A service which claims to “remove” bad links from the innernets.
The Consumerist completely owns them.
Don’t have anything in your mouth when you click the link.
Author: Matthew G. Saroff
Florida and Michigan Update
I think that it is clear is something will be done to reselect delegates.
The options are a primary and a caucus, and neither the states or the DNC are willing to front for a primary, which would cost about $25 million, $10m for Michigan and $15m for Florida.
My guess is that its probably going to be a caucus, but you could fund the primaries with soft money, so theoretically 1 person could cut two checks to make it happen.
This is Funny, in a Very Sad Way
It appears that musicians are disappointed that they haven’t seen any money as a result of the royalty deals that Youtube cut with the RIAA.
They are expecting to get some money out of their record distributors?
What are they smoking????
Oh…Yeah…They are rock and rollers….That’s what they are smoking.
Seriously though, the RIAA does not, and has no interest in, raising money for the artists. They represent the record distributors, who make money by shafting the artists.
$55 Million
I may have my difference with Barack Obama, but damn his campaign can raise some serious money.
$55 Million in February.
Nutter to Campaign Hard for Hillary Clinton
Nope, it’s not The Onion, it’s Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, who probably did not think that it meant all that much when he endorsed in December.
He’s promising to campaign hard for.
Hell, no one in Pennsylvania expected it to matter.
Strange year, this.
Mostly though, I just liked the opportunity to use that headline.
Boy, Those Arabs Just Love the Palestinians
They Sold Me To Buy Dunkin Donuts, and They Have Defaulted
Not joking. I used to work at United Defense, and the Carlyle Group sold us BAE to buy Dunkin Donuts, at DFA meetings, I’d introduce myself, and say, “I work for the Carlyle Group”, just to see the double takes.
It now appears that the
Carlyle Capital Corp. division has defaulted on about $21 billion in loans.
They invested in “high quality” mortgage backed securities from the GSEs (Fannie and Freddie), but they have not been able to sell them in order to pay some notes coming due.
Not surprising. $21.7 billion backed by $670 million in equity is a 32.3:1 leverage, which means that if things tend down about 3%, you are broke.
Our Bogus Unemployment Statistics
David Leonhardt at the times has a very good article on unemployment statistics, and it explains how it has become less accurate over time.
Consider this: the average unemployment rate in this decade, just above 5 percent, has been lower than in any decade since the 1960s. Yet the percentage of prime-age men (those 25 to 54 years old) who are not working has been higher than in any decade since World War II. In January, almost 13 percent of prime-age men did not hold a job, up from 11 percent in 1998, 11 percent in 1988, 9 percent in 1978 and just 6 percent in 1968.
It’s a good read, and better written than I can do.
Another Gloom and Doom Article About an Aerospace Brain Drain
They are wringing their hands because all these people will be retiring over the next few years, and there is no one in the wings to replace them.
It’s because the course of study is hard, the pay is not great, particularly once one gets past the 5 or 10 year mark, and at the slightest whiff of a downturn, you get laid off.
It doesn’t help that what once took 6 months (the P-80 shooting star), now takes 18 years or so (F-22), either.
These folks can do numbers, they know that they will be poorly paid, won’t have a secretary, and half-way through their careers, they may be asking, “Would you like fries with that”.
People don’t go into the field because it is an underpaid unattractive field.
Breaking: Fire in Reichstag!
Me bad, it was a small bomb in Times Square, doubtless set by some nutter.
Of course, Fox News and Michael Chertoff will be screaming that this is the end of the world.
I’m sure that Dick Cheney has a stiffie about the possibility of exploiting this for political gain.
Economics Update
Well, we don’t need to feel so alone any more, U.K. house prices Fell 0.3% in February. What the French call “Anglo-Saxon” capitalism seems to be working wonderfully.
Back in the US, the housing market is not looking up, with Foreclosures hitting an all time high:
Over 900,000 households are in the foreclosure process, up 71% from a year ago, according to a survey by the Mortgage Bankers Association. That figure represents 2.04% of all mortgages, the highest rate in the report’s quarterly, 36-year history.
Even if you are paying your mortgage, you are probably still losing home equity. Total home equity is below 50% for the first time ever. It was 49.7% in Q2 2007, and 47.9% in Q3 2007, and the total equity dropped from $9.65 trillion from $9.93 trillion, or about $1000 for every man woman and child in the united states.
There is not a whole bunch of confidence in real estate now, so the spread on mortgage backed bonds is at its highest level in 22 years, and S&P has downgraded WaMu to BBB from BBB+.
We don’t have a stampede out of mortgages and real estate yet, but there are now rumors that UBS dumped $24 billion in Alt-A residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS). If this is reality, we could very see a stampede for the door, and Alt-A, which is for people with credit ratings above 700, will go the way of subprime.
So it’s no wonder that Fannie has dropped to a 12 year low.
It looks like the world is noticing this because the Dollar hit another record low, and oil hit another high.
This may have been driven by the European Central Bank and Bank of England not lowering rates, when it is expected that the Fed will.
We do have some mildly positive news retail sales were good in February, and new unemployment claims have fallen, though continuing claims are still going up.
It seems that Ambac is going to be a laugh a minute, see here, here,
and here. Basically, they have a plan to raise much needed capital, but no one thinks that it will work, and the markets halted trading at one point due to volatility over rumors.
Finally, in a case of the weak helping the even weaker, GM will provide $3 billion in loans to Delphi in an attempt to help them emerge from bankruptcy.
If that ain’t good money after bad, I don’t know what is.
Fun With Kellogg Brown & Root
It turns out that they are avoiding taxes by having a phony headquarters in the Cayman Islands.
They are, of course, the leading contractors in Iraq.
Seriously, these folks couldn’t walk a straight line if you paid them.
Iraq Forever Pact Back on Track
Yes, Bush and His Evil Minions™ are asserting that the original authorization to invade Iraq gives him the authority he needs to sign a deal on a permanent military presence.
Seriously, when he gets out, we need to find the laws that these folks have broken, and throw the lot them in gaol for a very very long time for breaking those laws.
Whover You We Can All Agree On One Thing
That Mark Penn is a self important, greedy, incompetent asshole who should never hold a job again (Details the knives out for him in the Clinton campaign).
His “skip 10 primaries strategies” had to be one of the stupidest campaign strategies ever.
Mark Penn is an overpaid jerk.
Special Election for Hastert’s Old Seat Looks Good for Dems.
Rollcall has a poll (subscription only) giving Foster (d) about a 5% lead over Oberweis (R) with a 4.5% margin of error
It’s been tied up recently, and the special election is Saturday.
I did not read the article, it’s subscriber only, bur rather heard the results on CSPAN’s Washington Journal driving in this morning.
Nobel Prize Winner Stiglitz Fingers War as Cause of Slowdown
It’s an interesting theory. Basically, he believes that in order to cope with the financial drain from the war, the Fed was forced to slash interest rates, leading to a speculative bubble, higher energy prices, and reckless lending.
While I agree as to the consequences of the the Fed’s (really Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan’s) policies, I do not think that the ultra low interest rates were from the war.
They were a function of Greenspan wanting to remain Fed chair when dealing with a president who had publicly stated his dislike of him during the campaign in 2000.
Bush blamed Greenspan for his dad loosing in 2002, you may recall McCain joking about doing the “Weekend at Bernies” thing if “Bubbles” died, and so when Bush came in, he whored himself to Bush and His Evil Minions™.
The Fed was slashing rates before 911, and even more between 911 and the Iraq invasion.
Foreigners Own Us
Representatives of Treasury Department, SEC and Fed told Congress that it was crucial to the economic health of the United States to all sovereign wealth funds to have free reign to purchase US companies.
Congress is concerned after Abu Dhabi bought a significant portion of Citi, and other sovereign wealth funds have done so with other financial institutions, as a result of fall out from the credit implosion.
The regulators basically said, without foreigners buying this stuff, we’d be flat broke.
What they neglected to say is that we are flat broke anyway, from years of budget and trade deficits.
Moneylaundering Bank Julius Baer Drops Suit Against Wikileaks
My guess is that they decided that it was better to ask to have the suit dismissed than it was having millions of internet users going through their records with a fine toothed comb.
My guess is that they will be moving an offshore registrar.
Governors Granholm (D-MI) and Crist (R-MI) Fall for The Full State Delegate Slate to Be Seated at Both Conventions
The have released a joint statement on this, and it seems to be backtracking on the part of Crist, who originally made noises about reholding the primary.
I’m not clear on the politics involved, I assume that Granholm is a Clinton supporter, and Crist, being a Republican, may just want to piss in the proverbial punchbowl, since the delegates mean nothing at the Republican convention as McCain has already clinched.
Then again, this may just be pandering to the local electorate.
Simple Answers to Simple Questions
Duncan Black asks:
Does the Washington Post have a policy of only publishing complete morons?
Yes.
This has been another episode of simple answers to simple questions.