Sunday Reads

Posted: November 21, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , , , , | 33 Comments
Good Morning!!!

I’ve always been fascinated with robots.  I’m not sure how it got started.  It may have been the first time may grandparents took me to Disneyland to see the Lincoln speech.  I found this article on robots and shinwakan at The Economist and it’s fascinating!!  There’s evidently a threshold we have for animation and robots for how real they should look.  It’s called “the uncanny valley” and evidently the best example of animation that’s over board and creepy is “The Polar Express“. Robot scientists are trying to learn how to avoid “the uncanny valley” when working on their creations.

The idea of the uncanny valley was originally proposed by Masahiro Mori, a Japanese roboticist, in 1970. Though he had no hard data, his intuition was that increasing humanness in a robot was positive only up to a certain point. Dr Mori drew a graph (see chart) with “human-likeness” on the horizontal axis and a quality he called shinwakan (variously translated as “familiarity” and “comfort level”) on the vertical one. As an object or image looks and behaves more like a human, the viewer’s level of shinwakan increases. Beyond a certain point, however, the not-quite-human object strikes people as creepy, and shinwakan drops. This is the uncanny valley. Only when the object becomes almost indistinguishable from a human does shinwakan increase again.

The horror stories from TSA pat-downs continue. This one is awful as it involves a bladder cancer survivor whose pat down left him soaked in urine after the pat-down punctured his urostomy bag.  Sixty-one year old Thomas Sawyer is a retired special education teacher that recounted his tale to msnbc.

“One agent watched as the other used his flat hand to go slowly down my chest. I tried to warn him that he would hit the bag and break the seal on my bag, but he ignored me. Sure enough, the seal was broken and urine started dribbling down my shirt and my leg and into my pants.”

The security officer finished the pat-down, tested the gloves for any trace of explosives and then, Sawyer said, “He told me I could go. They never apologized. They never offered to help. They acted like they hadn’t seen what happened. But I know they saw it because I had a wet mark.”

Humiliated, upset and wet, Sawyer said he had to walk through the airport soaked in urine, board his plane and wait until after takeoff before he could clean up.

“I am totally appalled by the fact that agents that are performing these pat-downs have so little concern for people with medical conditions,” said Sawyer.

The Florida Sun Sentinel reports that you can possibly be fined $11,000 or arrested if you refuse a nudie scan or grope session.  Evidently, you give your consent to both should you decide to fly.  At least that’s what the TSA is saying.

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is warning that any would-be commercial airline passenger who enters an airport checkpoint and then refuses to undergo the method of inspection designated by TSA will not be allowed to fly and also will not be permitted to simply leave the airport.

That person will have to remain on the premises to be questioned by the TSA and possibly by local law enforcement. Anyone refusing faces fines up to $11,000 and possible arrest.
“Once a person submits to the screening process, they can not just decide to leave that process,” says Sari Koshetz, regional TSA spokesperson, based in Miami.

Koshetz said such passengers would be questioned “until it is determined that they don’t pose a threat” to the public.

Well, that is unless your are John Boehner, Speaker-Elect. Then, you can wave them off and tell every one else to eat cake.  His Oranginess is evidently above the rest of us.  Feeling better about your status in the Banana Republic now?

As he left Washington on Friday, Mr. Boehner headed across the Potomac River to Ronald Reagan National Airport, which was bustling with afternoon travelers. There was no waiting for Mr. Boehner, who was escorted around the identification-checking agents, the metal detectors and the body scanners, and whisked directly to the gate.

The Republican leader, who will become the second person in line to assume the presidency after the new Congress convenes in January, took great pride after the midterm elections in declaring his man-of-the-people plans to travel home as other Americans do. In a time of economic difficulty, it was a not-so-subtle dig at Ms. Pelosi, who has access to a military jet large enough to avoid refueling for her flights home to San Francisco.

But he is not giving up all the perquisites of power.

Mr. Boehner, who was wearing a casual yellow sweater and tan slacks, carried his own bag and smiled pleasantly at passengers who were leaving the security checkpoint inside the airport terminal on Friday. Among the travelers not invited to bypass the security line was Representative Allen Boyd, Democrat of Florida, who lost his re-election bid two weeks ago.

Only Congressional leaders or members of Congress with armed security details are allowed to go around security. The same privilege is afforded to governors and cabinet members if they are escorted by agents or law enforcement officers.

 

Prime U.S. Mortgage Foreclosures have hit a record high amid increased reports of irregularities in mortgage processing by originator Country Wide.  What a horrible growth industry!  The reason?  High, prolonged unemployment.  Good thing we’re focused on the right priorities! Let’s see, I did mention the obsession with extending tax cuts for the very rich, right?  Oh, right, I do that right after this.

Foreclosures on prime fixed-rate mortgages in the U.S. jumped to a record in the third quarter as unemployment strained household budgets of the most creditworthy borrowers.

The inventory of homes in foreclosure financed by prime fixed-rate loans rose to 2.45 percent from 2.36 percent in the previous three months, the Mortgage Bankers Association said in a report today. New foreclosures rose to 0.93 percent from 0.71 percent. Both numbers were the highest in the 12 years since the Washington-based trade group started tracking the categories.

Homeowners are falling behind on their mortgage payments as job cuts make it difficult for them to cover their bills, said Michael Fratantoni, the Mortgage Bankers Association’s vice president of research and economics. The unemployment rate has stayed above 9 percent for 18 consecutive months, the longest stretch since 1983, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“The increase in these plain-vanilla type of loans to the highest numbers ever show us it really is being driven by the economic environment,” Fratantoni said in a telephone interview. “It’s not going to turn around until we get more significant job growth.”

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) has gone on record calling for President Obama to stand up to Republican demands to extend the tax cuts to wealthiest Americans. Will Democrats finally show some spine now that they’ve lost their supermajority?

Speaking on MSNBC’s “Hardball” on Friday, Brown said Republicans such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Speaker-elect John Boehner (R-Ohio) have shown they have no interest in anything but the failure of the Obama administration, which is why he shouldn’t make major concessions to them on the tax cuts.

Brown argued GOP leaders have done nothing but say no to President Obama since the day after his inauguration despite his much larger electoral victory, which is why the Democrats shouldn’t be afraid to respond in kind.

“I’m not saying no to the Republicans, but I’m also not — I’m also saying we’re not going to do more tax cuts for the rich, more deregulation of Wall Street, more job-killing outsourcing free trade agreements,” Brown said. “Those things don’t work for the American public. They don’t work in Cleveland or Toledo or Mansfield or Dayton, and they don’t work for the whole country.”

You’ve probably heard that the Celtic Tiger is in trouble.  Thought I’d share the front page of the Irish Star with you to put a smile one your face.  No smiling Irish eyes for Irish banksters–sorry, wanker banker buddies–or gouger-pols these days.  And you thought we were disgusted with our lot?  The Star is known for being a lot like New Orleans Levees.  They don’t hold anything back !!

Brad DeLong is taking aim at the Republican detractors of Ben Bernanke. He does so by explaining some of the rationale behind the QE2.  Oh, and he doesn’t have to use cute little talking cartoon characters to bedazzle you either.  This is also an extension to the Paul Krugman op-ed and the Collender article I wrote about last night in a thread on economic sabotage by republicans. DeLong appears to be considering a similar vein of thought.  That is, Republicans are objecting to everything that will improve the economy.

Indeed, it is now clear that the right-wing objection to the policies of the Obama administration was not an objection to fiscal policy as an inappropriate policy modality for stabilizing nominal spending. It was, instead, an objection to the very idea that the government should try to serve as a stabilizing macroeconomic balance wheel.

The flow of economy-wide spending is low. Thus Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve is moving to boost the flow. It is doing so by changing the mix of privately-held assets as it buys government bonds that pay interest in exchange for for cash that does not.

That is totally standard.

There is only slightly nonstandard thing. The bonds that pay interest the Fed is buying are not the usual three-month Treasury bills but seven-year Treasury notes instead. The Federal Reserve has to do this, because those are the shortest-duration Treasury bonds that now pay interest. It cannot reduce short-term interest rates below zero, and so it is attempting via this policy of “quantitative easing” to reduce longer-term interest rates.

And the right wing objects to this.

I really cannot figure out why the Republicans are making such an issue out of this. They either don’t understand it or they are purposefully trying to create  subterfuge so they can stop any attempt to heal the economic woes of the country.  This makes no sense to me.

One of the most striking covers of The National Geographic was the one with  a young Afghani girl with piercing green eyes.  The National Geographic has a feature on Afghan Women with lots of pictures in a piece they’ve called “Veiled Rebellion”.  It’s worth a look and a read.

The Afghan Parliament recently drafted a law intended to eliminate violence against women, who are beginning to reject old cultural practices and assert themselves in public and in private. I went to the Kabul home of Sahera Sharif, a Pashtun and the first female member of parliament from Khost. “No one knew a woman could put up campaign photos and posters on the walls in Khost—men didn’t allow women to even have jobs in Khost,” she said.

As a girl, Sharif stood up to her father, a conservative mullah, locking herself in a closet until he allowed her to go to school. She lived through the civil war between competing mujahideen groups, who ravaged Kabul before the Taliban conquest in 1996. She witnessed unimaginable cruelty and many deaths. “Much of the violence and cruelty you see now,” Sharif said, “is because people are crazy from all these wars.”

After the Taliban fell in December 2001, Sharif started a radio station to educate women about hygiene and basic health. More radically, she volunteered to teach at the university in Khost (a first there). She took off her burka (another first) and stood before the male students teaching them psychology. They blushed. And so she began to reeducate them.

And so the process of knowledge and change begins… with an exchange between one person and another.

[MABlue’s Sunday picks]
This is getting personal: Terrorists seem to “hate me for my freedoms” everywhere I happen to be.
Terrorists Believed to Be Planning Attack in Berlin

It would be an attack on the very heart of democracy. SPIEGEL has learned that terrorists may have been planning an attack on the Reichstag, the home of the German parliament and one of the most popular tourist destinations in Berlin. Two suspected culprits are already believed to be in Berlin.

That is really where I live. The Bundeskanzleramt(German Chancellery) and the Amt des Bundespräsidenten(German President Offices) are also in the same area. I still believe this is the safest spot in the city, along with the area in the vicinity of the US Embassy.
So far, Germans have remained calm, which is good to see.

Even with all the progress we have made, there is still so much we don’t understand about the human body.
Doctors Mystified by Case of World’s Thinnest Woman

Texas native Lizzie Velasquez, 21, is thinner than anyone thought possible. She spends her days wolfing down burgers, fries and cake, consuming more than three times the normal calorie requirements. Doctors can’t explain how she can be so underweight and still alive.

Here are some people Obama is certainly not going to listen to:
Millionaires to Obama: Tax us

More than 40 of the nation’s millionaires have joined Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength to ask President Obama to discontinue the tax breaks established for them during the Bush administration, as Salon reports.

“For the fiscal health of our nation and the well-being of our fellow citizens, we ask that you allow tax cuts on incomes over $1,000,000 to expire at the end of this year as scheduled,” their website states. “We make this request as loyal citizens who now or in the past earned an income of $1,000,000 per year or more.”

For Heaven’s sake! What is it with Obama constantly adopting right-wing myths and revisionism and then propagating them? Many observers deplored this inclination during the campaign of  2008, but were quickly dismissed. However, that attitude hasn’t changed. Maybe there’s a something more to the madness. Krugman has the latest:
FDR, Reagan, and Obama

Some readers may recall that back during the Democratic primary Barack Obama shocked many progressives by praising Ronald Reagan as someone who brought America a “sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing.” I was among those who found this deeply troubling — because the idea that Reagan brought a transfomation in American dynamism is a right-wing myth, not borne out by the facts. (There was a surge in productivity and innovation — but it happened in the 90s, under Clinton, not under Reagan).

All the usual suspects pooh-poohed these concerns; it was ridiculous, they said, to think of Obama as a captive of right-wing mythology.

But are you so sure about that now?

And here’s this, from Thomas Ferguson: Obama saying

We didn’t actually, I think, do what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did, which was basically wait for six months until the thing had gotten so bad that it became an easier sell politically because we thought that was irresponsible. We had to act quickly.

As Ferguson explains, this is a right-wing smear.

I’m sure BostonBoomer will spend the entire day playing this game.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

Saturday Night Treats!

Posted: November 20, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Food, Treats | Tags: , , , , | 98 Comments

Hi Everyone!!

Tonight I’m going to share some traditional New England recipes from some of Boston’s oldest restaurants. New England cooking is pretty basic, real comfort food. And of course, since we’re near the ocean, we eat lots of seafood.

I’ll start out with a couple of recipes from Boston’s oldest restaurant, the Union Oyster House. The building itself dates to sometime in the 1600’s; it became a restaurant in 1826.

The new owners installed the fabled semi-circular Oyster Bar — where the greats of Boston paused for refreshment. It was at the Oyster Bar that Daniel Webster, a constant customer, daily drank his tall tumbler of brandy and water with each half-dozen oysters, seldom having less than six plates.

The toothpick was first used in the United States at the Union Oyster House. Enterprising Charles Forster of Maine first imported the picks from South America. To promote his new business he hired Harvard boys to dine at the Union Oyster House and ask for toothpicks….

The Kennedy Clan has patronized the Union Oyster House for years. J.F.K. loved to feast in privacy in the upstairs dining room. His favorite booth “The Kennedy Booth” has since been dedicated in his memory.

Here are a couple of popular Union Oyster House recipes

Lobster Stew.

1 lb Cooked lobster meat
4 oz Unsalted butter
2 c Half-and-half
Chopped fresh chives

1. Cut lobster meat into 1/2 inch chunks.
2. Melt the butter, and stew the lobster meat in it until the lobster is heated through.
3. Place the mixture in a warmed casserole dish.
4. Heat the half-and-half until piping hot, almost scalded.
5. Pour it over the butter and lobster in the casserole.
6. Garnish with chopped chives and serve at once.

Union Oyster House Gingerbread

2 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup sugar
1 large egg
1 cup unsulfured molasses
1 cup hot water (160 degrees F)

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease and flour a 9-inch square baking pan, knocking out excess flour.
2. Into a bowl sift together flour, baking soda, spices, and salt.
3. In another bowl with an electric mixer beat together oil and sugar until combined and beat in egg and molasses until combined well. Gradually beat in flour mixture until combined and add water, beating until smooth.
4. Pour batter into pan and bake in middle of oven 30 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean. Cool gingerbread in pan on a rack 10 minutes. Run a thin knife around edge of pan and invert gingerbread onto rack to cool completely.
5. Serve gingerbread with whipped cream.

Durgin Park is almost as old as the Union Oyster House. A Boston landmark since 1827, it is located near Faneuil Hall in the old market district. There is a huge shopping area there now, but when I first lived in Boston none of that was built yet. I’m going to share a some really old Yankee recipes from Durgin Park.

Boston Baked Beans

1 lb dried navy beans
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 lb salt pork
1/2 medium onion (peeled and uncut)
4 tablespoons sugar
1/3 cup molasses
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

1. Soak beans overnight. In the morning, preheat oven to 325°F Place the baking soda in a Dutch oven and fill half way with water.
2. Bring to a boil, add the beans & boil for 10 minutes. Drain beans in a colander and run cold water through them. Set aside.
3. Dice the salt pork into 1-inch squares. Put half of the salt pork on the bottom of the bean pot, along with the onion. Put beans in the pot. Put the remaining salt pork on top of the beans.
4. Mix the sugar, molasses, mustard, salt and pepper with 3 cups of hot water and pour over the beans.
5. Cover pot with lid and place the pot into the preheated oven. Bake for 6 hours. Check pot periodically to make sure the amount of liquid is okay. Add water to the beans slowly as needed to keep them moist; DO NOT FLOOD THEM. Just “top them up.”

Indian Pudding

3 cups milk
1/4 cup black molasses
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup yellow corn meal
Vanilla ice cream

1. Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.
2. Mix together 1-1/2 cups of the milk with the molasses, sugar, butter, salt, baking powder, egg, and cornmeal. Pour the mixture into a stone crock that has been well greased and bake until it boils.
3. Heat the remaining 1-1/2 cups of milk and stir it in.
4. Lower the oven temperature to 300 degrees and bake 5-7 hours.
5. Serve warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.

Legal Seafoods was orginally a just a fish market. The restaurant started up in 1950. It has lots of locations nowadays, but at first it was just a little restaurant in Inman Square Cambridge. Seating was communal, with everyone sitting at long wooden tables. There was sawdust on the floor to soak up spills. Here are a couple of my old Legal favorites.

Legal Seafood Clam Chowder

4 quarts littleneck clams (about
1 2/3 cups cooked and chopped)
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 cup water
2 ounces salt pork, finely chopped
2 cups chopped onions
3 tablespoons flour
1 1/2 pounds potatoes, peeled, and diced
into 1/2-inch cubes
4 1/2 cups clam broth
3 cups fish stock
2 cups light cream
Oyster crackers

Clean the clams and place them in a large pot along with the garlic and water. Steam the clams just until opened, about 6 to 10 minutes, depending
upon their size. Drain and shell the clams, reserving the broth. Mince the clam flesh, and set aside.

Filter the clam broth either through coffee filters or cheesecloth and set aside.

In a large, heavy pot slowly render the salt pork. Remove the cracklings and set them aside. Slowly cook the onions in the fat for about 6 minutes, stirring frequently, or until cooked through but not browned. Stir in the flour and cook, stirring, for 3 minutes. Add the reserved clam broth and fish stock, and whisk to remove any flour lumps. Bring the liquid to a boil, add the potatoes, lower the heat, and simmer until the potatoes are cooked through, about 15 minutes.

Stir in the reserved clams, salt-pork cracklings and light cream. Heat the chowder until it is the temperature you prefer. Serve in large soup bowls with oyster crackers on the side.

Baked Scrod

3/4 cup oyster crackers
2 tsp unsalted butter
1 tsp fine-chopped onions
1 tsp minced fresh parsley
1/2 tsp dried thyme or Herbes de Provence

4 x (7 to 8 oz.) scrod fillets, each about 1 inch thick
1/4 cup real mayonnaise
2 tsp fresh-grated parmesan cheese

crumb mixture: In a food processor fitted with metal blade, process crackers.
You want a crumb somewhere between medium coarse and medium fine; set aside.
In a medium skillet, melt 1 tablespoon butter over medium heat.
Saute onions about 2 minutes, or until translucent.
Do not brown. Add remaining butter, and when melted remove from heat and stir in reserved crumbs, parsley and thyme or Herbes de Provence.
Mix well and refrigerate until ready to use.
(Crumbs will need some stirring before use as butter will have solidified mixture a bit.)

Scrod: Preheat oven to 425 F.
Lightly oil a baking dish just large enough to hold fillets in a single layer and place fillets in it.
Stir mayonnaise and parmesan cheese together well.
Spread 1/4 of mayonnaise mixture evenly over top of each fillet.
Sprinkle about 2 tablespoons crumb mixture over each and press tops lightly so crumbs adhere to mayonnaise.
Bake in center of oven 12 to 14 minutes, or until fillets are just cooked through and topping is golden brown.

Legal used to sell a T-shirt that said “I got scrod at Legal Seafoods.”

Finally, here is a variation on bread pudding that is very popular in New England.

Grape Nuts Pudding

1 quart milk, scalded
1 cup Grape-Nuts cereal
4 large eggs
scant 1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla
Pinch of salt
1 tablespoon unsalted butter (approx.)
Whole nutmeg
Water

Heat oven to 350°. In a medium-size bowl, pour scalded milk over Grape-Nuts and let sit 5 minutes. In a second medium-size bowl, beat eggs, sugar, vanilla, and salt. Add egg mixture to milk and Grape-Nuts and stir well. Pour into a buttered 2-quart casserole dish. Generously grate nutmeg over the top. Place the casserole into a deep roasting pan. Place in the oven and pour water into the roasting pan, enough to reach halfway up the side of the casserole. Bake 45 to 60 minutes, until almost set in the center (very slight jiggle).

Grape Nuts are really popular in New England for some reason. People even put them on ice cream.

So that’s my offering of vintage Yankee New England recipes–all great for a chilly fall day. Enjoy! You are invited to share your own recipes in the comments.

An act of Economic Sabotage

Posted: November 20, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: The Bonus Class, The Great Recession, The Media SUCKS, U.S. Economy, Voter Ignorance | Tags: | 14 Comments

Over at The Washington Monthly, there’s a new hypothesis in town. Steven Benen thinks the Republican Party is working hard to ensure that joblessness remains high and that the economy doesn’t recover.  It is because this would be their certain path back to power.    Evidently there are other liberal/progressive columnists that are floating around the hypothesis so I think it’s worth examining and discussing.

Is there a Republican plot to tank the economy or are they just stuck in VooDoo economics fantasy land?  Is this possibly a new meme for Democratic partisans that’s come from some Journolist replacement?

Benen points first to several other sources, so let’s begin there.  Stan Collender writes at a blog called capital gains and games. Collender mention the idea was while writing on the seemingly endless attacks on the Federal Reserve by the GOP.  The GOP is notoriously filled with gold bugs and with folks that scream communism at any thing they think looks like big government overreach. (Say, fluoridating the water or giving children polio shots, or initiating an income tax to pay for war.) They go through cycles of screaming about the Fed ever so often.  However, this set of attacks is gaining some footing with the populace for some reason.  This is a quote from something Collender wrote last August.

It’s not at all clear, however, whether Bernanke realizes that the same political pressure that has brought fiscal policy to a standstill in Washington is very likely to be applied to the Fed if it decides to move forward. With Republican policymakers seeing economic hardship as the path to election glory this November, there is every reason to expect that the GOP will be equally as opposed to any actions taken by the Federal Reserve that would make the economy better, and that Republicans will openly and virulently criticize the Fed for even thinking about it. The criticism is likely to come both before any action is taken to try to stop it from happening and afterwards to make the Fed think twice about doing more.

Matt Yglesias echoed a similar sentiment which is where Benen comes up with the hypothesis.  They appear to have a mutual admiration society.  He says that every one knows that the path to re-election for President Obama is improvement on the economic front.  Mitch McConnell has made it very clear his goal is to see that Obama is a one term president. Therefore, is it possible that the Republicans are prepared to sabotage anything that improves the economy that might improve Obama’s chance at re-election?

Which is just to say that specifically the White House needs to be prepared not just for rough political tactics from the opposition (what else is new?) but for a true worst case scenario of deliberate economic sabotage.

The next cite is from Paul Krugman who echos a similar theme in his op-ed ‘The Axis of Depression’ in last week’s NYT.

What do the government of China, the government of Germany and the Republican Party have in common? They’re all trying to bully the Federal Reserve into calling off its efforts to create jobs.

Indeed, we’re seeing all kinds of weird things coming from Republicans these days including that infamous WSJ letter where they all are in a panic about inflation.  This teeth-gnashing occurs despite that October’s core consumer price index rose by a meager .6% .  That is the lowest it has risen since records have been taken;  starting in 1957.  Then, we have that ridiculous little cartoon that ramps up the same kind of fallacy-based nonsense with those two cute little bears using some strange form of English.   In all my years of teaching economics, I have never seen so much misinformation get spread around by so many.  We’ve got plenty of data now that completely debunks the anti-Keynsians, the Austrians, and the Reagan worshipers.  The facts recruited infamous supply sider Bruce Bartlett to the truth. What more proof do they need?

So, what is Benen implying, no make that stating?  He’s saying that the data, the proof, and the fact that people are suffering from joblessness has nothing to do with the agenda here.  The agenda is that the folks that want to deregulate us into Somalia status simply want to regain their power.

One of the interesting things Benen does is actually give some thought to  the idea that the Republicans are just misguided ideologues.  He gives the thought a test drive by looking at a column by Jon Chait in the TNR called “It’s Not a Lie if You Believe It” that ascribes less motive and more ignorance.  Benen dismisses it.

That seems largely fair. Under this line of thought, Republicans have simply lied to themselves, convincing one another that worthwhile ideas should be rejected because they’re not actually worthwhile anymore.

But Jon’s benefit-of-the-doubt approach would be more persuasive if (a) the same Republicans weren’t rejecting ideas they used to support; and (b) GOP leaders weren’t boasting publicly about prioritizing Obama’s destruction above all else, including the health of the country.

Indeed, we can even go a little further with this and note that apparent sabotage isn’t limited to economic policy. Why would Republican senators, without reason or explanation, oppose a nuclear arms treaty that advances U.S. national security interests? When the treaty enjoys support from the GOP elder statesmen and the Pentagon, and is only opposed by Iran, North Korea, and Senate Republicans, it leads to questions about the party’s intentions that give one pause.

So, that seems a little paranoid.  It also  seems like there would be some conversations some place outside of left blogosphere that would shun a group of office holders that show such naked hatred of their own country and the people they represent; even if the naked hatred extends mostly to those that don’t vote for them.  Benen says that the that assumes a vigilant press.  I think we can all agree these days that what we do not have is a vigilant and intellectually vigorous set of journalists.

Historically, lawmakers from both parties have resisted any kind of temptations along these lines for one simple reason: they didn’t think they’d get away with it. If members of Congress set out to undermine the strength of the country, deliberately, just to weaken an elected president, they risked a brutal backlash — the media would excoriate them, and the punishment from voters would be severe.

But I get the sense Republicans no longer have any such fears. The media tends to avoid holding congressional parties accountable, and voters aren’t really paying attention anyway. The Boehner/McConnell GOP appears willing to gamble: if they can hold the country back, voters will just blame the president in the end. And that’s quite possibly a safe assumption.

If that’s the case, though, then it’s time for a very public, albeit uncomfortable, conversation. If a major, powerful political party is making a conscious decision about sabotage, the political world should probably take the time to consider whether this is acceptable, whether it meets the bare minimum standards for patriotism, and whether it’s a healthy development in our system of government.

This gets me to another interesting thing that popped up in my mail this week.  It’s an announcement for one of those debate topics that you get if you’re a subscriber to The Economist. The motion this week is “This house believes that America’s political system is broken.” Right now, 76% of the folks voting agree with the motion. Interestingly enough, Matthew Yglesias is the one defending it.

So,  I’m not willing to draw any conclusion at this point, but I am willing to entertain the idea that the Republicans are willing to sabotage the President no matter what he chooses to do.  I am not willing to see it as a take down of the nation’s first ‘black president’.  I am willing to see it as a continuation of the job they wished they’d done on Bill Clinton. The hate all ‘liberals’. Plus, Republicans have felt entitled to power for as long as I can remember.  I do know–from experience–that they will do and say anything to get their agenda through.  Does this now include leaving incredibly large numbers of their own citizens suffering in poverty and without a job to do so?

My guess is that any means justifies any ends if you think some universal power broker is on your side.   Just read about the C Street group if you think that’s an outrageous hypothesis.  Then, tell me what you think.

SEC: Finally Functional?

Posted: November 20, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Breaking News, Equity Markets, Global Financial Crisis | Tags: , , , , , | 8 Comments

The SEC seemed captured by insiders for so long and was so badly understaffed that it really was a pathetic excuse for a regulator.  All it seemed capable of doing was capturing media divas like Martha Stewart while the Bernie Madoffs were only caught when market down turns identified their PONZI Schemes.   Interestingly enough,  two Madoff employees were JUST arrested on Thursday as prosecutors are finally moving towards the Madoff family jewels. But, bigger things are afoot.

The SEC has finally gone after the bad guys with a little help from the FBI and the Manhattan District Attorney’s office in what what can only be characterized as a major investigation. It took around three years to complete.  That means it actually got stated under the Bush years which is a shocker unto itself.

Have the SEC finally traded their aging white horses for some real stallions? This can only mean good news for the small investor and those of us who are stuck in institutional funds because Congress wants to pay back their FIRE friends by giving them our money to take to their casino.

The criminal and civil probes, which authorities say could eclipse the impact on the financial industry of any previous such investigation, are examining whether multiple insider-trading rings reaped illegal profits totaling tens of millions of dollars, the people say. Some charges could be brought before year-end, they say.

The investigations, if they bear fruit, have the potential to expose a culture of pervasive insider trading in U.S. financial markets, including new ways non-public information is passed to traders through experts tied to specific industries or companies, federal authorities say.

One focus of the criminal investigation is examining whether nonpublic information was passed along by independent analysts and consultants who work for companies that provide “expert network” services to hedge funds and mutual funds. These companies set up meetings and calls with current and former managers from hundreds of companies for traders seeking an investing edge.

Finally, some one is going after these “expert networks” which are basically groups of people that sell inside information. Yves at Naked Capitalism--some one who worked in the market for years and has some way of knowing–has been on this for years. I’ve been buried in academia and at the FED for some time, but even I knew it was bad.

Yours truly has complained off and on over the years about “consulting” and “research” firms whose entire business model revolves around the procurement and sale of inside information. These companies solicit consultants, who in the vast majority of cases are employees of major corporations, to provide insight into what is going on at their employer’s operations. These vendors are generally smart enough to make their consultants sign various waivers, which have the effect of shifting liability on to the hapless chump paid a couple of hundred dollars an hour for an hour or two for information worth vastly more than than. They are effectively exploiting the contract worker’s lack of understanding of the finer points of SEC regulations and corporate policy.

We first wrote about this abuse with weeks of starting this blog, in January 2007, when a Wall Street Journal investigation of the biggest player in this space, Gerson Lerman, led to an investigation by the New York attorney general, Eliot Spitzer (the SEC reportedly had investigations underway, although it was not clear whether Gerson Lerman was a focus).

I have had my tinfoil hat theory on Spitzer’s fall from grace  for some time. My thought is that some one went after Client 9 deliberately to stop him from finding out more about these lucrative deals and other Wall Street nastiness.  He got taken down over a game of patty cake so these guys could continue their scam.  Traders can make boatloads of money with ex ante knowledge and enough money to make the trade. Also, remember even if you’re just doing the deal, your value as a trader and analyst goes up if your assets’ value goes up.  There’s a lot of money in this game and getting in on momentum at the ground floor is a beautiful thing.

Here’s one of the more egregious examples from the WSJ article.

Another aspect of the probe is an examination of whether traders at a number of hedge funds and trading firms, including First New York Securities LLC, improperly gained nonpublic information about pending health-care, technology and other merger deals, according to the people familiar with the matter.

Some traders at First New York, a 250-person trading firm, profited by anticipating health-care and other mergers unveiled in 2009, people familiar with the firm say.

A First New York spokesman said: “We are one of more than three dozen firms that have been asked by regulators to provide general information in a widespread inquiry; we have cooperated fully.” He added: “We stand behind our traders and our systems and policies in place that ensure full regulatory compliance.”

Right.  It was just very good analysis.  We’ll see how that stands up in court.

My guess is that there will be a good deal of shaking and quaking going on shortly because the names have yet to be released.  We will undoubtedly see some Goldman Sachs names among them.  Goldman Sachs appears to be a central player in those health care company mergers.  NY magazine is being vague right now, but the network of traders and investment bankers could shake up the Street and it’s about time.  They’re poking around now which probably means their lining up their fallen angels who are most likely to turn state’s evidence to avoid having more than just a few weekends with Bernie.

The characterization of the degree of insider trading by both the FBI and SEC is that this is part of a “pervasive” culture. I smell a huge class action suit in the works against a lot of funds.   It also further puts to rest the idea that the U.S. equities markets represent anything near a rational market since prices in this instance represent two tiers of agents.  One set that only have public information.  One set that’s privy to the out of school tales of contract workers.  This should turn some of the literature  in the investment area on its heels. That’s a good thing too.  I do so want to see the death of that random walk down Wall Street hypothesis once and for all.

AND I just hate that look of a smug investment banker in the morning; especially when they try to give the impression that that it’s all about their brilliance and not about their luck or a little illegal information.   This should be more fun to watch than a James Bond movie when Sean Connery was in his prime.  It may also breathe some life into that CNN show Parker/Spitzer because Spitzer is bound to have his own little insider information on the probe and my guess is he’ll try to parlay that into higher ratings for his current enterprise of journalistic pattycake with Parker.  Eliot Spitzer could may well have the last laugh on this.

Saturday Reads

Posted: November 20, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Diplomacy Nightmares, morning reads, The Great Recession | Tags: , , , , , , , | 52 Comments

Good Morning!!

President Obama has left the country again. He was in Lisbon today for a NATO meeting, at which the organization agreed to build a missile shield, and they hope that Russia will go along with it too.

In general, senior NATO officials note a welcoming Russian tone under President Dmitri A. Medvedev to the idea of cooperation with NATO on missile defense and European security, and they also note the general silence of Mr. Putin, now prime minister.

On Saturday, Russia will be formally invited to take part in the missile defense system, especially with intelligence and radar sharing. Moscow has indicated that it is interested but has questions, and wants to ensure that the system is not aimed at countering Russian missiles.

The missile defense system approved Friday is different from the fixed-missile defense that President George W. Bush initiated and that proved controversial. The idea is to have a phased system of radars and antimissile missiles that would be less expensive than the Bush system. The NATO spokesman, James Appathurai, said the nearly $1.5 billion cost could be managed over 10 years.

Plenty of money for missile defense that probably won’t work, but nothing for the desperate long-term unemployed.

In one of his many bad decisions, President Obama invited Skeltor Alan Simpson back out of obscurity, and we may never get rid of him. With his latest pronouncement, he has moved way beyond inappropriate to sociopathic.

He predicted a government that approaches shutdown in April of next year.

“This is going to be beautiful politics – The brutal kind,” he told reporters in Washington at a forum put on by the Christian Science Monitor. “I love those,” he said, with a twinkle in his eye and a jokester tinge to his voice.

“The debt limit, when it comes in April or May, will prove who’s a hero and who’s a jerk and who’s a charlatan and who’s a faqir,” said Simpson. “And there it will be right there. Because they’re going to say, these new guys, some of them, and I’ve met a good deal of them and boy they’re sharp cookies,” he said, adding a message to new Congressmen.

“Compromise is not a filthy word,” said Simpson. “It doesn’t mean you’re a wimp when you learn to compromise. You either learn to compromise and legislate or go home – my personal view – anyway there they are and they’re going to say I will not vote for the debt limit extension until you cut this. Say, you can’t do that. you can’t possibly do that. well, then I’m not voting for it. and they’ll say well the government will close. Which they’ll say that’s what I came here for. Oh, I can’t wait. It’ll be something and I’ll be watching.”

You can watch it at the Christian Science Monitor site.

If only there really were a hell so Alan Simpson could spend eternity there.

Ezra Klein is thinking along the same lines as Simpson, but makes more of an effort to sound reasonable. He says Democrats should trade an extension of the Bush tax cuts to the rich for Republican votes to extend unemployment benefits and increase the debt ceiling when the time comes.

Ezra must have learned bargaining strategy from that great bipartisan choker compromiser Barack Obama.

Elsewhere in The Washington Post is the story of “one family’s plunge from the middle class into poverty.”

Walker used to make $100,000 a year as a nursing home executive until she lost her job a year and a half ago. Unable to find a new one, she shed her business suits and high heels and put on an apron and soft-soled shoes. This year, she and her daughter are living on $11,000: her unemployment benefits plus whatever she can earn selling home-cooked dinners for $10 apiece….

The Census Bureau recently reported that the poverty rate in the United States rose to 14.3 percent last year, the highest level in more than 50 years.

Texas and Florida saw the most people fall below the line. In Florida alone, 323,000 people became newly poor last year, bringing the state’s poverty total to 2.7 million.

The numbers tell another tale as well: Nationwide, in black households such as Walker’s, income plunged an average of 4.4 percent in 2009, almost three times the drop among whites. The number of blacks living below the official poverty line – $21,756 for a family of four – increased by 7 percent in just one year.

Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, co-chairs of the Catfood Commission, should be forced to read this article, memorize it, and then write on a blackboard 1,000 times, “I am a damn fool who knows nothing about economics.”

At Counterpunch, Alexander Cockburn thinks “it’s time for a real mutiny.”

So much for 2010 as the year of mutiny, when the American people rose up and said, “Enough! Throw the bums out!” As the dust finally clears after the midterm elections, and the bodies are hauled from the field of battle, guess what? It was all so predictable. The safest thing to be in 2010 was an incumbent.

Out of 435 seats, 351 incumbents will be returning to the House in January. In the Senate, out of 100 seats, 77 incumbents will return in January. As the libertarian Joel Hirschorn puts it, “Welcome back to the reality of America’s delusional democracy where career politicians will continue to foster a corrupt, inefficient and dysfunctional government because that is what the two-party plutocracy and its supporters want for their own selfish reasons.”

What will Dear Leader do next?

Already there are the omens of a steady stream of concessions by Obama to the right.

There’s hardly any countervailing pressure for him to do otherwise. The president has no fixed principles of political economy, and who is at his elbow in the White House? Not the Labor Secretary, Hilda Solis. Not that splendid radical Elizabeth Warren, whose Consumer Financial Protection Bureau the Republicans are already scheduling for destruction. Next to Obama is Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the bankers’ lapdog, whom the president holds in high esteem….

Two more years, of the same downward slide, courtesy of bipartisanship and “working together”? No way. Enough of dreary predictability. Let’s have a real mutiny against Obamian rightward drift. The time is not six months or a year down the road. The time is now.

But who will lead the charge?

Dakinikat turned me on to this article about Obama’s Asian trip: Asia After Obama, by Brahma Chellaney

Significantly, Obama restricted his tour to Asia’s leading democracies – India, Indonesia, Japan, and South Korea – which surround China and are central to managing its rise. Yet he spent all of last year assiduously courting the government in Beijing in the hope that he could make China a global partner on issues ranging from climate change to trade and financial regulation. The catchphrase coined by US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg in relation to China, “strategic reassurance,” actually signaled America’s intent to be more accommodating toward China’s ambitions.

Now, with his China strategy falling apart, Obama is seeking to do exactly what his predecessor attempted – to line up partners as an insurance policy in case China’s rising power slides into arrogance. Other players on the grand chessboard of Asian geopolitics also are seeking to formulate new equations, as they concurrently pursue strategies of hedging, balancing, and bandwagoning.

Once again, Obama plays the role of Bush III.

At Truthdig, I learned that David Sirota has found a new hero to replace his now tarnished idol Barack Obama. These days Sirota is bragging about hanging with cut rate Rolling Stone gonzo writer Matt Taibbi.

Sirota reminds me of that little dog Chester in the Looney Tunes cartoons–the one that idolizes the big bulldog Spike. Chester jumps around Butch, trying to get his attention, praising him, agreeing with him; and when Spike brushes him aside, he just keeps coming back for more. Sirota:

Over drinks in my living room, Taibbi and I pondered the financial Masters of the Universe and their maddening infallibility. I asked him why they never fear facing legal consequences. Do they believe they’re untouchable? Or do they know law enforcement won’t pursue them?

“They’re not afraid because other than Bernie Madoff, when was the last time someone on Wall Street faced any real punishment?” he responded. “Sure, a few go to jail once in a while, but they’re usually out in a few months and then on the speaking circuit. That’s not exactly a deterrent against bad behavior that’s making you millions.”

Deterrence—it’s the vaunted idea behind “tough on crime” sentences for violent offenses. Lock the door, throw away the key, and the theory says that heinous acts will be prevented.

Duh! I think Sirota wrote this piece just so everyone would know he’s pals with Taibbi.

Since it’s Saturday Morning….

What’s on your reading menu this morning?

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