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Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.

18 Responses to “10 Tuesday AM Reads”

1. DSS10 Says:
   November 29th, 2011 at 9:46 am

   “Mr. Gingrich said the C.B.O. “is a reactionary socialist institution which does not believe in economic growth, does not believe in innovation and does not believe in data that it has not internally generated.””

   http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/gingrich-and-the-destruction-of-congressional-expertise/

2. Moe Says:
   November 29th, 2011 at 10:10 am

   I’m not sure the Paulson article qualifies as WTF? these days…

   I’m not even sure this would: “Congressmen Burn Down House Full of Kittens and Puppies”

3. SOP Says:
   November 29th, 2011 at 10:38 am

   Now we know why US AG Eric Holder said the following:

   “The threat has changed from simply worrying about foreigners coming here, to worrying about people in the United States, American citizens — raised here, born here, and who for whatever reason, have decided that they are going to become radicalized and take up arms against the nation in which they were born,” he said.

   http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/attorney-general-eric-holders-blunt-warning-terror-attacks/story?id=12444727&tqkw=&tqshow=GMA&tqkw=&tqshow=GMA&tqkw=&tqshow=GMA&tqkw=&tqshow=GMA

   ———————————–

   Coming soon to the USA -(substitute “Ordinary Americans” for “Iran Protesters” and “The White House, congress, Fed etc” for “UK embassy in Tehran.”)

   Iran protesters storm UK embassy in Tehran

   http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15936213

   —————————-

4. Irwin Fletcher Says:
   November 29th, 2011 at 11:08 am

   More on Climate change. WSJ is 2 for 2 on this topic.

   http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203935604577066183761315576.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read

5. rd Says:
   November 29th, 2011 at 11:24 am

   The financial sector has been in a bubble for over a decade.

   Our depression won’t be over until the financial sector portion of GDP has dropped by at least 50% (preferably more) from its peak. At that point, it should be back to its financial intermediary role necessary to assist the economy in functioning efficiently instead of the gaming and fraudulent extraction that has become prevalent.

6. SOP Says:
   November 29th, 2011 at 11:43 am

   More on Climate change. WSJ is 2 for 2 on distributing misinformation and distortions.

   http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/CRUstatements/rebuttalsandcorrections/phrasesexplained

7. Arequipa01 Says:
   November 29th, 2011 at 12:30 pm

   Re American Airlines and bankrupcty. Is this a preemptive move to get out from under oil hedges that will go very wrong if a shooting war starts with Iran?

8. AHodge Says:
   November 29th, 2011 at 1:00 pm

   Paulson might be ethically challenged
   but this fannie leak is not at top of my list-or illegal
   love Black but disgree that there is no “possible legitimite reason” for this
   paulsons stated reason-it clear from his memoirs
   is that he thought the market breakdown was partly fannie etc fears. this is reasonable, the Fannie etc pool spreads had widened that summer to nearly 3% over treasuries
   the implied writedown on 1.5 %pts (per year) of higher rates of the $3.6 trillion of pools would be over $1/2 trillion
   after two fake Fannie fixes including the Bazooka in july
   he did the massive real fix including the undisclosed “keepwell” On sept 5
   but then was shocked when the market went over the falls later in the month.
   this was because he was not following either the economy in the summer, or the extent of the securitization and other credit shutdown.

9. maddog2020 Says:
   November 29th, 2011 at 1:06 pm

   “More on Climate change. WSJ is 2 for 2 on this topic.”

   Thank you SOP, for the first and second smack-down. Irwin, come back with data or analysis that refutes climate change, not crappy opinion pieces and columns. Otherwise, stay away.

10. Lugnut Says:
    November 29th, 2011 at 1:16 pm

    They wouldnt havent have gone to such lengths to keep it under wraps if they thought is straight and narrow. There’s a reason they don’t keep meeting minutes.

    Its a how to guide in high level insider trading of material non-public information, but no one seems to care. I think this story merits a stand-alone post Barry. Its rather important. JMHO….

11. tradeking13 Says:
    November 29th, 2011 at 1:24 pm

    The Man Who Busted the ‘Banksters’ (Smithsonian)

12. Mike in Nola Says:
    November 29th, 2011 at 1:28 pm

    On the tablet front, I think it’s the Kindle Fire that’s going to be the cabbage patch doll this year (showing my age). Amazon released a statement about how wonderful it is doing:

    “Even before the busy holiday shopping weekend, we’d already sold millions of the new Kindle [devices], and Kindle Fire was the best-selling product across all of Amazon.com,” the company noted in a press release tied to the “Black Friday” shopping event last week. “Black Friday was the best ever for the Kindle family: Customers purchased four times as many Kindle devices as they did last Black Friday. In addition, we’re seeing a lot of customers buying multiple Kindles—one for themselves and others as gifts. We expect this trend to continue … through the holiday shopping season.”

    One big factor seems to be price. Most of the people I hear in podccasts are getting them because for $200, it’s worth trying. I think this will be the big selling point. It’s not as nice as an iPad, but much more of an impulse buy for those who are still employed.

    On an anecdotal level, I was getting a haircut today and one of the beauticians asked a fellow employee about a tablet for her daughter for Christmas and the Kindle Fire quickly came up. Price was a big factor since it was for a kid. They almost immediately went down to the Office Depot in the same strip mall to have a look. I didn’t get to hear the outcome, but you can see there is buzz and the price is right.

13. DeDude Says:
    November 29th, 2011 at 1:38 pm

    On the SEC vs. Citi

    “The agency contends that it must settle most of the cases it brings because it does not have the money or the staff to battle deep-pocketed Wall Street firms in court”

    Now that is sweet. The agency in charge of policing Wall Street banksters is so underfunded that it cannot do its job. Nice way to pretend that there are rules and then make sure those rules cannot be enforced. The banksters do whatever they want and if they are among the few unlucky who get caught, they just settle for a slap on the wrist.

14. AHodge Says:
    November 29th, 2011 at 1:39 pm

    also the threat to AAA ratings and the banks refusing BEARs and others FF paper as repo and other collateral. i think paulson right the FF rescue” helped”
    (apply the usual massive $ 3/4 trillion moral hazard caveats)
    just was way too little too late

15. krsone Says:
    November 29th, 2011 at 1:54 pm

    I just read a great article which I believe really gets to the ROOT of many of our financial and political (and social) problems.

    http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/article/1091678–weeding-out-corporate-psychopaths

16. Manal Mehta Says:
    November 29th, 2011 at 2:13 pm

    From Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book Too Big To Fail:

    But before he ended his evening on Saturday, he had one last meeting after dinner. Just days earlier, when Paulson learned that Goldman’s board would be in Moscow at the same time as him, he had Jim Wilkinson organize a meeting with them. Nothing formal, purely social–for old times’ sake.

    For fuck’s sake! Wilkinson thought. He and Treasury had had enough trouble trying to fend off all the Goldman Sachs conspiracy theories constantly being bandied about in Wash- ington and on Wall Street. A private meeting with its board? In Moscow?

    For the nearly two years that Paulson had been Treasury secretary he had not met privately with the board of any company, except for briefly dropping by a cocktail party that Larry Fink’s BlackRock was holding for its directors at the Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi in June.

    Anxious about the prospect of such a meeting, Wilkinson called to get approval from Treasury’s general counsel. Bob Hoyt, who wasn’t enamored of the “optics” of such a meet- ing, said that as long as it remained a “social event,” it wouldn’t run afoul of the ethics guidelines.

    Still, Wilkinson had told Rogers, “Let’s keep this quiet,” as the two coordinated the details. They agreed that Goldman’s directors would join him in his hotel suite following their dinner with Gorbachev. Paulson would not record the “social event” on his official calendar.

    That evening, the Goldman party boarded a bus to take them the dozen or so blocks to the Moscow Marriott Grand Hotel on Tverskaya Street. Some felt as if they were taking part in a spy thriller, what with the security detail and the grandeur of downtown Moscow. The directors walked through the bright lobby with its large fountain and were escorted upstairs to the Treasury secretary’s rooms.
    “Come on in,” a buoyant Paulson said as he greeted everyone, shaking hands and giving bear hugs to some.

    For the next hour, Paulson regaled his old friends with stories about his time in Treasury and his prognostications about the economy. They questioned him about the possibility of another bank blowing up, like Lehman, and he talked about the need for the government to have the power to wind down troubled firms, offering a preview of his upcoming speech. “Nonetheless,” he told them, “my own view is that we have tough times ahead of us, but based upon history, I think we may come out of this by year’s end.”

    It was that comment that Blankfein recalled the following day to a director over breakfast. “I don’t know why he’d say that,” Blankfein said quizzically. “It can only get worse.”

17. freejack Says:
    November 29th, 2011 at 2:20 pm

    In the spirit of BR’s theorem that we are first and foremost primates with fallacious thinking processes who frequently design our own greatest disasters, specifically our in inability to Understating the Benefits of Avoiding Low-Probability Events with Disastrous Consequences….
    http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/06/understating-the-benefits-of-avoiding-low-probability-disastrous-consequences/
    …a follow up to the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster;

    “Japan’s science ministry says 8 per cent of the country’s surface area has been contaminated by radiation from the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant.”

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-22/japan-land-contaminated-by-radiation/3686324/?site=melbourne

    Ship of fools.

18. Jim67545 Says:
    November 29th, 2011 at 8:12 pm

    Judge Rakoff’s decision is wonderful. On one hand he skuttles the slap on wrist agreement, in which the $700M in damaged parties get no recovery. On the other hand it puts a monkey wrench in government agencies in essence extorting funds from corporations charged with unproven allegations. When the corporation, weighing their options, settles for a few mere $100M and no admission of fault but are actually innocent, we have government extortion at its worse. This is hardly the only instance of this. Let’s actually see which is which. Let’s see what took place, or didn’t.