We have Democratic Congressman Kendrick Meek announcing that he will run for the seat being vacated by Mel Martinez (R) who is retiring after 1 term.
Meanwhile, in Ohio, the scramble to replace George Voinovich (R) in the Senate proceeds apace, with Rob Portman being the front-runner on the ‘Phant side, and on the Democratic side, it appears that most of Ohio’s Congressional delegation, along with the Lt. Gov and SOS, are considering a run.
The U.S. trade deficit fell by 28.7% in November, not because we are exporting more, but because consumption is falling so quickly. This is why you don’t see decoupling in the world economies (see chart pr0n)
While we are on the topic of international capital flows, it appears that Standard and Poor’s is threatening to downgrade the debt of Spain and Portugal because of increasing deficits.
Of course, and I am not a deficit hawk right not, it does beg the question about what to do with the US government shortfall, as it was $485.2 billion in the first quarter of fiscal year 2009 (October 1, 2008 – December 31, 2008), which is more than the deficit for all of FY 2008.
When is S&P going to warn us, and when is S&P going to be prosecuted for its recent fraud on the public? After the meltdown of various instruments that S&P saw fit to declare AAA, one wonders why. I would not employ any of the major ratings agencies as pastry chefs.
We have some good news though, the TED spread fell to 98 basis points (0.98%), dropping below 1% for the first time since August 15.
The TED spread is the difference between 3 month treasuries and 3 month interbank loans, and the spread goes up as uncertainty about getting your money back goes up.
BTW, homes won’t be turning around any time soon, Beazer Homes is reporting a 53.2% drop in home sales Q4 2007 to Q4 2008.
So with all of this uncertainty, people are pulling money out of palces like Spain and Portugal and putting it in the US, which drove the dollar up today.
Oilrose too, largely on promises of large production cuts by the House of Saud.
So, the Pentagon is reporting that 61 ex-Guantanamo detainees have engaged in terrorism after being released from our Southern Gulag.
Remember, this is under the auspices of the regime established by Bush and His Evil Minions™ that worked from guilty before innocent, accepted torture derived information, and used torture routinely on these folks.
So, the ones that they let go? They were not playahs in terrorism, if they were, they would still be locked up.
On the other hand, when you torture people, if they get out, they tend to take it personally:
The Pentagon said on Tuesday that 61 former detainees from its military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, appear to have returned to terrorism since their release from custody.
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said 18 former detainees are confirmed and 43 suspected of “returning to the fight.”
We will be seeing blowback from what we did to these people for years.
We also know that Guantanamo is only a part of the problem. Bagram probably has 10 times as many people that we are mistreating, and a non zero percentage of them, and their friends and family, and their countrymen and coreligionists, will be outraged and moved to action by this.
Basically, the complaint is that S&P is the sole supplier of unique identifiers for securities in the US for the American Banking Associations, and it has been using that status to extract payments from people who want to use those identifiers:
Each security such as a stock or bond has a unique number to ensure there is no confusion when it comes to clearing and settling a trade in that security.
Standard & Poor’s operates the CUSIP service bureau on behalf of the American Bankers Association, the sole issuer of identifiers for U.S. securities.
Standard & Poor’s says it charges a license fee when the numbers are used for purposes other than clearing and settlement.
The complaints focus on whether Standard & Poor’s can charge financial market data vendors such as Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg News as well as end users of these identifiers, such as asset managers and banks.
It is alleged that S&P forces vendors to cut off financial institutions from data feeds on U.S. securities unless they have licensing agreements.
These are serial numbers, and as such, they should not be protected by IP law, and the EU is going after them on this.
It’s Julius Genachowski for head of the FCC.
I don’t know him from Adam, but Harold Feld is cautiously optimistic about his appointment, and FCC and telecom regulation is Harold’s day job.
In Israel, the Central Elections Committee has banned the two major Arab parties, Balad and United Arab List-Ta’al, from standing in the next election.
It appears that this pops up periodically, and the Israeli Supreme Court shoots it down while the ink is still wet.
This is just amazingly stupid. It’s electioneering at the expense of country.
If true….
We now have reports that Barack Obama will issue an executive order closing Guantánamo in his first week in office.
It would be nice. It would be nicer still if it were implemented immediately.
I think that the former is likely, but I think that the shut down process will take 12-18 months.
Additionally, Glenn Greenwald notes increasing indications that the closing of the camp won’t result in real trials for real criminals, and that they are still working on an extrajudicial trial system which will allow the use of torture evidence.
Calculated risk makes a very good point on any potential economic stimulus plan, you don’t just have to spend on building things, you can spend on tearing them down too.
He’s talking about spending money to demolish houses in neighborhoods with high vacancy rates.
They are actually doing this in Youngstown, where the city council has finally abandoned hairbrained growth schemes, and they are pulling down phone lines, demolishing roads, and buying people out from abandoned neighborhoods so as to live within their means.
H/T The Big Picture:
That’s what you get when you merge Citigroup and Morgan Stanley . . .
The monitoring deal has been signed by both parties, and gas should be flowing tomorrow through Ukrainian pipelines.
Bush to Seek Rest of TARP Money At Obama’s Request
We live in strange times.
Well, it looks like cutting defense spending to help the economy may not work, S&P is threatening to downgrade New Zealand’s AA Credit Rating.
By the time this is over, I would not be at all surprised if we see a number of countries out there like Australia and New Zealand with rating in the “B”s.
Well, we’ve got another retailer bankruptcy, Shane Co., a Jeweler with 23 stores in 14 states….We’ll see a lot more of this.
The Dollar rose, because traders are expecting the ECB to cut rates.
Also, Oil is back below $40/bbl.
H/T WallStreetJackass.
Reid and Durbin complete their climbdown from their unsteady moral high ground, and accept that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s appointment of Roland Burris is in order, and they will seat him.
Well, at least it’s over.
It’s no fun being in the minority, so he’s calling it a day.
Enterprising young environmental protester Tim DeChristopher was at a demonstration against hurried auctions of government land next to some of the crown jewels of the National Park system by Bush and His Evil Minions&trade, when an idea hit him: go into the auction, and bid against the people getting the sweetheart deals, and drive the prices up.
He had no money, but he did drive the prices up, and DeChristopher, the now infamous “Bidder 70”, actually won a fair portion of the bids before authorities realized what was up, and they threw him out.
Well, he has been collecting donations online, and he now has the requisite $45,000.00 to make the first payment on the 13 leases that he won, which accounted for roughly 15% of the total acreage that was sold at auction.
He still needs to pay a total of $1.7 million, but it’s a start.
You can donate to him here.
The IHT is now reporting that Israeli ground forces have moved into some of the most heavily settled areas of Gaza, particularly Gaza City, and that more reserves are being called up.
I’m not sure if this is a pre-cease fire push, or just an increase in operational tempo.
Regardless of the final status of a negotiated solution regarding Israel and a Palestinian entity (or entities, with the West Bank and Gaza going separate ways), there will doubtless be compromises on both sides that will outrage significant constituencies on both sides of this dispute.
Whether one is talking about East Jerusalem, the “Right of Return”, water rights, transit rights, etc., it there will be provisions that people on one side or the other will not be happy about.
If one, for the moment, ignores the substance of these compromises, and agrees to the existence of these compromises, it raises an interesting question: Is there actually anyone in the Palestinian community who can negotiate such a deal and survive long enough to make it stick?
We know that the compromises of Michael Collins with regard to the 6 northern counties or Ireland were directly responsible for his death at the hands of anti-Treaty faction of the IRA.
The important thing to remember in the case of Michael Collins is that despite his death the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 was a done deal, and remained a done deal.
While there is a a real possibility of political assassination, as a result of successful negotiations, it has already happened with Rabin in Israel, but on the Palestinian side there is a real possibility that with the assassination and/or the overthrow of of whoever signs such a deal will abnegate whatever deal that is signed.
Hamas is for the foreseeable future without the institutional imperatives to even enter into such a negotiation, and on the PA side, Mahmoud Abbas carries the moral weight of Hillary Duff.
He’s a party apparatchik who survives through appeasing the various factions and playing them off one against the other, and as such it is unlikely that he would have the political ability to survive a successful final status negotiation.
So, the question is how does one create an environment that will facilitate the creation a movement and/or leader in the Territories that will have the political and moral infrastructure to allow for a successful negotiation?
It’s in the halls of Congress, where the procurement of bloated weapons systems must be supported at all cost, because otherwise how would the generals get their cushy consultant gigs after they retire.
Case in point, the PR offensive being launched by the US Army in support of the Future Combat System (FCS).
