I hope 2009 does not stink as badly as I fear it is going to stink, so here's a little happy happy music!
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Cool Quotes From Paul Krugman's Blog
Yesterday, on Krugman's blog:
And here’s a trip down memory lane:
“A national severe price distortion seems most unlikely in the United States” — Alan Greenspan, October 2004.
“Homebuilders led the stock parade this week with a fantastic 11 percent gain. This is a group that hedge funds and bubbleheads love to hate. All the bond bears have been dead wrong in predicting sky-high mortgage rates. So have all the bubbleheads who expect housing-price crashes in Las Vegas or Naples, Florida, to bring down the consumer, the rest of the economy, and the entire stock market.” — Larry Kudlow, June 2005.
“I suspect that we are coming to the end of this downtrend, as applications for new mortgages, the most important series, have flattened out .. I think the worst of this may well be over.” Alan Greenspan, October 2006.
“The housing market is at or near the bottom.” Henry Paulson, April 2007.
Thanks for nothin', idiots!Awesome Headline...
Wonkette from yesterday: Bristol Palin finally crapped out her kid, Tripp Easton Von Dildo Palin Aniston Mozzarella Stick Johnston.
We Are All Roland Burris
...Even his kids. From Wonkette:
Roland Burris Has Already Constructed His Terrifying Death Chamber
Wonkette grave-robbing operative “Vasyl” sends us this hilarious bit of information about your would-be new junior Senator from Illinois, Roland “Don’t Lynch Me” Burris: “Just so you know, that nice old black man who is set to become the next US Senator from Illinois is well prepared. He has already built a tombstone — actually, more of a monument — with all his accomplishments listed on it. Planning ahead, he has left extra space for additional accomplishments. Also, Roland Burris’s children? They’re named Roland II and Rolanda. No joke.” HMM… It appears that there is much to learn about this so-called “Roland Burris.”
Roland Burris Has Already Constructed His Terrifying Death Chamber
Wonkette grave-robbing operative “Vasyl” sends us this hilarious bit of information about your would-be new junior Senator from Illinois, Roland “Don’t Lynch Me” Burris: “Just so you know, that nice old black man who is set to become the next US Senator from Illinois is well prepared. He has already built a tombstone — actually, more of a monument — with all his accomplishments listed on it. Planning ahead, he has left extra space for additional accomplishments. Also, Roland Burris’s children? They’re named Roland II and Rolanda. No joke.” HMM… It appears that there is much to learn about this so-called “Roland Burris.”
The Good Ol' Texas Ratio
From the awesome website lolfed.com, which is tropes on lolcat.com, which is itself a poor version of icanhascheezburger.com, comes the following post, reprinted here in full, as I could not link to it:
There’s an antiquated notion that, perhaps, banks should have more equity and loan-loss reserves than they do nonperforming loans. It comes in handy when banks try to do things like not fail.
In the 1980s, a metric came out of RBC Capital Markets (best associated with Gerard Cassidy) called the “Texas Ratio,” so named for the performance of banks in Texas during the 1980s, and retested in New England in the early 90s. It’s not so complicated; you divide the total of the bank’s nonperforming loans by its total equity+loan loss reserves, and if the ratio is 1:1 (or, worse, 2:1, or higher) you start Photoshopping the bank’s logo onto a sinking boat and posting about it on LOLFed.
Today, LewRockwell.com took this formula - with a variation to account for gov’t-guaranteed debts - and ran the numbers for all the banks in the United States. You might as well look your bank up, though it won’t necessarily give you a warm fuzzy feeling when you do it. A “100″ in their formula is the equivalent of a 1:1 Texas ratio, that is, a bank with bad loans equal to its reserves; any number higher than 100 means they already have more bad loans than reserves. There are a lot of banks to which that applies. Back in May, Cassidy ran the Texas ratio for US banks and predicted at least 150 upcoming failures. LewRockwell’s numbers are probably even less rosy.
Looking at the banks with the better Texas ratios, you will notice many of them have hit the TARP hard. Once our TARP application is approved and we become a bank holding company, we’ll be known as the LOLFed Bank of Bartertown and Cheap Scotch, N.A. We’ll do our best to keep our Texas ratio down.
Sad But True...
True that post by John Aravosis at Americablog about how if everybody cuts spending in order to save their money in case things tank, things will tank. Reprinted here in full:
Krugman wrote a column the other day about how state governments are cutting back spending, at at a time that we need them to keep spending, and even increase spending.
Krugman wrote a column the other day about how state governments are cutting back spending, at at a time that we need them to keep spending, and even increase spending.
It’s true that the economy is currently shrinking. But that’s the result of a slump in private spending. It makes no sense to add to the problem by cutting public spending, too.It's the same problem we see with private spending, spending by you and me. It makes sense that you're cutting back your spending, just in case the economy REALLY goes south. But the thing that just might send the economy REALLY south is all of us collectively cutting back our spending. Thus, the precaution leads to the very problem. Ironically, Bush's then-ridiculous advice last year to "spend money" was spot on. But how can you spend when you're afraid that your employer won't spend, but will instead cut back themselves and fire you? It's all one big prisoner's dilemma (or, tragedy of the commons).
[A] dilemma in which multiple individuals acting independently in their own self-interest can ultimately destroy a shared resource even where it is clear that it is not in anyone's long term interest for this to happen.In other words, it makes sense for YOU personally to stop spending and save your money, but if we all do it, we're screwed. If we all spend, perhaps we're not screwed (and that's part of the problem - there is no guarantee that spending wildly will save any of incomes).
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Price Discovery? No Thanks!
Cool post by Yves over at Naked Capitalism, where he discusses how most banks are toast in spite of the huge capital infusions from the government. The salient point is this:
Repeat after me: you need recapitalization AND price discovery. The near pathological avoidance of the latter by the officialdom would seem to support widespread suspicions that marking assets to market, or even a realistic notion of longer-term value, would confirm that the industry is insolvent.
Price discovery is where you let the market (remember it?) decide, based on supply and demand (remember them?), what a commodity is worth. But what would happen if banks admit that a lot of the paper they hold is worthless and that they are basically insolvent because they are so over-leveraged? Sounds pretty scary to me, but at least we wouldn't by giving the money we're printing to the crooks who got us all in trouble in the first place.
Repeat after me: you need recapitalization AND price discovery. The near pathological avoidance of the latter by the officialdom would seem to support widespread suspicions that marking assets to market, or even a realistic notion of longer-term value, would confirm that the industry is insolvent.
Price discovery is where you let the market (remember it?) decide, based on supply and demand (remember them?), what a commodity is worth. But what would happen if banks admit that a lot of the paper they hold is worthless and that they are basically insolvent because they are so over-leveraged? Sounds pretty scary to me, but at least we wouldn't by giving the money we're printing to the crooks who got us all in trouble in the first place.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Dude! Your Name!
Awesome article in Business Week about Anurag Dikshit, the founder of an internet gambling site who's now in trouble with the feds. It's got a lot of great lines, like:
Apparently, U.S. officials don’t believe Dikshit is a flight risk.
and:
Dikshit has already paid the first $100 million installment.
Apparently, U.S. officials don’t believe Dikshit is a flight risk.
and:
Dikshit has already paid the first $100 million installment.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Mr. Mortgage's Recipe for Fixing the Housing Mess
Mr. Mortgage, who maintains the Mortgage Lender Implode-O-Meter website (worth bookmarking cuz it's chock-full of good information, daily updates, and useful links about the real estate/mortgage biz), wrote an awesome article about the real roots of housing crisis. His recipe for helping homeowners out of their current troubles makes a lot of sense:
This would of course be a tough pill for the banks and investors to swallow, but Mr. Mortgage makes a good case that it's really all their fault.
It is time for the very same financial institutions that created all of this to do what’s right and re-underwrite every loan originated between 2003 - 2007 using prudent underwriting guidelines. Then, they must reduce the principal balance to what the borrower really earns using a 28% housing and 36% total debt-to-income ratio at a market rate 30-year fixed loan. When home owners are levered to 28/36 DTI they are able to save money and live a decent lifestyle. If they go upside down in their property who cares - they are still able to save money and live the lifestyle their income level allows. At 28/36, their home once again becomes a place to live.
If reducing the principal balance to 28/36 on a market rate 30-year fixed loan winds up being $100k lower than the present value of the home, the bank should receive the differential through an equity warrant to 90% of the value of the property. This way the home owner is not upside down in the home, they can freely sell or refi, they are not getting anything more than they deserve and the bank is still protected. But the home owner gets all of the upside. Anything less and the program will fail. If the borrowers can’t prove income through bank statements at the very least, then they need to leave the house and rent. They should have been renters all along.
For the small percentage of folks who can afford the payments with DTI’s under 28/36 but are underwater solely due to house price depreciation, principal balance reductions to 90% of the present value of the property is likely in order WITH a full-recourse provision to thwart fraud.
For the minority with equity who may owe $200k on a $400k home or have no mortgage at all, you get a multi-year tax break and a lollipop. By de-leveraging and stabilizing the consumer, you will stabilize house prices much faster, which will benefit you. Left unchecked and the consumer de-leveraging and housing price depreciation will continue for years, which brings you down too. You may end up underwater in your home unless the right solution is brought forth.
These things will not prevent housing prices from coming down over the next few years to reach a level of affordability consistent with present mortgage rates and lending guidelines. But at least it would be the best way to begin to undo the irresponsibility of the past five years and get back to basics where house prices and affordability are based primarily on traditional factors such as rents, incomes, interest rates, macroeconomic conditions and sentiment.This would of course be a tough pill for the banks and investors to swallow, but Mr. Mortgage makes a good case that it's really all their fault.
Passive Homes!
On Being WaMu
Long, detailed NYT piece on Washington Mutual's crazy lending practices. Fun example:
On another occasion, Ms. Zaback (a mortgage screener for WaMu - ed.) asked a loan officer for verification of an applicant’s assets. The officer sent a letter from a bank showing a balance of about $150,000 in the borrower’s account, she recalled. But when Ms. Zaback called the bank to confirm, she was told the balance was only $5,000.
On another occasion, Ms. Zaback (a mortgage screener for WaMu - ed.) asked a loan officer for verification of an applicant’s assets. The officer sent a letter from a bank showing a balance of about $150,000 in the borrower’s account, she recalled. But when Ms. Zaback called the bank to confirm, she was told the balance was only $5,000.
The loan officer yelled at her, Ms. Zaback recalled. “She said, ‘We don’t call the bank to verify.’ ” Ms. Zaback said she told Mr. Parsons that she no longer wanted to work with that loan officer, but he replied: “Too bad.”
Friday, December 26, 2008
SEC = Morons!
Here's the link to the letter that guy wrote to the SEC in 2005 about how the Madoff fund was a Ponzi scheme - it's a 19 page PDF. In its defense, the SEC stated that the letter was short on details, and that is why they did not act. I read the whole thing, not understanding most of it of course, and it is nothing if not detailed. Whoever read this letter and decided to ignore it should have a live python stuck up his or her a*s!
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
46% of Kids do not Finish College...
...But their loans live on forever! Neat piece by Zac Bissonnette, a precocious 19-year-old at Zoo Mass Amherst who can afford a lot of double consonants in his name:
But there are plenty of four-year colleges willing to take the money of anyone who can pony up -- whether that money comes from parents, the government, or that student's paychecks until he’s old enough to buy a discounted movie ticket. These colleges have seats to fill and bills to pay, and sure, they'd all love to be Harvard, but they'll take what they can get. And student lenders? They have absolutely no incentive to encourage responsible borrowing because they will get paid back -- you can file for bankruptcy 400 times, and your student loans will still be there, with interest and penalties accruing daily.
But there are plenty of four-year colleges willing to take the money of anyone who can pony up -- whether that money comes from parents, the government, or that student's paychecks until he’s old enough to buy a discounted movie ticket. These colleges have seats to fill and bills to pay, and sure, they'd all love to be Harvard, but they'll take what they can get. And student lenders? They have absolutely no incentive to encourage responsible borrowing because they will get paid back -- you can file for bankruptcy 400 times, and your student loans will still be there, with interest and penalties accruing daily.
Ponzi Schemin'
Awesome post by Michael Hudson in Counterpunch about the original Ponzi scheme, the 2006 Spanish stamp fund scandal, and how the financial markets really are a Ponzi scheme after all:
We have entered an era in which financial markets resemble the stamp-buying funds. Governments have replaced industrial growth with purely financial wealth creation in the form of a real estate and stock market bubble. This has turned the economic universe upside-down relative to what the classical writers expected to result from the technological progress unleashed by the Industrial Revolution and its parallel agricultural, commercial and financial revolutions. Property and credit have become costs instead of a benefit, institutional forms of rent- and interest-extracting overhead rather than helpful inputs.
We have entered an era in which financial markets resemble the stamp-buying funds. Governments have replaced industrial growth with purely financial wealth creation in the form of a real estate and stock market bubble. This has turned the economic universe upside-down relative to what the classical writers expected to result from the technological progress unleashed by the Industrial Revolution and its parallel agricultural, commercial and financial revolutions. Property and credit have become costs instead of a benefit, institutional forms of rent- and interest-extracting overhead rather than helpful inputs.
23/6 Says Be Happy You're Not Mrs. Ted Haggard
Good ol' 23/6:
Remember this lady? Her husband, former Evangelical pastor Ted Haggard, admitted to having sex and meth with a male prostitute. Ted was removed from his position at the influential New Life Church, then kicked out of a de-gaying program and is now trying to sell insurance in Arizona. The couple, who have five children, are still married.
[snip]
Imagine for a second that you take your marriage vows seriously. For Evangelicals, "in sickness and in health" is a catch-all that includes, "gay or straight." And Gayle's husband is ill. Very ill. Ted's fever for d*ck has left a cucumber-sized tumor in his mouth. If this lady were you or me, we would introduce him to our friend Bruce from college and wish them well. But this is Gayle. According to every truth she holds self-evident, she must stay and make this marriage work.
Remember this lady? Her husband, former Evangelical pastor Ted Haggard, admitted to having sex and meth with a male prostitute. Ted was removed from his position at the influential New Life Church, then kicked out of a de-gaying program and is now trying to sell insurance in Arizona. The couple, who have five children, are still married.
[snip]
Imagine for a second that you take your marriage vows seriously. For Evangelicals, "in sickness and in health" is a catch-all that includes, "gay or straight." And Gayle's husband is ill. Very ill. Ted's fever for d*ck has left a cucumber-sized tumor in his mouth. If this lady were you or me, we would introduce him to our friend Bruce from college and wish them well. But this is Gayle. According to every truth she holds self-evident, she must stay and make this marriage work.
The fall from Pastor's Wife to Uncloseted Gay Insurance Salesman's Beard is a long, hard one. No matter what happens during this tough recession, let us be thankful that we are this one thing: not Gayle Haggard.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Krugman on Madoff...
...and how Madoff was not all that different from Wall Street business as usual:
Well, Mr. Madoff allegedly skipped a few steps, simply stealing his clients’ money rather than collecting big fees while exposing investors to risks they didn’t understand. And while Mr. Madoff was apparently a self-conscious fraud, many people on Wall Street believed their own hype. Still, the end result was the same (except for the house arrest): the money managers got rich; the investors saw their money disappear.
Well, Mr. Madoff allegedly skipped a few steps, simply stealing his clients’ money rather than collecting big fees while exposing investors to risks they didn’t understand. And while Mr. Madoff was apparently a self-conscious fraud, many people on Wall Street believed their own hype. Still, the end result was the same (except for the house arrest): the money managers got rich; the investors saw their money disappear.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
More Change You Can Stick in Your Crack Pipe and Smoke it!
Interesting article about Obama's pick to head the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, Gary Gensler. The upshot:
The choice of Gensler for that mission is ironic. While in the Clinton administration, the former assistant Treasury secretary helped oppose regulation of the exotic derivatives at the center of the financial crisis.
That pretty much describes everybody on Obama's economic team.
The choice of Gensler for that mission is ironic. While in the Clinton administration, the former assistant Treasury secretary helped oppose regulation of the exotic derivatives at the center of the financial crisis.
That pretty much describes everybody on Obama's economic team.
HHHHOOOOLLLLLYYYY CCCCRRRRAAAAAPPPP!!!!
A must-read post by Rob Patterson on the key points of the Boyd 2008 Meeting, a group looking to apply the theories of John Boyd, an influential military strategist, to survive what they see as the coming economic and political unraveling. Here are Patterson's first two bullet points:
- That there is no soft landing. We are not in a recession. We are not even in a depression. We are at the end of an era. The Tipping Point is of course the financial collapse. The Vast Ponzi Scheme of our financial world - with the vast sums in the Derivative Market and the Credit Bubble all in effect lost - cannot be saved. There is not enough money in the national accounts to pull this back.
- The search for efficiency and the urge to consume has set us all up like a row of dominoes - there is no buffer, no resiliency. As one problem rises it causes another. As one solution is tried it drives another problem. We all pull back and the consumer economy stalls. The auto industry and credit firms feeds the media (40% of conventional advertising). Papers and TV and Radio networks, many subject to LBO's will have to fail as per the Tribune. Every sector will be laying people off. Sales of all things fall off a cliff - driving more business failures and layoffs. Cities and states that depend on sales tax and property tax and the credit markets can rely on none of these. So they too will have to lay off millions - thus making all the problems worse. National governments will be asked to save us all and of course cannot. As States and Cities get squeezed and cannot borrow, they will too lay off millions - teachers, firemen police. No one will be safe.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Alexander Cockburn On Madoff
Interesting article in Counterpunch about how the Madoff fiasco is disproportionally affecting Jews:
It’s not just ruined heiresses in the Palm Beach Country Club now faced with the prospect of dividing the contents of the Whiskas can into two equal portions for mistress and cat, it’s academics on Ivy League campuses, doctors in Santa Monica, rich people from Boston to San Francisco to the West Side of Los Angeles finding their retirement nest eggs or charitable trusts wiped out overnight.
It’s not just ruined heiresses in the Palm Beach Country Club now faced with the prospect of dividing the contents of the Whiskas can into two equal portions for mistress and cat, it’s academics on Ivy League campuses, doctors in Santa Monica, rich people from Boston to San Francisco to the West Side of Los Angeles finding their retirement nest eggs or charitable trusts wiped out overnight.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Awesome Gawker Piece About Shana Madoff!
Pretty funny. So Shana Madoff, Bernie Madoff's niece, married a lawyer at the SEC. Apparently, her job at the family firm was keeping regulators at bay. Talk about taking your job seriously!
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Gloom & Doom from Mike Whitney Part 6,721,452
Mike Whitney from Counterpunch argues that the Fed's massive injection of liquidity into the financial system is having little effect. He quotes Christopher Woods from the Wall Street Journal:
"The origins of the modern conventional wisdom lies in the simplistic monetarist interpretation of the Great Depression popularized by Milton Friedman and taught to generations of economics students ever since. This argued that the Great Depression could have been avoided if the Federal Reserve had been more proactive about printing money. Yet the Japanese experience of the 1990s -- persistent deflationary malaise unresponsive to near zero-percent interest rates -- shows that it is not so easy to inflate one's way out of a debt bust."
Whitney goes on to say:
The Fed has increased the money supply at an unprecedented pace and expanded its balance sheet to $2.25 trillion, but velocity is down. [snip] According to the Wall Street Journal, " the issuance of nonagency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in America has plunged by 98 per cent year-on-year to a monthly average of $0.82 billion in the past four months, down from a peak of $136 billion in June 2006. There has been no new issuance in commercial MBS since July. This collapse in securitization is intensely deflationary."
Whitney thinks there is not going to be any real structural change out of Obama's economic team, which is the only thing that can restore confidence in the financial system. He writes:
And how can confidence be strengthened when no one pays for predatory lending, ratings manipulation, malfeasance, fraud, or any other white collar crime? So far, not one indictment has been served in the biggest financial swindle of all time. That's not how a "rules-based" system is supposed to operate.
[snip]
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and presidential adviser Lawrence Summers believe they can fire off a stimulus salvo and put the economy back on track, but it will take more than that. The financial system needs fundamental structural reform and both men rose to power because they proved themselves defenders of the status quo. Geithner and Summers may nibble at the edges and make grandiloquent proclamations about rebuilding the system, but when it’s time to pull the trigger, they will subvert every attempt to regulate or oversee the system which they feel is the sole province of the establishment elites who own the big financial institutions. There's bound to be plenty of blasting trumpets and celebratory confetti to greet Obama's economic whiz kids. Just don't expect change. Barring a complete economic meltdown, the rot at the heart of the system will continue to fester and grow under Obama just as it did under Bush and Clinton.
Since I'm an Obamacynic, I agree 100%. So what's in store? A long, deep recession. Read the whole piece!
"The origins of the modern conventional wisdom lies in the simplistic monetarist interpretation of the Great Depression popularized by Milton Friedman and taught to generations of economics students ever since. This argued that the Great Depression could have been avoided if the Federal Reserve had been more proactive about printing money. Yet the Japanese experience of the 1990s -- persistent deflationary malaise unresponsive to near zero-percent interest rates -- shows that it is not so easy to inflate one's way out of a debt bust."
Whitney goes on to say:
The Fed has increased the money supply at an unprecedented pace and expanded its balance sheet to $2.25 trillion, but velocity is down. [snip] According to the Wall Street Journal, " the issuance of nonagency mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in America has plunged by 98 per cent year-on-year to a monthly average of $0.82 billion in the past four months, down from a peak of $136 billion in June 2006. There has been no new issuance in commercial MBS since July. This collapse in securitization is intensely deflationary."
Whitney thinks there is not going to be any real structural change out of Obama's economic team, which is the only thing that can restore confidence in the financial system. He writes:
And how can confidence be strengthened when no one pays for predatory lending, ratings manipulation, malfeasance, fraud, or any other white collar crime? So far, not one indictment has been served in the biggest financial swindle of all time. That's not how a "rules-based" system is supposed to operate.
[snip]
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and presidential adviser Lawrence Summers believe they can fire off a stimulus salvo and put the economy back on track, but it will take more than that. The financial system needs fundamental structural reform and both men rose to power because they proved themselves defenders of the status quo. Geithner and Summers may nibble at the edges and make grandiloquent proclamations about rebuilding the system, but when it’s time to pull the trigger, they will subvert every attempt to regulate or oversee the system which they feel is the sole province of the establishment elites who own the big financial institutions. There's bound to be plenty of blasting trumpets and celebratory confetti to greet Obama's economic whiz kids. Just don't expect change. Barring a complete economic meltdown, the rot at the heart of the system will continue to fester and grow under Obama just as it did under Bush and Clinton.
Since I'm an Obamacynic, I agree 100%. So what's in store? A long, deep recession. Read the whole piece!
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Katha Pollitt Tears Bill Ayers a New One!
It couldn't have been easy for Bill Ayers to keep quiet while the McCain campaign tarred him as the Obama's best friend, the terrorist. Unfortunately, the silence was too good to last. On Saturday's New York Times op-ed page, he announced that "it's finally time to tell my true story." Like his memoir, Fugitive Days , "The Real Bill Ayers" is a sentimentalized, self-justifying whitewash of his role in the weirdo violent fringe of the 1960s-70s antiwar left.
Ouch! Read the whole post here.
Ouch! Read the whole post here.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Colin Powell to Sarah Palin: GFY!
I think GFY should enter the texting lexicon like IMHO or LOL. It's sure succinct: Go F* Yourself! Anyway, here's what Colin Powell, speaking to Fareed Zakaria on CNN, had to say about Sarah Palin:
"Gov. Palin, to some extent, pushed the party more to the right, and I think she had something of a polarizing effect when she talked about how small town values are good. Well, most of us don’t live in small towns. And I was raised in the South Bronx, and there’s nothing wrong with my value system from the South Bronx.
And when they came to Virginia and said the southern part of Virginia is good and the northern part of Virginia is bad. The only problem with that is there are more votes in the northern part of Virginia than there are in the southern part of Virginia, so that doesn’t work."
The YouTube video is posted on Think Progress. The 1st comment in the comments section is pretty funny:
"Gov. Palin, to some extent, pushed the party more to the right, and I think she had something of a polarizing effect when she talked about how small town values are good. Well, most of us don’t live in small towns. And I was raised in the South Bronx, and there’s nothing wrong with my value system from the South Bronx.
And when they came to Virginia and said the southern part of Virginia is good and the northern part of Virginia is bad. The only problem with that is there are more votes in the northern part of Virginia than there are in the southern part of Virginia, so that doesn’t work."
The YouTube video is posted on Think Progress. The 1st comment in the comments section is pretty funny:
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Donde es el Joe Stiglitz?
Interesting article by Michael Hirsh in Newsweek, wondering why NYU economist and Nobel price winner Joseph Stiglitz has not yet been offered a position on Obama's economic team. He's been a vocal critic of Rubin's and Summers' policies for years, so they don't like him much:
No surprise there. Stiglitz, more than anyone on the Washington scene, was the biggest fly in the ointment of "free-market fundamentalism" pressed on the world in the '90s by Summers, Geithner and their mentor, former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin—advice that has now contributed to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. It's not just that Stiglitz's Nobel-winning work, building on John Maynard Keynes's insights, uncovered profound fallacies in the Reagan-era idea that markets, especially in finance, can always correct themselves (good call, Nobel committee). In his writings and speeches since serving as chairman of Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors and then chief economist of the World Bank, Stiglitz has been the leading voice opposed to the mindless liberalization of capital flows that brought us to where we are today.
No surprise there. Stiglitz, more than anyone on the Washington scene, was the biggest fly in the ointment of "free-market fundamentalism" pressed on the world in the '90s by Summers, Geithner and their mentor, former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin—advice that has now contributed to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. It's not just that Stiglitz's Nobel-winning work, building on John Maynard Keynes's insights, uncovered profound fallacies in the Reagan-era idea that markets, especially in finance, can always correct themselves (good call, Nobel committee). In his writings and speeches since serving as chairman of Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors and then chief economist of the World Bank, Stiglitz has been the leading voice opposed to the mindless liberalization of capital flows that brought us to where we are today.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Everyone's a Critic!
Apparently, karaoke is quite the rage in Malaysia, but bad karaoke etiquette will get you killed. From the New York Times:
A 23-year-old Malaysian man was killed on Thursday night after reportedly enraging other customers who felt that he “hogged the microphone” at what Malaysia’s Star Online described as “a coffeeshop-cum-karaoke outlet” in the town of Sandakan, on the island of Borneo.
A 23-year-old Malaysian man was killed on Thursday night after reportedly enraging other customers who felt that he “hogged the microphone” at what Malaysia’s Star Online described as “a coffeeshop-cum-karaoke outlet” in the town of Sandakan, on the island of Borneo.
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Well, most of us don’t live in small towns.
That’s why they are small.
December 11th, 2008 at 5:05 pm