The Ukrainian Supreme Court has temporarily suspended the election results for the Presidential election, so the official declaration of Viktor Yanukovich’s victory is on hold.
It has not suspended the inauguration, so it may largely be a formality, but my guess is that they will give a few days for Yulia Tymoshenko to present evidence.
I don’t expect much in the way of vote fraud to be found, and certainly not enough to change the results, but my record on predictions is a bit spotty.
James Kwak in discussing Barack Obama’s putative deficit reduction panel, which is supposed to seat people from both sides of the aisle to address the deficit, asks the following question, “What if they put Mankiw and Krugman on this commission?”
Well, let us assume that both Greg Mankiw and Paul Krugman mass 75 kg.
It’s fair to characterize them as the economic equivalents of anti-matter and matter, so:
I think that this places the idea of placing both of them on the same panel as “imprudent”.
I have notes, and photos, taken with my cheap digital camera, as opposed to my profoundly cruddy cell phone camera.
I talked with Wayne Morse, the President, and Paul Vasilescu, the Technology Development Director for the firm at their offices in a Jessup, Maryland office park, right next door to, if the stickers on the doors of the neighboring are any indicator, old offices from the Baltimore Examiner.
We went over their technology, what they have covered under IP, potential customers and applications, and their capabilities.
They will be sending me a copy of their presentation in PDF, which I will be embedding via ScribD.
A full write-up will be coming in the next couple of days.
I had fun……It’s kind of a kid in a candy store thing for me.
Fast, easy, and off-the-record.
Heh. A cutting funny about Lisa Murkowski from Greenpeace.
Not that I care all that much, but the Hill is reporting that Republicans are pissed off about the timing of the announcement:
Republicans are livid about the timing of Sen. Evan Bayh’s (D-Ind.) retirement announcement.
They have at least four candidates in the upcoming primary while the Indiana Democratic Party will get to decide its nominee.
Indiana required nominating petitions to be filed by noon Tuesday. Bayh announced Monday he would not seek reelection, giving would-be candidates less than 24 hours to get on the ballot.
………
Republicans have called on Bayh to ask for an extension of the filing deadline.
“The reality and ramifications of this timing cannot, and should not, be ignored,” National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (Texas) said in a statement.
“Assuming there is no qualified candidate that files the appropriate documentation before the deadline, Sen. Bayh should call on the state Democratic Party to ask an Indiana court to extend the candidate filing deadline — both for this Senate candidacy and for any House candidacy that is left open by a Democrat House member who runs for the Senate nomination,” Cornyn said. “Doing so would remove any appearance of unfair gamesmanship by the Democrats while affirming their belief that voters, and not party bosses, should be the final arbiters of elections.”
Boo-f%$#ing-hoo.
Your strongest candidates, Rep. Mike Pence, Secretary of State Todd Rokita, and Governor Mitch Daniels, didn’t want to run because of Bayh’s $13 million war chest, and now the best you can find is former Senator Dan Coats, who retired as a Senator, then moved to DC to be a lobbyist, and is on tape joking about leaving Indiana.
Bayh’s decision might not have been quite the f%$#-you to Democrats that I had previously thought.
Mortgage applications fell last week, with home purchases leading the way relative to refinancing on the way down.
Even so, housing starts rose sharply, though as Calculated Risk notes, a lot of this is likely from home builders trying to complete houses in time before the latest round of housing tax credits expire at the end of April.
In the world of actually making stuff, US industrial output rose more than expected in January.
In the “looming train wrecks” category, the newly released minutes from the Fed’s January meeting show increasing confidence in the economy, it appears that there are some strong voices for the Federal Reserve to significantly shrinking their balance sheet, would would likely result in a significant, probably in excess of 50 basis points (½%), increases in mortgage rates, which would make an already shaky real estate market even more problematic.
In any case, the news on housing starts and industrial output drove both oil and the dollar is higher.
Moving to prohibit the military from spending money to enforce DADT is a good idea.
Among other things, it is a non-filibusterable measure, and when the usual crowd of Republicans start screaming, it’s an opportunity to show them up as hypocrites, since they are now ignoring the military leadership and the budget and HR needs of the military.
It also raises a question about Senator Gillibrand (D-BY).
She was, when she was the Congresswoman from New York’s 20th district a very conservative lawmaker, but now, that she’s in the Senate, far more liberal in her record.
The 20th is a conservative district, R+2 according to the Wiki, and it is understandable how a politician might find it in their best interest to represent the needs and wants of their district.
On the other hand, since being appointed by Governor Paterson to replace Hillary Clinton, she has also faced the prospect of viable primary challengers from the liberal wing of the party,* and her positioning may simply be an attempt to forestall any challengers, much in the same way that Arlen Spector is doing in Pennsylvania.
There is nothing wrong with her attempting to represent the views of her constituency, and her constituency has changed, and become significantly more liberal with the change in office.
Unfortunately, there is no way to know if this is driven by a constituent considerations, or if it is driven by primary election considerations.
If it’s the former, she should be a decent Senator. If it’s the latter, then come November, we’ll have another wanker in the Senate, at least for the next year or so, until she positions herself for the regularly scheduled election for that Senate seat.
*We’ll ignore the Harold Ford, corporatist DLC puke “candidacy” right now, because I’m not sure if it’s a serious candidacy, an attempt at extortion, or an exercise in masturbatory ego stroking.
As I wrote about them earlier, and I have facilities tour with them with them.
This post is a request for any questions you might like for me to ask, and write about.
My original post on about the company and its products, the is UAV shown, is here.
I have this post dated, so scroll down for newer posts.
Image, American Dynamics Flight Systems
Could it be ………… Satan?
Barry Ritholtz finds a rather delicious piece of information showing that fraud in earnings statements is rather widespread, to be fair, it originally came from the Wall Street Journal, but since that’s behind a pay wall, and Ritholtz summarizes nicely, he gets the link.
You see, when you look at companies reporting earnings per share, the general number is rounded to the whole cent, but when you delve deeper into the numbers you get fractions of a cent per share, and lo and behold, a fraction of 0.4¢ a share is conspicuously absent from these numbers?
Why would this be?
It’s not the work of Satan, but the work of accountants.
Basically, if your earnings are 13.4¢ a share, you announce earnings of 13¢ a share, but if they are 13.5¢ a share, you announce earnings of 14¢ a share.
This number is statistically significant.
If you saw this in a poll you would immediately conclude that someone was just making sh%$ up.
Quoting Ritholtz, quoting the Journal:
The study, which examined nearly half a million earnings reports over a 27-year period, reached its conclusion by going beyond the standard per-share earnings results that are reported in pennies and analyzing the numbers down to the 10th of a cent.
That deeper look showed that companies tend to nudge their earnings numbers up by a 10th of a cent or two. That lets them round results up to the highest cent. Investors often snap up shares of companies that beat earnings expectations, even by a cent, and, likewise, sell off shares of companies that don’t make their numbers.”
I love the euphemism “meet investor expectations” as opposed to the more colloquial “lie cheat and steal.”
It also points out the need for the SEC to develop a Department of Quantitative Analysis filled with math geeks and computers, doing nothing but sifting through data looking for investor fraud. I’d bet they would get more convictions than the rest of the SEC combined. (If someone in the SEC would call me, I’ll help you set it up).
(emphasis mine)
This is the sort of application of “quants” in finance that I could wholeheartedly get behind.
I really can’t speak to the qualities of Atlas Shrugged, though I did read Rand’s treatise The Virtue of Selfishness, and found it extremely unpleasant, both from the writing and the underlying philosophy.
As such, I find this bit from South Park (1:13) funny.
However, current, and likely soon to be former, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko ischallenging the election in court.
I don’t think that the is going anywhere; the margin was 3.5%, and about 900,000 ballots, and the balloting was by all reports well observed by outside entities, and you can’t steal that many votes if you are watched.
Remember when I said that I had an interview for a short term position?
They decided to fill it internally.
Capital One charge-off rates, H/t Calculated Risk
Well, the New York Federal Reserve Bank just released its Empire State Manufacturing, Index, and it rose more than expected, from 15.9 in December to 24.9 in January, though I have no clue as to how the numbers went up:
……The details of the report were mixed. New orders slowed to 8.8 in February from 20.5 in the prior month. Shipments inched lower. However, inventories were flat in February after 17 straight negative monthly readings. Employment was positive for the second straight month……
I’m a little bit confused, but it appears that what we are seeing here is almost entirely stronger inventories, so as been noted before, it appears to be an inventory bounce.
In consumer credit, things appear to be moderating, in that default rates for the major card companies did not increase last month, or more accurately they didn’t rise last month for major credit card companies, except for Capital One, whose charge off rates rose from 10.14% to 10.41% in January. (See chart pr0n)
In real estate the National Association of Home Builder confidence index rose last month, albeit from an amazingly unambiguously crappy 15 to startlingly unambiguously crappy 17, where 50 is neutral.
In England, inflation rose sharply in January, to a 3.5% annual rate, which really isn’t scary at all, and additionally it should be noted that much of this was driven by the VAT (sales tax) increasing from 15% to a 17.5 as that stimulus measure expired, as shown by the fact that the, “CPIY rate of inflation, which strips out the effect of indirect taxes, fell from 2.8 per cent in December to 1.9 per cent in January.”
I just want to say, once again, that low inflation is a part of the problem, and another parts are the inflation hawks, both among regulators and among bond investors.
In currency, the dollar fell on reduced concerns about the Greek financial meltdown, which increased risk appetite.
I am not sure why investors had reduced concerns about Greece though. (I’ll get to the Greek crisis in more detail later)
Additionally, we have a report that the Bank of Japan is planning more quantitative easing if the Yen strengthens to OJ May Expand Easing Should Yen Reach ¥87:$1.00.
In any case, the falling dollar had commodity traders buying oil, which drove the price higher.
Reports from the Indiana Election Division say that she wasn’t even close.
So, the State Democratic Party will select a candidate.
Here’s hoping for the Mayor with the unspellable name, Jonathan Weinzapfel, he, at least, seems to be a real Dem.
It’s $8 billion in loan guarantees, but if you run the numbers, and assume a 4% interest rate savings as a result of the loan guarantees over a 10 year period, the new reactors are due to come on line in 2017, but they will be late, because they are always late, then you get about a $3.85 billion [(1.0410-1) x $8 billion] subsidy for the Southern Company to build two new reactors at their Vogtle plant.
Actually, the payback time is likely closer to 30 years, which means that the US government is actually paying Southern to build the plant, but depending on how you count it, it’s a f%$# load of money.
Well, we may now have a reason as to why Bayh announced when he did, because he wanted the party to select his successor, which, my guess, he found preferable to the possibility someone who is not a right wing preening DINO (i.e. Blue Dog) getting the nod:
On a conference call with county Democratic Party chairs this afternoon, Sen. Evan Bayh and Indiana Democratic Party Chair Dan Parker declared that not having a Democratic primary to find a replacement for the retiring Bayh would have its upsides, according to a source who was on the call.
It appears that he wanted the party apparatus to select someone from their “deep bench,” which means, I guess, that he was looking at another right wing F%$#.
Unfortunately, no one thought about Tamyra d’Ippolito, who now appears likely to have the required signatures in time to get on the ballot, and it’s likely that the Republicans are helping:
Tamyra d’Ippolito, a cafe owner who has been seeking the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat currently held by Evan Bayh, just told TPMDC that she does have the minimum number of ballot-petition signatures need to get on the ballot for the Democratic primary. If her petitions do in fact work out, that would seriously complicate the efforts by the party to pick a new candidate to replace Bayh, the retiring incumbent Democrat, on the ballot this November.
……
I asked d’Ippolito about the possibility that Republicans may have given her a hand. Erick Erickson, for example, personally encouraged his Indiana readers to sign her petitions. “God bless him, because anybody can sign the petition,” said d’Ippolitio. “Republican, Democrat, independent, teabag person, any registered voter with a warm pulse can sign.”
D’Ippolito was not specifically aware of Republicans who signed her petitions in order to cause problems for the Democrats, but she didn’t have a problem with it: “I have no way to know that for sure, but I’m sure that is happening. It’s common sense, I think that would be realistic.”
Late Update: After telling TPM that she already had the necessary signatures collected, d’Ippolito is now denying to Greg Sargent that she has them yet, saying instead that she would have them in time.
This makes Bayh either incompetent or malevolent, you choose. He either tried to be cute about it, and got bitten, or he was just being a dick.
Here’s hoping that D’Ippolito has some problems with the signatures, because in addition to having worked for Lehman, her business, where she is also living illegally, is facing eviction.
They have captured the Taliban’s military chief and 2nd in command, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in Karachi, Pakistan:
The Taliban’s top military commander was captured several days ago in Karachi, Pakistan, in a secret joint operation by Pakistani and American intelligence forces, according to American government officials.
The commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, is an Afghan described by American officials as the most significant Taliban figure to be detained since the American-led war in Afghanistan started more than eight years ago. He ranks second in influence only to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder and a close associate of Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks.
(emphasis mine)
After 911, he was running around for about 6½ years under Bush. Obama got him after only a bit more than 1 year.
<tinfoil hat>I’m beginning to wonder if Bush and His Evil Minions™ made a political decision not to capture bin Laden because it kept people scared, and scared voters are Republican voters.</tinfoil hat>
Of course, Shell is based in Holland, where those socialists Dutch people allow for the owners of a company to vote on matters of importance to their investment, but still the fact that Royal Dutch Shell felt compelled to curbe pay to upper managment is a good thing:
Royal Dutch Shell Plc
said it was overhauling its pay practices for top management, including a pay freeze for its chief executive, Peter Voser, and a limit on bonuses, after a shareholder revolt last year. The head of Shell’s remuneration committee said salaries for Voser and Chief Financial Officer Simon Henry, which are 20 percent lower than their predecessors’, were being frozen until 2011.
Directors will not, this year, be allowed to award management bonuses if they fail to meet pre-agreed targets.
Top management received bonuses for 2008, despite not hitting targets, prompting 60 percent of Shell investors who voted, to oppose the 2008 remuneration report.
Hans Wijers, Chairman of Shell’s Remuneration Committee told investors in a letter, a copy of which was published on Shell’s web site on Tuesday, that he wanted to “demonstrate appropriate restraint in the current economic environment”.
I still think that a non-binding “say on pay” is weak tea, but it managed to shame a huge company into doing the right thing, so it is an improvement.
I’m not saying that it was a result of anything that I did, but he is now arguing that our economy needs “modestly higher inflation,” though he is talking more about problems in the Euro zone, as opposed to those in the US.
He does include the US though when he talks admiringly of a paper by Olivier Blanchard which notes that with higher inflation, a central bank has more room to cut rates before hitting the zero bound.
I would also note that he is still talking about rather modest inflation; a 4% instead of 2% target, while I would go for 6-8% for the next 3 years.
Seriously, the good folks at Citi are planning to start selling, “derivatives intended to pay out in the event of a financial crisis.”
That’s right, they are creating instruments that will allow people to bet against our financial system, and win if they, or their friends take it down:
Credit specialists at Citi are considering launching the first derivatives intended to pay out in the event of a financial crisis. The firm has drawn up plans for a tradable liquidity index, known as the CLX, on which products could be structured that allow buyers to hedge a spike in funding costs.
(emphasis mine)
Seriously, if our forfathers understood the need to prevent this sort of casino gambling masquerading as insurance when the parliament passed the Marine Insurance Act of 1746, no that’s not an error, taking out insurance on something in which you have no interest in the continued existence of the insured property has been illegal for 264 years, because otherwise, people do things like take out insurance in their neighbor’s house, and then burn it down.
These people are terrorists under the (admittedly lax) standards of the PATRIOT act and its successors, and they should be pursued as such, with all the jurisprudence that Dick Cheney wants for suspected al Qaeda members.
H/t Felix Salmon, who crystallizes the basic point rather clearly:
We learned in the crash of 1987 [and 2001, and 2008, me] that when financial markets start selling products which insure a portfolio against catastrophic loss, the very existence of those products can destabilize the market and make it more prone to crashing. And, of course, we learned that such insurance has a tendency not to get paid out on exactly when it’s most needed. But heaven forfend that the market should ever learn from its mistakes.
We need hand cuffs for dishonest and delusional bankers today, or we’ll need pitchforks, torches, tar and feathers for all bankers tomorrow.