Saturday Reads
Today’s most fascinating (non-Lehman) reads are:
• Economists Credit Fed For Alleviating Crisis (WSJ) The $787 billion stimulus package was a good for the U.S. economy, but the Federal Reserve played the biggest role in rescuing the economy from the financial crisis;
• US takeover defenses come tumbling down (FT) Only 28% of S&P1,500 companies had a poison pill in place last year, vs 43% the prior 2 years
• For Stocks, 16 Lean Years (Barron’s)
• Look who is late to the party: Optimism Arises After Year-Long U.S. Stock Surge: Chart of Day (Bloomberg)
• Siegel vs. Shiller on Bull Market Valuations (WSJ) Guess who is bullish and who is concerned with overvaluation?
• Miguel Barbosa Interviews James Montier on Behavioral Investing (Part I and Part II)
• Treasury hopes new rules send short sales to the rescue of underwater mortgages (Washington Post) With new Treasury Department rules designed to expedite short sales set to take effect April 5, relief can’t come soon enough for some area buyers, sellers and real estate agents who have waded through a long and arduous process to get short sales approved by the bank.
• China’s Property: Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble (Time)
• The Professor Who Chases Financial Bubbles (WSJ) Wall Street firms and governments around the world are looking for the sort of predictive system this prof has.
• Verizon FiOS Buildout Is Dying (Fast New News)
• Color Visualization of one year in Boston (FlickFlow)
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March 13th, 2010 at 3:43 pm
Not an article, but a video:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/view/
Brooksley Born’s efforts to regulate derivatives get thwarted by Rubin, Greenspan, and Larry Summers.
March 13th, 2010 at 3:44 pm
This just in: short-sellers had nothing to do with the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
You’re reading that correctly. Summarizing the 2,200 page report of the bankruptcy-court examiner who investigated Lehman Brothers, the Journal’s headline says, “Lehman Torpedoed Lehman.”
Not—despite the misinformed yammering of hysterical Congresspersons driven near-mad during the financial crisis by the thought that, lacking any other employable skills as they do, their fat government pensions and healthcare benefits would be at risk if their country collapsed; and fueled by the highly misleading commentary of at least one self-appointed crusading CEO whose chief aim seemed to be to shift the spotlight away from his own shortcomings—short-sellers.
March 13th, 2010 at 3:46 pm
The Long-Term Budget Outlook
http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/102xx/doc10297/toc.html
This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report examines the pressures facing the federal budget over the coming decades by presenting the agency’s projections of federal spending and revenues through 2080. Under current laws and policies, rapidly rising health care costs and an aging population will sharply increase federal spending for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Unless increases in revenues kept pace with escalating spending, or spending growth was sharply reduced, soaring federal debt would weigh heavily on economic output and incomes.
March 13th, 2010 at 3:48 pm
Hearts may swoon when stocks do, study suggests
–Yahoo
Stock market slides may hurt more than your savings. New research suggests they might prompt heart attacks.
Duke University researchers found a link between how a key stock index performed and how many heart attacks were treated at their North Carolina hospital shortly after the recession began in December 2007 through July 2009, when signs of recovery emerged.
The trend weakened after they did a second analysis taking into account seasons of the year. Some research suggests heart attacks are more common in winter, meaning the initial finding could have been a statistical fluke.
However, leading scientists unconnected with the work said they found it plausible and worth further research in a nationwide study.
March 13th, 2010 at 4:19 pm
THIS JUST IN: The Fox has done a fantastic job of guarding the henhouse, states the other foxes…
Barry, you really should remove the “Economists Credit Fed For Alleviating Crisis” WSJ article. That’s a propaganda puff-piece if ever I have seen one. Running a quick bio on the “economists” that were quoted in the article:
Dr. Allen Sinai is President, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Global Economist/Strategist of Decision Economics, Inc. (DE)…. Previously, Dr. Sinai served for over 13 years at Lehman Brothers, where he was Managing Director and Chief Global Economist, and the Director of Lehman Brothers Global Economics. He also served as Executive Vice President and Chief Economist of The Boston Company, a subsidiary of Shearson Lehman Brothers.
Paul Edelstein
Vice President and Senior Economist – Macroeconomics and Strategy at Decision Economics Inc.
Past: Assistant Economist at Federal Reserve Bank of New York
Diane C. Swonk
Chief Economist, Mesirow Financial
Advisor to Federal Reserve Board and regional Reserve Banks
~~~
BR: I dont disagree with your assessment — I spend so much time mocking economists that I assume its understood that I am rarely in agreement witht hem
Look at the foirst dozen or so articles here
March 13th, 2010 at 4:49 pm
Chinese Fluoride In Massachusetts Water Raises Concern
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/investigative/22814488/detail.html
March 13th, 2010 at 5:50 pm
Re: Verizon FiOS Buildout Is Dying
Didn’t we already give these criminals a tax break to build-out high-speed internet infrastructure?
Time for claw-backs, trials, and harsh penalties.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c107:S.88:
March 13th, 2010 at 6:22 pm
A little history on tax relief for broadband development:
http://ncseonline.org/NLE/CRSreports/Science/st-49.cfm?&CFID=6128700&CFTOKEN=50435356
Follow the links to legislation in this paragraph (near the end of the linked page):
Other legislation introduced into the 107th Congress would provide tax credits (S. 88, S. 150, S. 426, H.R. 267, H.R. 1415) and grant/loan guarantees (S. 428, H.R. 1416 and H.R. 1697) for broadband deployment primarily in rural and/or low income areas. For more information on federal assistance for broadband deployment, please see CRS Report RL30719, Broadband and the Digital Divide: Federal Assistance Programs.
Congress has no historical memory. The billions of cash missing in Iraq will be forgotten, along with every other financial crime committed against the citizenry of this country over the past 20 years.
March 13th, 2010 at 6:28 pm
>> the Federal Reserve played the biggest role in rescuing [reckless investors] from [their own decisions];
Fixed that for them.
March 13th, 2010 at 6:47 pm
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6292987n&tag=related;photovideo
60 Minutes – March 14 – Michael Lewis
March 13th, 2010 at 7:18 pm
” The notion that journalism can regularly produce a product that violates the fundamental interests of media owners and advertisers … is absurd.”– Robert McChesney, journalist and author
~~
“Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.
Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.
The ID card plan is one of several steps advocates of an immigration overhaul are taking to address concerns that have defeated similar bills in the past…
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703954904575110124037066854.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsThird
maybe it’s time to revisit the Dred Scott decision?
~~
1856-1857
Scott and his lawyers appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Scott v. Sanford the Court states that Scott should remain a slave, that as a slave he is not a citizen of the U.S. and thus not eligible to bring suit in a federal court, and that as a slave he is personal property and thus has never been free. The court further declares unconstitutional the provision in the Missouri Compromise that permitted Congress to prohibit slavery in the territories. In fact, the compromise is already under assault as a coalition of political leaders-some slaveholders, others westerners who resent the federal government’s ability to dictate the terms of statehood-claim that territorial residents should be able to determine on what terms they enter the union. The decision in Scott v. Sanford greatly alarms the antislavery movement and intensifies the growing division of opinion within the United State. The newly-formed Republican Party, which opposes the expansion of slavery, vigorously criticizes the decision and the court.
http://library.wustl.edu/vlib/dredscott/chronology.html
estilio2.0
http://www.law.cornell.edu/anncon/html/amdt10_user.html
“For decades, using a tortured definition of “interstate commerce,” Congress has claimed the authority to regulate, control, ban, or mandate virtually everything..”
http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/
March 13th, 2010 at 7:28 pm
FEMA’s sale of Katrina trailers sparks criticism
By Spencer S. Hsu
Saturday, March 13, 201
In a giant auction, the federal government has agreed to sell for pennies on the dollar most of the 120,000 formaldehyde-tainted trailers it bought nearly five years ago for Hurricane Katrina victims. But the sale of the units, perhaps the most visible symbol of the government’s bungled response to the hurricane, has triggered a new round of charges that it is endangering future buyers for years to come.
Consumer advocates and environmentalists are outraged that the government resold products it deemed unsafe to live in, saying warning stickers attached to the units will not keep people from misusing them.
Besides formaldehyde, units might be plagued by mold, mildew and propane gas leaks, FEMA acknowledged.
“Proceed with caution, extreme caution, if you are tempted to respond to what appears to be an attractive offer for a travel trailer or manufactured home,” Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel wrote in a consumer alert. He and others cautioned that the FEMA units could be resold many times, including over the Internet, and that unscrupulous sellers could remove warning labels or withhold information about the dangers.
This year, for example, building inspectors in Missouri discovered damaged FEMA units sold as scrap in a Fenton, Mo., mobile home park. The units were billed as housing even though their paperwork specified they were not to be occupied.
“What if Toyota ordered a recall, then simply put a sticker on its vehicles saying they were unfit to drive before reselling them?” said Becky Gillette, a spokeswoman for the Sierra Club in Mississippi, which helped uncover the formaldehyde problem. “There’s a double standard for the government.”
http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/graphic/2010/03/12/GR2010031202162.gif
More at the Article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/12/AR2010031202213.html
March 13th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
The intriguing thing about the China Property Bubble is, assuming it is real, that its origins are very much the same as the residential property – sub-prime bubble blown by Greenspan from 2003 and earlier to 2006. It was an attempt to maintain employment levels and was facilitated by false inflation measures and low priced goods from China.
In China in the target was simply to maintain GDP growth. In the face of the 2008 credit collapse China carried out massive fiscal stimulus and credit easing, instead of sub-prime China set mandatory lending and spending growth targets. Has there been large capital miss allocation and bubble asset valuations? IMOP Very probably. What else can you expect from economic central planning. Greenspan was the US’s monetary central planner. China has the PBOC.
March 13th, 2010 at 8:21 pm
tradeking13 Says:
March 13th, 2010 at 4:49 pm
Chinese Fluoride In Massachusetts Water Raises Concern
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/investigative/22814488/detail.htmlMega Giant Corporations Are Very Bad for America | Books | AlterNet
————-
Sheesh…not only does our Flouride in water come from China…but all our “Vitamin C” comes from there, too!
Chinese Fluoride In Massachusetts Water Raises Concern
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/investigative/22814488/detail.html
Jan 2, 2010 … Why the monopolization of our economy should scare you. … those stories that comes along every so often that rips away the …. be it of vitamin C, wheat gluten, heparin, or aspirin in China, … Barry C. Lynn, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, is a business and political journalist. …
http://www.alternet.org/…/mega_giant_corporations_are_very_bad_for_america – Cached
March 13th, 2010 at 8:35 pm
…The following are 20 signs that the United States is rapidly becoming a totalitarian “Big Brother” police state….
#1) A new bill being pushed by Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman would allow the U.S. military to round up large numbers of Americans and detain them indefinitely without a trial if they “pose a threat” or if they have “potential intelligence value” or for any other reason the President of the United States “considers appropriate”.
#2) Lawmakers in Washington D.C. working to create a new immigration bill have decided on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would be required to obtain.
#3) Barack Obama is backing a plan to create a national database to store the DNA of people who have been arrested but not necessarily convicted of a crime.
#4) Just to get on an airplane, Americans will now have to go through new full-body scanners that reveal every detail of our exposed bodies to airport security officials.
#5) If that wasn’t bad enough, the Transportation Security Administration has announced that airport screeners will begin roving through airports randomly taking chemical swabs from passengers and their bags to check for explosives.
#6) Starting this upcoming December, some passengers on Canadian airlines flying to, from or even over the United States without ever landing there, will only be allowed to board their flights once the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has determined they are not terrorists.
#7) Organic milk is such a threat that the FDA has been conducting military style raids on Amish farmers in Pennsylvania…”
http://thisistheendoftheworldasweknowit.com/archives/20-signs-that-the-united-states-is-rapidly-becoming-a-totalitarian-big-brother-police-state
y mas..
http://thisistheendoftheworldasweknowit.com/archives/12-huge-problems-that-americans-need-to-come-together-on-and-start-facing-before-it-is-too-late
March 13th, 2010 at 8:40 pm
MEH, that’s….astonishingly scary. Uh, “thanks”, I guess. ;-)
(Seriously, keep it coming.)
March 13th, 2010 at 9:15 pm
Obama Calls for Sweeping Overhaul in Education Law
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/education/14child.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
Sweep THIS curling breath. What I want to sweep away is your homo-secular agenda.
Stop waisting money on education. We need more tax cuts for the rich foreigners so they invest here.
No one is investing here because our tax rates are so high. The Chinese only have $2T the Japanese a T… why… Tom Tancredo is right… only millions of stupid immigrants are willing to come here.
And what about this? We need to stop searching anyone at airports who don’t look like terrorists. Why… they search patriotic American’s wearing American clothes and real American veterans wearing blue USS Enterprise ball caps…
A Colorado Mom Is Arrested in Terror Plot Case
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704131404575118103199708576.html?mod=igoogle_wsj_gadgv1&
“Jihad Jane” Linked to the Irish Seven in Vilks Murder Plot
http://www.sr.se/cgi-bin/International/nyhetssidor/artikel.asp?nyheter=1&ProgramID=2054&Artikel=3498223
It’s too late to stop Obama. He’s already ruined the country. Move our Tea Parties to England where they know how to drink tea like real ladies.
March 13th, 2010 at 10:27 pm
The $2 Trillion Hole — Barron’s article on just how bad the unfunded pension liabilities are for each state:
http://online.barrons.com/article/SB126843815871861303.html
March 13th, 2010 at 9:40 pm
only millions of stupid immigrants are willing to come here . . .
. . . and Rupert Murdoch
March 13th, 2010 at 10:40 pm
http://site.despair.com/images/dw/m/toyotaMODEL.jpg
Toyota – One You Drive One, You’ll Never Stop
March 13th, 2010 at 10:42 pm
Venn, even if Obama is much better — and I mean that sincerely — than the last dufus — (and I mean that sincerely) — I still like hearing the negatives.
March 13th, 2010 at 10:48 pm
MEH –
I’m not really “scared” by any of those articles.
1) The McCain-Lieberman bill wont pass (or even get a vote). The terrorist fear-mongers (Cheney) are out. Iraq will be 99% done in 1 yr. Afganistan will be 90% done in 2 year. Peace is a good thing for all!
2) Immigration is a key issue. Enforcing the law is a good idea. Better national ID card is a good thing. Why are our state driver’s license technology essentially 1970s equivalent? Easy problem to solve.
3,4,5) DNA analysis and airport security are GOOD things. Do you realize that 10s of 1,000s of guilty criminals of the worst kind (rapist, murders, child abusers) are in jail ONLY because of advanced DNA technology and collection? I want MORE of this. Also (and this is KEY) 1000s of formerly imprisoned people are FREE because of the same technology.
Violent crime rates are down more than 90% in the last 20 years. They be down another 90% in the next 20 years. This is a good thing. DNA technology is a key to this. Other technologies will continue to solve crime problems — drones covering border security, surveilance cameras even more widespread, etc. The govt does not care about liberitarian private acts. It cares about systematic violence and organized crime.
Good, honest, no-drama people will get even more recognition — which they deserve!
Out in the “old-west” the fear-mongered about losing the right to carry firearms in the city. Oh, they still do! Ha! What dumb-ass bullshit.
March 13th, 2010 at 11:43 pm
lol, well, me and cognos aggree, maybe i need to get long
freakenomics is a great read, in refeerence to crime stats, either, way, imho, locally in your neighborhood, we are safer
March 14th, 2010 at 12:16 am
cognos,
ewe go with: “The govt does not care about liberitarian private acts.”
also, you may be trying for ‘libertarian’..
see:
Incarceration Nation: The Rise of a Prison-Industrial Complex by Andrew Bosworth
http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&query=non-violent+incarceration+Prison+Industrial+Complex
~~
“Missouri’s chief justice told legislators yesterday that hat putting more nonviolent offenders in prison is not the answer to the state’s drunk driving problems, reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Perhaps the biggest waste of resources in all of state government is the over-incarceration of nonviolent offenders and our mishandling of drug and alcohol offenders. It is costing us billions of dollars and it is not making a dent in crime,” Justice William Ray Price told the House of Representatives in the annual “state of the judiciary” speech. “We may have been tough on crime, but we have not been smart on crime.”
Price spoke before a major DWI bill received its first hearing. The bill, proposed by Rep. Bryan Stevenson, would require all courts to enter DWI convictions into a statewide clearinghouse, making it easier for multiple drunken driving offenders to be prosecuted. The bill would also increase penalties for some multiple offenders and reduce the sentences of those who seek treatment while in prison. Stevenson stressed that final provision in opening the hearing, with Price in attendance..”
http://thecrimereport.org/2010/02/04/mo-chief-justice-assails-over-incarceration-of-the-non-violent/
~~
“…What precisely is being criminalized? Not bad driving. Not destruction of property. Not the taking of human life or reckless endangerment. The crime is having the wrong substance in your blood. Yet it is possible, in fact, to have this substance in your blood, even while driving, and not commit anything like what has been traditionally called a crime.
What have we done by permitting government to criminalize the content of our blood instead of actions themselves? We have given it power to make the application of the law arbitrary, capricious, and contingent on the judgment of cops and cop technicians. Indeed, without the government’s “Breathalyzer,” there is no way to tell for sure if we are breaking the law.
Sure, we can do informal calculations in our head, based on our weight and the amount of alcohol we have had over some period of time. But at best these will be estimates. We have to wait for the government to administer a test to tell us whether or not we are criminals. That’s not the way law is supposed to work. Indeed, this is a form of tyranny.
Now, the immediate response goes this way: drunk driving has to be illegal because the probability of causing an accident rises dramatically when you drink. The answer is just as simple: government in a free society should not deal in probabilities. The law should deal in actions and actions alone, and only insofar as they damage person or property. Probabilities are something for insurance companies to assess on a competitive and voluntary basis…”
http://mises.org/daily/2343
~~
contrary to your, seemingly, soothing salves, Free People are not found in a Police State.
March 14th, 2010 at 12:33 am
The World According to Brooksley Born
Less than six months after she became the seventh Chairperson of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Brooksley Born discovered that a number of powerful congressmen wanted to dramatically limit her power to regulate the futures markets. The most controversial aspect of the new legislation sponsored by Senator Richard Lugar and others-and supported by the Chicago exchanges-is a proposal that would allow the exchanges to create “professional markets” that would be free of federal regulation.
In the last few weeks, Born has plunged into an active round of lobbying to save her agency and the cause of futures regulation. She is no stranger to Washington power plays. Before joining the CFTC, Born was a partner at heavyweight D.C. law firm Arnold & Porter, where she specialized in representing institutional and corporate clients in futures regulation matters. She speaks as a woman who knows the power of words and chooses them carefully. The interview took place in March with Editor Joe Kolman.
http://derivativesstrategy.com/magazine/archive/1997/0597qa.asp
~~
Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and unknowns in the dazzling world of derivatives
By Satyajit Das
“With the financial crisis tightening its chokehold on global banks, Das’ forewarnings – outlined in his 2006 book Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives – are looking rather timely. Still, some in the industry initially scoffed at his warnings.” – The Toronto Star, September 23, 2008
“The sexier side of finance … at last … a convincing picture of what life is like in today’s modern financial industry. Traders Guns and Money by Satyajit Das not only has a catchy title, it actually manages to entertain, educate and inform.” Corporate Financier, July 2006
http://astore.amazon.com/derivstratmag-20/detail/0273704745
~~
Dynamic Hedging: Managing Vanilla and Exotic Options (Wiley Finance)
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Dynamic Hedging is the definitive source on derivatives risk. It provides a real-world methodology for managing portfolios containing any nonlinear security. It presents risks from the vantage point of the option market maker and arbitrage operator. The only book about derivatives risk written by an experienced trader with theoretical training, it remolds option theory to fit the practitioner’s environment. As a larger share of market exposure cannot be properly captured by mathematical models, noted option arbitrageur Nassim Taleb uniquely covers both on-model and off-model derivatives risks.
http://astore.amazon.com/derivstratmag-20/detail/0471152803
~~
People would do well by reading Taleb’s “Dynamic Hedging”, before crossing (to) the Street..
March 14th, 2010 at 1:24 am
Mark E Hoffer wants to let drunk drivers freely roam the roads:
“What have we done by permitting government to criminalize the content of our blood instead of actions themselves?”
Drunk driving is an action, which is reckless and irresponsible. It’s this action that is being penalized.
rc
March 14th, 2010 at 1:42 am
cognos,
“Immigration is a key issue. Enforcing the law is a good idea.”
Doesn’t this depend on what kind of law? Why would I want to prevent employers from hiring “illegal” immigrants? I don’t have anything against “illegal” immigrants.
“DNA analysis and airport security are GOOD things.”
It wasn’t about DNA-analysis. It was about a DNA-database. Why not making it mandatory that everyone has to make his/her DNA available for a government database, whether convicted of a crime, or not, or ever arrested, or not? You seem to have a lot of trust into the state apparatus. As if such information has never been abused by the ones in power, and as if there isn’t any danger that it will be abused.
rc
March 14th, 2010 at 1:51 am
rc,
sweet cherry-picking~ note: “…What have we done by permitting government to criminalize the content of our blood instead of actions themselves? We have given it power to make the application of the law arbitrary, capricious, and contingent on the judgment of cops and cop technicians. Indeed, without the government’s “Breathalyzer,” there is no way to tell for sure if we are breaking the law.
Sure, we can do informal calculations in our head, based on our weight and the amount of alcohol we have had over some period of time. But at best these will be estimates. We have to wait for the government to administer a test to tell us whether or not we are criminals. That’s not the way law is supposed to work. Indeed, this is a form of tyranny…” from, above snip..
this: “We have given it power to make the application of the law arbitrary, capricious, and contingent on the judgment of cops and cop technicians.”, actually, is quite similiar to your point: “It wasn’t about DNA-analysis. It was about a DNA-database. Why not making it mandatory that everyone has to make his/her DNA available for a government database, whether convicted of a crime, or not, or ever arrested, or not? You seem to have a lot of trust into the state apparatus. As if such information has never been abused by the ones in power, and as if there isn’t any danger that it will be abused.”
rootless, no doubt..
March 14th, 2010 at 1:52 am
To Marcus Aurelius –
Nice citations. If anyone were to list the countless promises made by these giant corporate greed machines it would fill a warehouse of terabyte hard drives.
Over the past couple of decades the telcos have committed to wire “millions” of homes with fiber, to supply broadband wireless to the most remote of hamlets, and made endless repetitive promises of “telemedicine” and “telework” and so on. All they ever asked for was “a level playing field.”
That’s balls.
To cite just one example, the Universal Service Fund is the greatest slush fund boondoggle of modern times. We cough up a nominal few bucks every month so the telcos can have some walking-around money. Multiply a couple of dollars by every breathing adult, paid monthly for life, and you’re talking real money. They’ve collected this loot for decades but there’ s nothing to show for it.
Their lobbyists are pervasive and among the best in the business. Most are ex-Hill/FCC staff or former Congressmen, and the door never stops revolving. If they provided service as well as they lobbied we’d make South Korea look like a cell phone backwater.
Pray that Google and other innovators can keep the ossifying corporatism at bay for at least a little longer. Maybe we’ll actually see some of the promise of telecom. In the meantime, Verizon and AT&T will happily chug along in their cozy duopoly, confident that there is no business challenge that their paid acolytes in Congress and the FCC can’t solve for them.
March 14th, 2010 at 3:16 am
I should clarify my reaction. “Astonishingly scary” because this country seems hell bent on spending itself into bankruptcy (with “security theater”) to safeguard us against “terrorism”. We’ll be incrementally safer from physical threats from amateurs but at greater risk from all the other things we neglect: healthcare, environment, finance.
Britain is talking about a 24×7 fleet of drones…
“Electric Eye”
http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/Electric-Eye-lyrics-Judas-Priest/19C0ADE7BD223E2F482568CB00057303
March 14th, 2010 at 3:18 am
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/22/doesnt-work-didnt-ask-why-cameras
March 14th, 2010 at 3:22 am
Despite what the graphic appears to show, I can think of few things less useful than a 52-week moving average of investor optimism/pessimism.
March 14th, 2010 at 3:54 am
Hmmmmm. When we owe them……….
States may hold onto tax refunds for months
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-03-11-tax-refunds_N.htm?csp=34
Chinese granny buried alive by property developers
A 70-year-old Chinese grandmother in the central province of Hubei was beaten
and buried alive by property developers eager to get their hands on her land.
http://tinyurl.com/ylnw547
March 14th, 2010 at 4:30 am
@wunsacon Says:March 14th, 2010 at 3:18 am
Since they have now taken away people’s tax dollars to build a defense network, they can now start changing the rules of the UK. That’s how it goes right? Build an electric fence around the sheep and then spook the sheep.
People say that this surveillance state is no problem if you are doing nothing wrong. What happens if the leaders of all political parties hold a press conference and declare democracy over? Suddenly all those people (and with the way political apathy is running these days that could be a hundred people) who would take to the streets in protest are considered enemies of the state.
Then you have the police face recognition software clicking into high gear and seizing those people’s lives, families and assets (probably the next set of executive orders to be drawn up). Suddenly we don’t have a right versus left ideology debating in the streets but a slave versus free one fighting it out and the free ones have all the power, surveillance and many of the guns. Especially the big ones
March 14th, 2010 at 4:59 am
From an investment standpoint:
Dollar pushes Canada ahead of the pack
Surging loonie, 10-month low in unemployment have foreign investors betting on Canada
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/dollar-pushes-canada-ahead-of-the-pack/article1499480/
March 14th, 2010 at 10:34 am
GOP wants Dodd to slow down on financial reform legislation
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/13/AR2010031302136.html
March 14th, 2010 at 10:36 am
Surging loonie, 10-month low in unemployment have foreign investors betting on Canada
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/dollar-pushes-canada-ahead-of-the-pack/article1499480/
March 14th, 2010 at 11:01 am
Mark E Hoffer,
Cherry picking? Your nonsense-statement about the “content of your blood” being criminalized, but not an action, was central for your ranting about what “tyranny” penalizing drunk driving by itself was. Without this absurdity, there is really not much left of it. Allegedly, you can’t determine yourself whether you break the law? Buy your own breath analyzer, if you think estimating isn’t sufficient.
If you think it’s your right as a “free man” to freely roam the streets with a deadly weapon at your disposal under the influence of toxins that affect your thinking and reflexes, until you run over my neighbors kids with this weapon, and if you think it’s “tyranny” against your likes when such reckless behavior is being outlawed and when the alcohol content in your breath is being tested at occasion while you are driving, so be it. Too bad for you.
I don’t see the analogy to the DNA-database. I didn’t say there should exist a federal breath-test results database.
rc
March 14th, 2010 at 11:24 am
Prof. L Randall Wray’s interview for the Greek newspaper (Eleftherotypia) about Greece’s debt crisis:
http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/2010/03/interview-with-randall-wray-about.html
Pithy quote -
“1.Why isn’t the Obama administration doing something about Wall street’s manipulation and destruction of the world’s economies?
Wray: That is of course a difficult question to answer because it is not possible to get inside the heads of administration officials. We can only look at this from the outside, and from the outside it stinks of scandal. I am beginning to think that this will go down in history as one of the worst scandals the US has ever seen. The triggering event will be seen as the AIG bailout—in which the NYFed led by Timothy Geithner gave billions of dollars to AIG that it funneled to counterparties like Goldman to pay off CDSs at one hundred cents on the dollar. There was and is absolutely no justification for that action. But far worse is the cover-up, in which the Fed and Treasury are still engaged. It is always the cover-up that brings down administrations. This one looks like it ranks with a Watergate cover-up. I repeat that we do not have the facts, so the appearances might be incorrect. But that is all the more reason for the Obama administration to come clean. It must release all internal documents, and all emails, and account for every dollar spent. It must name names and it must then prosecute all fraud—even if that goes right to the top of the Treasury and Fed.”
March 14th, 2010 at 11:29 am
Marcus A:
“only millions of stupid immigrants are willing to come here . . .
. . . and Rupert Murdoch”
I know you weren’t implying Rupie the Murdoch is stupid, Mr A, but, haysuseffingchristos, the old baaahstard is sly like the proverbial gawd***n fox.
I lived in the UK for most of the years between 73 and 94 and watched this antipodean serial collector of passports cut a swath through British media and politics. Without a doubt he is the biggest contributor to the desertification of UK political life and his efforts to take the lead in that process here in the US have been herculean.
With apologies to Her Majesty, since Thatcher’s time he’s been the ‘king’ maker in UK politics and still is. Thanks to him, Labor since Blair has morphed into an appalling chimera of Limey Banksterism and Stasi surveillance.
It doesn’t get much coverage over here, but the UK citizenry is the most spied on this side of North Korea and their rights are eroding faster than a Cape Cod beach during a ten day Nor’easter. We complain about the TSA, but over there the police have massive rights which they abuse with gusto.
The Guardian [see Henry Porter's reporting] and the Independent have led the way on coverage but most of the population is sunk in apathy. 21 months ago I went back for another year and saw with my own eyes the horrifying changes. Lots of very sober people I met refer to St Tony of Crawford as their first fascist prime minister.
After Thatcher replaced Calhoun the Tories joined forces with the Banksters and began de-industrializing and have not looked back. We followed suit… and now both countries are at the bottom of the OECD table when it comes to social mobility and have political lives that grow more banana flavored by the day.
I don’t remember which pre Common Era Greek said it, but his dictum holds true today: “Those whom the gods will destroy, they first make mad”.
So it goes…
March 14th, 2010 at 12:38 pm
MEH –
I complete agreely. The incarcaration of non-violent drug offenders is probably the #1 injustice in modern, western society. (the plight of women in non-western society is the #1 injustice worldwide). I want zero prision time for drug use of all kinds and even zero prision time for dealers (why punish dealers if 15% of people use?). This is already happening with marijuana. It will expand in time. I would actually favor keeping it illegal and just making the punishment confiscation of all assets for dealing, heavy fines, etc. This way police, FBI, DEA dont have to be forced to realize their work is worthless. Slow adjustment.
Why people dont realize worldwide organized crime networks (Al Queda, Taliban, Columbians, Italian and Russian Mafia) depend on illegal drugs for most of their revenue? First thing I would do in Afganistan is HELP the good guys grow giant poppy fields (crush price and win support at the same time?). Havent we seen this before in prohibition?
All that said. This has NOTHING to do with surveillance, the police state, ID cards and DNA databases. It has to do with having the right laws. And decriminalizing widespread acts and laws that are highly selectively enforced.
Just work for the right laws, right? And the right goals (less people in prison for instance).
March 14th, 2010 at 12:58 pm
rootless,
do you understand context?
from the beginning of that article: “In November 2000, Clinton signed a bill passed by Congress that ordered the states to adopt new, more onerous drunk-driving standards or face a loss of highway funds. That’s right: the old highway extortion trick. Sure enough, states passed new, tighter laws against Driving Under the Influence, responding as expected to the feds’ ransom note.
The feds have declared that a blood-alcohol level of 0.08 percent and above is criminal and must be severely punished. The National Restaurant Association is exactly right that this is absurdly low. The overwhelming majority of accidents related to drunk driving involve repeat offenders with blood-alcohol levels twice that high. If a standard of 0.1 doesn’t deter them, then a lower one won’t either.
But there’s a more fundamental point. What precisely is being criminalized? Not bad driving. Not destruction of property. Not the taking of human life or reckless endangerment. The crime is having the wrong substance in your blood. Yet it is possible, in fact, to have this substance in your blood, even while driving, and not commit anything like what has been traditionally called a crime….”
“adopt new, more onerous drunk-driving standards or face a loss of highway funds.”
“If a standard of 0.1 doesn’t deter them, then a lower one won’t either.”
to begin with the article, itself, and, from the post in which it was found–a response to cognos’ assertion: ““The govt does not care about liberitarian private acts.”
–”Incarceration Nation: The Rise of a Prison-Industrial Complex by Andrew Bosworth”
““Missouri’s chief justice told legislators yesterday that hat putting more nonviolent offenders in prison is not the answer to the state’s drunk driving problems..”
““Perhaps the biggest waste of resources in all of state government is the over-incarceration of nonviolent offenders and our mishandling of drug and alcohol offenders. It is costing us billions of dollars and it is not making a dent in crime,” Justice William Ray Price told the House of Representatives in the annual “state of the judiciary” speech. “We may have been tough on crime, but we have not been smart on crime.””
again, from the article: ““…What precisely is being criminalized? Not bad driving. Not destruction of property. Not the taking of human life or reckless endangerment.”
Do you understand(?) Tort(s) n. Law
Damage, injury, or a wrongful act done willfully, negligently, or in circumstances involving strict liability, but not involving breach of contract, for which a civil suit can be brought.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/tort
and, again, verbatim, from the art.: “But there’s a more fundamental point. What precisely is being criminalized? Not bad driving. Not destruction of property. Not the taking of human life or reckless endangerment. The crime is having the wrong substance in your blood. Yet it is possible, in fact, to have this substance in your blood, even while driving, and not commit anything like what has been traditionally called a crime….”
and, do you read? further, from the art.: “We need to put a stop to this whole trend now. Drunk driving should be legalized. And please don’t write me to say: “I am offended by your insensitivity because my mother was killed by a drunk driver.” Any person responsible for killing someone else is guilty of manslaughter or murder and should be punished accordingly.”
and, to my earlier point, in re: the 10th Amendment: “There’s a final point against Clinton’s drunk-driving bill. It is a violation of states rights. Not only is there is no warrant in the Constitution for the federal government to legislate blood-alcohol content – the 10th amendment should prevent it from doing so. The question of drunk driving should first be returned to the states, and then each state should liberate drunk drivers from the force of the law.”
~~
rc,
also, know http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&query=MADD+Founder+Candy+Lightner+quits
“…“MADD has become far more neo-prohibitionist than I ever wanted or envisioned, I didn’t start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with issue of drunk driving.”
In other words, Candy Lightner, the founder of MADD in 1980, left her organization because it had become a monster and took another path with other intentions. What started as a noble crusade against drinking and driving after her daughter was killed by one, has turned to taking a zero tolerance approach to alcohol.
Uh oh, we’ve seen this before and it’s consequences.
Here’s a factoid you can tell your liberal progressive neighbor: The biggest percentage of drunk driving fatalities occur by repeat offenders. So what do nanny states do? They don’t target the offender, no, they decide to target everyone when they decide to implement those ignition interlock devices. It doesn’t matter if you don’t drink at all or if you are a responsible person and has a plan in place in the event you have a little too much at happy hour. Nope, Big Brother has hopes of catching the few by punishing the responsible many…”
http://thelaymanscorner.com/?p=869
~~
sorry for the long post, seemingly, some people need it spelled out..
March 14th, 2010 at 1:34 pm
Mark E Hoffer:
Just a short question. Perhaps I really misunderstand your point of view. Do you think no one should be penalized for driving while being under the influence of intoxicating substances, whatever the amount of those substances in the blood, as long as no one else is being damaged or killed or any property that belongs to someone else is being damaged due to this action? Do you think driving around like this is your “right” as a “free man” that should be protected?
Because I take from following that your answer to this question was “Yes”:
“and, again, verbatim, from the art.: “But there’s a more fundamental point. What precisely is being criminalized? Not bad driving. Not destruction of property. Not the taking of human life or reckless endangerment. The crime is having the wrong substance in your blood. Yet it is possible, in fact, to have this substance in your blood, even while driving, and not commit anything like what has been traditionally called a crime….”
If the answer is “Yes” then the other things you talk about like “highway extortion trick”, or that someone else thinks the 0.08 promille limit was too low, etc. are just a wordy diversion from the central question, from what it is really about.
rc
March 14th, 2010 at 2:17 pm
rc,
again, from the article, itself: “…Despite the propaganda, what’s being criminalized in the case of drunk driving is not the probability that a person driving will get into an accident but the fact of the blood-alcohol content itself. A drunk driver is humiliated and destroyed even when he hasn’t done any harm.
Of course, enforcement is a serious problem. A sizeable number of people leaving a bar or a restaurant would probably qualify as DUI. But there is no way for the police to know unless they are tipped off by a swerving car or reckless driving in general. But the question becomes: why not ticket the swerving or recklessness and leave the alcohol out of it? Why indeed…”
http://mises.org/daily/2343
“Of course, enforcement is a serious problem. A sizeable number of people leaving a bar or a restaurant would probably qualify as DUI. But there is no way for the police to know unless they are tipped off by a swerving car or reckless driving in general. But the question becomes: why not ticket the swerving or recklessness and leave the alcohol out of it? Why indeed…”
“why not ticket the swerving or recklessness and leave the alcohol out of it? Why indeed…”
In that frame, to me, that’s the operative Q:.
in such a circumstance, that ‘swerving’, or ‘recklessness’, “Ticket” could be annotated to denote “poss. Alcohol/impairment related”..such an annotation could/should kick-off a higher level of scrutiny..
LSS: there are many people, in the U.S., that have problems with Alcohol, the last place they should be is ‘behind the Wheel’.
again, note: ““Missouri’s chief justice told legislators yesterday that hat putting more nonviolent offenders in prison is not the answer to the state’s drunk driving problems, reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Perhaps the biggest waste of resources in all of state government is the over-incarceration of nonviolent offenders and our mishandling of drug and alcohol offenders. It is costing us billions of dollars and it is not making a dent in crime,” Justice William Ray Price told the House of Representatives in the annual “state of the judiciary” speech. “We may have been tough on crime, but we have not been smart on crime.””
that Missouri Judge is hardly alone in his POV.
you may do well to understand http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&query=Prison+Industrial+Complex to see some of the other drivers behind the criminalization of blood content..
March 14th, 2010 at 2:58 pm
Mark E. Hoffer:
I guess you don’t want to answer my question straightforward. You will have your reasons. So, I continue to infer from your writing and your affirmative quoting of the article by the Mises-guy.
“again, from the article, itself: “…Despite the propaganda, what’s being criminalized in the case of drunk driving is not the probability that a person driving will get into an accident but the fact of the blood-alcohol content itself. A drunk driver is humiliated and destroyed even when he hasn’t done any harm.”
Drunk driving increases the probability to get into an accident and of harming other people. That makes drunk driving itself already reckless behavior. It’s this reckless behavior, this intentional action, that is being penalized. Thus the assertion above is nonsense.
“But the question becomes: why not ticket the swerving or recklessness and leave the alcohol out of it? Why indeed…”
Because the recklessness doesn’t start when the car is visibly swerving. It starts when the driver gets in the car and drives intoxicated. The drivers ability to react properly and his/her judgment is impaired under the influence of the toxins. This isn’t just the case when any car swerving is visible.
Or this equalization of genetic disposition and alcohol in blood:
“But it is perverse to punish a murderer not because of his crime but because of some biological consideration, e.g. he has red hair.”
Sure, alcohol in blood is a “biological condition”, for which a person isn’t responsible. What stupid nonsense.
Or this:
“Bank robbers may tend to wear masks, but the crime they commit has nothing to do with the mask. In the same way, drunk drivers cause accidents but so do sober drivers, and many drunk drivers cause no accidents at all.”
Basis logic within an argument isn’t really the strength of the author either, obviously. From the fact, that accidents are also caused by sober drivers, it doesn’t follow that there wasn’t a causal link between drunk driving and accidents.
You and your libertarian Mises buddies are so full of s***.
rc
March 14th, 2010 at 4:01 pm
rootless,
completely ignore this: “also, know http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&query=MADD+Founder+Candy+Lightner+quits
“…“MADD has become far more neo-prohibitionist than I ever wanted or envisioned, I didn’t start MADD to deal with alcohol. I started MADD to deal with issue of drunk driving.”
In other words, Candy Lightner, the founder of MADD in 1980, left her organization because it had become a monster and took another path with other intentions. What started as a noble crusade against drinking and driving after her daughter was killed by one, has turned to taking a zero tolerance approach to alcohol.
Uh oh, we’ve seen this before and it’s consequences.
Here’s a factoid you can tell your liberal progressive neighbor: The biggest percentage of drunk driving fatalities occur by repeat offenders. So what do nanny states do? They don’t target the offender, no, they decide to target everyone when they decide to implement those ignition interlock devices. It doesn’t matter if you don’t drink at all or if you are a responsible person and has a plan in place in the event you have a little too much at happy hour. Nope, Big Brother has hopes of catching the few by punishing the responsible many…”
http://thelaymanscorner.com/?p=869
you state: “…the probability to get into an accident and of harming other people.”
answer, from: “Of course, enforcement is a serious problem. A sizeable number of people leaving a bar or a restaurant would probably qualify as DUI.”
Why don’t we have ‘mandatory screenings’ at the exits of any Bar?
Or, if you want to stay w/ ‘probabilities’, Why aren’t we ‘ticketing’ drivers for operating while their ‘bio-rythms’ are “critical”?
“In the workplace, railroads and airlines have experimented the most with biorhythms. A pilot describes the Japanese and American attitudes towards biorhythms.[3] He acknowledges, researching his pilot logbook, that his greatest errors of judgment occurred during critical days, but concludes that an awareness of one’s critical days and paying extra attention is sufficient to ensure safety. A former United Airlines pilot confirmed that United Airlines used biorhythms until the mid-1990s, while the Nippon Express air freight still used biorhythms.[4]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biorhythm
LSS: you want to convict on ‘probabilities’? it opens the door to all kinds of abuses..
Common Law–Law of Torts–has, already, sufficient remedy for those that breach it.
meanwhile, as it stands, we are criminalizing many people, at great expense, that are not assisted by incarceration, in the pursuit of making an inherently risky proposition, Automobile Driving, ‘risk-free’.
We should, rather, be asking “Cui Bono?”
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/cui+bono
Physical Injury, due to Negligence, is, without question, a terrible Crime. If we were intelligent, We would spend more time understanding why, exactly, it was that Lightner quit MADD..
March 14th, 2010 at 4:32 pm
@Mark E. Hoffer:
“Cui bono” – the magic formula based on which every conspiracy theorist knows the dark forces that control the world.
Probabilities. So, I suppose you are also in favor that no one is forbidden to have shooting practices in crowded streets at his/her free will, and you only want to punish when another person is actually killed or injured due to such action. After all, there is only a high probability that latter will happen, but no certainty. And we don’t want to penalize just based on probabilities. Actually, penalized is an intentional action that recklessly endangers life and health of other people.
And the article by the Mises guy, with its grave violations of facts and logic, is just an insult for an intelligent being.
I will continue to ignore your repeated quotes with your straw man arguments (e.g., ignition lock devices) that serve to divert from the issue here, even if you post them another 10 times. But I guess this exchange has become circular anyway.
rc
March 14th, 2010 at 5:59 pm
rootless,
it’s sad, really, that you’re levelling the accusation of “straw man arguments”, and “grave violations of facts and logic”..
from yourself: ““Cui bono” – the magic formula…”
“I suppose you are also in favor that no one is forbidden to have shooting practices in crowded streets at his/her free will..”
“If you think it’s your right as a “free man” to freely roam the streets with a deadly weapon at your disposal under the influence of toxins that affect your thinking and reflexes, until you run over my neighbors kids with this weapon,…”
to truncate the List.
I think I’ve made myself, and the position, clear. Others can, and should, decide for themselves–whether, or not, the current approach is, actually, accomplishing it’s stated goals, in a reasonable fashion.
These questions are going to devolve to the Localities for, if no other reason, simple Arithmetic.
Budget Deficits, at all levels of ‘Government’, simply, means that the current edifice, and its artifices, don’t add-up.
There are, actually, better, and simpler, solutions to many of these issues; It is Why We should be asking “Cui Bono?”, in re”: the current (S/s)tate–along with others Q:s designed to illuminate, rather than obfuscate.
cui bo·no (kw bn)
n.
Utility, advantage, or self-interest considered as the determinant of value or motivation.
[From Latin cui bon (est), for whom (it is) of advantage : cui, dative of qu, who + bon, dative of bonum, advantage.]
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
or, in other parlance http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&query=Woodward+Bernstein+Follow+the+Money
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/cui+bono
March 14th, 2010 at 8:32 pm
Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum Change
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html
I’m sure learnin’ from Texas-written school books will fix all this for the next generation.
http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/dpp/news/texas-textbook-changes-stir-controversy-030607
Thank you FOX News for telling us we all need Texas School Books, the seal of approval for a generation of Rush Limbaugh-loving, Glenn-Beck-gold-buying, astrology-believing morons who can’t hold a logical thought in their pointy heads.
Thanks GOP, you’re doing American proud.
March 15th, 2010 at 12:15 am
Here’s another “fine” example:
http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/police-twitter-riots-social-media-activists
I’m not saying Obama started this mentality or could fix it if he wanted to. And I’m more embarrassed by the GOP (by far) than the Dems. But, “so?” Regardless of figurehead, we seem to be headed towards a police state.
Maybe other generations worried about the same issue but we “never quite get there” (to a police state). Surely, the McCarthy era was worse. Under Edgar Hoover and Nixon, too. And things felt worse to me under the neocons. But, every year, technology “improves”. What happens with that apparatus when the next jerks gain win election? They’ll have more power than ever before.
>> Suddenly we don’t have a right versus left ideology debating in the streets but a slave versus free one ..
Totally. The Fed is part of that: keeping people in debt instead of liquidating the creditors.
March 15th, 2010 at 5:53 am
with everyone foaming at the mouth over gold, i thought this was interesting:
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/gata-present-new-evidence-feds-gold-price-supression-scheme-coming-through-oddly-unredacted-