This was a case of a blatantly political US literally making a federal case out of things like using the office fax machine, and now, because most of the evidence has been excluded, political hack Mary Beth Buchanan has been forced to drop the case.
I know that Barack Obama does not want to dismiss US attorneys until he has replacements, but Buchanan is a cancer on the Department of Justice.
Background here.
It appears that European governments are wondering why they should detainees from Gitmo whent he US is not willing to do so.
Go figure.
We seized them under the sketchiest of evidence, and then tortured them, and now that we’re done, they are less than enamored at cleaning op our mess.
Well, the ADP payroll estimate is out, and they are estimating a drop of 532,000 in non-farm payrolls, which is better than last month, but is still in major league suckage territory.
The Institute for Supply Management’s index of non-manufacturing businesses is in the same boat, which covers the services sector, is still declining, but not quite as badly.
So, things are getting worse less quickly, not getting better.
Meanwhile in the junction of banking and real estate, S&P has downgraded 59 prime Residential Mortgage Backed Securities (RMBS) to D, which, according to the Wiki, means, “Bankruptcy or lasting inability to make payments most likely.”
With all this going on in mortgages, it is not surprising that we are seeing higher rates and fewer mortgage applications.
Well, at least we are not in Latvia, whose government was unable to sell debt today….That’s right, we aren’t talking about paying more interest than anticipated, no one would buy their debt.
Mean while, the news of reduced demand and a surge in inventory drove oil down, while the dismal economic news drove the dollar higher, as investor looked for safe havens.
My guess is that the trend in the dollar is down, and it will be firmly ensconced somewhere weaker than $1.50:€1.00 by year’s end
It looks like it may be nearly impossible to find the black boxes though.
Option ARMS, NegAm, and other forms or risky, exotic loans are making a comeback as 30 year fixed loan rates.
It’s amazing how quickly some lessons are unlearned.
Hopefully, this is the end game, it’s been 8 bloody months.
It appears that Anthony Taguba is now denying that he has any knowledge as to whether or not the photos suppressed by Barack Obama are rape photos.
He’s not denying that he saw photos of rape of women and boys, along with photos rape by instrumentality, he’s just denying any specific knowledge as to whether or not these specific photos are the same.
So there are rape photos, but the 44 photos that the ACLU has filed a freedom of information act about might not be them.
Well, the Euros are not doing well with unemployment, hitting 9.2%, which is not as bad as it sounds, because the EU’s count is more accurate, and so generally excludes fewer people from the unemployment statistics, and because the social safety net is better there.
We have some good news in real estate, with pending existing home sales jumping, though the numbers are still awful, and large proportion of them are distressed sales.
Still, the most recent numbers on construction spending are grim, and you can see that it looks like non residential construction is due to start falling too.
Still the home sales number kept profit taking against oil to a minimum.
The dollar is getting interesting, as in the curse, “May you live in interesting times,” over the past few weeks. It hit another low for 2009:, and there is active talk about countries moving to some other currency, typically the Euro, Russia’s idea of some sort of “non western” reserve currency being a pipe dream.
Richard Bruce Cheney has admitted that he was wrong:
Former Vice President Dick Cheney disavowed intelligence he once cited to suggest that then-Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein collaborated with al-Qaeda to stage the Sept. 11 attacks.
Cheney said today that information by the Central Intelligence Agency of collaboration between Iraq and al-Qaeda on Sept. 11 “turned out not to be true.” Still, Cheney said a longstanding relationship existed between Hussein and terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, that justified the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Not only is he admitting error, he is doing so on a signature issue.
I have no clue as to what is going on. First, he embarks on his “human snarl tour,” in which he says that he is right about everything, and now he is backing off of his biggest lie.
Either there are wheels within wheels beyond my understanding, or he’s throwing small strokes, and I cannot figure out which.
The OECD has released its GDP figures for the 1st quarter, and they are not good, down 2.1% for the quarter, and down 4.2%year over year.
Also, consumers in the US are continuing to explore the paradox of thrift, with consumption down and savings up, even though there was a bump in income.
Of course, the financial press is optimistic on the fact that the ISM manufacturing index is the highest it has been in 9 months, only the number, 42.8, still signals further contraction, but for the financial press, the fact that the 2nd derivative is up means that prosperity is just around the corner.
The Wall Street Journal is selling the fact that corporate profits rose for the 1st time in two years in the same way.
Personally, I’m more concerned about signs of increasing interest rates and inflation, like the recent surge in 10-year treasuries, and the fact that retail gasoline broke $2.50/gal nationally this weekend.
With oil breaking $68/bbl, even a long time in the doldrums is going to have energy prices rising.
Still the traders are optimistic, which is why the dollar fell to its lowest level this year, there is less demand for a safe haven.
They will be replaced by Cisco and Travelers.
Interestingly enough, Travelers was owned by Citi until spun off a few years ago.
Strange times, indeed.
They have filed for bankruptcy protection, and while I have no illusions that this will be as smooth or quick as Chrysler’s bankruptcy, the stakes are far larger, and the consequences of a mis-step will be industry wide, it looks like they got their ducks in a row.
They got most of the bond holders on board, they got a deal from the UAW, and a deal was cut to sell Opel, GM’s European division, though the Treasury almost killed that:
For the Magna deal to work, U.S. officials must abandon their opposition to German demands that Opel assets be temporarily placed in a trust to protect them from GM creditors.
I agree with Michael Moore’s take on all this though, it could be the start of something better, but only if the US government takes an active role in the running of the company, and redirect the unused industrial infrastructure into things like mass transit and alternative energy.
Of course, the free market Mousketeers like Larry Summers, co-chair of the auto task force, are determined that this won’t happen, so instead, we will end up with something still dysfunctional, just a bit smaller.
I can only conclude that in order to run for governor in Texas, there is some sort of an IQ test involved — if you pass it, you become ineligible for state office . . .
On the fact that Texas Governor Rick Perry, who had said that he would decline stimulus funds, and had actually talked secession, was in fact spending stimulus funds on remodeling the governor’s mansion.
It appears that the only people in the United States who are lamer than Code Pink, the “New Black Panther” Party (NBPP), have once again put their foot in it.
They stationed some of their people outside a polling place in uniforms and one of them, Samir Shabazz, was carrying a baton and brandished it, and the Civil Rights division of the DoJ filed a civil suit against them for voter intimidation, which they have now dropped, after review by Obama appointees.
They took it to court, and got a default verdict, which is not surprising, since the NBPP doesn’t have the resources for lawyers, and a permanent injunction against Mr. Shabazz from being within 100 yards of a polling place with any sort of weapon.
The NBPP drops Shabazz like he was a Plutonium milkshake, and then issues a condemnation of any sort of voting suppression, and the DoJ drops the case.
Then some of the “professionals staff” in the Civil Rights Division complained to the Washington (Moonie) Times about this.
Why the Moonie Times? Because these were Bushies burrowed into the division, and they wanted to show that it was “those n*gg*rs” who were suppressing the vote, not the ‘Phants in Texas, Alabama, etc., who were doing so with back door poll taxes.
So, Bush and His Evil Minions™ purge the Civil Rights Division, burrow political hacks to replace them, try to show that the problem is black people trying to vote, and then complain to their mouthpiece when the adults come in and fix it.
Expect this to be wall to wall on Rush, Hannity, and O’Falafel tomorrow.
I am referring, of course, to the sad fortunes of Harvard University’s endowment, which I have blogged on a number of occasions.
Well, Felix Salmon notes that , something which I noted in December, though, to be fair, I never thought that it would get to this point, he said, quoting Mr. Salmon:
Richard Bradley reports:
Harvard has already halted the hiring of junior faculty and announced an early retirement program for tenured professors, and for the first time ever is considering laying off tenured professors.
And why might Harvard be laying off tenured professors? Because it’s down to its last $25 billion, of course. Bradley adds a bit to what we know about Harvard’s financial mismanagement:
According to the university’s 2008 financial report, in the next 10 years it must pay various private investors some $11 billion in capital commitments. Where will that money come from if, as seems likely, endowment growth over those years is minimal or nonexistent, and alumni’s own strained budgets limit their generosity?
So, the question here is where Harvard will go with all of this.
Obviously, hitting up alumni for more money is a given. That’s what they do normally.
The real question is whether they will either move to a less aggressive, and less risky strategy, which will provide lower, but more stable, returns and greater liquidity, or whether they will go whole hog into more private equity deals, betting on a rebound which will lift them out of their problem?
Human nature being what it is, I’m going to guess that they go with the latter, because doubling down on failure is basic human nature.
*Yes, I spent a lot of time on this title, and get your mind out of the gutter!
Someone shot George Tiller, who ran Women’s Health Care Services, in his church in Wichita, Kansas.
It is yet another right-to-life movement murder.
There has been an arrest, but, unfortunately, there has been no movement taken against those people and organizations that offer material support to these terrorists, such as Kansans for Life, Priests for Life, Operation Rescue, former Kansas AG Phill Kline, Randall Terry, and Kansas Coalition for Life.
It is clear that the ties between these people and organizations, and people and organizations that aggressively engage in terrorism against law abiding medical professionals are far closer than those between the Holy Land Foundation, whose leaders just received 65 year sentences, and Hamas, and Hamas has never engaged in terrorism in the borders of the United States.
This is an interesting technology, both for its promise to reduce drag by 6%+, and for the very significant reduction in wingtip vortices that would allow for takeoff and landing spacing between aircraft to be significantly tightened up.
Earlier post from this, from last July, here.
I think that this implies that the Chinese intend to move very aggressively towards creating an aircraft carrier capability.
It’s an opportunity for them to hone their skills, and tap the expertise of the Brazilian, along with the rapidly progressing refit of the Varyag, you can see pictures at the link, implies to me that the Chinese intend to have an training carrier air wing in a pretty near term operating from the never completely Admiral Kuznetsov-class carrier.
The Pentagon is looking at whether the USAF or the Pentagon will run the next competition between the 767 and A330 for the KC-X tanker.
If they go with the Pentagon, this is a a major change from earlier procedures.
It appears that some people are concerned that the USAF is incapable of doing this properly, after the first deal was shot down because of corruption, and the 2nd deal was successfully challenged to the GAO.
I can’t imagine why.