Happy Halloween

10-31-08—McCain and Obama Advisers Briefed on Deteriorating Afghan War, NYT A11

--Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has collected a record-shattering $640 million, but only two of his staff members are among the 15 highest-paid workers in the general election, according to campaign finance records. The rest, including the three highest paid, are employed by Senator John McCain. The Obama campaign, despite having more than 700 field offices across the country, compared with fewer than 400 for Mr. McCain, has spent slightly less on rent than its counterpart. And even though Mr. Obama has raised $400 million more than Mr. McCain, he has spent less on fund-raising consultants. NYT A18

--Financial giants getting injections of federal cash owed their executives more than $40 billion for past years' pay and pensions as of the end of 2007, a Wall Street Journal analysis shows. The government is seeking to rein in executive pay at banks getting federal money, and a leading congressman and a state official have demanded that some of them make clear how much they intend to pay in bonuses this year. But overlooked in these efforts is the total size of debts that financial firms receiving taxpayer assistance previously incurred to their executives, which at some firms exceed what they owe in pensions to their entire work forces. WSJ A1

10-30-08

10-30-08—Striking new evidence has emerged of a widespread gap in the cost of health insurance, as women pay much more than men of the same age for individual insurance policies providing identical coverage... Some insurance executives expressed surprise... NYT A1

--Iraqis insist on changes to long-delayed security pact with US –NYT A15

--Conceding it needed outside help in figuring out why the suicide rate among service members was rising, the Army.... NYT A17

--“A revolution [in France] comes when what was taboo becomes mainstream.... when you have images in the Metro of a woman paying for sex who could be the middle-aged woman next door, and a single pregnant Muslim justice minister and no one seems to care, the certainties are in trouble.” Pascal Bruckner, French intellectual, NYT E6

10-29-2008

10-29-08—First came the mortgage crisis. Now comes the credit card crisis. NYT A1

--At least 310 private security companies from around the world have received contracts from US agencies to protect American and Iraqi officials, installations, convoys and other entities in Iraq since 2003, according to the most comprehensive accounting yet of the secretive and weakly regulated role that private firms have played in the conflict. NYT A5

--The Alaska Republican Party on Tuesday found itself in the awkward [but not unusual] position of urging voters to return a convicted felon to the US Senate. NYT A13

10-27-2008

10-27-08—China appears to join Europe in call for overhaul of ‘financial’ rules. WSJ A8

--Speculative currency trades plunge Kuwait into bank bailout. WSJ A1

--“Madonna of the Goldfinch,” a 500-year-old painting by the Renaissance master Raphael (1483-1520), [and one of the greatest paintings in the world] will go on display next month after a decade-long restoration in a lab in Italy, the BBC reported. NYT C2

NYRB

10-23-08—I just took rurality as my ground... The landscapes [of Wyoming and Newfoundland] are different, but the economic situations and the beliefs of the people who live in the places are quite similar, because [the people] can’t see who’s making the rules and the economic strategies that govern them, they continue to believe in the independent rural life, which is deliciously ironic and very said. –Annie Proulx, NYRB (Oct. 23, 2008) p. 41,

--A Web site that tracks security issues has estimated that in 2008, the US defense budget will be $711 billion, or about 48 % of overall world military spending. This would be close to twice as much as the budgets of Europe and China, the second- and third- biggest military spenders, combined. –Alan Ryan, NYRB (Oct. 23, 2008) p. 4159.

9-25-08—The astrophysicist Adrian Melott of the University of Kansas, in a fight with zealots who wanted equal time for creationism in the Kansas public schools, founded an organization called FLAT (Families for Learning Accurate Theories). His society parodied creationists by demanding equal time for flat earth geography, arguing that children should be exposed to both sides of the controversy over the shape of the earth. –Steven Weinberg, NYRB p. 73.

--[Obama’s] coalition represents, in a very literal sense, an America of the future in which there will be more white-collar tech-related jobs and fewer blue-collar manufacturing jobs. There will be more immigrants and people of color and fewer Anglo-Saxon whites. Cities and inner-ring suburbs will be more important than small towns and sprawling, diffuse exurbs. The concerns of the middle and upper-middle classes will predominate in political life, not those of the working class (i.e., not the traditional “backbone of the Democrat Party” of the passing industrial age). It will, finally, be a country more reliant on the young than the old. –Michael Tomasky, NYRB 81.

more proof of GWB's foreign policy genius

Russia tells OPEC eyes swing oil producer role

Wed Oct 22, 2008 11:32am EDT

By Amie Ferris-Rotman and Vladimir Soldatkin

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia could become a swing producer to influence global prices, the country's top energy official said on Wednesday as OPEC's Secretary General met with a Russian president for the first time.

The resurrection of a decade-old idea of a big oil reserve comes as another sign of Russia's growing ties with OPEC, which has unnerved global consumers already worried by talks between Russia, Iran and Qatar to create an OPEC-style gas group.

10-20/21-2008

10-21-08--“Right now,” said Mr. White, the head of the American National Socialist Workers Party, “we’re facing the potential of a half-black candidate financed by Jewish money going up against a white candidate financed by Jewish money, who are both advocating the same policy. So you’ve got two terrible choices.” ... There have been sporadic reports throughout the country of Obama signs vandalized with swastikas, windows smashed at local Obama campaign offices and racist pamphlets dropped on doorsteps. Overt and thinly veiled racist comments about Mr. Obama have been caught on camera at rallies, and a Republican women’s group in California — the Chaffey Community Republican Women, Federated — has made headlines for a flier that showed Mr. Obama’s face on a faux food stamp that also included watermelon and fried chicken. NYT A19

--The characters [on “Family Guy”] ambush Nazi soldiers in an alley and steal their uniforms so they can travel without drawing attention. Putting on an overcoat, Stewie notices a McCain-Palin campaign button affixed to the lapel. NYT A18

10-20-08—“The landscape’s changed, said Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard University professor. “I think we’ll see a big turn in the US position [at upcoming international financial summit]. ... We certainly would prefer that market principles have an important bearing [on policy]. But I don’t think we can blow them [European officials] off as we might have a year ago.” WSJ A4

weekend update

10-19-08—Suddenly, Europe Looks Pretty Smart. NYT WK 1

--FBI Struggling to Handle Wave of Finance Cases. NYT A1—too busy w/ voting fraud

--When it comes to the topic of aging, [Catherine] Denuve is known for saying (to quote loosely), “You choose either your face or your fanny.” NYTSM 34.

10-18/19-08--“You won’t let them turn the Buckeye State into the Acorn State.” Sarah Palin—WSJ A9

10-18-08--Asked how many members of Congress she would describe as “anti-American,” [GOP MN Rep. Michelle] Bachmann replied: “I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America. I would like to see an expose like that.” NYT A15—too busy w/ voting fraud

--10-17-08—GOP Donor Is accused of Overcharging Pentagon. NYT A12—but not vote fraud

Sunday paper

10-11-08--The new approach, which would have government inject capital directly into the nation’s banks, is on that administration officials had publicly opposed until just a few days ago... The surprising turnabout by Treas. Sec. Paulson has raised questions about whether he squandered valuable time by trying to sell Congress a plan that he and other administrations had failed to think through in advance. It also raises questions about whether the administration’s deep philosophical hostility to government ownership in private companies aggravated the financial crisis by delaying rescue action.—NYT A1

--Britain overreached imperially. The US has been doing it financially. ... Right now, it doesn’t seem so ridiculous to ask whether 2008 will come to be seen as the first year of a distinctly non-American century.—NYT WK1

--This guy [GWB] is basically a bum who became president of the United States. –Oliver Stone, NYT AR1

--The major spy character [in LeCarre’s new novel A Most Wanted Man] ...is Guenther Bachmann. Not Smiley: much rougher, more desperate, not a bit worried about doing evil in defense of good because nor it’s 9/11 evil, not Soviet evil. –NYT BKR 10

--Have you been wondering why Republicans have suddenly stopped talking about “family values”? Could it be because a divorced John McCain chose as his running mate a stay-at-work mom who hid her last, unplanned pregnancy... and who has a pregnant, unwed teenager with a self described “**** redneck” of a boyfriend who “does want kids”... and n ex-brother-in-law who tasered her nephew, and a husband with a DUI who loves his country so much he joined a secessionist party? All of which leaves the GOP clinging to one remaining family value—the shotgun wedding! All previous values are null and void because “life happens.”--Doonesbury

10-10

10-10-08—The White House announced steps to speed the transition process for the next administration. WSJ A1 –good riddance to bad rubbish

--[US] Joint Chiefs Chairman is Pessimistic on Afghanistan. NYT A11—hey what’s the loss of another country compared to the destruction of global capitalism?

--US Failing to Promote Math Skills, Study Finds. NYT A15 hard to count all those dollars

--What had been a [GOP] disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole.—NYT A29, David Brooks, conservative columnist

first Sunday in October

10-05-08--The US is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining.—Horace Engdahl, secretary of the Swedish Academy which awards the Nobel prize in literature, NYT Wk3

--Until we get our financial act together, our motto is going to be: “Swedish spoken here—or Arabic or Chinese or German.”—Thomas Friedman, NYT WK9

—In Raleigh, executives at RBC Bank canceled the parachuters that were supposed to spear at the grand openings of its new headquarters, saying it was not an appropriate time to have people jumping off a bank building. –NYT A16

hoosier hysteria

10-03-08--Many events in Washington, on Wall Street and elsewhere around the country have led to what has been called the most serious financial crisis since the 1930s. But decisions made at a brief meeting on April 28, 2004, explain why the problems could spin out of control. The agency’s failure to follow through on those decisions also explains why Washington regulators did not see what was coming.

On that bright spring afternoon, the five members of the Securities and Exchange Commission met in a basement hearing room to consider an urgent plea by the big investment banks.

They wanted an exemption for their brokerage units from an old regulation that limited the amount of debt they could take on. The exemption would unshackle billions of dollars held in reserve as a cushion against losses on their investments. Those funds could then flow up to the parent company, enabling it to invest in the fast-growing but opaque world of mortgage-backed securities; credit derivatives, a form of insurance for bond holders; and other exotic instruments.

The five investment banks led the charge, including Goldman Sachs, which was headed by Henry M. Paulson Jr. Two years later, he left to become Treasury secretary.

A lone dissenter — a software consultant and expert on risk management — weighed in from Indiana with a two-page letter to warn the commission that the move was a grave mistake. He never heard back from Washington. ...

In letters to the commissioners, senior executives at the five investment banks complained about what they called unnecessary regulation and oversight by both American and European authorities. A lone voice of dissent in the 2004 proceeding came from a software consultant from Valparaiso, Ind., who said the computer models run by the firms — which the regulators would be relying on — could not anticipate moments of severe market turbulence.

“With the stroke of a pen, capital requirements are removed!” the consultant, Leonard D. Bole, wrote to the commission on Jan. 22, 2004. “Has the trading environment changed sufficiently since 1997, when the current requirements were enacted, that the commission is confident that current requirements in examples such as these can be disregarded?”

He said that similar computer standards had failed to protect Long-Term Capital Management, the hedge fund that collapsed in 1998, and could not protect companies from the market plunge of October 1987.

Mr. Bole, who earned a master’s degree in business administration at the University of Chicago, helps write computer programs that financial institutions use to meet capital requirements.

He said in a recent interview that he was never called by anyone from the commission.

“I’m a little guy in the land of giants,” he said. “I thought that the reduction in capital was rather dramatic.”—NYT A1, A23

--...this is Homer [Simpson’s] first vote in a presidential general election. “It’s time for a change, he says to an electronic voting machine. But ... the machine records the vote (multiple votes, actually) for John McCain, then tries to swallow Homer when he disagrees. “This doesn’t happen in America,” Homer exclaims. “Maybe Ohio, but not in America!”—NYT A20

--Sunspots are Fewest since 1954, but Significance is Unclear—NYT A21

--Sen. Obama has advertised in Indiana for months, and until recently Republicans have ridiculed those efforts. On Tuesday, the RNC made its first advertising buy in the state, a 10-day, $740,000 purchase, after polls showed a statistical tie in a state Mr. Bush won by 31% in 2004. –WSJ A15

Oct. 1

10-01-08--Even worse, from the French perspective, Americans are reckless optimists, incurably blind to the tragedy of life, to the weary convolutions of history and thus to the need for lengthy August vacations and financial regulations. NYT A12