Author: Matthew G. Saroff

Election News

No Comments

In California, it looks like it will be Jerry Brown running as the Dem for Governor, because Gavin Newsome has quit the race, because of weak support and poor fund-raising.

Additionally, in the very odd special election for New York’s 23rd Congressional district, Republican Dierdre Scozzafava has suspended her campaign, after coming up short on money and placing 3rd in recent polls.

The numbers were about 35% for Doug Hoffman, the Club for Growth approved Neanderthal, 35% for Bill Owens, the Democratic candidate about whom I know nothing, and about 25% for Scozzafava.

Her name will remain on the ballot, which is, I think a message to Hoffman that he should go Cheney himself, but I’m an engineer, not a psychologist, dammit!*

I think that this puts Hoffman the live dead girl/live boy† favorite in the overwhelmingly Republican district now, though I think that there are a number of people who will vote for Scozzafava anyway, because they do not want to vote for Hoffman, who is a carpetbagger with absolutely no interest in the real issues of the district, but cannot bring themselves to pull the “D” lever.

*I LOVE IT when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!

†Edwin Edwards, when discovering that he would be facing David Duke in the Louisiana governor’s race, said that the the only way that he would lose were if he were, “caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy”.

A Coda on the Bank Failures

No Comments

If you plot annual rate of bank failures vs time of year, it looks like we might hit 150 bank failures this year.

With 7 Fridays to go, they won’t be doing a closing on Christmas, that’s an 5 failures a week until the end of the year.

My guess would be somewhat less, in the 135-145 failures through the end of the year though.

Note that the data at the start of the year is of a smaller grouping, so inherently noisier.

The trend from June on seems to be clear: that bank failures, which were at around 1½ a week, began accelerating, and it now looks to be averaging around 3/week.

It’s Bank Failure Friday!!!! ( On Saturday)

No Comments

And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

  1. Bank USA, N.A., Phoenix, AZ
  2. Community Bank of Lemont,Lemont, IL
  3. San Diego National Bank, San Diego, CA
  4. California National Bank, Los Angeles, CA
  5. Pacific National Bank, San Francisco, CA
  6. Park National Bank, Chicago, IL
  7. Citizens National Bank, Teague, TX
  8. Madisonville State Bank, Madisonville, TX
  9. North Houston Bank, Houston, TX

Great googly moogly, 9 banks…..That’s the most so far this year…..Last week’s 7 failures tied with the June 24 tally.

Full FDIC list

Except for that Whole Parachute Failure Thing…..

No Comments

So, the delayed launch of the Ares I launcher was deemed a success, except, of course, for the whole recovery parachutes failing and damaging the nominally reusable shuttle solid rocket booster derived first stage.

The first stage suffered some significant damage as a result of the failure, though, for now, at least, the rest of the flight is considered to be “nominal.”

I’ll wait for the full report.

Russia Planning Nuclear Rocket

1 Comment
Click for full size

Bimodal Nuclear Thermal Rocket

From the report, we are not talking about Orion, or direct thrust from nuclear heating, but rather some sort of electric propulsion system using electricity from a reactor for a proposed mission to Mars.

Something like ion drive, or plasma drive would likely cut transit time by at least ¾ for a manned trip to Mars, and if a ground base were established, a nuclear power supply would handle the reduced solar energy levels there.

I’d take this with a grain of salt, because the cost quoted for this is a bit over US $¾ billion, which sounds like a quote from Never Land.

Update on Saab Bribery Donations in Korea

No Comments

The allegations are rather different from the run of the mill bribery cases, where someone pays a government official to buy their products.

Instead, it is alleged that Saab paid bribes to get information on Korea’s indigenous fighter program, so as better to compete for business.

SAAB is denying this.

The core of the allegations is that the president of the Security Management Institute (SMI), a private research company, was invited to a trade seminar in Sweden, and that SAAB covered his expenses, to the tune of $17,200.

Me, I’m just confused.

Earlier post.

OK…….Count Me Dubious

No Comments
Click for full size

Slat Armor


TARIAN


RPG-30


RPG-30 in Action

There are a number of systems to deal with RPGs and similar threats, such as the US and Israeli active protection systems that shoot down incoming rounds, the slat armor used to predetonate HEAT rounds (shown, top), the cloth based TARIAN armor also used to predetonate armor (shown, Bottom), and now Textron has come up with the Tactical Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) Airbag Protection System (TRAPS), which uses sensors to detect an incoming round, and than uses an airbag to detonate the warhead far enough away from the hull to minimize damage. (no pictures, sorry)

There are a number of reasons that I am dubious.

The first is that it combines all the disadvantages of a passive system (single use) with those of an active system (expensive sensors), and also because it would appear to be particularly vulnerable to the tandem round system used in the RPG-30. (bottom 2 pictures)

I would also note that it does seem to suffer the same problem as all such systems developed under the Aegis* of the Pentagon:

The progress of TRAPS has not been as fast as one might expect. It was first unveiled at an Army trade show back in October 2006, after spending $3.5 million in Pentagon cash the previous year. Phase II testing is still to take place, and an operational system will be some way down the line. Janes notes the timing of the latest tests –- Textron is bidding to be part of the Army’s new Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) program.

It’s running late, and it appears to be over budget.

Ecuadorian Helo Crash Air Show

No Comments
Click for full size



They walked away from this?

Here is the video

Thankfully, there were only minor injuries at the crash, which occurred during an armed forced day celebration, but in keeping with my policy of never letting a crash with video and a happy ending go unnoticed, here it is.

I will say that it is kind of surreal how the marching band never misses a step in the video as the helo comes down.

H/t Graham Warwick

Economics Update

No Comments
Click for full size

Too True!
H/t Calculated Risk,
The Artist should have his website up shortly


Fannie Mae Single Family Delinquencies..OUCH

You know with this recession being over and all, maybe someone should tell the consumer, because consumer spending fell by 0.5% in September, the biggest drop in 9-months.

So consumers are skittish, as a new consumer sentiment survey, this time the Reuters / University of Michigan Survey of Consumer Sentiment Survey, fell in October, down to U Michigan survey, 70.6 from 73.5 in September.

So, that’s like 3 different consumer sentiment surveys that I’ve seen in the past 3 days, one up, and two down.

You have permission to be confused.

There are still a lot of people hurting out there, as shown by the Fannie Mae single family delinquency numbers for August. (see graph pr0n)

I am not seeing even a smidgen of a moderation there.

In the central bank world, the banks appear to be slowly walking back from the extreme measures that they took a year ago, with the Federal reserve re-instituting regulations that it suspended which allowed banks to supply capital to affiliates, which is generally a no-no, and the Bank of Japan is slowly pulling out of the credit markets.

Basically, they are trying to slow-walk their quantitative easing (printing money) measures.

It does not mean that they will be raising rates soon, but it does mean that there is a very gradual tightening of money going on.

In any case, the consumer spending numbers have rattled the markets, pushing US treasuries higher.

In stocks, the VIX, an index of stock volatility spiked upward by 24%, which indicates that market participants are expecting major swings in the stock market.

The bearish news today also pushed oil down, on demand concerns, and pushed the dollar up, on a flight to safety.

Ding Letter

No Comments

I will not be the Washington Post’s “Next Great Pundit”:

Thank you for entering the first season of the America’s Next Great Pundit contest. You didn’t make the judging easy for us. Not only did we get nearly 5,000 entries, but a great many of those entries were really quite excellent — smart, interesting, funny, well written and well argued. So while we’re sorry to say that we can’t include you as one of our ten finalists this time around, we hope this isn’t the last time we hear from you. We hope you’ll follow the rest of the contest and participate as voters. But even more important, we hope you’ll pitch us more of your work. The various ways you can send various types of pieces are outlined here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/21/AR2009042103705.html

Thanks again for giving this a try. We enjoyed reading.

Best,

The Editors

So it goes.

Not surprised. There are lots of folks who write and think better than I do.

I will note that the Post still publishes Krauthammer, Will, Applebaum, Broder…TANJ.*

In any case, congratulations to Burton Richter, Courtney Martin, Darryl Jackson, Jeremy Haber, Maame Gyamfi, Kevin Huffman, Mark Esper, Lydia Khalil, and Zeba Khan.

*Let me Google that for you.

Someone Was Trying to Steal Money

No Comments
Tin Foil Hat Time!

I don’t know if it was insider trading, or just the standard front-running that accompanies the high frequency trading out there, but the fact that the New York Stock Exchange was unable to report trades for much of the morning due to a flood of “erroneous” trades is a byproduct of some thing to do with the seamier side of the markets.

My guesses:

  • A software glitch on a machine doing computerized trading.
  • Someone trying to capitalize on inside information using high speed trading (which, BTW, the NYSE does not do HFT, so it gets odd).
  • A deliberate attempt to take down reporting so some sort of funny business could get done in the dark.

In any case, a lot of people were trading blind as a result, which makes for much potential for mischief:

NYSE Euronext (NYX.N)(NYX.PA), the parent of the exchange, said the delays followed “an inordinate influx” of orders received as Friday’s session got under way. Later in the session, the company had to temporarily transfer quote processing to a backup system before the problem was resolved around noon.

The exchange’s quote delays caused some tickers to be locked, but a NYSE spokesman said trades were continuous throughout.

“It was an influx of erroneous orders which were caught before they were executed,” said Ray Pellecchia. He could not say where the orders came from.

Yeah, and it could just be an ordinary f%$#-up, and I’m being a conspiracy nut.

Evil: A Cheney Family Traditon

No Comments

Yesterday, I mentioned Obama’s trip to Dover to pay his respects to the dead whose caskets were coming back that day.

I figured that at some point, some prominent Republican would try to cast it ad evil and sinister, and out of the gate comes Liz Cheney, on the John Gibson Show:

“I think that what President Bush used to do is do it without the cameras. And I don’t understand sort of showing up with the White House Press Pool with photographers and asking family members if you can take pictures. That’s really hard for me to get my head around…It was a surprising way for the president to choose to do this.”

Only, neither George W. Bush or…You know….Her Father ever went to pay their respects to the dead.

In fact, they were they supporessed any and all photographs, whether the family assented or not.

Here’s a Shocker

No Comments

It appears that Bank of America and its subsidiary Countrywide Home Loans are routinely destroying mortgage documents:

Bank of America and Countrywide Home Loans destroyed mortgage documents, and “recreate” them by “insert(ing) data as they see fit,” to cover up their own failure to keep records – or their fraud – according to a federal RICO class action.

“To cover up the servicing mistakes and fraud and misrepresentation in the servicing of a consumer escrow, Defendants ‘recreate’ letters, insert data as they see fit, and fail to produce the entire HUD complaint form. This way, a consumer is left in the dark about the fraud that occurred to them,” the complaint states.

Lead plaintiff Kim Gorham says that when she sent a letter seeking information about her escrow account, she was informed that it had been “destroyed by a letter opener.”

After repeated requests, Gorham, who is blind, received her purported escrow analysis, but it was “100 percent illegible,” according to the complaint. The defendants knew that Gorham was legally blind, the complaint states.

She says that getting a “clear and concise” statement from the defendants has been an “impossible task.”

Countrywide routinely responded to customers’ requests for records by claiming they were “unavailable or destroyed,” according to the complaint.

The lawsuit alleges that the records were destroyed, “in an attempt to suppress damaging information.”

While not every lawsuit has merit, and a defendant should be presumed innocent, this certainly justifies a hearty, “Hoocoodanode?”

BoA will be paying for acquiring Countrywide for decades to come.