We also had a credit union taken down, the Bakersfield-based Kern Central Credit Union was closed by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA).
So it’s one bank, and one credit union, there were 140 banks and 31 credit unions, for a total of 171 closures in 2009.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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:
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.
Jon Stewart is amazing.
This video with humorist Calvin Trillin in Junk 19, 2006 predicted the underwear bomber:
It illustrates how news gathering has been overtaken by the entertainment culture, and that was 27 years ago.
Credit: SAAB CONCEPTIn 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.
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.
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.
So far, I’ve shown you military video of M-16 magazine operation, the Rafaele Python, and a Bollywood musical weapons sales vid, but I’ve seen nothing…………………Nothing!!!!That compares in majestic scope to this simulation of a combat between a Chinese J-10 and the American F-22.
It is one for the ages.
It’s a new year, so the counter is reset. Last year topped out at 140, or a smidgen under 3 a week.
And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.
This story is old, I saved it when I was visiting my Mother-in-Law’s, but my sense of this remains the same.
There was a snowball fight in Washington, DC, and some people threw snowballs at a Hummer driven by a Washington, DC police officer, who then drew his gun and threatened the participants.
If it hadn’t been caught on video, and posted to Youtube (included), and the police claimed that it never happened, until, of course the video, and the photographs showed up all over the web.
This is actually pretty standard: Until you have outrageous law enforcement misconduct on tape, the police deny that it ever happened, and so I have very little to say about this.
That being said, I do have something to say about the Washington Post‘s coverage of the incident.
You see, they took the original police story, “Nothing to see here, move along,” at face value, and they did so despite the fact that a Washington Post editorial staffer was at the event and reported what happened:
Washington Post editorial aide Stephen Lowman was at 14th and U on Saturday when the controversial snowball-fight-cum-police-indiscretion went down. He wasn’t there on assignment–he was just taking it all in.
And take it all in he did. He eye-witnessed the snowball fest and the cop waving around a gun, not to mention all the hubbub that ensued.
So Lowman got on the phone to the Post, to give the newsroom a heads-up. He says he was placed in contact with staff writer Matt Zapotosky. Lowman told Zapotosky about the confrontation and the gun. It was just after 3 pm.
………………
Two hours later, at 5:40 pm, the inexplicable takes place: The Washington Post files a post by Zapotosky and Martin Weilrefuting the photographic evidence already on the Web and taking the official position of the D.C. Police Department. Here are some key excerpts:
Assistant Chief Pete Newsham, who leads the department’s investigative services bureau, said it appears the patrol officer acted appropriately, and the worst the detective might have done is use inappropriate language in dealing with the snowball fighters.
So, what we have by the time that the Post covers the story is:
Now the folks at DC’s alternative paper, the Washington City Paper, whose link I am citing in the story, broke this. They had the pictures, they linked to the Youtube, etc., and they, or at least their reporter Erik Wemple, think that this is all about the WaPo not wanting to link to them, because they are a bunch of DFH’s* from the alternative weekly.
I think that they are wrong. I think that what is going on is far more malevolent.
I think that this has nothing to do with the Post dissing an alternative weekly competitor, and it has everything to do with being an upper middle class, and overwhelmingly white institution in a city that is majority black.
Simply put, they went with the police story, because the unspoken bias of the Washington Post editors is that they need to keep the N***ers down. They go with a blatantly false police account of the events for the same reason that they so so aggressively repeat and amply blatantly false Republican spin: They believe that the police and the Republicans are the best way to keep N***ers in their place in the District.
Then again, maybe I am just reading way to much into this, and it’s just a crappy and lazy reporter.
*Dirty F%$#ing Hippies.
Because, you can find a monkey chimp getting to 2nd base with Bo Derek in her 1981 celluloid horror, Tarzan, the Ape Man, and see an animated gif of the scene:
I’m no prude, and even though I’ll probably never do it again, I understand that boobs are fun to suck on. That’s great. Everybody suck more boobs! I just cannot believe that the frigid MPAA was down with this (and still is since the movie is in print and everything!), and that Bo Derek, the sole producer of Tarzan, the Ape Man, was like, “Yes. That time that the monkey rounded second on me is sooooo going in the movie!” This has to be the most line-crossing thing I’ve ever seen in a film OK’ed by the MPAA. A cursory Google search came up with zero mentions of this, which means I’m either the first person to point out the fucked-upedness of this, or I’m just easily excited. Kind of like that monkey.
Anyway, here’s a still. I’m tempted to transcribe this scene and read it for Porn for the Blind or perhaps recreate it with Winston and some peanut butter on my nipple, but I doubt even that would make it more real. My mind is blown forever.
Completely NSFW, though the good folks at the MPAA gave the film an “R” rating.
Really, NSFW, though Bo Derek is very buff, and it reminds us all why she was a sex symbol in the early 1980s.
Steve Blank relates a story, one which is all to frequently repeated in American Boardrooms, where the new CFO comes into a startup company that is finally making a profit, and decides to end the provision of free soda to employees, which saves $10,000 a month, but chases away the experienced staff:
Sometimes financial decisions that are seemingly rational on their face can precipitate mass exodus of your best engineers.
……………
I had lived through this same conversation four times in my career, and each time it ended as an example of unintended consequences. No one on the board or the executive staff was trying to be stupid. But to save $10,000 or so, they unintentionally launched an exodus of their best engineers.
This company had grown from the founders, who hired an early team of superstars, many now managing their own teams. All these engineers were still heads-down, working their tails off, just as they had been doing since the first few months of the company. Too busy working, most were oblivious to the changes that success and growth had brought to the company.
The Elves Leave Middle Earth – Sodas Are No Longer Free
One day the engineering team was clustered in the snack room looking at the soda machine. The sign said, “Soda now 50 cents.” The uproar began. Engineers started complaining about the price of the soda. Someone noticed that instead of the informal reimbursement system for dinners when they were working late, there was now a formal expense report system. Some had already been irritated when “professional” managers had been hired over their teams with reportedly more stock than the early engineers had. Lots of email was exchanged about “how things were changing for the worse.” A few engineers went to the see the CEO.But the damage had been done. The most talented and senior engineers looked up from their desks and noticed the company was no longer the one they loved. It had changed. And not in a way they were happy with.
The best engineers quietly put the word out that they were available, and in less than month the best and the brightest began to drift away.
Truth be told, I’ve never worked a company that gave out free sodas in the break room in the first place, and if I were to start a company, I would not choose this as a benefit for the employees, but it is American management that would create that would chase away its most valuable employees by counting pennies this way.
To the degree that the United States has achieved economic success since the end of the 2nd World War, it has been in spite of management, not because of it.
Andrew Martin exposes how Visa and the banks have colluded to increase the interchange fees charged merchants for debit cards.
Basically, because Visa can use its market share to force merchants to accept its products, and because it splits the interchange fees with the banks, it creates a situation where fees in the US are the highest in the world, and every merchant, and by extension every buyer, pays to shovel money to Visa and its client banks.
The reason for this is because Visa and MasterCard do not compete for end user consumers, they compete to get banks to offer their cards to end-user consumers, and they compete by raising prices, which they split with the banks:
As debit cards became the preferred plastic in American wallets, Visa has turned its attention to PIN debit too and increased its market share even more. And it has succeeded — not by lowering the fees that merchants pay, but often by pushing them up, making its bank customers happier.
In an effort to catch up, MasterCard and other rivals eventually raised fees on debit cards too, sometimes higher than Visa, to try to woo bank customers back.
“What we witnessed was truly a perverse form of competition,” said Ronald Congemi, the former chief executive of Star Systems, one of the regional PIN-based networks that has struggled to compete with Visa. “They competed on the basis of raising prices. What other industry do you know that gets away with that?”
This is only possible because Visa has a near monopoly, and even after it settled an anti-trust lawsuit, and agreed not to tie its expensive debit cards to all Visa products, merchants still cannot afford to diss the product, because the market share is too high.
This is, of course, what the Chicago School’s “perfect markets” create: Monopolies and near markets that create market “stickiness” that ill serve anyone but the monopolist.
It’s a capitalist’s dream, but a consumer’s nightmare, to the tune of about $427 per household per year.
