So, now we have a report that Bush and Maliki have have agreed on a timetable for troop withdwawal.
The devil is in the details*, and I expect the details to include huge military bases in Iraq for a very long time.
*Or maybe he’s at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue until January 20, 2009.
Anti gay bigot hotelier Doug Manchester donated $125,000 to the anti-gay marriage initiative in California, and how he is whining because he is facing a boycott.
Boo f*&^ing Hoo Mr. Manchester.
Well, the Europeans, or at least the Germans promise to be in major freak out mode for a while, as producer prices are increasing at 6.7%, and this means that the Germans, the largest economy in Europe, will be screaming for rate hikes, because it was only 80 years ago that you needed a wheelbarrow or marks to buy a loaf of bread.
Unsurprisingly, this drove the dollar down too, though a contributing factor may be a report published in the financial times that sovereign wealth funds are looking to reduce exposure to the dollar.
There is no stampede, but people are tiptoeing toward the exits on the dollar.
I’m not sure how related it is, sovereign wealth funds hold a big chunk of GSE debt, but Freddie Mac has filed with the SEC to sell stock in order to raise new capital.
In energy, dribbled down a bit* to settle at $128.88/bbl, and retail gasoline fell about a penny.
In investment banking, Merrill Lynch lost $4.9 billion, and Citi lost $2.5 billion, though the latter was better than expected, and Citi will continue paying a dividend, which strikes me as foolish.
In real estate, evidence, in Orange County at least, that commercial real estate is comatose. A 91% drop in building, a 62% increase in vacancy, and a 2.5% decrease in rents.
It’s grim in the UK too, with mortgage lending falling 32% year over year, with near certainty of the central bank increasing rates.
The UK is beginning to look like the San Diego of Europe.
*No Apology for the pun.
Seriously. I Can’t make this up.
Go to Crooks and Liars to see Senator Larry “Happy Feet” Craig saying, “Don’t let foreigners jerk us around by the gas nozzle.”
Good day for Schadenfreude.
A cartoon from 1993.
H/t Calculated Risk.
I wrote earlier about Obama wanting to give a speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, but that Bush and His Evil Minions™ were pressuring German Premier Angela Merkel to turn him down.
Well, he’s going to give his speech at the Berlin Victory column (see also here) instead.
The gate is in the distant background, for what it’s worth.
Background here.
I don’t know what it is, though I predict that it will come out some time between 8:00pm on Friday and Monday morning.
How do I know this? I know this because Homeland Security Secretary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin* Michael Chertoff is issuing a warning that European Terrorists are attempting to enter the US.
We know what this means: Breaking scandal in the Bush admin.
*Sorry about the confusion, for some reason, I always mix up the two of them.
I don’t expect the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet to do much this year, but it appears that they are legitimately concerned about deep packet inspection by advertising firms and ISPs acting in concert to market to consumers.
Hopefully, momentum will build for opt-in-only over the next few years.
I don’t mean junk the planes, just fold it back into the US Army Air Corps.
Case in point, the Air Force Top Brass is spending some $20 million counter-terrorism funds to build “comfort capsules” to be used by senior generals when traveling.
And these people were very involved in this project:
One request was that the color of the leather for the seats and seat belts in the mobile pallets be changed from brown to Air Force blue and that seat pockets be added; another was that the color of the table’s wood be darkened.
Changing the seat color and pockets alone was estimated in a March 12 internal document to cost at least $68,240.
(emphasis mine)
I understand the need of these guys to stay connected, but that would be a large screen laptop with secure network connections and a satcom link, not this.
Apparrently General Robert McMahon, Air Force’s deputy chief of staff for logistics, installations and mission support, who appears to be the prime mover behind this, and claims that it is, “not opulent”, and that he wanted the change to blue because “it would not show as much dirt” as brown, the color of dirt.
It appears that he is unhappy about the provision requiring full notification of the members of the House Intelligence Committee in order to release 75% of the funding.
The Bushies also hate the provision prohibiting the use of contractors in interrogations, which is also a good provision.
Of course, it’s always about the Benjamins, and it looks like DNC fund raising is picking up now that the primaries are over, going from about $6 million in the prior months, to $22.4 million in June.
What’s more they just set up an independent expenditure division to hammer John McCain with that money.
Two snaps up for Howard Dean.
Well, the head of the House Financial Services Committee is saying that there limits on executive pay and dividends as a quid pro quo for any deal being done.
He’s talking about inserting language into the bill which would require regulatory approval of senior executive pay, and that any government purchased stock would be first in line for dividend payments.
Additionally, he’s looking at language to explicitly tie any monies involved in the bailout to the Federal Debt limit, which is responsible thing to to.
I think that Frank is one of the 10 best congresscritters out there.
His campaign for Kansas state rep, and he’s clearly inspired by the XKCD online comic.
Throw him $8.34.
He’s using paypal….He should get on act blue.
Rather than asking for explicit his explicit removal, the MDC is now requesting that another mediator in addition to Thabo Mbeki be included in MDC-ZANU-PF talks.
Interestingly enough, it appears that Mbeki’s pathetic performance as mediator is getting some visibility, as you can see in this Washington Post articlediscussing how the South African president’s legacy has been harmed by his embrace of Mugabe.
We no know, as a result of a computer technician selling data he downloaded, about a large number of using Lichtenstein bank secrecy laws to evade taxes.
While Liechtensteiner banking secrecy laws are actually more opaque than those of Switzerland, it has always been Swiss banks that have captured the public imagination when it came to the rich laundering money, and we are now seeing revelations regard Swiss banking giant UBS was helping its clients launder money, though this time it appears the discovery happened the old fashioned way, employees have been caught, and they are flipping to prosecutors for consideration on sentences.
Senator Carl Levin is now calling for regulators to revoke the banking license UBS American operations.
His call may have little bite, as UBS has revealed that it intends to wind down its US private banking operations.
It intends to stop taking new customers immediately, and wind down the rest of its services over time.
Wachovia Securities, until last October A.G. Edwards, was raided by regulators from Missouri, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and a, “sixth state that asked not to be identified”, today. In addition, some number more than a dozen employees of the firm were subpoenaed.
It appears that they had some questions about the collapse of the auction rate securities market, and Wachovia refused to respond to queries.
I expect to see a lot more of this as the markets swirl down the drain.
Weekly unemployment filings are up 16K from last week, which is not good, but better than forecast, though, as I’ve said before, the weekly data is noisy and not very useful.
On the other hand, the Philadelphia Fed Business Outlook Survey is definitely downbeat, though not as grim as I would have anticipated.
China has problems. While its growth rate slowed to only 10.1% annually(!), inflation remained well above 7%.
Honestly, I think that the fix here is simple, let the Yuan rise some, which would decrease the relative cost of imported energy, and slow exports to cool down the economy, but I do not expect the Chinese central bank to do this.
Housing starts jumped 9.1%, only because of change in NY City building codes, allowing for more multi-residential building. Otherwise it would have been -4%, and construction of single-family homes dropped by 5.3%, hitting a 17 year low.
Seeing as how the Europeans have inflation concerns too, and are talking about ratcheting up rates, it;s not surprising that the dollar fell today.
Oil continues its slide, dropping below $130/bbl for the first time in over a month, though retail gasoline holds at yesterday’s record.
OK, maybe the next time I fly, I walk instead.
Some US Air pilots requested additional fuel be loaded into their aircraft in order to have more reserves upon landing. US Airways retaliated:
But US Airways recently crossed the line when it ordered eight pilots who requested “an extra 10 to 15 minutes worth of fuel” to attend training sessions, or “check rides,” that could put their pilot licenses in jeopardy, Ray said. The pilots were supposed to report for their training sessions Wednesday, he said.
So, we have bankruptcy, pay cuts for the workers, massive bonuses for the executives, and now attempts to eliminate safety margins on fuel loads, because you have to burn some of that fuel to carry that fuel.
And all the while, I though that Ashcroft was one of the Evil Minions™
It turns out that in early 2003, John Ashcroft refused to appoint torture memo author John Yoo to head the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel, which had among its roles certifying interrogation techniques as legal, and there was a major blowup on this.
It was eventually settled with a compromise on Jack Goldsmith, who promptly review Yoo’s work and put a big red BS on it.
In the latest Rasmussen Reports™ poll Jeff Merkeley has taken the lead, 43% to 41%, over Gordon Smith (R), the incumbent.
Smith has been below 50%, which is trouble for an incumbent, for some time, but I think that this is the first time that he has been shown in the lead.