2-25-2010

2-25-2010—Bannks Bet Greece Defaults on Debt They Helped Hide. Traders seek to profit, making it harder to raise money. Bets by some of the same banks that helped Greece shroud its mounting debts may actually no be pushing the nation closer to the bring of financial ruin. NYT A1

2-24-2010

2-24-2010—The free market system blunders into recession; its victims flock to the free market banner. And here we go again.... The laissez faire system has just finished giving us a demonstration of its viciousness, but the part of FDR can’t get out in front of the working class anger. Working-class Massachusetts and Appalachia are turning away from it in disgust, but the party of the political scientists does seem to have noticed.—Frank, WSJ A15

weekend words of comfort

—2-21-201---A last-ditch effort to keep Dutch troops in Afghanistan brought down the governing coalition in the Netherlands ... NYT A12
--Afghan Army Lags in Battle; In Marja, Marines do the heavy lifting. NYT A1
--Whether it’s the Somali pirates, who created a national economy based on corruption; the drug lords in Afghanistan and Columbia; or the Mafia in Moscow, corruption elsewhere dwarfs the worst crime in Illinois, New Jersey and New York. NYT 27A
--2/20-21-2010--“[federal response to Toyota problems] isn’t an NHTSA failure under this president. There is a continuation of a failure” that may go back more than a decade. --GOP Congressman Issa. WSJ B5
--2/11/2010—The lesson Stalin should have taught us==and if he didn’t, then the more recent history delivered by Dick Cheney will do—with the paradoxical one that that the more security-conscious a state becomes, the more insecure are those it is supposedly trying to protect. LRB 33

2-18-2010

2-18-2010—Mitt Romney ... is back with a new book in which he warns that if America doesn’t change its ways it could wind up becoming the “France of the 21st century.” We all know that Americans would hate to spend the next 90 years enveloped in serious wine and universal health care... Collins, NYT A21 where are the coneheads when we need them?]
--The 400 highest-earning households in the USA made nearly $435 million in 2007, up 31% from a year earlier [according to IRS data] NYT B11 [o for the days of class war of yore...]
2-17-2010—China sold a record amount of US Treasury holdings in December, ceding its place as the world’s biggest foreign holder of US debt to Japan. WSJ A1 [cui bono?]
--2-15-2010—Timothy Corvidae is a student in the University’s School of Social Work. Corvidae doesn’t identify with any specific gender and uses the pronoun “ze” instead of “he” or “she.” Corvidae is a member of a group of people on campus who face language barriers as a result of their decision not to identify with a specific gender. Though these individuals represent a minority of students, their cause has recently made its way to the forefront of campus discussion. –MICHIGAN DAILY, A1 [o for the days of class war of yore...][and as a German I’m pissed because nobody is acknowledging German’s third gender, neuter...]

VD weekend update

2-14-2010—Wall Street tactics akin to the ones that fostered subprime mortgages in America have worsened the financial crisis shaking Greece and undermining the euro by enabling European governments to hid their mounting debts. NYT A1

--As a former-student athlete at Binghamton, I am dismayed at the negative publicity brought upon the university by its athletic department. But I am equally dismayed that the SUNY board would try to mitigate the negative effects by paying $913,000 Skadden Arps for its report on the scandal. NYT SP5

2-13-2010—As Chine builds a vast network of fast trains, the US falls further behind. NYT B1

no childs left behind

2-12-2010--ATLANTA — Georgia education officials ordered investigations on Thursday at 191 schools across the state where they had found evidence of tampering on answer sheets for the state’s standardized achievement test. The order came after an inquiry on cheating by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement raised red flags regarding one in five of Georgia’s 1,857 public elementary and middle schools. A large proportion of the schools were in Atlanta. The inquiry flagged any school that had an abnormal number of erasures on answer sheets where the answers were changed from wrong to right, suggesting deliberate interference by teachers, principals or other administrators. Experts said it could become one of the largest cheating scandals in the era of widespread standardized testing. –NYT A16

2-11-2010

2-11-2010—The British government lost a protracted court battle on Wednesday to protect secret US intelligence information about the treatment of a former Guantanamo Bay detainee, and immediately published details of what it called the “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” administered to the prisoner by US officials. NYT A12 [stupid courts, stupid freedom of the press, stupid human rights...]
--In the battle over the pricing of electronic books, publishers appear to have won the first round. The price of many new releases and best sellers is about to go up, to as much as $14.99 from $9.99. But there may be an insurgency waiting to pounce: e-book buyers. Over the last year, the most voracious readers of e-books have shown a reflexive hostility to prices higher than the $9.99 set by Amazon.com and other online retailers for popular titles. When digital editions have cost more, or have been delayed until after the release of hardcover versions, these raucous readers have organized impromptu boycotts and gone to the Web sites of Amazon and Barnes & Noble to leave one-star ratings and negative comments for those books and their authors. “This book has been on the shelves for three weeks and is already in the remainder bins,” wrote Wayne Fogel of The Villages, Fla., when he left a one-star review of Catherine Coulter’s book “KnockOut” on Amazon. “$14.82 for the Kindle version is unbelievable. Some listings Amazon should refuse when the authors are trying to rip off Amazon’s customers.” [stupid market] NYT B1
--Two former employees of Blackwater Worldwide have accused the private security company of defrauding the government NYTA 20 [stupid government]
-- Since the euro was launched—as an accounting currency in 1999 and as cash in 2002—c9untries in Southern Europe and Ireland have ... allowed the low interest rates and stable currency that came from euro membership to fuel housing and consumption binges. WSJ A14—[stupid brunettes—or stupid blondes?]

nyt a couple days ago

February 8, 2010
In a Message to Democrats, Wall St. Sends Cash to G.O.P.
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
WASHINGTON — If the Democratic Party has a stronghold on Wall Street, it is JPMorgan Chase.

Its chief executive, Jamie Dimon, is a friend of President Obama’s from Chicago, a frequent White House guest and a big Democratic donor. Its vice chairman, William M. Daley, a former Clinton administration cabinet official and Obama transition adviser, comes from Chicago’s Democratic dynasty.

But this year Chase’s political action committee is sending the Democrats a pointed message. While it has contributed to some individual Democrats and state organizations, it has rebuffed solicitations from the national Democratic House and Senate campaign committees. Instead, it gave $30,000 to their Republican counterparts.

The shift reflects the hard political edge to the industry’s campaign to thwart Mr. Obama’s proposals for tighter financial regulations.

all marxists should get $16 million bonuses

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said he doesn't "begrudge" large bonuses paid out to JPMorgan Chase & Co chief executive Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs Group Inc CEO Lloyd Blankfein.

Barack Obama

"I, like most of the American people, don't begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free-market system," Obama said.

Obama, in an interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, called the two "savvy businessmen." Although he said the pay packages for Dimon and Blankfein were "an extraordinary amount of money" for Main Street, he pointed out that some baseball players make more than that.

Goldman, which reported a record profit for 2009, announced last week it would award Blankfein stock worth about $9 million. Dimon is to receive a compensation package worth about $16 million.

it's getting better all the time...

2-10-2010—Far fewer children would get a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. “Binge eating disorder” and “hypersexuality” might become commonly used labels for adults. And the way mental disorders are diagnosed and treated would be sharply revised. These are a few of the changes proposed on Tuesday by doctors charged with revising psychiatry’s encyclopedia of mental disorders, the guidebook that largely determines where society draws the line between normal and not normal...” NYT A1 [don’t’ like it? Change the name!]
—One reason conservatives own the antigovernment narrative is because liberals don’t really offer a competing one ... .. the toxic truth is staring us right in the face: The reason government has failed so many times is because it’s been run into the ground by antigovernment politicians.—Frank, WSJ A17 [reality perception disorder—change the name]
2-09-2010--They were Tokyo’s worst-kept diplomatic secrets: clandestine cold war era agreements with Washington that obligated Japan to shoulder the costs of US bases and allow nuclear-armed US ships to sail into Japanese ports.—NYT A4 [reality perception disorder—change the name]
--The Roman catholic Church faces yet another child abuse scandal, this time in Pope Benedict XVI’s native Germany.—NYT A9 [hypersexuality]
--Irish [child abuse] victims write to Pope. Ibid. [hypersexuality]
--Pope Benedict XVI on Monday condemned the abuse of children by members of the clergy. NYT A11-- [reality perception disorder—change the name]
--—JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon recently explained this brave new world, saying that crises should be expected “every five to seven years.”—WSJ A19 [didn’t Marx say this?]
2—8-2010—The good news for players [in the upcoming NFL collective bargaining negotiations] is that Saints quarterback Drew Bess is a player representative who is passionate about union issues.—NYT D7 [workers of the world unite]

you read it here first 2-9-2010

BEIJING (Reuters) - Senior Chinese military officers have proposed that their country boost defense spending, adjust PLA deployments, and possibly sell some U.S. bonds to punish Washington for its latest round of arms sales to Taiwan.

weekend update

2-7-=2010—To have a healthy culture you have to have stable health care financing and stable arts financing and stable sports financing, and if you don’t have that, your culture beomces a parking lot.—Douglas Coupland—NYTMag 12
Feb. 2-7,2010—A Tailban attack [in Afghanistan] was tied to poor US defenses. WSJ A1
--Gates made a plea to NATO for thousands of troops to train Afghan forces, but France will contribute only 80. Ibid.
--Danish special forces stormed a ship captured by Somali pirates and freed the 25 crew who were on board. Ibid.
--[GOP] Senator Richard Shelby has blocked more than 70 presidential nominees over a long-running feud related to an Air Force refueling-tanker contract and an FBI lab he wants to see built in his home state....WSJ A5
2-6-2010---The Air Force Academy, which recently set up an outdoor worship area for founders of Wicca, Druidism and other Earth-centered religions on its Colorado Springs campus, has come under criticism from some cadets as being too slow to address an incident of vandalism at the area...NYT A12
2-6-2010—While Republican members of the banking committee expressed hope that a deal could still be brokered [on banking reform] several Democratic members said on Friday they were resolved to move on.—NYT B1
--Goldman chief’s $9 million bonus seen by some as show of restraint. –Ibid.

2-4-2010

2-4-2010—In a Recession, Europe’s Focus on Saving Jobs Pays off. NYT B1 [fuck Adam Smith]

--Prime Minister François Fillon said Wednesday that he would sign a decree denying French nationality to a man who ordered his French wife to wear the full Islamic veil. “This case is about a religious radical: he imposes the burqa, he imposes the separation of men and women in his own home and he refuses to shake the hands of women,” Mr. Fillon told Europe 1 radio. “If this man does not want to change his attitude, he has no place in our country. In any case, he does not deserve French nationality.” The government is examining a ban on the full veil. The man’s name was not released. NYT A& [fuck diversity]

a nod to the national holiday

2-4-2010—[The low average weight of the Colts’ defense] stands out: The Colts defense is also shorter, on average, than the starters from all but one other team. .. The Colts’ defense allowed the eighth fewest points in the NFL this regular season and, more impressively, showed the ability to stiffen in the late stages of games—when the players would have every reason to be exhausted. ... The Colts’ success stems from a philosophy that borders on treason in the modern NFL: the idea that bigger is not always better. ... By carrying less mass, the Colts believe their players are quicker to the ball and less fatigued late in games....Some studies have shown that mental fatigue hinders decision-making.—WSJ D9

--Long ago, then-NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle figured out this greatest of all human truths, that the only value most people have in common, other than life itself, is the desire for a competitive home team. Family members who would sink a dinner fork into each other over Barack Obama’s health care plan will do high fives in the living room later if the Cleveland Browns beat the Pittsburgh Steelers. ... Basketball and hockey [do the same as football, i.e., TV revenue sharing] Baseball has not, and it is well established that Chicago Cubs fans do not believe happiness exists. WSJ A17

ground hogs

2-2-2010—why do almost all animal species reproduce sexually, and why are most asexual reproducters on their last legs, so to speak?—NYT D3 [you read it here first]
--Wealthy face tax increase; budget projects larger deficits despite spending cuts; “Think bigger,” says GOP WSJ A1 [depending on what we should think bigger, I’m w/ GOP]
--...the US could begin to suffer the same disease that has afflicted Japan over the past decade. As debt grew more rapidly than income, that country’s influence around the world eroded.—NYT A1 you read it here first]