Link
Category: Media
OK, I Understand You Have to Hire a Right Winger
But do you have to hire a really stupid right winger?
Forget Erickson’s politics and whether you agree with them. It’s not whether he’s on the left or the right that matters — it’s the way he expresses his beliefs that’s the problem. Among other things, he’s had readers send fake dog poop to Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., because of the congressman’s support for his party’s healthcare reform proposals, he’s celebrated Chicago’s losing the 2016 Summer Olympics by writing, “Obama’s pimped us to every two bit thug and dictator in the world,” he’s said that “leftists celebrate each and every death of each and every American solider because they view the loss of life as a vindication of their belief that they are right.”
I’m not asking that they find a smart wingnut, but at the very least, they should find someone who does not need help to cut his own meat, you know, someone who can at least pretend to have two brain cells on the teevee, see Will, George.
More Lehman, the Press, and Why Timmeh Should Go Now
Click for full size
A Repo 105 transaction: if it looks confusing, that’s because it’s intended to confuse
As I noted a few days ago, Lehman used what any normal human being would have called, “accounting fraud.”
Well, we have some more details, and it appears that the New York Bank of the Federal Reserve, and its president, current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, knew it, and did nothing about it.
Basically, this was all about what is called “Repo” transactions.
Essentially, it’s a way to get short term cash by turning over assets as collateral, which is normal and ordinary. It’s a lot like pawning your wedding ring, only the amounts are much larger, and typically the periods of the loan are typically shorter.
So, what is the problem?
Well, ignoring the fact that the assets were in reality absolute crap, which is really a matter of due diligence for the lender, if you remain responsible for any losses in value of these assets, and you structure the transaction so that it does not show up on your balance sheet, because they booked the transaction as a sale of assets, as opposed to borrowing money.
The thing is, that this is illegal, or at least without precedent, in the United States, so they justified the activities, which took place in the United States, by claiming that they operated under UK law:
When Lehman first designed Repo 105 in 2001, however, there was one catch. The firm couldn’t get any American law firms to sign off on the aggressive accounting, namely that these transactions were true sales instead of what amounted to the parking of assets. From the firm’s own Repo 105 accounting policy document, according to the report:
Repos generally cannot be treated as sales in the United States because lawyers cannot provide a true sale opinion under U.S. law.
Enter Linklaters, [a “magic circle” law firm, the US equivalent is a “white shoe” law firm] which grounded its legal brief in English, rather than American, law. The firm explicitly said: “This opinion is limited to English law as applied by the English courts and is given on the basis that it will be governed by and construed in accordance with English law.”
The full legal opinion is after the break.
In any case, other investment banks are denying that they use this accounting gimmick, to which I reply, “Yes, and you will respect me in the morning, the check is in the mail, and you won’t cum in my mouth.”
It’s no wonder that the bankruptcy examiner described the behavior as, “grossly negligent.”
Let me make this clear, I have not read the report, it’s 1053 pages long not counting appendices, but Yves Smith did, and she finds that the NY Fed did not exercise due diligence, and cites the footnotes:
Liquidity was an important factor in the stress testing that Lehman was required to run under the CSE Program. After March 2008 when the SEC and FRBNY began onsite daily monitoring of Lehman, the SEC deferred to the FRBNY to devise more rigorous stress‐testing scenarios to test Lehman’s ability to withstand a run or potential run on the bank.5753 The FRBNY developed two new stress scenarios: “Bear Stearns” and “Bear Stearns Light.”5754 Lehman failed both tests.5755 The FRBNY then developed a new set of assumptions for an additional round of stress tests, which Lehman also failed.5756 However, Lehman ran stress tests of its own, modeled on similar assumptions, and passed.5757 It does not appear that any agency required any action of Lehman in response to the results of the stress testing.
(emphasis mine)
So it appears that little Timmy Geithner allowed Lehman to game the stress tests so as to pass, which makes one wonder about the stress tests of the remaining financial institutions last year?
Geithner is either incompetent, or completely captured by the finance industry, or corrupt.
In any of these cases, he should have been given the boot long ago.
You know the one where Geithner negotiated the results with the banks?
A final note on all this, for some reason, the blogs are doing a good job of covering all of this, but the papers are burying the story on inside pages, with the WSJ placing it on page C7, and the NYT placing it on B2.
Legal opinion after the break:
Linklaters Letter to Lehman Brothers re Repo 105
What Miserable Excuses for Human Beings
The usual suspects, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Malkin, and News Busters (Scott Whitlock & Tim Graham), who decided that it was somehow ethically good to smear an 11 year old boy who simply said, that he did not want other little boys to lose their mothers because of a lack of health insurance.
Why anyone buys any products from people who advertise with them is beyond me.
These are evil people, and not only should we not patronize their sponsors, we shouldn’t piss on them if they are on fire.
</rant>
I’m Famous!
I just got a letter to the editor published to the Financial Times.
Happy dance time.
Basically, it’s about something that I’ve written many times; that there should be a requirement for insurance like financial products to have insurnace like regulations, such as the 260+ year old requirement that you cannot take out insurance on somethting that it is not yours to lose.
Of course, I understand that this actually does not mean much in the greater scheme of things: People get LTE’s published all the time.
Of course, I don’t have what the conquoring Roman general had, a slave whispering in his ear that fame is fleeting, but I do have a cat with a piece of bacon that has been taped to it.
Deep Thought
Click for full size
H/t Punkster
Too true…..
Unfortunate Advertising
Click for full size
H/t despair.com
My memory is by no means perfect, but I do recall it being an actual slogan for the embattled car maker at one point.
Can anyone confirm this?
What’s to Love About Obama Care?
Well, if it passes, Rush Limbaugh says that he will leave the counrty:
“If the health care bill passes, where would you go for health care yourself?” a caller asked Limbaugh on his radio show Tuesday.
Story continues below…“I’ll just tell you this, if this passes and it’s five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented — I am leaving the country. I’ll go to Costa Rica,” Limbaugh replied.
OK, I’m feeling a bit better about the Senate plan.
Posted Without Comment
H/t Probably Bad News.
Pay Per View Review
It was time for another family movie night, and Charlie chose Up (2009).
Edward Asner…Carl Fredricksen (voice)
Christopher Plummer…Charles Muntz (voice)
Jordan Nagai…Russell (voice)
Bob Peterson…Dug / Alpha (voice)
Delroy Lindo…Beta (voice)
Jerome Ranft…Gamma (voice)
John Ratzenberger…Construction Foreman Tom (voice)
David Kaye…Newsreel Announcer (voice)
Elie Docter…Young Ellie (voice)
Jeremy Leary…Young Carl (voice)
There are some parts that are very funny, but at its core it’s not a funny film, it’s melancholy.
The issues that are significant parts of plot are about infertility or the loss of a child, the loss of a spouse, the abandonment of a child by his father, and the descent of a childhood hero into murderous obsession.
It is well scripted, well animated, and visually arresting, and it is in its own way rather sweet and touching, but I found it to be a basically sad film.
It’s a good film, but it’s much darker than the normal animated fare.
Signs of the Apocalypse
The National Enquirer has had its coverage of of the John Edwards sex scandal accepted by the Pulitzer committee:
The Pulitzer Prize Board has officially accepted The National Enquirer’s submissions for breaking the John Edwards scandal, according to sources close to the Board. In a historic move, the Pulitzer Board conceded that the self-proclaimed tabloid is qualified to compete with mainstream news outlets for journalism’s most prestigious prize. The Enquirer is in the running for the Pulitzer in two categories: “Investigative Reporting” and “National News Reporting” for The National Enquirer staff.
I agree that they should be considered for the prize, but it’s still weird.
I wouldn’t bet on them winning though.
OK, Now, it’s Time To Roll Tom Tomorrow
Click for full size
Tom Tomorrow, from Sept. 19, 2005 and Feb. 1, 2010
So Barack Obama is now saying that he, “doesn’t begrudge the $19 million in bonuses for Goldman Sach CEO Lloyd Blankfein and JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Domon:
“I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen,” Obama said in the interview yesterday in the Oval Office with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system.”
This is simbply a complete mind f%$#.
It is as Krugman notes, clueless, and Simon Johnson notes that this is an example of, “One of the most complete (and awful) instances ever of savvy businessmen capturing a state and the minds of the people who run it.”
Even if you accept the argument, such as was made by Greg Seargant, that Obama was actually making a nuanced statement where he attempted to show concern without being too “anti-business” in his statements, an to be fair, both Simon Johnson and Paul Krugman, as well as yours truly accept this, it’s still wrong, and shows a concern that is warping the decision making process at the white house.
Johnson notes that he is, “Not sure why he needs to strike that balance. CEOs are overpaid, bankers are overpaid, and bank CEOs are overpaid. Why not just say it plainly?”
Paul Krugman thinks that the nuance makes it worse:
I really don’t see how this makes things any better than the reporting in the Bloomberg story. We don’t begrudge wealth in the free market system — OK, but this wasn’t about free markets, this is an industry that survives only thanks to taxpayer backing. And Wall Street bonuses are like baseball salaries; please.
Just to be clear: what freaks me out about this isn’t what it says about Obama’s policies, it’s what it says about failure to read the mood of the country. The president seems solely concerned that someone might think that he’s anti-business, without — in this interview, at least — appearing to consider it necessary to say a thing about the pervasive sense of unfair Wall Street privilege. He doesn’t have to bash bankers every step of the way, but to respond to a question about bonuses solely by praising free markets and comparing bankers to baseball stars is … clueless.
Whether Tom Tomorrow is right, or whether Paul Krugman is right, what it means is that there is a distinct possibility of a President Palin in 2012.
Hopefully, This is as Close as I Ever Come to Pledge Week
Click for full size
Charlie in front of the control room
Pledge drive studio while programming is going on
Pledge drive during requests for donations
Control room for studio
Control room for satellite up and downlink
Server room
Charlie just had a tour of the Maryland Public Television (MPT) studios, courtesy of his cub scout troop.
As the crow flys, it’s only about a mile away from us.
It’s pledge week at MPT, which meant that there was no escaping it on a tour.
We swung by twice. the 1st time, the regularly scheduled program was showing, and the 2nd time, they were in the break doing their pledge fund stuff, and I couldn’t change the channel.
One of the things that I notices, and it really wasn’t much of a surprise, is that the studio is actually rather a lot smaller than it appears on TV.
Seeing as how square footage costs money, this is really not surprising: You see the same thing with the Star Trek™ bridge in the Smithsonian.
As to Charlie’s thoughts on his visit to MPT, he thought that it was an OK way to kill an hour.
A final note, I need to remember to clean my cell phone camera lens before take pictures.
On Paywalls and Newspapers
Newsday got bought out by the Dolan family, the folks who own Cable Vision, and they promptly put the website behind a subscription wall.
Do you know how many people are willing to buy a $5 a week subscription to the Long Island newspaper?
Well, after 3 months, they have 35 subscribers, so I think that their newsroom outnumbers the web page subscribers.
I think that the folks at the New York Times are in for a world of hurt.
Their pay wall is a bit different, you get a few stories before having to pay, but what it will mean to folks like me is that I won’t link to them unless they have a big exclusive. It’s just not worth it to me.
As it currently stands, I do link to them frequently as a paper of record.
Now, I’m sure that the loss of the eyeballs of my reader(s) does not mean much in the scheme of things, but when their OP/EDs were behind a pay wall, they completely fell off the screen on the internet.
Damn
At least Rachael Maddow and Ed Schultz still have day jobs.
It’s not the message, as much as it was that management sucked, at least that how it appeared to me, though I was never in a market for the network.
Full statement after the break:
It is with the greatest regret, on behalf of our Board, that we must announce that Air America Media is ceasing its live programming operations as of this afternoon, and that the Company will file soon under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Code to carry out an orderly winding-down of the business.
The very difficult economic environment has had a significant impact on Air America’s business. This past year has seen a “perfect storm” in the media industry generally. National and local advertising revenues have fallen drastically, causing many media companies nationwide to fold or seek bankruptcy protection. From large to small, recent bankruptcies like Citadel Broadcasting and closures like that of the industry’s long-time trade publication Radio and Records have signaled that these are very difficult and rapidly changing times.
Those companies that remain are facing audience fragmentation as a result of new media technologies, are often saddled with crushing debt, and have generally found it difficult to obtain operating or investment capital from traditional sources of funding. In this climate, our painstaking search for new investors has come close several times right up into this week, but ultimately fell short of success.
With radio industry ad revenues down for 10 consecutive quarters, and reportedly off 21% in 2009, signs of improvement have consisted of hoping things will be less bad. And though Internet/new media revenues are projected to grow, our expanding online efforts face the same monetization and profitability challenges in the short term confronting the Web operations of most media companies
When Air America Radio launched in April, 2004 with already-known personalities like Al Franken and then-unknown future stars like Rachel Maddow, it was the only full-time progressive voice in the mainstream broadcast media world. At a critical time in our nation’s history — when dissent on issues such as the Iraq war were often denounced as “un-American” — Air America and its talented team helped millions of Americans remember the importance of compelling discussion about the most pivotal events and decisions of our generation.
Through some 100 radio outlets nationwide, Air America helped build a new sense of purpose and determination among American progressives. With this revival, the progressive movement made major gains in the 2006 mid-term elections and, more recently, in the election of President Barack Obama and a strongly Democratic Congress.
Laws have changed for the better thanks to this revival…..but all the same our company cannot escape the laws of economics. So we intend a rapid, orderly closure over the next few days. All current employees will be paid through today, January 21. A severance package will be offered tomorrow to full-time current employees with more than six months of tenure.
We will strive to assist affiliates and partners in achieving a smooth transition. Starting at 6 pm EST today, we will provide our affiliates, listeners and users a selection of encore programming until 9 pm EST on Monday, January 25, at which time Air America programming will end.
We are proud that Air America’s mission lives on through the words and actions of so many former radio hosts who are active today in progressive causes and media nationwide. In the years ahead, as we look back, we should all be proud of our passionate determination to assure that our nation’s progressive voice would be heard loud and clear. Through the hard work and dedication of current staff, and those who preceded you, a lasting legacy was forged which will now continue through other voices and venues.
Thank you.
Buh Bye New York Times
One of the dirty secret of the newspaper business is that people do not pay for the news.
People pay a portion of the cost of setting ink to paper, but the remainder of the cost of producing a physical copy, as well as the cost of producing the content is covered by advertising.
The problem is that the most lucrative part of advertising is the classified. at about $55 for 3 lines, it generates a lot of revenue.
Unfortunately, Craigslist is better and cheaper, so newspapers find their classified revenue shrinking.
Additionally, after years of playing the Wall Street game of cutting costs, meaning reporters and in depth stories, and quality in general, their product is less attractive.
In the case of the New York Times, this has been further complicated by the fact that they plunked down a huge amount of cash for their brand new narcissistic monument to the New York Times office building, so they find themselves with a cash flow problem.
It appears that they are looking at setting up a pay wall around the newspaper to generate the desired revenue.
They have forgotten the disaster that was Times Select, which shut down after 2 years, when they generated very little revenue, and their opinion pieces largely dropped of the map on the Internet.
People pay for the Wall Street Journal because it provides breaking financial news, which is something that people have traditionally been willing to pay for.
General news, probably not, and so I’ll probably find other sources to link to.
OK ……………… Weird
Pyrofarmer, one of the regulars on the Shortskoolbus BBS had the following exchange:
My nearby farmer was asking me if I watched some Obermann segment the other night about health care?
‘No, but aren’t you going to loose your GOP membership for watching him?’
‘Have you tried to watch Beck or listened to Rush lately? They’re out of their f%$#ing minds!
(%$# mine)
You don’t have to be a Democratn to realize that Fox News resides in Bizarro World.
Spot the Cancer Victim
High heels and Bathing Suits? WTF?*Actually, it’s a trick question, neither of the women have had cancer, they were just two contestants on the British reality show Make Me a Supermodel.
Guess which one the judges preferred?
Yes, they preferred the one on the right, Marianne Berglund, while the viewers preferred the 5’11” 154 pound Jen Hunter, who won the show, but then could only find employment with a “plus size” model agency.
As an FYI, their relative body mass indices (BMI) were 16.5, well into emaciated, and 21.5, slightly below the 21.75 mid point of the 18.5-24.9 normal index.
It should be noted that during the show, Hunter was rididuled by the judges for her being “too fat:
During its five-week run, Make Me a Supermodel provoked fury from health experts after Ms Hunter, a size 12, was repeatedly attacked, and reduced to tears, by judges who accused her of being too fat. But the last laugh belonged to the British public, who voted in their tens of thousands for her to be their female winner.
Jen hunter nails it when she says, “People need to realise that to be beautiful doesn’t mean you have to be the size of a 13-year-old boy.”
The problem is that for many years, a lot of designers have seen “13-year old boys” as their aesthetic ideals, and it permeates the media.
One final note, send the woman on the right a cheesecake.
*But that’s another rant.
Perspective on the Late Night Kerfuffle
Craig Ferguson on the late night shenanigans at NBC, and on Haiti, and on Rush Limbaugh’s drug driven paranoid delusions. (3:37)
Brilliant!
What the Brits Really Think of Us
Or at least what they think of our cable news-droids:
This is absolutely brill! (7:31)