusal to “take away the punch bowl” in bubble markets, because he believed that the markets were perfect….A policy which the Federal Reserve has now explicitly disavowed.
How stupid does he think we are?
I don’t have a degree in economics, and even I get that he is simply spouting gibberish in an attempt to obfuscate his leading role in creating an economy of bubbles, arbitrage, and criminal fraud.
Seriously, did Alan Greenspan get his PhD from a cereal box or something?
Oh…I forgot….He DID get his PhD from the back of a cereal box.
What is Shinseki Thinking?
It appears that Eric Shinseki is considering billing veterans’ private insurance companies for the treatment of service related injuries.
I don’t think that this is an attempt to bill veterans, just extract more money from their insurers, but it’s a very bad idea:
- It means that they will fight their insurance companies over billing.
- It raises the costs of employers of hiring disabled vets.
- It is the first step on a slippery slope to privatizing VA care.
Put a stake through its heart now.
Economics Update
Not unexpected, but the budget deficit jumped 10% because taxes have fallen to a 14 year low.
Like I said, the solution here is inflation to wipe out bad debts, and the deficits are going to do that sooner rather than later, because we’re not going to see a this resolve itself in the US, or overseas in the near future, as evidence by the cratering confidence numbers globally.
With Chinese exports falling sharply, 25.7% year over year, and the rest of the world seeing similar numbers, they are in no position to drive a recovery either.
Consumers are vanishing worldwide, and there is no sign of a recovery in the US, particularly in real estate, where S&P is warning of downgrades of, “9,430 classes from 1,077 U.S. first-lien Alt-A RMBS transactions issued in 2005, 2006, and 2007”, and builder loans threatening to take down banks that weren’t playing with funky financial instruments.
On the brighter side, it looks like the SEC might reinstitute the ‘Uptick Rule’ on short selling.
I’d like to see aggressive prosecution of market manipulation techniques like “naked” short selling too, but I am not holding my breath.
If Wall Street were investigated by Patrick Fitzgerald, I’m pretty sure that you would see tens of thousands of prosecutions.
In energy, the week economy has driven oil down.
Also, it appears that there are more stupid people than I thought, because the dollar fell as people left its safe haven, it appears that this was largely a result of Pandit’s delusional memo saying that Citi is going to rake in the bucks this quarter.
Another Nobel Calls Geithner a C*cks*ck*r
This time, it’s Joseph Stiglitz, and to be fair, Barack Obama is where the buck stops, and he does assign blame to Bush and His Evil Minions&trade, but he make it clear that the strategy here is self-destructive.
Go read.
Fed Chairman Follies
So, first Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke calls for some sort or über regulator to manage systemic risk, and it sounds to me like he wants to make the Federal Reserve the “One Ring to Rule Them All,” and then he flat out says that, “would not be allowed to fail.
This sounds an awful lot like what Alan Greenspan said, and did when was running the Fed, and bailing out any reckless speculators that crashed (see Long Term Capital Management).
If there is a lesson here about the Federal Reserve, it is that while its opacity and lack of response to political pressure may be necessary to tighten down on an economy when there is a serious inflation problem, it makes it spectacularly unsuited to anything else, because you never know when it will be run by some frothing at the mouth Ayn Rand acolyte who will run the economy into the ground.
When You Are In a Hole, Stop Digging
You would think that after Jon Stewart’s merciless beatdown of him, and of CNBC, Jim Cramer would have the sense to know that he’d been beaten, and not get into a pissing contest with a comedian and what may be the best, and smartest, writing staff on TV.
But, you’d be wrong, and Mr. Cramer continues to call out John Stewart.
So Stewart, and and His Minions™ on the Daily Show respond.
So Cramer dressed himself up as a fish…..And jumped in a barrel……And handed Jon Stewart a gun.
This is shooting fish in a barrel.
Any questions?
Economics Update
The Manpower hiring survey has fallen to its lowest level in its history, and the survey started in 1962.
Meanwhile, a survey of economists say that the U.S. economy set should start to recover in the 2nd half of the 2009:
“Consumer spending and residential investment are expected to turn positive and begin boosting GDP growth in the third quarter of this year,” the newsletter Blue Chip Economic Indicators said, summarizing its survey of private economists.
I want what the economists are smoking, because we are seeing no signs of either right now.
The fact the even previously overheated China saw deflation in January indicates to me that this will be longer and deeper than they think.
Additionally, while wholesale inventories fell in January, wholesale sales fell faster, and house prices fell 3.5% in January, according to the Integrated Asset Services index, indicating that the contraction is accelerating.
There is also the fact that the meltdown of the US megabanks has gotten worse, with us regulators looking at more bailout money for Citi, and the notification that the Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle said it has fallen short of one of its capital requirements.
Note that the FHLBs are where the mortgages are being written right now, so this means that things are going pear shaped in the mortgage market.
With all this going on, it’s no wonder that the 3-month LIBOR spread is up, indicating a tightening credit environment.
Some good news, though it means short term pain, which is that the Securities and Exchange Commission remains committed to reality based accounting, and so it will not abandon mark-to-market.
We also have oil rising on reports of OPEC production cuts, and the dollar falling on US bank worries.
Insulting Our Intelligence
Pandit Says Citigroup Having Best Quarter Since 2007
Do we look like complete gits who will swallow anything that a Wall Street banker tells us?
OK, let me rephrase this:
Do the rest of us like complete gits who will swallow anything that a Wall Street banker tells us?
Naked Aggression
The USNS Impeccable was conducting an “ocean mapping mission” in the South China Sea when she was confronted by Chinese ships, who maneuvered close to her and attempted to snag her towed sonar array:
The exposure came as the American vessel USNS Impeccable was attempting to defend itself against what the Pentagon claimed was co-ordinated harassment and aggression from five Chinese ships. Being unarmed, the Impeccable turned its fire water hoses against two of the Chinese vessels that had come within 50 feet in a threatening posture.
Then, the Pentagon records in the admirably restrained language of international diplomacy, “the Chinese crew members disrobed to their underwear and continued closing to within 25 feet.”
(emphasis mine)
OK, it’s not naked aggression, it’s semi-naked aggression, but still…..
It should be noted that the ship was actually on an intelligence gathering mission:
The U.S. Navy’s description of the incident states that “a civilian crew mans the ship, which operates under the auspices of the Military Sealift Command.” Yet as one of five ocean surveillance ships, the USNS Impeccable (T-AGOS 23) has the important military mission of using its array of both passive and active low frequency sonar arrays to detect and track submarines. The USNS Impeccable works directly with the Navy’s fleets, and in 2007 operated with the three-carrier strike battle group in Valiant Shield 07 exercise in the Western Pacific.
USNS Impeccable is equipped with the Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (SURTASS), a passive linear underwater surveillance array attached to a tow cable. SURTASS was developed as a floating submarine detection system for deep waters, and the Navy wants to add an active Low Frequency Array (LFA) to improve long-range detection of submarines in shallow waters.
Note that the ship was only about 75 miles from the Yulin naval base, where the Chinese have based their most advanced SSN, the Shang-class (Type-093), and that the Impeccable does carry the Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System (SURTASS).
I’m not sure if they recording acoustic signatures, or recording operations, or both, but this was not just an ocean mapping expedition.
The US government is claiming illegal harassment in international waters, and the Chinese government is claiming a violation of their sovereignty.
It’s probably a bit of both.
Nutjob Liberal Praises Obama for Killing Embryos
This would, of course, be Nancy Reagan:
“I’m very grateful that President Obama has lifted the restrictions on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research,” the former first lady said in a statement. “These new rule will now make it possible for scientists to move forward.”
“Countless people, suffering from many different diseases, stand to benefit from the answers stem cell research can provide,” said Reagan, who has long been at odds with other conservative Republicans over the stem cell issue.
“We owe it to ourselves and to our children to do everything in our power to find cures for these diseases — and soon.”
H/T Extremepreneur, who also supplied the title.
Banks Exposure to Risky Derivatives Surges
So the latest regulatory filings show that the big 5 banks exposure to risky financial instruments has exploded, which means that their potential losses have exploded, and so the possibility of being insolvent has increased.
I’m particularly concerned about when the lines cross, which is JPMorgan, and Citi, though it probably applies to Bank of America too, because this graph does not include the derivatives and other financial time bombs that it acquired when it bought Merrill Lynch.
Of course, Geithner and Summers just think that these assets are “artificially” depressed, and so the banks really are solvent…..Tools.
Do Not Reward the Incompetent
While I’ve heard complaints about the people who campaigned against Proposition 8 in California, I’ve not followed it closely, but the following is unbelievable. Anyone who had anything to do with the “No on 8” campaign should never be hired as a political consultant ever again:
At the forum, Kors said turning the campaign over to the consultants was “a huge mistake.”
Smith also acknowledged that the campaign should have used then-presidential candidate Barack Obama’s stated opposition to Prop 8. Instead, little use was made of Obama’s opposition in a letter last June to the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club, and right before Election Day the Yes on 8 campaign sent out a mailer featuring Obama’s image and quotes that he is opposed to same-sex marriage.
“That was a close call,” Smith said. “Maybe we should have.”
Maybe you should have? Maybe you should have?
This is so phenomenally stupid it beggars the imagination.
Smith said that people outside the Bay Area wouldn’t know what the Alice Club was, but club Co-Chair Susan Christian spoke up and said that in fact, Obama’s letter to the club been widely reported, including in the New York Times.
Win or lose at the California Supreme Court, and the indications are that it will be a lose, this will be on the ballot as an initiative petition in 2010, and job 1 is to ensure that the folks who ran “No on 8” don’t get into positions of authority on this.
Documentation of Turkish Knowledge of the Armenian Genocide
The archives of the old Ottoman Empire are opening up, and fairly conclusive evidence of the direct knowledge of the authorities of the Armenian Genocide has been uncovered:
With his book, “The Remaining Documents of Talat Pasha,” Bardakci (pronounced bard-AK-chuh) has become, rather unwillingly, part of this ferment. The book is a collection of documents and records that once belonged to Mehmed Talat, known as Talat Pasha, the primary architect of the Armenian deportations.
The documents, given to Bardakci by Talat’s widow, Hayriye, before she died in 1983, include lists of population figures. Before 1915, 1,256,000 Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire, according to the documents. The number plunged to 284,157 two years later, Bardakci said.
To the untrained ear, it is simply a sad statistic. But anyone familiar with the issue knows the numbers are in fierce dispute.
….
Hilmar Kaiser, a historian and expert on the Armenian genocide, said the records published in the book were conclusive proof from the Ottoman authority itself that it had pursued a calculated policy to eliminate the Armenians. “You have suddenly on one page confirmation of the numbers,” he said. “It was like someone hit you over the head with a club.”
Seriously, it’s reality, and it’s something that the Turkish people should acknowledge.
Suck on this Serdar Argıç.
SNL as Political Assassin
Steele is dead….He just does not know it yet.
On a related note, it’s refreshing to see SNL use a black man to impersonate a black man.