Olbermann’s worst persons….And I got nothing to add:
Year: 2009
AIDS Vaccine Achieves 1/3 Protection
They have been testing an AIDS vaccine, actually a combination of 2 failed AIDS vaccines in Thailand, and it appears that it has a 32% effectiveness rate.
That may not seem like much, but typically, you start to see reductions in outbreaks once you hit this level, and this is the first vaccine that has shown any effect ever.
Of course, we can now expect the vaccine manufacturers to price it at a high enough price so that people in Thailand won’t be able to afford the vaccine.
Economics Update
Click image for full size
Unemployment Graph Pr0n Courtesy of Calculated Risk
Exhaustion Rate Graph Pr0n Courtesy of zero hedge
Initial claims for unemployment fell this week again, down 21K to 530K, but that’s because unemployment claims from last week were revised to 551. The first count was 545K, so the apples to apples delta is 15K, not 21K (I love how it always seems to work out this way).
The 4 week moving average fell too, 553.5K, down from 546.5K, and continuing claims fell 123K, to 6.138m from last weeks 6,261m.
Note, however, that continuing claims do not count folks who are on extended benefits, or who have exhausted benefits, and that the exhaustion rate has hit a new record, with 52.40% of all people filing for unemployment exhausting their benefits before they find another job.
In real estate, existing home sales fell for the first time in 5 months, and we are hearing dire warnings about a shadow inventory of 7 million foreclosures which have yet to hit the market, either because the lenders are hip deep in foreclosures, and the process is proceeding slowly, or because they are holding off to avoid selling into a down market.
The down housing market has been good for treasuries, with prices rising, and yields falling, as people flock to their relative safety.
The quest for safety has investors running back to dollars, driving the greenback up, and pushing oil down below $66/bbl (!).
Someone is not believing in recovery here.
Massachusetts Senate Update
The Massachusetts Republican Party just filed for an injunction against Paul Kirk’s appointment to the US Senate.
The issue is that under the state constitution, laws do not take effect for 90 days unless they are declared “emergency laws,” as Governor Patrick has.
No clue as to the finer constitutional points here.
[update]
The judge has not granted an ex parte restraining order, which would immedieatly stay the restraining order, which implies the court expects arguments and motions to be done well before the formal Friday appointment and/or that the Republicans have little or no case.
Oopsie!
Well, it looks like Republican Jihad against Acorn may have uninended consequences.
You see, in order to avoid an unconstitutional bill of attainder in their quest to punish Acorn for registering black people to vote being taken in by a right Gonzo videographer, the bill was drafted broadly.
“How broadly,” you ask?
The congressional legislation intended to defund ACORN, passed with broad bipartisan support, is written so broadly that it applies to “any organization” that has been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency. It also applies to any of the employees, contractors or other folks affiliated with a group charged with any of those things.
In other words, the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops.
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) picked up on the legislative overreach and asked the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) to sift through its database to find which contractors might be caught in the ACORN net.
Lockheed Martin and Northrop Gumman both popped up quickly, with 20 fraud cases between them, and the longer list is a Who’s Who of weapons manufacturers and defense contractors.
Needless to say, I don’t expect anyone to enforce it against anyone but Acorn, but this does sound a bit unfortunate.
Looks Like the Tobin tax is Gaining Currency*
The Tobin tax, basically a small tax (typically less than ¼%) on financial transactions to discourage rampant speculation and high frequency trading, is moving into the Overton window, and leaving the realm of “you’re nuts,” and entering the realm of “serious people can discuss this.”
2 Weeks ago, Peer Steinbrück, Germany’s finance minister, called for just such a tax, and today an OP/Ed he wrote calling for an 0.05% tax to, noting that German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier also supports this policy.
Personally, I’d much rather see the tax rate closer to ¼% than his proposal of 1/20%, but it’s a good start.
According to his numbers, revenues would amount to, “$690bn a year, or about 1.4 per cent of world GDP,” which, while nowhere near covering the bailout by taxpayers to the banks, AIG alone has sucked about 1/3 of that out of taxpayers, and total spending on the just the TARP is over $700 billion, does have the effect of making bankers feel the pain, and it also makes risky high frequency trading operations economically nonviable.
BTW, it’s not just the Krauts who are beginning to look at this seriously. Adair Turner, chair of the Financial Services Authority in the UK, is calling for the same thing:
So Mr. Turner is proposing a few changes, none of which would make the bankers very happy. Tax financial transactions. Increase capital requirements. Shrink the financial industry, which, at its peak, accounted for roughly 11 percent of the British economy. Only then, he argues, can banks’ excessive profits — and bankers’ pay — be curtailed.
I would also note that Turner has also explicitly stated that the size of the financial industry needs to be reduced because, “The City [the London equivalent of Wall Street] takes too much from British society and gives back too little. It has grown too big and too powerful.”
It’s interesting that this discussion has moved from “crazy people” like Dean Baker, who, we should note, was 100% correct on spotting the real estate bubble, and put his money where his mouth was, selling his condo and going to renting in 2004, though he has recently purchased a detached house to movers and shakers.
And not a moment too soon.
*Pun not intended.
Kennedy Replacement Named
Former Kennedy aide and DNC chairman Paul Kirk was appointed to serve as Senator by Governor Deval Patrick.
He has announced that he will not run in the special election.
So, the Dems have cloture, so long as Senator Byrd keeps breathing.
From the Depart of Unbelievably F$#@ing Stupid Ideas
I give you the conversion of a training grenade into an MP3 player.
Unless you are someone who really likes getting body cavity searches and trips to Guantanamo Bay, this is not the gadget for you.
You Know the Downturn is Severe When
The manufacturer of the AK-47, OAO Izhmash, is filing for bankruptcy.
If there was anything out there that I thought would be a growth industry……
Another Claude Raines Moment: Banker Salaries
I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!
US Bank CEO Pay Dwarfs Rest of the World: Study
I am stunned that suggestion that the geniuses at Wall Street might somehow be overpaid:
Jiang, chairman of Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, made just $234,700 in 2008. That’s less than 2 percent of the $19.6 million awarded to Jamie Dimon, chief executive of the world’s fourth-largest bank, JPMorgan Chase
…
“The U.S. executive pay levels have always dwarfed pay for companies elsewhere in the world,” said Sarah Anderson, a fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies, which is critical of Wall Street, and co-author of the recent study “America’s Bailout Barons.”
“They have claimed it is impossible to recruit people without paying such compensation. Yet, if you look at the pay levels in Europe and in a lot of Asian countries, somehow they manage to find people who can run major global firms while making a fraction of what they make in the U.S.,” she said.
Great googly moogly: Why don’t we just outsource bank presidents to China.
Coup Conspirators in Honduras Up Pressure
In addition to the police shooting a man dead, state security forces have surrounded the embassy where Honduran President Manuel Zelaya has taken refuge after slipping back into the country.
While Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has been out front in all this, all we’ve heard from Obama is crickets.
With one simple step, a freeze on money transfers back to Honduras from expats, we’d have Zelaya back in office for the 2½ months remaining in his term.
US inaction has the effect of legitimizing coups against leaders who are unfriendly to Wall Street, and I’m wondering if that is a feature, rather than a bug.
Barney Frank Can Go Cheney Himself
Generally, I like the guy, but this is crap.
In addition to excising the requirement that banks offer “plain vanilla” mortgages and credit cards, you know, products which the consumer can actually understand enough to comparison shop for, the bill removes, “securities, commodities, investment and general insurance products; accountants and tax preparers; real estate brokers and agents; lawyers; auto dealers; communications providers; and providers of retirement and pension plans,” from the scope of the proposed consumer protection agency.
Great googly moogly! When you look at industries that confuse and abuse consumers as their primary means of profit, you have most of them in between the quotation marks.
And if you want a couple more, how about,”retailers who have credit or layaway plans and auto dealers who offer loans to buy vehicles,” because used car dealers and “Rent-A-Center” have done so well in doing right by the consumer.
Unsurprisingly, the poster child for regulatory capture, Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner, expressed support for weakening the bill.
Yes, I know sausage making, but it’s damn depressing.
The Worst Web Site Ever
Carly Fiorina’s site for her bid to be the next Senator from California.
You know, you would figure that maybe the site’s design would be a little more tech savvy for a former head of HP, but then you realize that it’s….well….Carly.
If there is a better example of a destructive and dishonest empty suit out there, I’d be hard pressed to find it.
Dead Bank Walking
It looks like another local bank has a few weeks/months to live.
First Mariner Bank has agreed to a cease and desist order from regulators requiring that they end “unsafe and unsound practices.”
Generally, it’s less than 2 weeks from when I hear of such a notice until the bank hits the BFF list.
House Moving on LGBT Job Protection Bill
The House Labor Committee is looking at a bill which would add sexual orientation and gender identity to protected classes under the civil rights laws.
About damn time. It passed in the house in 2007, but wilted under a Bush veto threat.
The cynic in me wonders how Obama’s people are going to try to knife it this time around, because they have gone out of their way to knife the LGBT community on almost every other level, because they found morality inconvenient in their quest for bipartisanship.
Economics Update
The big news today is that Fed’s Open Market Committee has issued its regular statement (here), though the cartoons are just ducky.
They left their benchmark interest rate unchanged, but issued a rather positive statement about how things are getting better, and that they would be phasing out their purchases of mortgage backed securities:
To provide support to mortgage lending and housing markets and to improve overall conditions in private credit markets, the Federal Reserve will purchase a total of $1.25 trillion of agency mortgage-backed securities and up to $200 billion of agency debt. The Committee will gradually slow the pace of these purchases in order to promote a smooth transition in markets and anticipates that they will be executed by the end of the first quarter of 2010.
(emphasis mine)
Their announcement that the purchase program will be terminating in about 6 months has increased demand for Treasuries, driving their yields down today, but over the past week, before their announcement, mortgage rates have fallen below 5% for the 30 year fixed (!), pushing mortgage applications are up.
I don’t think that the low mortgage rates, or the level of mortgage apps will remain where it is for long, now that the Fed is shutting down its program to bid the rates down.
Meanwhile, in the only non-corrupt petro-state on earth, the Norwegian Central Bank has kept deposit rates at 1.25%.
I’m not sure what this means for real estate, though because the US and the rest of the world seem to be going in separate directions, with Manhattan rents dropping 8% over the previous year, and the Paris, France office market showing signs of a real revival.
It confuses the hell out of me.
In any case we do have some numbers heading in the same direction, with the European manufacturing and services industries index rising to 50.8, with any number above 50 being expansion, and US seen vehicle miles driven, as reported by the DOT are up too.
On the flip side, we have credit card defaults hitting 11.49%, in August, up almost a full percent from July’s 10.52%, the 25 biggest US retailers looking to cut back on holiday hiring, and mass layoffs in August rose to 2,690 with 259,307 people losing their jobs.
In energy and currency, oil fell on rising inventories, and the dollar remained near yesterday’s lows.
Life on Mars
Click images for full size
When the World Ends, All that Will Be Left are Cockroaches and Australian Surfers
Odd Day at the Playground
The Iconic Opera House
Satellite Image
If you want to see more, your best bet is Google Images, though you can get the proverbial, “rest of the story,” from the Mail Online (and here), BBC NEWS, the CSM, and see this video at the bottom.
Whatever the case, it is clear that the mars analogies seem almost universal.
Holy Crap, the Murders Have Begun in Kentucky
It looks like one of Glenn Beck’s or Michelle Bachmann’s butt boy fans has decided to murder a census worker:
The FBI is investigating whether anti-government sentiment led to the hanging death of a U.S. Census worker near a Kentucky cemetery. A law enforcement official told The Associated Press the word ‘fed” was scrawled on the dead man’s chest.
The body of Bill Sparkman, a 51-year-old part-time Census field worker and teacher, was found Sept. 12 in a remote patch of the Daniel Boone National Forest in rural southeast Kentucky. The Census has suspended door-to-door interviews in rural Clay County, where the body was found, pending the outcome of the investigation.
Speaking as a former “part-time Census field worker”, I think that until the perp is found, the door to door survey should be stopped now.
If you don’t like census takers, fine. No congressman for you.
If there is reduced representation of the crazy parts of the country, then the governance of the country will improve.
I’ve Seen Clips of Tom Delay on Dancing With the Stars About 5 Times
And almost thrown up 6 times.
What were they thinking.
I beg the media, please stop showing us these clips.
Economics Update (a Day Late) (Again!)
I know that there is a lot of talk about the recession ending, but all the metrics that involve manufacturing real items in the united states, are down, case in point, the AAR’s report on rail traffic, which is down, 17.1% YoY, which is, as Yves Smith notes, down to 1993 levels.
I’m not saying that the rest of the world is not showing signs of recovery, after all the economic powerhouse New Zealand’s economy has left recession, and the $NZ is hitting records, but for the United States, things are not looking better for the rest of us.
Actually, we are seeing some positive movement in US manufacturing, like GM adding shifts at its plants, though this appears to be one part “cash for clunkers”, and one part having to make up for other plants that have been closed.
We are seeing some action though in Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury land, where US Treasuries are up, and hence yields are down, largely on the expectation that the Fed won’t do anything to interest rates.
More importantly, we are seeing evidence that the Fed is looking at winding down its money printing. They are not doing it yet, but the Bernanke and crew are in preliminary discussions with bond dealers to implement reverse repurchase agreements in order to get a trillion dollars or so out of the money that they pumped into the economy:
Central bank officials are discussing plans to use so- called reverse repurchase agreements to drain some of the $1 trillion they pumped into the economy, said the people, who declined to be identified because the talks are private. That’s where the Fed sells securities to its 18 primary dealers for a specific period, temporarily decreasing the amount of money available in the banking system.
Well, the intent is clear, though the mechanism is as clear as mud to me.
In the always fun areas of energy and currency, oil rose because the dollar fell to a one year low, $1.4778:€1.000, though this is still about a dime below the peak in early July of last year.