Month: January 2010

Economics Update

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Slow news day, with the only non-energy/currency news being that non-foreclosure U.S. Mortgage Delinquencies 9.8% in November, a 5.5% increase over October, and a 21% increase year over year.

In the old reliables of energy and currency, we see gasoline prices back in the news, the the price of a gallon of regular unleaded approaching $3.00, though crude oil fell on forecasts of warmer weather in the US and Europe.

In currency, the dollar fell to a 3 week low, largely on the expectation of continued low rates, as well as indications of a recovery, and higher interest rates, in China.

Google Pulls AP Links from Google News

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A picture of falling page views

As you may, or may not be aware, I am not linking to Associated Press stories.

This applies to both stories at the Associated Press, as well as stories at other venues that carry an AP byline.

It’s not absolute: If I cannot find another source anywhere, and the story is IMNSHO important, I will link, with a preference for not linking directly to the AP servers.

I have spiked comment based on the the fact that I could not find another source on a number of occasions, but generally, Google News has managed to bail me out.

Well, Google and the Associated Press are coming up on the end of their current licensing agreement, and as a result, Google has not included any links to the AP site since December 23:

Through much of last year, the Associated Press threw public barbs and veiled threats at Google, while in private it was renegotiating its licensing agreement with Google News. That agreement is believed to be up for renewal at the end of this month, yet no new AP stories have appeared directly on Google News since December 23, 2009. (AP stories licensed by other news sites such as ABC News or the New York Times do continue to appear, however). So what’s going on here? Is that the end of AP stories on Google News?

I’ve been doing some sniffing around, and it is not the AP that is withholding its content. This conclusion is also supported by the fact that older AP content from before Christmas continues to be available on Google News. If the AP were no longer licensing its articles to Google, those older articles likely would also no longer be available. (The AP has talked about withholding news from certain licensees for a set period of time, but those were measured in minutes and hours, not weeks, and it would operate on a rolling basis. The AP stories on Google News just stop on December 23).

The pucker factor at the Associated Press offices right now must be extreme.

Who’d Have Thunk It?

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That the patron saint of dotcom excesses, Henry Blodget is calling for

Latest AIG Revelations: One More Reason Why Geithner’s Got to Go
Posted Jan 08, 2010 11:20am EST by Henry Blodget in Investing, Newsmakers, Recession, Banking

The latest revelations about the New York Fed’s actions in the AIG bailout make one thing clear: Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner must go.

Geithner must go not just because of the emails showing that his New York Fed ordered AIG to keep details of the bailout secret, but because of many other decisions and policies he has championed in the past two years.

…………………

This is a time for Obama to fish or cut bait.

He is either a captive of the FIRE (Finance Insurance Real Estate) sector, or he represents the American people, and Geithner, and to an even larger extant Lawrence Summers are an artifact of the former.

H/t The Big Picture.

Funny, That

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The Republicans for Choice political action committee (PAC) collects money to support pro-choice Republicans running for office.

The odd part of this is that Republicans for Choice PAC doesn’t actually give much of the money to said candidates:

Since the PAC’s formation in 1990, documents show that Republicans for Choice has raised and spent more than $5.5 million. But a Center for Public Integrity analysis of the PAC’s more recent filings — along with data from CQ MoneyLine, which tracks political giving — reveals that over the past decade less than five percent of the committee’s spending has gone to political candidates, other political committees, or independent expenditures. Since 2005, just about one-half of one percent of the PAC’s nearly $1 million in spending has gone to federal or state campaigns, according to a review of records. By comparison, Federal Election Commission data show the average federal PAC in the recent 2007-2008 cycle dedicated about 35 percent of spending to contributions aiding federal candidates. A comparison to other PACs on both sides of the abortion debate shows that similar groups spend a much greater portion of their funds on candidates and campaigns.

Where did RFC’s money go? Much of the group’s spending has been for consulting companies owned by the PAC’s chairwoman, Ann E. W. Stone. Those firms — along with payments to reimburse Stone’s expenses for travel, entertainment, and automobile repairs — comprise more than two-thirds of RFC PAC’s expenditures since 2006. And hundreds of dollars more went to pay for Stone’s parking tickets.

This should not be a surprise.

For folks who follow Talking Points Memo, this sort of self dealing is rather common among Republican fund raising groups.

Linda Chavez has earned a healthy living doing this, as has a PAC dedicated to electing minority Republicans.

Basically, if you are donating to pro-life or minority Republicans through a 3rd party firm, you should assume that less than ½% makes it to candidates.

The Massachusetts Senate Race Just Got Weird

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The normal part is a Boston Globe poll that has Democratic candidate Martha Coakley holding a solid 15 point lead over Republican Scott Brown, which is unsurprising in this solidly blue state, but Public Policy Polling shows Brown with a 1 point lead, indicating that the real issue here is whether or not the Democrats can mobilize a thoroughly demoralized base.

The difference here has to be the criteria for likely voters.

That’s a bit odd, but the fact that Scott Brown Posed Nude in Cosmopolitan Magazine in 1982. (Pics are at the link, I don’t post Republican pron.)

It will be a bad thing of Coakley loses, though it would be a good wake up call the people who are busy sucking up to bankers and insurance companies.

Technology Finally Gives Us Something Worthwhile

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The toilet dunk proof cell phone:

Most people would shudder at the thought of putting their mobile phones in the dishwasher. This is precisely what Seal Shield invites you to do with its new SEAL CELL handset. Or put it in the sink for a regular clean up.

The phone is water resistant (and not waterproof as we wrote carelessly earlier) and coated with an antimicrobial glaze to reduce mould, mildew and odour build-up. It looks destined mostly for hospital use: Seal Shield specialises in washable IT equipment for the healthcare sector. The company says (http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/seal-shield-announces-worlds-first-dishwasher-safe-cell-phone-80697162.html) it devised the phone to help reduce the risk of worldwide cross contaminations, including H1N1, Norovirus and MRSA.

Win.

I have Pepsi-Syndromed phones, and I look forward to an expansion of this technology.

Here’s to You, Mrs. Robinson

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Hey, hey, hey…hey, hey, hey

No, really. In this case however, the Mrs. Robinson in question is Iris Robinson, wife of Peter Robinson, the head of the, “conservative Northern Ireland Unionist party.”

She has spent much of her public life campaigning against gays, implying that they will molest children and young adults.

Well, now, this 60 something paragon of morality has been caught having an affair, and, I almost forgot to mention this, she was screwing a 19-year old boy.

Lovely people, wot?

H/t Americablog and The Stranger.

Not Enough Bullets

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This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.

Cue Freddie Dalton Thompson from The Hunt for Red OctoberThe New York Times on banker compensation in these tough times:

Bank executives are grappling with a question that exasperates, even infuriates, many recession-weary Americans: Just how big should their paydays be? Despite calls for restraint from Washington and a chafed public, resurgent banks are preparing to pay out bonuses that rival those of the boom years. The haul, in cash and stock, will run into many billions of dollars.

Industry executives acknowledge that the numbers being tossed around — six-, seven- and even eight-figure sums for some chief executives and top producers — will probably stun the many Americans still hurting from the financial collapse and ensuing Great Recession.

It’s going to get out of control, as in some tea-bagging nut with a gun out of control, and I know that I won’t be sitting on the jury, because I could not bring myself to vote to convict.

Next Up, the Field Vasectomy

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This is a Bridge to Far

You know, I’ve occasionally watched the survival pr0n that you find on the Discovery Channel, both the rather more authentic Les Stroud, and the more entertaining Bear Grylls, and I think that this qualifies as Jumping the Shark.

In order to get water into his body, when the only water is fetid, and would likely cause illness/vomiting that might further dehydrate you, Grylls is using an enema to get water into his system.

This will work, just ask any medical professional, but seriously, enough is enough.

Unsurprising Lesson

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When the modern version conservatives talk about anything, they define reality to fit their preconceived notions, much in the tradition of their Trotskyite progenitors, and you cannot believe a word they say.

Case in point, James Manzi, who, as Paul Krugman notes, talks about the GDP of Europe, and completely fudges the data:

But as Jonathan Chait quickly pointed out, Manzi’s definition of Europe included the Soviet bloc (!), so that he was attributing to social democracy an economic decline that was mainly about the collapse of communism. Chait also suggested that Manzi wasn’t comparing the same dates for America and Europe; and most importantly, Chait pointed out that to the extent there has been a growth divergence, it’s almost entirely because America has faster population growth; since 1980, real GDP per capita in Western Europe and the US have grown at almost the same rate.

But I went back to Manzi’s source of data, and it turns out that it’s even worse than that. If you use the broad definition of Europe, which includes the USSR, it did indeed have 40 percent of world output in the early 1970s. But that share has not fallen to 25 percent — it’s still above 30 percent.

The only thing I can think is that Manzi compared Europe including the eastern bloc in 1970 with Europe not including the east today.

It’s probably not a deliberate case of data falsification. Instead, like so many conservatives, Manzi just knew that Europe is an economic disaster, glanced at some numbers, thought he saw his assumptions confirmed, and never checked.

I think that Krugman is being too charitable. Manzi lied, and had to have knowingly lied in order to cook the books this way.

Harry Reid: Dead Meat on the Table

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Harry Reid has hit a new low in the latest Las Vegas Review-Journal poll, with a 52% having an unfavorable view of him, and 33% having a favorable view of him.

As an incumbent, polling below 50% in terms of how people vote is a near death sentence, when your unfavorable rating is over 1½ times your favorable rating, you are in Dick Cheney territory.

The problem is not what he has done, but what he hasn’t done.

Notwithstanding the arcane rules of the Senate, his constituents expect him to kick ass and get things done, and he hasn’t. He’s been a wimp, though I think that this was largely at the request of the Obama administration, which wanted insurance company and pharma support for something called healthcare.

So, now he’s screwed, and won’t be a Senator in February of 1011, just like Chris Dodd, who got shafted by Obama and His Evil Minions™ in almost exactly the same way.

If the poll numbers weren’t bad enough, the merry band of at Politico have released a book, Game Change, in which they have the following quote from Harry Reid:

He was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama — a “light-skinned” African American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,” as he said privately. Reid was convinced, in fact, that Obama’s race would help him more than hurt him in a bid for the Democratic nomination.

(emphasis mine)

So now we have a quote, an accurate one since Reid has apologized for it, where he sounds like a country club racist.

Reid needs to announce his retirement, tomorrow.

What Dan Said

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Dan Froomkin, that is, about the bogus numbers that the Pentagon keeps feeding the media regarding Guantanamo detainees who have returned to the fight:

Denbeaux calls this week’s outrageous Pentagon assertions the latest example of what he calls “numbers without names and trends without numbers.” He told me he’s outraged it’s been so widely picked up — including by the Times.

“I don’t see what the point is of a public editor criticizing a story for the New York Times if they’re going to republish it a year later,” he told me.

Gullible, amnesiac journalists are a dangerous thing. Is our profession really incapable of learning anything from its mistakes?

Yes, journalists are so tied to their sources that they will repeat the same lie, even if it it’s known to be a lie, over, and over, and over, and over again.

This has been another episode of simple answers to simple questions.

Best Prediction for 2010

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Bruce Krasting, retired finance guy, makes his predictions, and while most are pretty safe, thinks like ‘Phants pick up seats, but Dems retain majorities, and Boeing delivers a pitifully small number of Dreamliners, one is completely off the wall, and I mean that in a good way:

  • Tim Geithner will resign as Treasury Secretary. Sheila Bair will replace him.

My inclination on reading this was to go all Poppy Bush, and say, “Not gonna happen,” but based on recent events, I need to add a qualifier, and say, “Not gonna happen before November 2,” the day of the general election.

I think that Barack Obama really believes that Geithner and Summers are the best people for the job, and he believes that the American people believe this too, and it’s going to take a big clue stick, something like House Speaker David Boehner, to convince him otherwise.

I tend to agree that a change in party control is unlikely, but I think that there will be significant losses by the Dems, on the order of 30-35 seats, which will put the House in the 1981-83 dynamic, where the Democrats nominally controlled the house, but the Republicans could always peel away enough Dems to get their way.

Saab Looks to Go Feet Wet on Indian Gripen Proposal

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Credit: SAAB CONCEPT

In an effort to improve its chances to sell its Gripen to India for the MMRCA competition Saab has once mooted the possibility of an aircraft carrier capable Gripen:

Saab believes modifying the Gripen NG to meet an Indian requirement for a carrier-borne fighter would add only 400 kg. (880 lb.), giving the aircraft—dubbed Sea Gripen—an empty weight of 7,500-8,000 kg.

…………

The Sea Gripen would require a new main undercarriage and nose gear, airframe strengthening in specific areas and a redesigned arrestor hook. Given the comparatively small size of the Gripen, this obviates the need for folding wings. The company is proposing Sea Gripen as a “partner program,” with the first target country being India.

Even for an aircraft as light as the Gripen, having a delta of only 400 kg (880 lb) is pretty impressive, so I’m wondering if they are trying the same thing that was proposed for the Eurofighter Typhoon, when it was proposed to create an auto-land system that allowed for a flare before landing to the need to reinforce the landing gear and structure.

[on edit]

There is also the possibility that Swedish operational requirements, which include the ability to operate from austere fields, such as roadways, may have already resulted in a landing gear that is rather more robust than those found on the normal western jet fighter.

Why Yes, It Appears that Barack Obama Has Sold Us Out Again…………

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Silly peasant, it’s only the bankers, insurance companies, and other big players who get their promises kept. If it’s a promise to the little people, it doesn’t count.

This time, it’s net neutrality:

The Obama administration and its allies at the Federal Communications Commission are retreating from a militant version of Net neutrality regulations first outlined by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski in September.

That’s my reading of a number of recent developments, underscored by comments made by government speakers on a panel on the first day of a Tech Policy Summit at CES in Las Vegas.

…………

Signs of more modest Net neutrality regulations include resignation in late October of Susan Crawford, who took part in Thursday’s panel discussion and who was previously a key adviser to the president on technology and communications. According to the conservative-leaning American Spectator, [according to the paid to lie by Richard Mellon Scaife American Spectator] Crawford’s version of Net neutrality was too radical for White House economic adviser Lawrence Summers, contributing to her early departure.

…………

Part of the reason is some unexpected political pressure, including a letter signed by 72 congressional Democrats opposing the FCC’s proposed rules soon after they were announced.

But the bigger explanation is the growing priority within the administration for nationwide, affordable broadband service. In the course of preparing the national broadband plan, mandated by the 2009 stimulus bill, universal high-speed access has taken on increased significance in the government’s hopes for a rapid economic recovery. Beyond the current financial woes, Congress, the FCC and the White House all recognize the importance of improving the communications infrastructure to maintain U.S. competitiveness in technology innovation.

You see, the Telcos won’t build out high speed fiber/cable unless we allow them to bend us over the table and do us without any lube at all.

This is why the US has the highest costs and the slowest speeds for internet access in the developed world (here, here, and here), because allowing the Baby Bells and the Cable companies to squash competition and extort money.

F-35 News, 1 Good, 2 Bad

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Finally!

On the good side, the F-35B, specifically air frame BF-01, has finally engaged the lift fan in flight, and everything was, as the flight test people say, “Nominal”:

The Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II stealth fighter engages its short takeoff/vertical landing propulsion system in flight for the first time, near Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Md., on Jan. 7. F-35 Lead STOVL Pilot Graham Tomlinson said afterward that the aircraft flew smoothly with the STOVL system engaged and was very easy to control.”

This is a good thing, though it is somewhat behind schedule, and Lockheed-Martin is thinks that it is necessary to add planes to the test program, so as to reduce the test schedule slippage from 2 years (!) to 6 months:

Lockheed Martin Corp. may add an aircraft-carrier model to a group of F-35 test planes as the company works to limit delays on the fighter jets to six months or less instead of the two-plus years expected by the Pentagon.

I’m not sure that this would help though, as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has just ordered a delay in deliveries of the aircraft:

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered a delay in the Lockheed Martin Corp. F-35 program, cutting the Pentagon’s planned purchases by 10 aircraft in fiscal 2011 and a total of 122 through 2015, according to a budget document.

More than $2.8 billion that was budgeted earlier to buy the military’s next-generation fighter would instead be used to continue its development.

The delay is a setback for both Gates and Lockheed.

Setback is one way to put it.

So is clusterf%$#, death-spiral, shambles, snafu, and many other words I’m not in the mood to look up right now.