Author: Matthew G. Saroff

Healthcare Update

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AARP Executive VP Nancy LeaMond and House Leaders

Well, today both the AMA and the AARP endorsed healthcare reform, which, I think makes the possibility of passage significantly greater.

Note that some of the constituencies in the AMA, most notably, the “American Assn. of Neurological Surgeons, the American Society of General Surgeons and the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery,” came out against this, but note that these are people who make their money when preventative care fails.

Notwithstanding Harry “No Balls” Reid’s statement that there may not be a bill this year, the House of Representatives is moving forward full throttle, with a vote scheduled for this Saturday.

Steve Benin also notices that the Republican opposition to the bill might not be as unified as it was for the stimulus package:

Republicans will overwhelmingly reject the Democrats’ healthcare reform measure when it is reaches the House floor, according to a key lawmaker.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), who serves as deputy GOP whip, told The Hill that the number of Republicans supporting the sweeping legislation will be “very, very close to zero.

Mr. Benin, much like I did, “assumed it was a foregone conclusion that every House Republican would vote against reform, just as every House Republican voted against the economic recovery package and against this year’s budget plan,” while this quote implies that there might be 1 or 2, or perhaps even a few more votes for the bill.

I think that this situation can be explained in 4 words, Anh “Joseph” Quang Cao, the Republican who defeated incumbent William “Dollar Bill” Jefferson in an overwhelmingly Republican district, because Jefferson was under indictment for corruption.

He knows that no matter how much support Republicans throw his way, and they won’t throw much, he’s a goner unless he actually considers his district’s needs.

Even in Louisiana, he cannot count on his opposition facing corruption charges for every election.

This is Never Good News

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The much delayed audit of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has been delayed again:

A much-anticipated audit of the Federal Housing Administration was abruptly postponed just before it was supposed to be made public, after questions arose about its accuracy.

The auditor, Integrated Financial Engineering, said it notified the F.H.A. late Tuesday that its computer models were creating unexplained inconsistencies. A news conference scheduled for Wednesday morning was canceled.

The audit calculates whether or not there are solvency issues under various economic scenarios.

The fact that concerns over these models led to another delay on the release of the audit is concerning, to say the least, particularly since, “The delinquency rate on F.H.A. loans was 14 percent in the second quarter.”

Breaking: Bernard Kerik Pleads Guilty

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So, the man who Rudy Giuliani mentored to the position of New York City Police Commissioner has copped a plea deal, and pled guilty to on 8 counts, “two counts of tax fraud, one count of making a false statement on a loan application — the most serious — and five separate counts of making false statements to the federal government,” and is likely to be sentenced to 27 to 33 months.

The false statements are in connection to his statements to federal agents when he was being vetted to be head of DHS by Bush and His Evil Minions™.

Basically, he got a $¼ million in renovations for his apartment from a mob tied contractor that he later recommended for city business.

Basically, Giuliani’s right hand man was mobbed up.

This guy was pretty low level until Giuliani decided to smile on him, and it says something about Rudy’s judgment, and could, and should be an issue if he chooses to run for governor.

How Utterly Appropriate

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Remember Carrie Prejean?

She is a former Miss California, who whined that she was “discriminated against for her religious beliefs, because she didn’t become Miss America after declaring her opposition to same sex marriage.

Well, after that, she became a right wing cause célèbre, and started hitting the right wing talk show circuit, and ignoring her duties, and appointments, as Miss California….I think it involves waving and smiling….So, despite an intervention by Donald Trump,* she was fired for…you know….Not showing up to work.

So, she sued, and then a few bikini modeling pics of her showed up, and then she dropped the suit, because, “the lawyer for the Pageant showed Carrie an XXX home video of her handiwork.”

I have been unable to find any details, but the wags at TMZ, who have apparrently seen this bit of cinéma vérité, but decided that it was inappropriate for them to release, have seen the film:

The video the lawyer showed Carrie is extremely graphic and has never been released publicly. We know that, because TMZ obtained the video months ago but decided not to post it because it was so racy. Let’s just say, Carrie has a promising solo career.

Seriously, what is it with conservatives?

They make Gene Simmons look like Mother Theresa.

*When Donald Trump has to do an intervention, you are in a really strange place.

Economics Update

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The Notch is the Bankruptcy law change
H/t Calculated Risk

The FOMC has met, and they are keeping their benchmark rate at essentially 0%, and they have clearly said that they will keep rates low for an extended period of time.

Meanwhile the Bank of Japan has issued a statement that its walk-back on emergency programs to bolster the credit market are not a precursor to a rate hike.

In employment, ADP’s private sector job survey reports that 203K jobs were cut in October, the smallest cut in over a year, and Challenger, Gray, & Christmas is reporting that announced that planned layoffs fell to 55,6799 in October, down 16% from September.

Meanwhile, in New Zealand, where they are supposed to be out of the recession, their jobless rate hit a 9-year high, 6½%.

Meanwhile, the Institute for Supply Management’s Non-Manufacturing survey fell to 50.6, down from September’s 50.9, but any number above 50 indicates expansion., though, as Calculated Risk notes, “the Non-Manufacturing Employment Index for October registered 41.1 percent. This reflects a decrease of 3.2 percentage points when compared to the 44.3 percent registered in September,” so the sector expanded, while employment in the sector shrank.

Still, even after the draconian legislation enacted in 2005, personal bankruptcies rose 9% in October, to a new post law change high (see graph pr0n). (American Bankruptcy Institute report)

One interesting thing on all this is that the the market is pricing in increasing inflation expectations, as indicated by the spread between Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS), and generic Treasuries. It’s at 2.08%, the highest level in over a year.

Unsurprisingly, the statement by the Fed regarding rates, juxtaposed with the increased inflation concerns, pushed Treasuries down, and hence their yields up.

The Fed’s statement pushed the dollar down, as investors looked for higher returns, though this was abated somewhat when Fitch cut Ireland’s credit rating to AA- from AA+, which put a downward pressure on the Euro.

As is customary, the falling dollar drove oil prices up, but only by about 1%, to $80.40/bbl.

Full Federal Reserve Open Market Committee statement after break.

Press Release

Release Date: November 4, 2009

For immediate release

Information received since the Federal Open Market Committee met in September suggests that economic activity has continued to pick up. Conditions in financial markets were roughly unchanged, on balance, over the intermeeting period. Activity in the housing sector has increased over recent months. Household spending appears to be expanding but remains constrained by ongoing job losses, sluggish income growth, lower housing wealth, and tight credit. Businesses are still cutting back on fixed investment and staffing, though at a slower pace; they continue to make progress in bringing inventory stocks into better alignment with sales. Although economic activity is likely to remain weak for a time, the Committee anticipates that policy actions to stabilize financial markets and institutions, fiscal and monetary stimulus, and market forces will support a strengthening of economic growth and a gradual return to higher levels of resource utilization in a context of price stability.

With substantial resource slack likely to continue to dampen cost pressures and with longer-term inflation expectations stable, the Committee expects that inflation will remain subdued for some time.

In these circumstances, the Federal Reserve will continue to employ a wide range of tools to promote economic recovery and to preserve price stability. The Committee will maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and continues to anticipate that economic conditions, including low rates of resource utilization, subdued inflation trends, and stable inflation expectations, are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels of the federal funds rate for an extended period. To provide support to mortgage lending and housing markets and to improve overall conditions in private credit markets, the Federal Reserve will purchase a total of $1.25 trillion of agency mortgage-backed securities and about $175 billion of agency debt. The amount of agency debt purchases, while somewhat less than the previously announced maximum of $200 billion, is consistent with the recent path of purchases and reflects the limited availability of agency debt. In order to promote a smooth transition in markets, the Committee will gradually slow the pace of its purchases of both agency debt and agency mortgage-backed securities and anticipates that these transactions will be executed by the end of the first quarter of 2010. The Committee will continue to evaluate the timing and overall amounts of its purchases of securities in light of the evolving economic outlook and conditions in financial markets. The Federal Reserve is monitoring the size and composition of its balance sheet and will make adjustments to its credit and liquidity programs as warranted.

Voting for the FOMC monetary policy action were: Ben S. Bernanke, Chairman; William C. Dudley, Vice Chairman; Elizabeth A. Duke; Charles L. Evans; Donald L. Kohn; Jeffrey M. Lacker; Dennis P. Lockhart; Daniel K. Tarullo; Kevin M. Warsh; and Janet L. Yellen.

Jon Stewart on Election Coverage

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Have I mentioned lately that Jon Stewart is a F%$#ing Genius?

John Oliver: At that point, it will be clear that I’m changing the tone of my voice, to try and give the appearance of balance and genuine thought.

Jon Stewart: John, let me ask you then, will you be backing that up with genuine thought.

John Oliver: No, John. I’m not going to do that.

Rahm Emanuel is a Such a Pissant

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So, after Barack Obama went full throttle in supporting Former Goldman Sachs CEO Senior Partner John Corzine, who got beaten handily, Anthony Weiner (D-NY-9) suggested, given the unexpected closeness of the NY Mayor’s race that, “Maybe one of those Corzine trips could have been better spent in New York. Who knows?”

The response, from a anonymous White House source responded, “Maybe Anthony Weiner should have manned-up and run against Michael Bloomberg.

That would be Rahm, or someone who speaks just like him, and he is being such a bitch.

Devastating Takedown of Super Freakonomics

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Not really such a big patch of territory.

 You don’t have to go far for help

I think that the book is an exercise in muddy headed contrarianism: The idea here is if you come to conclusions that are counter intuitive, particularly if they are favor conservatives, you get air time and book sales, and thus academic integrity be damned.

In any case, Professor Raymond T. Pierrehumbert takes a look at the chapter on Superfreakonomics where the authors claim that solar panels will contribute to global warming, and shows that anyone who can add 2 and 2 should never have put out this tripe.

First, he Googles world electric consumption, 16.83 trillion KWH, and figures back to wattage, which gives about 2 trillion (1.921T actually) watts.

Well, with 200w/m for an average area (he used 250 W on the assumption that you place solar cells in sunnier climes), and the current commercial efficiency of 15% that means that one would need about an area equal to 2×1012/(.15 X 250)=5.333×1010 m2=53,000 square kilometers, or a square about 231 kilometers to a side. (top picture).

Wiki has Earth’s surface area as 510,072,000 km2, so this is 0.0105% of the earth’s surface.

Now, you actually have to double this, since you need to account for the fact that at any given moment, half the earth’s surface is in darkness, so it rises to a whopping 0.0210% of the Earth’s surface area.

This is a worst case scenario, particularly since the albedo (reflectivity) of a solar cell is frequently the same as the roof that they are placed on (yes, this is an argument for white roofs in warm climates), but let’s ignore that, and go to his numbers:

So, let’s say that sand has a 50% albedo. [note the albedo of the earth is 0.39, I learned that from the Greek composer Vangelis] That means that each square meter of black solar cell absorbs an extra 125 Watts that otherwise would have been reflected by the sand (i.e. 50% of the 250 Watts per square meter of sunlight). Multiplying by the area of solar cell, we get 6.66 trillion Watts

That 6.66 trillion Watts is the “waste heat” that is a byproduct of generating electricity by using solar cells. All means of generating electricity involve waste heat, and fossil fuels are not an exception. A typical coal-fired power plant only is around 33% efficient, so you would need to release 6 trillion Watts of heat to burn the coal to make our 2 trillion Watts of electricity. That makes the waste heat of solar cells vs. coal basically a wash, and we could stop right there, but let’s continue our exercise in thinking with numbers anyway.

Of course, the problem is not the heat produced by coal production, it’s a trivial part of the equation, it’s the heat trapped by the emissions that are the concern, and it is (go to article) at least two orders of magnitude greater than waste heat.

His conclusion:

A more substantive (though in the end almost equally trivial) issue is the carbon emitted in the course of manufacturing solar cells, but that is not the matter at hand here. The point here is that really simple arithmetic, which you could not be bothered to do, would have been enough to tell you that the claim that the blackness of solar cells makes solar energy pointless is complete and utter nonsense. I don’t think you would have accepted such laziness and sloppiness in a term paper from one of your students, so why do you accept it from yourself? What does the failure to do such basic thinking with numbers say about the extent to which anything you write can be trusted? How do you think it reflects on the profession of economics when a member of that profession — somebody who that profession seems to esteem highly — publicly and noisily shows that he cannot be bothered to do simple arithmetic and elementary background reading? Not even for a subject of such paramount importance as global warming.

(emphasis mine)

He then finishes with a Google map (bottom pic) showing that it is a ½ mile walk to the Hinds Geophysical Laboratory on his own campus in order to confirm these numbers.

It would be even shorter if he cut through campus and the Administration building, though considering that the ethics office is likely located there, he probably wants to take the long way.

(on edit)
I updated the pictures to go with the popup format that I now use.

Given Michael Kinsley’s most recent exercise in mindless contrarianism, where he came out against journalism, I feel compelled to note that this behavior (Michael Kinsley disease) becomes even more toxic and has less intellectual integrity when juxtaposed with Chicago School economic delusions.

Zimbabwe Update

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It’s been about 3 weeks, so it’s time to update everyone on the hell hole that Bobby Mugabe made again.

On the bright side, the UK is saying that they will give Zimbabwe $100 million in aid, though I wonder if recent developments (see below) may interfere with this.

First, we have the case of deputy agriculture minister-designate Roy Bennett, who has been imprisoned on what are clearly trumped up charges, with an improperly filed indictment for, “possessing weapons for the purposes of insurgency and banditry,” a crime that carries the death sentence. (See also here)

While he was finally granted bail, this was one of the proximate causes of Tsvangirai and his MDC-T
disengaging from the ZANU-PF, which means that they are no longer attending cabinet meetings.

It should be noted that Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara and his MDC-M are also participating in the boycott of cabinet meetings.

Tsvangirai is Trying to get the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to intervene on what has increasingly become a phony power sharing arrangement.

Meanwhile, ZANU-PF harassment of the MDC and human rights activists continues apace with raids on MDC offices in Harare (also here) claiming that they were looking for arms…..Shades of Bennett’s kangaroo court.

Inter party talks between the MDC and ZANU-PF have broken off without a resolution, and the human rights situation in the country has gone straight into the twilight zone with Mugabe detaining, and then expelling the “UNHRC special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” Manfred Nowak.

Meanwhile, the Marange diamond fields, which are one of the few sources of hard currency available to Mugabe to keep his supporters paid off, are under a Kimberly process investigation for widespread torture, forced labor, and smuggling, which could lead to ban on the export of their gems.

The reports are that, once again, the Kimberly process will wimp out and do nothing , even after members of the Zimbabwe delegation to the meeting threatened and harassed witnesses at the meeting.

Finally, we have the ZANU-PF ordering the state run media to stop covering any MDC activities.

Election Results

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I’m heading off to bed, but here are the numbers from NY-23 and the Hate Amendment in Maine.

It looks like I was wrong on NY-23. Owens could win, though I am not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Unfortunately, I was right on Maine. The bigots won again.

88% reporting N.Y. District 23

N.Y. District 23
Candidate Party Votes Pct.
Bill Owens Dem. 60,458 49.0%
Doug Hoffman Con. 56,174 45.5
Dede Scozzafava Rep. 6,796 5.5

It looks to me like Hoffman would need to pull in more than 60% of the remaining votes to win this, but I think that the wingnut precincts are reporting late.

76% reporting Maine: Reject Gay Marriage Law

Maine: Reject Gay Marriage Law
Answer Party Votes Pct.
Yes — 231,273 52.2%
No — 211,634 47.8

Geithner is not Incompetent, or Captured by the Street, He is Corrupt

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Dylan Ratigan and Senator Maria Cantwell wonder why he still has a job.
I wonder why he hasn’t been arrested

Is I mentioned earlier, small business lender CIT went bankrupt, and cost the taxpayers $2.3 billion.

It now appears that this happened because Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner completely screwed the pooch on the lend of TARP money:

But here’s the bad news: While senior debt holders will only lose 30% of their investment, we, the U.S. taxpayer, will lose the entire $2.3 billion we lent the company this summer.

William Black, professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law is dumbfounded. “We put ourselves on the hook in a completely inept way where we lose first. We lose entirely as the taxpayers.”

….

The government was in no way obligated to lend the struggling CIT money and, in fact, initially refused to provide it bailout funds. More importantly, being the lender of last resort, the government should have guaranteed we’d be the first to get paid if CIT eventually filed Chapter 11. By failing to do so, “it’s like he [Geithner] burned billions of dollars again in government money, our money, gratuitously,” says Black.

I think that this has gone beyond mere incompetence.

Timothy Geithner is a mole for Wall Street in general, and for Goldman Sachs in particular. First, we have him making AIG pay its swaps at 100¢ on the dollar, and now this.

This is not incompetence. This is regulatory capture. This is deliberate corruption to favor people who have mentored him throughout his career, and it’s happening because Geithner knows that when he leaves, he will get a senior executive position at one of those Wall Street firms for millions of dollars a year.

Burying the Lede

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Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism was called in, along with a number of other prominent financial bloggers to a meeting with Treasury Department officials.

Aside from the, not particularly earth shattering observation that the bloggers and the T-men talked past each other, and this was the general sense of the bloggers there, Ms. Smith makes the most notably observation far down in her post:

My bottom line is that the people we met are very cognitively captured, assuming one can take their remarks at face value. Although they kept stressing all the things that had changed or they were planning to change, the polite pushback from pretty all the attendees was that what Treasury thought of as major progress was insufficient. It was instructive to observe that Tyler Cowen [he’s a relatively sane Libertarian economist], who is on the other side of the ideological page from yours truly, had pretty much the same concerns as your humble blogger does.

(emphasis mine)

The people running the Treasury Department have been thoroughly captured by Wall Street.

To my mind, this has gone well beyond a cultural problem, and straight into outright corruption.

This needs to change.

Christie (R) Wins in New Jersey

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Damn.

This is going to f&^% over the people of New Jersey something fierce.

As bad as Republicans are when times are good, in a recession, with declining revenue, they are horrendous. See Schwarzenegger, Ahnuld.

That’s one of my predictions that wasn’t right.

In related election news, Michael Bloomberg was reelected to a 3rd term as mayor, though by a much smaller margin than previously anticipated: 49.8% to 46.9%.

There is a lot of anti-incumbency out there.

EU Approves Lisbon Treaty

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This is a major streamlining of the EU’s governance practices:

The treaty aims to give the European Union a bigger role internationally by creating a full-time presidential post with a two-and-a-half-year term and setting up a more powerful foreign policy chief supported by a network of diplomats around the world. It will put in place a new voting system that reflects countries’ population size, while reducing the opportunities for individual countries to block a proposal. It also gives more power to the directly elected European Parliament.

So, they have it.

Now they need to show what they are going to do with it.