Month: February 2010

Dick Cheney Just Confessed on National Television

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As much as it pains me to say, who watches the Sunday gasbags so I don’t have to, is completely correct when he says that Dick Cheney’s interview on ABC’s This Week is an admission that he committed war crimes:

CHENEY: I was a big supporter of waterboarding. [. . .]

KARL: And you opposed the administration’s actions of doing away with waterboarding?

CHENEY: Yes.

This is an admission of guilt under the conspiracy laws as they currently stand, though, President “Hopey Changey” and his Attorney General, Eric “Hold of on Prosecutions” won’t do anything about it, because ………… Hell, I don’t know why, and it pisses me off.

I would note that inaction not does make Holder, and Obama accessories in crimes against humanity.

There is an affirmative requirement to investigate and prosecute under the treaties.

Wicked Stupid

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As a result of the blow-back from their spate of problems and associated recalls, Toyota is considering US automaker style incentives to move its cars.

They are talking about the various “invoice pricing” and “rebate” programs, and this is a bad thing, because they push down resale value.

One of the things that drives people to Toyotas is the fact that depreciation is much less than in similar American cars.

If they go the rebate programs, they won’t get out easily, and they lose one of their market advantages.

Economics Update

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As today is a holiday in the United States, it was a fairly slow news day, but over the weekend, we got a report on house prices in the UK, and the asking price rose at the fastest rate in 3 years, of course, the whole problem with the real-estate crisis was the disconnect between ask and offer, so I’d wait for sale prices to rejoice.

In real estate in the US, delinquencies on commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS) jumped in January.

On the brighter side, Japanese GDP grew strongly, largely on capital spending driven by exports.

In currency and energy, the Euro hit a 9 month low on the mess that is Greece, while crude oil was basically flat, up 6¢/bbl.

I Have Neglected the Ukraine

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They had elections for President, and in the first round, current President Viktor Yushchenko was completely blown out, and the top vote getters, Russian friend Viktor Yanukovych, and current Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko went to a runoff.

Well, Yanukovych won the election, though Timoshenko is still contesting the election.

As a result, investors are avoiding a Ukrainian debt issue like the plague as a result, because:

  • Investors don’t like an unstable government, and because they prospect of Timoshenko remaining in government unsettles them because:
  • She has a reputation for obstructionism that makes John Boehner look like Doctor Ruth The cabinet that she has nominally been in in charge of has been unable to agree on budget cuts that the bond investors are demanding.

It’s a mess.

OK, So It Wasn’t Kinky Sex

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Well, when I wrote about the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a major actor in the military wing of Hamas in Syria, I suggested that it was not a result of is day job, where he worked in textiles, and gave the three alternatives as the Mossad, a dispute internal to Hamas, and the consequence of some sort of kinky sex.

Well, I think that we can rule out the last two:

Dubai police released names and photographs of 11 suspects they say took part in the murder of a senior Hamas official there last month, and separately detained two Palestinians in connection with the killing.

The suspects, who entered the emirate from a number of European Union countries, carried out the assassination, Dubai Police Chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim said at a press conference today. The suspects included six British passport holders, three Irish, one German and one French, Tamim said. Dubai will submit their names to Interpol for arrest warrants, he said.

Hamas would not have used so many people under different passports.

It’s odd though that Hamas was so caught off guard by this.

Update on the Bayh Announcement

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I don’t like the idea of a yet another Blue Dog becoming the Senator from Indiana, but Tamyra D’Ippolito is a political horror show.

She’s not just a political neophyte, she is also a 20 year veteran of Wall Street, including time at Lehman brothers.

So, what she appears to be is someone who spent 20 years on Wall Street, some of it at one of the more infamous players in finance, and then retired and decided to play dilettante.

It’s a toxic combination of ties to the financial crisis and political inexperience.

I’ll stick with what I said earlier, I’m pulling for Evansville Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel, though I am going to hate spelling his name.

Bowing Out Like a Punk

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Yeah, like this will go over with Indiana voters

Evan Bayh will not stand for reelection.*

Yes, unlike Chris Dodd, who announced well in advance, and was frank about the reason, that he thought that he would lose, Evan Bayh’s announcement comes as a complete surprise to to everyone, with 1 day left to the primary filing deadline, and the only person close to having the signatures necessary being a protest candate, Tamyra d’Ippolito, a café owner in Bloomington.

If she gets the necessary signatures, 500 signatures in each Congressional district, it means that if any Democrat wants to run against her, they will have to do so as a write in candidate in the May primary.

If she gets the signatures, expect the Dem establishment to challenge every signature.

If she doesn’t get the signatures, then the Indiana Democrat Party appoints a nominee, with the likely suspects being, “Dem Reps Brad Ellsworth and Baron Hill, and Evansville mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel.”

I’m hoping for the mayor, because I don’t care about the municipal government of Evansville, but I do care about the composition of the United States House of Representatives, and both Ellsworth and Hill are Blue Dogs.

Mother Jones nailed it when they said, “Evan Bayh quits in a huff“, because the manner of his withdrawal makes it clear that he is doing this in a way most calculated to cause damage to the Democratic Party, either by leaving them without a viable candidate for the Senate, or by pulling in a candidate from one of the Democratic Congressmen, which leaves that seat open.

On the other hand, most of the potential big name Republican candidates have already elected not to run, which leaves former Senator Dan Coats, who, as Charles Lemos shows, moved out of the state, and has to rent a house to run. (See video)

Still I do not think that this is an attempt to jam up the Republicans, he did it out of pique.

Why else would he have waited until after the news was public to tell Harry Reid?

I agree with Mark Ambinder who nails it in a tweet, either 100 characters, or 81 if you don’t count spaces:

Why Bayh? He wanted to be POTUS and came to hate the Senate and liberal activists. He wanted no mas.

He not only voted for the Iraq invasion, he was a f%$#ing cosponsor for the bill, which means that he will never be president, and now he is pouting.

Joe Lieberman writ small.

*Like Evan Bayh ever stood for anything, except perhaps for the ambition of Evan Bayh.

I Don’t Think that the Chinese Gentleman is Joking

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Steve Clemons notes the following discussion that he had with a Chinese official some years back:

Several years ago, I met with the Deputy Director of the Policy Planning staff of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and I asked him what he was working on — and what China’s grand strategy was.

His reply: “We are trying to figure out how to keep you Americans distracted in small Middle Eastern countries.”

It’s pretty memorable when one can joke and be truthful at the same time.………

Yes, it’s funny, but I’m not sure if it’s funny “ha ha”, or funny “strange”.

What Real Banking Regulations Look Like

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In the UK, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) has told banks that if their bonuses do not comply with regulations, the face the forfeiture of their banking licenses:

In an extraordinary ultimatum that has shocked some of the City’s biggest companies, the Financial Services Authority (FSA) told bank bosses that 60pc of all pay must be deferred, with no exceptions, even for those whose contracts conflicting with the edict.

Many of the global players have in recent weeks made representations to the City watchdog, in particular about pre-existing employment contracts that guarantee bonuses over a year or more. But their appeals have been met with the FSA’s toughest yet response.

One pay executive in a major bank told The Daily Telegraph: “The message came back that while the FSA agreed that it does not have jurisdiction over contractual law, it does have jurisdiction over issuing bank licences in London, and that we should go away and unwind the contracts.“

Bankers at Merrill Lynch are among the first affected. Those with pre-existing contracts were told about the FSA’s tough stance on Friday when their bonuses were agreed.

(emphasis mine)

This is very canny on the part of the FSA. They aren’t instructing banks to break contracts, which might create all sorts of problems with EU or WTO “free trade courts”, they are saying, “This is the rule, if you don’t comply, bye bye licens(c)e.”

If an employee refuses to modify their contract, it’s pretty clear that they are deliberately engaging in an activity which would cause the loss of their firm’s banking license, which in a sane universe is grounds for dismissal.

I wish that I lived in a country with meaningful banking regulations.

Scary Mortgage Developments

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The first bit of news is that the mortgage delinquency rate in the United States has passed 10%.

That’s a pretty scary number if you are a mortgage lender.

The second bit of scary news, and it contributes to the first, is that borrowers are increasingly paying off credit cards before their mortgages, with, “percentage of borrowers who are delinquent on their mortgages but paying their credit card bills on time is growing, to 6.6 percent in the third quarter of 2009 from 4.9 percent in the same quarter of 2008.”

Part of this may be the bankruptcy changes of a few years back, which make it much more difficult to discharge credit card debt, but a lot of it is also the fact that the mindset has changed, and people are looking at their houses as bad investments, and so are in a “walk away” mindset.

The banks and mortgage brokers rode the bubble by selling homes as investment vehicles, as opposed to shelter, and now, they are dealing with borrowers who increasingly look to their homes in the same way, and are considering “jingle mail” as a way to deal with something that they see as a failed investment.

Goldman Sach Losing Profits from Trnasparency

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The big banks profit on this lack of transparency

As a result of moves by regulators to move Credit Default Swaps, it looks like the big banks are looking at a revenue stream drying up:

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. will find it tough to reproduce last year’s record trading revenue as the difference between bid and offer prices in credit markets narrows to the tightest in almost 18 months.

The CHART OF THE DAY shows how the gap between prices at which traders offer to buy and sell credit-default swaps on North American companies has shrunk to 6.1 basis points, from as high as 20.4 in October 2008 and 16.3 in March. Historically wide spreads on everything from derivatives to bonds, representing fees earned per trade, helped fuel the recovery in bank earnings.

Basically, this gap is the difference in buying and selling prices, and it is the investment banks that profit from large spreads.

It’s why they have been campaigning to keep financial instruments off of public markets. When buy and sell prices are public knowledge, the spreads between them shrink, and so do the banks profit margins.

That’s why they want carve-outs from requirements for public trades: It robs them of the ability to overcharge for their services.

Net Materials Create Really Ugly Spacecraft

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This doesn’t fly, it is just so ugly that it repels the earth

In a move away from about 50 years convention in materials and aerodynamics, European aerospace firms are looking at faceted sharp edged reentry vehuicles: (paid subscription required)

Advanced thermal protection systems, to be tested in upcoming hypersonic experiments, will enable development of a reusable “sharp-edged” orbital launch vehicle with much greater flexibility than blunt-capsule or shuttle-type designs, say German researchers.

The team at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in Bremen believes the move to simple, faceted geometries—away from the curved surfaces of conventional reentry vehicles— should also help cut costs while simultaneously offering improvements in aero-thermodynamic performance.

Basically, they are suggesting that the use of flat surfaces will make for more easily constructed heterogeneous materials, kind of like how Chobham armor give tanks angled surfaces, and that this can allow for sharp edged re-entry vehicles that can give more cross range performance and far lower G loads during reentry.

This is not an easy nut to crack. Not only are the temperatures higher with a weak shock wave, on the order of nearly 5,000°F as versus about 2300°F for the shuttle, but the high speed portion of reentry would take something on the order of an hour, as opposed to 10 minutes.

The technologies involved are ceramic matrix composites, basically composites where ceramics replace the conventional resin, advance ablative systems, and effusion cooling, which is basically where very small holes in the surface are used to pass a cooling fluid that carries away heat directly, as well as creating a thin film of relatively cool gas on the surface in question.

Effusion cooling has already been applied to cool combustors, but might prove more problematic in the rather less well controlled environments during reentry.

In French, found on a Russian BBS

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In French, and posted on a Russian BBS
I would not call this definitive

Eric Palmer found the following 3-view of the Pak-FA with descriptions, in French, on a Russian message board.

Well, it shows a number of features, though the provenance is totally unclear.

Items of interest are the IRST in front of the nose(2), wing mounted radar arrays (10), in flight refueling provisions (8), external stores provisions (16), a missile warning system (4), and (most notably) a vertically inclined “S” duct for the engines.

It does appear to match the general configuration of what was seen in the flight video though.

I hadn’t thought about a vertical offset in the inlets to hide the engine face, but from this 3-view, it does appear to be there, so the engine does appear to be shielded, at least partially, though I would still bet on a radar blocking grid.

Cracked.com Gets Serious

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They just listed the, “The 6 Most Statistically Full of Sh%$ Professions, (%$ mine) and they are:

  1. Stock Market Experts
  2. Wine Tasters
  3. Art Critics
  4. Criminal Profilers
  5. Weather Forecasters
  6. Sportswriting

Note that this is not just a slam at these professions. It is a statistical analysis about how they perform relative to random chance.

Stock market experts underperform the market, wine tasters cannot tell the difference between “Grand Cru” and “vin de table”, art critics cannot identify clear forgeries, criminal profilers don’t beat control groups, weather forecasters don’t beat chance, and sportswriters bat about .476 at predicting games.

Just to let you know what it means when you allow non-peer reviewed professions to declare themselves “experts.”

Even Dick Cheney Supports Ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

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Another sign of the apocalypse:

KARL: OK, “don’t ask/don’t tell” — you’re a former defense secretary — should this policy be repealed?

CHENEY: Twenty years ago, the military were strong advocates of “don’t ask/don’t tell,” when I was secretary of defense. I think things have changed significantly since then. I see that Don Mullen — or Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has indicated his belief that we ought to support a change in the policy. So I think — my guess is the policy will be changed.

KARL: And do you think that’s a good thing? I mean, is it time to allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military?

CHENEY: I think the society has moved on. I think it’s partly a generational question. I say, I’m reluctant to second-guess the military in this regard, because they’re the ones that have got to make the judgment about how these policies affect the military capability of our — of our units, and that first requirement that you have to look at all the time is whether or not they’re still capable of achieving their mission, and does the policy change, i.e., putting gays in the force, affect their ability to perform their mission?