Over 100,000!!!!!
My car, a 1998 Saturn, which I got from my Grandmother when she stopped driving about 5 years ago, broke 100,000 miles on the odometer yesterday.
I think that the car had about 22K when we got it.
The idea that Canada would buy anything but a US aircraft, particularly with a significant long shot, but the fact that both companies are pitching their aircraft as an alternative to the F-35 JSF:
Representatives from the German-based Eurofighter Typhoon and Sweden’s Saab Gripen appeared at committee and told members their planes can meet Canada’s air force demands, and are far cheaper than the fifth-generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter stealth jet the government agreed to buy in July.
Canada intends to buy 65 F-35s for $9 billion — plus maintenance costs — to replace the aging fleet of CF-18s, with delivery expected to start in 2016.
Antony Ogilvie with Saab said they could supply Canada with 65 upgraded Gripens, with 40 years of maintenance costs included, for under $6 billion.
I am unsure of the maintenance costs of the F-35, but it is safe to say that the life cycle costs for the F-35 are at least twice as much as the diminutive Swedish fighter.
If the Gripen ever reaches sales critical mass, it could be the F-5 of this era. It’s half the life cycle cost and size of its competitors while offering decent performance by the standards of the day.
Truth be told, it’s likely that the Eurofighter will probably be cheaper over its lifetime than the JSF as well, and while not offering the all aspect stealth (or stealthish if you listen to the critics) of the JSF, it does offer a known price and operating cost, a wider array of munitions, greater agility, supercruise, and higher ceiling, with the advantage of known operational and purchase price and a 2nd engines for safer operations over the largely uninhabited, and rather inhospitable, areas in northern Canada.
Patty cake.
And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.
We broke 150 failed banks for the year.
Around July, it looked like there would be about 190 failed banks for the year around July, but the pace has slackened significantly.
For historical reference, here is the Full FDIC list for banks, and the Full NCUA list for credit unions.
So, here is the graph pr0n with trendline (FDIC only):
Both good pieces of news:
A rise in U.S. consumer confidence to its highest in six months and a much bigger-than-expected contraction in the country’s trade deficit pointed to a firmer economic recovery on Friday.
………
Consumer sentiment in December rose to its highest level since June and was at its third-highest since the start of 2008, according to a Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan survey. Government data showed U.S. exports in October rose a robust 3.2 percent while imports declined slightly.
………
The survey’s preliminary December reading for consumer sentiment came in at 74.2, up from 71.6 in November. That was above the median forecast of 72.5 among economists polled by Reuters.
This is unalloyed good news.
It’s particularly good news because we are in the Christmas shopping season that accounts for a disproportionate amount of consumer spending.
My guess is that the the exports are helped by the general trend down with the dollar over the past month. (see graph pr0n)
In an odd way, if Obama’s disastrously bad tax capitulation compromise may actually help our economy if it convinces the currency markets to go short on the dollar.
So, the Senate failed to end a filibuster and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Repeal is dead, probably for at least the next 4 years.
Obama started calling people about this yesterday, so much for fierce advocacy, and the witch hunts and separations continue.
With financial reform, he was pushing back to keep it as small as possible.
With healthcare reform, he cut a deal that made us all slave labor for the insurance companies.
And not a peep from the administration about the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), or the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).
And then there is the tax deal, which lowers the inheritance tax, and gives the Republicans a wedge to defund Social Security.
As I have noted before, he appointed Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, both supporters of “privatizing” Social Security to chair his debt commission.
I am beginning to think that he’s not a bad negotiator, but that he is getting everything that he wants, and what he wants are largely Republican policies.
I’m beginning to think that he bay actually getting he wants.
Talk about eleventy dimensional chess.
* It’s an old joke.
To the “good” folks at Westboro Baptist
Westboro Baptist Church will be protesting and spewing their anti-gay vitriol at the funeral for Elizabeth Edwards.
Here is hoping that the police called in to keep the anger at these folks from ending in a beat down does get called away to rescue a cat in a tree.
And initial unemployment claims fell to 421,000, with the less volatile 4-week moving average falling to a 2¼ year low of 427,500, continuing claims falling by 191,000 4.09 million, and extended and emergency claims fell by 393,200 to 4.51 million.
Better news, but still somewhere between 30K and 60K too high to indicate a recovery in the labor market.
A lot of what happens for the next 6 months will be driven by the what happens in the Greed Day Christmas shopping season, I guess.
My sincerest apologies for not mentioning the Rude Pundit earlier.
He is a very profane genius.
One of his more recent gems is about the Republican response to Obama’s capitulation, “Senate Republicans Have a Celebration Orgy“:
The Senate Republican cloakroom was filled with whores yesterday. No, not the senators themselves, who were taking the afternoon off from letting the Chamber of Commerce sodomize them, the better for their assholes to regain some elasticity. There were real, actual, non-metaphorical prostitutes there, female and male, paid for by Karl Rove’s American Crossroads GPS and its billionaire donors.…
In the name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I implore you tor ead the rest.
Treasury yields fell today, after rising sharply on news of the Obama-Republican tax deal:
Treasuries rose, following the biggest two-day slump in two years, as yields at the highest level in six months lured investors on prospects the Federal Reserve will discuss a possible extension of purchases.
Ten-year notes rallied before the Fed meets next week to review its program to buy $600 billion of U.S. debt through June. The yield advantage of 10-year Treasuries over Japanese bonds increased to the widest in five months, boosting the allure of U.S. assets. Treasuries tumbled the past two days, pushing 10- year yields up by 35 basis points, the most since Sept. 19, 2008, when they fluctuated following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
Those invisible bond vigilantes are a fickle lot.
In August U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White, in response to the suit by environmentalists, issued a ruling that no new genetically modified “roundup ready” sugar beets be planted until a full environmental impact statement has been filed.
The US Department of Agriculture, never a big one for following the law, then issued permits to plant them anyway.
In response to this the judge has ruled that the crops must be destroyed.
This is what happens when you metaphorically call the judge a cock sucker.
The appeals court has stayed the ruling pending a review, but my guess is that they will be inclined to go along with the judge’s decision.
Judges hate it when you ignore their orders. They think that it’s illegal or something.
Come to think of it, it is illegal or something.
If we we are so damned terrified of terrorists that we have to erect airport style scanners to get into the Washington Monument, then we should close the structure to the public until we have grown a pair.
We got off the Jersey Turnpike while driving up to my Mother-In-Law’s in New York, and we found the Westhampton Family Diner,1857 Route 541 South, Westhampton, NJ 08060 (609)265-7065.
It is off of exit 5.
It had very nice food, both diner style, and some other cuisines.
I had a very nice Kibab over Rice Pilaf.
Large portions, good food, and friendly service.
Not sure which genius came up with this, but it is floating around the innerwebs.
First, it appears that the Republicans have structured the deal to force states into bankruptcy in order to destroy the public employee unions:
Congressional Republicans appear to be quietly but methodically executing a plan that would a) avoid a federal bailout of spendthrift states and b) cripple public employee unions by pushing cash-strapped states such as California and Illinois to declare bankruptcy. This may be the biggest political battle in Washington, my Capitol Hill sources tell me, of 2011.That’s why the most intriguing aspect of President Barack Obama’s tax deal with Republicans is what the compromise fails to include — a provision to continue the Build America Bonds program. BABs now account for more than 20 percent of new debt sold by states and local governments thanks to a federal rebate equal to 35 percent of interest costs on the bonds. The subsidy program ends on Dec. 31. And my Reuters colleagues report that a GOP congressional aide said Republicans “have a very firm line on BABS — we are not going to allow them to be included.”
This is juxtaposed with proposals mooted among the Conservative Nomenklatura, most notably in The Weekly Standard, that Congress enact laws allowing states to declare bankruptcy, which in turn would allow them to unilaterally break union contracts.
Additionally, you have the withholding tax holiday, which legitimizes schemes to defund Social Security as a prelude to gutting it, as Nancy Altman, co-director of Social Security Works, so ably notes:
Given that unwillingness to raise taxes by less than a nickel on every dollar earned over $1 million, I find it unfathomable that a more conservative Congress, in two years, in an election year, will increase the payroll tax by 2 percent on the very first dollar, and every other dollar up to the cap, earned by virtually every single worker in the country. Consequently, I think we have to assume that the payroll tax holiday will be extended beyond the two years the president is proposing and quite likely could become permanent.
That means that the federal government will have to continue to transfer $120 billion to the Social Security trust funds each and every year even as it has to transfer more and more interest payments as the trust funds continue to grow and as interest rates return to more normal levels. Unless Congress acts to restore Social Security to solvency, the Treasury bonds held in trust will have to be redeemed, again on top of that new $120 billion transfer from the general fund, starting fifteen years from now, assuming Congress even continues to make the $120 billion every year before that point. These dollars will be competing with dollars for defense, environmental protection, education, school lunches, Food Stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, SSI, Pell grants for low income college students, and every other good and service financed by the federal government.
A permanent two percent cut in Social Security contributions doubles the 75 year projected shortfall. Scrapping the cap (eliminating the $106,800 maximum on earnings), tonally eliminates the shortfall today. If FICA is cut by 2 percent, scrapping the cap gets Social Security only halfway there.
I’m a cynic, and I believe that this is a feature, and not a bug.
On labor, the Obama administration has pointedly sat on its hands with regard to the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), and the Obama Department of Education is more virulently anti-union than Bush’s Education Department ever was, as mind boggling as it sounds.
As to Social Security, anyone who appoints Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles to a “deficit reduction” (catfood) commission, clearly wants to gut that gem in the crown of the New Deal.
These flaws in the “compromise” are features, not bugs.
After seeing this happen repeatedly, I think that actual intent is a more coherent explanation than simple incompetence.
Obama wants these things to happen.
H/t Yves Smith for the first link.
Well, don’t forget it:
Jon Stewart 37, War on Christmas morons: 0.
Unlike Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain, the PIGS, Iceland has a currency, which it has allowed to devalue, and it has largely defaulted on its banks debts, though its government had to be dragged into this kicking and screaming through a plebiscite, but now Iceland’s economy grew sharply in the 3rd quarter:
Iceland’s decision two years ago to force bondholders to pay for the banking system’s collapse appeared to pay off after official figures showed the country exited recession in the third quarter.
The Icelandic economy, which contracted for seven consecutive quarters until the summer, grew by 1.2% in the three months to the end of September.
Iceland famously agreed in a referendum to reject a scheme to repay most of its debts that were once worth 11 times its total national income.
In contrast to Ireland, Iceland’s taxpayers refused to foot the bill for the debts accumulated by the banking sector. Bondholders were told to accept dramatic reductions in the value of repayments on bank debt after the sector borrowed beyond its means to fund ambitious investments abroad.
By contrast, Ireland guaranteed all depositors and all bond holders, and will be crushed by that debt for years.
Rule number one of these sorts of meltdowns is that the bond holders are professionals, and they get interest because they are taking a risk, and risk means a chance of default.
The argument that is made against Greece, or Ireland, or the rest of the PIGS taking a similar approach is that it they need to maintain the confidence of the markets in order to prosper economically.
This is wrong. It is literally a confidence game.
They’re just not that into you, Barack!
Stephen Colbert is a genius.
Interest rates on Treasuries have surged in the wake of the tax cut capitulation:
Treasury prices dropped Tuesday, pushing 10-year yields up by the most since June 2009, after Congress and the White House compromised on a tax package that is expected to raise the deficit and increase the government’s borrowing needs.
The drop in prices, which move inversely to yields, extended further after the government’s first of three auctions this week drew tepid demand from investors.
Go figure. Barack Obama has managed to capitulated his way into pushing interest rates up.
That will help the economy.