Well, we are now hearing that Ford is putting Volvo on the auction block, and that GM is looking to do the same with SAAB.
In truth Ford-Volvo is a bigger deal than GM-SAAB, as Volvo automobile has a much larger reach (the commercial vehicles/trucks are still owned by Volvo Group).
Hank Paulson and His Evil Minions™ are looking at bailing out private student loan issuers with TARP money:
Student advocacy groups are urging the Treasury Department to prevent a new $200 billion consumer-lending program from benefiting private student lenders, which they say are largely unregulated and prey on students with risky, high-interest loans.
The program, announced this week and developed by the Treasury and Federal Reserve, is not aimed specifically at the student loan market. Its much broader goal is to encourage lending to consumers — including car loans, credit card debt and student loans — as well as help the financial system by increasing liquidity in the credit markets.
But groups including Consumers Union, the nonprofit group that publishes Consumer Reports magazine, and the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers say the money will also help prop up private student-loan providers, which often offer high and variable interest rates but not the consumer protections guaranteed under the federal government’s loan programs.
These people are sleaze merchants, and they victimize the students in question and the taxpayers, in addition to having been caught bribing school financial aid officials.
Sallie Mae, the nation’s largest lending company, has offered private loans with an average interest rate of 11 to 13 percent, nearly twice as much as federal loans, according to Student Lending Analytics, a California-based firm that advises financial aid offices. It said Sallie Mae, which is based in Reston and controlled 42.5 percent of the private student loan market last year, has offered some private loan variable rates that are more than 17 percent.
Tom Joyce, a spokesman for Sallie Mae, said the average rate now is between 10 and 11 percent, around what most banks are charging for private student loans, which are not subsidized and government-guaranteed like federal loans. “The comparison to federal student loan rates is unfair and artificial,” he wrote in an e-mail. “The comparison should be to borrowing on a credit card or other unsecured loans.”
Only, of course, these loans cannot be discharged through bankruptcy, and they are guaranteed by taxpayers, so they are completely different from credit card loans.
Can you imagine an industry so f$#%ed up that it compares itself to the credit card industry in regards to how ethically it treats its customers?
Well, you don’t have to, because reality has met you, and smacked you in the face with a rancid halibut.
Bush was interviewed by Charlie Gibson:
BUSH: I don’t know — the biggest regret of all the presidency has to have been the intelligence failure in Iraq. A lot of people put their reputations on the line and said the weapons of mass destruction is a reason to remove Saddam Hussein. It wasn’t just people in my administration; a lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence. And, you know, that’s not a do-over, but I wish the intelligence had been different, I guess.
Let’s see, we have documents from the British saying that your intel was complete ballocks, the French thought that it was complete ballocks, the Germans thought that it was complete ballocks, the Israelis thought that it was complete ballocks.
You systematically excluded anything that did not support your wish to invade Iraq, and you, and the rest of your Evil Minions&trade should all be on your way to the Hague.
That is what an anonymous author of an editorial in the Washington Post wrote today.
He notes the breakthroughs that he made by using psychological measures designed to build rapport with the detainees, up to and including getting the information used to successfully hunt down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
But that was never the norm in Iraq.
He describes a situation where sadism for its own sake is actively encouraged. It is reports of torture that bring in the foreign fighters to Iraq:
Torture and abuse are against my moral fabric. The cliche still bears repeating: Such outrages are inconsistent with American principles. And then there’s the pragmatic side: Torture and abuse cost American lives.
I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It’s no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me — unless you don’t count American soldiers as Americans.
(emphasis mine)
The answer, of course, is that Republicans don’t count American soldiers as Americans, because, after all, “they all volunteered,” so they demand torture because it makes them feel smug and superior.
This time on the effect that zero down, negative equity and other risky mortgages might have if allowed to continue:
The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.
“Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories,” California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job.
Bowing to aggressive lobbying — along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK — regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was under way.
They soft pedaled Saudi involvement in terrorism both before and after 911 because the House of Saud is an FOB (Friend of Bush), and they soft pedaled sleazy mortgage agents because they gave money to Republithugs.
That’s what it’s all about for them.
It appears that there is a kosher meat shortage as a result of Agriprocessors’ collapse.
I guess that this hits me where I live, as we keep kosher, but considering the labor law violations, hiring illegals and child labor, in their slaughterhouse, good riddance.
Agriprocessors are a shanda before the Goyim.
Well it now appears that the merger of Bank of America and Countrywide Financial so aggressively pushed by Bank of America CEO and President Kenneth D. Lewis is finally bearing some fruit.
Unfortunately, it appears to be fruit of the toxic variety, as investors who hold mortgage backed securities of the former subprime lender are suing to demand their repurchase at full face value:
On Monday, a hedge fund sued the Countrywide Financial Corporation, the giant mortgage lender, demanding that Countrywide compensate holders of some securities backed by mortgages if the lender changes the terms of the loans.
The fund, Greenwich Financial Services, said it and other investors stood to lose money if Countrywide, now part of Bank of America, modified loans under a settlement that it reached with 11 state attorneys general in October.
Seriously, what were you thinking when you turned over the rock that was Countrywide Financial, saw the slime that lay beneath, and started to eat that, Mr. Lewis?
The problem with superstar multimillion dollar CEOs is that they don’t think that the basic rules of reality apply to them.
Trust Gary Brecher to cut to the chase:
So what you see here is something economists would understand as well or better than traditional military analysts. I hate to sound cold-blooded, putting it this way, but what happened is that Pakistan’s Islamists had a surplus of raw labor, and thought of a way to get it to a place where it maximized its global value in terms of pure blood and destruction.
It is remarkable just how badly Carter and Brezinski’s purchase of a civil war in Afghanistan in the 1970s has screwed up that entire region.
Go read the rest.
It appears that the The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has issued a statement commending the US and UK central banks for following its lead: See also here):
As Monetary Authorities, we have been humbled and have taken heart in the realization that some leading Central Banks, including those in the USA and the UK, are now not just talking of, but also actually implementing flexible and pragmatic central bank support programmes where these are deemed necessary in their National interests.
That is precisely the path that we began over 4 years ago in pursuit of our own national interest and we have not wavered on that critical path despite the untold misunderstanding, vilification and demonization we have endured from across the political divide.
Yet there are telling examples of the path we have…For instance, when the USA economy was recently confronted by the devastating effects of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, as well as the Iraq war, their Central Bank stepped in and injected life-boat schemes in the form of billions of dollars that were printed and pumped into the American economy.
(emphasis in original central bank statement)
I don’t know about you, but I’m very relieved that a bank that has engineered a 231 million percent inflation rate (and that’s just the official number) has endorsed our monetary policy.
President elect Obama rolled out his new national security team: (cut and paste from the Washington Independent)
An interesting side story on all this is that
Hillary Clinton will not resign until she is confirmed.
My guess is that notwithstanding the famous collegiality of the Senate, she figures that there is at least one Republican willing do pull the secret hold crap, either to screw with her or Bill, and she just sent a message to them that if they do, she will be in the room with them for a long time.
The one of the main bloggers on Calculated Risk has died of ovarian cancer at age 47.
The New York Times Obit.
Where the hell did manufacturing go?
Seriously, with the ISM’s factory index falling faster than it has in 20 years in the US, and similar gauges dropping like epileptic ducks in the UK, Euro Zone, and Chine, I’m expecting global manufacturing’s face to show up on a milk carton.
If there is any solace, it is that oil prices fell on reports that OPEC is holding off on further cuts for now, as did retail gasoling (75th straight day!).
Meanwhile, another indicator of the credit crunch Treasury yields, are still plumbing record lows, indicating that money is still too frightened to do anything.
Yes, Virginia, we are officially in recession, and we have been since December, 2007.
What took the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) so long?
Well, we now have a report from Canada that the Liberal Party and the New Democratic Party have agreed to form a coalition, and that the Bloc Québécois has agreed to be a part of the government too.
Because of this they have asked that the current minority Conservative government be dissolved, as they constitute a majority of the Canadian Parliament, as 77 Liberal + 37 NDP + 49 BQ is 164 of the 308 seats.
I’m not sure how long this would last. The Liberal Leader, Stephane Dion, would be the interim PM, but he announced his resignation as party leader following the recent election, so the new leader would replace him. (more on the machinations here)
Of note is the fact that this would be the first time that the NDP would actually be officially a part of a government.
The Conservatives are screaming Coup, but they got neither a majority of the seats nor a majority of the popular vote.
I think that the proximate cause is a recognition by the Conservatives that with Obama in the White House, one of their main claims to legitimacy, being uniquely positioned to maintain a good relationship with the US President, is no longer operative, so they have tried to impliment some of the more radical elements of their agenda in the expectation that they would lose in the next election:
….Transport Minister John Baird said the minority government won’t try to eliminate federal civil servants’ right to strike over the next couple of years, as pledged in last week’s economic update.
On Saturday, Baird also announced the government had shelved its contentious plan to eliminate political party subsidies that are based on the number of votes received during elections. Parliament is due to vote on a Liberal no-confidence motion on Dec. 8.
The subsidies in question are public financing of campaigns.
Also, Harper is refusing to submit a real stimulis package for the Canadian economy.
In the process, I think that he has gotten the 3 other parties freaked out enough to work together.
Trying to post via my cell phone is a pain.
The Blazer browser that comes with Palm OS is kind of limited.
Anyone have any suggestions?
I’m looking for better Javascript support, the ability directly bookmark a link, and the ability to view a page’s HTML.
Bumper to bumper, topping out at 20 mph….sigh.
It looks like Rolls Plans ‘is looking hard at a “puller configuration” for it’s advanced propfan. (paid subscription required)
They believe that the issues involved in mounting the fan in the immediate vicinity of hot exhaust from the core are challenging, so they are looking at a more conventional “turboprop like” layout.
Of course, it’s all tradeoffs, as the “puller” configuration has issues of the interaction between the prop wash and the pylons and inlets too, which need to be carefully managed to handle noise, which is generally considered to be the Achilles heel of propfans.
I understand that the political appointees in the State Department may wish it otherwise, but the rest of the world understands that Bush and His Evil Minions™ are lame ducks, and they want no part of any of initiatives.
Case in point, the latest IAEA runing on the Syrian nuclear program:
The U.N. atomic agency approved a contested Syrian bid for nuclear aid on Wednesday, overcoming U.S.-led resistance to the project while Damascus is under investigation for covert activity that could lead to atom bombs.
The United States, Canada and Australia mounted last minute objections to a compromise deal on the project but finally joined a consensus in favor since they could not have won if they forced a rare vote by International Atomic Energy Agency governors, diplomats in the closed meeting said.
(emphasis mine)
They matter very little now. On January 20, they do not matter at all.
Full disclosure: I have not read Atlas Shrugged. I do not intend to do so, The Virtue of Selfishness in high school was enough unpleasantness for me.
All I have read is the Wiki, and a few excerpts.
That being said, this made me laugh to hard that I think that I broke something.
Atlas Shrugged Updated for the Current Financial Crisis.
BY JEREMIAH TUCKER
– – – –1.
“Damn it, Dagny! I need the government to get out of the way and let me do my job!”
She sat across the desk from him. She appeared casual but confident, a slim body with rounded shoulders like an exquisitely engineered truss. How he hated his debased need for her, he who loathed self-sacrifice but would give up everything he valued to get in her pants … Did she know?
“I heard the thugs in Washington were trying to take your Rearden metal at the point of a gun,” she said. “Don’t let them, Hank. With your advanced alloy and my high-tech railroad, we’ll revitalize our country’s failing infrastructure and make big, virtuous profits.”
“Oh, no, I got out of that suckers’ game. I now run my own hedge-fund firm, Rearden Capital Management.”
“What?”
He stood and adjusted his suit jacket so that his body didn’t betray his shameful weakness. He walked toward her and sat informally on the edge of her desk. “Why make a product when you can make dollars? Right this second, I’m earning millions in interest off money I don’t even have.”
He gestured to his floor-to-ceiling windows, a symbol of his productive ability and goodness.
“There’s a whole world out there of byzantine financial products just waiting to be invented, Dagny. Let the leeches run my factories into the ground! I hope they do! I’ve taken out more insurance on a single Rearden Steel bond than the entire company is even worth! When my old company finally tanks, I’ll make a cool $877 million.”
Their eyes locked with an intensity she was only beginning to understand. Yes, Hank … claim me … If we’re to win the battle against the leeches, we must get it on … right now … Don’t let them torture us for our happiness … or our billions.
He tore his eyes away.
…..
There is more, go read.