Category: Good Writing

Jerome Armstrong Has the Definitive Word on Obama

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The “Blogfather” just put his finger on my problem with Obama, and I did not realize that I hadn’t gotten what was wrong already.

Once again, someone who writes better than I ever will.

Barack Obama is lacking in the most basic experience of a presidential candidate: He has never run a real campaign against a Republican.

His state senate races were in a safe Dem district, and for Senate, he ran against Alan F###ing Keyes.

All of his real political campaigns have been against Democrats, in the primaries.

….

This questionnaire in and of itself is just one thing, but Obama’s response to it coming out is unsettling in it’s pattern of positioning himself above the partisan fray. Obama has never faced a serious Republican challenge. Not one. Obama has no experience of the hostile and polarized political environment that he’d enter were he to win the nomination, and he has distanced himself from partisan Democrats during his campaign for the nomination. I don’t think it’s spin to question how Obama might actually do once he confronts Republicans on the campaign trail, instead of across the table in those bipartisan negotiations he longs for making happen.

My guess is that, once he’s personally experienced the confrontation of the Republican machine, it would totally transform the way Obama views campaigns. Rather than viewing partisan progressives as something to Sister Soulja while he appeases the non-partisan media machine, he would come to realize the value, in today’s partisan environment, of engaging partisan Democrats as part of his campaign. He’d prepare to battle with us, rather than trash us as tokens of the past.

….

For Democrats that think about how a campaign might position itself best to win, the question really comes down to this: Do you believe that this nation is going to transcend partisan politics in 2008?

(emphasis mine)

I disagree on only one point, the media machine is not non-partisan. It’s had it’s tongue up the right wing’s ass for way too long.

Hillary might win. She is the most vetted candidate in history, and she understands the war, and even savors it a bit.

Edwards would win. He has been blooded by the 2004 election, and his own contentious senate campaign.

Obama can’t win. The press loves him right now, because he sucks up to them, and the ‘Phants are keeping their powder dry. He is bringing a knife to a gun fight.

Krugman on the Bush/Paulson Mortgage Rate Freeze

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Once again, he nails it. The Bush/Paulson program isnot about fixing the problem, it’s about making sure that no one else does, or as Dr. Krugman puts it:

In particular, the Paulson plan is probably an attempt to take the wind out of Barney Frank’s sails. Mr. Frank, the Democratic chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has sponsored legislation that would give judges in bankruptcy cases the ability to rewrite mortgage loan terms. But “Bankers Hope Bush Subprime Plan Will Scuttle House Bill,” as a headline in CongressDaily put it.

As it currently stands, a bankruptcy judge cannot rewrite the terms of a mortgage, but Frank’s legislation would allow that.

He makes a compelling case that this is about protectinb banks and bond holders, so go read his OP/ED

Facebook Has Not Jumped the Shark, It Is In the Tank, Being Devoured

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Josh Quittner has a very well written essay on Facebook, and I loved the opening ‘graph:

A lot of people say that Facebook has jumped the shark. That’s flat out wrong. In fact, Facebook is now being devoured by the shark. There’s so much blood in the water, it’s attracting other sharks. And if Facebook’s not careful, one of them is bound to come along and finish it off. I’ve never seen anything like it in the annals of fast-rising tech companies that fail.

Love the devoured by shark bit. Go read the essay, and the comments.

It’s All Us Feelthy Bloggers Fault

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At a national press club event, WH Reporter, and wanker, Dick Gregory claimed that the polarization in the national dialog was a function of the internet. Blogger Richard Power (love that pseudonym) eloquenty responds, and reminds Mr. Gregory of the words of I.F. Stone and Tom Paine, and then sums up (some) the events that really led up to this polarization:

  • Rich pigs like Richard Mellon Scaife dropping tens of millions of dollars on attempted coups like “The Arkansas Project”.
  • The impeachment debacle.
  • The incompetent handling of intel by Bush and His Evil Minions™ leading up to 911
  • The deliberate and premeditated minipulation and deception on intelligence by Bush and His Evil Minions™ leading up to Iraq.
  • The Swift Boating.
  • The theft of the election in Florida in 2000.
  • Voter suppression and intimidation.
  • The Jamming on Democratic phone banks on election day.
  • The US Gulags.
  • The politicization of the Justice Department.
  • Terry Sciavo
  • Valerie Plame

He makes the point that if Tom Paine were alive, he’d be blogging. Go read it.

The thing that really bugs guys like Mr. Gregory is not the “polarization”, it’s that some guy sitting in front of his screen can fact check him using 15 minutes with Google, and show that he’s doing sloppy, poor quality work.

Krugman Nails the Root Cause of the Liquididy/Insolvency Crisis

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Basically, he sees the cause as being the free market fundamentalism that is practiced by regulators, brokers, and politicians. I wholeheartedly agree.

This time, market players seem truly horrified — because they’ve suddenly realized that they don’t understand the complex financial system they created.

This is, of course, a symptom, not the cause, but he does see the cause too.

How did things get so opaque? The answer is “financial innovation” — two words that should, from now on, strike fear into investors’ hearts.

O.K., to be fair, some kinds of financial innovation are good. I don’t want to go back to the days when checking accounts didn’t pay interest and you couldn’t withdraw cash on weekends.

But the innovations of recent years — the alphabet soup of C.D.O.’s and S.I.V.’s, R.M.B.S. and A.B.C.P. — were sold on false pretenses. They were promoted as ways to spread risk, making investment safer. What they did instead — aside from making their creators a lot of money, which they didn’t have to repay when it all went bust — was to spread confusion, luring investors into taking on more risk than they realized.

Why was this allowed to happen? At a deep level, I believe that the problem was ideological: policy makers, committed to the view that the market is always right, simply ignored the warning signs. We know, in particular, that Alan Greenspan brushed aside warnings from Edward Gramlich, who was a member of the Federal Reserve Board, about a potential subprime crisis.

(emphasis mine)

So, when does he get his Nobel?

Go and read the whole thing

Being Forced to Price Radioactive Toxic Waste at Market Values

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Sometimes, someone writes something that captures the totality of a situation in just a few words. In this case, it is my favorite bear, Nouriel Roubini on FASB 157, which, as I’ve mentioned before, requires more stringent evaluations of exotic financial instruments.

It really is forcing people to price assets that they thought had value, but are now viewed with the enthusiasm of a radioactive toxic waste sandwich.

Sounds like a job for Troma Films.

Economic Avalance Update: November 7 Edition

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The Dollar hit another all time low, it’s currently at $1.4645:1.0000€, oil peaked at $98.62/bbl, the Canadian Dollar briefly broke $1.10 US today and the Dow dropped 361 points.

Not only do I expect to be right on the Euro breaking $1.50 and oil breaking $100/bbl before year’s end, we may see significant moves toward moving oil to Euro denomination by next June. Iran and Venezuela are already pushing for this for political reasons, and the dollar’s decline will likely put pressure on other petro economies to go a similar way.

To quote Paul Krugman (PDF):

Almost everyone believes that the US current account deficit must eventually end, and that this end will involve dollar depreciation. However, many believe that this depreciation will take place gradually. This paper shows that any process of gradual dollar decline fast enough to prevent the accumulation of implausible levels of US external debt would impose capital losses on investors much larger than they currently expect. As a result, there will at some point have to be a ‘Wile E. Coyote moment’ – a point at which expectations are revised, and the dollar drops sharply. …..

You have to love an economist who can invoke the Warner Brothers.

Reflections of Guy Fawkes Day

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Scott Horton has the definitive word:

But today Britons have a take on Guy Fawkes that is much at odds with the historical one. Once Fawkes was a symbol of the traitor within. The people were called to be on guard against his like. No longer. Today Guy Fawkes is increasingly viewed as the heroic figure prepared to stand against an unjust and oppressive state, as a martyr and a victim of torture. What are the lessons of Guy Fawkes Day for 2007? I propose three:

1. Torture Never Works and is Always Wrong

………

2. Beware the Government that Rules By Fear

……

3. A Government That Stereotypes Is Unjust

…

It should be noted that the brutality, fear-mongering, xenophobia, and paranoia of the Stuart Kings, those who tortured Guy Fawkes, led inexorably to the revolution in England that placed Oliver Cromwell in control of England as a dictator.

Snark of the Day, Budget Edition

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It should be noted that some budget budget wonks have uncovered a line item for a weapon to attack Iran.(h/t Attytood)

It’s for a modification to the B2 Stealth bomber so that it can carry the 30,000 penetrating pound bomb

Tucked inside the White House’s $196 billion emergency funding request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is an item that has some people wondering whether the administration is preparing for military action against Iran.

The item: $88 million to modify B-2 stealth bombers so they can carry a newly developed 30,000-pound bomb called the massive ordnance penetrator, or, in military-speak, the MOP.

The MOP is the the military’s largest conventional bomb, a super “bunker-buster” capable of destroying hardened targets deep underground. The one-line explanation for the request said it is in response to “an urgent operational need from theater commanders.”

Hey, well, I’m sure the federal government has lots of uses for super “bunker-buster” bombs, such as, um, uh, na….

“You’d use it on Natanz,” said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. “And you’d use it on a stealth bomber because you want it to be a surprise. And you put in an emergency funding request because you want to bomb quickly.”

There is no reason to put this in an emergency request unless you have a target, and you want to hit it soon.

BTW, two snaps up to Will Bunch for this comment, “I’ve long been in the camp that the Cheney-Bush administration isn’t really as incompetent as it looks, that most of the worst stuff they do is 100 percent intentional. Putting your air-attack plans in a budget bill, however, is actually pretty incompetent. Hopefully they’ll get rid of this before Hillary can enthusiastically vote for it.“

Now I have to clean off my screen.

On the FiresIn California

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“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands’ necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.”

Raymond Chandler, Red Wind

I guess that the Santa Ana winds cause fires too, and pretty bad ones at that. I can’t add much to this news except this picture:

A Good Analysis of the Collapse of the “Anglo-Saxon Model of Capitalism”

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Martin Wolf has a fascinating essay on how the “mixture of crony capitalism and gross incompetence” in the Anglo-Saxon Model of capitalism (Basically the sort of high finance practiced in the US and the UK, is headed for a fall.

His points:

  • The whole cronyism, corruption, and incompetence thing.
  • That the current model of securitized lending is may not be valid. The models and instruments are incomprehensible, even to the experts.
  • The failure of the central banks to provide meaningful regulation.
  • The spectacle of Hank Paulson, US Treasury secretary, trying to organise a cartel of holders of toxic securitised assets in the “superSIV”, when 15 years ago, all it handed out to Japan was lectures on letting asset prices find their level.
  • That the US consumer is increasingly no longer considered a investing safe haven.
  • That the US consumer is finally tapped out.

I agree with him that these presage long term changes in the financial markets:

Experience teaches that big financial shocks affect patterns of lending and spending across the world. Originating, as it does, at the core of the world economy, this one will do so, too. The question is how stable and dynamic the world economy that emerges will be.

Go to his article to see the graphs.

Gore Derangement Syndrome

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I love that Paul Krugman is no longer behind the NY Times firewall, because he just took a marvelous shot at the wingnuts, and in particularly at Charles Krauthammer*, when he described their reaction to his Nobel Piece Prize as, “Gore Derangement Syndrome“.

Just go read it. Hell, go read everything that Krugman writes.

*Krauthammer coined the term “Bush Derangement Syndrome”, one of his many violations of the canon of ethics for a psychiatrist, which prohibits this sort of long distance diagnosis under the color of professional authority.

Bob Herbert Gets is: Republicans are Racist Scum

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Read his article, The Ugly Side of the G.O.P. – New York Times.

Here is an excerpt:

…

Dr. Carolyn Goodman, a woman I was privileged to call a friend, died last month at the age of 91. She was the mother of Andrew Goodman, one of the three young civil rights activists shot to death by rabid racists near Philadelphia, Miss., in 1964.

Dr. Goodman, one of the most decent people I have ever known, carried the ache of that loss with her every day of her life.

In one of the vilest moves in modern presidential politics, Ronald Reagan, the ultimate hero of this latter-day Republican Party, went out of his way to kick off his general election campaign in 1980 in that very same Philadelphia, Miss. He was not there to send the message that he stood solidly for the values of Andrew Goodman. He was there to assure the bigots that he was with them.

“I believe in states’ rights,” said Mr. Reagan. The crowd roared.

In 1981, during the first year of Mr. Reagan’s presidency, the late Lee Atwater gave an interview to a political science professor at Case Western Reserve University, explaining the evolution of the Southern strategy:

“You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Nigger, nigger, nigger,’ ” said Atwater. “By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

…