I am no not surprised at the veto threat.
Disgraceful.
Author: Matthew G. Saroff
Bush Administration Lied on Iraqi Reconstruction Spending
The GAOhas the details on Iraqi reconstruction spending, but the nickel tour is that Bush and His Evil Minions™ lied when they said that, “By July 2007, the administration said, Iraq had spent some 24 percent of $10 billion set aside for reconstruction that year”, as was stated in documents given by Crocker and Petraeus to Congress.
But in its report on Tuesday, the accountability office said official Iraqi Finance Ministry records showed that Iraq had spent only 4.4 percent of the reconstruction budget by August 2007. It also said that the rate of spending had substantially slowed from the previous year.
The reason for the difference, said Joseph A. Christoff, the G.A.O.’s director of international affairs and trade, was that few official Iraqi figures for 2007 were available when General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker went to Congress.
So the administration, with the help of the Finance Ministry in Baghdad, appears to have relied on a combination of indicators, including real expenditures, ministries’ suggestions of projects they intended to carry out, and contracts that were still under negotiation, Mr. Christoff said. But actual spending does not seem to have lived up to those estimates for spending on reconstruction, a budget item sometimes called capital or investment expenditures, he added.
“So it looked like an improvement, but it wasn’t an improvement,” he said.
Meaning that there was no data, and that they did not look for ways to get that data, because they were under orders to sell Bush’s endless war™.
This was not bad data, this was Crocker and Petraeus telling the Iraqis the numbers they wanted, and then getting those numbers.
BTW, the 2007 number on Iraqi spending is LESS than the 2006 number. It’s getting worse, not better.
Mitt Romney Defends Himself Against Allegations Of Tolerance
Economics Update
Philadelphia-area manufacturing activity lowest just after 911.
Lehman Brothers is downsizing its mortgage arm. I believe that there is an expression, involving the words, “barn”, “door”, and “cow” that would be appropriate here.
It looks like the real estate crash is finally starting to effect rents, with rents increacing by only ½% in 2007 in a sampling of 10 metro areas. (In previous years, it was in the 3% range)
Housing starts and permits plunge to multi-decade lows. Housing starts are the lowest in 27 years, permits the lowest in 33 years. The market is still on the way down.
This analysis predicts 5 years to recover. It’s probably wrong.
Local housing crashes have all taken at around 5 years to recover, and the markets were far less inflated. Additionally, the underlying economic situation is very grim, and the home buyers were less leveraged, meaning that foreclosures will be higher this time.
The Dollar has recovered somewhat against the Euro in response to an inflation hawk on the ECB saying that right now recession is the problem, not inflation
Getting IP Right, and Trying to Avoid the “Oh, Canada” Cliche
Harold Feld asks, “Someone tell me why Canadians seem to be so much smarter than we are, at least on the public policy fronts that I cover?”
The public policy fronts that he covers involve things like IP and network neutrality, and he is, in this case referring to the the Candian Radio-Television Commission‘s (CRTC) announcement that it is imposing new national ownership limits and cross ownership limits on its broadcast media, and the political backlash that has delayed a Canadian version of the DMCA.
The answer is actually far more depressing than the my friend Harold Feld, esq. would like to think: The Canadians believe in public policy, and the United States does not.
This is why someone like Michael Powell could make a statement that basically said that corporate profit was a public good, and not get tarred and feathered.
In Canada, his phone calls would not be returned.
Bill Clinton and the Repeal of Glass-Steagall
The Nation has a very interesting article, Citigroup: Too Big to Fail?, which goes a long way towards seeing how the deregulatory attitudes of the past 31 years (yes, it started with Carter) have led to our current mess.
Citibank is the poster child for this problem, though the bank has a very long history of being on the wrong side of collapses (they were deep in Mexico and Asia when both needed bailouts).
First, let’s look at the Glass-Steagall act of 1933. It was a New Deal law, which was enacted in response to abuses preceding the Great Depression, where bankers were pushing depositors to invest in dubious stocks that they were also being paid by the company to sell.
Basically, it made it illegal for a commercial bank to operate as an investment bank, and vise verse, because there are too many conflicts of interest created when commercial banks are permitted to underwrite stocks or bonds“.
Bill Clinton delivered his “New Democrat” party, accompanied by lots of happy talk about magic words like “synergy” and how “modernization” would create a more stable (and profitable) financial system. It did the latter, for sure, but not the former.
Actually, the combination of insurance, investment banking and old-line commercial banks multiplied the conflicts of interest within banks, despite so-called “firewalls” supposed to keep these activities separate. Much like Enron, placing some deals in off-balance sheet entities did not insulate Citigroup from the losses in its swollen subprime housing lending. The bank has so far written off something like $15 billion and more to come.
The problem is, of course, that Citi is so large that the consequences of its failure would be disastrous to the markets. It would make the collapse of LTCM, which reaqired a Fed orchestrated (Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan) bailout look like the failure of the corner 7-11.
Over the past few years it has appeared that the every single rollback of Depression Era regulations has been a mistake.
New CIA Tape Coverup
The Washington Post has a farily good rundown on the CIA tape destruction.
I think that it’s increasingly evident that this was intended to avoid congressional and criminal scrutiny.
I think that it’s also very likely that some tapes were missed, and they will find their way into investigators hands, where there may be criminal issues.
I understand that the torturers were being “good Germans”, but that is no defense.
I further understand that there will be no small number of people who will demagogue this issue for political gain, making any prosecution near-impossible.
This is why I support the US signing onto the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague.
Our politics, and judiciary, have been so poisoned that we are unable to pursue justice in such cases.
FWIW, prosecuting torture is not about our victims, though doubtless some were innocents tortured by mistake, but about who we are.
Ron Paul Might Do Very Well in Nevada
I came across this story, and this quote
No major GOP candidate has set foot in the state for two onths, and some Republicans are bracing for a possible surprise first-place showing by long-shot Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the only Republican to broadcast TV ads in Nevada.
My guess as to why no Republican has campaigned in Nevada? It requires too much outreach to non-Cuban Hispanics.
Castro’s Final Days?
Castro is now saying that he is too unhealthy to campaign in parliamentary elections.
My guess is that he’s not long to this world.
Hopefully, the US policy following his death will be a dropping of sanctions, and an agreement on policies to keep the Cuban émigré community out. They are more poisonous than Achmed Chalabi.
Machiavelli got it right when he said (Discourses, Book 2, Chapter 31):
“It ought to be considered, therefore, how vain are the faith and promises of those who find themselves deprived of their country. For, as to their faith, it has to be borne in mind that anytime they can return to their country by other means than yours, they will leave you and look to the other, notwithstanding whatever promises they had made you. As to their vain hopes and promises, such is the extreme desire in them to return home, that they naturally believe many things that are false and add many others by art, so that between those they believe and those they say they believe, they fill you with hope, so that relying on them you will incur expenses in vain, or you undertake an enterprise in which you ruin yourself….. A Prince, therefore, ought to go slowly in undertaking an enterprise upon the representations of an exile, for most of the times he will be left either with shame or very grave injury.
In a country of 300 million, the wacko wing Cuban émigré community has damaged US diplomacy and credibility significantly.
If they given ties to Cuba through property restoration, they will create an unstable despotic state that will be a US security risk.
To quote Tallyrand on the Bourbons, “They have learned nothing and they have forgotten nothing. “
Justice Deptartment Says State Department Offers of Immunity Make Prosecution Difficult
Gee, I wonder if those offers of immunity, which make complication prosecution because they, “might make it difficult to prove that evidence gathered by federal prosecutors did not stem from statements made by the guards after they were promised limited immunity,” have anything to do with the fact that this guy is a loyal Republican donor from a family of loyal Republican donors.
It certainly seems that Blackwater has been using State to run interference on drunken murder, fraudulent billing practices, and human sacrifice.
OK, the last one is pulled out of my ass, but I’m going BillO here.
Yeah, Right, “Recycled Tapes”, and the Dog Ate My Homework
Yes, all those emails from the time of the Valeria Plame outing, reused and overwritten in a “consistent with industry best practices”.
Remember yesterday’s post on the lies of our times, this one needs to be added.
Not only are these clearly government records which require retention, but these tapes have been used in investigations going back to Iran-Contra.
They knew that this could be used as evidence, and they knew that it had been used as evidence, and they deliberately decided to destroy this evidence.
Israel Coalition Government Falters
Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu’s has pulled out the government, and subtracting its 11 lawmakers from the government leaves a narrow majority of 67 in the 120-seat Knesset.
They objected to talks with the Palestinians.
This also means that the Ultra-Orthodox Shas party, with 12 members, is all that prevents a new round of elections, that Olmert would almost certainly lose, and Shas has said that it would leave the government if any compromise is made over Jerusalem.
You’ve gotta love Israeli politics.
BTW, this sort of crap is why proportional representation sucks wet farts from dead pigeons.
Poland Worries About Being Left Holding the Bag on the “Missile Shield”
I think that the new government in Poland realizes that George W. Bush does not stand up for his allies, and his successor will be unlikely to stand up for George W. Bush’s allies, so they are special military treaty ahead of negotiations on a US missile shield in Europe, such as the ones with Turkey and Italy.
For Poland, “The worst scenario is a situation in which Poland would agree to the shield, will incur the political costs and then the base is not built, because of a change of government in the United States”.
They are afraid of being left holding the bag.
With a year left in the reign of the Avignon President, it’s a sensible concern.
Obama is Trying to Be the Worst Sort of Democrat, a Phony Republican
And as Harry Truman once said, “Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like one, the people will vote for the real Republican every time.”
His talk to Reno Gazette editorial board exemplifies this.
Barack Obama and I are alike in some significant ways.
We are nearly the same age, he was born in 1961, and I was born in 1962, and we both missed the 1960s, we was in Hawaii and Jakarta during the decade, and I was in Fairbanks, Anchorage, and Juneau (though after August 1969, I was in Virginia for a time.
As such, we were in some very real ways separated from the cultural goings on of the 1960s by virtue of geographic separation.
We thus both became politically aware at the same time, though I might have done so earlier, as both my parents were politically involved, and I had a summer without cartoons while my mom watched the Watergate hearing.
For most of my generation, any political awareness came around the time of Jimmy Carter, who was, and is, truth be told, a depressingly sanctimonious downer.*
So there are a lot of people, and I am not one of them, who have some fondness for Reagan, if just because Carter was so depressing.
I remember him running a blatantly racist campaign, and opening up the White House for the personal profit of his friends.
He won by keeping the hostages in Iran until after the election.
In any case, he gave a talk to the Reno Gazette editorial board on Monday, and it was caught on tape for posterity.
In any case, he gave a talk with Here is a transcript of the relevant portion of his talk, (H/T Open Left)
I don’t want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what’s different are the times. I do think that for example the 1980 was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s
This, of course would be the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Medicare, the opening of social welfare programs to black and brown people, and to a large degree the elimination of childhood malnutrition in the United States?
Yep, that’s REALLY excessive.
and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating.
You like how the American people forced the US to withdraw from a wasteful, stupid and useless war?
You mean like how a corrupt and dictatorial President was forced from office because the American people would not tolerate a crook in the White House?
When people like Ronald Reagan refered to the excesses of the 1960s, they mean that they did not want people with your complexion to be able vote in the South, and that Lynching and church bombings were the God given right of the white man.
You think those were excesses?
Well, Ronald Reagan certainly made it explicit that he was running on behalf of people who that that they were.
Or to quote Jane Hamsher of Firedog Lake:
No, Ronald Reagan didn’t appeal to people’s optimism, he appealed to their petty, small minded bigotry and selfishness. Jimmy Carter told people to tighten their energy belts and act for the good of the country; Ronald Reagan told them they could guzzle gas with impunity and do whatever the hell they wanted. He kicked off his 1980 campaign talking about “state’s rights” in Philadelphia, Mississippi — the site of the murder of three civil rights workers in 1964’s Freedom Summer. He thus put up a welcome sign for “Reagan Democrats,” peeling off white voters who were unhappy with the multi-ethnic coalition within the Democratic Party.
One of his first acts was to fire 11,000 air traffic controllers in 1981 — one of the most devastating union busting moves of the past century. And his vision of deregulation didn’t free the country up for entrepreneurship, it opened it up for the wholesale thievery of the savings & loan crisis. He popularized the notion that all government is bad government and in eight short years put in place the architecture for decades of GOP graft and corruption.
There’s enough hagiography of Reagan on the right, I don’t think Democrats really need to go there.
*I also consider him a war criminal, along with Zbigniew Brezinski, for quite literally buying a civil war in Afghanistan just to screw with the Soviets.
Russian Fighters Integrate Western System
Russia has licensed the Thales Damocles targeting pods with Su-27 class fighters. It’s flown on Malaysia’s Su-30MKM, and the Russian air force will be adopting the pod, which was chosen after a competition with the Ural Optical and Mechanical Plant (UOMZ) Sapsan and Solux targeting pods.
This is fairly significant, for a number of reasons.
I believe that this is the first time that Russia has license produced a western weapons system of this sophistication, and it is the first time that the manufacturer has incorporated sophisticated western electronics into one of their aircraft.
This may make it much easier for operators of western equipment to integrate fleets of Russian aircraft in the future.
Another Three Month for Boeing 787 First Flight
It’s already been delayed at least once, and now the first flight of the 787 is delayed until at least 3 months, to the end of the 2nd quarter.
In a statement, Boeing Commercial Airplanes chief executive Scott Carson says “we continue to be challenged by start-up issues in our factory and in our extended global supply chain”.
Well, duh.
It was originally supposed to have a first flight in August of 2007, and now they are saying may or June of 2008.
Of interest is the fact that the press, particularly the American press is not running around saying, “the sky is falling”, as they did with the roughly 18 month delay on the A380.
Part of the reason is that it’s easier for the press to find some Eurocrat tied into Airbus to wring his hands publicly, not surprising given its origins as a state sponsored enterprise, and part of it, at least in the US is a cultural bias against Airbus because of its state origins (kind of necessary, everything in Europe had gotten the %$#@ bombed out of it 25 years prior).
Oh Man, This is One Harsh Obama Endorsement
Seriously, when the Las Vegas Review Journal gave this endorsement, they knifed Obama and Clinton. They describe him as “hardly” the ideal candidate fro president, but preferable to, “Bill Clinton invited onto a This is Your Life talk show where they’re joined by Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinsky.”
So, “Obama is, at least, likeable”, and Hillary is “re-run of the horror movie “It Came From Little Rock,” with the sound turned up much too loud.”
The only substantive comment that they make is that, “John Edwards’ anti-capitalist populism is not in this country’s long-term best interests.”
Like Anglo-Saxon hyper capitalism has led to rising living standards.
It’s wankeriffic, but at least it’s well written wanking. It made me laugh.
European Central Bank Executive Council Member Says that Currency Strength May Constrain Fed Actions
I have been warning for some time that the US dollar, and the US economy is in a bad position because we are increasingly in a position where rate cuts can cause the US dollar to plummet, and while this may be good in the long term, it would move toward restoring the balance of trade, in the short term it leaves US policy makers with the choice between inflation and recession, and that the net result would probably involve both.*
Well, we now have a central banker at the European Central Bank, Lorenzo Bini-Smaghi, saying the same thing, when he, “warned that the tumbling dollar may now start to foreclose the option of US rate cuts and force the Fed to keep monetary policy tighter than it would like.”
The ECB is acknowledging that the Emperor has no clothes. While it seems mild, it’s actually a very strong statement, and it’s not the individual statement of one person. They don’t freelance that way.
*See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, with the last link being just as I started the blog, but I’ve been posting about this on a private BBS for about 6 years.
Economics Update
Consumer prices rise by the highest amount since 1990, though it should be noted that the inflation numbers have become far less reflective of reality due to “creative massaging” since then.
H/t to The Big Picture for finding the cartoon.
Bond Insurerer Ambac Cuts Dividend, and declares loss, they are bleeding to death.
[on edit, added the following]
Standard & Poors raises the assumed losses on 2006 subprime bonds from 14% to 19% when it makes ratings on financial instruments, such as CDOs. They are in the process of reviewing their models for all outstanding mortgage backed debt. (The end result won’t be pretty)
Then we have a report from JP Morgan saying that home equity delinquencies are high In fact, they are higher than they would have expected at the bottom of a recession, which implies that the way down is still pretty scary, and their profits fell 34%.
On the good news side, oil prices have fallen below $90/bbl, because traders expect to see a moderation in demand because of an economic slowdown.
FCC Investigates Comcast Packet Blocking
For what it’s worth, if Comcast finds it necessary to throttle some applications, they should be open about it to customers and prospective customers.
What happened here was that they were forging TCP reset packets to throttle the traffic, and then lying about it.
The problem is threefold, first, it interferes with non-Bit Torrent applications, I’ve read about it interfering with Lotus Notes, second, it makes troubleshooting problems with other applications very difficult, and third, the customer is being defrauded.
FWIW, traffic management, if necessary, should be based on bandwidth, which is what the ISPs sell, not application. It, or so I’ve been told, a trivial operation.
To quote Wetmachine: Harold Feld’s Tales of the Sausage Factory:
1) The FCC issued a public notice asking for comment on our Petition for Declaratory Ruling that Comcast’s “network management practice” of messing with BitTorrent uploads violated the FCC’s “Broadband Policy Statement,” which includes a principle that network operators may not block or degrade content or applications. In a separate public notice (but as part of the same proceeding), the FCC also seeks comment on the Vuze Petition for Rulemaking on how broadband access providers handle and shape IP traffic generally. (Copy of Vuze Petition here, copy of our Petition here).
2) Separately, the FCC issued a separate public notice seeking comment on a Petition filed by Public Knowledge and the usual suspects asking the FCC to declare that wireless carriers cannot deny short codes or block text messaging. This goes after Verizon’s high profile “oopsie” of denying a request by NARAL for a short code. Although, as we pointed out in the Petition, the more likely and pernicious problem is with plain old anticompetitive blocking, such as denying a short code to VOIP provider Rebtel.com and denying applications to major banks offering competing services.
3) Comcast confirmed that the FCC has lanched a formal inquiry into whether it violated the FCC’s broadband policy statement. Comcast reiterated that it will fully cooperate with the FCC, and expects any investigation to show that Comcast did not block content and has engaged in legitimate network management practices.
I think that the problem here is largely cultural. To paraphrase Lilly Tomlin from Laugh-In, who originally said this about the phone company, “We’re the cable company, we don’t have to care.”
That said, for the complex minutiae of how this is proceeding, and what it all means, go to the link. The process is confusing.
In particular, look at his, “How Do I File Comments?” section. If you want your voice heard.