Lt. Cdr. Diaz is the man who got the list of the Gitmo detainees out when Bush and His Evil Minions™ were illegally concealing this information from the International Red Cross (It’s called “disappearing”).
The National Press Club just gave him the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling.
He spent 6 months in the brig, and now the Pentagon is trying to take his law license.
Read the article from the always compelling Scott Horton.
The good general wrote to the Dean of the UC Berkely law school, regarding their hiring of war criminal John Yoo.
I wish I could write so well. The phrase, “Mengele Professor of Sado-Political Studies” is prize.
A shining interrogation center upon a hill
Christopher Edley, Jr
Professor of Law and Dean
School of Law
University of California, BerkeleyDear Dr. Edley,
I’m very impressed by your decision to hire former Justice Department official John Yoo to serve on your faculty. It was a very shrewd marketing move on your part. It allows Berkeley to finally get past its sordid history as the battleground for the expansion of our civil liberties and become the foremost advocate for that “shining interrogation center upon a hill” so many of us wish our nation to become.
Go read the rest.
Go Read his riff.
There is not a single instance of political discourse in the history of this nation in which the participants did not want to simply kick their opponent in the balls.
Matthew Yglesias, who I think is sometimes contrarian for its own sake, nonetheless nails it in this essay.
The best point for me is here:
For veteran Washington hands—wheelers and dealers in the lobbying game or at the major interest groups—the new system is worse than dull. It’s emasculating. This is why political elites find polarization so distasteful. In a polarized world, elections and procedural rules largely determine policy outcomes; there’s little room for self-styled players to construct coalitions on the fly, and enhance their own power in the process. The growth in the lobbying industry might seem to belie the point, but consider Tom DeLay’s post-1994 “K Street Project”—which pressured lobbying firms who wanted access on the Hill to hire more Republicans—or the swing of the pendulum back after the Democratic takeover in 2006. Power in Congress is firmly in the hands of the party leadership; lobbyists become less powerful, not more, in a polarized system.
The fact is that outside of the beltway, no one really cares what David Broder thinks, or what gets said at Sally Quinn’s parties, and if you have a political system in which party affiliation actually means something, neither do the members of Congress or the Executive branch.
They answer to the voters under those circumstances.
This is not just an indictment of Republican economic policy, it is also a also a critique of New Democrat Wall Street Loving economics:
...
The key lesson Americans need to learn from today’s troubles is how to distinguish faux prosperity from the genuine article. Over the past hundred years, we’ve experienced both. In the three decades after World War II we had the real thing. Led by our manufacturing sector, productivity increased at a rapid clip and median family incomes rose at a virtually identical rate. The value of the American work product grew significantly and that value was shared with American workers.
But we’ve had other periods of apparent prosperity that were based not on broad increases in personal income but on the inflation of assets. So it was with stocks in the late 1920s, a time when most Americans lacked substantial purchasing power. So it was with the dot-com bubble of the late ’90s. And so it was with the rising value of American homes in recent years.
In the broadest sense, the American economy over the past three decades has been powered by ever more ingenious extensions of credit to a people whose incomes were going nowhere, unless they were in the wealthiest 10 percent of the population. There were some limits, as a result of New Deal regulations, on how old-line banks could extend credit, but investment banks and other institutions not legally obliged to keep a certain amount of cash in reserve operated under no such constraints. The risk was that one day, burdened by debt and static incomes, American homeowners would have trouble making their payments and the house of cards would come tumbling down. But what were the odds of that?
Pretty good, it turns out. And out of this debacle emerge two paramount lessons for our highest-ranking policymakers: Regulate the American financial sector, which is now turning to the government for a bailout. And commit the government to doing all in its power to generate broad-based prosperity, through laws enabling workers to bargain collectively, through a massive public commitment to projects “greening” the economy, through provision of universal health coverage and affordable college educations.
…
Go read the whole thing.
Just don’t go to Robert Rubin’s house. You will feel an urge to spit on him.
Krugman notes that while the capital infusions of the Fed are in the $200 billion range, outstanding mortgages are in excess of $ 11 trillion, so the Fed bailout is about 1.8% of the mortgage market, and the number rapidly dwindles when examined in the context of other markets also in trouble.
The idea is not that the Fed will save these markets, but rather that the it will “slap the market in the face” to calm it down from hysteria, much like those old film noire detective movies.
Thing is, the Fed has done this twice, and it’s not working. What’s more, the interest rates that really matter to the economy, “The rates that matter most directly to the economy, including rates on mortgages and corporate bonds, have been rising”, because people are having to price an unknown level of uncertainty into their lending.
This is what is meant when it is said that the Fed is, “Pushing on a string”. It can lower rates all it wants, but the rates paid by businesses and individuals are now rising.
One of the things that I harp on, but that Krugman does not have the space to deal with in the constraints of a New York Times editorial, is the effect of the strength of the dollar on the Fed, and the effect of the Fed on the strength of the dollar.
Specifically, when the Fed cuts rates, it reduces the returns on the US dollar, which makes the currency less attractive, which drives the currency price down.
While this does help exports and reduces the advantages of imports, it also raises prices, because foreign dollars compete more for US products, like groceries (I posted about this in yesterday’s economics update).
So we are in a situation where we cannot win, and we cannot get out of the game.
*It’s one of the few Yiddish idioms that I grasp as a 3rd generation America Jew. Nu literally means yes, but, “so nu” means, “So tell me something I don’t already know”?
I only hope that I am never on the receiving end of his wonderfully savage sharp pen. It would scar me for life.
He writes on the Democratic primaries, and I won’t quote, because it has to be appreciated in its entirety, but the nickel version is, “stop whining and get to work.”
Glenn Greenwald has the scoop, and I need a drink.
Oh well, Purim is not that far away.
David Leonhardt at the times has a very good article on unemployment statistics, and it explains how it has become less accurate over time.
Consider this: the average unemployment rate in this decade, just above 5 percent, has been lower than in any decade since the 1960s. Yet the percentage of prime-age men (those 25 to 54 years old) who are not working has been higher than in any decade since World War II. In January, almost 13 percent of prime-age men did not hold a job, up from 11 percent in 1998, 11 percent in 1988, 9 percent in 1978 and just 6 percent in 1968.
It’s a good read, and better written than I can do.
Writing for The Hill, Markos Moulitsas, founder and proprietor of Daily Kos pens, “GOP’s flesh-eating zombie candidate.”
It’s a great title, and it is largely factually accurate, and this guy is contributing to the suffering of severe burn victims all over the country.
Go read it.
She has an article in the nation, Disowned by the Ownership Society, or as I like to refer to it, the Pwn3rsh1p society.
Go read it.
Here is a sample:
In November Nasdaq joined forces with several private banks, including Goldman Sachs, to form Portal Alliance, a private equity stock market open only to investors with assets upward of $100 million. In short order yesterday’s ownership society has morphed into today’s members-only society.
BTW, this private market will crash and burn, because there is no small investor left to hold the bag when the bubble bursts.
Technically, it’s Google docs, and I am not the genius who did it.
It explains the entire big sh#$pile debacle in simple and easy to understand terms.
It’s also funny as hell.
Eliot Spitzer, current Governor of, and former Attorney General for, the state of New York, has an editorial today that says just that.
Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.
Let me explain: The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers.
In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government’s actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules.
I don’t who care who wins the election in 2008. I want Eliot Spitzer to win the 2012 Presidential election as the Democratic nominee.
Read the whole thing
Note that this has been, for whatever reason, a busy news day, so this does not include news related to real estate or to the bond insurance crisis. Those will be posted later.
We have downward pressure on the dollar, because additional Fed rate cuts are anticipated.
Basically, the thought is that Fed rate cuts lead to lower interest rates, which make the dollar less attractive, because rates of return are less.
If I had the money, I would bet against this, because, as the latest rate cuts have showed, the Fed can no longer move rates down. We are in a Japan style liquidity trap.
We also have a type of investment that I have never heard of before, auction rate securities, which were sold as being as liquid as cash. They work by regularly re-auctioning the securities on a fairly frequent basis, allowing for people to sell easily, and for the rates to adjust to suit market conditions.
These are now becoming increasingly illiquid, with thousands of auctions failing, and Goldman Sachs refusing to let investors withdraw money from their investments when auctions fail to attract buyers.
UBS has notified its 8200 US brokers that it will not support these securities if the auction fails either.
FWIW, Paul Krugman has a very good editorial, even by his own ordinarily high standards, describing what is going wrong, and the consequences of this failure in terms that a layman like me can understand.
Related is the news that Citigroup is suspending withdrawals from its CSO Partners hedge fund.
In terms of the real economy, as opposed to high finance, we have the New York Federal reserve reporting that its Empire State Manufacturing Index fell nearly 21 points, from +9.03 in January to -11.72 in February. It was expected to fall, but only to +5.75.
The Financial Times is reporting that banks are being advised to walk away from the private equity deals that they are funding, because the penalties are far lower than the potential losses.
This would stop private equity buyouts in their tracks.
Care of The Big Picture:
The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.’
Well, I came across a blog posting from the marvelously named “Horse’s Ass” blog (and the story behind that name is a hoot) has suggested that Rudy Giuliani is the “Max Bialystock of Politics”.
If you’ve never seen Mel Brooks’ movie, The Producers, or the subsequent musical, you need to understand that Max Bialystock is an unsuccessful Broadway producer who realizes that he can make money by selling a few thousand percent of a production, and when it fails, no one will expect their money back.
So he chooses the wrong director, the wrong lead, the wrong play (Springtime for Hitler), and, of course, it turns out to be a smash hit, and his deception is revealed.
David “Goldy” Goldstein posits that Rudolph Giuliani did the same thing.
But could Giuliani and his high-paid strategists really have been that stupid? Or, is it possible that the Florida Strategy has actually worked exactly as planned?
While the rest of the presidential field were trudging through the snows of Iowa and New Hampshire, trading rhinoviruses with voters in diners and VFW halls throughout the heartland, Giuliani and his team were leisurely soaking up the rays in sunny Florida, making a few appearances, playing a little golf, and all the while laying claim to the Sunshine State’s winner-take-all primary. While Romney, McCain and Huckabee were emptying their campaign coffers duking it out in Nevada and Michigan and South Carolina, Giuliani apparently spent his $50 million-plus campaign war chest on what…? Sunscreen and greens fees? Two percent of the vote, and a single national delegate? According to media reports the Giuliani campaign is so broke his top staffers have foregone their salaries, raising questions of how he could have spent so much money for such poor results? But perhaps the better question might be, did he actually spend the money at all?
Think about it. Giuliani may be arrogant and vindictive and ethically challenged, but nobody’s ever accused the man of being stupid, so perhaps he and his advisers knew all along that he didn’t stand a chance on the national stage once Americans really got to know him. But just because he couldn’t win the White House didn’t mean he couldn’t make a little scratch on the side, and taking a lesson from Max Bialystock and Leo Bloom in Mel Brooks’ legendary The Producers, perhaps Giuliani realized he could make a helluva lot more money from a presidential flop than he ever could from a respectable run?
Go read the whole thing, it’s a hoot.
Hysterically funny.
Not even remotely work safe, but funny as hell.
This guy is a genius.
Have I mentioned that this is so unbelievably not safe for work that it buggers the mind?
Charlie Pierce on Altercation:
As I was watching the debate the other night — the Democratic one where Anderson Cooper came on afterwards and got to pretend to be Angelo Dundee — I was struck by Senator Obama’s resolute assertion that he was the candidate that can come to Washington and work with “independents and Republicans” to get things done. (One of his new ads has him sitting next to Dick Lugar, a Republican senator only slightly more relevant today than is Arthur Vandenberg.) I was struck even harder by it as I watched the Democratic Senate go supine, selling out poor Chris Dodd and the Constitution, and concocting retroactive alibis for the Telecom giants in a week where we finally got the empirical count of prewar Iraq lies. Here’s my deal with His Barackosity. Take the list of Republican congresscritters, House and Senate. Make me a list of 10 of them with whom you think you can work to achieve anything close to the progressive goals you have said you want to achieve. Give me an honest run, and I guarantee you that you can’t do it. You may get “something done” but it’s not going to have anything to do with anything resembling the values of the party you seek to represent. This is a party that has to be forcibly disenthralled from its lunatic base.
Let’s make it clear, Obama has a fairly unique background, and he’s a bright guy, he was the head of the bleeding Harvard Law Review.
He has been dazzling people for years to convince them to get his way, and if someone does not hate you with a blinding white hot passion, it frequently works.
Republicans live on that level of hate.
They hated Bill and Hillary, etc. too.