Year: 2010

You Know that the ‘Phants are Crapping Their Pants When……

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That look in his eyes is terror

When Karl Rove is so concerned about teabagger paranoia over the census that he as recorded a PSA for the decennial survey.

You see, the numbers are coming back, and it turns out that all over the Republican heartland, people are refusing to fill out the forms, because people like Michelle Bachmann and Glen Beck are telling them that it’s all a ploy for Barack Obama’s concentration camps for white folks.

What this means is that, probably for the first time in a very long time, that the under counting of minorities and immigrants may be balanced out by non-compliance among the suburban and rural white populations, which could move a few Congressional districts to bluer states, and change the shapes, of a few more.

I know that the census is important, and I know that it should be filled out promptly and accurately, but still, my initial thought is, “Heh. Hoist by their own petard.”

Hearts and Minds

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The head of Wikileaks on Dylan Ratigan


The Wikileaks Video

Dan Froomkin has some very trenchant commentary on the video released by Wikileaks showing the attack on a Reuters camera crew and the people who later attempted to take the shooting victims to hospital.

Wikileaks calls it “Collateral Murder,” and I think that the characterization is a bit inflammatory.

That being said, regardless of intent or criminality, it is clear that this was a mistake. As Glenn Greenwald notes on Ratigan, the people effected by this violence will have their world view, and their view of the United States, colored by these events, as will the people in the Arab world who see videos like this, and videos like this are common features on various Arab broadcast networks.

In a word, incidents like this create a fertile ground for the radicalization of individuals, who then are far more likely to take action against Americans and American interests: In other words, they create terrorists.

That being said, I think that there are some problems here beyond the tactical, an over-reliance on relative imprecise airpower and artillery in a counter-insurgency situation, or the aesthetic, the rather creepy laughter on the video.

The first is that this sort of tragedy is an inevitable part of war, and are unavoidable, and so invasion and occupation, even when conceived to combat radicalism and terrorism, must create some level of new radicalism and terrorism, because sh$# like this will happen. War is confusing, and mistakes will be made.

Second, it does appear, at least according to as to training and rules of engagement, there were some violations, at least according to Lt. Col Anthony Shaffer (again on Ratigan), based on his observation of the video, and the fire directed at the would be rescuers of the injured people.

Third, and most importantly, it is clear that the US Military has a policy of deliberately lying about such things as standard operating procedure, whether it is this incident, the friend fire incident that killed Pat Tillman, or the rather gruesome account of special forces operatives digging bullets out of bodies in order to cover up their mistakes that has been reported recently by the New York Times.

It’s clear that this has nothing to do with protecting militarily sensitive information, simply put, shooting innocent civilians, or former NFL players, is not militarily sensitive, and the people on the ground, both the general public in the war zones, as well as the forces opposing us, already know what is going on.

The purpose of these activities is to deliberately deceive the American public, which is something that the military has been specifically forbidden to do by law, and the media, particularly the broadcast and cable media, appear to be all to willing to ignore.

Simply put, on matters where embarrassment is an issue, the Military can be reliably relied on to lie, and the press can be trusted to mindlessly parrot the stories over the news cycle.

Good Writing

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Matt Taibbi, once again, this time on how the banks used complex products to rape Jefferson County, Alabama when they wanted to issue debt to upgrade their sewer system:

What happened here in Jefferson County would turn out to be the perfect metaphor for the peculiar alchemy of modern oligarchical capitalism: A mob of corrupt local officials and morally absent financiers got together to build a giant device that converted human sh%$ into billions of dollars of profit for Wall Street — and misery for people like Lisa Pack. [a county employee laid off when the debt exploded]

………

And once the giant sh%$ machine was built and the note on all that fancy construction started to come due, Wall Street came back to the local politicians and doubled down on the scam. They showed up in droves to help the poor, broke citizens of Jefferson County cut their toilet finance charges using a blizzard of incomprehensible swaps and refinance schemes — schemes that only served to postpone the repayment date a year or two while sinking the county deeper into debt. In the end, every time Jefferson County so much as breathed near one of the banks, it got charged millions in fees. There was so much money to be made bilking these dizzy Southerners that banks like JP Morgan spent millions paying middlemen who bribed — yes, that’s right, bribed, criminally bribed — the county commissioners and their buddies just to keep their business. Hell, the money was so good, JP Morgan at one point even paid Goldman Sachs $3 million just to back the f%$# off, so they could have the rubes of Jefferson County to fleece all for themselves.

(%$# mine, emphasis original)

I believe that I have described him as this generation’s Hunter S. Thompson, but I was wrong.

He is this generation’s Upton Sinclair, though there is certainly a lot of Thompson in his prose.

It’s a fairly long read, and the twists and turns of the deal, where Morgan Stanley paid a middleman to bribe people, and now will be getting off Scott free, and I really can’t do justice with a summary, so just read the whole thing, and at the end, you will agree with him when he says, “This isn’t capitalism. It’s nomadic thievery.”

I wish that I could write like him.

Meta

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I’ve reorganized the Google™ Ads™, in the hopes of getting a few more pennies, because my my application for extended unemployment benefits, has been put on hold by the petulance of Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK).

I figure that the narrow strip of ads under the title is preferable to my screaming, “Will no on rid me of this turbulent ‘Phant.”

Hoocoodaode?

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Michael Burry, who made millions from the collapse of housing bubble, talks about how it was all perfectly obvious that we were heading at 95 miles per hour into a brick wall:

Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, proclaimed last month that no one could have predicted the housing bubble. “Everybody missed it,” he said, “academia, the Federal Reserve, all regulators.”

But that is not how I remember it. Back in 2005 and 2006, I argued as forcefully as I could, in letters to clients of my investment firm, Scion Capital, that the mortgage market would melt down in the second half of 2007, causing substantial damage to the economy. My prediction was based on my research into the residential mortgage market and mortgage-backed securities. After studying the regulatory filings related to those securities, I waited for the lenders to offer the most risky mortgages conceivable to the least qualified buyers. I knew that would mark the beginning of the end of the housing bubble; it would mean that prices had risen — with the expansion of easy mortgage lending — as high as they could go.

I had begun to worry about the housing market back in 2003, when lenders first resurrected interest-only mortgages, loosening their credit standards to generate a greater volume of loans. Throughout 2004, I had watched as these mortgages were offered to more and more subprime borrowers — those with the weakest credit. The lenders generally then sold these risky loans to Wall Street to be packaged into mortgage-backed securities, thus passing along most of the risk. Increasingly, lenders concerned themselves more with the quantity of mortgages they sold than with their quality.

He is one of many people who began to worry about an over-inflated housing market,* though he has the distinction of being one of perhaps a dozen people who actually researched it thoroughly enough to risk his, and his clients’ money at Scion Capital.

And he made a killing, to the tune of about $¾ billion.

Of course, Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan take on all this is that he was just lucky:

Since then, I have often wondered why nobody in Washington showed any interest in hearing exactly how I arrived at my conclusions that the housing bubble would burst when it did and that it could cripple the big financial institutions. A week ago I learned the answer when Al Hunt of Bloomberg Television, who had read Michael Lewis’s book, “The Big Short,” which includes the story of my predictions, asked Mr. Greenspan directly. The former Fed chairman responded that my insights had been a “statistical illusion.” Perhaps, he suggested, I was just a supremely lucky flipper of coins.

Mr. Greenspan said that he sat through innumerable meetings at the Fed with crack economists, and not one of them warned of the problems that were to come. By Mr. Greenspan’s logic, anyone who might have foreseen the housing bubble would have been invited into the ivory tower, so if all those who were there did not hear it, then no one could have said it.

If Greenspan had no naysayers talking to him, it was because, as Paul Krugman so ably notes, it was, “Because Greenspan insulated himself from people who told him what he didn’t want to hear.”

Krugman notes a number of people, Dean Baker, Robert Shiller, himself, etc., and notes that Greenspan’s alibis are an artifact of his lack of menschlichkeit (integrity).

I would actually go further: He actually had a political and electoral purpose to his policies, which was that he held, and kept rates low, and encouraged things like exotic mortgages, because he wanted the Republicans in general, and George W. Bush in particular, to implement policies that he supported, such as the dismantling of Social Security, and by propping up the economy, he put the wind at their backs.

The independent Federal Reserve is largely a myth, and treating it as such leaves us with people like Alan Greenspan running the show to the detriment of everyone else.

*Hell, I was issuing dire warnings on the by invitation only Stellar Parthenon BBS regarding what I thought was, and is, an over valued US dollar and increasing interest rates KOing the housing market in 2004, so I was right about there being a housing bubble, and the effects of low interest rates, but wrong, at least so far, as to the mechanism for the collapse of it all.

The Latest Faux Conservative Outrage

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Do you think he’s maybe compensating for something?

It appears that the right wing media is having a hissy fit over the size of Nancy Pelosi’s gavel:

  • Beck asks if Nancy Pelosi was “inciting” tea partiers with House gavel — “a big hammer.”
  • Limbaugh: Pelosi tried to “provoke” tea partiers by “carrying that big gavel” with “excrement-eating grin on her face.”
  • Michael Graham: Pelosi was “asking for” response by carrying gavel.
  • Tea Party blogger: “It would have been more symbolic had she had a whip.”

Gee, the Republicans see something big, and it makes them feel insecure.

Imagine that.

Conservatives Feel Entitled to Their Own Facts

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As evidenced by the recent assault on history by conservatives.

Cases in point, arguing that:

  • Alexander Hamilton, the most vociferous supporter of a strong government and against the powers of the states amongst the Federalists, who themselves supported a strong central government, opposed a strong central government.
  • Texas text books rewriting history.
  • That the deaths at Jamestown in its first years were because it was a socialist endeavor.
    • The truth is that, “The Jamestown settlement was a capitalist venture financed by the Virginia Company of London — a joint stock corporation — to make a profit.
  • Teddy Roosevelt was a socialist.

We could go on and on, but the lesson to be learned is that when talking to conservatives, you need to confirm if they say that milk is white.

Jon Stewart: National Treasure

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I don’t think that Jon Stewart is saying that all Republicans are Racists, but he is saying that this Republican calling into to CSPAN is a racist, and he is also making a comment on the sort of, “Opinions on the shape of the Earth differ,” coverage that you see amongst people who see themselves as members of the journalistic community.

Fundamentally, one of the major problems in our political discourse these days is that fact that there is literally nothing that a right-winger can say, no matter how bigoted or deceitful, that can get a meaningful push-back from the gentleman in the 4th estate.

You Keep Using That Word. I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means*

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USA Today headline, “In good sign for economy: Hiring rebounds on Wall Street.”

More Wall Street brokers, cutting more deals, with other people’s money, using more and more opaque instruments is supposed to be a, “Good sign for economy.”

It’s a pity that the author, Paul Davidson, apparently understands neither English nor the economy.

*The quote is from The Princess Bride.

Gunmen Wearing Military Uniforms, My Ass

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When gunmen in military uniforms stormed the the Sunni village of Albusaifi, and shot 24 people, you can be pretty sure that they were, in fact, soldiers.

One of the recurring themes during the ethnic cleansing of Sunnis from many parts of Baghdad was that the attackers were, “Dressed as security forces.”

This was not because these uniforms are floating around the street for anyone to pick up. It was because they were soldiers and police, and they were acting with the tacit approval of the Iraqi government.

The Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, knew what was going on, and approved of what was going on, which is why the ethnic cleansing went into high gear in 2006, following his ascension to the PM’s office.

Maliki has been implacably hostile to incorporating the Sunni “Sons of Iraq,” Sunni militiaman recruited to fight against Al Qaeda, into the state security apparatus, as promised, and has directed a program of harassment and arrest against them.

This is just the next step in this process.

Barney Frank Goes Nuclear on Former Staffer

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And let me note that the staffer, Peter Roberson, deserves it.

Basically, this guy took lead on writing regulations on derivatives, and then he started shopping himself to hedge funds, and this Really pissed off Barney Frank:

But in late January, after learning that Roberson was interviewing for a position with ICE, Frank asked him to leave his post, removed him from the payroll, de-activated his email account and took his Blackberry, keys and identification credentials, according to both Frank and Frank’s spokesman.

And if that weren’t enough:

Frank said there is a rule which bans staffers who leave for industry positions from interacting with committee members for one year, but he doesn’t think this rule goes far enough.

Frank said Thursday he has instructed staff “to have no contact whatsoever with Mr. Roberson on any matters involving financial regulation for as long as I am in charge of that committee staff.”

(emphasis mine)

I will note that Frank did this a year ago with another former aid, where he forbade contact with Goldman Sachs lobbyist, and former committee staffer, Michael Paese, from contacting the committee while they were working on reform legislation, but that was only while the bill was being drawn up.

I am not sure if this has happened because Roberson’s behavior was particularly egregious, or if it was because the bleeding in staff was becoming excessive, but this is a much needed shot across the bow of the revolving door in the US Congress.

In either case, it’s pretty clear that Roberson is now radioactive, and that his market value as a peddler of access has been much diminished.

Frank’s official statement after break:

Statement of Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank

Washington, DC – House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) today made the following statement about stories related to a recent staff departure from the House Financial Services Committee:

“Several people have expressed criticism of the move by Peter Roberson from the staff of the Financial Services Committee to ICE, after he worked on the legislation relevant to derivatives. I completely agree with that criticism. When Mr. Roberson was hired, it never occurred to me that he would jump so quickly from the Committee staff to an industry that was being affected by the Committee’s legislation. When he called me to tell me that he was in conversations with them, I told him that I was disappointed and that I insisted that he take no further action as a member of the Committee staff. I then called the Staff Director and instructed her to remove him from the payroll and provide him only such compensation as is already owed.

“Stories about this correctly noted that there is a one year ban on his interaction with members of the Committee staff, but I do not think that is adequate. I am therefore instructing the staff of the Financial Services Committee to have no contact whatsoever with Mr. Roberson on any matters involving financial regulation for as long as I am in charge of that Committee staff. Fortunately, examples of staff members doing what Mr. Roberson has done are rare, but even one example is far too much and that is why I wanted to make clear I share the unhappiness of people at this, and my intention to prohibit any contact between him and members of the staff for as long as I have any control over the matter.”

###

Jon Stewart Nails CNN

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I really do not to ever piss off Jon Stewart!

He comments on Eric Erickson, who has moved from the Red State blog to a pundit at CNN, and Stewart notes that the expressions of shock from CNN about the incendiary nature of his posts rings about as true as, “The guy at the strip club who says, ‘I’m going to hang out, but I’m not getting a lap dance, I’m here for the buffet.’ “

BTW, Erickson’s latest, that he would pull a gun on census takers.

Credit Where Credit is Due

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Notwithstanding what appears to be no small amount of stonewalling on the Pat Tillman death, it appears that Stanley McChrystal is being remarkably forthright on issues involving excessive use of force at check-points in Afghanistan:

Q: “On Escalation of force, have you considered engaging the local community on the issue? We could explain at the brigade/battalion level what behavior we find threatening, and how we are trained to react when we feel threatened. We could negotiate with the community leaders over mutually agreeable actions and reactions that are better understood by both and gives part ownership of the issue to the community and empowers them in line with our approach to reintegration.”

GEN McChrystal: “That’s a great point. I don’t know if we have, but we certainly ought to be doing that. We have so many escalation of force issues, and someone gets hurt in the process, and we say, ‘They didn’t respond like they were supposed to.’ Well, they may not have known how they were supposed to respond, so as they approached an area or checkpoint or whatever, they may have taken actions that seemed appropriate to them, and when a warning shot was fired they may have panicked. I think this is a great thing to do, to engage people and tell them the kind of behavior on their part that would lower the chance that they would run into problems.

“I do want to say something that everyone understands. We really ask a lot of our young service people out on the checkpoints because there’s danger, they’re asked to make very rapid decisions in often very unclear situations. However, to my knowledge, in the nine-plus months I’ve been here, not a single case where we have engaged in an escalation of force incident and hurt someone has it turned out that the vehicle had a suicide bomb or weapons in it and, in many cases, had families in it. That doesn’t mean I’m criticizing the people who are executing. I’m just giving you perspective. We’ve shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force.”

(emphasis mine)

What he is saying here is that none of the shootings have prevented an actual threat to the forces.

He is very careful not to criticize the troops, but it appears to me that he is criticizing the rules of engagement, which, given the generally opaque response of the chain of command in such incidents, is remarkably frank.

Osama, Take Me Now!

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Just when you thought that the fashion industry in general, and the makers of perfume in particular, could not get any more insane, they give us Vulva Original, a vagina scented perfume.

No, this is not a joke, it’s real, complete with a web site featuring a video which, for lack of a better term, climaxes in a man sniffing a bicycle seat.

Whiskey tango foxtrot?

You know, the supposition that certain backward religious nut-jobs make that our society is evil, corrupt, and irredeemably icky is becoming more and more plausible.

Economics Update (For the Week)

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Click for full size


Employment/Population Ratio Still at 1983 Levels


Long-term unemployment is still at a 40+ Year high


Personal bankruptcies on level with pre-bankruptcy reform numbers (H/t Calculated Risk)

Well, we have the employment numbers for March out now, and the March non-farm payroll numbers (NFP) rose by 162,000, with unemployment (U3)remaining at 9.7%, and the broader U6 unemployment number remained basically flat, increasing from 16.8% to 16.9% (seasonally adjusted).

This is an improvement. It’s the largest NFP jump in 3 years.

That being said, some things to note:

  • The US Census hired 48,000 temp employees in March.
  • You need about 150,000 new jobs each month to accommodate people entering the workforce.
  • Some of this may be hiring from prior months that was delayed because of the various snowpocalypse weather events that occurred.
  • Long term unemployment increased.
  • Involuntary part time employment increased (largely why U6 is up)

About 8 million people have lost jobs in this recessions, and at a NFP payroll increase of 162K a month, it would take more than 50 years for everyone who lost their jobs to get another job, so while it is an improvement, things are at best treading water, but the trend does appear to be getting better.

Still, the employment/population ratio is at a 27 year low, and long term unemployment is at a 40+ year high.

Also, we have

Still, all in all, I have to say that we are seeing a recovery, but it’s a feeble and fragile recovery.

We still have some areas of concern, most notably that construction spending fell once again, and personal bankruptcies rose sharply.

Yes, It Probably Is Abused

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Something that popped up some time after I graduated school was the rise of unpaid internships, and it appears that authorities are beginning to look at them for labor and wage law violations:

With job openings scarce for young people, the number of unpaid internships has climbed in recent years, leading federal and state regulators to worry that more employers are illegally using such internships for free labor.

Convinced that many unpaid internships violate minimum wage laws, officials in Oregon, California and other states have begun investigations and fined employers. Last year, M. Patricia Smith, then New York’s labor commissioner, ordered investigations into several firms’ internships. Now, as the federal Labor Department’s top law enforcement official, she and the wage and hour division are stepping up enforcement nationwide.

Many regulators say that violations are widespread, but that it is unusually hard to mount a major enforcement effort because interns are often afraid to file complaints. Many fear they will become known as troublemakers in their chosen field, endangering their chances with a potential future employer.

I would be inclined to agree.

My father, my mother, and my older brother all went to the (lamentably now closed, at least until 2012) Antioch College, and I considered going there myself, and they had a co-op job program, where work credits were required to graduate, and this was for paid positions, so the idea of huge numbers of unpaid students doing scut work seems to me to be more of an opportunity to get free labor than of any legitimate educational need.

Additionally, I think that the growth of unpaid internships may hide a darker agenda, specifically that with the growth of this practice, and the necessity of this sort of experience to enter some fields, it creates an unlevel playing field for people in many fields:

While many colleges are accepting more moderate- and low-income students to increase economic mobility, many students and administrators complain that the growth in unpaid internships undercuts that effort by favoring well-to-do and well-connected students, speeding their climb up the career ladder.

Many less affluent students say they cannot afford to spend their summers at unpaid internships, and in any case, they often do not have an uncle or family golf buddy who can connect them to a prestigious internship.

Additionally, the laws regarding discrimination and sexual harassment appear not to apply to interns, since they are not employees, so the opportunities for abuse are rife.