Month: January 2019

A Consequence of Our Consumer Debt Society

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It turns out that one of the more common features of mass shootings in the United States is the use of credit cards to finance these acts:

The New York Times reviewed hundreds of documents including police reports, bank records and investigator notes from a decade of mass shootings. Many of the killers built their stockpiles of high-powered weapons with the convenience of credit. No one was watching.

Two days before Omar Mateen killed 49 people and wounded 53 more at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, he went on Google and typed “Credit card unusual spending.”

Mr. Mateen had opened six new credit card accounts — including a Mastercard, an American Express card and three Visa cards — over the previous eight months. Twelve days before the shooting, he began a $26,532 buying spree: a Sig Sauer MCX .223-caliber rifle, a Glock 17 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol, several large magazines, thousands of rounds of ammunition and a $7,500 ring for his wife that he bought on a jewelry store card. His average spending before that, on his only card, was $1,500 a month.

His web browsing history chronicled his anxiety: “Credit card reports all three bureaus,” “FBI,” and “Why banks stop your purchases.”

He needn’t have worried. None of the banks, credit-card network operators or payment processors alerted law enforcement officials about the purchases he thought were so suspicious.

Mass shootings routinely set off a national debate on guns, usually focused on regulating firearms and on troubled youths. Little attention is paid to the financial industry that has become an instrumental, if unwitting, enabler of carnage.

I am not sure that there is a way to use this information without further prying into the personal lives of everyone, but this is yet another data point about how the culture of guns in the United States is fundamentally broken.

Look Out Below

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Two of the most overheated real estate markets in the world are Manhattan, and Australia, and both of them appear to be trending downward, which looks an awful lot like 2007:

The median price of a Manhattan apartment has fallen below $1m for the first time in three years, according to a survey of sales in the final months of 2018, as real estate agents struggle to shift a glut of luxury properties and potential buyers worry about the outlook for the US economy.

The median price paid for co-operatives and condominiums in the prime borough of New York City — some of the most expensive properties in the US — fell 5.8 per cent to $999,000 according to research by Miller Samuel, a real estate appraiser, and Douglas Elliman, a real estate broker.

And from the land down under:

In its latest report on Australia, the OECD focuses to a disturbing extend on housing, household debt, what the current housing downturn might do to the otherwise healthy economy, and what the risks are that this housing downturn will lead to a financial crisis for the big four Australian banks, an eventuality that it says “authorities” should make “contingency plans” for.

The big four banks are huge in relation to the Australian stock market and the overall economy: Their combined market capitalization, at A$341 billion, even after today’s sell-off following the OECD report – accounts for 26% of Australia’s total stock market capitalization.

 ………

 But then there’s the housing bubble, household debt, and the banks that have funded this bubble and that households owe this debt to.

 The charts below are from the report. The first chart compares inflation-adjusted house prices of the two most magnificent housing bubbles, Australia (red) and Canada (green), Spain (ESP), and the US. The index measures changes in price levels, adjusted for inflation. Clearly, Australia and Canada are in a world of their own, but Spain, whose bubble collapsed disastrously and led to numerous bank resolutions and bailouts, got close:

It took more than 40 years for us to forget the lessons of the Great Depression.

This time around, the lessons were ignored from day 1, or more accurately from January 20, 2009 on, and it looks like we are going to head down the same road all over again.

I Remember the Cicadas

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Well, there is now an explanation of the “sonic attacks” against the US embassy in Havana.

It turns out that it was crickets looking for love in all the wrong places:

In November 2016, American diplomats in Cuba complained of persistent, high-pitched sounds followed by a range of symptoms, including headaches, nausea and hearing loss.

Exams of nearly two dozen of them eventually revealed signs of concussions or other brain injuries, and speculation about the cause turned to weapons that blast sound or microwaves. Amid an international uproar, a recording of the sinister droning was widely circulated in the news media.

On Friday, two scientists presented evidence that those sounds were not so mysterious after all. They were made by crickets, the researchers concluded.

That’s not to say that the diplomats weren’t attacked, the scientists added — only that the recording is not of a sonic weapon, as had been suggested.

………

Experts on cricket songs said the analysis was well done. “It all seems to make sense,” said Gerald Pollack of McGill University, who studies acoustic communication among insects. “It’s a pretty well supported hypothesis.”

When the American diplomats first complained of the strange noises in Cuba, they dismissed the possibility that insects were responsible. But short-tailed crickets are exceptional: They have long been known to make a tremendous racket.

I remember Brood X when it roused from its subterranean slumber in 2004, and it was deafening.

When You Start to Believe Your Own Bullsh%$

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Rich people seem to think that simply because they have lots of money, they are knowledgeable about things completely out of their purview.

Case in point, Bill Gates, who appears to believe that he is an expert on nuclear power and global warming, so he is wringing his hands over the lack of new nuclear nuclear power plants in the US:

Bill Gates is urging the United States to invest in nuclear power research.

In his annual year-in-review Gates Notes blog post, Gates noted that, despite the consequences of climate change that people face around the globe, “global emissions of greenhouse gases went up in 2018.”

Because burning fossil fuels (oil, coal, and natural gas) releases carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere, Gates wrote that we need breakthroughs in clean energy in order to curb the rise of global temperatures. Generating energy from sunlight and wind does not emit CO2; the same goes for nuclear energy.

“The world needs to be working on lots of solutions to stop climate change,” Gates wrote. “Advanced nuclear is one, and I hope to persuade US leaders to get into the game.”

First, the construction time for a nuclear power plant is on the order of a decade.

Second, one of the largest contributors to anthropogenic climate change is cement, and nuclear power uses a very large amount of that.

Third, the total life cycle costs, which are a good measure of total emissions are off the f%$#ing charts, so while fission emits no carbon, construction, enrichment, transportation of fuel, and disposal of waste, are major emitters.

So the savings are illusory, the costs are unsustainable, and the time frame is too long.

This is Geology 101

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One of the oft ignored facts about the fracking explosion in the United States is drop off rates.

The production of any oil well will drop off over time, with conventional oil wells declining between 5 and 10% a year, and fracked wells declining between 25% and 50% a year.

What this means is that the production numbers that have driven the financing of fracked oil and gas wells have been based on imaginary numbers, much like the numbers that came from assessors at the height of the housing bubble a decade ago.

I don’t know who is going to end up losing, but, once again, Wall Street has managed to generate its profits and leave someone else holding the bag:

Thousands of shale wells drilled in the last five years are pumping less oil and gas than their owners forecast to investors, raising questions about the strength and profitability of the fracking boom that turned the U.S. into an oil superpower.

The Wall Street Journal compared the well-productivity estimates that top shale-oil companies gave investors to projections from third parties about how much oil and gas the wells are now on track to pump over their lives, based on public data of how they have performed to date.

Two-thirds of projections made by the fracking companies between 2014 and 2017 in America’s four hottest drilling regions appear to have been overly optimistic, according to the analysis of some 16,000 wells operated by 29 of the biggest producers in oil basins in Texas and North Dakota.

Collectively, the companies that made projections are on track to pump nearly 10% less oil and gas than they forecast for those areas, according to the analysis of data from Rystad Energy AS, an energy consulting firm. That is the equivalent of almost one billion barrels of oil and gas over 30 years, worth more than $30 billion at current prices. Some companies are off track by more than 50% in certain regions.

The shale boom has lifted U.S. output to an all-time high of 11.5 million barrels a day, shaking up the geopolitical balance by putting U.S. production on par with Saudi Arabia and Russia. The Journal’s findings suggest current production levels may be hard to sustain without greater spending because operators will have to drill more wells to meet growth targets. Yet shale drillers, most of whom have yet to consistently make money, are under pressure to cut spending in the face of a 40% crude-oil price decline since October.

………

Schlumberger Ltd. , the oil-field-services giant, reported in a research paper that secondary shale wells completed near older, initial wells in West Texas have been as much as 30% less productive than the initial ones. The problem threatens to upend growth projections for America’s hottest oil field, the company said in October.

Seriously, is there anything left in America that is not basically a fraudulent pump and dump scheme?

It’s Better Having Someone outside the Tent Pissing in Then Having Them inside the Tent Pissing In

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When you look at who Wesley Bell is replacing, Bob McCulloch, who literally authorized the introduction of false evidence to ensure that former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson would not be indicted for murdering Michael Brown, it is clear that a wholesale change in the prosecutor’s office was essential:

St. Louis County’s new prosecuting attorney is shaking up his staff and instituting new policies just two days into the job, his spokeswoman confirmed Wednesday, and a veteran assistant prosecutor who presented evidence to the grand jury after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson is reportedly among those let go.

Former Ferguson Councilman Wesley Bell defeated 28-year incumbent Bob McCulloch in the August Democratic primary and ran unopposed in November. He was sworn in Tuesday, becoming the first-ever African-American to hold the office.

He wasted no time implementing some of his reformist agenda. Bell’s office said Wednesday that they will no longer prosecute marijuana possession cases, among other changes.

……….

Bell’s election victory was seen by many as a referendum on McCulloch’s handling of the investigation of Darren Wilson, the white Ferguson officer who killed Brown, a black and unarmed 18-year-old, after they got into a scuffle on Aug. 9, 2014, setting off months of sometimes-violent protests.

………

Assistant prosecutor Kathi Alizadeh was largely responsible for presenting evidence to the grand jury. Critics accused prosecutors of swaying the jurors’ decision. Ferguson erupted in renewed protests once the decision was announced.

So she was the one who allowed perjured evidence to be presented to the grand jury.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Alizadeh was among those fired on Wednesday after 30 years working in the office, and that two other veteran prosecutors were suspended pending termination hearings. Alizadeh said Bell gave her a two-page letter describing grounds for termination, but she declined to elaborate. She does not have listed phone numbers.

Good.

These people are enthusiastic supporters of racist and corrupt law enforcement, and they have no place in the DA’s office.

I hope that some people file complaints with the state bar as well.

Please Credit Patti LuPone

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Patti Lupone Owns This

Newly seated Representative Rashida Tlaib just gave a speech where she said, “We will impeach this Motherf%$#er.”

I appreciate the sentiments, but credit needs to be given to that legend of the Broadway Stage, Patti Lupone, who owns that in the same way that Mary Martin owned Peter Pan, Ethel Merman owned Annie Get Your Gun, and Carole Burnette owns Once Upon a Mattress, Angela Lansbury owns Sweeny Todd, and (of course) how Patti LuPone owns Evita.

Other actors can do the roles, and do them well, but they are standing on the shoulders of motherf%$#ing giants.

Rashida Tlaib, give a shout out to Patti LuPone.

And once, you have done that, impeach the motherf%$#er.

Like All Anti-Piracy Lists: FAIL

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The EU is releasing a list of infringing sites, and the surprising thing is not that it is full of non-infringing sites, they all do, but that it includes Cloudflare, which is a close to a core technology for the whole internet as any single company gets these days:

In mid-January, the EU is hoping to finalize the EU Copyright Directive, including Article 13, which will effectively create mandatory copyright filters for many internet websites (while, laughably, insisting it creates no such burden — but leaving no other option for most sites). One of the key arguments being made by supporters of Article 13 is that it’s crazy to think that this law will be used to block legitimate content. This is pretty silly, considering how frequently we write about bogus DMCA takedowns. As if trying to prove just how bad they are at properly classifying infringing content, the EU recently released its “Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List”, which is a sort of EU version of the USTR’s “notorious markets” list. That list has been widely mocked for basically declaring any site that Hollywood doesn’t like “notorious”, even if no court has ever ruled that it’s breaking the law.

It would appear that the EU list has the same sort of problem. For example among the sites listed in the EU report is Cloudflare, a platform used by tons of internet companies (including Techdirt) as a CDN or to protect against DoS attacks (among other things). Cloudflare is simply a tool — like a phone line — that tons of internet companies use. If some of them are doing things that are against the law, that should be on those sites, not Cloudflare. Unfortunately, the EU doesn’t seem to care.

CloudFlare is a US based company, which provides hosting service combined with other services, including CDN services and distributed domain name server (DNS) services. According to the creative industries (film, music, book publishers, etc.) and other organisations, CloudFlare is used by approximately 40% of the pirate websites in the world. It operates as a front host between the user and the website’s back host, routing and filtering all content through its network of servers. Out of the top 500 infringing domains based on global Alexa rankings, 62% (311) are using CloudFlare’s services, according to stakeholders. A sample list of 6,337 infringing domain names presented by the film industry showed over 30% (2,119) using CloudFlare’s services.

 This is like claiming Verizon is a dope dealer because dope dealers use cell phones.

Tru Dat

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American Exceptionalism Is a Dangerous Myth

This is true.

Over the past 40 years, this myth has been a license for brutality and plundering on and scale that rivals the height of the British empire:

But it would be more accurate to say that this is who we’ve too often been. This hateful sociopath, immune to all human sentiments save fear and greed, devoid of all principles save a will to power, incapable of seeing the world from anyone’s perspective but his own — this is who we were to the peasants of Vietnam, and to the people of Jacobo Árbenz’s Guatemala, Salvador Allende’s Chile, Mohammad Mosaddegh’s Iran, João Goulart’s Brazil, and so many other fragile republics yearning to breathe free.

Two of the three DC area airports, Dulles and Reagan National, are named after psychopaths.

There is nothing more horrifying than a people who believe that God is on their side.

Nooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!

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Durgin Park, the iconic Fanuil Hall restaurant is closing on January 12:

Durgin-Park, a Faneuil Hall staple since 1827, will be closing on January 12.

Employees of the historic restaurant were notified about the decision to close Wednesday.

Durgin-Park is one of the oldest restaurants in the country. It gained a reputation for its good-hearted waitresses being nearly as “fresh” as its fish.

………

Parent company Ark Restaurants based out of New York says it’s the nature of the business – and that the restaurant just isn’t making money like it used to.

Seriously, this sucks like 1000 hovers all going at once.

F%$# Ark Restaurants.

There are plenty of people in the Boston who are more than willing to abuse me, but none of them make prime rib, Boston baked beans, and Indian pudding like Durgin Park.

Qu’ils Mangent De La Brioche — — AGAIN

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It looks like Emanuel Macron is a man who emulates the Bourbon kings, he has learned nothing, and he has forgotten nothing, to paraphrase not-Tallyrand.

He is now calling the yellow vest protesters a hateful mob, all because they have the audacity to object to his policy to benefit the haves at the expense of the have nots.

He is blind in a way that the now-incarcerated Sarkozy could never:

Emmanuel Macron last night delivered a combative New Year’s address, vowing to push forward with economic reforms despite two-month long protests from what he termed a “hateful mob”.

The French President, whose televised address was broadcast form the Elysee Palace, acknowledged that “anger over injustices” lay behind the yellow vest movement that has scarred his second-year in office.

………

But the 41-year-old also strongly condemned protest-leaders. “Those who claim to speak for the people, but in fact speak for a hateful mob – attacking elected representatives, security forces, journalists, Jews, foreigners, homosexuals – are quite simply the negation of France,” he said.

………

Alexandra Schwarzbrod, an author and political analyst, argued that the President still lacked a common touch.

“He did a creditable job in terms of his political communication, but he still appeared fairly distant from the everyday problems the ‘yellow vests’ have injected into the political agenda,” she said.

Of course he seems distant.

He had a privileged childhood, the child of a doctor and a professor, and went to elite schools, and he has nothing but contempt for people who lack the initiative to have well-off parents.

Marine le Pen must be feeling very confident about her future right now.

It Really Is All about the Spoils, Isn’t It?

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You know, maybe if more time was spent reigning in the excesses of capitalism, and less effort spent on dividing the spoils of the system, we would have a more functional society:

California Democrat Maxine Waters, the first woman and first African-American to chair the House Financial Services Committee, is planning to use her new power to push for more women and minorities in the top ranks of corporate America.

Some firms are panicking at the prospect of new public scrutiny, according to lobbyists, who say that while companies won’t openly fight Democrats’ moves to promote diversity, many are uneasy about the prospect of government getting directly involved in their hiring decisions.

………

One financial industry source who previously worked for a Democratic member said: “Very, very few have been ahead of the game” when it comes to improving diversity.

“Now companies are focused like a laser on identifying top African-American talent with Congressional Black Caucus relationships to help them understand and mitigate the striking lack of diversity within their corporations,” the person said.

They look at finance, where the self described “geniuses” nearly blew up the world a decade ago, and their first concern is that the rewards of being a parasite are not being evenly distributed.

To quote Lambert Strether, “One does not improve a tapeworm; one removes it.”

Not Sending a Cake with a File in It

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Nicolas Sarkozy has been detained by police over illegal campaign donations from Muammar Gaddafi.

As Mark Ames so pithily stated, There is, “Nothing cynical at all about Sarkozy’s reasons for wanting Gaddafi dead.”

But let us not be cynical. Just because the overthrow of Gadaffi resulted in a hell-hole where slave markets have been established doesn’t mean that it was a failure:

Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been taken into police custody for questioning over allegations that he received campaign funding from the late Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi.

 Police are investigating alleged irregularities over the financing of his 2007 presidential campaign.

 Police have questioned him previously as part of the probe. Mr Sarkozy has denied any wrongdoing.

 The centre-right politician failed to return to power in 2012.

 Judicial sources said he was being questioned in Nanterre, a suburb in western Paris.

 In 2013, France opened an investigation into allegations that his campaign had benefited from illicit funds from Gaddafi.

Please, don’t let him out ……… EVER!!!

Both the Wisest and the Snarkiest Thing that I have Heard this Year

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In an analysis of potential murder charges against PG&E for the California fires, Yves Smith related the following from an email exchange:

Arbeit Macht Frei Slave-Labor Was the Original Public-Private Partnership.

This is brilliant.  It may be the most brilliant and snarkiest thing that I’ve heard for last year as well.

Linkage

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The game is $25, so I am not buying, but I love the trailer from Cyanide and Happiness:

Today in Unclear Headlines

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In. the publication Deutsche Welle, they headline a story as,  “Germany mulls introducing ′mosque tax′ for Muslims,” which makes it look like one of the increasingly bigoted steps against Muslims in Europe.

In reality, it constitutes an official recognition, and state subsidy being extended to the religion:

Lawmakers from Germany’s grand coalition government said on Wednesday that they were considering introducing a “mosque tax” for German Muslims, similar to the church taxes that German Christians pay.

Thorsten Frei, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) told Die Welt daily that a mosque tax was “an important step” that would allow “Islam in Germany to emancipate itself from foreign states.”

In Germany, church taxes are collected from practicing Catholics and Protestants in order to fund church activities. They are collected by the state and then transferred to religious authorities.

The justification is that this would reduce the dependence of the German Muslim community on the largess of the House of Saud.

In the absence of a similar tax, mosques in Germany are reliant upon donations, raising concerns about possible financing by foreign organizations and governments, which has sometimes prompted questions about the promotion of fundamentalist ideologies. For example, there has been growing concern about the influence of the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), an arm of the Turkish government based in Germany.

I do not approve of the policy, I believe that church and state should be separate, but if such a policy exists, then it should apply to mosques, particularity as the effect of Saudi Money is corrosively Medieval.

Make it So

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I don’t expect it to actually happen, but it appears that some prosecutors are considering a murder charge against California utility PG&E:

California prosecutors are poised to charge the state’s largest utility company with an array of crimes, including murder and manslaughter if it is found responsible for starting two recent deadly wildfires.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a new filing that if Pacific Gas & Electric Co., which provides electricity to about 16 million customers, was found to have mismanaged or failed to maintain power lines, it would face a wide range of charges.

Prosecutors wrote they were prepared to pursue a wide range of charges, including minor offenses, felonies or misdemeanors, and implied-malice murder and involuntary manslaughter.

This is just a ploy.

It’s all going to be pled down to a “cost of doing business” level of fines, likely with the state legislature passing laws limiting the utility behemoth’s liability, just like they did last time.

Still, I dream of their senior executives being frog-marched out of their offices in hand cuffs.

Too Soon

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It’s not bad that Elizabeth Warren is looking at running for President in 2020, but still, it’s too bloody soon:

Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat and a sharp critic of big banks and unregulated capitalism, entered the 2020 race for president on Monday, becoming the first major candidate in what is likely to be a long and crowded primary marked by ideological and generational divisions in a Democratic Party determined to beat President Trump.

Ms. Warren quickly made plans to campaign this weekend in Iowa, which holds the first-in-the-nation presidential caucuses in February 2020. The senator, who has not traveled to Iowa recently, announced Tuesday that she would visit several of the state’s major cities: Des Moines, Council Bluffs, Storm Lake and Sioux City.

Bernie still has my vote, but she’s the only other one currently on the list who isn’t a tool of the banks.

Still, couldn’t she wait 6 months?