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?]