Or more accurately, negative net worth to the tune of something on the order of -$50 Billion each.
The only thing keeping them solvent is their banking of losses against future taxes.
They are going to fail….It’s that simple.
The only question is how, and who gets hosed.
H/t Barry Righoltz.
It appears that the short term sweetheart deals that Bush and His Evil Minions™ engineered are not sweet enough for the oil companies.
The theory was that these short term contracts would lock in, or nearly lock in, longer term more lucrative contracts, but it appears that the Iraqis were driving a hard bargain.
It appears that these folks can’t even pay their supporters in the oil bidness competently.
Details here.
As has been known for some time, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC) is underfunded as a result of pension obligations that it has had to assume over the past few years, and now its management is looking toward a more aggressive, and hence riskier, investment strategy.
It was 75% to 85% bonds and 15% to 25% in stocks, and it’s going to 45% stocks, 45% bonds, and 10% in “alternative investments”.
Alternative investments? What’s that, rare coins?
I’m a bear by nature, but to me it looks like this has EPIC FAIL written all over it.
The Wall Street Journal discusses the netroots campaign against Representative Chris Carney (D-PA 10), but they miss a big point: in 2006 Chris Carney lied though his teeth to get the support of Blue America, Moveon, etc. on any number of issues (the example that springs to mind is that he flipped flopped completely on sexual orientation based hate crimes legislation).
Carney has welded himself to George W. Bush in Congress, despite protestations to the contrary in 2006, and I approve of Blue America welding him to George W. Bush, “Mr. 29%,” back in his district.
AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka just cut Bob Rubin a new one:
Blaming unfettered global trade and inadequate government regulation for lost manufacturing jobs and a staggering economy, Trumka’s presentation cautions that “it will do us little good if, when the next Democrat moves into the White House, Wall Street takes command of our country’s economic policy.”
Trumka leaves no doubt that the rebuke is aimed at Rubin, Wall Street’s most prominent Democrat. It’s “hard to tell the difference” between Rubin and Republican Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, the presentation says. Trumka’s critique reflects the concern among organized-labor officials that Rubin and like- minded Democrats may win the behind-the-scenes battle to shape Obama’s economic thinking.
“I’m hearing Rubin’s name more and more associated with the campaign’s economic policy,” says James Torrey, a top Obama fundraiser and chief executive officer of New York-based Torrey Associates LLC, a hedge-fund investor.
Further down in the article, it notes that Obama is talking up a strong dollar policy, a shibboleth of Bob Rubin.
This is a bad sign, and not just because it indicates a tilt toward Rubin. It’s also no longer sustainable, and tremendously damaging to the economy, at least if you are not a big ticket stock broker like Bob Rubin.
The fact is that much of the Clinton administrations economic policy was driven by Rubin, and it was not Democratic Party economics, it was Eisenhower Republican economics, and the credit crunch is largely a function of these policies now coming home to roost.
Russia says that it is pulling troops out of Georgia, though Pentagon sources are disputing this.
My guess is that there is a withdrawal going on, the Russians don’t want to deal with an insurgency, but that it is proceeding with all deliberate slowness.
Aviation Week has analysis of the relative success of Georgian air defense systems (Paid Subscription Required), specifically of the SU Tu-22M3, and suggest that it was shot down because of Israeli aid in upgrading the Soviet era air defense systems.
Additionally, they note that the Georgian air defense system was less sophisticated, less networked, and less automated than the Syrian one, and as such, it may have been less vulnerable to the cyber attacks that were allegedly used by the Israelis when they struck the Syrian reactor complex.
Shades of Battlestar Galactica, the new one, not the old one.
As to the Su-25 losses, they suggest that these were shoulder launched SAMs, and I agree, as the Su-25 is really a close air support aircraft, which puts them in the sweet spot of such weapons.
There is nothing wrong with a psychologist participating in a legitimate military interrogation, but what the APA is debating now is whether psychologists should participate in torture.
Water-boarding, sleep deprivation, beatings, stress positions, extremes in temperature, threats to children…These are torture, and any psychologist, or for that matter any medical professional who aided in this, should never be licensed to practice medicine ever again.
Tsvangerai is insisting on real executive power as prime minister, which makes sense, as he won the election, but this is a major sticking point, which is why the SADC summit ended without a deal.
So the SADC is pressuring Tsvangerai to cut a deal with Mugabe that does not involve real power for the MDC, with the threat that the splinter MDC-Mutambara would ally with the ZANU-PF in parliament otherwise, which indicates to me that the SADC, or some of the members of the SADC, don’t really care about the quality of governance in Zimbabwe, they just want the problem to go away.
Additionally, the FBI will be releasing more evidence to buttress their claims.
Personally, I’m not as concerned about the timeline to mail the letter from New Jersey as the complete lack of evidence of weaponization equipment or experience.
It’s clear that he could lyophilize (freeze dry) his anthrax, but then it would have to be milled in some manner to a very small particle size, and then coated with a substance that gives it a static charge so that it would aerosolize well, and this was not something done at the lab.
It looks like concerns about GSEs are roiling the markets again, so one wonders when the government will nationalize Fannie and Freddie.
It won’t happen under Bush and His Evil Minions™, needless to say, but I see it as inevitable for the next president.
Meanwhile, energy is still trending downwards, with oil falling as the path of Fay becomes clearer, and gasoline falling fo the 32nd straight day.
The dollar is down a bit, but I’m not sure if this is a pause in a rally as people take profits, or a change in direction.
In any case, it looks like labor day air travel is going to be way down, yet another sign of the slowing economy, and the fact that airlines have become so bloody awful.
Finally, home prices in the UK fell by 4.8% year over year, showing again just how well the “Anglo Saxon Model” of capitalism works when things go bad.
When we talk about how the falling dollar has increased exports, they rarely note what it is that the US actually exports.
We are exporting, “decidedly low-luster commodities like corn, wheat, ore and scrap metal. Commodities are 42% of export increase in the first half of 2008, and manufactured goods, only 12% (Note that this is only the percentage of the delta, percentage of the whole is 26% commodities and 40% manufactured goods).
Part of the reason for this is that much of the manufacturing capability of the US no longer exists. It has been shut down and either shipped overseas or sold as scrap, so there are very real limits to the degree that US manufacturing can take advantage of the dollar in the short term.
He, of course, paraphrases Senator Joseph Biden, when he says, “A Noun, A Verb, POW in response to the story that John McCain was in a position to hear the questions that Saddleback church pastor Rick Warren put to Barack Obama, and so get a leg up on his responses.
The response to the allegations from McCain Spokesman Nicolle Wallace:
The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous.
A noun, a verb, and POW.
That should be a talking point from the Obama campaign, but direct it at the McCain campaign, not at the candidate, so it won’t seem disrespectful.
And it looks like he’s going to Saudi Arabia, assuming that he does not have an “unfortunate accident”, and the people who would benefit from his silence are too numerous to name, on the way there.
Of course, this makes things far more difficult for the Pakistani government, because now the electorate will expect them to fix the problems in their country.
Certainly the ability to launch their own satellites is a capability that most nations desire, though I would note that a rocket that can put 100 lbs in low earth orbit could most likely put a 1000 lb warhead on a sub-orbital flight to almost anywhere on earth, based on my limited sens of orbital mechanics.
That being said, the Pentagon is saying that they doubt that the launch was successful.
I wonder if any of the mercenaries will become a witness for the prosecution….Rats and sinking ship, after all.
If so, this should get interesting.
In response to the fact that his apartment rental in DC is at well below market rates, and does not include utilities from a lobbyist, he is saying that, “I gotta tell you, people of Minnesota actually appreciate the fact that I live humbly as a senator — that I’m not living the way some people think senators live.”
The classic definition of Chutzpah is killing your parents and asking for mercy as an orphan. Norm Coleman may very well have beat that classic out.
What a bloody weasel.
Because OPEC is talking about output cuts to stabilize the price.
I don’t think that they will allow it to break $100/bbl.
They call him Dr. Doom.
It’s a rather nice profile of Dr. Roubini, though I agree with Paul Krugman that his prediction of a housing crash was hardly unique, and that they missed what was special about his predictions, that there would be as Krugman says, “there would be large “knock-on” effects from the bursting bubble on the financial system”, i.e. the credit crunch as we are currently experiencing it.
Interestingly enough, it looks like the crisis will exceed Roubini’s most pessimistic projections, which is kind of scary.
He served 1½ years of a 2½ year sentence. He was given time off for entering an alcohol treatment program.
I wonder how long before he starts doing the Sunday morning gasbag pundit circuit.
One wonders if this “slip” in an interview is a Freudian slip, or intentional:
If you look at folks of color, even women, they’re more successful in the Democratic Party than they are in the white, uh, excuse me, in the (chuckles) Republican Party, because we just give more opportunity to folks who are hard-working people who are immigrants and come from members of minority groups.
I’m hoping intentional.
In either case, I’m Matthew Saroff, and I approve of Chairman Dean’s message.