Author: Matthew G. Saroff

It’s the Fault of Clinton’s Penis

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Yep, that’s what the Wall Street Journal says (subscription required):

The joint housing and mortgage-market crisis once again reminds us that all financial implosions stem from the same cause: borrowing short and lending long without enough equity to weather periodic storms in the gap between.

But this bubble was different. Besides being fueled by housing purchases and repackaged loans, each with inadequate equity — doubling down with other people’s money — at the end of the capital-gains rainbow was the right to take up to $500,000 of profit, tax free.

Thank you President Bill Clinton for your 1997 action, applauded by the banks, the realtors and all citizens in search …

Jacob Zuma Defeats Thabo Mbeki As Head of the ANC

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Basically, this means that he will be elected South African president. While there is a lot of hand wringing about how Zuma won’t be as “investor friendly” as Mbeki, the fact that there was a contested leadership election in the ANC, and that the incumbent lost in a free and fair vote is a good thing.

This is good…it’s called democracy…

I think that its clear that Zuma’s mandate is to improve the lives of South Africans who live in poverty, and as such, members of the foreign and domestic investor class are likely to have to pay a bit more in taxes and fees, but this is a good thing, not a threat to democracy.

He got more votes than the other guy, and it appears that the exhumation of old corruption charges is more about an anti-democratic effort of Mbeki to stay in power than anything else.

Obama Selling Out On Healthcare in Illinois

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Paul Krugman looks at Obama’s tepid venture into healthcare reform during his days as an Illinois state senator, as reported by this Boston Globe article, and he concludes that Obama is not ready for prime time:

My thoughts: being president isn’t at all like being a state legislator, Illinois Republicans aren’t like the national Republican party, 2009 won’t be 2003, and the insurance industry’s opposition to national health reform — which must, if it is to mean anything, strike deep at the industry’s fundamental business — will be much harsher than its opposition to a basically quite mild state-level reform effort.

The point is that if national health reform is going to happen, it will be as the result of a no-holds-barred fight of an entirely different order from what Obama saw in Illinois. The president’s role will have to be far more confrontational, involve far more twisting of arms and rallying of the public against the special interests, than Obama’s role as a state legislator in the Illinois case. And it will take place against a backdrop of fierce attacks not just from the industry but from Republicans who fear, rightly, that any kind of reform will move the country in a more liberal direction.

My thoughts are much less charitable, because of one paragraph in the Globe article:

The bill originally called for a “Bipartisan Health Care Reform Commission” to implement a program reaching all 12.4 million Illinois residents. The legislation would have made it official state policy to ensure that all residents could access “quality healthcare at costs that are reasonable.” Insurers feared that language would result in a government takeover of healthcare, even though the bill did not explicitly say that.

By the time the legislation passed the Senate, in May 2004, Obama had written three successful amendments, at least one of which made key changes favorable to insurers.

Most significant, universal healthcare became merely a policy goal instead of state policy – the proposed commission, renamed the Adequate Health Care Task Force, was charged only with studying how to expand healthcare access. In the same amendment, Obama also sought to give insurers a voice in how the task force developed its plan.

(Emphasis mine)

Let’s be clear on this: This is not just the “big table” that Obama is so fond of talking about. This is the wholesale abandonment of a core value, and he didn’t just vote for it, he proposed the amendment to abandon it.

Truth be told, I’m sick of his “Red Sea will part before my awsomness” schtick. This was just selling out.

Read Krugman’s blog post, but you may find the Globe article more interesting. He appeared to be joined at the hip with the insurance companies.

Fed Shrugged as Subprime Crisis Spread

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The hed above is straight from The New York Times article about how the Federal Reserve under Alan “Bubbles” Greenspan ignored the warning signs of the real estate bubble.

It’s a clever turn of phrase. Greenspan was an acolyte of Rand’s and what was likely his first publication in the Times was his defense of Atlas Shrugged against a brutal review of the work. He argued that it was actually a “celebration of life and happiness”.

While the authors of the article rarely write the headline, it is clearly an attempt to cast the failures of the Fed to deal with the problems in the credit markets generally, and the housing market specifically as a result of Greenspan’s Randroid ideas.

It clearly shows that Greenspan was never the genius that he was viewed as in, say, 2000.

To my mind, the high opinion that many people had of him was an artifact of low oil prices and the cooking of the books with regard to inflation figures.

Read the article. It’s a hoot.

Deep Thoughts

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Every so often, I have a thought that is worthy of Jack Handy, and I’m sharing this with you:

I was at my chiropractor, and I noticed the various theraputic furniture that they have in the office.

With springs, hinges, dampers and suspension, powered lifts, straps and buckles, I thought You know, a pervert could have a lot of fun with this stuff.

And then I realized, Throw in some killer eggnog with whipped cream, and you could have a really kick ass office party.

Bush and His Evil Minions&trade Back Down on Attempt to Seize Control of JAG Corps

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Yesterday, I mentioned how Bush was attempting to put political hacks in charge of the military’s legal corps, one would assume that they were doing this because they have so completely f$%#ed up real trials, so they wanted false ones.

Today, they have backed down. Reviews and promotions will be handled through the military chain of command, not through political hacks.

My guess is that a few dozen of the people involved with the Gitmo trials made it clear that they would resign their commissions if this went through.

Prosecutors Investigating Bear Stearns

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Fortune has an article, somewhat amusingly titled titled Prosecutors loaded for Bear, looking into allegations of insider trading.

Specifically, it is alleged that senior fund manager Ralph Cioffi pulled his money out of Bear’s mortgage backed funds about 2 weeks before they imploded.

Drip, drip, drip…I stand by my prediction on Bear Stearns: They will cease to exist as an independent entity before August 2, 2008.

Senate Democrats Considering Removing Byrd as Appropriations Chair

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Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) is not doing well health wise.

At 90 years old, he needs help walking, and there are suggestions that he is no longer physically able to run the appropriations committee, so there are discussions about moving him aside.

At this point, it is just talk, and any move would set up a battle for who would head the powerful committee, so my guess is that nothing will be done until 2008.

Unfortunately, he was re-elected in 2006, so this will have to be sorted out sooner or later.

Russian Head of Nuclear Forces Says Retargeting Europe Under Consideration

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Remember when I mentioned that Obama’s Senate subcommittee never met? It was the Foreign Relations’ Subcommittee on Europe.

It might look at things like, I don’t know, the fact that the Russians are threatening to retarget Europe over the US Missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.

General Nikolai Solovtsov, head of strategic missile forces says that Russia might just do this if the installation is seen to, “undermine the Russian nuclear deterrent capability”.

Just because it doesn’t get a whole bunch of press doesn’t mean that it isn’t important work. John Kerry, in a similar position, was instrumental in breaking open the criminal terrorist money laundering operation known as BCCI.

Judge Tells DoJ Not To Tell Him What to Do, Holds CIA Tapes Hearing

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U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy rejected calls from the Justice Department to stay out of the matter, and told lawyers to appear before him this Friday.

Kennedy as you recall was the judge who ordered the government to preserve, “all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay.”

The tapes were destroyed a couple of months later.

Even if the destruction technically complied with the letter of his order, they could still be on the hook for obstruction or spoliation, a legal term for the destruction of evidence in “pending or reasonably foreseeable litigation.”

Long Island Couple Found Guilty of Slavery

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They face up to 40 years in Federal prison, and the jury has decided that their $2 million dollar house was used in the commissiion of a crime and so forfeited.

As horrific as the testimony given in the case was, a landscaper testified that the women begged for food, these high profile cases involving domestic servants are really the small minority of the cases.

Most are larger scale, involving sweatshops and prostitution, and they are far more appalling.