‘Moby-Dick’ to be Rewritten in Emoticons
Someone needs to get a f$%#ing life.
Author: Matthew G. Saroff
Why I Refer to Republican Jews as Kapos*
Two Republican county chairmen in South Carolina penned an editorial praising Senator Mike DeMint.
Of course, they chose the most sensitive terms to rebut the accusation that Senator DeMint had not brought home enough in earmarks:
There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves. By not using earmarks to fund projects for South Carolina and instead using actual bills, DeMint is watching our nation’s pennies and trying to preserve our country’s wealth and our economy’s viability to give all an opportunity to succeed.
(emphasis mine)
A note to my Republican Jewish friends. They aren’t wearing stylish hoodies, they are Klan robes.
*Refers to the concentration camp prisoners who were made trustees, and put in charge of other prisoners. Their brutality frequently shocked the SS guards.
Why Tax and Trade (Cap and Trade) is a Really Bad idea
In just one headline:
Private Capital Looks To Cash In On Carbon Trading
Yep, letting the hedgies in on this is such a good idea.
New York State Senator Hiram Monserrate Convicted on Misdemeanor
He was acquitted of slashing his girl-friend’s face, not surprising, given that she was testifying on his behalf, but, “convicted of misdemeanor assault for dragging her through the lobby of his apartment building, which was caught on the building’s security cam.
It should be noted that some members of the State Senate, mostly Democrats, are calling for his ouster, while the Republicans are largely silent on this.
It’s not surprising, as Republicans would still be down by one vote 31-30 if Monserrate were to leave, and so, unlike the national Republicans, they are keeping their mouths shut, knowing that this is a lose-lose for the Democrats.
UN Fraud Inquiry Calls for Runoff in Afghanistan
So, it turns out that the ECC threw out nearly 1/3 of the ballots cast for Karzai, and the US government is saying that it cannot make a decision about more troops until the matter is resolved.
My guess is that Karzai will accept a runoff, and that he will probably win, as he has extensive support from the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan, as well as a bureaucracy that will be firmly supporting him in the balloting.
You Can Take the Clue Train
Someone else can filk the rest of the song, but it appears that even the Blue dogs are starting to get a clue:
At this moment, all Democratic politicians, even the most conservative, are realizing that their voters will blame them, not the insurance companies, if the policies the voters are required to buy are so expensive that premiums consume over 20 percent of those voters’ annual incomes. Suddenly, more generous tax subsidies to cover middle-class premiums seem like a good idea. And if the public option can bring down the cost of premiums those subsidies have to pay for, then the overall size of the reform price tag can be kept under control – a long time demand of moderate Democrats.
(emphasis mine)
Yeah. It took a while, but the Blue Dogs now realize that most people hate their insurance companies.
Hoocoodanode?
Quote of the Day
Will Bunch notes that a number of so called liberal pundits have gone after Barack Obama:
Kind of reminds me of all those conservative columnists who gave Bush a honeymoon in those early months of 2001 but eventually went after him when it became clear that he’d invaded another country for bogus reasons, was assaulting the civil liberties of Americans and bankrupting the national treasury with unnecessary tax cuts at a time of proflagate spending.
Remember those columnists?
Me neither.
(emphasis mine)
Too true.
Least Shocking Factoid of the Day
It turns out that, despite the protestations of the banks, that they were hip deep in the subprime mortgage debacle.
It wasn’t just all those evil mortgage brokers, etc.
The banks protesting that they were leaving money on the table, is like claims made by WWE that pro wrestling is real.
Economics Update
Click for full size
Commercial Real Estate Prices
Home Builder Confidence Graph Pron Courtesy Calculated Risk
Ummm…If you think that the real estate implosion is done, then you haven’t been following commercial real estate (CRE), where prices fell 3% in August, about a 42% annual rate,* though the year over year decline was “just” 32%, and it’s down 41% from its peak in 2007.
Remember, commercial mortgages typically come due after 5 years, so we are going to see a lot of folks defaulting on CRE mortgages as their time comes up, because they will be under water.
It’s no wonder that the National Association of Home Builders’ Confidence Index has fallen, particularly when juxtaposed with the expiration of the let’s reinflate the bubble first time home buyer’s tax credit at the end of November.
Note that to qualify for the credit, you must close before November 30, which means that if you buy now, you are starting to cut it close.
Still investors seem to be sanguine about economic prospects, as they are pulling out of US Treasuries and the dollar while crude oil hit a 1-year high.
*The joys of compound interest. 3% a month over 12 months is not 36%, it’s 1.0312=1.42=42%.
You Call This a Good Start
A Rich Guy Being Frog Marched in HandcuffsIt makes me feel good
It appears that US Attorney for New York has come up with a new way to enforce the laws against stock fraud, by going after them as if they were members of organized crime, with things like court ordered wiretaps, which were used to bring an indictment against Raj Rajaratnam, the head of the Galleon Group hedge fund.
The thing is, it is organized crime, it requires an enormous amount of…well…organization to pull off insider trading schemes:
Mintz said the alleged $20 million scheme is the most elaborate insider-trading ring discovered since the 1980s when the government began using criminal laws to prosecute such allegations.
“This was an extensive web of insider trading built upon years of contacts and strategically placed people,” the former prosecutor said. “Typically, insider trading cases are much more narrowly focused on some significant deal that’s leaked from one or two sources. The more people who have knowledge, the more potential that the scheme will be uncovered.”
There are dozens of people involved who have to know what is going on, and who must either actively aid, or actively ignore the activity for it to go forward when it is much more than an individual who has foreknowledge of a single event and then buys or sells based on this, as was the case, for example, with Martha Stewart.
One thing to be noted here is that this is about what would be considered pennies, it amounts to about $20 million for a man worth well over a billion dollars, and so, on a deep level, it makes little sense: Why risk decades in jail for something that might net less than 2% of your total net worth.
Here is what going on, I think. Rajaratnam, and Galleon made their money through insider trading, and simply, he continued to do so once he was a made man.
One hopes that as prosecutors dig into this, they get more people to roll over, and they expand their investigation.
RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, as well as an aggressive use of aggressive asset forfeiture laws would spread the net further and wider.
The days of a Michael Millikan doing his 22 months and leaving prison fabulously wealthy should be a thing of the past.
Righteous
Let’s add Dylan Ratigan to the list of people who belong in in the Legion of People You Really Do Not Want To F%$# With (LOPYRDNWTFW), which so far includes Rachael Maddow, Roger Ebert, Stephen Colbert, the folks at 4Chan, Alan Grayson, Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart, and (of course) Jon Stewart.
Here he completely owns US Chamber of Commerce head, and right wing hack, Tom Donohue.
More Ass Covering by the Fed
As I have noted before, now that Congress is looking at having an agency dedicated to protecting consumers from the worst excesses of the banking industry, and the Federal Reserve Feels believes that this role belongs to it.
Of course, the history of the Fed over the past 40+ years is that they believe in dismantling consumer protections, so their record is less than stellar.
In response to numerous proposals which would make consumer protection more formal in financial markets, which they see as a reduction in their bailiwick, they have continued to make “a day lat and a dollar short” regulations in an an attempt to convince Congress that they do not need to assign this task to some other agency.
Case in point, is how, after decades of skyrocketing fees and increasingly punitive “overdraft protection” schemes, Bernanke and his merry band have decided to clamp down on overdraft fees:
The Federal Reserve is likely to soon pass new rules making it harder for banks to hit customers with fees for overdrawing their accounts, a top official told a Senate subcommittee Wednesday.
Note that it appears that these rules will require that banks have customers positively affirm their desire to opt in to overdraft protection.
It’s amazing what the prospect of some regulatory competition will do to a bureaucracy.
Earlier posts on the subject here.
Quote of the Day, Republican Values Edition
Courtesy of Talking Points Memo:
I’m going to go way out on a limb here: Professional wrestling and necrophilia have never come up together in a political campaign before today.
Josh Marshall discussing the storied past of current Republican Senatorial candidate, and former WWE CEO Linda McMahon.
During her tenure as head of WWE, there were sketches featuring, “wrestlers engaged in a simulated rape, a public sex scene, and one depicting a wrestler having sex with a corpse.”
The only possible defense to the accusation that Ms. McMahon is a purveyor of smut and perversion would be that she has no control over the content because pro wrestling is real.
Good luck selling that.
God Bless the Internet
So, Charlie wanted help with instructions on how to construct a 4-braid Challah, a braided bread that is traditionally a part of festive Jewish meals, and I had no clue on how to do this.
So, I Googled it, and not only did I find instructions, I found a video.
Kewl.
My Head Hurts
This is why I never got into high energy physics, because this is too weird for me:
Two physicists recently suggested that the Large Hadron Collider may have malfunctioned because a Higgs boson particle, travelling back in time from a future experiment, wrecked the machine.
I hate when that happens.
You Mean They Were Still Playing
So, it appears that the band A-Ha is splitting up after 25 years.
I was never much on their big hit as a song, Take Me On, but the video was great:
I listened to the album Hunting High and Low, which is where the song came from when I was borrowing a car. The rest of the songs seemed a lot better, and had more substance
Go figure.
One other note, the actress in this is the quintessential big hair 1980s chick.
Barack and Rahm Need to Get Over Themselves
So, as a result of putting Republicans (Olympia Snow) and insurance whore DINOs in the driver’s seat in the Senate, the White House is getting flack from Gerry McEntee, the president of AFSME, and the Obama and His Stupid Minions™ are describing this behavior as, “gratuitous slaps.”
Tough noogies, kids. The Obama administration has been running the process on healthcare reform, and pretty much everything else as a war on the “Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party”, and somehow they are surprised when a Union President, would oppose what is literally a tax on his members just because Obama is desperate to put his name on something … anything … that he can call health care reform.
We need more of what Mr. McEntee is doing, not less.
H/t AMERICAblog.
More Pigs Flying on Financial Regulation
So, the politically connected academic who has made millions selling access to Wall Street banks, Larry Summers, has decided that real systemic regulation is necessary in the American financial system:
“Financial institutions that have benefited from government support can, should and must use this moment to think about what they can do for their country — by accepting the necessary regulation to protect the American people,” Summers said in remarks prepared for delivery at the Economist’s Buttonwood Gathering in New York. “There is no financial institution that exists today that is not the direct or indirect beneficiary of trillions of dollars of taxpayer support for the financial system.”
What’s more, his comments appear to be a part of deliberate push-back from the White House against the financial sector, where unnamed officials are describing themselves as “frustrated“.
Given who is working this issue *cough* Geithner and Summers *cough*, I have to conclude that this is being driven by political considerations, Obama has finally realized the depth and breadth of the anger against the banks and their lavish pay packages, and understands that there is a real political cost, one that will be born by the Democratic Party generally, and Barack Obama in particular, if the Wall Street banks continue to be what they are.
So, We Just Learned Something About the Abortion Nut Who Got Shot
I posted about it when James L. Pouillon got killed, and it now appears that his family speaks, at least his son, James L. Pouillon, and it ain’t pretty:
It will be impossible for some to believe, but my dad really didn’t care about aborton.
He did this to stalk, harass, terrorize, scream at, threaten, frighten, and verbally abuse women. He had a pathologic hatred of women: his mom, my mom, everyone.
After my mom finally left him and he lost his favorite punching bag the violence and abuse that was always contained within our 4 walls was unleased on the people of Owosso.
My dad used the pro-life movement and 1st Amendments foundations to defend him, support him, and enable him. He fooled them all.
He was at the high shool because my niece was there, and female family members were always his favorite targets.
Again, my dad didn’t care about abortion. He wanted to hurt people, upset people. He enjoyed making people suffer.
His goal was to be shot on a sidewalk. His goal was to make someone so angry, to make them feel so terrorized, to make them feel the only way they could make him stop was to kill him.
His pro-life stance was the most perfect crime I personally know of. He hid behind the 1st Amendment and was allowed to stalk, terrorise, harass, be obsene, ect. These things are crimes. Offending people isn’t a crime, and having different political views isn’t a crime, but he committed several crimes over the last 20 years and got away with it.
Yes I really am his oldest son. Owosso is now rid of a mad man.
One wonders if he is the exception rather than the rule for right wing extremists.
I’m Agreeing with Richard Shelby?
It’s true. As a part of updating financial regulations, Senator Shelby is trying to change the way in which the presidents of the Federal Reserve district banks are selected, by removing the ability of the lending institutions subject to that Fed bank to nominate their new president, he correctly notes that, “Any institution that is going to be involved in any way picking their regulator is not good policy.”
As to the current governance structure:
Each of the 12 Fed district banks has a nine-member board that includes three bankers, three non-bankers chosen by banks and three non-banker directors picked by the Fed’s Senate- confirmed governors in Washington. The directors nominate a president who is approved by the Board of Governors. The presidents vote on interest-rate decisions on a rotating basis, with New York having a permanent vote.
The idea that banks can hand pick one of their primary regulators has always been a bad idea, so I would go further, and remove banks from selecting the directors of the regional banks too.
While we are at it, how about shortening the terms of members. It’s currently 14 years, and it’s too long, and makes the board far to unresponsive and insular.
Additionally, one of the controls on the behavior of the Fed is meaningful criticism of its actions in academic economic publications, but the central bank has control over most of the academic economic publications, because so many of the editors out there are also on the Federal Reserve payroll, so a legal injunction prohibiting anyone working for the fed from acting as an editor of an economics journal would be a good thing.