Year: 2010

What the Hell is This?

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1000+ point move in under an hour

Normally, I don’t follow the stock market, and I follow the imperfect Dow Jones Industrial Market even less, but over the space of what looks to be about ½ an hour, the Dow fell 600 points, and then rose by 400 points.

In percentage terms, that’s about 5½% down and about 4% up in a very short time frame.

I’m wondering if the whiz kids with the high frequency trading robots just screwed the pooch somehow.

(Update)

We now have a potential cause, sloppiness and lack of controls:

In one of the most dizzying half-hours in stock market history, the Dow plunged nearly 1,000 points before paring those losses in what possibly could have been a trader error.

According to multiple sources, a trader entered a “b” for billion instead of an “m” for million in a trade possibly involving Procter & Gamble , a component in the Dow. (CNBC’s Jim Cramer noted suspicious price movement in P&G stock on air during the height of the market selloff. Watch.)

Sources tell CNBC the firm in question that handled the erroneous trade is Citigroup . The bank said it has no evidence of a bad trade but is investigating the situation

We now have some hard numbers:

Here is the time frame, courtesy Scott (from MarketWatch):

2:38 PM: Dow down 360

2:48 PM: Dow down 600

2:51 PM: Dow down 900

Dow is now down around 500 [around 3:40 pm]

Whatever is going on here, it appears that Bloomberg News Service got absolutely hammered, and is now (about 4:30 pm) inaccessible.

FCC to Reclassify Broadband Providers as Telecommunications

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A recent court decision said that the FCC lacked jurisdiction to regulate broadband providers regarding things like net neutrality,* because the Bush era reclassification of broadband as “information” rather than “telecommunications” services meant that they had no statutory authority.

It also meant that if they reclassify broadband as “telecommunications,” again this is a finding of fact, which gives them jurisdiction.

Well, the Chairman of the FCC, Julius Genachowski, has now detailed plans to reverse this finding, which is a good thing, but he seems determined to find a “3rd way”, where he would use “forbearance,” basically not doing all that they could, to create a, “a light regulatory approach that would still encourage investment in broadband.”

I guess that Genachowski misses the point that the light touch doesn’t “encourage investment in broadband,” instead it creates a situation in which the incumbents use their resources to keep competitors out, not to improve service, which is why the US has the worst broadband penetration, and worst broadband performance, in the industrialized world.

If you want better broadband in the US, you need your foot on the neck of the cable companies and the baby Bells. Period, full stop.

*Sorry for linking to a Declan McCullagh story, it was the first that I found. He is, as Andrew Orlowsky notes, a “Draw by crayon libertarian,”†and so he quotes uncritically industry-funded astroturf groups in his article.
†He is also the guy who created the, “Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet,” myth, and he remains proud of that bit of hackery.

Google™ Adsense™, Still F%$#ing Clueless

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Once again, I see an ad on my site that espousing a position that I not only explicitly oppose, but actually ridicule.

In this case, it’s from Stop the CFPA dot com, and it’s run by the explicitly pro big business at the expensive of small business and implicitly Republican US Chamber of Commerce.

They are attempting to convince people that the CFPA is a an assault on small businesses, which is a flat out lie.

The CFPA puts burdens on lenders not debtors, and small businesses are overwhelmingly the victims of complex financial packages marketed by the big banks.

It would be nice if the Dems realized just how much the Chamber of Commerce is a Republican front group, and dealt with them accordingly.

Please note: once again, that I do not vet, nor do I endorse any ad that appears on my site, and I reserve the right to mock both the ads that appear on my site, as well as the advertisers.

Also, please note, this should be in no way construed as an inducement or a request for my reader(s) to click on any ad that they would not otherwise be inclined to investigate further. This would be a violation of the terms of service for Google™ Adsense™.

Economics Update

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The ADP private job report for April is out today, and it reports that 32,000, but since the private non-farm workforce needs to grow somewhere in the neighborhood of 130,000 a month, this means that unemployment is still increasing.

Additionally, the Institute for Supply Management’s Non-Manufacturing Index was 55.5, for the 4th straight month with any number above 50 indicating expansion, though the employment component of the index fell.

All in all though, better numbers are getting better.

In real estate, mortgage applications rose, with the refinance index falling, and the purchase index rising, so this is likely an artifact of the tax credit.

And its the same story as yesterday with regard to Greece and oil and currency, with people fleeing to safety driving the dollar up, and the rising dollar pushing oil down.

When Glenn Beck is More Reasonable than You…

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Bummer of a birth mark, little Johnny

It’s game over, dude.

In this case, it’s John McCain, who is suggesting that mirandizing the alleged Times Square bomber is somehow evil and wrong, and Glenn Beck, yes, Glen Beck, who is suggesting that we need not shred the Constitution, and give American citizens their constitutional due.

So John McCain is being called a demagogue, by the tag team by Jon Stewart and Glenn Beck.

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This is one big shark that he jumped.
With Frikken

Lasers!Jumping C. Megalodon*

*The largest shark, and likely largest predator fish ever. It died out some 1.5 million years ago. The Genus is still in dispute, between either Carcharodon (Great White) or Carcharocles (broad toothed Mako). But in either case, you are jumping C. Megalodon, you have jumped the biggest shark ever.

Dave Obey Will Retire

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The powerful, and senior, head of the House Appropriations Committee has announced that he will not stand for reelection.

Wisconsin’s 7th district has a D +3 PVI, so I think that its likely that the seat will remain in Democratic hands, but given the late date of this decision, it’s likely that the party leaders in Madison, and the DCCC, and , of course, Rahm, will do their best to ensure that a squish will run.

It appears that the deaths of Charlie Wilson and John Murtha led him to make this decision.

12%?!?!?!?

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Analysts at Morgan Stanley have determined that 12% of all mortgage defaults in February were from people who afford to pay, i.e. they were “strategic defaults” from people who decided that their home mortgages were just a bad investment that they needed to walk away from.

If you think that home prices are on their way to a serious rebound, the fact that there are a huge number of people who are far enough underwater that they are walking away, even with the cost to their credit rating and social pressure, should make you pause.

So Predictable

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Because Larry Summers is too arrogant to realize that he will never be Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and because Larry Summers has Barack Obama’s ear,* the White House has all but threatened a veto if the finance reform bill passes with an amendment to audit the Federal Reserve:

Right now Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is trying to round up 60 or more votes to overcome a likely filibuster and include an “audit the Fed” provision in the Senate’s bill. There are just a few small obstacles: the White House, major financial institutions, and the Fed itself. Their resistance is fierce–but the measure is so popular that killing it will be difficult for them and that, in their eyes, threatens to put a grenade at the center of efforts to to tighten the rules on Wall Street.

The pushback is reminiscent, in a way, of the executive branch’s institutional opposition to oversight of the nation’s intelligence agencies and operations. The Fed has always been shrouded in secrecy, and its leaders (in both the private and public sector) continue to insist on keeping their activities opaque, in order, they say, to protect complicated monetary policy from the political process.

……

It’s likely, in fact, that the Obama administration will be under intense pressure to veto the entire financial reform bill if “audit the fed” survives.

This is nuts. I know that Ben Bernanke will be upset, but to the degree that any voter cares about this, they support this idea, and the audit specifically exempts the inflation fighting functions of the Fed, where independence really matters.

It’s pretty clear that the Fed bent (and likely broke) its own rules, and possibly the law, and we need to know how they handled this, and how they screwed this up in the first place, before we make any decisions on what authority they might hold.

*And Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner’s testicles.

Questions that Need to be Asked

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Is Every Right-Wing, Anti-Gay Christian Bigot Sucking Off Rent Boys?

I think that the answer is, “Yes”:

That man was George Alan Rekers, of North Miami—the callboy’s client and, as it happens, one of America’s most prominent anti-gay activists. Rekers, a Baptist minister who is a leading scholar for the Christian right, left the terminal with his gay escort, looking a bit discomfited when a picture of the two was snapped with a hot-pink digital camera.

Reached by New Times before a trip to Bermuda, Rekers said he learned Lucien was a prostitute only midway through their vacation. “I had surgery,” Rekers said, “and I can’t lift luggage. That’s why I hired him.” (Though medical problems didn’t stop him from pushing the tottering baggage cart through MIA.) Yet Rekers wouldn’t deny he met his slender, blond escort at Rentboy.com—which features homepage images of men in bondage and grainy videos of crotch-rubbing twinks—and Lucien confirmed it.

Sestak-Specter Primary Battle Closes

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Date 5/2 5/3 5/4
Arlen Specter 48% 49% 46%
Joe Sestak 40% 40% 42%
Undecided 12% 11% 12%

The latest tracking polls have the Arlen Specter Joe Sestak primary race too close to call.

If you use the rule of thumb that undecideds break against the incumbent by 2:1, Specter still appears to have the advantage, but it is a lot closer than it was a last, when Specter had a 20+% lead, 53%-32%.

I would be surprised if Specter wins by more than 3% when the primary is held in 2 weeks.

Note that the polls here describe Specter’s popularity among Democrats, and he is severely damaged goods, so the general, against the antediluvian Pat Toomey, he will have a very tough road to hoe.

Basically, he switched parties because he wants to stay a senator, and everyone knows it, and it’s unseemly, and no one trusts him, though the Senate Incumbent Protection Program Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC) is spending heavily on advertisements in his behalf.

This is yet another reason why I implore my readers not to give to the DSCC the DCCC, or the DNC (Post Dean): they are first and foremost an incumbent protection program.

Economics Update (a Day Late)

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Miles Driven


Sales of cars and light trucks (the notch is the cars for clunkers program), H/t Calculated Risk

Yesterday was a mixed day for news.

On the plus side, we had:

On the minus side:

Additionally, we had US Treasurys falling, and their yields rising, but that is largely on reduced concerns about Greece following the successful implementation of a bailout package.

OK, Maybe Not Getting the Washington Post Gig Wasn’t So Bad

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I while back, I applied to, and did not make the cut for, the Washington Post‘s America’s Next Great Pundit contest.

Maybe it was the best outcome, though I could use the money, because it appears that the paper is now going to blogs and asking for links to their blogs post, as well as the authority to give said bloggers their assignments, for the princely sum of $0.00 (€0.00):

Five weeks ago, I received an unsolicited offer from the Washington Post. They asked if they could post my picture and biography on their website and link to every new blog post appearing here if I agreed to produce regular original content for them at their request. I turned them down. Why?

Because they wanted me to work for them for nothing.

The Post is organizing a “local blogging network” linking to selected blogs from their website and asking bloggers to submit original content, which would be edited by them. The Post’s rights to that content would be enforceable under a written agreement. That agreement was written as follows:

…………

The Post is also demanding the, “non-exclusive right to republish the Work (in whole or in part) on the Site in real time simultaneous with Your own publication of the Work, as well as the right to adapt, edit, display, store, and promote the Work in connection with such republication on the Site.”

This deal sucks worse than a coupon for a week of sessions at John Boehner’s favorite tanning salon, though it might not suck worse than a coupon for two weeks at John Boehner’s favorite tanning salon.

OK, Maybe it Wasn’t a Glenn Beck Fan

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It appears that authorities are looking for a person of interest with extensive ties to Pakistan regarding the abortive bombing attempt on Times Square.

It is, of course, terrorism, whether it’s an Pakistani-American, or someone who can trace their lineage back to the Mayflower, because, after all, blowing up a bomb in Times Square is terrorism.

The question now is whether it was Mayflower type, or someone with ties to the Islamic world.

In either case, it was someone who did not know how to do it right, so we can pretty much cross off going to one of those al Qaeda training camps, because he clearly did not take IED making 101.

A Thought on Barack Obama’s Most Likely Supreme Court Choice

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Current Solicitor General, Elena Kagan, is on the short list to be the Supreme Court Nominee to replace John Paul Steven.

She has a long and distinguished record, though she has never been a judge.*

Perhaps her 2nd most prestigious position, after being Solicitor General was as Dean of Harvard Law School, where she made special efforts to “broaden the ideological diversity” of the institution by hiring conservative legal scholars.

Needless to say, this sort of thing would clearly play well with Obama, who has clearly drunk his own Koolaid on his post-partisan thing.

The thing is, her definition of “diversity” is pretty narrow, and it appears taht she did not hire minorities or women:

Granting that we know very little about Kagan, what do we make of the facts that we do know? Here are some data that gives me pause about Kagan. When Elena Kagan was Dean of the Harvard Law School, she hired 29 tenured or tenure-track faculty members. But she did not hire a single black, Latino, or American Indian faculty member. Not one, not even a token. Of the 29 people she hired, all of them with one exception were white. Under Kagan’s watch Harvard hired 28 white faculty members and one Asian American.

One of Kagan’s purported qualifications for the Supreme Court is that she is a consensus builder. The chief evidence for that contention is that she broke the hiring logjam at Harvard and made it possible for Harvard to hire conservatives. It might sound absurd to some, but I will accept the point that one of Kagan’s chief selling points is that she assured that Harvard did not discriminate ideologically. I am personally gratified that Harvard Law School is not closed to conservative faculty members. I support ideological diversity and would not want to see qualified individuals discriminated against on the basis of ideology.

But what about people of color? How could she have brokered a deal that permitted the hiring of conservatives but resulted in the hiring of only white faculty? Moreover, of the 29 new hires, only six were women. So, she hired 23 white men, 5 white women, and one Asian American woman. Please do not tell me that there were not enough qualified women and people of color. That’s a racist and sexist statement. It cannot be the case that there was not a single qualified black, Latino or Native-American legal academic that would qualify for tenure at Harvard Law School during Elena Kagan’s tenure. To believe otherwise is to harbor troubling racist views.

I am unaware of the dynamics at Harvard Law School, but having a stepmother who is both a former college president, and a Harvard grad, I do know that the politics at Harvard can be unpleasant, and produce less than optimal results.

Still, 28 hires, 27 of whom are white, and one of whom is of Asian extraction seems to me to indicate some very real issues, whether it’s just conflict avoidance/cowardice, or something more.

It seems to me that in an environment like Harvard Law, hiring 28 faculty and hiring only 1 non-white actually takes a lot of work.

H/t BTD.

*I think that the practice of appointing Federal judges is overrated. Every current justice was a Federal judge, which was not the tradition. The last non Federal judge appointed was O’Connor, and you have people like Warren, Douglas, Fortas, Marshall, Brandeis, Black, Frankfurter, etc., as well as people like Holms and Cardozo, who were judges, but not Federal judges.