Author: Matthew G. Saroff

Well, Now We Know Why Louis Freeh Is the Preferred Agent of Choice for a Coverup

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Because he is a thoroughly dishonest ratf%$#, and the tell on this is that he refuses to use email:

As Eric Falkenstein observes:

People who meticulously avoid email should not be trusted, because it is simply too calculating, as if they know they are regularly committing crimes. A phone conversation can always be disavowed, you just say you were talking about last weekend’s bar mitzvah.

If his behavior as MF Global bankruptcy trustee, where he is refusing to turn over information to regulators about where customer account money went, (He’s making a bogus claim that the evidence of theft is covered by attorney client privilige) is an indication, he’s going to be a little boy rapist’s best friend at Penn State, where he is in charge of the coverup investigation.

Between his incompetence and his corrupt hackery, it’s a wonder that anyone hires him.  It’s like hiring John Dillinger to be in charge of your bank’s security.  Bernie Madoff has more credibility.

Just Desserts

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You know, generally, I’m not in favor or murder. 

That being said, when I heard about this Chinese Tycoon’s poisoning, and I looked at the recipe, I thought, well, he had it coming:

Poisonous Herb Spices Cat Stew in Felonious Pot

By DAVID BARBOZA

SHANGHAI — There was one very disagreeable ingredient in the steaming hot pot of stew that may have killed a Chinese tycoon. And it was not the cat meat.

The police have detained a local township official on suspicion that he murdered the tycoon, a business associate who may have caught the official cheating, by dropping a poisonous herb into a cat-meat hot pot, a shared stew that is a local delicacy, China’s state-run news media reported Wednesday.

(emphasis mine)

I understand that they have different customs and dietary habits, but cat?

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Another Very Nice Takedown

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I love it when economists mud wrestle, but a number of the conservative fresh water* economists, Kantoos and Tyler Cowen, have complained that Krugman is being mean about them.

I love Krugman’s response to this criticism:

So Alex Tabarrok thinks I treat everyone who disagrees with me as mendacious idiots, and Tyler Cowen says that I always demonize my opponents.

I plead innocent. I only treat people as mendacious idiots if they are mendacious idiots.

Seriously: I have some big disagreements with Ken Rogoff, but if you use the little search box up there on the upper right and enter “Rogoff” I think you’ll find that I have always treated him with respect. On the other hand, enter “Heritage” and you’ll find me pretty scornful — but with very good reason! And I always document what I’m saying.

Now, what about people like Cochrane? You need to bear two things in mind. First, he and his friends entered this whole debate by declaring that Keynesian economics of any stripe was total nonsense, “fairy tales” that nobody serious believes. Then they proceeded to make howling, basic errors. And I was supposed to respond politely? I’ve never gone ad hominem on them — but I’ve called nonsense and ignorance when I see them. So?

I think that this is a valid response, and fairly straightforward, and measured.

On the other hand, Brad Delong goes seriously medieval on John Cochrain, and ends with:

What do I see here? A bunch of overheated and largely false rhetoric. A bunch of apparently false claims about the way the world works. A bunch of false claims about pretty basic economic theories. Occasionally correct claims that are then–almost invariably taken back–by something that claims (for reasons I do not understand) to be a refutation.

Overall, it does not seem to me to add up to a coherent argument.

Kantoos, what else do you want me to do with this?

Seriously, it’s a very nice Fisking.

It also proves a point that Krugman is wont to make, that salt water economists can cogently discuss fresh water economics, but fresh water economists cannot cogently discuss salt water economics.

Basically, when salt water economists teach, they teach both theories, and fresh water economists only teach their theories, which is why we see things like the walkout from former Bush Administration Economist Greg Mankiw’s intro to economics class at Harvard (yes, technically a salt water school, but Mankiw is a fresh water economist) because they found narrow and parochial.

This for a bloody introductory survey course that should expose them to the full range of theories.

But I think that I’m ranting here a bit.

*If you look at schools of economics, those in the center of the country, (fresh water) on lakes and rivers, tend to be extremely conservative, either Austrian, or Milton Friedman, while those on the coasts (salt water) tend to be more liberal.

Jon Stewart is Right

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At about 3:30, but it’s worth it to watch the whole thing

You can make fun of Rick Santorum without having to resort to making ass juice/frothy mixture/Google jokes.

There’s simply way too much insanity even without Dan Savages bit of literary genius.

Case in point, he just said that the “American left” “hates Christendom”, because, among other things, they think that the Crusades were an aggression against the Arab world.

Because, the mass slaughter in Jerusalem, and the pogroms and murders that swept through Europe was all hunky dory.

On behalf of my ancestors, who were doubtless murdered and raped by your ancestors, go Cheney yourself.

H/t The Reality-Based Community, who asks the obvious question, “Is he going to endorse the Inquisition next, and expose Voltaire as an undercover jihadist and proto-Marxist?”

Seriously, I’m not sure if Santorum is simply bat-sh%$ insane, if he’s just used to saying this crap because it’s what College Republicans do to tweak people in order to get their juvenile jollies.

Truth be told, it doesn’t matter.  The end result is the same.

It’s Jobless Thursday

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Pretty good news today, with initial unemployment claims falling to 372K, a drop of 15,000, from last weeks (adjusted upward) claims, with the 4-week moving average falling to the lowest number since July 2008 (!), 373,250, with continuing claims falling, though emergency claims rose slightly.

Additionally, the ADP survey, (same link) indicates a 325,000 increase in private sector jobs, though I’ll wait for tomorrow’s NFP numbers for the official word.

We also saw the ISM’s manufacturing index grew strongly and the non-manufacturing index rose modestly.

All in all, it’s pretty good news, I’m just wondering how much government jobs have hemorrhaged over the past month.

Well, What Do You Know, the FDA Supports Antibiotic Resistant Microbes

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They have given up on attempting to regulate the massive overuse of antibiotics in livestock:

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) pulled a Scrooge move just before Christmas. The agency published an entry in the Federal Register declaring that it will end its attempt at mandatory restrictions on the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture. The agency isn’t advertising the shift, though: This news would have remained a secret if not for Maryn McKenna’s Superbug blog over at Wired. McKenna, who specializes in writing about antibiotics and their link to pathogens, caught the Federal Register notice.

This is a sorry end to a process that began in 1977 (!), but McKenna created an excellent timeline that traces the history of the issue back to the 1950s. In 2009, the Obama administration breathed new life into a moribund process because the top two Obama appointees at the FDA, Commissioner Margaret Hamburg and her then-deputy Joshua Sharfstein, strongly supported restricting antibiotic use in agriculture.

But despite Hamburg and Sharfstein’s many supportive statements, the FDA has only produced a draft set of “voluntary” guidelines. And, with this latest announcement, it looks like that’s as far as they’re willing to go.

The depressing thing, in addition to the fact that this practice creates “superbugs” that kill people, is that we know how much this would cost the consumer, based on the Danish experience, and it’s less than 10¢ a pound.

By way of putting this into perspective, antibiotics used at sub-therapeutic levels in feed accounts for 80% of all antibiotic use in the US.

Our feedlots are a petri dish for MRSA, antibiotic resistant E. Coli, etc.

This is Not a Sudden Case of Balls

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It’s just that, at least until November 2, Barack Obama is more scared of the Occupy movement than he is of the Republicans, hence his recess appointments today:

President Obama kicked off the election year aggressively, picking a fight with congressional Republicans by sidestepping the Senate to fill the top job at the government’s newly created consumer protection bureau.

He also filled three vacancies on the National Labor Relations Board, which referees labor-management controversies — a priority of his allies in labor unions.

The appointments Wednesday, which had been stalled in the Senate, came as Obama moved to make confronting Congress a central part of his strategy for reelection. His job approval rating remains low, but Congress’ standing is even lower — “as unpopular as Ebola virus” — as one administration aide recently put it. In a confrontation between the two, the president will have the upper hand, White House aides say.

Actually, the NLRB appointments might be more significant, because the Republicans had shut down the board for lack of quorum.

I don’t expect the CFPB doing much, because Obama was dragged into the entire idea kicking and screaming, and his closest financial regulation adviser, Tim “Eddie Haskell” Geithner, hates it, and with Elizabeth Warren effectively neutered by virtue of her running for Senate, which pretty much requires her to be in lock step with the Obama administration, I expect to see a remarkably passive posture from Richard Cordray.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, Barack Obama will do the right thing, once he believes that he has no alternative.

Damn!

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Michelle Bachmann has dropped out of the Presidential race.

If Rick “Miss Malaprop” Perry drops out, as seems likely, I may have to start writing, because it’s getting to the point where the snark does not write itself.

John Stewart Goes Postal on Barack Obama

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Brutal!

John Stewart gives Barack Obama a righteous, and justly deserved, beat-down over the President’s signing of the “f%$# the Bill of Rights” indefinite detention defense authorization bill.

It’s remarkable how much eloquence he (and to be fair, his writers) gives to the absolute outrage through humor than the outrage expressed by other commentators.

If you want to show someone who doesn’t get why what happened is so wrong, this conveys it more succinctly than anything I’ve read from Greenwald, or Taibbi, or the Rude Pundit.

Stewart is a national treasure.

The Weirdest Sh*$ Out of Iowa

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A Santorum Salad, Really?!?!

Actually, the weirdest Santorum in Iowa.

Seriously, a restauranteur in Boone has christened their chicken salad a Santorum Salad.

I’m not sure whether or not this guy is aware of the neologism (first link) or not, but that chicken salad does look a lot like I imagine Santorum would look.

Yes, despite my complaints, I’m going to have to post about Iowa today, but this little taste of the surreal makes it feel a little bit better.

It’s Too Close to Call Between Mitt and “The Frothy Mixture.”

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They are still tabulating votes in Iowa, and it’s too close to call between Romney and Santorum,with Paul being a close 3rd:

Returns from 1,703 of 1,774 precincts showed Santorum with 24.6 percent, Romney with 24.5 percent and Paul with 21.3 percent. Santorum had 29,046 votes, Romney 28,928 and Paul 25,121.

It’s pretty clear that, no matter how it turns out, Mitt wins this.

Rick “The Frothy Mixture” Santorum has no funds and no organization, and he won’t play well in New Hampshire, and Ron Paul is … Ron Paul, so it’s now Mitt’s race to lose, regardless of how the next few thousand votes break.

Romney needed to lose, and lose big for someone to be in a real position to challenge him.

Then again, considering my record of prognostication…………

Damn! This Makes Matt Taibbi Look Like Thomas Kinkade!

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Mark Ames has just posted an epic take-down of bought and paid for pimp for mass murderers Joshua Foust, and by extension, his employer, Atlantic Magazine.

Here is a sample:

Last week, some troll named Joshua Foust attacked my article about the massacre in Kazakhstan on December 16. I really had no idea who Foust was until I started getting emails from readers telling me “some guy with a goatee is having a meltdown on Twitter.” What upset Foust so much about my article was that I dared to report a death toll number, “up to 70,” that differed from the official figure of 15 that the regime in Kazakhstan wanted the outside world to believe. Why did Foust take on the role of massacre-denier for Kazakhstan’s notoriously brutal, corrupt regime?

Foust, it turns out, has spent much of the past decade getting paid by defense contractors to front for them as one of their paid PR monkeys. One example: Last year, Foust published a hit piece in the Columbia Journalism Review attacking an award-winning Washington Post investigative series about the vast hidden defense contractor industry, without disclosing the fact that Foust was an employee of Northrop Grumman–one of the largest defense contractors in America.

Foust’s job is the opposite of journalism—he gets paid by war-profiteers to lie to the public, to cover for them while they soak the public for government contracts. That’s what Joshua Foust does for a living; and besides carrying the water for defense contractors as a “strategic communications” flak, Foust has spent the past few years talking up Kazakhstan’s despot-for-life, Nursultan Nazarbayev—and talking down the appalling human rights records both in Kazakhstan and in Uzbekistan.

This is truly epic.

It’s harsh, but perfectly justified, and it’s really a thing of beauty.

I love savage writing.

Well, Knock Me Over With a Mackerel!

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Congress has ended both the subsidy on corn ethanol and the tariff on imported Brazilian sugar based ethanol:

Tom Buis, CEO of Growth Energy, an ethanol trade group, clearly wasn’t thrilled with the decision, but in an interview earlier this month he claimed the ethanol industry would survive without government handouts stating, “The blenders’ tax credit initially helped the ethanol industry develop. But today, we don’t have a production problem, we have a market access problem. Without the tax credit, the ethanol industry will survive; it will continue to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, create jobs and strengthen our economy.”

By some estimates the total gifts to corn ethanol business totalled $45B USD since 1980.

The subsidy cut — approved by a 73-27 Senate vote in June — also is accompanied by the end of a tariff on the importation of Brazilian ethanol. Brazil has an excess of sugarcane ethanol, but the U.S. government had previously penalized this fuel stream as a means of allowing U.S. ethanol producers to escape competing on the free market.

The ethanol debate has divided both political parties and even set federal representatives within certain corn-producing states against each other.

I wonder if this says something about the increasing irrelevance of Iowa caucuses this year.

I’m pleasantly surprised by this development.

Finally Cashiering the Bloated General Officers in the Pentagon

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It’s a start, but considering that there is an officer for every 5 enlisted men, up from 1 for every 10 men that was the standard over the past few hundred years, it’s only a start:

With the Iraq war over and troops in Afghanistan on their way home, the U.S. military is getting down to brass tacks: culling generals and admirals from its top-heavy ranks.

Pentagon officials said they have eliminated 27 jobs for generals and admirals since March, the first time the Defense Department has imposed such a reduction since the aftermath of the Cold War, when the collapse of the Soviet Union prompted the military to downsize.

The cuts are part of a broader plan to shrink the upper ranks by 10 percent over five years, restoring them to the their size when the country was last at peace, before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The changes are projected to save only a modest amount of money, but defense officials said they are symbolically important as the Pentagon adjusts to an era of austerity. The Obama administration proposes to squeeze $450 billion from defense budgets over a decade. An additional $500 billion in cuts will be triggered if Congress cannot agree on a deficit-reduction plan in the next year.

This does not even qualify as a baby step in tackling the bloat at the Pentagon, but  it  is a positive development.

Matt Taibbi is Right

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When the Vampire Squid recommends a buy, sell as fast as you can:

It seems Jim O’Neill, the head of Goldman’s Asset Management department, is predicting that the United States stock market may go up “15 to 20 percent.” O’Neill apparently believes Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve will resort to another round of money-printing, and finally green-light the long-awaited “Qe3,” or third round of “Quantitative Easing.”

The QE programs involve the Fed printing hundreds of billions of dollars and pumping them into the marketplace, where they ostensibly stimulate the economy (although recent experience tells us that the money mostly ends up being swallowed by the financial services industry – but that’s another subject for another time). Anyway, Bernanke declined to go ahead with a third QE program in late 2011, but O’Neill apparently thinks we’ll get it in 2012. From Bloomberg:

“If QE2 doesn’t work, then we’ll get QE3,” said O’Neill, who was named chairman of the money manager in September after working as the co-head of global economics research and chief currency economist at New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc. since 1995. There’s a “good chance” the S&P 500 will rise 15 percent to 20 percent in the next 12 months, he said.

O’Neill added that he thought a 20 percent bump would be “relatively straightforward” for the U.S. S&P.

They pumped also pumped up the BRICS, and then shorted them, and aggressively sold their customers European bank stocks earlier this month.

Goldman Sachs is really nothing more than a ferociously criminal enterprise. They earn commissioners by advising their customers, and then they cheat them.*

The only reason to do business with them is to capitalize on their exquisitely honed revolving-door government connections.

If a prosecutor were to aggressively to pursue a RICO investigation against them, they would be toast, because the (to my mind dangerously low) standard of a, “pattern of racketeering activity,” is not a high bar to clear.

*Note to self. I need to get libel insurance.

Yes, the Complete Absence of Oversight of Central Bankers is a Good Thing…

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So there is nothing to worry about with the wife of head of the Swiss National Bank shorting the SFr just days before it’s devaluation by her husband:

My kind of story in the Swiss papers today. I love it when big shot central bankers get their dirty laundry made public.

Kashya, the wife of Philipp Hildebrand (head of the Swiss National Bank) sold Swiss Francs just a few days before the Swiss National Bank initiated exchange controls and devalued the Franc. The timing of the transactions was nearly perfect. The suggestion is that “pillow talk” between husband and wife lead to the trades.

Don’t expect heads to roll over this transgression. There has been a complete review by Swiss authorities and the conclusion is that there were no insider trading violations by the wife. That’s not to say that trades did not happen.

Apparently, Kashya Hildebrand bought ~$500,000 when she shorted the CHF. This relatively small transaction netted the Hildebrand family only ~$50,000 in less than one month. Being that the amount is so small, the conclusion is that nothing nefarious has taken place. ………….

Seriously, if I stole $50,000, I’d be in jail, with a prosecutor asking for a big chunk of bail money, but because this is one of the bankster elite, it’s no harm, no foul.

I’m, really beginning to think that we don’t need to just prosecute the financiers, but we need to go after the corrupt regulators, including the central bankers, as well.

To quote Sigourney Weaver, “I say we take off and nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”

H/t Atrios.

And No Carriers, What a Bummer

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It looks like the Latin American customs union, Mercosur, has declared that Falklands Islands flagged ships are banned from their ports, which amounts to a (rather porous) blockade:

Argentines call them las Malvinas. The British call them the Falklands. In news jargon, many assume that to use one name over the other is to take a side, mostly because these islands are the source of an acrimonious dispute that led to a non-declared war between the two countries in 1982.

Enter Mercosur, the trade agreement between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay – with Chile as one of the associated member states – which, a week ago, decided to ban ships that fly the Falklands flag from their ports. The measure, a blockade in simple terms, was taken to show solidarity with Argentina on the issue.

Of course, things are different from 1982.

The British no longer have any aircraft carriers, and won’t for many years to come, and the Chinese are explicitly endorsing the Argentine claim.

Truth be told, the only Falkland’s flagged ships out there are probably a few fishing boats, but the fact is that if this escalates, there is very little that the UK can do to to maintain its controls over the islands.

Truth be told, I think that any escalation would come from the British side, as Cameron, remembering Thatcher’s electoral benefit from the earlier war, will try to make a similar play for electorate.

I May Be Wrong About Eric Holder

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Because it does appear that he is actually investigating allegations of police brutality, with investigations being described as having, “mushroomed to unprecedented levels,” involving investigations of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Department  (Joe Arpaio), Seattle’s police department,  Newark, East Haven, Miami, and Puerto Rico.

The cynic in me notes that Obama’s closest move toward action on this matter was his now-disavowed comments on the arrest of professor Henry Louis Gates, which, when juxtaposed with his history is one of studiously avoiding involvement in any issue that might remind people that he’s black, would lead me to conclude that he is studiously uninvolved with this issue.

Compare this to clear White House directives on torture and the banksters, where it is clear that the word went out that there would be no prosecutions.

I’m assuming that the fact that actual law enforcement is occurring here because the Obama administration is largely uninvolved with this.