This blog will be ending soon. I have already spelled out the reasons in my amiable blog. There will be other blogs that will be published for varying lengths of times. Some will be limited by the limited nature of their content, some will be probably go on forever. This blog will basically become a catch all blog separate from a personal blog. It will not be located here. I think I prefer for these blogs to be annonymous to give myself the truest freedom of speech I can, freedom that does not involve repercussions or hurt feelings or worry.
It is fun to think of a fresh start. I sincerely do love Laurence Sterne mentioned in a number of blog entries. His writing has been my guiding principle in this blog and even those who take an 18th Century novel class may miss his wit of deconstructing the writing process. I sit here now overlooking Orange Beach Florida waching the lovely ocean waves. After the devestating tornadoes that made their way through many parts of Alabama it is nice to be at a place where the effect was only strong breezes and a coolness that is uncharacteristic on a day like this in Alabama. It is a fitting place to say goodbye.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
I Wasn't Kidding
The Birthers think they have won. Proven wrong is spun into they have won. (It won't be long until the proof is questioned as well.) Winning here is a leap of logic only a bully would make:
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/04/27/6542314-trump-proud-of-himself-takes-credit-for-birth-certificate-release
I've been trying to come up with an analogy from my childhood that isn't nasty, but the best one I can come up with is this one: "Show it to us, show it to us. How do we know you're not a girl? I know you are a girl. You're a girl, you're a girl. Show it to us.. If Mikie wasn't a girl he would show it to us..... Ha ha ha, HE SHOWED IT !! I WIN !"
Update: LA Times
Update: David Letterman states the ignored yet obvious:
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/04/27/6542314-trump-proud-of-himself-takes-credit-for-birth-certificate-release
I've been trying to come up with an analogy from my childhood that isn't nasty, but the best one I can come up with is this one: "Show it to us, show it to us. How do we know you're not a girl? I know you are a girl. You're a girl, you're a girl. Show it to us.. If Mikie wasn't a girl he would show it to us..... Ha ha ha, HE SHOWED IT !! I WIN !"
Update: LA Times
Update: David Letterman states the ignored yet obvious:
Birthers Win!
President Barack Obama releases long form birth certificate. The level of debate now takes a giant step backwards as the "Why hasn't Obama released the birth certificate?" will inevitable give way to how the alien technologies used in area 51 and on the World Trade Center were used to falsify the document. The certificate will have to go to experts now, carbon dating, fingerprint analysis, and perhaps DNA testing. Perhaps we should encase it next to the Washington DC copy of the Declaration of Independence so we can all parade past and grasp the obvious.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Subterranian C-Span Blues
I was off for an extra two days last week. The following was honestly an unexpected highlight. (It begins "Last Fall the American people gave us our marching orders...")
Friday, April 22, 2011
Bold Feints
The Washington Post polls suggests that 87% of people are against cutting Medicare as a means of straightening out the budget. If 13% is the core group aimed at by cutting the budget to the detriment of seniors, I suspect that the bold fonts will disappear in their arguments very soon. Even as a bargaining chip to bargain away, future intent is obvious here. If the Republicans go this far when they hold only one house of the legislature and don't hold the Presidency, what does it say for them if we perchance put them into power to administer the full old people trashing treatment?
The message seems to be that there will be no sharing of burden beyond those already burdened. Actually, instead of the same old message, the budget sounded like a paradigm shift to me at first. Having won the young 18-24 aged group in the off election which young people of multitasking abilities often have a hard time focusing on :) , perhaps the Republicans seemed to be putting to bed the notion of a class war between the poor and the rich. The undertaxed millionaires would be off the stage as the battle was waged between the young and the old. That battle IS inevitable but possibly is not even in the near offing. I doubt the 13% were composed of young folks, I'm guessing they were the core Republicans of old.
When I raised the question of fairness with a good friend of mine, she clung to the ideas of waste in government like the example of illegal immigrants stealing health and education services. But if there is one thing we've learned here it's that cuts will be painful to ordinary American people. If we cut out small waste, there won't be enough money saved and the deficits will still grow with astounding curves on illustrative charts. If we cut out things that benefit large numbers of people, and finally make a dent in those dreadful charts, large numbers of effected people will surely be voting out the perpetrators. Prior to this time borrowing money to pay for tax cuts seemed to be an unflinchingly strong strategy. Promise tax cuts to get elected. Don't cut services that would be politically unpopular to cut, and in the next election you can complain about how big government is (because not cutting services certainly didn't shrink it) and say that tax cuts are the solution. The worse we got into debt, the bigger government seemed to get. After all, it must be that spending so much money was the reason for the debt. To add icing on the cake, tax cuts (or borrowing money) had the effect of artificially pumping up the economy.
Now things are substantially different. Spending money ( or "borrowing money" in the absence of new taxes) and spending it in vast sums was the only way to keep the economy from going over the edge of the abyss. Taking back tax cuts (or raising taxes) would have only had the effect of dragging that fragile economy ever closer to the edge. Any effect of keeping the tax cuts was only realized in a sort of negative reinforcement; things just didn't get as bad as they could have. There was no positive noted by the electorate I'm sure. Keeping tax cuts did not increase the amount in the paycheck but stave off the lowering of the paycheck, not exactly a banner way to promote them.
Eventually we would have to pay this back and the Tea Party acted the fastest. One could make a legitimate argument that it might be a little too fast for the fragile economy, but in real life things move with glacial speed in a divided government. This made it, economically speaking, safe to beat one's breast and say we have to get this spending under control. But carefully notice the difference from the earlier winning strategy. Tax cuts gave people money, borrowed, but still a positive in the pay check. Unfortunately for the Republicans many Tea Party people came in not to cut taxes but actually cut government (the never before tried part of the winning equation.) Show me a positive in alienating all but 13 % of the voters. Venturing into uncharted waters would be an understatement.
It surely won't be long until the idea of actually taxing the people who have all the money will appeal to the ordinary person. It is very clear as a local voter that my representative, Rep. Mike Rogers (R:AL), has a very clear agenda. Support his rich contributors at all costs even if I'm one of the costs.
The message seems to be that there will be no sharing of burden beyond those already burdened. Actually, instead of the same old message, the budget sounded like a paradigm shift to me at first. Having won the young 18-24 aged group in the off election which young people of multitasking abilities often have a hard time focusing on :) , perhaps the Republicans seemed to be putting to bed the notion of a class war between the poor and the rich. The undertaxed millionaires would be off the stage as the battle was waged between the young and the old. That battle IS inevitable but possibly is not even in the near offing. I doubt the 13% were composed of young folks, I'm guessing they were the core Republicans of old.
When I raised the question of fairness with a good friend of mine, she clung to the ideas of waste in government like the example of illegal immigrants stealing health and education services. But if there is one thing we've learned here it's that cuts will be painful to ordinary American people. If we cut out small waste, there won't be enough money saved and the deficits will still grow with astounding curves on illustrative charts. If we cut out things that benefit large numbers of people, and finally make a dent in those dreadful charts, large numbers of effected people will surely be voting out the perpetrators. Prior to this time borrowing money to pay for tax cuts seemed to be an unflinchingly strong strategy. Promise tax cuts to get elected. Don't cut services that would be politically unpopular to cut, and in the next election you can complain about how big government is (because not cutting services certainly didn't shrink it) and say that tax cuts are the solution. The worse we got into debt, the bigger government seemed to get. After all, it must be that spending so much money was the reason for the debt. To add icing on the cake, tax cuts (or borrowing money) had the effect of artificially pumping up the economy.
Now things are substantially different. Spending money ( or "borrowing money" in the absence of new taxes) and spending it in vast sums was the only way to keep the economy from going over the edge of the abyss. Taking back tax cuts (or raising taxes) would have only had the effect of dragging that fragile economy ever closer to the edge. Any effect of keeping the tax cuts was only realized in a sort of negative reinforcement; things just didn't get as bad as they could have. There was no positive noted by the electorate I'm sure. Keeping tax cuts did not increase the amount in the paycheck but stave off the lowering of the paycheck, not exactly a banner way to promote them.
Eventually we would have to pay this back and the Tea Party acted the fastest. One could make a legitimate argument that it might be a little too fast for the fragile economy, but in real life things move with glacial speed in a divided government. This made it, economically speaking, safe to beat one's breast and say we have to get this spending under control. But carefully notice the difference from the earlier winning strategy. Tax cuts gave people money, borrowed, but still a positive in the pay check. Unfortunately for the Republicans many Tea Party people came in not to cut taxes but actually cut government (the never before tried part of the winning equation.) Show me a positive in alienating all but 13 % of the voters. Venturing into uncharted waters would be an understatement.
It surely won't be long until the idea of actually taxing the people who have all the money will appeal to the ordinary person. It is very clear as a local voter that my representative, Rep. Mike Rogers (R:AL), has a very clear agenda. Support his rich contributors at all costs even if I'm one of the costs.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
S&P's tale told by an idiot...
full of sound and fury
signifying nothing:
linkie one
added linkie
(Added note for the added linkie article: ABS= asset backed securities; CDO= collateralized debt obligations; both are just nice sounding phrases created by investment banks to more favorably describe "vehicles" or "instruments" that were actually no more than a collection of mortgages originally sold by unscrupulous mortgage lenders. These mortgages that would otherwise have received terrible ratings by rating agencies like Standard and Poor's [S&P] were packaged into ABS or CDO [plural without the "s"] and rated AAA [the highest possible rating] despite the fact that any individual mortgage had a lot of risk attached and mostly had very low ratings of BBB. The logic given for this unrealistic rating of AAA for packages sometimes entirely composed of BBB rated mortgages was that it was unlikely that a lot of these mortgages, despite their individual risk, would default at the same time. Therefore the package would remain solvent and still pay it's interest even though a few of the mortgages would default in the package. After all, property was considered the safest investment. People would not simply walk away from their houses and the houses could be foreclosed upon and sold at a profit anyway. All of this assumed that the property market would continue to rise in price. One thing the ratings agencies [like S&P] inexplicably did not factor in was the unscrupulous nature of the mortgage loans. Many were composed of loans that had "teaser" rates. Is there anyone who likes people who tease? Defined in my day it meant: "a person who tempts someone sexually with no intention of satisfying the desire aroused." In today's parlance, teasing meant that the introductory rate would expire at a certain time and a higher rate would kick in. Various techniques were used to soften the idea like "Your property value will increase by then and it won't matter." Sometimes the loans would have a balloon payment that kicked in at a certain time. That is, interest rates would be low (sometimes interest only) and all the money on the house loan became due at a specified date and the homeowner would have to refinance, or possibly sell at a profit. How could you lose? As insane as all this sounds now, in times of continually rising real estate values, a balloon payment could easily be refinanced at a profit to the homeowner because the value of the property would have gone up. So, the first overlooked factor was that many of the mortgages would be refinanced oddly around the same time [packages were grouped by time of origination and contracts were similar, loan terms were similar] a few years in the future. And also at similarly grouped time periods in the future interest rates would increase for those with teaser rates. Even if property continuously went up in value, these risks were inherent in the packages [CDO, ABS]. Upheaval in a few years. Overlooking this wasn't quite critical until the second overlooked factor actually happened: real estate could and did fall in value. Some of the effects of the first overlooked factor played into this. The more unscrupulous the loans became the more people decided to sell after reaching either the balloon or the end of teaser rates [also lending requirements were incredibly relaxed, many were encouraged to lie about their income, so that people were offered loans who had no known or logical ability to pay them back --all to keep the investment bank mill grinding with the profits on transactions, no matter how sour the transactions.] The more people sold their houses or mobile homes [no one was immune from unscrupulous lenders, especially the poor in their tornado prone houses] the more houses were placed on the market all "coincidentally" at about the same time. So, the more the supply, the more than sellers were in the buyers pocket, and the less the price property would go for. The bubble of infinitely rising prices of property burst. Why had the investment banks been so willing to buy really crappy mortgages? They could sell them off to others and therefore pass the known risk on to someone else who knew less about the risk. Profits were made by fees on transactions, not by holding these obviously risky things and waiting for returns that might never materialize. Had that third party known the actual risk, they would not have paid high prices or more wisely they would have stayed clear of these packaged mortgage instruments. This is where the rating agencies came in. Pretending to be the unbiased third party, but actually paid by the investment banks to rate their own packages, the rating companies would help the investment bankers sell their sacks of used cat litter clumps by giving them the highest possible ratings. This is the recent legacy of the same Standard and Poor's who recently gave the sovereign nation of the USA a warning that it's AAA rating might come down in the future. Packaged stinky cat feces, rate those AAA--- United States - not so much. Thus the companies that were in the pockets of investment bankers and whose track record looks much like that of the guy at the dog track always throwing his tickets into the air with disgust, rated in their "regulatory role" the real regulators. It's sort of like hiring graduates of the Tobacco Institute to be officials on the FDA. Wait, did President George W. Bush already do that? Maybe not.) *
What started as a note to define two terms undefined in the article led to my usual long-windedness. I have some requests of anyone who might read this (i.e.,nobody): 1) other than my characterizations of cat dung, if I have made a mistake in my narrative please let me know. 2) if you think I can improve this simple explanation of the cause of the collapse by adding or subtracting words, phrases or paragraphs, please also let me know. In fact we probably need to hold contests in schools for the best most succinct explanation of the crash that has cost our country so much in financial as well as moral terms. This should occur in a class on banks, credit cards, and personal finance (one semester would be fine.)
*Official winner of the longest parenthetical remark on a blog since April fools day.
signifying nothing:
linkie one
added linkie
(Added note for the added linkie article: ABS= asset backed securities; CDO= collateralized debt obligations; both are just nice sounding phrases created by investment banks to more favorably describe "vehicles" or "instruments" that were actually no more than a collection of mortgages originally sold by unscrupulous mortgage lenders. These mortgages that would otherwise have received terrible ratings by rating agencies like Standard and Poor's [S&P] were packaged into ABS or CDO [plural without the "s"] and rated AAA [the highest possible rating] despite the fact that any individual mortgage had a lot of risk attached and mostly had very low ratings of BBB. The logic given for this unrealistic rating of AAA for packages sometimes entirely composed of BBB rated mortgages was that it was unlikely that a lot of these mortgages, despite their individual risk, would default at the same time. Therefore the package would remain solvent and still pay it's interest even though a few of the mortgages would default in the package. After all, property was considered the safest investment. People would not simply walk away from their houses and the houses could be foreclosed upon and sold at a profit anyway. All of this assumed that the property market would continue to rise in price. One thing the ratings agencies [like S&P] inexplicably did not factor in was the unscrupulous nature of the mortgage loans. Many were composed of loans that had "teaser" rates. Is there anyone who likes people who tease? Defined in my day it meant: "a person who tempts someone sexually with no intention of satisfying the desire aroused." In today's parlance, teasing meant that the introductory rate would expire at a certain time and a higher rate would kick in. Various techniques were used to soften the idea like "Your property value will increase by then and it won't matter." Sometimes the loans would have a balloon payment that kicked in at a certain time. That is, interest rates would be low (sometimes interest only) and all the money on the house loan became due at a specified date and the homeowner would have to refinance, or possibly sell at a profit. How could you lose? As insane as all this sounds now, in times of continually rising real estate values, a balloon payment could easily be refinanced at a profit to the homeowner because the value of the property would have gone up. So, the first overlooked factor was that many of the mortgages would be refinanced oddly around the same time [packages were grouped by time of origination and contracts were similar, loan terms were similar] a few years in the future. And also at similarly grouped time periods in the future interest rates would increase for those with teaser rates. Even if property continuously went up in value, these risks were inherent in the packages [CDO, ABS]. Upheaval in a few years. Overlooking this wasn't quite critical until the second overlooked factor actually happened: real estate could and did fall in value. Some of the effects of the first overlooked factor played into this. The more unscrupulous the loans became the more people decided to sell after reaching either the balloon or the end of teaser rates [also lending requirements were incredibly relaxed, many were encouraged to lie about their income, so that people were offered loans who had no known or logical ability to pay them back --all to keep the investment bank mill grinding with the profits on transactions, no matter how sour the transactions.] The more people sold their houses or mobile homes [no one was immune from unscrupulous lenders, especially the poor in their tornado prone houses] the more houses were placed on the market all "coincidentally" at about the same time. So, the more the supply, the more than sellers were in the buyers pocket, and the less the price property would go for. The bubble of infinitely rising prices of property burst. Why had the investment banks been so willing to buy really crappy mortgages? They could sell them off to others and therefore pass the known risk on to someone else who knew less about the risk. Profits were made by fees on transactions, not by holding these obviously risky things and waiting for returns that might never materialize. Had that third party known the actual risk, they would not have paid high prices or more wisely they would have stayed clear of these packaged mortgage instruments. This is where the rating agencies came in. Pretending to be the unbiased third party, but actually paid by the investment banks to rate their own packages, the rating companies would help the investment bankers sell their sacks of used cat litter clumps by giving them the highest possible ratings. This is the recent legacy of the same Standard and Poor's who recently gave the sovereign nation of the USA a warning that it's AAA rating might come down in the future. Packaged stinky cat feces, rate those AAA--- United States - not so much. Thus the companies that were in the pockets of investment bankers and whose track record looks much like that of the guy at the dog track always throwing his tickets into the air with disgust, rated in their "regulatory role" the real regulators. It's sort of like hiring graduates of the Tobacco Institute to be officials on the FDA. Wait, did President George W. Bush already do that? Maybe not.) *
What started as a note to define two terms undefined in the article led to my usual long-windedness. I have some requests of anyone who might read this (i.e.,nobody): 1) other than my characterizations of cat dung, if I have made a mistake in my narrative please let me know. 2) if you think I can improve this simple explanation of the cause of the collapse by adding or subtracting words, phrases or paragraphs, please also let me know. In fact we probably need to hold contests in schools for the best most succinct explanation of the crash that has cost our country so much in financial as well as moral terms. This should occur in a class on banks, credit cards, and personal finance (one semester would be fine.)
*Official winner of the longest parenthetical remark on a blog since April fools day.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Back to the Future
I finally finished The Case for God. I must admit, slogging through 80 percent of the book to get the history does indeed pay off in the end when the case for God is finally laid before you.
History is a fascinating thing. I remember my mother telling me how lucky I was to have been born in the United States. (Personally, I think I might have been born in Germany, where my first memories are, and my parents expected me to run for the Presidency someday. But, hey, maybe that copy of the birth certificate is correct.) The possibilty of being born in a place where children were starving was always at the dinner table. I of course didn't stop there though. I wondered what it would have been like if I had been born an African-American. How would my life be different? Sometimes I would wonder what it would have been like if I had been born at a different time. How would I have existed without television, or a VCR?
Throughout my life I have done this. I know we have all asked ourselves what it would be like to be a famous movie star or have wealth. The odd thing is now I wonder what it would have been like to have been born in a different time when religion was presented to me in a different way. Some of the historical ideas come closer to my view of God than do the beliefs of many today. Another odd thought is in asking myself why now I am not a conservative. I am currently a fervant believer in the status quo. That to me was the definition of "conservative" when I was younger. I wanted things to change, to be better. Now, as I get older I still have most of the same ethical values, but instead of wanting things to change, I just want to stop bad things from happening to an imperfect but tolerable status quo.
I voted for the first 4 years of Reagan. It is a blot on my otherwise perfect voting behavior. The reason? I saw a person who said they were going to cut taxes and cut spending. Half of the equation really didn't make the cut. :) Cutting taxes and increasing spending (with the borrowing necessary to do that) wasn't logical but the electorate continued voting for anyone that would do this. But it was a tribute to my inner conservatism that I did vote the way I did, the first time I believed a politician would do what he said he would do.
Why as age enters the equation, am I not a conservative? Ask me instead why I am not a Republican. I am conservative. Mess with my status quo? I will not surrender. Yet, all of a sudden, Standard and Poor's rates the way things are, and they aren't kidding. I wish people would stop catching up to me claiming victory long after I have concluded the race and am in the cooling down walking period. Leave me alone. Reganomics, tax cuts, Iraq War, more tax cuts where millionaires get vast amounts of the pie, making medicare a giveaway program to the drug companies, renewals of the tax cuts. Your race is over. Leave me my medicare, as it is, as it was promised to me.
History is a fascinating thing. I remember my mother telling me how lucky I was to have been born in the United States. (Personally, I think I might have been born in Germany, where my first memories are, and my parents expected me to run for the Presidency someday. But, hey, maybe that copy of the birth certificate is correct.) The possibilty of being born in a place where children were starving was always at the dinner table. I of course didn't stop there though. I wondered what it would have been like if I had been born an African-American. How would my life be different? Sometimes I would wonder what it would have been like if I had been born at a different time. How would I have existed without television, or a VCR?
Throughout my life I have done this. I know we have all asked ourselves what it would be like to be a famous movie star or have wealth. The odd thing is now I wonder what it would have been like to have been born in a different time when religion was presented to me in a different way. Some of the historical ideas come closer to my view of God than do the beliefs of many today. Another odd thought is in asking myself why now I am not a conservative. I am currently a fervant believer in the status quo. That to me was the definition of "conservative" when I was younger. I wanted things to change, to be better. Now, as I get older I still have most of the same ethical values, but instead of wanting things to change, I just want to stop bad things from happening to an imperfect but tolerable status quo.
I voted for the first 4 years of Reagan. It is a blot on my otherwise perfect voting behavior. The reason? I saw a person who said they were going to cut taxes and cut spending. Half of the equation really didn't make the cut. :) Cutting taxes and increasing spending (with the borrowing necessary to do that) wasn't logical but the electorate continued voting for anyone that would do this. But it was a tribute to my inner conservatism that I did vote the way I did, the first time I believed a politician would do what he said he would do.
Why as age enters the equation, am I not a conservative? Ask me instead why I am not a Republican. I am conservative. Mess with my status quo? I will not surrender. Yet, all of a sudden, Standard and Poor's rates the way things are, and they aren't kidding. I wish people would stop catching up to me claiming victory long after I have concluded the race and am in the cooling down walking period. Leave me alone. Reganomics, tax cuts, Iraq War, more tax cuts where millionaires get vast amounts of the pie, making medicare a giveaway program to the drug companies, renewals of the tax cuts. Your race is over. Leave me my medicare, as it is, as it was promised to me.
Good One, S&P :)
Linkie from Bloomberg
As Standard and Poor's threatens the full faith and credit of the United States it's worth noting just who they are and have been. They are a very powerful arm of the investment banks that needed to borrow money from the United States government to stay alive (my opinion but the rest is fact). They are the people (along with Moody's) who rated the worst sub-prime mortgage trash derivatives composed entirely of triple-B mortgages as triple-A rated. Their logic was in asking what were the odds that real estate would go down in value? Aparently they thought the odds were zero. So, if an investment bank packed all these rotten mortgages together into derivatives, the derivatives were not rotten, they weren't even marked down, they were the highest rating of triple-A. Because of all the different rotten mortgages in the packaged derivatives it would be uncommon for a lot of them to go bust at the same time. Why? Certainly not logic based on any kind of education. Real estate can go up and down. It went down. It was a bubble.
One should not think too heavily about how such an esteemed group of financial wizards could make the mistake of thinking a market would always go up. No one with a grain of sense in investing would think that. People and institutions (many retirement institutions that could only buy triple-A rated investment vehicles) believed Standard and Poor's ratings without looking deeper into the derivatives they were buying. That was Standard and Poor's job. But heck, they were full of a bunch of people who believed that the real estate market would always go up, with a zero chance of it going the other way. Really?
No, not really. Ratings services like this get paid by investment banks for their ratings. Investment banks were selling the trash derivatives. In the aftermath of the inevitable, Standard and Poor's credibility has just been through the ringer. Any number of important people have realized they need to be investigated. I see two possible reasons for Standard and Poor's very fortuitously timed threat of downgrading the full faith and credit of the United States.
1) The investment banks want to bolster the idea of slashing the budget of the government (which would have to include entitlement programs like Medicare in the absence of new revenue from actions like tax increases) while keeping the taxes on the rich as low as possible, a strategy otherwise known as the Republican Budget, which was just trotted out (probably with the horrendous political fallout towards Republicans that we expected to come their way) uncoincidentally a few days ago. The timing makes this the obvious choice.
2) Innoculation against investigation. Imagine how it would look if we investigated them now? It would look as if we were unhappy not with their completely incompetant ratings of the past that directly led us into depression, but with their rating of us today. And that threat of decreasing our credit worthiness is an expensive item. The actual decrease that is surely to come will be incredibly expensive for the USA.
It's not like we don't deserve the bad ratings. It's just the timing that is not credible. We have been refusing to pay for our government for a while now. Tax cuts were the promises that got politicians elected. But wasn't there a little tipoff when the Bush administration started borrowing trillions for their wars and tax cuts? Wasn't there a tipoff when the country headed into the worst recession since the Great Depression? Nope. Investment banks were still considered the villians at this time. Now that time has passed and the blame is squarely on the backs of the Democrats (cough cough, choke choke) now is a good time.
Ok, there is a third possible reason for Standard and Poor's decision.
3) They have reformed.
Now that is a knee jerker. Good one S& P. :)
Linkie from Christian Science Monitor
As Standard and Poor's threatens the full faith and credit of the United States it's worth noting just who they are and have been. They are a very powerful arm of the investment banks that needed to borrow money from the United States government to stay alive (my opinion but the rest is fact). They are the people (along with Moody's) who rated the worst sub-prime mortgage trash derivatives composed entirely of triple-B mortgages as triple-A rated. Their logic was in asking what were the odds that real estate would go down in value? Aparently they thought the odds were zero. So, if an investment bank packed all these rotten mortgages together into derivatives, the derivatives were not rotten, they weren't even marked down, they were the highest rating of triple-A. Because of all the different rotten mortgages in the packaged derivatives it would be uncommon for a lot of them to go bust at the same time. Why? Certainly not logic based on any kind of education. Real estate can go up and down. It went down. It was a bubble.
One should not think too heavily about how such an esteemed group of financial wizards could make the mistake of thinking a market would always go up. No one with a grain of sense in investing would think that. People and institutions (many retirement institutions that could only buy triple-A rated investment vehicles) believed Standard and Poor's ratings without looking deeper into the derivatives they were buying. That was Standard and Poor's job. But heck, they were full of a bunch of people who believed that the real estate market would always go up, with a zero chance of it going the other way. Really?
No, not really. Ratings services like this get paid by investment banks for their ratings. Investment banks were selling the trash derivatives. In the aftermath of the inevitable, Standard and Poor's credibility has just been through the ringer. Any number of important people have realized they need to be investigated. I see two possible reasons for Standard and Poor's very fortuitously timed threat of downgrading the full faith and credit of the United States.
1) The investment banks want to bolster the idea of slashing the budget of the government (which would have to include entitlement programs like Medicare in the absence of new revenue from actions like tax increases) while keeping the taxes on the rich as low as possible, a strategy otherwise known as the Republican Budget, which was just trotted out (probably with the horrendous political fallout towards Republicans that we expected to come their way) uncoincidentally a few days ago. The timing makes this the obvious choice.
2) Innoculation against investigation. Imagine how it would look if we investigated them now? It would look as if we were unhappy not with their completely incompetant ratings of the past that directly led us into depression, but with their rating of us today. And that threat of decreasing our credit worthiness is an expensive item. The actual decrease that is surely to come will be incredibly expensive for the USA.
It's not like we don't deserve the bad ratings. It's just the timing that is not credible. We have been refusing to pay for our government for a while now. Tax cuts were the promises that got politicians elected. But wasn't there a little tipoff when the Bush administration started borrowing trillions for their wars and tax cuts? Wasn't there a tipoff when the country headed into the worst recession since the Great Depression? Nope. Investment banks were still considered the villians at this time. Now that time has passed and the blame is squarely on the backs of the Democrats (cough cough, choke choke) now is a good time.
Ok, there is a third possible reason for Standard and Poor's decision.
3) They have reformed.
Now that is a knee jerker. Good one S& P. :)
Linkie from Christian Science Monitor
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Full Faith and Credit
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas): "The debt ceiling is going to be Armageddon."
Statements of absolute certainty have always bothered me. It's not like I don't make my fair share of them, I'll admit, but my very belief in God is based on my understanding that God can never be truely known, that he is ineffible or too great to be described by mere words invented by limited humans. I have had this belief in a wonderous and yet unknowable God for quite some time. It ebbed and waned in importance, but in many times in my life it was the only important thing that mattered, and I studied accordingly.
I studied many books on religion throughout my life. First came the picking up and reading of the Holy Bible that was given to me in vacation Bible school. My parents would never interfere in my religious development and for this I am happy. But some good Samaritan, I'm not sure who, enrolled me in vacation Bible school to learn basically nothing. It was all pretty much above my head or didn't make it across to a young child of about 6, I guess. However, at the end I received a gift of a Bible. It was all wrapped up like a birthday present. I remember being disappointed by it when I found out it was a book without pictures. The type was small and it looked very unappealing.
However, later I took this Bible every week to the Baptist church that a few kids and I started attending. Again my parents did not influence me one way or the other. The church was always a nice place to hang out around. People were friendly and often there was food from various events. We were always welcome. We often sat in the back and enjoyed "revivals" that would last an entire week. One of the small group of us was baptised there in the glass case filled with water that was high above where the pastor preached. I remember a microphone and the sounds of water it would pick up. Those to be baptised were dunked completely into the water and brought up. This was always a highlight because the production was rather difficult to do and often led to interesting moments.
This Bible was my first resource. Later, I received a "Living Bible" which I never quite trusted. But it certainly did help with my understanding. Meanwhile the church "Ridgecrest Baptist Church" of Montgomery, Alabama was struggling with a problem. Rezoning was occurring for integration of schools. Many houses of former parishioners were being sold to black people as the zones changed for black schools. White people just fled instead of sending their kids to schools that were purposely built and staffed to be inferior. White people without kids eventually sold also as their property values decreased as homes went on the market everywhere by homeowners desperate to sell to the delight of the local real estate moguls.
At the time it defied my imagination as to why the church had problems with this. Today it would defy pretty much every one's imagination. I was a relatively deep thinker for all my youthful innocence and wondered what the problem was. Apparently, in plain view to everyone, Ridgecrest Baptist Church was holding a vote to decide whether to allow people of a particular race to come inside their church. As instructed, I had been reading, studying, and thinking about this black book given to me as a present. Already I had reasoned using this book that the Vietnam War was immoral. But such a simple question, of whether to open the church to everyone who wanted to come inside, had not occurred to me as even a question worthy of asking. The group of us argued it through and I was of the opinion that a few would vote for exclusion of black people and the vast majority would vote for inclusion.
I was wrong. I quit attending church and much of my later theological development stemmed from this complete disconnect Ridgecrest Baptist Church had with my understanding of what I had read in the Bible. One incident of intolerance had ruined the whole organized movement for me. As I learned world history and the full story of the development of mankind, despite one college instructor's rabid bias against Catholicism and probably religion itself, I came to realize that the world was larger and encompassed many more ideas than I previously had an understanding of. My first years of college were consumed by my increasing awareness of learning for the sake of learning. There was no class in religion so I studied the 4 gospels on my own with commentaries from every possible source that seemed to be scholarly. I focused on Jesus Christ and his teachings.
What I found was nothing like what I had been taught in church and was much more involved than my previous rudimentary readings as a child. When I look back I can see I was a bit obsessed with trying to come to an absolute understanding of an ineffable subject. I am none the worse for it now, I believe, but I was very naive at the time.
I honestly dislike the word "faith" for it seems to imply a blind faith. I prefer the word "belief" as I have spent some time coming to my beliefs. Had I ever had that one moment in my life that I became "baptised" and saved from that day on, I would have missed out on the most important learning process in the questioning of life that has led to such fulfilling moments of clarity as I get older and hopefully wiser. I have been through years of belief and disbelief. Until I tired of it, I have held argumentative discussions with anyone who wanted to "save" me. I pointed out the problems of interpreting the Bible as the literal truth, and many times along the way I found myself lost. The constant barrage of fundamentalism coming from living in the south had at times caused me to pivot into a pretty much atheistic stance. Was this the best God could do? Were these the best arguments? Did things really turn upon the theory that the world was only thousands of years old when I knew beyond doubt that it was at least millions of years old? I have come to realize that those who seek out arguments are not always on top of their game, and the discussion is far from a game.
Just recently someone showed me a chart which showed the history of Earth with all the various Christian events and personalities carefully lined up below. I said "The Bible really shouldn't be limited by this idea." As the necessary disagreement ensued, this person asked me why I could not see that the chart proved the Bible was correct. At this point I realized that putting things in a chart meant that something was proven to this person. I said, "It is just that you limit God. I know the world is millions of years old and I know that the star light we see is millions of years old. Don't you see? If you battle with science, you lose. And God loses.I want him to win." It was because I had almost been led astray by Ridgecrest Baptist Church. I had almost given up because of the disappointment I had with small minded Christians. While I understood this person's desire to battle science and prove his religion, I kept worrying about the people who would choose science over God when confronted like this.As I have learned just recently from the book I have been incessantly reading and mentioning, Science has no business in criticizing God because Science deals with only things that are not Supernatural. It is one of Science's original postulates. Because some had taken to trying to "prove" God exists, to prove the ineffable, Christianity seemed to be "proved" wrong. It is not an effective battle to fight.
Similarly, in the field of politics the belief that a certain political party has God on their side disinherits anyone who believes we should, say, give to the poor rather than to the rich. It is easy to be led astray.
Is it really necessary to hold the country hostage to bankruptcy including the specter of Armageddon as a threat? Does Senator Hutchinson believe that a single party of the American government holds the key to Armageddon in it's hands? Do citizen legislators think it is somehow their right to hold the "full faith and credit" of the entirety of the United States up for international ridicule? It's not particularly inspiring to me, personally.
Statements of absolute certainty have always bothered me. It's not like I don't make my fair share of them, I'll admit, but my very belief in God is based on my understanding that God can never be truely known, that he is ineffible or too great to be described by mere words invented by limited humans. I have had this belief in a wonderous and yet unknowable God for quite some time. It ebbed and waned in importance, but in many times in my life it was the only important thing that mattered, and I studied accordingly.
I studied many books on religion throughout my life. First came the picking up and reading of the Holy Bible that was given to me in vacation Bible school. My parents would never interfere in my religious development and for this I am happy. But some good Samaritan, I'm not sure who, enrolled me in vacation Bible school to learn basically nothing. It was all pretty much above my head or didn't make it across to a young child of about 6, I guess. However, at the end I received a gift of a Bible. It was all wrapped up like a birthday present. I remember being disappointed by it when I found out it was a book without pictures. The type was small and it looked very unappealing.
However, later I took this Bible every week to the Baptist church that a few kids and I started attending. Again my parents did not influence me one way or the other. The church was always a nice place to hang out around. People were friendly and often there was food from various events. We were always welcome. We often sat in the back and enjoyed "revivals" that would last an entire week. One of the small group of us was baptised there in the glass case filled with water that was high above where the pastor preached. I remember a microphone and the sounds of water it would pick up. Those to be baptised were dunked completely into the water and brought up. This was always a highlight because the production was rather difficult to do and often led to interesting moments.
This Bible was my first resource. Later, I received a "Living Bible" which I never quite trusted. But it certainly did help with my understanding. Meanwhile the church "Ridgecrest Baptist Church" of Montgomery, Alabama was struggling with a problem. Rezoning was occurring for integration of schools. Many houses of former parishioners were being sold to black people as the zones changed for black schools. White people just fled instead of sending their kids to schools that were purposely built and staffed to be inferior. White people without kids eventually sold also as their property values decreased as homes went on the market everywhere by homeowners desperate to sell to the delight of the local real estate moguls.
At the time it defied my imagination as to why the church had problems with this. Today it would defy pretty much every one's imagination. I was a relatively deep thinker for all my youthful innocence and wondered what the problem was. Apparently, in plain view to everyone, Ridgecrest Baptist Church was holding a vote to decide whether to allow people of a particular race to come inside their church. As instructed, I had been reading, studying, and thinking about this black book given to me as a present. Already I had reasoned using this book that the Vietnam War was immoral. But such a simple question, of whether to open the church to everyone who wanted to come inside, had not occurred to me as even a question worthy of asking. The group of us argued it through and I was of the opinion that a few would vote for exclusion of black people and the vast majority would vote for inclusion.
I was wrong. I quit attending church and much of my later theological development stemmed from this complete disconnect Ridgecrest Baptist Church had with my understanding of what I had read in the Bible. One incident of intolerance had ruined the whole organized movement for me. As I learned world history and the full story of the development of mankind, despite one college instructor's rabid bias against Catholicism and probably religion itself, I came to realize that the world was larger and encompassed many more ideas than I previously had an understanding of. My first years of college were consumed by my increasing awareness of learning for the sake of learning. There was no class in religion so I studied the 4 gospels on my own with commentaries from every possible source that seemed to be scholarly. I focused on Jesus Christ and his teachings.
What I found was nothing like what I had been taught in church and was much more involved than my previous rudimentary readings as a child. When I look back I can see I was a bit obsessed with trying to come to an absolute understanding of an ineffable subject. I am none the worse for it now, I believe, but I was very naive at the time.
I honestly dislike the word "faith" for it seems to imply a blind faith. I prefer the word "belief" as I have spent some time coming to my beliefs. Had I ever had that one moment in my life that I became "baptised" and saved from that day on, I would have missed out on the most important learning process in the questioning of life that has led to such fulfilling moments of clarity as I get older and hopefully wiser. I have been through years of belief and disbelief. Until I tired of it, I have held argumentative discussions with anyone who wanted to "save" me. I pointed out the problems of interpreting the Bible as the literal truth, and many times along the way I found myself lost. The constant barrage of fundamentalism coming from living in the south had at times caused me to pivot into a pretty much atheistic stance. Was this the best God could do? Were these the best arguments? Did things really turn upon the theory that the world was only thousands of years old when I knew beyond doubt that it was at least millions of years old? I have come to realize that those who seek out arguments are not always on top of their game, and the discussion is far from a game.
Just recently someone showed me a chart which showed the history of Earth with all the various Christian events and personalities carefully lined up below. I said "The Bible really shouldn't be limited by this idea." As the necessary disagreement ensued, this person asked me why I could not see that the chart proved the Bible was correct. At this point I realized that putting things in a chart meant that something was proven to this person. I said, "It is just that you limit God. I know the world is millions of years old and I know that the star light we see is millions of years old. Don't you see? If you battle with science, you lose. And God loses.I want him to win." It was because I had almost been led astray by Ridgecrest Baptist Church. I had almost given up because of the disappointment I had with small minded Christians. While I understood this person's desire to battle science and prove his religion, I kept worrying about the people who would choose science over God when confronted like this.As I have learned just recently from the book I have been incessantly reading and mentioning, Science has no business in criticizing God because Science deals with only things that are not Supernatural. It is one of Science's original postulates. Because some had taken to trying to "prove" God exists, to prove the ineffable, Christianity seemed to be "proved" wrong. It is not an effective battle to fight.
Similarly, in the field of politics the belief that a certain political party has God on their side disinherits anyone who believes we should, say, give to the poor rather than to the rich. It is easy to be led astray.
Is it really necessary to hold the country hostage to bankruptcy including the specter of Armageddon as a threat? Does Senator Hutchinson believe that a single party of the American government holds the key to Armageddon in it's hands? Do citizen legislators think it is somehow their right to hold the "full faith and credit" of the entirety of the United States up for international ridicule? It's not particularly inspiring to me, personally.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Differing Views
House Speaker John Boehner: “This debt is also a moral threat to our country. In my opinion, it is immoral to rob our children and grandchildren’s futures and leave them beholden to countries around the world that buy our debt.”
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi: “I have heard our colleagues say that the budget deficit is immoral. It’s been immoral for the eight years of the Bush administration. I didn’t hear anybody say ‘boo’ while we were giving tax cuts to the rich, having two wars unpaid for and giving a prescription drug bill to the private sector.”
Fox News: http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thecutline/20110415/ts_yblog_thecutline/fox-pulls-story-connecting-gwu-student-suicide-to-obama-speech
House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi: “I have heard our colleagues say that the budget deficit is immoral. It’s been immoral for the eight years of the Bush administration. I didn’t hear anybody say ‘boo’ while we were giving tax cuts to the rich, having two wars unpaid for and giving a prescription drug bill to the private sector.”
Fox News: http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thecutline/20110415/ts_yblog_thecutline/fox-pulls-story-connecting-gwu-student-suicide-to-obama-speech
Fox News sparked criticism this week for publishing an article appearing to suggest that President Obama's speech Wednesday at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. was linked to a student's suicide.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
CNBC Self-parodying Remark of the Week
"..it's a mess and they oughta fix it intead of continuing to whine." - Kathleen ? on CNBC radio
Monday, April 11, 2011
1 Per Cent Solution
Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%
By Joseph E. Stiglit
http://www.vanityfair.com/society/features/2011/05/top-one-percent-201105?currentPage=all&wpisrc=nl_wonk
Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Compromised
List of Companies That Say My Email is Compromised, So Far:
Disney Destinations
Citi Cards
Hilton (multiple email addresses)
Best Buy Reward Zone
Best Buy Reward Zone Dining
Target (multiple email addresses)
Marriott International
Chase (multiple)
TIVO
List of Companies Offering Help or Restitution:
Disney Destinations
Citi Cards
Hilton (multiple email addresses)
Best Buy Reward Zone
Best Buy Reward Zone Dining
Target (multiple email addresses)
Marriott International
Chase (multiple)
TIVO
List of Companies Offering Help or Restitution:
Sunday, April 3, 2011
My Actual Bulwer-Lytton Contest Submission
Her wintry gray hair whipped around my face as if propelled by the sudden gust of an arctic breeze that rushes from a quickly opened freezer door; this, as our motorcycle slipped it's kickstand and dropped us to the icy curb just under the supermarket's roof draining downspout.
My favorite, not penned by me:
this, as I decided to end this foolishness and await my 53rd birthday which haphazardly follows at the tail end of this foolishly inaugurated month.
http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/
From Scott Rice who runs the contest: "Your submission has arrived and will receive the treatment it deserves."
:)
My favorite, not penned by me:
She walked into my office on legs as long as one of those long-legged birds that you see in Florida – the pink ones, not the white ones – except that she was standing on both of them, not just one of them, like those birds, the pink ones, and she wasn’t wearing pink, but I knew right away that she was trouble, which those birds usually aren’t. -Eric Rice
this, as I decided to end this foolishness and await my 53rd birthday which haphazardly follows at the tail end of this foolishly inaugurated month.
http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/
From Scott Rice who runs the contest: "Your submission has arrived and will receive the treatment it deserves."
:)
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Purple Prose
It was a dark and stormy night and the rain fell around me like a meandering waterfall from some bizarre universe where events are never as they appear, where good deeds are punished rather than rejoiced and heroes are made of fools while fools of heroes. The droplets of the peculiar yet entrancing precipitation felt cold on my uncovered cheek, like a gelato scoop full of cioccolato fondente from a gelateria I once lit upon in the backstreets of Cadiz. Was it the rain or my inner tears from a prescient memory of some long and forgotten period of my existence that chilled the deep purple crevices of my being? If only the world did not swirl in an eddy of tediously repetitious currents as maddeningly circular as a fancy milled button on a dowager's downy coat. My mind whirled as I thought of management dynamics and theories of psychology plucked from a tree of knowledge long forgotten by the patch of society's briers into which I currently found myself ensnared. But the spinning splashing raindrops would soon give way to an oceangoing voyage where thorns are crowded with roses and chilly people with the company of brilliant purveyors of fantasy and sincere good will. Without this hope of escape all would be dull characterless rain and there would be no brightly colored impressionistic Monet inspired umbrella lit from the rays of sun peeking from behind, nay, seemingly pushing assunder, the blundering witless clouds that dance to the nightingale's tune.
No punters were ignored, jostled,awakened, or hurt in any way during the writing of this blog entry. Entries in this blog may be edited, added to or competely transformed while the beginning dates and times listed on postings may or may not reflect the amount of work involved at the time of listed posting nor are entries designed to be limited by Newtonian laws of absolute time.
No punters were ignored, jostled,awakened, or hurt in any way during the writing of this blog entry. Entries in this blog may be edited, added to or competely transformed while the beginning dates and times listed on postings may or may not reflect the amount of work involved at the time of listed posting nor are entries designed to be limited by Newtonian laws of absolute time.
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