The Big Picture - Macro Perspective on the Capital Markets, Economy, Technology, and Digital Media

Check out Gretchen Morgenson’s column in the Sunday Times:

“The American taxpayer will lose a rare straight shooter when Neil M. Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, leaves his post on March 30. In his frequent testimony before Congress and in the nine quarterly reports and 13 audits his office has published, Mr. Barofsky has served taxpayers well by speaking truth to the powers at the Treasury.

This has often put him at odds with the Treasury officials whose work he is charged with overseeing — a natural consequence for any watchdog with teeth. Using facts, figures and extensive interviews, Mr. Barofsky has questioned the effectiveness of the administration’s loan modification program and the Treasury’s initial refusal to require institutions that received taxpayer-financed bailouts to account for their use of TARP funds.

He has also criticized the bank-friendly terms of the rescue in 2008 of the American International Group; that deal was led by Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, who at the time was president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New YorkUnlike others in Washington, Mr. Barofsky has also spoken passionately about the continuing problems posed by too-big-to-fail financial institutions.”

This is more than mere noise: Barofsky actually saved the US taxpayers some big dough:

“In addition to his candor, Mr. Barofsky delivered a solid prosecutorial record. Since it was created in the fall of 2008, his office has won criminal convictions of 18 people, helped keep $555 million in taxpayer funds from being lost to fraud and provided the Treasury with 68 recommendations to protect taxpayers from losses in its programs. The office — known as Sigtarp, for special inspector general for the TARP program — continues to work on 153 civil and criminal investigations, including 74 involving executives and senior officers at financial institutions who received or applied for TARP money”

Nice to see when someone actually dies their job well . . .

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Source:
TARP’s Watchdog: A Tough Act to Follow
GRETCHEN MORGENSON
NYT, March 19, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/business/20gret.html

Via NASA

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A physics and engineering perspective Prof. Ben Monreal, UCSB Department of Physics

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Understanding the radioactivity at Fukushima

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Via xkcd comes this very informative chart on radiation exposure:

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click for ginormous graphic

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Sources:
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/cfr/part020/
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/tritium-radiation-fs.html
http://www.nema.ne.gov/technological/dose-limits.html
http://www.deq.idaho.gov/inl_oversight/radiation/dose_calculator.cfm
http://www.deq.idaho.gov/inl_oversight/radiation/radiation_guide.cfm
http://mitnse.com/
http://www.mext.go.jp/component/a_menu/other/detail/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2011/03/18/1303727_1716.pdf
http://blog.vornaskotti.com/2010/07/15/into-the-zone-chernobyl-pripyat/
http://dels-old.nas.edu/dels/rpt_briefs/rerf_final.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sievert

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Hat tip Flowing Data

Washington’s Blog strives to provide real-time, well-researched and actionable information.  George – the head writer at Washington’s Blog – is a busy professional and a former adjunct professor.

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Santa Susana

As a History Chanel special notes, a nuclear meltdown occurred at the world’s first commercial reactor only 30 miles from downtown Los Angeles, and only 7 miles from the community of Canoga Park and the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles

Specifically, in 1959, there was a meltdown of one-third of the nuclear reactors at the Santa Susana field laboratory operated by Rocketdyne, releasing – according to some scientists’ estimates – 240 times as much radiation as Three Mile Island.

But the Atomic Energy Commission lied and said only there was only 1 partially damaged rod, and no real problems. In fact, the AEC kept the meltdown a state secret for 20 years.

There were other major accidents at that reactor facility, which the AEC and Nuclear Regulatory Commission covered up as well. See this.

Kyshtm

Two years earlier, a Russian government reactor at Kyshtm melted down in an accident which some claim was even worse than Chernobyl.

The Soviet government hid the accident, pretending that it was creating a new “nature reserve” to keep people out of the huge swath of contaminated land.

Journalist Anna Gyorgy alleges that the results of a freedom of information act request show that the CIA knew about the accident at the time, but kept it secret to prevent adverse consequences for the fledgling American nuclear industry.

1980s Studies and Hearings

In 1982, the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs received a secret report received from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission called “Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences 2″.

In that report and other reports by the NRC in the 1980s, it was estimated that there was a 50% chance of a nuclear meltdown within the next 20 years which would be so large that it would contaminate an area the size of the State of Pennsylvania, which would result in huge numbers of a fatalities, and which would cause damage in the hundreds of billions of dollars (in 1980s dollars).

Those reports were kept secret for decades.

Ongoing?

In light of the foregoing, the following quote from the San Jose Mercury News may not seem so far-fetched:

EPA officials, however, refused to answer questions or make staff members available to explain the exact location and number of monitors, or the levels of radiation, if any, being recorded at existing monitors in California. Margot Perez-Sullivan, a spokeswoman at the EPA’s regional headquarters in San Francisco, said the agency’s written statement would stand on its own.

Critics said the public needs more information.

“It’s disappointing,” said Bill Magavern, director of Sierra Club California. “I have a strong suspicion that EPA is being silenced by those in the federal government who don’t want anything to stand in the way of a nuclear power expansion in this country, heavily subsidized by taxpayer money.”

And see this and this

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So I have been tweaking the ads that are running on the site — I want to stay away from the junk, and keep them relevant and not-too-annoying (I did see one schlock text ad, which I killed.)

I keep seeing a Barbados ad on the site, and I wonder if it has anything to do with my recent trip there — do ad servers somehow hunt for cookies? Can they tell I searched for specific info on something, and then serve me ads on that topic? Very Minority Report (and a little creepy).

Let me know if you see any really ugly or inappropriate ads. Grab a screen shot and a copy the URL, send it to The Big Picture -at- Optonline.net,  and I will kill that ad.

Washington’s Blog strives to provide real-time, well-researched and actionable information.  George – the head writer at Washington’s Blog – is a busy professional and a former adjunct professor.

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Gaddafi is a lying psychopath who is slaughtering his own people.

So is the imposition of a no-fly zone a good thing?

Perhaps. The Arab League called for it. And even some Libyan rebels pleaded for imposition of a no-fly zone.

But if someone is going to stop Gaddafi, it should be Arab League nations – like Saudi Arabia, which is armed to the teeth.

America should not be involved, because:

• Most Americans are strongly against U.S. intervention in Libya

• America was already involved in 2+ wars costing the U.S. many trillions of dollars (Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says that the Iraq war alone will cost $3-5 trillion dollars.) Indeed, America’s engagement in multiple wars is bankrupting our country – despite the claims by the military Keynesians

• We are creating more terrorists than we’re stopping by bombing and invading Arab countries

• And both conservatives like Ron Paul and liberals like Dennis Kucinich have pointed out that American intervention is unlawful without a Congressional resolution of war … which no one bothered to ask for.

So I don’t care whether or not someone imposes a no-fly zone or takes out Gaddafi … but the U.S. shouldn’t be the one to do it, even as part of a coalition with France and Britain.

Indeed, Gaddafi has accused the efforts by the three former colonial powers – U.S., France and Britain – as being “neo-colonial” aggression and a “crusade“.

If Arabic countries were the ones to intervene, Arabs wouldn’t be able to make those charges.

And if Arab countries are not willing to intervene themselves, that speaks volumes as to their true priorities … especially since Saudi Arabia just sent 1,000 troops to Bahrain to help the tyrants in that country brutally put down a pro-democracy protest

Did I write The Dunning–Kruger effect?

I mean “Activism.”

You see, Mr. “1%.FOMC.Rates-Nonfeasance-banks.can.self.regulate-its.called.innovation-Greenspan.Put,” had the unmitigated gall, the colossal cojones, the planet sized testicles to blame the current slow recovery on Government Intervention!

Given how utterly unaware the former Fed Chairman is of his own gross incompetentcies, I thought if I used the actual, title no one would believe me.

Alan Greenspan on Activism

Abstract: The US recovery from the 2008 financial and economic crisis has been disappointingly tepid. What is most notable in sifting through the variables that might conceivably account for the lacklustre rebound in GDP growth and the persistence of high unemployment is the unusually low level of corporate illiquid long-term fixed asset investment. As a share of corporate liquid cash flow, it is at its lowest level since 1940. This contrasts starkly with the robust recovery in the markets for liquid corporate securities. What, then, accounts for this exceptionally elevated level of illiquidity aversion? I break down the broad potential  sources, and analyse them with standard regression techniques. I infer that a minimum of half and possibly as much as three-fourths of the effect can be explained by the shock of vastly  greater uncertainties embedded in the competitive, regulatory and financial environments faced by businesses since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, deriving from the surge in government activism. This explanation is buttressed by comparison with similar conundrums experienced during the 1930s. I conclude that the current government activism is hampering what should be a broad-based robust economic recovery, driven in significant part by the positive wealth effect of a buoyant U.S. and global stock market.

Perhaps Messrs Dunning and Kruger would not mind if we renamed their research the Alan Greenspan Effect?

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Source: PDF
Greenspan on Activism
Council on Foreign Relations
http://www.cfr.org/thinktank/cgs/

David Kotok, who published regularly in the Think Tank, is hosting a conference in Philadelphia in May:

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29th Annual Monetary and Trade Conference Tuesday, May 24, 2011 “Is Housing Ready for a Rebound?

QE2, Housing and Foreclosures: Are they Related?”

7:30AM – 8:00AM • Registration & Continental Breakfast

8:00AM – 8:15AM • Welcoming Remarks:
-George Tsetsekos, Dean, LeBow College of Business, Drexel University
-David Kotok, CIO, Cumberland Advisors & Vice Chair, GIC

8:15AM – 9:20AM • Session I: Panel Discussion and Audience Q & A “Fannie/Freddie: Where Have We Been and Where are We Going?”
-Josh Rosner of Graham Fisher & Co. Co-Author of Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon
-Chris Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics. Author of Inflated: How Money and Debt Built the American Dream
-Michael Lewitt, Author of The Death of Capital: How Creative Policy Can Restore Stability

Moderator: Gretchen Morgenson, Assistant Business and Financial Editor of The New York Times . Co-author of Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon

The speakers above will be available for a book signing during the break.

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9:20AM – 9:50AM • Session II: “Outlook for Housing Recovery” Followed by Audience Q&A
-David Berson of PMI

9:50AM – 10:25AM • Keynote Speaker: Tom Hoenig, President, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City

10:25AM – 10:45AM • Coffee Break and Book Signing

10:45AM – 11:25AM • Session III: “What Does QE Mean for U.S. Housing?” Followed by Audience Q & A
-Maria Pia Olivero, Dept of Economics, LeBow College of Business
-Mark Vitner, Managing Director & Senior Economist, Wells Fargo Securities, LLC
Moderator: TBA

11:25AM – 12:10PM • Session IV: “GSEs: What To Do and How to Do It.” Followed by Audience Q & A
-William Poole, Former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

12:10PM – 12:20PM • Summary and closing comments by Bill Dunkelberg, Chair, GIC

7:30AM – 12:30PM Behrakis Grand Hall, Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA

Registration: $50 – Members $100 – Non-Members and includes a one-year membership Registration Available Online: http://www.interdependence.org/Event-05-24-11.php Contact: Jillian Fornito at GIC at jfornito@interdependence.org or 215-898-9453 Global Interdependence Center • 3701 Chestnut Street • Philadelphia, PA 19104 • 215-898-9453 • www.interdependence.org