February 2009
68 posts
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The game changer →
givemesomethingtoread:
This is a condensed, almost shorthand account of what needs to be done to turn the global economy around. It should give a sense of how difficult a task it is.
George Soros lays out his theories of what went wrong and was done wrong in finance, and some ideas of how to put Humpty Dumpty together again. One idea is one that I have been a proponent of because it is...
January 2009
35 posts
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Bailed Out Bankers Behaving Like Welfare Queens →
This link is interesting because the reasoning is so wrong. Rush Limbaugh proves to be an idiot once again as well.
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Defaults Rise in Neg Am Loans →
Barry Ritholtz takes a quick look at Option ARM mortgages and finds some very scary numbers.
The Option Arm loan is causing trouble. The negative amortization loans, which typically see the amount of principle owed rise over the loan’s term, is seeing defaults rapidly rise.
There are ~$750 billion of option ARMs issued from 2004 to 2007; ~$1.9 trillion of subprime and $ 2 trillion in jumbo...
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News You Can Endow →
An editorial with an interesting potential solution for the downturn that newspapers are taking faced with the internet.
Most of the argument is very good, but making them non-profits seems problematic in the face of “the prohibition […] against trying to ‘influence legislation’ or ‘participate in any campaign activity for or against political...
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Huff Post Breaks Huge Corruption Story--And We... →
Wherein giant corporations who have been bailed out by taxpayer money plan to use the cash to lobby Congress-critters to try to break up unions.
Three days after receiving $25 billion in federal bailout funds, Bank of America Corp. hosted a conference call with conservative activists and business officials to organize opposition to the U.S. labor community’s top legislative...
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Too big to fail, too big to jail →
Amy Goodman’s editorial explains why the crimes of the Bush administration must be investigated and prosecuted.
Without thorough, aggressive, public investigations of the full spectrum of crimes alleged of the Bush administration, there will be no accountability, and the complete record of this chapter of U.S. history will never be written.
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Nationalize Now →
Barry Ritholtz argues for immediate nationalization of BoA and Citi.
As we have seem over the past few weeks, the country’s biggest banks — Bank of America and Citigroup — are deteriorating rapidly. They will need far more bailout money beyond the $350 billion of taxpayer cash and guarantees they have already received.
Note that the money already dumped into the black holes of these two financial...
Why is Marijuana Illegal? →
givemesomethingtoread:
Many people assume that marijuana was made illegal through some kind of process involving scientific, medical, and government hearings; that it was to protect the citizens from what was determined to be a dangerous drug.
The actual story shows a much different picture.
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Gaza invasion: Powered by the U.S. →
U.S. taxpayers are paying for U.S. energy companies to buy Arab crude, ship it across the Atlantic to refineries in the U.S., refine it, and then ship it back across the Atlantic so that the Israel Defense Force can use it in its wars.
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Back to What Obama Must Do →
Paul Krugman’s open letter to President Obama. The future of the economy does not look good.
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U.S. military report warns 'sudden collapse' of... →
The Mexican possibility [of rapid and sudden collapse] may seem less likely [than Pakistan], but the government, its politicians, police and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and press by criminal gangs and drug cartels. How that internal conflict turns out over the next several years will have a major impact on the stability of the Mexican state. Any descent by Mexico into...
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To Support and Defend: A Message to US Senators... →
So, what in the world has happened during the past eight years of the George W. Bush administration? The only defensible answer is that he and his subordinates have trampled our precious Constitution and the rule of law into the ground, while our elected members of Congress have stood idly and complicitly by. Our highest elected officials have utterly failed in their duty of greatest...
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Merrill Lynch CEO Spent $1,220,000 On Office... →
Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain spent over $1.22 million to renovate his office in early 2008, just as his firm was getting ready to slash thousands of jobs, cut back on spending and dump businesses.
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So Long, Revolving Door →
MoJoBlog covers Obama’s policy announcement regarding lobbyists in his administration.
John Wonderlich of the Sunlight Foundation said that while he’s waiting to see the details, “today’s announcement is a significant shift in the executive branch’s stance toward being held accountable to the public it serves.” He called the move “very encouraging.”
...
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Yes Pecan! →
New Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor in honor of our new president.
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Day One: New FOIA Rules →
[…] on his first full day in office […] Obama has struck a quick and prominent victory for government openness.
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Agnotology →
Agnotology: Culturally constructed ignorance, purposefully created by special interest groups working hard to create confusion and suppress the truth.
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Technology in the recession: Less is Moore →
givemesomethingtoread:
There is strong demand for technologies that do the same for less money, rather than more for the same price.
I’ve seen a trend among my friends toward netbooks, but this article provides a nice summary of the situation.
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Bush’s Economic Mistakes →
Barry Ritholtz summarizes a much longer Time magazine article listing Dubya’s eight main economic policy mistakes.
I like number 6:
6. Energy Policy: Not much to say here, except that there wasn’t an energy policy.
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Binding U.S. law requires prosecutions for those... →
Glenn Greenwald lays out the evidence which clearly shows that the Bush Administration must be investigated and prosecuted for acts of torture.
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The Terrible Lessons of TARP →
Barry Ritholtz takes a look at how the “first half” of TARP went now that we’re starting to spend the “second half”.
With the government now debating the release of the second half of the TARP funds, perhaps now is as good a time as any to look at how successfully spent the first $350 Billion dollars were.
The evidence is not very favorable.
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The $45 Billion Dollar Club →
The United States of Wall Street just added another major holding to its portfolio of financial garbage: Bank of America.
Like Citi, BA [Bank of America] has now received more MORE IN BAILOUT MONEY than its actually worth. (BAC = $53B; C = $21B) How this can ever be a profitable investment, as some mathematically challenged Congress-critters have suggested, is all but impossible to imagine.
How many AAAAAs in Khaaaaaaaan? →
Funny/interesting chart for the number of A’s in Kirk’s “Khaaaaaaan!”
RIP, Ricardo Montalblan.
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Why is Marijuana Illegal? →
givemesomethingtoread:
Many people assume that marijuana was made illegal through some kind of process involving scientific, medical, and government hearings; that it was to protect the citizens from what was determined to be a dangerous drug.
The actual story shows a much different picture.
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Get a Real FEC, Not One that Protects Special... →
The Federal Election Commission is currently ineffective, deadlocked along partisan lines. They are still failing to adjudicate problems from the 2004 election.
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Obama Faces Legacy of Lawlessness at Justice →
As internal government reports and congressional hearings have documented, the Bush Justice Department over the last eight years expelled or ignored attorneys that it didn’t agree with and replaced them with inexperienced lawyers hired more for their ideology than their qualifications. Many of those promoted and implemented conservative agendas that in some cases turned out to be illegal. Those...
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GMAC: 0% Financing for Subprime FICO Scores →
So it turns out that we [tax-payers] are now subsidizing a globally uncompetitive carmaker that does not understand what qualifies as a subprime FICO score and is offering 0% loans financed by a government (taxpayer) investment that costs 8%.
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“No One Saw It Coming” - REALLY? →
One of the biggest outright lies of this housing, economic and financial collapse is that “No one saw it coming.”
This is a patently absurd comment. Anyone who makes it - and there have been lots and lots of people saying as much - reveal themselves as either clueless or liars or both.
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WatchAmazing motorcycle jump by Robbie Maddison. Getting down looks like the hard part!