Author: Matthew G. Saroff
Some More Senate Polls
In Louisiana, we have Rasmussen Reports™ saying that:
U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu now attracts 49% of the vote in her bid for re-election while Republican challenger John Kennedy earns 44%. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey shows that, when “leaners” are included, it’s Landrieu 51% Kennedy 45%.
I think that this is significant, because she is above 50%, which is the worry point for an incumbent.
We also have an SurveyUSA Election Poll for Minnesota which shows Franken down by 13%, 39% to 52% to Coleman.
Both Survey USA and Rasmussen are reliable, so I’m unclear whether this poll, or the one from last night, which showed Franken up by 2%, is accurate.
In terms of how much I care, I care more about Minnesota than Louisiana, because we have a real Democrat running in Minnesota, and I think that after the ethnic cleansing of post Katrina Louisiana, the state is no longer viable territory.
Stupid
Israel and Hesbollah are trading a live terrorist for the body of two dead Israeli soldiers.
Sorry, but this is just a stupid swap on the Israeli’s part, and all it will lead to is more bodies being held for ransom.
If there were something else involved in the deal, it might make sense, but this is just political cowardice on the part of the Israeli cabinet, and perhaps desperation on the part of Olmert, who is facing serious corruption charges.
GSE Watch
We have a whole bunch of people talking about what should be done with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, starting with the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which suggests that Treasury Secretary Paulson put the GSE’s in receivership.
Of course, the WSJ has always hated Fannie and Freddie, because they are sort of public, which, by the standards of their Neanderthal sensibilities, is evil, so this position is far from a surprise.
Of more significance are the statements of William Ackman, who manages a hedge fund, and made big bucks short selling the monoliner insurance companies.
He’s betting against the GSEs:
Ackman, 42, has his own plan that would see Fannie Mae raise about $86 billion in capital by giving investors in $750 billion of senior unsecured notes 90 cents on the dollar in debt of a new company, with the balance in equity. Investors in Fannie Mae’s $11 billion of junior debt would get warrants, while common and preferred shareholders would get nothing, according to Ackman.
Not surprisingly, when talk like this is coming from Wall Street bigfoots, Moody’s cut the financial strength ratings of both GSEs to B-, and not surprisingly, their stock dropped by double digits today.
In my humble opinion, the upper management and stock holders need to lose, and lose big, or we will be back here in a few years.
Protecting share holders and upper management should not be a part of any bailout.
“Lack of Recall” on Pat Tillman Coverup
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has now released its report on the propaganda and misinformation on the Jessica Lynch rescue and the Pat Tillman death, and it basically comes down to Omertà, the Mafia code of silence:
“A near universal lack of recall” by Bush administration officials has thwarted a congressional investigation into whether the administration deliberately misrepresented the details of the friendly fire death of former NFL player Patrick Tillman in Afghanistan and the capture of Jessica Lynch in the first days of the Iraq invasion.
In a report released Monday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform expressed skepticism about the widespread lack of memory of the two events, which were the subject of widespread media coverage and can be counted among the best known incidents of the wars.
About Tillman’s death, “The committee interviewed several senior White House officials, including Communications Director Dan Bartlett, Press Secretary Scott McClellan and chief speech writer Michael Gerson,” the committee said. “Not a single person could recall when he heard about the fratricide or what he did in response.”
I hope that at some point someone there cuts a deal with prosecutors, because a bunch of these folks should be spending the next decade or so in prison.
What’s Going on in Afghanistan
VetVoice notes that there have been 556 Americans killed in Afghanistan since 2001, and that 64 of these deaths , or about 1 out of 8 Afghanistan deaths over the past 6½ years have been in the past 6 weeks.
Well….I’m sure that the Pakistani intelligence services will pick up the slack….not.
Economics Update
Well, we have to open up with inflation in the producer price index, 1.8% for June, and 9.2% year over year, though the 1.8% rate actually comes closer to 22% if annualized.
The Fed ain’t cutting rates any time soon, and apparrently neither is the Japanese central bank, which is holding rates steady at ½%. (Talk about pushing on a string!)
Even so, the dollar hit a new record low against the Euro before settling a bit.
Then we have General motors announcing massive job cuts and that it would suspend its dividend, which it has not done since 1922.
So GM paid a dividend throughout the Great Depression, but will not do so now.
Not surprisingly, Bernanke was rather downbeat about the economy in testimony before the Senate Banking Committee.
On the bright side, the doom and gloom has convinced everyone that the US is headed into a severe recession, reducing our demand for oil, so oil prices fell $6.44/bbl, the largest drop since Jan. 17, 1991, when Poppy Bush pulled oil out of the strategic petroleum reserves.
Unfortunately, this has not yet translated to relief at the pump, with retail gasoline hitting a new record high.
In the world of retail, there was a sales increase of just 0.1%, which, as Barry Ritholtz notes, is a a contraction when you figure in inflation, and even worse when you pull out food and energy.
Canadian Judge Releases Interrogation Vid of 16 Year Old Child
What has been released is only his interview by a Canadian intelligence agent, but the descriptions are profoundly disturbing, and this is very mild, though there are he was, “sleep deprived for weeks” before the Canadian intelligence agent came in and played ‘good cop’.
This for a child soldier who is a victim, not a terrorist, or at least he wasn’t before being tortured.
Harper is, of course, sitting on his hands about all of this.
Georgia Primary Day Today
Here’s hoping that Regina Thomas beats Bush Dog John Barrow in the GA-12 primary…I have my fingers crossed.
Dollar Weakens to New Record v. Euro
This morning, it was $1.6036:€1.0000, the previous record was $1.6020:€1.0000.
Fallout from Fannie and Freddie, I think.
As if We Didn’t Know that Bush and His Evil Minions™ Were Corrupt Bastards
Stephen Payne, a lobbyist with close ties to the GOP, is selling access to Bush, Cheney, and Rice for contributions to the Bush Presidential Library.
He sits on Bush’s Homeland Security Advisory Council.
Video at link of him soliciting bribes.
Curt Weldon, and a Lot of People Around Him, Are Going to Jail
Cecelia Grimes, a lobbyist with very close ties to Curt Weldon, has been charged with destroying evidence related to the investigation of former Congressman Curt Weldon’s corruption. Among other things she:
- Threw out her blackberry in a trash can at a Arbys.
And in her trash at home, she threw out:
- Grand-jury subpoenas
- Amtrak receipts
- American airline boarding passes
- Fourteen RSVP cards for a dinner honoring Weldon, which call for responses to be sent to Grimes.
Which the FBI recovered from her garbage.
If she doesn’t sing, she will be going to jail for a very long time….My guess is that she will sing, and Weldon will do time, but I’m an optimist.
Previous posts on Weldon’s slime here.
Minnesota Senate Race Update
First, Rasmussen Reports™ shows Franken having his first lead on Coleman: 42% for Coleman to 44% for Franken, and Jesse Ventura is now saying that he is not running for Senate.
Generally both good for Franken, I think.
American Psychiatric Association Major Recipient of Pharma Money
Interesting how what is supposed to be a independent non-profit organization is the recipient of large amounts of money from groups that have a fiduciary interest in one form of treatment.
Obviously, this is a legitimate reason to doubt the independence of the organization on issues related to the use of psychiatric drugs.
Hey! NSA!!! Surveill This!!!
Tangimoana, Omaka, Renwick and Punawai
Fannie and Freddie Update
First, let’s look at the analysis of the shrill one, Paul Krugman in the New York Times. He notes that they will almost certainly need some level of bailout, as they are simply too large to be allowed to fail, and that most of the post 2000 craziness in the real estate market was as the GSE’s as bystanders, since regulators hold them back.
Atrios disagrees with the idea that thay are too large to fail, and says that they should fail, at least from the perspective of their shareholders, that these organizations can be reconstituted as fully government entities, as Fannie was until the late 1960s.
The support of (re)nationally is the general opinion of the blogosphere cognoscenti turns out to be pro-nationalization too, and, on the Marketplace radio today, I heard wingnut “economist” Amity Shlaes suggest the same thing, only she suggested that the “healthy” parts be re-privatized, leaving the taxpayers holding the bag for the bad parts.
It turns out that there is actually no disagreement, as Krugman endorses nationalization too in this blog post. It just did not make the cut in the limited space in his Times OP/ED.
He also notes that as the housing market inflated, the GSE’s became a smaller part of the market (chart pr0n):
In any case, it’s clear that the statements by the Fed and the Treasury Department have stabilized things, at least for now, as Freddie Mac, clearly the weaker of the two GSEs, just successfully sold $3 billion in short term debt, $2 billion for three-months at 2.309% and $1 billion six-monthsat 2.496%. the company said.
On the other hand, we have a number of investors saying that they are basically insolvent, including George Soros and Jim Rogers, and Goldman Sachs is predicting at least another 35% stock decline.
As a bit of interesting historical information, the Washington Post has a nice article about how the GSE’s built, and used, their lobbying clout to prevent restrictions and capital requirements from being increased.
Well, they got what they wished for, much to their unhappiness.
New York City Develops Its Own Poverty Calculation
My guess is that the city’s numbers are more accurate than the federal poverty numbers, because they consider things that the feds don’t, like medical expenses.
The number in poverty is 23%, as opposed to 19% under the federal numbers, and of course, some wanker at the American Enterprise Institute was quoted as saying that the poor are, “a lot better off than they were 20, 30, 40 years ago”.
Yep, let’s go back to outhouses and cholera for the poor, just to be fair.
Economics Update
I’ve split off the GSE’s from this, along with the some other items that need more thought, so this is a short one: Oil flat, gasoline and diesel hit new record, and the dollar strengthened.
Too True
Magazine’s ‘satirical’ cover stirs controversy – Yahoo! News
Well, the New Yorker just put our a new issue, and the cover is something else.
David Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, defends the cover as “Satire, Meant To Target “Distortions And Misconceptions And Prejudices” About Obama.”
So a cartoon showing Barack Obama in Muslim garb, with a flag burning in the fireplace, bin Laden’s portrait on the wall, fist bumping with an AK-47 toting Michelle Obama is satire.
It may have been intended as such, but it’s not satire…or at the very least, it’s so poorly done that the satire is invisible to the observer, even one who is familiar with the magazine.
Interestingly enough, I think that the strongest critique, albeit an unintentional one, is a comment made by Jonah “Doughy Pantload” Goldberg in the National Review Online, he says that, “It’s almost exactly the sort of cover you could expect to find on the front of National Review.”
Well, yes it is, but the long term racism of the National Review is well known. William F. Buckley was supporting segregation into the 1970s.
We expect the National Review to be this stupid and racist. We don’t expect the New Yorker to be this stupid or racist.