Friday Reads
Posted: November 12, 2010 Filed under: just because, morning reads | Tags: Currency appreciation, Daily Beast Newsweek Merger, hot money, repeal DADT, secret war on Yemen, web spying 59 Comments
Anji Allen "Books, Cup and Flowers"
Good Morning!!!
Well, the on and off again relationship between The Daily Beast and Newsweek is on again. They’ve got more issues with mergers than a couple of teenagers.
The New York Post‘s Keith Kelly tweets tonight that Mr. Harman, reached by telephone, said: “It’s not done yet.” And Advertising Agereports that while the sides are “close to finalizing a deal,” the announcement is only “possible” for Friday morning. With two powerful egos at a negotiating table, no deal is final until it is final. But Mr. Harman and Mr. Diller have broken through on the major issues between them, according to one source, and a deal is all but complete.
If you ever need proof of the corporate agenda and money impacting policy positions within the Beltway, this is it. WAPO has an article up revealing how many of the Cat Food Commission staffers were actually paid by outside entities. Wanna guess what types of companies contributed employees to the effort? How about those that are after our social security dollars to fund their casino operations?
Kennelly and other liberal-leaning critics say they are particularly troubled by the influence of Peterson, a billionaire and former investment banker who began a $6 million campaign this week urging lawmakers to cut the deficit. Peterson, co-founder of the Blackstone Group investment fund, paid for a series of town hall meetings this year that included participation by deficit commission members. He also funds the Fiscal Times, a digital news organization that focuses on federal debt issues.
Best blue ribbon panel money can buy!!!
A pentagon survey evidently shows that dropping DADT will not cause wartime strife. So what the heck is Obama waiting for? Just sign an executive order and get it over with already! I’ve had it with this dilly dallying around with discrimination.
The findings summarized in a lengthy report that the Pentagon is preparing to send to President Obama about the potential effects of repealing the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy have been relayed to The Washington Post ahead of the game, and from the (secondhand) look of it, the policy’s days may well be numbered if the Department of Defense heeds those findings
Okay, I’m back on currency war topics again. This is from Nouriel Roubini on ‘New Rules for Hot Money’ at Project Syndicate. This is the money that will cross borders in search of higher returns from those developing markets that are in good shape. I think you’ll remember me telling you about 9 months ago that that was my investment strategy so I’ll just put this in as some kind of notification to you that I have money in this strategy. It’s not a lot of money, but, hey it’s hot!!! (And, I’ve done real well recently so I’m probably going to cut and run shortly too, so don’t take this as any indication of me saying do this, please! )I’m going to excerpt Roubini’s explanation. It’s also one of the reasons that the dollar weakens and other currencies appreciate because if you want to invest in bonds from Thailand, you don’t use dollars, you use the Baht. So, high demand for baht, low demand for dollars, exchange rates for baht are the price of the baht and so the baht gets more expensive. The interesting points this explanation are on what policy makers can do in response to this phenomenon. Also, there’s a point you have to separate the potential for a bubble vs. actual appreciation.
Capital flows to emerging-market economies have been on a boom-bust merry-go-round for decades. In the past year, the world has seen another boom, with a tsunami of capital, portfolio equity, and fixed-income investments surging into emerging-market countries perceived as having strong macroeconomic, policy, and financial fundamentals.
Such inflows are driven in part by short-term cyclical factors (interest-rate differentials and a wall of liquidity chasing higher-yielding assets as zero policy rates and more quantitative easing reduce opportunities in the sluggish advanced economies). But longer-term secular factors also play a role. These include emerging markets’ long-term growth differentials relative to advanced economies; investors’ greater willingness to diversify beyond their home markets; and the expectation of long-term nominal and real appreciation of emerging-market currencies.
There’s some important analysis up at the WSJ by economist Robert E Hall who is one of the folks that actually dates the start and end of recessions and booms. He’s basically talking about how dysfunctional monetary policy is now because we’re in a liquidity trap.
In a paper presented Thursday at a Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta conference, Mr. Hall calculates that loose credit earlier in this decade resulted in consumers buying 14% more long-lasting items — from cars and dishwashers to houses — than they would have if credit conditions had remained as they were in the previous decade.
The recession was marked by those overextended households cutting spending and saving more in the face of hard times. The problem now is that the normal tool used to revive consumer spending and hiring — cutting interest rates well below the inflation rate — isn’t available because rates are nearly at zero. So unemployment has remained stuck at a high level, currently 9.6%.
Mr. Hall, who also serves as chairman of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee — the group that officially pronounces the start-date of recessions and recoveries — concludes that the only way to get the job market growing is to institute monetary policies “that emulate the effect of low real rates — making current purchasing cheaper than future.” That should be music to the ears of many at the Fed, which just launched a controversial program to buy government bonds aimed at getting the economy growing faster.
Yves over at Naked Capitalism has found more evidence of BOA fraudulent foreclosures. This time they’re pulling stuff in the state of Kentucky. We’ll just have to see what newly minted Senator Rand Paul says about that, won’t we?
The bank position so far has been that problems so far are mere mistakes and “sloppiness”. But as we’ve described repeatedly, the problems with securitzations run much deeper than that. It appears that the parties to the deal often failed to take the time consuming steps necessary to convey the note (the borrower IOU) to the trust as stipulated in the contract governing the deal, the pooling and servicing agreement. The PSA required that each note in the deal had to be signed by multiple intermediary parties before it got to its supposed final resting place, a trust. And that had to take place by closing or at most 90 days thereafter.
Many foreclosures show this process was not observed on a widespread basis: the notes were assigned (as in transferred) to the trust right before closing, a violation of the PSA, the New York trust statutes that govern virtually all mortgage securitization trusts, and IRS rules for these trusts (REMIC). When foreclosure defense attorneys started contesting these assignments, suddenly a new ruse started to show up: allonges, which are sheets of paper that contained the needed endorsements, would magically appear out of nowhere. The problem is that an allonge is supposed to be used only when there is no space left on the note for endorsements, including margins and the reverse side, and when it is used, it is supposed to be so firmly attached to the original as to be inseparable. But these “ta da” allonges were always somehow discovered at the custodian, quite separate from the note.
How long can the Justice Department turn a blind eye to these things? There’s too many states involved and too many loans for it not to be a systemic procedure. Follow the details over there and I think you’ll see the evidence is strong.
Speaking of corporate malfeasance, have you read about GOOGLE recently? You might want to find out if the company’s been spying on you, because it appears they’re doing so as a matter of course.
Ardent Google critic Consumer Watchdog has called on Congress to hold hearings on a major privacy breach by the Internet search engine giant, and insists that CEO Eric Schmidt should come to Washington to testify.
The group says Congress should get involved even though the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is already investigating.
That probe is important, but Congress is “the best venue to get a full explanation,” the group said Thursday in a letter to House lawmakers on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over Google.
Google admitted last month that it collected and stored private user data, including passwords and e-mails, from Wi-Fi networks. Critics have termed the incident Google’s “Wi-Spy” breach.
Seems you don’t have to look over your shoulder any more to see if some one is following you. They’re doing it under your nose and fingers.
Glenn Greenwald continues to believe the Terrorism is being used an excuse to erode freedom of speech. You can read his latest at Salon. More importantly, I found a link to Justin Elliot’s latest on Obama and how he’s escalating the secret war in Yemen. Whoa!!!
The Obama Administration has U.S. military trainers on the ground in Yemen and has already launched an attack and possibly multiple attacks in the country, drawing relatively little public attention and virtually no debate in Congress. Analysts and news reports suggest that the administration is now poised to escalate the secret war in Yemen, possibly by launching drone attacks targeting suspected terrorists.
The attention of the U.S. media briefly re-centered on Yemen late last month after explosives originating from the Gulf nation were found on two cargo planes in Britain and Dubai. The Obama Administration has fingered the Yemen-based group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) as responsible for the failed attempt. (AQAP also claimed responsibility.) This is the same group that claimed responsibility for the failed attempt by Nigerian national Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day 2009.
But less attention has been paid to U.S. attacks on targets in Yemen — of which there have been at least two since 2002 — and the U.S. military role in training Yemeni forces as well as helping them carry out air strikes.
And you thought last stop was Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan? Yup, way to go PEACE candidate!
Alright, that’s enough from me. I’m going through my recipes to look for some good New Orleans recipes to share on Treats thread tonight. I’m giving you some warning so you’ll be prepared to share any that you’ve got that are just plain good ol’ down home cookin’.
peej
Carissa
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Just in case anyone wants to read the Deficit Commission report, it is available here.
Well, BoA foreclosed on our house the beginning of this month. It has been an ordeal that has been going on since Jan of 2009. The state I live in (Georgia) has laws that favor the banks, not the consumer. So we are not one of the states that BoA has halted foreclosures in. (Well if they have stopped them in our state I am not aware of it.) This foreclosure was a nightmare. Of course BoA would not approve the request we had for a modification. And when we consulted a lawyer, she suggested to go the “produce the note” route, to sort of buy some time. But at that point we were just so disgusted and tired of all the mess, we decided not to do that. Well, now Fannie Mae has foreclosed on the house. Which is strange because we never got any word that they were assigned the mortgage. (no record of it at the court house either) It took 2 years to get to this point. I find it strange that poof…the foreclosure all of a sudden went through just 2 days before BoA started to halt the foreclosures. The whole thing is very disturbing.
I’m so sorry you had to go through that, Minkoff Minx.
So sorry to hear this, Minx. What a nightmare for you.
Wow… I am so sorry. What a horrific experiencem
So sorry!!!!
What you say affirms something I have been thinking : that much of the foreclosure orgy we see going on is very like an old time land grab…in the past, many were robbed of their land by iffy paperwork… we think of this stuff as in the past, but it’s not
again, I’m so sorry
Land grab is right.
Here’s a story that will make you cry: 90-Year Old Woman Loses Home, Sues Lenders
Investigation Reveals Company’s Past Troubles
And a real good blog rant on the entire travesty here.
Oh, wow – how awful, Minkoff Minx. I’m so sorry you’re going through that experience and I wish the very best outcome for you and your family.
MM, That is terrible. And “no record of it at the court house” is … I would say “incredible,” but so much atrocious scam behavior by the Corporatocracy has happened lately.
Thank you for all the notes about our situation. We are just an example of what has happened to so many families in this economy. Our little town was completely driven by the housing market. (Mostly second homes.) I was a real estate paralegal, and was let go because of the slowdown in closings. My husband was a loan officer for Countrywide, yes I know…the irony of that. So he was unemployed for almost 9 months when all that mess came to a head. My father is in construction. So within a period of 1 year 3 of us lost our income. Since then my family has moved in together. It is a multi-generational household, like so many now a days. Now only with 2 incomes coming into the house,(Husband works at Walmart and Daddy works at a motorcycle shop) we pool the money together. Otherwise, neither family would be able to make it on their own. It is a very sad situation. As for the land grab, yes…that is definitely happening with our local bank. They are foreclosing on spec homes and spec subdivisions and then turning around and listing it with their own real estate firm. And as with any little good ol’ boy town, there are lots of embezzlement…that are not being prosecuted and other unsavory things. Ugh, our county is full of corruption.
http://www.dealwatchblog.com/post/2010/05/12/Bank-shifts-nonperforming-assets-gets-cash-from-stock-deal.aspx
But, you have that everywhere, it is just out in the open here…everyone knows but does nothing about it.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, the foreclosure mess is huge up here.
MM, I’m so sorry to hear what you have been going through. I hope things turnaround for you, and others in the same situation, very soon.
I am very sorry about your troubles with foreclosure of your home, and I hope you find a good lawyer to help you.
I am beginning to feel like the Joad family. Hopeless in the face of these people who are nothing but corporate genuflecters.
I have no idea how these people (under corporate umbrellas) can get away with this. It’s appalling. Real people like Minx having their home taken from them? It’s bizarre. And no one in power seems to care.
There is a reader diary at FDL suggesting that we should help the Republcans impeach Obama.
and get Biden?? If Hill was VP …well that would be different…actually Biden might be an improvement! LOL!!!
Why would the GOP want to impeach Obama? ” He’s a gift from God” …for them
The Citizens United founder is bored I guess. It isn’t ALL the GOP that want to impeach Obama, primarily the teapartiers, or at least that is what the string pullers are telling the puppets- er I mean tea party electorate.
Cindy McCain speaks out about gay rights, bullying and suicide.
Cindy and her daughter have been very active – strange since John seems to want to continue with the DADT. The following is the latest PSA from a group that both McCain women support to the extent that they have been in previous PSA messages.
Cindy McCain seems to be a very nice person. Perhaps he should have put her name on the ticket in 2008 as she seems to have more empathy and integrity than any of the candidates running from either side that year.
She has been deeply involved with charity work that goes unreported and speaks out on behalf of causes that go against the Republican Party’s tired philosophy.
John McCain should have as much integrity as his wife. Alas, he does not.
Wonder how that marriage works if she considers her husband to be a bigot?
http://www.adn.com/2010/11/11/1550305/murkowski-confident-as-tally-grows.html
Joe Miller’s challenges are being supported by the Citizen’s United funder. If ever there was a harbinger that this guy is bad news for the American people that should be it. Here’s to hoping Murkowski wins despite all the shenanigans.
It would probably be better for Alaska if Murkowski wins, since she had some seniority.
And it would be good to have another woman in the Senate.
Plus, having a write-in candidate win, even if she’s an R, could open up some interesting doors.
I was wondering about how well she was going to get along with the Republican party now. But the establishment of the Republican party–especially on the Senate side–doesn’t like the Tea Party faction so, who knows?
I was wondering with my spouse yesterday what happens if we ever get to a point where Independants have a plurality in regards to the concept of majority and minority leader?
Very O/T – I just checked in in on Violet’s site and i’m getting a message that her account has been suspended. I think she uses WordPress – is this something that could just be a computer glitch or is that status something that WordPress does? I emailed her, but haven’t heard anything yet.
It’s possible she has some image on on her site that some one’s questioned her access because they own the copy right. I’ve had that happen before on TC.
The Kool-Aid POTUS:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/text/2013412170.html
{{{snort}}} Or should that be the Emperor Has No Clothes POTUS?
Yeah, the NYT pretty much says they punted on the trade/currency wars.
He said the right thing, but no one is listening now.
I don’t know that he “gets” economics though. Today he was saying the Fed’s move wasn’t to weaken the dollar……..uh, whether that was his primary intent or not might be questionable but that is essentially what QE2 does.
I’m passed believing he’s parsing his words carefully. I go with the he doesn’t ‘get economics’ explanation.
Foreclosures, job loss, expensive health care insurance premiums — how can we afford to buy anything exported to us?
Completely apolitical, but fun:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/text/2013410552.html
We are always amused when our cat drinks…sounds so funny. Now I know why.
*Four* engineers, eh?
Amazing what people will spend money on to study, isn’t it?
Yes, it’s a constant source of amazement.
Just in defense of cat-lapping studies: “The project required no financing. The robot that mimicked the cat’s tongue was built for an experiment on the international-space station, and the engineers simply borrowed it from a neighboring lab.”
the international-space station? Are they thinking of putting cats up there to catch interstellar mice? Now you have my curiosity seriously piqued!!!
Krugman’s Op-Ed today is on the Cat Food Commission:
It was a “toss everything you can at a wall and see if any of it sticks” proposal.
Sigh.
Has Nancy finally drawn a line in the sand?
I’d say it’s about bleepin’ time but I am hesitant because standing firm for the Democratic Party generally means standing firm for 2 minutes before caving.
Maybe the election-day message hit home?
I’m really tired of hoping only to have that football yanked at the last minute. The progressive caucus has managed to make me a cynic. they usually loudly proclain their firmness right before they compromise everything away.
Me too. I’m waiting to see the action and not just read the words in the MSM. I’ll believe it when I see it actually happen.
She drew a line in the sand about a public option in the health care mess. Did she cave? Of course. She’s just building her creds for the people still drinking the kewl-aid.
Dak, what do you think of this?
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/text/2013405975.html
Let me go look at it.
I can’t find the details behind the numbers about the loss. I’m going to have to go look to see if I can see what the proposed deal is. I’m just finding overviews at the moment. This may take me a bit to dig out the details. I’m trying to find the Nader Letter right now.
http://detnews.com/article/20101111/AUTO01/11110470/Nader–Treasury-should-halt-GM-IPO
This has some interesting things in it. Looks like the Canadians are bailing too and it appears that it could be an arranged deal with some SWFs. Wonder if it’s the Saudis?
Pretty sure I’m going to feel silly after asking this….
but what is “SWF”??
Is it “Selfish Wealthy Fuckers”? No?
Sovereign Wealth Funds. But that works too …
I’m trying to understand statements like this
“It’s the same old arrogant GM,” Nader said in an interview. “There’s no sense of gratitude that they wouldn’t exist without the government, without the taxpayers.”
From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20101111/AUTO01/11110470/Nader–Treasury-should-halt-GM-IPO#ixzz1561vZIJv
Why is he blaming GM for the government’s decision to sell stock?
It does seem ill advised to offer up so much stock and relinquish controlling interests when it will come at a loss but I’m not sure why Nader seems to be placing the onus on the auto industry rather than on the government.
Sovereign Wealthy Foreigners?
There’s some talk that the Chinese will be buying up GM. That should be interesting. If it is one of the Sovereign Wealth Funds in China, that means a foreign government will own a US asset and that’s not usually kosher.
The whole thing is rather confusing since it appears there will be multiple sellers(government, UAW,GM itself maybe).
It doesn’t surprise me the Treasury is anxious to be rid of a private entity even if it comes at a loss for the rest of us. Obama makes a really lousy socialist. *grin*
I really enjoyed reading Tom in Paine’s latest. http://tominpaine.blogspot.com/2010/11/keith-olbermanns-back-so-what.html
You might want to check it out.