Some Assembly Required

SAR #12046

2012-02-15T07:36:00.001-06:00

Predicting “what” is easy, predicting “when” is the trick.

On Again Off Again: After a "Yes she is" "No she's not" tug of war in the news media, the current story is that the eurozone finance ministers meeting in Brussels to consider Greece's austerity plan is a non-starter. Apparently the finance ministers do not consider the Greek plan sufficient even to warrant discussion. Eurogroup President Juncker said that the prerequisites established by the EU had not been met - specifically in the matter of political assurances. In other words, the EU would like the Greeks to at least pretend they're going to do some of the things in their proposal.

Real Tale: According to Commerce Department data, January's auto sales grew over December's. According to just released retail sales data - which came in at just half the expected increase - auto sales were the weakest part of the overall 0.4% growth. December's retail sales were revised sharply downward, to a -0.5%. Note, too, that the unadjusted decrease of $98.5 billion in sales was the biggest one month drop in retail sales history. Merry Christmas and many Happy Returns.

Compounding the Interest: What's the sustainable long-term growth rate for the world population? And what's the sustainable long-term growth rate of the world economy? The answer to both is "Less than zero."

Creative Destruction: The worst aspect of the free market's creative destruction is that what is getting destroyed, at least in Greece, are the citizens. 25% of Greek companies have gone out of business, half of those that remain open cannot pay their employees, suicide is up 40%, hospitals have shortages of medicines, half the young people are unemployed... and so on. The country is collapsing into anarchy. The fundamental problems are two-fold. Yes, the euro is fatally flawed, but bankers and private investors ~~fucked up and~~ lent far too much money to obviously uncreditworthy borrowers. Competent bankers could have prevented most of this.

Band On the Run: The Republicans are betting that Congress will never be able to reinstate the long-deferred payroll taxes, and that they can use that as a stepping stone to abolishing Social Security once and for all.

Parageography: In my mental geography, America is not a place where 1.5 million children are homeless, where in some schools half the children arrive without having had breakfast, where families live in tent cities around major urban areas or in Las Vegas storm drains. I must be remembering another country.

One for All and All for One: Health-care costs overall fall when poor, uninsured patients are provided with coverage. “The use of primary care increased but use of emergency services fell, and -- over time -- total health care costs declined" by over 50%. Universal single payer health care is the most affordable way for the nation to make sure that decent medical care is available to all.

The Final Solution: The whole housing mess - from fraudulent foreclosures to underwater homeowners and banks pretending to be solvent - can only be resolved when the underlying problem is addressed. And what might that be? It is that Americans owe hundreds of billions of dollars that they will never be able to pay back. Much of it will have to be written off and our beloved leaders haven't the foggiest idea how to do this without pulling the whole thing down on our heads.

Blowback: If the fantasies and fabrications of the GOP wannabes are truly representative of modern conservatism, the conservative base they are wooing is simply delusional. For over a generation the GOP has appealed to blatant racial prejudices and social fears and delivered tax cuts and deregulation to the rich while blaming "the liberals" for the Republican destruction of middle class America. Now they reap what they have sown, which explains why those guys in the tinfoil hats are on television all the time, telling lies about each other.

SAR #12045

2012-02-14T07:20:00.001-06:00

Now that the feast is over …

Close The Door On Your Way Out: Party poopers are pointing out that the end game for Frau Merkel is still getting Greece to leave the eurozone. Soon. And the euro isn't going to be saved, either.

Working Man's Friend: The Republicans now want to extend the withholding tax cut for the rest of the year – without demanding offsetting budget cuts. Their plan seems to be to help Obama run up the deficit willy-nilly and force the Treasury into a debt ceiling kerfuffle before the fall elections.

Step Right Up: The European Union suspects that Spain's is “very likely” likely to take action against Spain's newly installed government by May for “overstating” 2011's deficit figures in order to delay imposing additional austerity measures. It's thought that a fine of 0.1% of the nation's GDP would get their attention where the havoc wrought in Greece hasn't seemed to make their point. Portugal seems to be beyond hope.

Pedal To The Metal: The San Francisco Fed anticipates unemployment will remain well above 7% for several more years, making it vital to keep flooding the market with dollars.

Batting Order: Moody's has presented a new European batting order: At Aaa negative: Austria, France, and the UK. Demoted from A1 to A2 are Slovakia and Slovenia. Now at A3 are Italy and Malta. Spain dropped from A1 to A3, and Portugal is now down to Ba3. All have negative outlooks.

Down Is Not Up: Is December's 21.2% y/y decline in listed housing inventory (a) a good thing or (b) reflecting reality? Probably neither; sales were only up 1.4% y/y, so that didn't account for the decline. What does is a combination of a sharp decline in distressed houses entering the market as banks hold on to them so as to pretend they are worth something, the long pause in foreclosures, and individual owners fearful of trying to sell into a sure loss.

Berlin, We Still Have A Problem: The politician most likely to replace Papademos as leader after the April elections views the current concessions as renegotiable.

All Volunteer Army: Fox News says that females in the military have to make up their minds to be warriors and stop complaining about getting raped – what did they expect was going to happen? They need to take Santorum's advice and “ accept what God has given to you... make the best out of a bad situation.”

Recalculating... Recalculating: As the planet warms, the once in a century hurricane, the 100-year flood and similar unique displays of mother nature's might are becoming far more frequent. Do a global search on "100-year" and replace with "20-year".

Marketing 101: The Catholic Church – like any giant corporation – wants a continually expanding market, thus their opposition to contraception and endorsement of erectile dysfunction drugs. They argue that it is neither sexist nor hypocritical, just another way to expand their customer base.

Magic Bullet: Adding things like fiber to unhealthy foods does not make them healthy. Perhaps the kindest thing that can be said about synthetic fiber additives is that they can give you gas. There is no research that shows all this added fiber enhances anything but profit margins.

Shocker: We are underwhelmed to learn that military officers will kiss ass and parrot the company line to get ahead!

Speak Up! Rat out the neighbors today, before they make up stuff about you! That's the message from ~~Nazi Germany~~, the ~~Soviet Union~~, ~~East Germany's Stasi~~, Homeland Security. Just keep in mind that when they come for you, innocence will be no barrier to incarceration, torture and eventual disappearance.

SAR #12044

2012-02-13T07:31:00.001-06:00

Humanity isn't inherently evil, but we're fast learners.

Mulberry Bush: It is hard to tell which was worse, the behavior of the Greeks in the streets of Athens, or the behavior of those in the Parliament building as the EU/ECB/IMF foreclosed on the country, using it as a conduit to pass 100 billion euros to the banks. The questions now are (i) what the Greek population will do in response to the terms of surrender forced on them and (ii) what Germany will do next to force Greece out of the eurozone. Somehow the markets think things are better, as if words and deeds might coincide.

Idle Hands... Pew reports that only 54% of young adults (18 to 24) have a job.

Chattel: The GOP under Mitch McConnell says employers should have the right to exclude any health service or procedure they personally find objectionable from the medical insurance available to their employees. No more C-sections, perhaps. Or no coverage for vaccinations and immunizations. Let's bar female doctors from treating men... This is not about freedom of religion, it's about gutting health care in this country any way they can.

“And then what?” The same bunch that promoted the troop-free smash and grab of Iraq are now urging a 'surgical strike' against Iran's nuclear facilities that would have no collateral damage and no repercussions to the US, Israel, or the oil industry. Wrong. War is messy. War with Iran will be very, very messy. They've been preparing for this longer than we have.

Watched Pot: Scientists now estimates that by 2100 the earth will be at least 2°C warmer (we've already added 0.75°C) and possibly as much as 5°C hotter. Call it 3.5°C and put a fork in us.

Fine Print: There is no official version of the "mortgage agreement" agreement available and there will not be. The details will only be released when the documents must be filled in federal court, and a fully authorized, legally binding deal signed. And even after that the servicers will have three months to develop ways pass the costs on to the public. But don't worry, we're told, they document isn't available because they're trying to make it a better deal. For the banks?

Our Gang: Western Hemisphere oil exporters net output available for export fell from 2005's 6.0 mbd to 4.8mbd in 2010 and is still falling. Global net exports available to importers other than China fell from 40mbd in 2005 to 35mbd in 2010. That's why oil goes for $100 a barrel.

Lying Eyes: For 20 years Monsanto has been selling dramatically increased food production and reduced pesticide use. No, no, just kidding. For 20 years they've been advertising those things and selling lots of Roundup and Roundup-Ready nostrums. The increased production and lowered costs? Hey, it's advertising.

Candid Camera: It is a felony in Illinois to make a recording of a police officer beating the crap out of non-resisting citizens exercising their First Amendment rights. It'll be interesting to see just how even-handedly this law is applied come May's G8 and NATO gatherings in Chicago. Given the ubiquity of cellphones with video capability, lots of luck.

Sin-be-Gone: Florida Republicans think that Florida's poor are too dumb realize that a dollar in food stamps from their right pants pocket will buy a dollar of healthy stuff, freeing a dollar in their left pants pocket to buy sweets and chips. It this idea worked, then prohibiting a charity from using federal dollars to promote birth control and abortions wouldn't free up dollars that used to be spent elsewhere for birth control and abortion services. Look up the word 'fungible.'

Storytime: According to our text, the US “is the closest it has been in almost 20 years to achieving energy self-sufficiency... Domestic oil output is the highest in eight years... [and] prices will fall “in the long run because long-term production is declining.” (Note that the laws of supply and demand have been rescinded.) “The U.S. is producing so much natural gas that it is no longer profitable to produce , where the government warned four years ago of a critical need to boost imports, it now may approve an export terminal.” And so on. Pathetic.

SAR #12042

2012-02-11T07:30:00.000-06:00

Greece is not unique, it is just first.

Definition: A terrorist is now officially defined as anyone who disagrees with the government on anything: Protesters who think we shouldn't bomb the crap out of Iran. Those who think killing random civilians via drones is wrong. Those who buy coffee for cash at Internet cafes. Those, like Ron Paul, who think that we are overtaxed and over-regulated. And those who think Nixon was wrong to dump the dollars last tie to gold are going to be in a whole lot of trouble, along with the rest of us.

Easy One: The banks or the Greeks? Europe appears is prepared to pay what it costs to save its banks. But not to rescue Greece.

Cave Dwellers: Around the world youth are leading the social unrest as they are the hardest hit by the global deleveraging. The US is not insulated from this – youth unemployment is above 20% and 1 out of 3 in the 25-29 age-range are back living with the parents. Don't be surprised when Yankee-Spring comes along.

Is There An Echo In Here? Ireland beat Portugal to be the first of the beggars to step up and ask for equality with the Greeks in writing off debts and handing out haircuts.

Car Pool: Gasoline consumption declined 21% from 54.8 million gallons a day(MGD) in July 2008 to 42.4 MGD in July 2011 and has now fallen another 27% to 30.9MGD in November 2011. Driving less during the ongoing economic contraction would be the likely explanation, but all the positive economic data put out by the government rules that out. Must be carpooling in all those hybrids.

Catchachism: Over 8,000 instances of child sex abuse have allegedly occurred in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee. You know – Catholic Preists – old white men who know what's best for women... and little kids. Why would anyone ever send their child to a Catholic Church?

Shopper's Guide: Saudi Arabia says it will buy a nuclear weapon if Iran tests one. From E-Bay?

Pin Money: During a 2003 peace rally in Chicago, about 500 demonstrators were beaten, maced, arrested, charged, held for two days and then released. Others were arrested and released without charges, and many others were 'detained' but not arrested. Every single one of them will get from $800 to $15,000. Hey y'all, come on out to the NATO/G8 protests in March and make some money!

See You and Raise You: The “$4.00 a gallon by May” has now been upped to $5 by year's end, due to increasing demand from places like China and India that more than replaces the drop in demand from Europe and the US as their economies stall.

Sex, Lies & Politics: Huckabee tells CPAC: ‘We are all Catholics now!’ He's wrong, of course. And over 90% of Catholic women use some form of birth control and would like their health insurance to cover the costs. This is more of the Republicans hiding behind religion so they can punish women for having sex.

Asked & Answered: Why are capital gains and dividends not taxed the same as income from honest labor? Silly, look who does the honest labor and who buys the politicians. The old Golden Rulers again.

Tidy: A floating mass of trash the size of California, carried out to sea by the tsunami in Japan, has begun washing up on beaches in Washington. No hurry, it'll be washing up for years, if not decades. The Japanese disavowed paternity, "No one knows if it's from Japan.” Well it's not from Dayton, bubba.

Value Judgment: Facebook is valued higher than Citi or Pepsi. Valued. Not worth more, just 'valued'. At $102.6 billion, how many ads do they have to sell for how many years to make enough profit so the mania is anything but a Bigger Fool investment?

Shaken, Not Stirred: Improved satellite data has helped climate scientists refine their estimate of global warming's impact on ice caps and glaciers. While nearly 230 billion tons of ice is melting into the ocean from glaciers, ice caps, and mountaintops annually, that's about 30% less than previously estimates. The same research shows that glaciers in the higher Himalayas that have not yet begun to melt. It is very still very chilly up there and will be for a long time. Which means it will take us longer to drown, but eventually we'll get 'em to melt.

SAR #12041

2012-02-10T07:30:00.000-06:00

Our trillions of dollars in debts are a call on quantities of labor and resources that do not exist and probably never will.

The Reformation: Here's the proposed wedding vows for the marriage of Greeks to French and German banks: GDP to shrink at least 5% more this year. Health related spending to be cut 20%. Wages to be cut 20% (or in most cases, 100% as unemployment soars, including 150,000 public servants - the equivalent of Uncle Sam letting 5 million go). The Greek government kcaved in and has announced a deal has been reached. re their second bailout, The head of the European Central Bank is saying a deal has been done as well. The German finance minister says not so fast, the cuts proffered do not fulfill the required conditions. If Greece gets a deal, other countries will want one, so it behooves the overlords to make the conditions as nasty as possible.

Good Tiding Of Great Joy: Unemployment claims fell 9,000 to 358,000 last week. The previous week was revised up to 373,000 from 367,000. Pepsi didn't get the word, announced plans to fire 8,700 workers. It plans to spend the money on advertising.

A Drop in the Bucket: The headlines got it right: Mortgage Settlement Good for Banks, Not So Good for Homeowners, The Worst Kind of Crony Socialism, and so on. The $5 billion from the banks is just $1 billion each, probably spread over 3 years. They pay out far more than than in bonuses - they made $46 billion in profits just last year. Only 1 in 11 underwater homeowners will benefit and the benefit will average a $17,000 write-down and refinance on a mortgage that is $50,000 underwater. And about 20% of those the banks kicked out of their houses may get as much as $2,000 as a consolation prize. Those of you who stayed current on your mortgages get to applaud as your pension fund and your taxes pony up most of the remaining $20 billion.

Chasing the Dragon: The market was happy to learn that consumer credit is rising because that means more consumption which leads to stronger economic growth. This much is true. But it assumes either that the consumer will consume much less in the future, or that the consumer's income will be much higher in the future. It does not assume the most likely outcome: That the consumer will end up having to borrow even more - not to pay the debt, but for everyday living expenses. Oh, wait. That's what they're doing now.

Little Behinds: The administration is going to allow ten states to escape from the well-intentioned but poorly formulated No Child Left Behind and let them continue to turn out illiterate, uneducated children. But now they will not call the schools failures or the students unprepared - now they're going to be 'improved." As a bonus, school districts will be able to stop cheating on test results.

Evasive Action: Barred from using the US dollar, Iran has turned to barter and gold to conduct its international trade. Agri-giant Cargill acknowledges that trade with Iran is still possible through "payments other than the dollar... in gold bullion and barter deals." Which makes the dollar as an intentional reserve currency irrelevant, which is not what Obama had in mind.

Let's Look At The Record: Housing gurus have been seeing the bottom of the housing market again. They're wrong this time, too. Zillow reports median home values decreased 4.7% y/y, and they expect a 3.7% decline during 2012. BofA's Michelle Meyer says " those who are counting on the housing sector to save the economy this year will be disappointed. She expects home prices will fall another 7% through 2013.

Fungibility: The US spent $100 billion more on gasoline in 2011 than in 2010. We're headed over $4 a gallon before summer. It is likely to have a negative impact on the economy, especially when much of that money goes to foreign producers.

German Miracle: Why does Germany think the way forward is through downtrodden workers? Maybe because that's how they do it. They have no minimum wage, 20% of their workforce makes less than €400 ($520) a month, many skilled workers are listed on the books as custodial staff earning €2 an hour.

SAR #12040

2012-02-09T07:32:00.001-06:00

How much of your future have you already spent?

Volunteers: The Obama administration is said to have forced all the state's AGs to voluntarily agree to let the mortgage bankers off with a slap on the wrist and a Get Out of Jail Free card.

Done deal in Greece? German lawmakers will have to approve the bailout funds, pass on letting the AESF guarantee ECB-held Greek bonds, and approve guaranteeing Greek bonds held by the private sector after the debt swap. They may have an agreement in principal, but the cows can't even see the barn yet. And someone's got to keep Zorba in line, too. When you get through being enthused about how far down the road the can went tumbling, tell me about Spain.

Blockade: The US sanctions against Iran have forced it to default on its payments for 200,000 tons of Indian rice. Tehran is having trouble buying rice, cooking oil and other staples to feed its 74 million people weeks before an election. Starving them into submission is far more humane than an outright attack, but don't expect it to win a lot of hearts and minds.

Ends/Means: They started it! That's Obama's justification for embracing a Super PAC to raise and spend unlimited & deniable money buying a second term. The Obama campaign explained that there was too much at stake not to behave as despicable as their opponents.

Downhill: Like Sisyphus' rock, the Italian economy is picking up speed as it goes down hill, with GDP now contracting at a 0.3% annual rate.

Unexpectedly: Closing out the year with €1.06 trillion in exports – the most ever – didn't save Germany's exports from a 4.3% decline m/m in December, as international trade slowed. Imports also fell 3.9%, unexpectedly.

Silly Question:Why do the horrific events in Syria not prompt a Libyan-style intervention by NATO? Oil, or the lack thereof, and Russians and the presence thereof.

May The Power Be With Them: Chinese electricity consumption declined 7.5% y/y, the first production decline in ten years. It is thought that this reflects a sharp slowdown in Chinese industrial production. Either that, or they celebrated Chinese New Year in the dark.

Cue Laughter & Applause: The ECB is willing to forgo profits on their holdings of Greek sovereign bonds. Profits? On Greek bonds?

Life In The Austerity Lab: If there were a typical Greek today, he or she has taken a 40% cut in pay and seen the sales tax rise to 23%. This cold winter has brought increased electricity costs and a new tax on heating oil. Gasoline is $10 a gallon and rising – assuming the Iranians keep shipping fuel. If retired, the pension has been cut. The kids are around the house all day because the schools can't pay the teachers. The local clinic's funding has been cut 40% and there are shortages of many common medicines. Do the Greeks feel gratitude to the Germans and French for rescuing them? Did the Greeks vote for thee austerity measures? Did they even get to vote for the leader installed by the EU? Do the Greeks feel proud of having to suffer now and suffer tomorrow so French banks can remain solvent? And the new bailout plan turns the screws even further?

Porn O Graph: Shy, not retiring.

SAR #12039

2012-02-08T07:30:00.000-06:00

Democracy ≠ Capitalism

Siege Tactics: The US has ordered all Iranian government and central bank assets held in the US or any foreign branch of a US entity, frozen until the end of hostilities. Hostilities? Sure, isn't a blockade aimed at starving the enemy one of the older forms of siege warfare? Although Obama's citing the “unacceptable risk posed to the international financial system by Iran’s activities,” seems a bit disingenuous.

Mary, Mary: Now that even Roubini has joined the bulls, is it time to sell everything and head for the cellar?

Easy Over: Americans added $19.3 billion to their debts in December, mostly ($16.5 billion) in cars and student loans (about $8 billion in Federal tuition loans) and other non-revolving debt. Credit card/revolving debt only added $2.8 billion, which is pretty much in line with Decembers mediocre retail sales. November's $20.4 billion additional debt was split between credit cards and auto loans. A new credit bubble is beginning to simmer. The defaults will come later.

Dog/Homework: Not only is there not a deal between the Greeks and damned near everyone else, there's not even a working draft of a deal. Obviously the haircut agreement with the private investors is not worth the paper its not yet written on. And even if there were a deal, there is no good reason to think it would amount to more than limply kicking the can down the cobblestones a ways – as in the current ECB offer to make a profit by pretending to take a haircut. It would take enormous credulity to believe that sufficient numbers of private creditors will 'voluntarily' accept a 75% haircut when they have CDS that will pay far more handsomely. Either we get a credit event or some very strong arm-twisting to redefine 'voluntary'.

Inalienable Right: California's 9th Circuit Court has ruled that the citizens' rights cannot be struck down by majority rule, and that the state's voter-passed ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional. The Supreme's are still an appeal or two away.

Get Shorty: It's claimed you can sell your house for whatever its current (underwater) valuation is, most banks will go along with the short sale, mark your mortgage paid, and give you $20,000 or $30,000 to walk away. Which shows how much they want to avoid the foreclosure process and especially how loath they are to end up owning another empty house.

You've Been Warned: The FBI views those who oppose taxes, think leaving the gold standard lead to our current bankruptcy and object to government micro-management of our daily lives as “extremists.” Is it okay to believe the US went bankrupt for any number of other reasons?

On The Way To The Forum: Funny thing - austerity measures that were expected to boost Greece's tax revenues by 9% actually resulted in a 7% drop, and VAT taxes generated 18.7% less than a year earlier as the economy basked in austerity. No wonder Merkel wants them to enact even more austerity measures – they obviously aren't trying hard enough.

Porn O'Graph: Credit where a bubble is needed.

SAR #12038

2012-02-07T07:30:00.000-06:00

Let's bomb ~~Iraq~~ Iran!

Pants On Fire!Frau Merkel again emphasizes that while “we want Greece to stay in the euro,' she even more wants them to implement the troika's demands. Greece is to cut 15,000 public jobs this year, 150,000 by 2015 – and remember the entire population is just 10 million. Also to be cut are the minimum wage and pensions. And more likely than not, politicians' throats if they go along with the Farulein's orders. The deadline for all this cooperation has once again slipped into the indefinite future, where a barber lurks, crew-cuts a specialty.

Let's Make A Deal: The bail-out-the-banks-and-forgive-them-their-crimes deal with Obama and the 46 or so little AGs seems to have come apart. Or maybe it was never as close to being a deal as the dealmakers leaked it to be. The sticking point seems to be the absolution -or not - of sins committed by MERS.

Salvation: The man that brought the blue screen of death to your computer says technology can save us from ourselves, prevent global climate change through geoengineering. What could go wrong?

An Apple For Teacher: After the failure of slide shows, film strips, movies, television, the VCR, DVDs and computers to revolutionize the educational process, replace the teacher, educate everyone and save money at the same time, the snake-oil salesmen are back. Today's answer is the iPad. One for every kid. Apple shareholders will thank you.

Clip and Save: Nationally, gasoline has gone up 19 cents a gallon and is expected to go up another 60 cents by May, peaking around $4.05 a gallon. Or perhaps the Iran thing will happen and along with it, $5 a gallon.

Compass Rose: If Clint Eastwood is to be out guide to 'the second half', I don't wanna go.

What Goes Around... The 125 million square foot, 55 story Bank of America Plaza in Atlanta is on the foreclosure auction block. Last appraised at less than half the $436 million it went for in 2006, the building's main tenant – Bank of America – continues to shrink even as it continues to foreclose on homeowners across the country.

~~Love~~ Money & Marriage: Employment is down, wages are down, marriage rates are down. More among the poor than the rich, surprise.

Cut Price Cruising:Entertain your friends and neighbors – take all of them on a cruise - get paid to rent a cargo ship! GMI is kicking in $2,000 a day to help defray the cost of shipping stuff in its own ships. Not quite the way the business plan was drawn up.

Tradition: LTC Daniel Davis' report from Afghanistan confirms that the government lies to get us into wars and the military lies to keep them going. Next time will be different.

Porn O'Graph: Youth is wasted on the young.

SAR #12037

2012-02-06T08:12:00.001-06:00

“The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing.” Ralph Peters, LTC, USArmy, retired.

One Toke Over The Line? Is Greece finally going to end the pretense that the euro is a viable idea? Has Greece (and more importantly, the Greeks) finally been pushed far enough to let the German's out of the euro?

Can Anybody Say Libya 2.0: Secretary Clinton is calling on the "friends of democratic Syria" to put a stop to the bloodshed, now that Russia and China have given ØØAssad a despot's license to kill as many of his citizens as necessary to stay in power. .

Multiple Choice: “Is US democracy being bought and sold?” (a) Yes, (b) All of the above.

Karnack: President Obama said the U.S. has a "very good estimate" of when Iran could complete work on a nuclear weapon,even though it hasn't started work on one yet.

Room to Let: By June of 2011 the demand for safe deposit boxes at Swiss banks was so high that a minimum balance of half a million Swiss francs was a prerequisite. Now the demand, especially in the region bordering Italy, has exhausted the banks supply of boxes and hotels are renting their out.

Libertarianism: Brazilian media report 78 people have been murdered in and around the northeastern city of Salvador since the start of a state police strike there five days ago. Ah yes, let us do away with the noisome interference of the state...

Porn O'Graph: Healthy job prospects.

SAR #12035

2012-02-04T07:30:00.000-06:00

There is always an "it depends.”

Winter Advisory: In case you've been concentrating on the absence of winter in the US, take a look at Eastern Europe where a deep cold spell has left 220 dead so far – some frozen on city streets. Ukraine has set up over 3,000 emergency heat and food shelters. It even snowed in Rome.

Trivial Errors & Omissions: Romney's tax data shows he neglected to disclose some required information about some 23 investments to the Office of Government Ethics last year. Specifically including a $3 million account at a Swiss bank that was purportedly a diversification of investments which earned him $1.71. Good investment. Even T-Bills would have been a better, albeit taxable, investment.

Feeding the Flames: A Harvard/Yale study concludes that "food aid promotes civil conflict. An increase in U.S. food aid increases the incidence, onset and duration of armed civil conflicts in recipient countries."

Breaking Even: While men are more likely to accurately remember unpleasant emotional experiences, they are also more likely to have the false belief that decisions are best taken alone even when collaboration is obviously required.

Yawn: “A small number of American Jewish billionaires are promoting a hawkish, aggressively pro-Israel stance “

Irony: A restored copy of the Magna Carta, one of four bearing the seal of King Edward I in 1297, will be put on display in Washington, D.C.

Quoted: "The combination of tax and spending policies that the nation has been accustomed to cannot be sustained over the long term. That is because the aging of the population and rising costs for health care will, in the absence of other changes, steadily push spending up." Douglas Elmendorf, CBO Director.

Getting Paid: Real hourly pay in the US, adjusted for changes in consumer prices, fell 1.2% in 2001, continuing the impoverishment of the American worker.

We Are Not Alone: In a move US Homeland Security would be proud of, their Canadian counterparts arrested a Moroccan-born Muslim businessman on terrorism charges after they intercepted a text message in which he instructed his ~~co-conspirators~~ salespeople to “blow away” the competition. The only held him three days.

Curious: Renovating old buildings saves more energy than building new, energy-efficient ones. What about a newly-designed energy-efficient one built from recycled materials?

Porn O'Graph: Rhyme or echo?

<< -- Separate but Equal – >>

Doing A Job On The Numbers: BLS statisticians are now using the 2010 Census data instead of the much adjusted 2000 set. This increased the 'civilian non-institutional population' by 1.7 million. (Go see the graph. ) Apply the long-term average labor force participation rate of 65.8% to this number and you get 159.4 million - that is what the labor force number should be, and the unemployment rate would then be 11.5%. The BLS says that most of the population increase was retired or else-wise escaped the labor force and that the population adjustment did not affect the unemployment data.

But their data shows there are 7.4 million fewer people working full time now than there were in 2008 (111.9 million now, 119.3 million then), with the number of full-time jobs declining by 677,000 in January. All-round and apart from the population number adjustment – which should result in recompiling the unemployment rate for the previous couple of years, just to make them apples and apples – the claimed increase of 243,000 jobs was based on the actual loss of 1.1 million jobs.

January's real-time withholding tax data shows employment plunged at the end of the month after a surge in late December. The actual survey number showed a decrease of 2.7 million jobs in the last two months. Full time jobs declined by 1.2 million in January. So, what is the real unemployment rate? Ha, what makes you think anyone knows?

SAR #12034

2012-02-03T07:29:00.001-06:00

Economies are not exempt from the second saw of thermodynamics.

Daybreak: The BLS reports employment in January rose by 243,000, dropping the unemployment rate to 8.3%. Previous months' numbers were revised upward. “The annual benchmark process also contributed to these revisions.” Carping will resume shortly.

It Begins: Republicans are already pulling the trigger on those automatic budget cuts that were the supposed consequences of the Super-committee's failure - at least as far as defense goes. They are quite all right with automatic devastation for social welfare programs, but adamantly oppose the corporate welfare represented by most defense spending. Among their priorities is extending the two-year old federal pay freeze for a few more years and cutting the federal workforce by a third.

Them That Has, Gets: Gazprom is reducing gas deliveries to Europe in order to meet the increased demand a severe winter is bringing to Russia. They say. They also say their net profit will be up 25%. God forbid you should think the one has anything to do with the other.

We're Winning? Homeland Security, through a diligent review of its files, has managed to double the number of potential terrorists forbidden to fly to of in the US. This did not, in itself, cause AMR's bankruptcy.

Slow Bern: The Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee says the US Treasury should permit negative rate bids at Treasury auctions. Which could make a hamburger today worth 99% of one Tuesday.

History Lesson: Some are taking the new information that volcanoes were most likely the causative agents for The Little Ice Age as suggesting that some planetary-engineering could stop the inexorable CO2 driven rise in global temperatures. The real lesson should be one of scale: The Little Ice Age was just 1ºC cooler than today, and climate scientists are promising us a rise of three or six or more degrees. This should sober a few of us up.

Memo: Nineteen of Mexico's 31 states are facing the most severe drought on record. Two million are without access to water and the drought combined with a cold snap has devestated half the country's croplands. No real relief is expected until the rainy season arrives – along with hurricane season.

Epidemic: The BLS anticipates the nation will add 5.6 million health-care/social-assistance jobs by 2020 - a 34% increase. So our GDP will grow because we have more people taking care of the sick. The BLS did not venture to guess where the money to pay these 5.6 million caregivers will come from.

See And Saw: Fannie Mae's delinquency rate (3.9%) dropped a tad in December while Freddie Mac's(3.6%) went up a tad. Both are still way above their long term – under 1% - averages.

Hidden In Plain Sight: The supposed mystery behind the long-running, sharp decline in the labor-force-participation rate - generally blamed on workers dropping out because the economy/employment conditions were terrible - now is thought to be mainly a demographic story. It seems economists have figured out that the baby boomers are retiring in large numbers. Someone should send them one of Harry Dent's books.

Situational Ethics: Google has quietly announced that use of Blogger will be limited/censored on a “per country basis.” Meaning that they'll do what it takes to make money.

Reinforcements: Following on the heels of the Case-Shiller report of a 3.7& y/y fall in house prices in November, Core Logic reports a 4.7% y/y decline in house prices. This makes five years in a row of consecutive declines in US house prices.

This Just In! Harvard Economist Ken Rogoff has discovered that 'Systematic And Widespread Regulatory Failures Are Choking Our Arteries As Well As Our Economy'. He also is reasonably sure that producers have few incentives to internalize the costs of the environmental damage that they cause. He did come up with “coronary capitalism” - a keeper.

Porn O'Graph: The way up and the way down; people, oil production, whatever.

SAR #12033

2012-02-02T08:11:00.001-06:00

Best to settle for small hopes and quiet despair.

Remembering Saddam: U.S. officials said they have seen no intelligence to indicate that Iran is actively plotting attacks on U.S. Soil; nevertheless, we intend to attack them first, with the media cheering all the way. Preventive invasion number whatever. Just because they have not - according to the CIA - decided to build a nuclear device isn't going to let them off the hook.

Unfinished Sympathy: The rumor now is that a final deal between Greece and its private bondholders will be signed any day now. This week. Probably. Greece is fast approaching a "condition of absolute poverty."

Mene, Mene, Tekel u-Pharsin: The Congressional Budget Office now predicts real GDP will grow only 2.0% in 2012, then slow to 1.1% in 2013. It sees unemployment at 8.9% in 4Q2012 rising to 9.2% a year later. And it sees Social Security tapping the $2.8 trillion Trust Fund starting in 2019.

The Big 'D': European monetary aggregates (M1 and M3) have been shrinking dramatically for the last couple of quarters as bank lending ground to a near halt. The annual growth rate of M3 declined to 2.0% in November from October's 2.6% rate and fell to 1.6% in December. Such contractions in monetary supply are generally correlated with rapid and steep slowing of economic activity, edging into deflation.

Overheard: "An improbably large number of things will have to go right in order to avoid a major decline in stock market value in the months ahead."

Fog Of War: "Had that portion of the decline in the labor force participation rate since 2007 that is attributable to neither the aging of the baby boomers nor the downturn in the business cycle not occurred, the unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of 2011 would have been about 1¼% higher than the 8.7% recorded". Translation: The BLS numbers are bogus and real unemployment is 10%."

Choosing Sides: American Airlines wants to cut 14,000 union jobs and stick the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation with a $9 billion obligation to take over its underfunded pension plans covering 130,000 people. The Union and the Government are not enraptured by AMR's plans. Stockholders, however, are pleased and bondholders delighted.

Morning Line: Homeland Security assures the nation that there are no major Super Bowl threats.. One presumes they were talking about terrorists, not Patriots.

Gift To The Magi: Romney gave $100 million in assets to his sons that was, for tax purposes, worthless. Legally. You need not ask how he managed it because you don't have near enough money to use that sort of tax trickery.

Hubris: Obama argues he has authority to bomb sovereign nations and that 'drones have not caused a great number of civilian casualties'. The source of this 'authority' is as mysterious as the President's poor grasp of the sanctity of human life. When did it become acceptable to kill “just a few” civilians?

Process: When a Republican wannabe denigrates Blacks or Latinos or the poor, Muslims, the President or climate scientists, they are not talking about Blacks, Latinos, etc. And they are certainly not talking to the poor or scientists. They are talking to the rabid right, the bigots who are going to decide which bozo moderate Republicans will have to swallow as their candidate.

Got Rhythm ? Pfizer has recalled a million ineffective birth control pill packs and suggested that its customers rely on back-up methods. Gotta watch out for those placebos.

Can't You Kids Play Nice? An ad running in Hong Kong calls mainland Chinese 'locusts'. Back in the civilized US, an adviser to Gingrich's SuperPAC claimed that Democrats wanted to abort black babies. Where's Goebbels when you need him?

Rest In Peace: Of the necessary deleveraging that is now underway, PIMCO's Bill Goss says "We are witnessing the death of abundance and the [birth] of austerity, for what may be a long, long time." No flowers. Donations accepted.

Porn O'Graph: Cannon fodder.

SAR #12032

2012-02-01T07:30:00.000-06:00

We could have stopped long before the last passenger pigeon died.

Castor Oil: Twenty-five of the European Union’s 27 countries have signed up to a German-inspired treaty enshrining tougher fiscal rules to help underpin the euro. This is actually not a bad ides - unifying the finances of the EU. It is probably the only way to save the euro. But it will take the willing cooperation of the peoples of these 25 nations to make this work, so the euro is most likely toast.

Judge, Jury... and Executioner: When 'the intelligence community' wants to off an American, they take their case to the President - "When we say someone is a terrorist, then we can kill them, because they're a terrorist,"according to Leon Panetta - and the President makes the decision which citizens are to be murdered by the state without a trial, without facing the accusers, hearing the evidence against them or having an opportunity to defend themselves. We have suspended the Constitution in order to save it.

Volunteers: To Rumsfeld's 'unknown unknowns' should be added 'the willingly unknown', the 'too hard to understand unknown' and that favorite couple of the financial set, "things we are too lazy to know"and “things we don't want to know.”

Home Owership: The Census Bureau says that the number of people paying outrageous rents to banksters for the privilege of thinking they're home owners has fallen 65.5%, the lowest level since 1997. Imagine how low the rate would be if all those who are hopelessly underwater just walked away.

I'm Lovin' It: McDonald's says it is no longer using bleached fatty beef trimmings scooped from the slaughterhouse floor as a filler to enhance the flavor and reduce the bacteria in its hamburgers. The 'beef product' is still used in the National School Lunch Program. Still want those fries?

One More Verse: The Case-Shiller Index for November reported a 1.3% house price decline over the previous three months and -3.7% on an annual basis.

Asked & Answered: The San Francisco Fed asks “Why is unemployment duration so long?” and then answers, “Stricter market incentives to control costs in the face of stiff domestic and international competition may also be factors.” What they meant was that globalization's race to the bottom has cut labor costs to the bone, then ground up the bones.

A Litany: America is producing more now than before the recession, but is doing so with 6 million fewer workers. Incomes continue to fall - even if you include Mitt and those Wall Street fellows. Consumer spending picked up in December only because consumers raided their piggy banks. In 4Q11, government spending dropped at an annual rate of 4.6 % – and that’s likely to continue. All of which raises a basic question: Who or what is the economy for? Just those at the top?

Laugh Test: Peabody Coal proposes to swap 831 acres of land scattered around southern Illinois for for 384 acres in the Shawnee National Forest that it wants to dig up and ship to China.

Funny Bone: Two Brits exchanged Tweets about partying in Los Angeles. In Great Britain. Weeks before flying to LA. When they arrived in LA they were scooped up by Homeland Security as terrorists. They spent their vacation being interrogated and then locked up with drug dealers. After the Protectors of Democracy got it thought their heads that the Brits' use of 'destroy' was synonymous with 'party hearty', they were thrown on a plane and deported back to London. They did not Tweet about their experience. Not having Homeland Security's Twitter intercepts, NY has subpoenaed Twitter to provide the user information and all Tweets posted between September 15 and December 31, 2011 by Malcolm Harris. Harris is being charged with disorderly conduct. Party on.

Up and Down: Here's the question: Will profit margins stay at their current near-record levels? Here's a better question: Now that corporations have wrung the last drop out of workers, what can they cut now to lower unit costs? And who are they going to sell to, anyway?

Porn O'Graph: Spring Break.

SAR 12031

2012-01-31T07:30:00.000-06:00

Investors keep fleeing to the dollar for safety. Scary.

Investment 101: People buy US Treasuries not for their high yield, but to preserve their capital. What sort of an economy is anticipated if 10-year Treasuries are returning 1.84% and 10-year TIPS yield 0.49%?

Follow The Money: The US insists that Iran must be punished for trying to develop nuclear weapons, although there is no credible evidence that Iran is doing so. What Iran is doing is accepting things other than dollars as payment for oil. And that will not be tolerated - just ask Saddam or Qaddafi. Oh, wait...

Magic Decoder Ring: It has been 3 months since MF Global went bankrupt, and all the experts can say about the $1.2 billion in customers' money simply vaporized. It just went 'poof'. They are not allowed to say that a significant amount was stolen, because the Wall Street subset of the US judicial code does not admit that such an even could ever happen.

Mrs. Lincoln: Austerity was going to fix the British and Italian and Greek economies - how are things working out? We'll skip Greece because that's outright embarrassing, and move on to Great Britain – which is doing worse in GDP terms that it did back during the Great Depression. And Italy? Well, Italy has become a dictatorship, but one of EU design and not yet fascistic. The US, on a national level, has only just dabbled in austerity cuts, but the states and cities have embraced the idea with a vengeance. And that's just the word for it, vengeance.

More is More: There is a fundamental problem facing us: no matter what the energy source, no matter what you use the energy for, using energy creates heat. The more energy we use, the more waste heat we generate. There is no such thing as "clean energy" on the usage end of the cycle.

Unintended Consequences: If - and it's a big if - Greece and its IIF private sector investors reach some agreement on the degree of haircut, the result would be worse than the dreaded "credit event". It would be the "non-credit event". If investors are forced to take a 50% haircut - or more - 'voluntarily' so as to not trigger CDS settlements, no one will buy another euro's worth of Portuguese, Spanish or Italian bonds. Because if they cannot be sure to get their money back either from the government or from the CDS insurance, investors will not venture their money. Which is not quite what the goal was. Or was it?

There's Something (Not) Happening Here: Since 2005, while global crude oil production has hovered around 74 mbd, European consumption has fallen by 1.5 mbd and US consumption is down 2 mbd. Internal consumption by the producing countries and significant growth in demand by the developing world has taken up the slack, while prices have climbed from $65 to $100 a barrel. Why hasn't production increased 2 or 3 mbd to take advantage of the increased price per barrel? It has, but that just made up for the decline in production from older fields. The future seems to have snuck in unannounced.

Porn O'Graph: The Little Engine that couldn't.

SAR #12030

2012-01-30T07:30:00.000-06:00

Mankind has never been particularly adept at reading entrails.

One Step Over the Line:Lots of chatter this weekend over Greece's rejection of Germany's demand that Brussels ( that is, Germany) be given complete control over the Greek budgetary process. Let's clarify one thing: Germany does not expect this to happen. What they seem to expect (and very much seem to want) is for Greece to use this threat as a reason to default and leave the euro. And Portugal and Spain are also supposed to take the hint.

Ozymandius: Jesuit Bill Bichsel is in prison for protesting a proposed nuclear weapons plant. He is being held in solitary confinement as additional punishment because two Buddhist monks prayed for him outside the jail. The 83-year old desperado, now in his second week of a hunger strike, is forced to wear shackles for his appearances in court. Behold the power of the state.

Braking News: The US, it says here, is planning for perpetual warfare. Planning?

Money, Money, Money: Many US corporations have squirreled away impressive amounts of cash; the cash held by the NASDAQ 100's top eight companies comes to nearly nearly $300 billion. Apple, alone, has some $97 billion sitting around. Sitting around because “nothing productive or value-generating can be done with it.” Houston, do we have a problem here?

Talking Point: Define and illustrate the following: legal, moral, ethical... as in “Ethically, everything corporations do is moral as long as it is legal.” Representative Ryan (R-KY), why don't you start us off.

Proportional Response: According to Oakland ~~storm troopers~~ police, they were forced to use tear gas, rubber bullets, night sticks and pepper spray, injuring 4 in the process of arresting 400 #Occupy demonstrators in response to the vandalizing of three privately owned vehicles. Oakland City Council President Larry Reid said “There is no excuse for the behavior we experienced this evening.” Agreed.

Unchained Melody: Have housing prices stopped falling? No. Are they near the bottom? No. How much farther will they fall? Historically when a bubble pops, prices tend to crash far below fair market values. So says Professor Shiller, who adds that after reaching bottom there's nothing to suggest they'll start back up for a while. Quite a while.

Inevitability: As a general rule, that which cannot continue, doesn't. For example, Portugal must have an annual budget surplus of over 10% of the nation's entire GDP in order to get control of its debt. And that's if its GDP grows at 2% a year. Haircuts all 'round. Any questions?

Steady As She Goes: The United States is forging ahead with plans to further encircle China with a ring of bases extending from Afghanistan to the Philippines and on to Japan and South Korea. The US continues to make it clear that it intends to keep East Asia under its ~~control~~ influence and protection, despite restiveness by hundreds of thousands of Pakistanis who object to US drones killing them at random.

This Just In: Bigotry is stupid, and vice versa.

SAR #12028

2012-01-28T07:30:00.000-06:00

Some psychopaths end up in jail, others lead corporations, many enter politics.

Growth Spurt: The US economy grew at a reported 2.8% annualized pace in the fourth quarter, but 1.94% of the upside was attributable to a rise in inventory restocking and another 0.3% came from the auto sector (based on low/no-interest six year loans), which means the rest of the economy grew at a 0.5% pace, even with a fair number of folks spending their mortgage payment money on big screen TVs.

Game Theory: Iran is considering a law immediately halting all oil exports to the European Union, which will hurt the Europeans a great deal and Iran not so much since China, India and Japan are quite ready to pickup the .8 mbd that doesn't go to Europe. Let those who don't want none have memories of not having had any.

G'way, Y'Bothering Me: If we are now a couple of years into The Recovery^TM and everything is looking peachy, why is Bernanke going to keep interest rates "exceptionally low" for another three years?

Trivia: Anyone whose holdings are as large and widespread as Romney's are is bound to overlook odds and ends when toting up his income. Especially if it involves 11 different funds held in tax havens like the Cayman Island. He didn't list them on his tax forms because – dummy – they're held in the Caymans to avoid having to list them on his tax form. His campaign maintains that the income generated by the 23 non-listed funds and partnerships is inadvertent, inconsequential and “trivial”.

Ante Up: Indiana will require that union members pay “dues” for those who chose not to join the union while they freeload and enjoy the benefits gained by the union. Existing law already requires a union represent all of the workers at a plant, so this law is simply an attempt to cut union membership by making it more expensive than it needs to be.

Wholly Mackerel: Jack mackerel, a fish rich in oily protein that is a staple in Africa, is being fished to extinction. No, not to feed the poor, but to be ground up and fed to swine and pen-raised salmon.

Mein Kampf: Germany is pushing to make Greece relinquish control over its budget policy to European (that is, German) institutions as a precondition for any further bailout money - along with steep cuts in defense and health spending, 'reform' (deep cuts) in pensions, and replacing only 1 out of 5 departing civil servants. This is no different than invading the country and putting one’s own puppet government in place, without the messy 'invading' part.

Price Tags: Global warming is a massive fraud perpetrated by tens of thousands of scientists who hope to gain greater funding, in cooperation with tens of thousands of pretend environmentalists bent on controlling every part of our daily life. Or so the Wall Street Journal claims.

Into The Abyss: A year into a cure-all austerity programme, the UK economy is growing at a heart-warming minus 0.8%. Perhaps someone should let US austerity advocates of austerity in on the news.

In The Abstract: Reduced oil consumption leads to lower economic growth and less capacity for debt. Lower debt levels lead to debt defaults, reduced credit,and falling home prices. If world oil supply remains level, as it has since 2005, continuing recession in OECD countries is probable as emerging markets consume a greater share of the available oil.

SAR #12027

2012-01-27T07:30:00.000-06:00

The human race is desperately in need of new management. Yves Smith.

Revisionism: Pick a week, any week, in unemployment: 402,000, 352,000, 377,000. Then pretend you can see a trend.

Dominoes: If you were the leader of a country - say Ireland, Spain, Portugal, or Italy, pick one - and you saw that Greece was sloughing off 50-60-70% of its debt, wouldn't you be remiss if you didn't open a barber shop?

About that Housing Recovery: New home sales – 21,000 total - in December were down 2.2% m/m and 7.3% y/y. Pending sales are also down and the median new house price is back to October 2010 levels.

Dear ~~Victim~~ Google User: We all got Google emails saying that starting March 1 Google will gather all of your personal data and browsing history and sell it to anyone (Homeland Security?) who wants it. PS: You can't do anything about it.

Emperor/Clothes: While California rather politely claims that the $25-billion mortgage settlement is 'inadequate', Arizona is complaining that the Bank of America settlement will ~~let the crooks get away Scott free~~ impede, if not prevent, investigation of BofA for fraud.

Down To The Sea In Slips: The Baltic Dry Index has fallen 42% below its seasonal norm and is now down 50% since the first of the year. The causation seems split between a decrease in demand for commodities and an excess of capacity having recently been built. Either way, European banks are looking at repossessing a lot of empty ships and writing off $100 billion in shipping loans.

Policy Intricacies: Bernanke has decided to buy another round of crappy bonds from the top five bankers, so they can pretend to have adequate capital. No, you are mistaken. We are assured this is not QU 3.5, nor is it a bailout. It's three card Monte.

Foot Shooting: If the EU goes through with an embargo on Iranian oil, refinery shut-downs in Europe are likely to seriously harm the European economy – never mind what it does or doesn't do to Iran.

Essentials: The essence of the Obama mortgage refinancing program is to get the government to refinance not only GSE held mortgages, but also all those loans backed by the private sector, and to have the government guarantee them all. This would encourage the banks to stop working with homeowners on mortgage defaults and go straight to Evict & collect $200. Or $200,000. Whatever. It is a way of guaranteeing the banks get their money and the taxpayers get evicted.

No Win Situation: God's reported forgiveness of Newt for this and that is wholly beside the point. He is not going to become president because "nobody's third wife is going to be First Lady". America is full of divorced first wives and insecure current wives and they will not stand for some bleach-blond=Monica Lewinsky-Trophy Wife taking up residence in the White House.

Want Fries With That? A remarkably poor investigation reports that eating fried food poses no threat to your health as long as you eat it in Spain, where the frying is done in olive oil. Before you Supersize the next bunch of French fries, pause to reflect that those eating fried foods in Spain are eating moderate portions of the Mediterranean diet - which has long been known to be good for your health - and are likely getting more exercise than you.

SAR #12026

2012-01-26T07:35:00.001-06:00

Pick one: War is peace. Slavery is freedom. Ignorance is strength.

Perspective: Apple made $13.6 billion in iProfits. Human costs are built into iStuff; 13 year-olds working for 70 cents an hour is just the start. Enjoy.

Apostasy: IMF director Christine Lagaard has suggested that the public sector (for which read 'Germany') should absorb at least some of the pending losses on Greek bonds if a way can't be found to force the private sector to accept 70% haircuts. This seems to be tacit recognition that the hedgies have absolutely no interest in anything short of a total Greek default. But Greece will be just the first to default on sovereign debts once the precedent for massive forgiveness is set in Athens.

Down Is The New Up: Pending home sales in December declined 3.5%, reversing a November's 7.3% surge. But the Federal Housing Finance Agency reported that house prices increased 1.0%, after a 0.7% decline in October.

You Are Here: In a world where a third of the people are poor, a gathering of the rich to bellyache about the global burdens of inequality ~~sticks in the throat~~ is nauseating. They realize "it's time to stave off disaster," for "survival is the most important thing,” according to George Soros, who foresees riots in the streets that will lead to a brutal clampdown curtailing civil liberties in the US and a global economic system descending into chaos and conflict.

Extra, Extra: Thirty of the largest US companies spend more lobbying congress than they pay in taxes. And they're getting their money's worth, too.

Exactly: “TSA airport security has nothing to do with security, and everything to do with making sure that every human being who transits within or through a US commercial airport knows exactly who is in charge. The idea is to desensitize people to government intrusion.”

Where's Mine? Obama plans on giving "every responsible homeowner the chance to save about $3,000 a year on their mortgage, by refinancing at historically low interest rates." Responsible seems to mean those who bought more house than they can pay for or paid far more for a house than it is worth. What about those of us who were irresponsible and bought houses we can afford in areas that avoided the bubble mania? Will I get $3,000, too? As always it's a question of who gets the cream and who gets creamed.

Runaways: Under cover of a storm, 300,000 salmon ran away from their caged homes off Scotland. The fear is that they'll start partying with the wild bunch and upset the gene pool.

Street Scene: The LAPD is cordoning off streets and providing "support" for the US military to conduct training exercises in urban environments "without negatively impacting the citizens." The aim, of course, is to ready the military for real deployments which would be designed to negatively impact the citizens.

Object Lesson: Do not criticize Israel. Do not criticize Israel for its treatment of those who were brushed aside to make room for Israel. Do not criticize Israel's manipulation of the US political process. Do not criticize AIPAC. Or else.

Bravado: Nancy Pelosi assures us that Newt's "not going to be President of the United States. That's not going to happen... There is something I know." Cue the suspense-building music.

Don't Sweat The Small Stuff: Airbus says that the small cracks in the wings of its A380 jumbo planes are not dangerous, insisting that “The cracks do not compromise the airworthiness of the aircraft." So, they're a design feature?

Porn O'Graph: Hey big spenders...

SAR #12025

2012-01-25T07:30:00.001-06:00

Greed and fear, the financial fundamentals.

Pig In A Poke: No public version exists of the treaty establishing the European Stability Mechanism - the one that will give unelected technicians in Brussels veto approval over national budgets. Rumors say that the treaty must be ratified by all 17 of the euro nations by July of this year - actual discussion of the terms can wait.

Just War: United States Marine Corps Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich, commander of the unit that killed 10 unarmed Iraqi women and children at point-blank range as the huddled in a bedroom, will serve 3 months in confinement and have his pay cut. The other members of the squad "have been exonerated".

The Revisions: The IMF now says the world economy will grow only 3.5% in 2012, down from an earlier estimate of 4%. US growth is predicted to be 1.8% of GDP while the Euro nations will show a decline of about 5%. Sharp contractions were forecast for Italy and Spain. All this in an attempt to bully Germany into putting up more money to rescue failing European economies.

Civics Lesson: Which is more shameful, that Mitt paid only 13.9% of his 2010 income in taxes, or that his income was $21.6 million? He made the average American worker's yearly income of $42,000 every four hours and garnered enough in the first week of the year to be in the top 1%.

Clear and Present Danger: Previous plans to save the euro have failed, the current proposals seem doomed to fail, many euro countries cannot continue to fund their debts at current levels. It would take €5 trillion just to save the PIIGS and there isn't €5 trillion to be had. Several sovereign defaults are likely. The risk of systemic collapse in a week, a month, or a year is real and will not disappear quickly or easily. There is simply too much debt. So says Simon Johnson, former IMF economist, who adds "A rapid shift from low-level crisis to collapse is very plausible."

Some Are More Equal: Andrew Adler, editor/publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, called for the assassination of Barak Obama by agents of Israel's Mossad. If a follower of Islam had made such a suggestion, his waterboarding would be underway at Guantanamo.

Double Dipping: Okay, maybe Dick Cheney earned his $125,976 a year pension – after all, starting wars is hard work. And I'd have no problem with Newt drawing $100,200 a year in his retirement – as long as he stays off the Federal payroll.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does: Hedge funds escape a lot of regulation because their customers are supposedly drawn from the financially sophisticated. So sophisticated that they happily give billions of dollars to hedgies who keep 98% of the profits for themselves.

Without Comment: Oklahoma State Senator Ralph Shortey has filed a bill that bans foods or products using aborted human fetuses, claiming “there is a potential that there are companies that are using aborted human babies in their research and development of basically enhancing flavor for artificial flavors.”

Essay Question: Why do we lock so many of our fellow citizens up? [Note: “Because they're black” is not an acceptable reason.]

Translation: Tennessee Tea Party leaders insist that "no portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens.” in textbooks or classroom teaching. That is, no mention of "made-up criticism" of the Founding Fathers by mentioning that they owned slaves or slaughtered Indians. "We seek to compel the teaching (of) the truth regarding the history of our nation and the nature of its government.” Me, too. Try Howard Zinn's "A People's History".

Posturing: Researchers have found that using tablet computers like the Apple iPad on your lap can cause neck and shoulder stress. Microsoft assisted in the research.

SAR #12024

2012-01-24T07:44:00.000-06:00

Investment advice: if it burns, buy it.

Open Marriage: The Eu has agreed to stop buying oil from Iran... in six months. C'mon, isn't that like asking for a divorce effective in six months, but until then wanting spousal privileges? And as part of the divorce, they don't want Iran to ~~change the locks on the front door~~ block the Strait of Hormuz. These guys have been taking marriage advice from Newt.

Let's Make A Deal: You never thought Obama was actually going to investigate and prosecute the banking giants for their part in the housing debacle, so why act surprised at the spineless giveaway? Or do you think that giving $1,800 consolation prizes to 10% of those who have been swindled out of their homes is adequate? No jail time & a hollow promise not to get caught again. Phah. [This trial balloon appears to have crashed & burned.]

Echo: Folks making $30,000 a year, buying $600,000 apartments, expecting a 20-30% return in less than a year are now finding that their apartment is worth only $400,000 and there are no 'bigger fools' around to buy at even that price. Sound familiar? Well, that's because China's housing bubble resembles the US bubble, except theirs is just starting to pop. But don't worry, it'll be contained.

One For Our Side: The Supreme Court has ruled that the cops can't physically attach a GPS device on your car without a warrant. At least, that is, if they want to track you "for an extended period of time." So the government can spy on us, just not continuously.

Rose Is Rose: House Republicans say that their budget plan - which hasn't been formulated yet - will include an alternative vision to the “cradle-to-grave welfare state". Specifically the unwritten document will specify substantial cuts in Medicare ~~and turn it over to the insurance companies~~.

Leaks vs. Leaks: A former CIA official who publicly confirmed the use of waterboarding in interrogations and in doing so revealed the identity of two CIA officers now faces 20 years in prison, which is considerably longer than Dick Cheney got for outing a CIA covert officer.

Bushite Iraq: Under a law called "Freedom of Expression of Opinion, Assembly, and Peaceful Demonstration," Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is intimidating, beating, detaining and torturing those who are foolish enough to express an opinion that does not meet government approval.

Anomaly Is As Anomaly Does: TSA at Nashville said "an anomaly" on Senator Rand Paul's right leg "triggered an alert" that resulted in his being escorted from the screening area by police when he declined to be patted down. A half-hour later, rebooked on a different flight, Paul went through the same screening devices without triggering an alarm, raising the question of the validity of either the first or the second screening.

Pick A Number: Joe Granville claims the Dow will fall 4000 points by year's end. Optimist.

Nation Building: Political factions are tearing apart what little central government the US and David Petraeus were able to cobble together before declaring victory and skedaddling. Opposition politicians are particularly upset over Obama's recent characterization of Maliki's government as inclusive, efficient, independent and transparent - none of which terms can be applied to anything in Iraq, much less Maliki's government.

Priorities: KY Gov. Beasher's budget cuts higher education and basic services and - he admits - "is inadequate for the needs of the state's people." There is, however, $43 million to help a creationist theme park teach Bible lessons to the uneducated, much like the art in medieval churches.

Porn O'Graph: Down in the valley...

SAR #12023

2012-01-23T07:30:00.000-06:00

What's the future? Who's got the map? Where are we going?

Short Take: The fact that the Mario Brothers (Italian PM Mario Monti and ECB President Mario Draghi) are working on a permanent European rescue fund should tell you all you need to know about the future of Greece and the euro. They want the €500 million European Stability Mechanism (doesn't that sound really, really technical?) doubled. Germany's Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaüble ~~politely~~ said no, that “We are sticking to what was agreed in December.” [Program note: A weak euro bolsters Germany's exports.]

Because I'm Bigger: The US used an unmanned drone to kill a British citizen of Lebanese origin in Somalia. The US is not at war with Great Britain, Lebanon, or Somalia.

Slippery Slope: If Greece gets to knock off about half of what it owes to “public” holders of its debt and get a very low interest rate on the rescheduled balance, why should anyone else – Hungary, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy – even pretend to try to make their payments?

Keystone Kop: John Boehner says he may hold millions of dollars in tax breaks for American workers hostage in order to play mind games with Obama over the Keystone XL pipeline, insisting the pipeline construction be approved before an extension of the payroll tax holiday is considered.

Q&A: Should the West intervene in Syria? Depends, how much oil do they have?

Moral Deficit Reduction: Instead of simply reforming taxes so they revert back to the progressive taxation of say the 1950's, why not retroactively reform them to that level, making those in the top 10% - who have gained almost all the increase in income in the last 30 years – start paying back what they really owe the country?

Know Snow: The big story isn't the mildness of the winter, it's the lack of snow – the dryness. Those who drink the snow melt come summer best be doing the snow dance.

Precisely: Studies suggest that students drop out of engineering coursework because they don't want to do the homework. Which is fine with me, I want my engineering done by someone who did the extra credit homework. That attitude towards working at some goal also explains a lot of other things.

SAR #12021

2012-01-21T07:30:00.000-06:00

Should we surrender to the bankers now, or wait until we have nothing left?

On The Up and Up: Sales of previously owned houses were up 3.6% in December, y/y, the third consecutive month showing gains. For the year, 2011's previously owned house sales were up 1.7% over 2010. Taking a bit of the luster from the sales numbers were the sales prices, which were down. Again. Some more.

Candide, Indeed: Two months ago the European banking system was in such bad shape that a coordinated intervention by the European Central Banks was rushed into existence, and billions were shoveled into the banks, which turned around and parked them at the Central Banks. What did that solve? The banks still have a 26 to 1 leveraging, where a strong wind of a 4% decline in their already worthless assets would doom them. The LTRO charade was the best the ECB could come up with to hide their monetizing EU bonds - except that it was neither successfully hidden nor did the banks buy the sovereign bonds they were supposed to. So how is it everything is getting better over in the best of all possible worlds?

Fine Print: A couple of ~~wives~~ years ago, Newt insisted that “the people have every right to ask the tough questions.” Yesterday he said that asking about past dishonesty and moral lapses was “despicable”. Not the dishonesty and the moral lapse, mind you. Just the asking.

Finer Print: Gingrich also refused to release documents relating to $300,000 fine levied after the House investigated what they could find of his ethics.

Cow/Cabbage: The bloom is slipping from the rose of global growth projections. The IMF now sees two years of recession in Italy, while “the global recovery is threatened by the growing tensions in the euro area." Overall, world GDP growth is projected to be 3.3% in 2012 and 4% next year – both downgrades from earlier guesses.

True or False? “We now live in an era of unmitigated propaganda that is accepted much as propaganda in wartime.”

Civilized Discourse: Maine's governor, Tea Partiest Paul LePage, asserts that if the state's Health and Human Services budget isn't decimated, he will permanently close the state's public school system. The 61% of Maine voters who did not vote for LePage are less than thrilled, especially those the governor wants to toss off of Medicaid in order to fund his tax cut for the rich last year.

Chocolates: Debt-to-GDP has declined in only 3 countries since the current crisis began - the US, South Korea and Australia. US households are, it is thought, about one-third of the way through their required deleveraging, and attempts to re-inflate the economy through bubblicious credit is not helping. Deleveraging has been mostly absent in Europe - the UK and Spain get singled out as the worst miscreants.

Surprise! Analysts say that Romney's tax plan would only increase the national deficit by $600 billion in 2015. That makes Mitt the better of the tax and spend wannabes; Gingrich, Perry and Santorum's plans would all increase the annual deficit by over a trillion. All of them achieve this by cutting taxes for the rich and slashing social spending for the rest of us.

SAR #12020

2012-01-20T07:30:00.001-06:00

Someone is watching, someone is always watching.

Up + Down = Even: December's CPI was essentially flat. Energy costs declined enough to offset increases in nearly everything else. For the year, food prices have risen 4.7%, while gasoline prices increased 10%.

Offense/Defense: Yves makes a good argument that Madame Lagarde did not ask for more money because she thought the IMF would get another $500 million, but because it wouldn't and thus she'd be able to say “I tried... “

Trust, Inc. The Fed, having secretly sold $7 billion in crummy assets to Credit Suisse for an unknown amount said it had determined that "the winning bid represented good value for the public." How good a good value, we're not allowed to know.

Unclear On The Concept: The Republicans held a debate on abortion, with each candidate being asked to describe the punishment they would mete out to baby-killing doctors and the mothers who willingly participated in the murder of their unborn.

Roller Coaster: New unemployment claims were claimed to decrease 50,000 (12.5%) to 352,000. The experts expected 384,000.

A Nation of Laws: Newt Gingrich is again promising that he will faithfully execute all US laws that he agrees with. But he also promises to point out those instances where the Supreme Court has made errors and pay no attention to rulings he personally does not like. Earlier he threatened to arrest federal judges who didn't learn from their mistakes. Someone should tell Newt that promising to "faithfully execute the laws" doesn't mean killing them.

Unexpectedly #472: December housing starts fell 4.1%, while the experts agreed they would fall less than 1%. Of course in November the same report unexpectedly jumped 9.3%. As Artie Shaw used to say, "Verrry interesting."

If You're Doing Nothing Wrong... NYPD - with the DoD as interested observer - is planning to equip cops with ~~x-ray vision glasses~~ Terahertz Imaging Detection scanners to provide a fig leaf for their extensive and illegal 'stop-and-frisk' operations. The goal is to remove guns from the hands of ~~citizens~~ criminals. The device will only be used in “reasonably suspicious circumstances”, in which the Second and Forth Amendments do not apply.

Asked & Answered: Is it different this time? Historically, deliberate governmental decisions to adopt austerity programs have been followed by hard times. Define 'hard times'.

Can't Anybody Here Play This Game? Bloomberg had two stories following the release of the DOE Gasoline Inventory survey. The first read "Oil Extends Gain After DOE Reports Unexpected Decrease in Inventories." Soon thereafter there was, "Crude Futures Decline as Gasoline Inventories Increase to 10-Month High."

I Know This Much Is True: Romney's taxes put the lie to the GOP's constant "the rich are over-taxed" bullshit.,

Long/Short: Why will the Presidential rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline have no effect on the continued mining of Canadian tar sands? The long answer is "Peak Oil" and the short answer is "Profits".

Unopposed: To qualify as a GOP wannabe, the candidate must demonstrate a belief in things that are patently false. This has resulted in a field composed of those who are not very smart, those who are not rational and those who are simply cynical. Some have managed to combine more than one of these qualities.

SAR #12019

2012-01-19T07:52:00.001-06:00

There are no possible worlds where the impossible happens.

The Greek Train Robbery: A group of hedge funds that picked up Greek bonds at very distressed prices is threatening to block attempts to avoid a Greek default unless they are awarded enormous profits on their ~~blackmail~~ investment. After all, the hedgies have CDS that (theoretically) will pay them when Greece defaults. Say, remember AIG?

Because I Said So: The Florida Senates rules committee is considering a bill that would permit privatization of state programs and services be accomplished in secret.

Cup/Lip: Saudi Arabia produced 10,047,000 barrels a day in November, 1,788,000 b/d more than November 2010, but their net exports have fallen from 9.1 mbd in 2005 to about 8 mbd now as internal consumption grows. And the increased production means an increase in the rate of depletion, too, suggesting Saudi Arabia will approach zero net petroleum exports in less than 20 years.

Eggs/Basket: The US electrical industry is turning from expanding wind and nuclear generation to building new gas-fired plants to take advantage of the currently abundant supplies of cheap natural gas. “Currently abundant” being the key phrase.

Present at the Destruction: Bats may soon be joining the American bison and the passenger pigeon in extinction. White-nose fungus has already killed nearly 7 million bats.

Odds On Favorite: Swiss mathematicians have shown that the risk of extreme climate events is largely underestimated. They have developed a model that takes into account parameters such as climate change, allowing researchers to predict extreme risks more precisely. According to standard weather models, the 2003 heat wave was statistically impossible. Actually, there was a five in ten thousand chance for the event to occur. But it is six times more likely to recur by 2050.

"All Hope Abandon..." The scientists behind The Limits to Growth have said that there will not be another sequel to their study. If they start from current conditions, there is no plausible outcome other than over shoot followed by collapse; remember the petri dish experiments?

SAR #12018

2012-01-18T07:33:00.001-06:00

Actually, you are the other guy, the one with the short straw.

Clip & Save: Fitch Ratings says that Greece will default on its debts before the March 20th bond payments (€14.5 billion, which it cannot pay) are due. What's 50% of nothing?

Modesty: Mitt Romney - whose income puts him into the top one-tenth of one percent - not the 1%, but the 0.1% - says he pays "about 15%" of his income in taxes. He goes on to explain that his income isn't really income, but rewards he's still earning for putting people out of work in his Bain Capital days. Oh, sure, he has some other income, including a "modest" amount from speaking fees. Only $370,000 last year.

It's A Gas: Natural gas continues its plunge into unprofitably, with a million Btu priced at its lowest point in a decade, going for $2.46, down from a 52-week high of $5.28. The problem with getting rich fracking around is the oversupply that the fracking around only makes worse.

Let Us Count The Ways: I'm glad I live in a free, democratic society governed by laws, and not someplace where the government continually monitors its citizens' telephone conversations and Internet use, conducts warrantless searches, indefinitely detains citizens without trail or judicial review or ships them overseas to be tortured by others, or simply murders them. Sure, in the US the president can take away your freedom on his own authority, but you have rights. Right?

Plan Ahead: The government say it plans to develop effective treatments for Alzheimer’s by 2025. Plan accordingly.

Renting Out The Commons: Here's an interesting discussion on how on-street parking should be priced, which is a great introduction to the moral economics of the commons. Pro/con 1,000 word essays are due by the end of the week.

Location, Location, Location: For your daughter's wedding, why not rent the Acropolis for the day? At $2,000 it's a steal. You have to pretend you're making a feature film and clean up afterward, but the neighbors will be jealous and that's the whole point anyway.

Walking the Floor Over You: After a trauma, don't go try to sleep it off. Research shows that sleep preserves the negative emotional response, while staying awake tends to lessen the strength of the emotional connection. Ernest Tubb had the right idea.

SAR #12017

2012-01-17T07:38:00.001-06:00

Amusingly, the US was founded to protect the citizenry from the government.

Text Evasion: The saddest part of the NY Times-instigated discussion of truth's place in the news is that it is a serious discussion about whether printing lies qualifies as news. If a politician lies the story should not spread the lie, but point out that he (or she) lied. Not that lying politicians is exactly news. Wouldn't the world have been a better place if the Times had headlined "Bush & Cheney tell more lies about Iraq!"?

Decryption: The US says it has ~~told Israel not to attack Iran just yet~~ intensified its coordination with Israel over policy on Iran.

Supplying Demands: In response to the expected decline in world petroleum demand caused by the effects of the worsening financial crisis in the euro zone, OPEC has cut its forecast for 2012's growth in petroleum demand by one tenth of one percent. OPEC is currently producing at its highest level in over 3 years. Norway, the world's eighth-largest oil exporter, expects its production will decline this year. Regardless of demand levels, according to Saudi Oil Minister al-Naimi, the price of power is $100 a barrel. Not the cost to produce petroleum, but the price they Saudis need in order to buy off their restless citizens and stay in power.

Discuss: "the use of fossil fuels should be made a crime against humanity"

Echo: John Bolton, the former Bush administration nutcase who went around assuring everyone that Saddam had WMD – nuclear, biological, yougurt-based, whatever - now says that the sky is falling and Iran is closer to being able to build a nuclear bomb than anyone but he and a few other neocons realize. The people pushing for war against Iran are the same neocons who pushed for the invasion of Iraq. Sorry, John, I gave at the office.

Allowance: My teen-aged granddaughters love their iPhones. Their parents love their iPads and Apple's iProfits. They, like CNBC announcers, like Steve Jobs, pretend not to know that Apple's iProfits are made by 13-year old Chinese kids living 15 to a 12 by 12 foot dorm, working 16 hours a day for 70 cents an hour. Hey, I bet there's an app for that.

Crime Beyond Punishment: Authorities in Florida suspect that an arsonist destroyed one of the oldest cypress trees in the world. The 3,500-year-old tree, known locally as “The Big Tree,” went up in flames early Monday morning, Sometimes I'm not overly proud to be human.

SAR #12016

2012-01-16T07:32:00.001-06:00

The experiment in unlimited monetary expansion will continue.

Static: Completely ignoring S&P's observation that “a reform process based on a pillar of fiscal austerity alone risks becoming self-defeating”, Frau Merkel still insists that Greece (and others) embrace even more austerity, citing cases of IMF imposed austerity where “very strong phases of growth come after a certain phase of recession." No, don't tell her the IMF now says that austerity is wrong. Now. For Europe.

War Games: The US is keeping two carrier strike groups in the Persian Gulf and sending extra combat troops to the region. The Pentagon says the deployments are not a prelude to war, but are simply “a contingency force”. What contingency? War, of course.

Debtors' Prism: Banks made a lot of really bad loans with a lot of highly leveraged funds. These loans are not going to be paid back. Those who took the loans are essentially bankrupt and can't pay the banks. The banks, in turn, cannot pay back the borrowing (leveraging) they did to make the loans and do not have the capital resources to cover them; they too are bankrupt. This means those whose funds the loan-makers used will not be getting their funds back, either. Anyone who says this can all be worked out without massive suffering is either a Wall Street lackey or a central banker. Or both.

Crime Pays: There is no evidence that for-profit prisons save taxpayers money. There is mounting evidence that for-profit prisons are more violent than state run ones. And there is a strong suspicion that they benefit politicians handsomely. Or so some in Florida are saying.

Extortion: European banks have sold much of their holdings of Greek sovereign debt to hedge funds, which is holding up the Greek restructuring negotiations because the hedgies think they are in the driver's seat and can demand less in the way of a haircut or get paid by the CDS bets they've made.

Back Of The Envelope: If an effective embargo on Iranian oil comes about (big if), what will really happen is that those Iranian customers the US can lean on will buy their oil elsewhere and those who don't kowtow to Uncle will up their purchases and the world will wobble along. If conflict escalated and Iran's production was taken off the market, a 25 - 50% increase in price would be expected. If the Straits of Hormuz are blocked and 20% of the world's production (and 35% of the export-available production) lost, car-pooling would be the least of your concerns.

Ex-pats: When Obama, on signing the NADA act, said he wouldn't use its indefinite detention provisions against US citizens. That's because the Enemy Expatriation Act was on the way, giving him the power to strip US citizens of their citizenship and then tuck them away forever without trial.

Porn O'Graph: My, how big you've grown.

SAR #12014

2012-01-14T07:30:00.000-06:00

The United States has given war a bad name.

Kristallnacht: Finally. S&P's long expected downgrade of everything European arrived with no great surprises - 'BB' Portugal; 'BBB' Ireland, Italy; 'A' Spain and, most importantly, France steps down to 'AA'. This leaves Germany even more power among the EU equals. S&P explained “Today's rating actions are primarily driven by our assessment that the policy initiatives that have been taken by European policymakers in recent weeks may be insufficient to fully address ongoing systemic stresses in the eurozone." The downgrades will have more political than economic impact, and leave serious questions about the status of the ESFS and the overall international monetary system. Will S&P follow-up with similar downgrades for major European banks?

Deck Chairs: President Obama says that by merging six trade and business agencies into a single, export-oriented bureau the US can double its exports. It was not immediately clear who needed more US munitions.

Arrested Development: Participation in the US labor market has dropped by 4.8 million workers over the last 3 years. If they were still considered as unemployed instead of having been disappeared by the BLS, the US unemployment rate would be 11.3%. Out of sight, out of mind.

Dealing Off The Bottom: Goldman Sachs has offered the NY Fed $3 billion for $20 billion of crappy AIG bonds the Fed swallowed back in 2008. Don't polish up the altruism award just yet, they're in it for the money.

Healthy Care Costs: Stop me if you've heard this one: AstraZeneca raised list prices for its drugs by 9.5%, Novartis raised prices 8.5%, and Pfizer 7%. Inflation? Nah, it's just about the profits.

Greeks Not Bearing Gifts: Restructuring talks between Greece and its private bondholders have broken down, raising the likelihood of a hard default by Greece before the end of March. An agreement was a necessary precondition for the next installment of bailout funding. Now the ECB, EU and IMF have the excuse they needed to stand aside and let Athens implode.

Porn O'Graph: My, how you haven't grown.

SAR #12013

2012-01-13T07:30:00.001-06:00

Mitt's persistence suggests Republican voters are not crazy after all.

Recess: The EU, understanding that a the last thing the euro needs is further economic contraction brought on by soaring oil prices, wants to delay implementing the Iranian oil embargo by six months. Which is wildly optimistic time table.

Dead Man Walking: Sears has lost its access to the credit financing that bridges the span between paying for inventory and selling the inventory. This is the step immediately before suppliers demand cash on delivery, which is the precursor to bankruptcy filling. K-Mart is also rumored to be consulting bankruptcy advisors. Save up for the blue-light specials.

Or Else: The European Union has given Hungary "a final warning" that it would start legal action (?) unless the current government reversed its march toward single-party dictatorship.

Present At The Creation: TransCanada & the GOP are back, zombielike, insisting that the Keystone pipeline project will create 20,000 American jobs. It will, but only if hiring a guy in December and not firing him until January counts as creating 2 jobs. And if you can count jobs created in Canada – about a third of the purported 20,000 - as 'American', and can count jobs that have already been finished (mostly in Canada) as jobs that the pipeline will create. And you certainly don't want to acknowledge the jobs the pipeline will destroy in the US. And these are all transitory, temporary jobs. The pipeline will create, at best, a couple of hundred permanent jobs. Parts is parts.

Occam's Razor: Why do well-off people shoplift? The standard answer is a bunch of psychobabble about depression, lack of control, getting even for perceived slights and so on. Maybe it's simply who they really are when nobody's watching.

What Big Teeth You Have, Grandma: The IMF says it will give further help to Greece only if it can convince its bondholders to take even larger haircuts. Germany says it will give further help to Greece only if it meets conditions that no Greek government can accede to and survive. But then, who said Germany and the IMF have much interest in Greece's survival?

Take a Pew: The wealthy should not dismiss the #Occupy movement lightly. Recent research confirms that two-thirds of Americans believe there are serious conflicts between the rich and the poor in the country. Even those making over $67,000 a year agree, as do 55% of Republicans. Another sign that the American myth is evaporating.

Why Don't They Eat Cake? Europe's leaders seem puzzled that the euro crisis hasn't gone away. They don't seem to understand that demand-reducing austerity measures reduce economic activity, that those who have their pensions cut or lose their jobs don't have any money, so they can't spend and so the economy stalls and tax revenues dive. Seems like a simple concept, but perhaps it doesn't translate well. Eventually these same leaders will be stunned when angry voters throw out the EU/IMF appointed governments.

Silly Question: Are drones watching you? Better question: Whose drones are watching you?

Stopped Clock: Mitt Romney thinks that class warfare in the US is based on the envy the 99% of us feel for the "millionaires and billionaires and executives and Wall Street." Keep it up folks, we're starting to get through to them.

End Run: Republicans are reportedly planning to use the commerce clause of the Constitution as their authority to approve the Keystone XL pipeline without Presidential involvement. Don't they know the Constitution doesn't apply anymore?

Cheer Up: Over 46 million Americans live in poverty, and things are likely to get worse before they get better. If they ever do. While the recession is technically over^TM, the cuts in social support payments and the poor wages of available jobs will continue to force families into poverty for several more years, as the long-term unemployed discover that the jobs they once had no longer exist.

Porn O'Graph: I can get it for you retail.

SAR #12012

2012-01-12T07:38:00.001-06:00

My interest in these things is more than idle curiosity...

Hangover: The unemployment figure rose 26,000 last week, to 399,000. Unexpectedly.

Photo Finish: Will oil keep climbing, or will the price collapse? Continued deterioration of the European economy would cut demand and thus price. But an interruption of the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf would spike prices higher. Eneey, Meeny...

Th ey're Back: Two US drones attacked a hovel in Pakistan's tribal region, killing four people who, being dead, were obviously militants.

Trust Us: Researchers have now demonstrated what was feared all along - some of the genetic modifications made to food crops can survive digestion and take up residence in the blood and organs of humans who eat them. But it is far too late to panic - GM crops of corn, rice, soybeans, cotton, alfalfa and others have become ubiquitous, thanks in no small part to the US State Department pushing Monsanto's little darlings on client states around the world.

Three Guesses: Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan was assassinated by a bomb planted by ________ agents.

Size Matters: The Transportation Security Administration says that cupcakes with a thick layer of icing are a security threat. It also says that ““In general, cakes and pies are allowed in carry-on luggage, ~~however the officer in this case was hungry~~.”

Nevermore: Drones now account for 31 percent of all military aircraft. The Army, for example, has 5,346 Ravens, a tiny flying spy used to monitor battlefields ~~and civilian populations~~.

Resolution: A 2% growth rate leads to doubling about every 80 years. The human population has grown at about that rate for the last 200 years, fed by fossil fuels and the unrestrained exploitation of natural resource and the unfettered despoliation of the environment – land, sea and air. This cannot continue, and thus will not. We must very rapidly reduce both our population and our thoughtlessness, or Ms. Nature will close our account. People ask “What level of human population is sustainable?” as if there were a positive integer that would answer the question.

Thirsty Business: A bill in the Florida legislature would transfer public drinking water to the care and keeping of a privately owned entity. What could go wrong?

Yes, But... Using the 'we're bigger than you are' defense, the US declines to be taken to court over experiments involving sexually transmitted diseases conducted on unsuspecting Guatemalans. The US does not deny conducting the experiments, it just denies the victims and their descendants the right to take the US to court. Besides, we ran the syphilis experiments here at home.

'Nuff Said: The RNC, following up the Roberts' Court ruling on corporate campaign donations, wants to overturn the 1908 law that bans corporations from directly buying political candidates. Logic, if not prudence, is on their side.

Porn O'Graph: It's the oil, stupid.

SAR #12011

2012-01-11T07:43:00.001-06:00

The history of humanity is written by the survivors.

War Drums: It is becoming clear that President Obama is prepared to use military force against Iran if it is necessary for his re-election.

Economic Silence: The appalling results of applying severe austerity measures to the Greek economy explain why conducting morality based experiments on whole populations is a poor idea.

House That Again? After over three years of pretending the gorilla was just a house pet, the executive branch has suddenly seen the light and is focusing on the housing, foreclosure, social unrest aspects of the dysfunctional economy. The banks are deep in trouble again and need more money injected, the housing rental program may well do the trick, while conning the public into thinking the project is for their benefit.

Volunteers: France and Germany have instructed Greece to accept the debt deal offered them, and has told private creditors they must take bigger losses. The 'or else' is a promise that promised EU/ECB/IMF funds will not arrive as promised. “We must see progress on the voluntary restructuring of Greek debt,” Merkel said. You, you, and you – step forward.

Sports Quiz: Does God care who wins a football game?

Fire Drill: China's imports increased only 11.8% y/y in December. Only. That's down from a 22% gain in November. This reflects a slowdown in China's rate of growth, which threatens the global economy, as if it weren't shaky enough already.

Look Ma! No Hands: Chris Cook delivers a long article about manipulating the price of oil, demonstrating it is possible to write a long article about oil without actually mentioning oil.

Ratings Game: Fitch Ratings says Italy, Spain, Belgium, Ireland, Slovenia and Cyprus may see their credit ratings downgraded by one or two notches by the end of this month. Italy is the one to watch for, as Fitch says, “The future of the euro will be decided at the gates of Rome.”

Draining Swamps: Muddling through as a strategy assumes that there is an end to the muddle. Bailing out a Ponzi scheme with a new and bigger Ponzi scheme is also a questionable undertaking.

Mythology: Studies have repeatedly shown that the US is far less open and mobile in social and economic terms than other comparable nations. The studies also show that Americans do not believe this is true, which is why it continues to be true. US society is so unequal that it is hard to pretend the inequalities are not deliberate.

Trust: European banks have half a trillion dollars squirreled away at the ECB, rather than lend it to other banks & financial institutions or – heaven forbid – risk it on sovereign bonds or investments in the real economy.

The Cost Is Clear: A Florida Atlantic University study found that the sea level increase now anticipated over the next 20 to 30 years will bring flooding to South Florida cities, salinate drinking water, and drive up utility bills. Maybe the increased costs will drive home the point Dr. Hansen has been making for the last 20 or 30 years.

Porn O'Graph: Credit where credit is more or less not due.

SAR #12010

2012-01-10T07:36:00.001-06:00

Pending catastrophes are probably farther away than advertised.

Let Them Eat... The Merkozy are meeting again to solve the eurozone crisis again, this time through some form of Tobin tax. But the undercurrent at their meeting is the question of how many more chances Sarkozy will have and what happens if he loses out to a replacement who is less likely to turn over French budget and tax powers to Brussels.

On The Horizon: There is a major administration effort underway to create expectations around "solving the housing crisis" by converting foreclosed houses into rental units. Such a program would depend on "bulk REO sales to investors", but only if a way is found to pay the banks more than the houses are worth and let the investors buy them for less than they are worth. Guess who gets to cover the spread.

Bigger Truck: They lined up two deep in Berlin to lend Germany their money for six months for free. Actually, the interest rate was a negative 0.01%. Don't they know they're supposed to be worried about hyperinflation? The Netherlands sold securities due in March at a yield of zero a few days ago. It's not about the return on their money, but their worry about the return of their money.

Footnote: The last time Brent oil reached 88.50 euro/barrel was in August 2008, just before the wheels came off the wagon.

Clip & Save: United States Secretary of Defense ( and former director of the CIA) Leon Panetta acknowledged publicly that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons. "Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No." Contrast that with reports from unnamed 'diplomats' claiming that Iran is building bombs in a secret underground bunker. Probably the same bunker where Cheney was held all those months.... The US is also reported to have nuclear weapons.

Unexpectedly: Americans spent $13.6 billion they didn't have on cars in November, and put $5.6 billion more on their credit cards as non-revolving credit debt increased 10% and revolving charges went up 8.5% over previous months. And in America, where the entire economy depends on ever increasing debt, this was a good thing.

Caution, Men At Work: Since unemployment bottomed in December 2009, over 90% of all new jobs have gone to men - men have gained about 1.5 million jobs while women have lost 750,000 in the same time.

Careful Wording: Norway's Statoil says it has discovered "a second major oil reserve in the Arctic" with a possible 300 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalents. Note that it is "oil equivalents". Note also that 300 million barrels sounds a lot better than "has found enough oil to supply the world for three and a half days."

Philosophy 101: Should unemployment benefits be conditional on moral behavior? The Republicans, in December, wanted to deny benefits to those who do not have a high school diploma. Several GOPers want to drug-test applicants. Maybe we could require proof of attendance at church or Wednesday night bible study...

Succinct: The Romney campaign lies, all the time, about everything.

Microcosm: If you held any lingering hope at all that we were intelligent enough to avoid catastrophic global climate change, the GOP's success in preventing new energy-efficiency standards from going into effect should disabuse you of that fantasy. The American public insists it has the right to ~~piss in the commons~~ keep dumping CO2 into the atmosphere until there is no more carbon to burn and to hell with the consequences.

D'ya Think? Locals living along the Gulf Coast say that BP's slick PR campaign, aimed at making people think the environment has recovered from the massive oil spill, is simply propaganda.

SAR #12009

2012-01-09T07:27:00.001-06:00

Science doesn't care whether you believe.

Coming Attractions: American, British, Israeli and Iranian warships are reported to be steaming towards the same stretch of water near the Straits of Hormuz. What could possibly go wrong?

Grimm Tales: Spain's unemployment is fast approaching 1 out of 4, Europe as a whole has over 10% unemployed. Italy is paying well over 7% on its bonds. German industrial production dropped 8% while retail sales on the continent sputtered and fell sharply in Germany. Belgium, Malta and Cyprus all face fines from the EU for not being able to control their debt (thus they have more money taken away from them... Good Idea.) France is rushing to impose a form of Tobin transaction tax. And the technocrats in Brussels want a new pact that will allow them to spank countries that break the rules.

Freedom to Suppress: Speaker John Boenher's office, which controls the use of TV camera in the chamber, has once again refused to let C-SPAN broadcast the charade that is supposedly the House in Session (but only 'pro forma' to prevent Obama from getting on with the business of governing) when only two or three Republicans are present and Democrats are not permitted to speak.

Book Talk: UBS warns that the Greek sovereign debt crisis "will deteriorate further than the stressed levels of late November. We do not believe that Greek PSI will take place in a “voluntary” fashion but instead expect coercive restructuring of Greek debt... triggering CDS contracts. Is this an honest prediction or just UBS looking for someone, anyone to bail out the banks? And Greece is just the beginning. The holding company that controls Portugal's second largest retailer has moved to Holland due to worry that Portugal will leave the euro.

Bypass Operations: Global trade is still done in the world's reserve currency, the US dollar. Except for certain trade between China and Japan, China and Iran, India and Japan, China and Russia, Russia and Iran.

Take Two Aspirin: In the US there were shortages of 267 prescription drugs during 2011, a 20% increase from 2010. At least 15 deaths were attributed to the the shortages, which have set successively higher records in each of the last 5 years, up from 58 in 2004. The FDA also said it had prevented more than 100 other shortages during the year. Some shortages were due to plants shut due to contamination or quality problems, some were orphaned when manufactures closed product lines due to a lack of profitability.

Prophets and Losses: SocGen says that a full-blown EU embargo of Iranian oil would push Brent crude into the $125 - $140 a barrel range, and that a shutdown of the Straits of Hormuz would push Brent towards $200 a barrel. Either would be a windfall for Saudi Arabia, but that's a secondary consideration, isn't it?

Times Change: The US once believed that while everyone benefited from good schools, excellent roads, decent parks and playgrounds and public transit, the rich benefited proportionally more and thus should pay proportionally more in taxes. But the rich figured out that they could afford to turn to private replacements for shoddy public goods and services, so they stopped paying taxes and let the country's shared spaces deteriorate. “Public spending on education, infrastructure, and basic research has dropped from 12% of GDP in the 1970s to less than 3% by 2011." The public be damned.

SAR #12007

2012-01-07T08:03:00.001-06:00

It's only funny when someone else steps on the banana peel.

Free Lunch: Freddie Mac will “forbear” mortgage payments from the unemployed for up to a year. Details were not immediately available, but massive abuse is easily predicted, as is the Republican reaction.

Advancing To The Rear: Acknowledging that the American Empire has crested and is in retreat, Obama announced that the US can no longer afford to blunder around the world causing unnecessary pain and suffering and will be reducing its military by half a million troops over the next ten years. In the future the Pentagon will focus on countering terrorism ~~at home~~ and containing the Chinese.

Datenpunkt: German factory orders fell 4.8% m/m in November and foreign orders fell 7.8%, while European retail sales declined 0.7%. Austerity, all around.

Bandwagon: The BLS reported 200,000 new jobs (42,000 of which were part time workers for places like FedX and UPS and will be gone next month) and an unemployment rate of 8.5%. Twenty percent of the jobs previously reported for November were revised away, leaving only 100,000. For the year, the economy added 1.64 million total non-farm jobs and the economy has 6.0 million fewer jobs than in 2007. The number of people not in the labor force (and thus not officially unemployed) is up 7.5 million since 2007 and now stands at 13.1 million. Labor force participation is now at a 27 year low of 64%,The real unemployment rate, using a realistic labor force participation rate, would be 11.4%. Following the BLS approach, when the participation rate reaches 58.5% there will be no unemployed people in the US and the stimulus will have worked.

The Art of War: The object of war is to inflict serious harm on the enemy, generally by military means, but the long history of warfare has often included blockades and sieges. The trade and financial sanctions being imposed on Iran by the US and its dependencies can thus be considered acts of war. As the sanctions reduce the options available to the Iranian regime, the negative costs for doing something catastrophically irrational become less and less. And this is just the beginning.

Speak Softly: Last week Spain's new leaders caved in to US State Department threats and enacted a version of the SOPA, giving copyright holders the right to shut down Internet sites by simply alleging infringement. No legal process, just their say so. Same thing is coming soon to the US, as part of the drive to eliminate tiresome aspects of the Bill of Rights.

Preview: Heavily armed Federal Protective Service officers, wearing body armor and accompanied by dog teams, surrounded the Leesburg, Florida Social Security offices and began stopping seniors and demanding identification in a search for "unauthorized persons involved in potentially disruptive or dangerous activities." DHS said it was "a random training operation". Training for what?

Lock, Stock & Barrel: As part of the negotiations seeking a 50% writedown on its debt, Greece has agreed that the new bonds to be issued would be governed by English law, which permits creditors to seize Greek assets ~~whe~~n if the country defaults on its payments.

Warning, Curves Ahead: Following up on Bernanke's prodding Congress to 'help' banks and investors turn REO housing into rental units, Fed officials are publicly suggesting moves to help re-inflate the housing ~~bubble~~ market, such as having the Fed buy more MBS (that is, buy the dogs from the banks at inflated prices). They also are urging Congress to task Fannie and Freddie to "provide cheaper mortgages to a broader pool of homeowners." This, it is suggested, will help lower unemployment. Somehow.

Porn O'Graph: The good news in perspective.

SAR #12006

2012-01-06T07:30:00.000-06:00

If you want a better world, elect better leaders.

Peak Money: "The world is running out of money. If money is credit, and credit relies on confidence, there is not enough confidence in the financial system to supply the world with the money it needs. ... credit and money have been withdrawn from the system in such staggering amounts that international trade can no longer grow. The world’s central banks are playing a rear guard action by acting as lender of last resort to banks that no longer trust each other and have stopped lending in the interbank market. As liquidity flows out from the system, the rottenness that has corrupted the foundations of global finance is now exposed for all to see." And so on.

Rin-Tin-Tenner: Tax evasion and the movement of ill-gotten gains out of the country has become such a severe problem that the Italian financial police are deploying dogs trained to sniff out euro notes.

Triage: Investors (?) holding Greek sovereign debt are seeing their "voluntary haircut" go from a 50% crew-cut to an 80% Mohawk. Some at the ECB want to abandon the effort to “involve the private sector” and make the Greeks pay far more, while “restoring trust” in the rest of the euro zone thus reducing their financing costs. Except, of course for Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy.

Data Dump: Unemployment initial claims were reported at 372,000, down 15,000, and the 4-week average stands at 373,250 – the lowest it has been since June 2008. Light vehicle sales, at 13.56 million SAAR, were up 8.9% y/y and were the strongest since June 2008. Gift horses, do not look too closely.

Sampler: Where once Americans dreamed of owning a home, now they dream of affording an apartment.

Sticks and Stones: Despite our expectations and the forecasts of experts, there are not going to be any dramatic changes, just continued, unrelenting decay all around. Oil prices are never going to come down, house prices are not going to go up, and US wages will continue to erode, year after year. True, the system is broken, but it has tremendous inertia.

Motivation: In the legislation to convert REO/foreclosed houses to rental units, expect investors to get access to federal money at below-market rates, banks (and the GSEs) to receive above-market prices for houses they cannot sell, and the taxpayers of 2045 to foot the bill.

Clarification: The non-partisan Tax Policy Center says that Romney's tax plan would increase taxes on low-income families by 60% while cutting taxes for the middle-class 2% and reducing taxes on the rich by 15%. Any questions?

As Easy As 1 – 2 – 3: First the financial/economic crisis discredited America's free-market brand of capitalism. Then the European version collapsed. Now the Chinese approach (socialized state capitalism) is wobbling badly. How then shall we next try to organize the economy? Is there any absolutely sure way of generating wealth and prosperity? No.

Beautification Project: The US defines its foreign policy and foreign military adventures as being “pro-democracy”, while even the most casual observation reveals that “democracy” to the US power elite denotes a country whose leadership will serve America's interests, while dictatorships are countries that do not take orders from Washington. Democracy in terms of the various countries internal politics is of no concern to America, Inc.

Ipso Facto: Three New Hampshire GOPers want the state to adopt a requirement that all legislation must trace its origin directly from the Magna Carta. Beats insisting on implementing the Ten Commandments.

Reminder: “Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes? Yeah, me neither...”

SAR #12005

2012-01-05T07:31:00.001-06:00

"Crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought." Rudiger Dornbusch

Hidden Message: Bank stocks dropped as soon as it was learned that Obama would appoint a director for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Why ~~should~~ will having someone looking out for the consumer threaten bank profits?

The Snidely Solution: Bernanke wants Congress to help make the US a nation of renters by “devising policies that could help facilitate the conversion of foreclosed properties to rental properties.” Is there a Federal Apartment Rental Management Team in our future?

Caution: Not every disastrous prediction for the New Year – Iran, Italy, oil, the euro, China, Ron Paul - will prove accurate; but just one or two would be more than sufficient.

Introductory Comments: Budget cutting governments are as likely to get re-elected as big-spending governments. Austerity may save the economy, it is less likely to save the regime. The 20th Century is replete with instances where austerity resulted in unpleasant social outcomes. History also suggests that internal stresses tend to give rise to external stresses. There, I thought I phrased that quite delicately.

Is It Getting Warm In Here? European banks turn ever more to the ECB to safely hide their free money - €453 billion at latest count. That's €453 billion that the banks were given on the foolish hope they might buy sovereigns. Banks are greedy, not dumb.

Ms Manners: An appellate court has upheld an $18 billion fine against Chevron for environmental damages in Ecuador. The original sum was only $8.6 billion, but the amount was more than doubled because Chevron refused to apologize. How much could a simple "sorry" and some flowers have cost?

Apples To Apples: Why do Republicans cite our children and grandchildren's lives as reasons for doing something drastic now to reduce the federal deficit, while climate change - a far more serious threat – is not?

Day In The Park: A judge ruled that in order to prevail in its suit against Countrywide, MBIA needs only show that Countrywide misrepresented the nature and quality of the loans backing the bonds MBIA was insuring.

Complication: When guestimating how much oil will be available in 10 years, remember that Saudi Arabia's internal consumption will double in that time. What they burn at home, they will not be selling on the open market. And in 20 years, they won't have any left over to export at all. And that's before we figure in their depletion rate...

Pending Question: When is the stock market going to encounter the real world?

And Your Point Would Be? Stock trading, in and of itself, does not create wealth. Trading stocks very rapidly with computers does not create anything useful to the real economy. Taxing trades - say at 0.25% or a penny a share or somesuch - would put a sudden stop to a lot of the churning in the market.

Yes, But: The US has imposed sanctions on institutions that deal with Iran's central bank, which has led Turkey to seek a wavier for oil, while South Korea simply increased its oil agreement with Iran, without even saying "May I?"

Porn O'Graph: It's good to be rich.

SAR #12004

2012-01-04T07:30:00.000-06:00

The Republican wannabes all hope Barnum was right.

River City: The Tea Party wing of the GOP in the House intend to use the debate over the renewal of the payroll tax extension to make outrageous demands and drive negotiations to and perhaps beyond the deadline to shut down the government - not because they think they can win, but because they want to swagger home claiming they held to their principles. In the end the adults will take care of things, assuming there are any left in Washington.

Cut and Run: Peter Schiff says that only Ron Paul can Save America. We must be in more trouble than I thought.

Idle Hands: Unemployment among young adults has reached 49% in Spain, 45% in Greece; adult labor force participation in the US has fallen to depression levels at 64%. What's more likely, that the disaffected will spend the day at the beach or following a charismatic leader?

If I Had A Hammer: Romney says that he'll "crack down on China". Maybe he got one of those multi-tools for Christmas.

Talking Out Of School: Olivier Rech, former oil expert for the International Energy Agency, says that petroleum supplies will tighten in the years following 2015, as demand grows and non-OPEC production declines 2.5 to 5% per year. A similar, or steeper, decline in OPEC production is likely, as OPEC's claimed spare production capacity turns out to be mythical. Alternative fuels will not save us, he says, for we are already approaching the upper limit for production of first-generation biofuels and are unlikely to achieve significant production of second generation biofuels for 25 years, and then probably less than 2.5 mbd, which will hardly matter.

Stuff, Rolling Downhill: Bank of America is getting desperate. How desperate? They are calling small business loans, giving their customers a month to come up with the balance of the loan, or have it refinanced at 12%.

Construction Zone: Construction spending unexpectedly rose 1.2% in November, but is still running 2.5% below 2010's pace.

Day Late, Dollar Short: Romney, ignoring what Bernanke's been up to, asserts that “the US must take care of its own crisis, and won’t give a dollar to save Europe.” But then, he also said '“Germany, France, Italy all have the resources to pay back their debts, solve the confidence crisis, invest and start growing again, ideally through a real market economy,” which is pure gibberish.

Indisposed: Remember, the US is still a consumer economy. And the consumer's disposable income has not changed (in real terms) in over five years.

Rolling, Over? This year the G-7 nations have to roll over $7.3 trillion in bonds and come up with over $588 billion in interest payments. International corporations need to roll over nearly $1 trillion during 2012. What's in your wallet?

Instant Replay: “I don’t single out on any group of people, that’s one thing I don’t do,” says Rick Santorum. But he also said, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them other people’s money.”

Names? Name Names! "Drug companies" paid at least 12 Indian doctors in Madhya Pradesh to conduct trials of drugs for sexual dysfunction on 233 unsuspecting youths.

Clearance Sale: Germany says the latest round of discussions with Greece have come to an end, but declined to say if they ended with an agreement to suggest (?) that private creditors accept a 75% markdown, marked down from the voluntary 50% dictated earlier.

Chicken/Egg: The NY Times observed that austerity now reigns as the eurozone crisis deepens, as though the one had little to do with the other.

Porn O'Graph: Your home is an investment. A bad one.

SAR #12003

2012-01-03T07:30:00.000-06:00

The 1% could really use a good war about now.

Check's In The Mail: Obama signed the Defense bill, granting himself the power to incarcerate Americans anywhere at any time for any reason for as long as he wants, with no formal charges, no trial, professing that he'll never use that power. Maybe not, but what about the next guy? And why sign the bill if it's that repugnant? Something smells, besides the Constitution rotting away.

Priorities: Frau Merkel says Europe must cooperate more for the euro to succeed. “A common currency can only really be successful if we in Europe cooperate more than we have done." "Cooperate" is a German word meaning "do what I say".

Terminology: Ben is not, repeat not, bailing out Europe. He said he wouldn't and he's a man of his word. And the word is "swaps". He's swapping dollars - which people still want - for euros - which they don't. Why? Because the Fed does not want Congress to see foreign bank debt on its books and a currency swap with the ECB is not technically a loan. If they loan the dollars to European banks, what can Ben do?

Wrong In So Many Ways: George Will is an experienced snake oil salesman who joins others of his ilk to peddle the misleading 'fact' that America is "a net exporter of petroleum products" portends the return to energy abundance. It does not. Parse the lie: "petroleum products". What's a petroleum product? Something made out of petroleum. Like diesel fuel or kerosene or Vaseline. But it is not petroleum as in crude oil. America still imports about 60% of the petroleum it uses. In fact, the more petroleum products it exports, the more petroleum it must import. There must be a word to describe someone that unscrupulously mendacious, but all I can come up with is ~~"Republican"~~ ‘neocon’.

Exports! Portugal's prime minister, in an effort to increase the country's exports has urged unemployed Portuguese to emigrate, because there is no future for them at home.

Consuming Passion: Before you swallow a lot of the hopium going around about housing and the economy, ponder these: Adjusted for inflation, US consumer spending has grown only 0.2%, employment looks better because more and more people are leaving the job market, real wages fell 16 cents in the last year, an extension of the (luke warm) government stimulus is unlikely and GDP growth is expected to reach 2% if we're lucky. You feeling lucky?

No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service: Europe's largest independent refiner by capacity, Petroplus Holdings AG, is suspending operations at 15 of its 24 refineries because the banks have frozen its access to credit. As credit gets ever tighter in Europe, the continent's credit-dependent industries will tumble, one by one, into the abyss.

Preydiction: About half of all the low-FICO, high loan-to-value mortgages backed by the FHA at the peak of the housing bubble will default - if they haven't already.

Solutions: In at least 34 states, Republicans have introduced strict photo ID/voter laws, as a way of solving a problem. Not the problem of voter fraud - the Bush Justice Department initiated a five year probe that looked at over 300 million votes cast and found only 83 people to prosecute for voter fraud. No, the problem the GOP is solving is that the 11% of Americans who do not possess a government-issued ID (that's 21 million people) are poor and black and generally vote Democratic. That's the problem they're out to solve.

Begin the Beguine: Announcing that its deficit was 8% of GDP, not 6%, Spain unveiled €8.9 billion in budget cuts and surprise increases in income and property taxes, promising that "This is the beginning of the beginning" and that more reforms and harsher austerity are on their way.

I Remember Mama: Boeing is going to take in another $3.48 billion over the next 7 years, chasing the Reagan chimera called Star Wars. Boeing has taken in $18 billion so far, designing and building a missile shield to protect the US from al-Qaeda. Thanks, Ron.

Porn O'Graph: You get what you pay for.

SAR #11365

2011-12-31T08:02:00.001-06:00

The words “in some circumstances” do not appear in the Constitution.

Demonstrations: Egypt's generals demonstrated their contempt for even the pretense of democracy and an open society by sending their security forces into 17 NGO offices, confiscating paperwork and computers and hauling off some of the workers – all in the name of stemming criticism of the corruption, abuse and torture routinely practiced by the military. The West has dutifully wrung its hands and said tsk, tsk.

Plain Plan: Let's all agree that the federal budget with deficits as far as the eye can see is unsustainable. Let's agree: Something Must Be Done. Start with 1) Temporarily – a couple of years - undertake massive deficit spending on infrastructure projects, putting America back to work. 2) Cut spending on the War Machine. 3) Terminate the Bush tax cuts and raise taxes on all income – including capital gains and interest and dividends. 4) Accept that for-profit medicine is non-affordable and act accordingly. And remember there is little or no correspondence between your household budget and those of the government unless you have a printing press in the basement...

Clarification: The IMF and EU say that Hungary's new banking law will compromise the central bank's independence from politics. Hungary says that's the whole point. S&P has downgraded Hungarian debt to junk levels. The government, too, has reached junk level.

If I Tell You, Then It's Not Secret: The administration continues to refuse to tell Congress about the clandestine undeclared wars it is carrying on with drones, nor the extent of the drone warfare being carried out in Pakistan and Yemen. It especially does not want to talk about using drones to assassinate Americans. Congress, after all, long since gave up its right to declare war and oversee the President's use of deadly force.

Camping In: About 40% of homeowners in serious default on their loans - that means not making their payments - have been living rent free for at least two years. Why more folks who are woefully underwater on their loans do not default-in-place is a mystery. Many feel their house is the exception, that it has held its price or will soon rebound. A very large percent think that not paying when you can afford to - even though it is throwing money away - is simply immoral. It is not. Just ask American Airlines – or the example set by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Yes, Mother... It's simple. You are not saving enough. You need to set aside 15% of your pay. That's the minimum. A house is a place to live, it is not an investment. We're running out of greater fools. Make saving a priority. Pay yourself first. If you want to “invest” do it out of what's left after savings, after living expenses, after everything else.

End Run: A federal appeals court has ruled that private parties can do things that the government is constitutionally prevented from doing, and that the private parties may do so at the request of the government without fear of retribution from those whose rights get trampled.

Porn O'Graph: Bushwhacked

SAR #11364

2011-12-30T07:30:00.000-06:00

When the perceptive become suddenly obtuse, blame ideology.

"Unexpectedly": As in initial applications for unemployment unexpectedly jumped 17,000 from last weeks initially reported 364,000, which had, of course been revised upward by 2,000. Actual terminations (smoothed away by 'seasonal adjustments') jumped from 421,000 to 490,000. Unexpectedly.

The Horsemen: Rank the following possible disasters in their order of probability: Collapse of the Eurozone. Oil price spike/shortages due to geopolitical factors. Oil price spike/shortage due to geologic factors. Collapse of the Chinese housing bubble. Economic setbacks due to governmental austerity and budget cutting programs. Natural disasters of enormous scope and damage. Societal upheaval.

Can You Hear Me Now? Starting January 15^th, Verizon plans to charge customers $2 to pay their bill via Verizon. Also via the Internet. I wonder how they feel about pennies piled on the floor of one of their stores?

Collateral, Damaged: Banks in the EU need to roll over about $800 billion a month in order to finance their outstanding loans - one of the dangers of borrowing short and lending long is when the shorts grab you by the shorts. This will not be a problem until, of course, a month comes along when they cannot raise $800 billion in new short term money.

"Unexpectedly II": November's pending sales of existing homes unexpectedly rose 7.3% m/m after an even more unexpected 10.4% increase in October. Doesn't anybody know how to play this game?

Contagioncy Plans: The UK is reported to be planning what steps it will take when the euro break-up begins. It will restrict the movement of money and people in and out of the country, and plans to help thousands of its citizens return from the continent, using the Ministry of Defence to organize and coordinate that effort. A major effort - and not just of the UK but of all governments - will be to obtain and husband the means to obtain basic necessities in a world where most food and energy is imported. And 'means' means dollars.

Playing the Odds: About 5% of the Chinese economy is exports. About 70% of it is construction. The Chinese real estate bubble seems to be collapsing. This will most probably bring on the same problems the US has faced for the past five years. Will the economic problems cause the current food and housing riots to spread, triggering anarchy on a regional or national basis? Stay tuned.

Paper Chase: A predicted increase in foreclosures in 2011 – based on seriously delinquent and in process properties – didn't happen. In fact, foreclosures are down to their lowest level since 2007. Owner occupied properties, in particular, are not being foreclosed. Given the 2.2 million loans either seriously delinquent or “in process” in January, that only 815,000 foreclosures were completed should be seen as a sign of the difficulties mortgage servicers have had meeting the legal requirements to foreclose.

Well, Dry: Hungary held a bond auction and nobody came - all the bids received on its offering of 3-year notes were rejected. Its 10-year debt offering went with a 9.70% interest rate, up from last month's 8.78%.

Playing In Traffic: The DOT says that US drivers drove 2.3% less in October this year than last. This makes 47 consecutive months where miles-driven was less than the previous peak. Higher gas prices and lower employment rates both contributed to the decline.

Precis: “Europe's leaders have spent most of the euro crisis denying there's a euro crisis.” First it was a Greek problem. Then it was the PIGS problem. Then it was 'Club Med'. Italy was flavor of the week recently. But it is not, repeat after me, not a euro problem. Mostly because if the problem is the euro, and it is, there is no acceptable solution.

Limbo: Congress has failed to extend the subsidized conversion of food to fuel, bringing at least a temporary halt to the very bad idea of using fossil fuel energy to turn corn into fuel, a process that at very best was a break-even in terms of energy even while it lined the pockets of a lot of important political contributors. It is unclear if this is a temporary lapse or if the country is finally going to stop wasting $6 billion a year on this boondoggle.

Porn O'Graph: As long as you don't drive to the the grocery store, you're doing fine.

SAR #11363

2011-12-29T07:30:00.000-06:00

Who gets fleeced next?

Resolution: On behalf of climate scientists and the reporters that follow their work, be it resolved that the word "unexpected" will no longer be used to describe Mother Nature's tendency to do things her way. For example, "The glaciers in Peru's Cordillera Blanca mountains are unexpectedly melting faster than conservative IPCC models predict." will henceforth be reported for what they are - mounting indications that we are headed for an environmental disaster will within the lifetimes of at least half the people now alive. It ain't unexpected if respected scientists have been predicting it for decades.

True Faith: This happens to be about oil and gas, but it is the classic American solution to all of problems, big and small. “A lot of the technical problems that exist today will be solved in the not-too-distant future.” - per corporate evangelist Jim Letourneau. Just click your heels.

Penny For Your Thoughts: The euro dropped nearly $0.01 against the dollar in an hour of trading today - with no appreciable cause other than the revival of the very reasonable fear that the eurozone debt crisis is still with us. The euro also hit a 10-year low against the yen. Gold was down 2.25% on the day.

Shopping Tip: Electrical shortages in Uganda are seriously cutting the annual grasshopper harvest. Stock up now. Rare earths are going to be limited, too, as China cuts export quotas.

Word/Wise: DHS says it will (continue to?) monitor the public postings of Twitter and Facebook users, and it will create fictitious user accounts and scan posts of users for key terms in an effort to ~~entrap~~ gather data on users. Your file will be kept for five years and passed around to various government agencies.

Caution Steep Grade Ahead: If our various debt death-traps cannot be cured by issuing more debt, a "sharp and sustained drop" in market averages may well result in 50 - 60% declines by next Christmas. Use lower gears.

Laundry Cycle: Krugman sees "debt-eroding inflation as something helpful in dealing with debt overhang." Maybe so, but it is simply a slow and sneaky way for the government to renege on its debt. Why is impoverishing savers at the expense of spenders a Good Idea? Krugman also claims "we’re awash in savings with no place to go." It that's true, I'm willing to take in the wash.

Precautions: A six-year study showed that those who took multi-vitamins had nothing to show for it but less money.

Swan Song: It would be interesting to see the term "monetary easing" retired and good old fashioned "printing scads of money" resurrected for use in sentences such as " The only thing that will save the Shanghai Composite index from a precipitous fall (if down 30% in a year isn't precipitous) would be for the government to massively inflate the money supply. Like Bernanke does and the ECB is trying to do.

If, Then, Why: Petroleum - WTIC - is back at the $100/barrel mark, but I paid $2.96 at the pump for gasoline today. How's that possible? Petroleum has risen steadily of late, while gasoline prices keep falling. This is counterintuitive at best.

Simple Truths: The deficit is being rattled, like a chain in a dark cellar. Let's turn on some lights: If we digressively reduce the federal budget deficit we will drive up unemployment. The deficit was and is large because the economy collapsed, not because of 'out of control spending'. Social Security will not break the budget. Social Security is fully paid for through 2038, as is. Outrageous profits in the health system will break the budget. Let's shine a little light over in that corner for a while.

Porn O'Graph: Where the ~~Wild~~ Dark Things Hide.

SAR #11362

2011-12-28T07:30:00.000-06:00

Pepper spray - don't leave home without it.

Numbness: US houses have lost another $680 billion in value this year. That's 35% less than the $1.1 trillion they lost last year, according to Zilow. Ignore last year's Zilow report that claimed 2010's loss was $1.7 trillion. And back in 2008, houses lost 2.6 trillion or maybe $3.6 trillion – again according to various Zilow reports. It was all pretend money, it's gone, move along.

Priorities: Big Pharma spends twice as much on marketing as on research. But they maintain their high prices are needed to pay for their ~~profits~~ research.

Saying & Doing: Wannabe Rick Perry, who is still being paid as governor (and as a retired governor), while running around the country debating the other wannabes, has billed Texas taxpayers over $1.4 million for his travel costs. He maintains his travels “promote Texas”, especially when he's giving speeches about welfare cheats living off the taxpayers' money.

Coming Attractions: At least some of Russia's media are growing bolder, losing their fear of Putin's authoritarian reach. The latest blow finds Russian TV openly lampooning him. Russia has always mocked their dictators, but not openly. It is fear of the regime, not the regime’s actual ferocity, that keeps dictators in power. If his henchmen lose their fear, it'll be all over.

Borrowed: Here's a middle of the road set of predictions for 2012's economic, political and social adventures. Pessimism abounds. And that's among the optimists. I'd only add that things can appear deceptively close. Social upheaval may take some time. Wall Street bankers and their European cousins can kick the can a few more times before we all end up in the gutter. All the bad stuff will probably happen ,just not as quickly as some expect.

Railroaded: Capitalism at its best, isn't.

SAR #11360

2011-12-26T08:42:00.001-06:00

Facebook is to friendship as television is to entertainment.

Adventures in Numbersland: There have been but two times in the last 75 years when two consecutive quarters of GDP growth of less than 2% did not occur in a recession. We have just finished the second of two such quarters.

Nest of VIPRs: TSA wants $25 billion to make its nearly invisible Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response surprise parties a lot more visible. Last year they only were able to hold 9,000 “non-airport unannounced checkpoints and other search operations” last year, in bus and train station, sporting events, a couple of high school proms and at random intervals on Tennessee highways. TSA does not pretend VIPR teams have done any good, but they'd like to be ready in case Americans begin escaping from “emergency detention camps” as the indefinite detention bill is implemented. Word for the day: “Disappeared.”

Ontology: Public debate in the US is no longer involves people holding different views of the world, it has become a clash between different worlds – one of which is imaginary, where facts do not matter.

E=MC2: In the real world of petroleum, even “one of the largest oil fields ever discovered in the North Sea” holds between 2 and 3 billion barrels of recoverable oil. It will not come on line until 2018 and will produce about half a million barrels a day for the next 15 years or so. By then the would will want about 100 million barrels a day. Salvation is relative.

The Cratchits: The government's austerity program is working, making life in Merrie Olde ever more austere. The typical family in the UK saw its income fall 8.4% this year, ending with an average weekly disposable income of £161 - $12,500 a year.

Peace On Earth: Syrian tanks fired into crowds of protesters, killing 20. Tens of thousands rallied in Moscow over Putin's blatant 20+ million vote fraud. The military vs civilians contest in Egypt continues. Cops in Albany, NY got to try out their new pepper spray on peaceful #Occupiers. Iran is putting former president Rafsanjani's daughter on trial for talking out of school. And in Bahrain medics are being tortured for offering medical care to those beaten and shot by police for protesting torture by the government.

SAR #11358

2011-12-24T08:00:00.001-06:00

Eventually we must face the necessary consequences of our sins.

Object Lesson: Deal or no deal, for two months or a year, doesn't matter to some 32,000 long term unemployed workers in Michigan and Minnesota wno will lose their benefits because their state's 3-year “lookback” for qualification no longer qualifies for the 20 extra weeks of benefits. Switching all states to a 4-year lookback in order to keep most people eligible for extended benefits would add about 2% to the $44 billion cost of the program. That was rejected by the Republicans on the grounds that the unemployed were enjoying their time off too much.

The New Normal: 2011 has been the worst year for sales of new houses since 1963 - at 315,00, about half the number economists say would be normal. But people gotta live somewhere, so apartment construction is growing rapidly.

Chagrin: Of all the crystal-balling about what happens in 60 days when the extended unemployment benefit can comes up for kicking again, the most likely scenario is a round of “lets screw the workers and shut down the government” by the Tea Party Republicans who think their leadership gave away too much, too early this time around.

Point of View: "the only way the [American financial/banking] system could have been saved would be by letting it fail in 2008. Now, we are sorry to say, it is too late."

Christmas Preyers: That's it for now, I've gotta go to the mall and kill someone over a pair of sneakers. Merry Christmas.

SAR #11357

2011-12-23T07:32:00.001-06:00

America's economic problems are due to the cost of the war - the class war.

Leftovers: After six months of bitter fighting, Congress has agreed to put off addressing the question of what to do about jobs, taxes and unemployment for two months, which they will spend re-enacting the whole charade.

People/Property: We the People, through our EPA, have finally overcome GOP/corporate objections and imposed strong limits on the emission of mercury and other toxic compounds from coal- and oil-fired power plants. We have known for decades that mercury spewn into the environment causes birth defects, learning disabilities, respiratory diseases and death. The regulations will save far more American lives than all the money spent on Homeland Security, TSA and the war on terror. On the other hand, it may cost some Republican donors a few bucks.

High Noon: In the showdown between the Texas drought and Texas' trees, some 100 million to 500 million trees perished. Hard to tell when weather shades into climate.

The Good & The Ugly: Initial claims for unemployment fell again this week. Only 4,000 fewer, but this makes three weeks in a row. Maybe there's a tad of hope that the godawful labor market may be leveling out. Now that companies have stopped firing quite so many people, a few jobs would be nice. Elsewhere, the 3Q GDP has been revised downward - again - this time to 1.8% annualized, mostly due to consumer spending (PCE) being cut from 2.4% to 1.7%.

Kick Me! Greece's creditors are balking at IMF pressure to accept a 65% loss in the net present value of their (nominal) €260 billion in Greek bonds, feeling the 50% loss they were earlier forced to 'voluntarily' accept was bad enough. Ah, suffering in a good cause.

Free Press? How many reporters must be arrested while covering #Occupy events before a pattern is evident? a) 4, b) 14, c) 36, d) they are helping the terrorists.

Well, Duh: The IMF suddenly realizes that aggressive austerity measures such as those now being applied in Europe (and very much like those it insisted on throughout the third world for thirty years) exacerbate the problems and that slow and steady fiscal consolidation and subsequent lowering of debt levels is a far better approach. They didn't get the memo.

Sow/Reap: Now that we've provided every cop shop in the nation with bullet-proof vests, tear-gas grenades, automatic weapons, riot shields and lots of plastic handcuffs, let's see what happens.

Priorities: Governor Rick Perry wants to conserve Texas' $5 billion rainy day fund in case there's an economic downturn in the state. That's why he won't let the legislature touch it to help with the $4 billion cut in education funding made this year or the even larger cuts scheduled for next year. Instead, more than 12,000 teachers and support staff have been laid off in the state.

Numbers Gaming: The NAR has acknowledged that it overstated exisiting house sales in the 2007-2010 period by 3 million houses. If houses were (and are) selling slower than reported, it suggests a healthy housing market is a long ways off. Existing house prices are down 3.5% m/m, at $161,000, which means a lot of sellers would have to bring a check to closing, so they are not eager to sell. Right now 30-year mortgages are at 3.91%. No banker wants to commit funds at that level for that long, which means the government – through Fannie and Freddie and so on – will have to be the mortgage holder of last resort for as far into the future as you can see from here.

Long/Short: It is claimed that Mitt Romney will say anything to be president. True, but so will any of the rest of them.

#Occupy Congress: While the commoners wander around occupying parks and streets, corporations have #occupied Congress, lock, stock and anti-labor laws, crying poverty and hardship. But in the 2008-9-10 tax years, 30 big-name corporations paid a negative 6.7% on $160 billion in profits, while laying off 93,000 workers, depressing wages, and dropping health insurance coverage. But they managed to spend half a billion lobbying for favors.

Old Time Religion: Eliot Spitzer has a stirring call to action, urging small stockholders to revolt against corporate management and force reforms on Wall Street. Quaint, his belief that management cares in the least what shareholders want.

SAR #11354

2011-12-22T07:35:00.001-06:00

Is it better to be prematurely right, or wrong and dead?

The Half-Trillion Euro Question: Will the 523 banks that quickly swapped their questionable assets for the ECB's low-interest three year loans (half of it being repackaging of old laundry) actually use the money to buy up over-valued sovereign bonds as the ECB hopes? Pretty much, no. But mistletoe doesn't actually work, either.

Silly Question: “Can the U.S. Government close social media accounts?” Yes, the US Government long since gave up any pretense of upholding the Constitution or of being “...by the people, for the people.”

See-Saw: The NAR claims sales of existing houses rose 4% m/m and 12% y/y. It also says a burst of enthusiasm resulted in sales from 2007 thru 2010 being overstated by 14.3%. But what's 2.9 million houses among friends? The NAR also says there are only 2.58 million houses for sale, but CoreLogic says there are another 1.6 million in the "shadow inventory".

Rounders: Now Monsanto's RoundUp is accused of being responsible for a brand new micro-fungal-type organism that has been linked to “Sudden Death Syndrome” which causes infected animals to have spontaneous abortions. Animals like cattle, horses, pigs, sheep, and poultry. The researchers also note that there has been an increase in miscarriage and infertility in human populations in the last decade.

Experience Factor: Saudi Arabia, which claims to be able to produce 12 mbd any time it wants plans on running at least 130 drilling rigs in 2012. Just to keep their hand in.

Cracks: The conservative Republican Party has been slowly coming apart for several decades, and the cracks are getting hard to ignore. The Eisenhower era GOP is now the Centrist Democrats and what once was the right wing of the GOP, when they're not behaving badly on the Hill, is slugging it out with the wingnuts of the Tea Party – the mostly white, mostly rural, mostly Southern, spiritual refugees of the Confederacy who don't want to govern as much as just lash out. Brinkmanship has replaced compromise, obstruction has replaced negotiation, threats and tantrums have replaced normal political maneuvering. Newt is just a symptom.

Secrets: The National Labor Relations Board wants companies to put up posters informing workers that they have the right to form or join a union and the right to have that union bargain collectively for them. The Republicans think that it is not the government's place to tell people what rights they have, only to take them away. That's why the GOP is "investigating" the NLRB for enforcing the law, and promises to do all it can to prevent the NLRB from getting involved in labor relations.

Choices: Medicare costs 1.7% of US GDP and will cost 3.0% of GDP in 2040. The question “Can we afford Medicare?” presumes there is some other option. The Defense Department costs 4.7% of GDP. We can afford to keep 'em safe, we just can't keep 'em healthy, is that it?

Word Game: Define 'significant' and 'could be' as in: Ohio “could once again be a significant source of domestic [petroleum] supply... Ohio could be producing 200,000 barrels of crude a day by 2020.” In 2010, Ohio pumped 13,108 bpd and in July of 2011 it zoomed to 15,500 bpd.

Vive la différence: The main difference between your debts and the government's debts is this: You have to pay your debts. Governments – those with their own sovereign currency – do not. They have to pay the interest when due, but they seldom pay off the debt. They pay it down a bit now and then, but if the government were to pay off the debt, the main engine of money creation would vanish and with it most of the vitality of the economy. We have not paid off the debt we incurred for WWII. “We are not paying off the debt left by our parents and grandparents, and our children and grandchildren will not pay off ours.” To pretend that deficits matter is disingenuous at best. Don't worry about your grandchildren having to live in poverty to pay off the debt, they won't have to pay off the debt. Nor will their grandchildren.

SAR #11353

2011-12-21T07:26:00.001-06:00

Everyone’s basic needs should take precedence over anyone’s greed. Jodi Dean

The Plan, Version 5.63: Remember when Ben gave the banks free money in exchange for iffy assets in the hope that they would then lend it out and create some jobs? And how they took the money and lent it back to the US Treasury? The ECB is going to try the same trick, in hopes that the banks will invest (?) in Italian and Spanish etc. covering bonds. Even though the banks say they won't. Nothing in this process actually improves the likelihood that Spain or Italy, etc. will ever be able to repay their debts. And the ECB can't lend out more than 25% of the €2 trillion it would take. But if some banks can make a nice profit from it, I'm sure it will be called a success.

See/Do: Secretary Clinton is upset that Egyptian security forces are acting like their counterparts in Bahrain, Oakland, Saudi Arabia, Syria and UC Davis.

Asked & Answered:Why are Republicans against the payroll tax cut? First, what part of 'payroll' don't you understand? Then there's the chance that it might make the economy better and they certainly don't want that - not until Obama is a memory. And dropping GDP an additional 1.7% in 2012 will be okay, as long as they can extort a bunch of stuff for their donors out of the negotiations.

Pattern Learning: The Bush/Cheney/Gingrich folks are sick with envy that Hungary's leaders are getting call constitutional reform.

Driving Around: The markets soared today, supposedly on the good housing news which was that housing starts were up 9.3% m/m, building permits (up 5.1% m/m), and completions (up 5.6%) . But to the census bureau a 'house' includes a multifamily rental property... an apartment. A 25% jump in multifamily construction accounted for almost all of the gain.

Looking Before Leaping: Yes, fracking and shale gas are going to make folks rich, but mostly just the one selling the stock. Natural gas at $3.10/mmBTU isn't going to do anything much, certainly not create a million jobs.

Once Upon A TimeIn America: The 1% see the 99% as impedimentia, to be avoided when possible and ignored when unavoidable. Home Depot's Bernard Marcus asks, "Who gives a crap about some imbeciles? Are you kidding me?” And the always beloved Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan - who made $23 million in 2010, is willing to admit, "“Sometimes there’s a bad apple," but complains that all the rich bankers get tarred with the same brush. We've always had the rich, but once upon a time they had manners and some sense of shame.

Progress: Wasn't it better in the old days, when you had to actually stuff the ballot boxes? All electronic voting has done is make it harder to spot, harder to prove and easier to get away with. Which explains why the politicians are in favor or it.

SAR #11352

2011-12-20T07:30:00.000-06:00

When will peak oil denial peak?

Bill of Particulars: The average American has been designated a potential enemy of the state, America itself has become the battlefield, and the Constitution must be destroyed in order to save it. Interesting times.

Self-Help: Italy is going to give the IMF €23.5 for the IMF to give to Italy to help lower its debt burden... or something like that.

Quod Erat Demonstratum: Judge Louis D. Brandeis observed “We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.” He was right, as Washington and Wall Street continue to prove. As we go about trying to even the playing field, we should keep in mind that it is the after-tax fairness of the economy that is the arbiter, not various tax rates. The rich do not overly trouble me, hungry children sleeping in broken-down cars do. We can have the one without the other.

Usual Suspects: By age 23 at least 1 out of 3 young Americans will have been arrested, up from 1 out of 5 forty years ago. "There's more arresting going on now," was the explanation.

Dogs/Fleas: Hanging out with your BFFs on Facebook could hurt your credit score and drive up the interest rates you have to pay if they are a bunch of deadbeats. NSA isn't the only outfit mining your Facebook trail, financial institutions are using the crumbs you strew about using Facebook, Twitter, the Internet and cell phones. And they can gather info they cannot legally ask you for. One micro-lender even requires access to your Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Yahoo, and Windows Live logons as part of the loan application, and they will tell your friends you are a deadbeat if you start missing payments. Do you have to give them access to your social accounts? No, but they don't have to give you access to their money, either.

First Shoe: Prices for new houses in Beijing fell 35% in November from October. Pop went the weasel?

Rock/Hard Place: Banks (and mutual funds and hedge funds and so on) are shedding assets, not because they want to, but rather because they have to. But when a bank has to have a fire sale, no one wants to buy the shoddy goods that prompted the crisis and no one wants to pay full price for the good stuff, knowing the bank has to sell at nearly any price.

The American Way: DHS has determined that paying with cash is suspicious. “If a person insists on paying for cash and refuses to show a credit card, that's suspicious behavior.”

I Know What You Did: Without reciting the long list of electronic data collected on you every day, just remember, it is never erased. Never, even when they tell you it was. The government can not only track you in real time, it can walk the cat back and track you retroactively. This isn't news, but maybe you hadn't thought about it because you haven't done anything wrong. But any day now Congress may start passing retroactive bills...

For Example: If the assets of an average bank in the US were to decline just 8%, all of that bank's capital would be wiped out. But for the total US household debt – now equal to one year's total GDP – to return to historic levels, over $4 trillion would have to be written off, which would doom the banks.

Draining the Swamp: Make a list of the problems facing the world – population, global warming, the slow and steady decline in petroleum, debt/deflation, and the global economic slowdown. Which one is most important? Which one must we solve first? No one cares to address the population question and all the rest require large investments that will not be available until the economy picks up and the economy can't pick up until.... Round and round...

Idle Hands: UK Prime Minister David Cameron, having time on his hands now that he is no longer advising Sarkozy on financial matters, says that Great Britain should stand up for its Christian values to help counter the general “moral collapse”. Might as well, doesn't stand for much else these days.

SAR #11351

2011-12-19T07:26:00.001-06:00

Repeat After Me: Pence, Marks, Francs, Drachma, Lira, Peseta...

Look Out Below: The seasonally adjusted all-items CPI fell in November at an annualized 0.23% rate. This is the second consecutive month of negative CPI “growth” - better known as deflation. Draw your own conclusions (hint, hyperinflation it's not).

Interesting Math: There are 17 signatories to the Euro treaty - but a proposed “amendment” says that if the amendment is passed by 9 of the 17, then the amendment will have amended the treaty and will not require approval by all the signatories. It's harder to pass something in the US Senate.

Closeout: The War on Iraq is over. What did we gain?

Seems Like Old Times (One): Now that the US has declared victory and ~~fled~~ departed, Iraq's al-Maliki is solidifying his position as leader of the emerging democracy. His first step has been to confine his Sunni rival, VP al-Hashimi in his quarters, surrounded by tanks and APCs. For his safety, of course. Who said building a democracy was easy? Who said the US was building a democracy?

Quoted: “Christmas Day, originally a Christian holiday to celebrate the birth of Christ...” USA Today.

Old Times (Two): Egypt's military dictatorship has lost its patience with the protesters who thought they had achieved some measure of political freedom and sent its troops into Tahrir square where they killed at least 9 and wounded over 300. They were particularly vicious towards women who they beat with pipes and clubs in front of TV cameras, as an object lesson to those who thought anything but the name on the door had changed. Much like in the US.

Shocker! The White House has accused the GOP of playing politics with the payroll tax cut.

Unclear on the Concept: GOP wannabe Newt Gingrich says that if he were President he would ignore Supreme Court rulings he didn't agree with. Just like Bush/Cheney. And, he claims, if he becomes President at least 9 million people would leave the country, many of them undocumented immigrants.

...Fear Itself: TSA is now conducting random handbag and briefcase checks on the Washington DC Metro and Bus lines.

Curb Your Enthusiasm: Last September, North Dakota pumped 464,000 barrels of oil a day. In 5 years it may reach 700,000 bpd. Before you grab the party hat and kazoo, reflect on the fact that the US imports over 15 million barrels a day and the world's existing oilfields are declining and produce 4.5 mbd less this year than last. That's 'm' for million. Party on.

One Liner: "Our predicament parallels [the] Long Depression of 1870s"

Funny Girl: The IMF's Christine Lagard says there is an increasing risk of "retraction, rising protectionism, isolation", similar to “what happened in the 1930s, and what followed is not something we are looking forward to."

The Pacific: Secretary Clinton says the future of global politics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq, and the United States will be right at the center of the action. She did not say who the US planned on invading first. Or where the US would get the money do so.

On The Up and Up: According to the US Census, nearly half of all Americans are either poor or just scraping by. This is up from “just” 30% 5 years ago. The middle class is shrinking, and not because the upper classes are expanding. Only food stamps, tax credits and extended unemployment benefits are keeping millions more from scraping bottom. The right wing, however, says that safety-net programs have gone too far because “too many poor people live in decent-sized homes and drive cars.”

Countercurrent: Hungary is making the banks - especially foreign banks - take the losses on the rotten foreign-denominated mortgages they created. An interesting idea that won't catch on here.

It Pays to Be Rich: Since 1970, in the US, the top 1% have doubled the share of national they capture,while the poorest 20% have seen their share fall by 30%. The top 1% now take home 20% of all income, own 50% of all stock and have 33% of all the wealth in the country. This is far more lopsided than Rome ever was.

SAR #11349

2011-12-17T07:55:00.001-06:00

He who sees, learns.

A Great Sadness: Things that were avoided, secret, or outsourced under Bill Clinton and then embraced by Bush/Cheney are now being codified as acknowledge policy and enshrined in federal statutes - Military arrest of citizens, indefinite detention without any legal process, the “extra-judicial” murder of citizens on the President's say-so, killing people at will in natons where no state of war exists. Pogo was prescient, as was Franklin.

ET Phone Home: Informed opinion is that Iran 'spoofed' the US super-duper drone by getting it to believe fake GPS signals were the real deal. They didn't so much shoot it down as simply stole it out of the sky.

Moral vs Legal: The ECB is forbidden to ~~prop up~~ invest in covering debts of EZ member states. They are not forbidden to loan money to private banks within the zone at near zero rates (in exchange for any and all assets, no matter how iffy) and encourage them to buy sovereign notes at inflated prices and then to use the very same notes as security for another round. If it sounds sly, it is. Too bad the banks don't want anything to do with it.

Destiny: It was always going to come to this: "Democracy itself has been suspended in favor of bank and sovereign survival".

Back of the Envelope: The GOP will go along with the Dems in extending the payroll tax cut for another year and the Treasury will continue to transfer general tax revenues to the Social Security fund to make up the difference. But isn't that undermining the "earned" nature of the fund and making just another tax-transfer welfare program? Exactly. And that will be their point later on when it's time to "raise taxes" - that any increase be devoted to individual retirement accounts that Wall Street can then steal.

Assholocracy: Spread the word.

Bigger Brother: Yes, they track us, all the time. Where we go, who we chat with, what we read on the Internet, what we buy and what we buy it with. Old news. Now they (Amazon in this particular instance) want to use the data they've got to predict. Where you will go, who you will chat with, what sites you will visit on the web, what you will buy and... And that's the part they want to know so the can 'guide you' to buy the right thing.

Long/Short: Fitch Ratings says that a comprehensive Eurozone deal is “beyond reach”. Nearly beyond imagining, actually.

Progress, Not: Ireland's economy shrank 1.9% in the latest quarter - the worst performance yet under the one-size-fits-all ECB/EU/IMF austerity program. This is the same program that is currently "saving" Greece and Portugal and Italy. There seems to be "a disconnect between legislation and implementation" ("disconnect" is IMF-speak for rioting in the streets). Bottom line: austerity will soon make the social cost of staying with the Euro prohibitive.

Another Step: The voices in the land are reasonably unanimous, the Stop Online Piracy Act is too broad, too vague, too unconstitutional, amounts to "prior restraint" and will lead to Internet censorship as practiced by China, Iran, Syria and other despotic governments. To which the sponsors of the bill smugly say, "Exactly."

Short End of the Stick: If you think a company has a good idea, a good product, a good future, then you should act on that belief and invest in the company. If you are really, really sure, you might even buy some stock on margin. Applause all around. But if you think the company has a poor product, poor prospects and a dismal future, and you decide to act on that belief and short-sell the company's stock, you are a villain. Why?

A Truism: Portugal is being urged to simply tell the Germans and the French that Portugal cannot and thus will not pay their debts. "Debt is our only weapon and we must use it to impose better conditions..." And at that point it becomes the banks' problem, not Portugal's.

An Extra Helping: GOP wannabe Rick Perry draws $150,000 a year from the State of Texas as its governor. He also draws A$92,376 a year from the State of Texas as the retired governor of Texas. He's been doing so for a year now and doesn't “find that to be out of the ordinary.”

Porn O'Graph: About all that oil in North Dakota...

SAR #11348

2011-12-16T07:30:00.001-06:00

Is the solution in Europe a Franco/German Empire? Or a Fifth Reich?

Ozymandias: Bush's demonstration of power has failed, becoming the most expensive waste of money in US history – not counting America’s thousands of dead and tens of thousands of the crippled in body and spirit. Behind, in Iraq, we leave hundreds, perhaps a million, dead Iraqis, ruined cities and an ungovernable, divided country. Intended to impress the Chinese and Iran and to defend the Israelis and - yes - to secure the oil, it accomplished none of the goals.

Zebras? The IMF's new director, Christine Lagarde says that things are not going well in Europe and that help "from countries outside the EU" is needed. Bernanke says he can't help, and Cameron's UK is both broke and offended. Russia may pony up $20 billion, from the stash it's been building up by dumping its holdings of US bonds. The Chinese ~~remain inscrutable~~ are “trimming” their holdings, too. Fitch has downgraded Barclays, BNP, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Societe Generale, UBS (plus BofA and MorganStanley). Regulators in Australia have told banks to been told to hunker down. And another big-deal asset manager has fled to cash.

Landscaping: During the current century, most of the Earth's land will see at least a 30% change in plant cover. And with the change in vegetation there will be comparable changes in animal populations, including humans. And that's if the globe only warms 3 or 4ºC.

Data Is Data: New claims for unemployment benefits dropped 19,000 to a 3½ year low of 366,000. The 4-week moving average is now at 387,750, also a 3-year low. A total of 7.45 million people were receiving unemployment benefits up 874,670 from the prior week. Industrial production in the US fell 0.2% in November, against expectations of a 0.2% rise. How business can be falling and employment rising is a mystery.

Talking Point: The GOP wants to prove that hungry, homeless people will work for whatever the employer wants to pay and is sure the Army can keep the peace.

Constitutional Conventions: Congress thinks it has the power to grant the President the power to use the military within the US to arrest American citizens and incarcerate them indefinitely, with no charges, no trail and no rights. This effectively abolishes the Posse Comitatus Act, portions of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution (the Bill of Rights) and abolishes eight or nine centuries of habeas corpus. And the executive is all in favor of continuing to wield these powers – which he already thinks he has. Eventually the Supreme Court may hear a case questioning the constitutionality of the law, but it seems unlikely. After all, if there is no trial, there is no judicial matter to appeal. The White House has cited the extra-judicial (that is, illegal) assassination of Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki (a US citizen) as evidence that there should be no restraints on the form through which executive power is exercised. It is official, the transformation to a Military-Industrial dictatorship is complete.

Hills, Run For The: Richard Russell's latest newsletter gets right to the point, "Get out of stocks." He says the current market - "the greatest sucker's rally in history" - is coming to an abrupt and brutal end.

Porn O Graph: That's you, down there at the bottom; smile and wave!

SAR #11347

2011-12-15T07:38:00.001-06:00

Food shortages are self-correcting.

The Plot Thus Far: Washington needs to pass & sign a $1 trillion funding bill to keep the government operating beyond this weekend. The GOP-majority House wants to pas the bill. The White House doesn't like their version. The Democrats are afraid that if they pass the bill, the GOP will go home for Christmas without doing anything about the expiring payroll tax cut for 160 million working Americans and the expiring extended employment benefits for a few million unemployed Americans. To make the Democrats think twice about extending the tax cut and the unemployment benefits, the Republicans have larded that bill with a provision to shorten the “extended” extension of benefits, plus significant curbs on EPA authority, approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, increases in how much loot Doctor-owned hospitals can steal from Medicare, an increase in Medicare premiums on the well-off, and permission for the states to require drug tests of all unemployment benefit applicants – most of which the Democrats will choke on. So, let's see who crumbles first.

Protesting Too Much? Bernanke is 'very concerned' about Europe, but seems to have gone out of his way to make it perfectly clear that the Fed cannot and will not provide bailout funds to European banks, claiming it has neither the money nor the authority to do so. It is also not going to sneak money to European banks ~~under the table as it has before~~ via the IMF. Which is just as well because the Republicans are going to try to geld the IMF.

Stand on a Chair: The latest ECB plan for putting off doing anything useful calls for all of the EU countries to export their way to prosperity. To whom all this exporting will be directed was unclear.

Best Friends Forever: Iran says that the Saudis have promised not to ramp up their production to make up any shortage in the market caused by an international embargo on Iranian oil. In that Iran and Saudi Arabia are pretty much the Hatfields and the McCoys, perhaps this is another way of saying Saudi Arabia cannot meaningfully increase its current production for any sustained period.

Silence: Gold dropped like a lead weight today, probably due to panicked liquidation in anticipation of pending margin calls as Europe swirls around the drain. While nobody can predict the future, Citi predicts gold will reach $3400 "in the next two years" and maybe go as high as $6,000. Especially if you buy your gold through them.

Due Diligence: The nuclear lobby says that "nuclear power remains an indispensable part of the US energy mix" and there should be no over-reaction to the Japanese experience. No, no, we should wait for our own disaster before deciding how safe nukes are.

Emperor/Clothes: Set aside all the ballyhoo about shale gas and salvation and check out the books. Is there any fracking operation that is producing gas profitably? Is there any light on the horizon to suggest that they will produce natural gas profitably next year? In ten years? Ever? how expensive does natural gas have to be before an actual real-world profit shows up and can pay off the costs, including financing?

Squaring the Circle: OPEC has increased its production ceiling to 30mbd, the first increase in three years. This simply acknowledges what has been a fact for some time, as the OPEC nations routinely ignore their quotas. On the other hand, 30mbd seems to be all they can produce anyway. Even when Libya's production dropped off the market, OPEC kept producing about 30mbd, which suggests that that's all folks.

Do As I Say... Doctors don’t die like the rest of us. They seek far less “end of life” treatment than most Americans. But then, they know what medicine can and cannot do and accept that a good death is better than dying in pain amid heroic but doomed measures.

SAR #11346

2011-12-14T07:30:00.000-06:00

The placebo effect is wearing off.

Finders, Keepers: Following the principles taught me by Mrs. Bartlett, that a ball that's thrown through her window becomes her property, Iran has no intention of giving the US back its drone. Yes, Mr. Cheney thinks we should bomb them, but that's been his solution to almost everything except gay marriage. The US also lost another drone, this one in the Seychelles, east of Africa. Theories abound.

Excitable Adolescents: The GOP-led House will soon pass a silly law making it illegal for the Administration to negotiate a peaceful settlement with Iran. Unless not doing so “would pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the vital national security”. Like war, for example, which Ron Paul thinks this will lead to.

Sackcloth, Ashes: From this distance it is clear that EU leaders are wrong to put so much emphasis on austerity without any real plans to stimulate economic growth, pointing out that austerity budgets in Greece, Poland and Ireland have not accomplished anything except to rile the voting public. Sending Italy and Spain down the same path hoping for a different result is called leadership.

News, Mostly So-So: China has cut way back on killing its citizens this year, executing only 4,000 of them. Syria has done them a bit better, killing 5,000 so far this year in the name of peace and tranquility.

Republican Tax Math: Gingrich's tax plan is a lot like Paul's and Bush's - give the rich the breaks and the rest the taxes. Newt would give the top 1% about $430,000 each and the top 0.1% about $2.3 million extra. It would also drive up the federal deficit by at least $1 trillion the first year, more each year thereafter. More evidence that the Republicans simply are far less fiscally responsible than they pretend.

One Hand Clapping: Greece is having difficulty finding bondholders who are eager to lose half their investment. Without enough "volunteers" the haircut – which is coming either with 'em or without 'em - will become "a credit event" and trigger a round of musical chairs as CDS writers try to figure out who's holding the biggest bag and the rest of us watch the dominoes do what dominoes do best.

Good Government: California Gov. Jerry Brown says the state will cut another $1 billion from schools and social services, as the states tax revenues fell over $2.2 billion short of the wildly optimistic estimates that went into the budget. Brown said that making these cuts was a sign of California's improving fiscal health.

Going Bust: There's a lot of glib talk about one or more countries 'leaving the euro'. Here's the play-by-play: Over a weekend the banks are nationalize, a new currency issued, use of the euro outlawed & those not turned in within 24 hours will be confiscated, bank accounts are recalculated in the new, worthless currency. Not only are the banks broke, so is the country, which defaults on all of its euro-denominated bonds. The economy grinds to a halt, the local stock market drops 90% and freezes up. Then things start to go bad.

Shots to the Foot: Top counter-terrorism experts argue that indefinite detention and detention without trial, torture and the rest of the affronts to common decency and the Constitution that have become commonplace are increasing terrorism and mark significant losses in the war on terrorism. It's not that the enemy is winning, it is that we are defeating ourselves while they sit around the campfire, laughing.

Porn O'Graph: Your slice of the pie.

SAR #11345

2011-12-13T07:29:00.001-06:00

Confusion is often mistaken for insight.

Cliff Note: The only thing those gathered in Durban actually agreed on was to put off doing anything about global warming for 8 years. Everything else was essentially a matter of waving hands and expressing sincere best wishes for a future, as the world approaches the edge of the precipice and prepares to jump off.

True Believers: Europe's leaders (for which read Germany) wants to commit the continent to severe fiscal austerity believing there is some magic in mass suffering that will make contractionary policies produce expansionary results. No mater how righteous suffering may be, it is not going to save the euro. The cavalry are not coming. And remember it was the Germany obsession with austerity and hard money that created the conditions that gave rise to Hitler.

Times Change: Young, relatively wealthy Russians are no longer afraid to speak out politically and are turning out by the tens of thousands to express their disapproval with Putin. Odds are that Mr. Putin will find ways of expressing his disapproval of them, too.

There They Go Again: Lindsey Graham (R-SC) says the Consumer Finance Protection Board the Democrats want to pass (oops, it's already law) has no independent nor Congressional oversight (which isn't true), and the conditions the GOP insists on do not exist for any other regulator. It's also not Stalinist just because it protects people, not businesses.

Fifth Amendment? The SEC is demanding that US companies doing business with Syria, Iran, and other “state sponsors” of terror must publicly confess their sins so investors will realize what poor an investments they are.

Self-Survey: it should not come as a surprise that federal agencies such as the DEA and ICE use drones to ~~spy on~~ protect the public, but how do you feel about your local police using drones to monitor your behavior?

Shadows at the Center: Last month the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development reported that there was a significant deterioration of belief in democracy and in the free-market system in the “transition economies”. Nobody wants to say “fascist” but that's the fear.

Wannabe Watch:

Geography Lessen: Ask Rick Perry to point out on a map “the country of Solynda”, on which he says the US has spent “over $500 million”.

Math Problem: Wannabe Michele Bachmann claims to have ”spent 50 years in the real world as a private business woman.” But her work history shows 5 years at the IRS and 11 in elected office. Even if she started at age 5 working for Newt in a coal mine her business experience could not amount to more than 35 years, most of it part-time while she was in grade school and college. Maybe she counts raising foster children as business experience.

Try Before You Buy: Leading wannabe Newt Gingrich thinks the unemployed are being paid “99 weeks to do nothing,” and wants unemployment taxes to go to fund training programs like the one in Georgia that pays the “unemployed” $240 a week for eight weeks of forced labor provided free to companies who can, but are not required to, hire some of those who complete their “tryouts”. The serial adulterer has (once more) promised to “ uphold the institution of marriage through personal fidelity to my spouse and respect for the marital bonds of others”.

SAR #11344

2011-12-12T07:37:00.001-06:00

Something's not working the way it's supposed to.

Constitutional History: The concept of habeas corpus, the right to know the charges against us, and the right to a jury of our peers are the very basis for our consensual government. Congress is trying to take these rights away from us, and the White House says we no longer have them anyway. The dispute between Congress and the President comes to this: the Administration does not want to open its dictatorial powers to public scrutiny.

Pot/Kettle: The US has called on Russia to respect peaceful protests.

Too Little: The climate talks in Durban accomplished nothing, no matter what spin is put on it. The agreement was an agreement to negotiate. Not to do, to negotiate, to pursue a new accord with the hope of competing it by 2015, that would bring all nations under greenhouse gas restrictions – without being “legally binding” - by 2020. It is too little, too late. But, as Tony Blair admitted back in 2005, “The blunt truth about the politics of climate change is that no country will want to sacrifice its economy in order to meet this challenge.”

Too Late: Even with a strong La Niña, 2011 was one of the ten hottest years on record and 13 of the 15 warmest years on record have been in the last 15 years. Arctic ice is melting faster than at any time in the last 1450 years. Melting permafrost will soon begin releasing massive quantities of methane. The IEA's Fatih Biro suggests we are on path to a 6ºC warming by 2100. Government climate-change negotiators pretend they want to keep the rise to “only” 2ºC, but Dr. James Hansen warns that a 2ºC average global temperature rise “is a prescription for long-term disaster... If we want to maintain a planet that looks like the one humanity has known, then we're out of time. We have got to start reducing emissions,” else civilization may not survive the present century. We know what we must do, we simply are not going to do it.

It Pays To Advertise: Studies show that people do not recognize government benefits that are hidden in the tax code as benefits at all, but view things like mortgage interest deductions as a right, not a benefit. Hiding government programs in the tax code undermines the social support system because it obscures the role that government plays in society.

Euro Mural: The main accomplishment of the 8^th Save The Euro meeting was to place the European Union in jeopardy. The best possible outcome now is that the ECB – or someone - will find a way to hold the whole thing together until March, when the circus reassembles. The markets want the ECB to bail them out – and that's the bottom line. To that end the bankers want strict budget deficit limits, EU level approval of national budgets, and bailout funds provided (via the IMF to provide pretend legality) to absolve the banks of their stupidity while stripping debtor nations populations of their wages, pensions, health care and infrastructure. But all this would require a new treaty, and there is not that much time left.

Wholly Grail: If the US could convert 100 percent of the solar energy stored in plant matter into fuel, it would supply only half our current energy consumption.

Now That's Rich: If you are tired of hearing that the 400 richest Americans have as much wealth as the poorest 150,000,000 of us, try this: The six Wal-Mar Waltons have more than the poorest 100,000,000 of us put together. But they're not the idle rich, no, no. They spend a lot of time making sure that inheritance taxes never touch them. And they did not do it by 'creating jobs', they did it by killing tens of thousands of small businesses and shipping hundreds of thousands of jobs overseas.

Porn O'Graph: The big upswing...

SAR #11342

2011-12-10T07:30:00.000-06:00

The day ends, the world appears unchanged; we are again deceived.

Addition, in addition: If you borrow $25,000 to buy a car, pay the money back and a few years later buy another car with another borrowed $25,000, how much money have you borrowed? If you borrow $100 million overnight, every night for, say, 1000 nights, how much money has the Fed lent you? $29 trillion and change. The change being converting the US Treasury and Federal Reserve into piggy banks for the entire world's financial institutions.

Tale of Two Cities: Brussels wants to take over the EU in the name of the eurozone nations. London does not think this should happen. If Merkozy go very far down the indicated path, it may or may not lead to the end of the euro. It most certainly will lead to the end of the European Union, which was a treaty between sovereign states.

At the Register: Amazon has a new ap for your smartphone that will instantly let them undersell any store, anywhere, anytime.... and give the user an extra $5 for evading the state sales tax. Retailers in stogy old malls think this is unfair. They are right, at least as far as evading the tax goes.

Getting Out the Vote:Newt the Wannabe, in an attempt to win the Israeli vote, has decreed that Palestinians - those folks whose parents and grandparents lived in Palestine before it became Israel - are "an invented" people with no right to any state of their own except wretchedness. Meanwhile, Rick the Wannabe Santorum has promised to reduce the cost of the food stamp program by not letting obese people eat. After all, " If hunger is a problem in America, then why do we have an obesity problem... ?" Now it's not just Cadillac Welfare Queens, its Obese Cadillac Welfare Queens that are ruining the country.

Finger/Spot: ".. the decision to provide the energy for industrialization by burning fossil fuels was the most consequential, although perfectly innocent, misstep human beings [have] ever taken."

Assignment: Yeah, it's the weekend and you don't need the downer, but read about LAPD's finest hour anyway.

Asked & Answered: What does Peak Oil look like? Look around; this is what peak oil looks like. " ...a long ragged slope of rising energy prices, economic contraction, and political failure, punctuated with a crisis here, a local or regional catastrophe there, a war somewhere else—all against a backdrop of disintegrating infrastructure, declining living standards, decreasing access to health care... Which of course has been happening in the United States for some years already."

White Flag: European Union leaders have dropped their demand that investors share the cost of bailouts by taking "haircuts" on their bad investments. Ie. the bankers are winning. Again.

Excuse Me: I read that the Library of Congress is going to receive entire Twitter archive of ever public twitter ever tweeted. Why is there a “Twitter archive” in the first place?

SAR #11341

2011-12-09T07:30:00.000-06:00

Perpetual economic growth is necessary, but impossible.

Carpe Diem: Saying they're going to sign a new treaty and actually getting it done are two different things. Also keep in mind that this is the 17-nation Eurozone telling the 27 member European Union how life is going to be. The 17+ co-conspirators must individually amend their constitutions to cede financial sovereignty to the technocrats in Brussels and to tie themselves to a mandatory balanced budget. Which is the same as imposing austerity conditions on their citizens to infinity and beyond... And once they do all this, no bailout money will have been approved (or found), they're all still broke except for Germany (which may be by then) and the ECB still will have no money. Unless it just prints the 2+ trillion euros they need...

Temporary Suspension of Disbelief: The Department of Labor invites you to believe that unemployment claims dropped 23,000 in a week, to 381,000 - a number that hasn't been seen since Jesus lost his paper-route. We're saved, and just in time for Christmas shopping, too.

Ignorance is No Defense: John Corzine, former Goldman Sachs CEO, former US Senator, former NJ Governor, and hopefully future federal prisoner, says he "didn't intend to break the rules" (these rules are criminal statutes), nobody told him anything, he was just the boss and he didn't know the gun was loaded.

What Part of 'No' Don't You Get? The US Chamber of Commerce, acting through their toadies in the GOP, have beaten back another attempt by the administration to install someone as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Until a way of rendering the CFPB toothless and impotent is found, the Republicans paymasters do not want it to operate.

Yes, But: Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has introduced a constitutional amendment that would overturn the Supreme Court’s controversial Citizens United ruling. It would be better to force them to revisit Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad and actually rule on whether or not a Corporation has rights under the Bill of Rights. They never have, you know.

You Have My Word: Obama says he will not trade approval of the Keystone Pipeline for a Payroll Tax Cut. That's today's position. Tune in tomorrow, offer void West of the Rockies, your mileage may vary. As always, he's open to suggestions, so make him an offer.

The Ten-cent Tour: Turn on the 'Bright Lights' and take a tour of the secret dungeon the CIA operated for years in a suburb of Bucharest. Here's a handy guide. Don't bother to check Orbitz, your travel arrangements have been made for you.

And Bread Eaten in Secret is Sweet: The Republicans are urging the administration to publicly endorse undertaking covert operations against Iran and Syria. That's an improvement; Republican overt operations against Iraq and Afghanistan didn't work out too well.

Black Is White: Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS group is running ads against Elizabeth Warren implying that she was responsible for bailing out Wall Street. Lying, for the GOP, has become mandatory.

Betty Davis's Eyes. In Australia, archaeologists have found the insect-like eyes of an ancient super-predator, with 30,000 lenses in each eye. The better to see you with.

No Exit and Other Plays: Best question of the day: How can anyone possibly believe that totally incompetent and clueless politicians and central bankers who created the problem can or should be trusted to solve anything?

Nostalgia: Newt continues to maintain that making 5-year-olds work is "a good life experience" and that current restrictions on child labor are "truly stupid." Child labor, he says, brings children "into the world of work, the world or prosperity, the world of savings, the world of investment — and we want every young American to have an opportunity to do that.”

My Girls... Father of two girls, Barack Obama asks "When it comes to 12-year-olds or 13-year-olds, the question is: Can we have confidence that they would potentially use Plan B properly?" What he really meant was, like any father, he doesn't want his girls even thinking about sex until they're 34 and have been married several years. So he over-ruled the FDA on over-the-counter sales of the emergency contraceptive pill Plan B.

SAR #11340

2011-12-08T07:29:00.001-06:00

The real scandal isn’t that the banks got rescued,it is that we didn't.

Smoke, Mirror: When it heard the rumor that the Group of 20 nations were putting together $600 billion to rescue the euro, the stock market climbed rapidly. When the IMF said the story was a bunch of hooey, the enthusiasm ebbed and the market fell a little. But for a while there, the smartest people in the world believed that 20 broke and indebted nations could come up with $600 billion to rescue all of Europe - even though it would take $2 trillion to rescue just Italy.

Fine Print: Syrian President Assad says not only did he not order his military and security forces to crack down on civilian unrest, but that he could not have done so because "They are not my forces. They are military forces that belong to the government of Syria."

Bouncing Ball: OPEC says speculators are to blame for high oil prices and that there is no lack of supply for world markets, but that the world should leave Iran alone because it would be "very, very difficult to replace" Iran's exports. BP's CEO says that Middle East social unrest, supply worries, and increasing Asian demand have driving up prices. Saudi Arabia claims to be producing 9.9 to 10 mbd to meet demand, but independent data shows that that the Saudis have not increased production "for many years" and that its internal consumption has been rising rapidly, lowering the amount of oil it sells to the international markets. But Saudi Aramco's CEO says "we have adequate supplies" due to "unconventional resources." Deutche Bank observes that Saudi Arabia has halted its $100 billion expansion of production capabilities and estimates it now needs oil at $92 a barrel to break even because of greater social spending designed to keep the peace in the populace. As their production falls, internal consumption rises, and social unrest grows, they will need ever higher prices for their exports.

Drugs of the Irish: An Irish psychiatrist, citing widespread depression and increasing suicide among the general population, thinks the government should add lithium to the water supply. Just a maintenance dose, mind you, just to take the edge off.

Bad News & Worse: Scientists warn that the current promises to reduce carbon emissions will result in at least 3.5ºC of global warming - far in excess of the targeted 2ºC rise. But those promised reductions are not happening, and the current rate of increase in CO2 in the atmosphere promises a far more dangerous future with more than 4ºC warming by 2100. Progress towards more concrete and effective actions to curb dangerous global climate change is being blocked by the US, because what is necessary - cutting carbon emissions to40% below 1990 levels by mid-century if not sooner - would hurt the profits of politically important corporations. The US insists that all nations - even the most backward and least developed - must share "legal parity and responsibility for CO2 emission curtailment", and denies any significant financial responsibility rests with the US and other industrialized nations - just because they caused the problem.

Damned Data: A new study suggests that domestic projects such as improved education, universal health care and the development of clean energy would create at least twice as many jobs as spending the money invading countries and building bombs. Don't tell the Republicans.

Some of the Truth, Some of the Time: The headline read “Payroll Gains Improve as U.S. Unemployment Rate Drops”, which was all true. Average wages went up 2 cents an hour and the unemployment rate dropped because a half-million former workers have used up their extended employment benefits and are officially non-workers.

Porn O'Graph: Counting the uncounted.

SAR #11339

2011-12-07T07:30:00.000-06:00

"It is a violation of human rights when people are beaten or killed because of their sexual orientation, or because they do not conform to cultural norms about how men and women should look or behave. It is a violation of human rights when governments declare it illegal to be gay, or allow those who harm gay people to go unpunished. Being gay is not a Western invention; it is a human reality, and protecting the human rights of all people, gay or straight, is not something that only Western governments do." - United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Agreeing to be Disagreeable: European leaders Merkel and Sarkozy have reached “complete agreement” (mostly) on a new treaty that would restrict the budgeting and size of future deficits for eurozone nations. That such an inflexible approach is economic suicide in recessionary times does not seem to bother the inflexible Germans. And getting all those nations to accept the loss of sovereignty smacks of optimism, but the Merkel -Sarkozy agreement will certainly speed up multiparty negotiations by doing away with them.

Hopey-Changey 2.0: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Obama apparently thinks we are as needy as a battered wife.

Under the Radar: While BLS statistics show an ever growing shadow economy (where many of the uncounted struggle to get by but are not counted as part of the workforce), the monthly Gallup count of the underemployed (unemployed + "part-time for economic reasons") is up once more, reaching 18.1% of the labor pool, up from 17.2% a year ago. As employers more and more prefer temporary and part-time workers, the trend to lay off full-time employees and re-hire them as temps will grow. America continues to transition to a part-time, no-benefit society.

Recovery 101: The hotness of your waitress, the closure rate among Waffle Houses, and the sale of plain white cotton panties can apparently be used as a guide to the recovery.

If I Had a Hammer: The Pentagon's '1033 Program' has provided over $500 million worth of military gear to local police departments this year, and looks to quadrupling that next year. M-16s, APCs, grenade launchers, helicopters... And once the local bullies have the weapons, they'll find reasons to use them.

Modesty: Wannabee Romney, as a parting effort to hide his candle under a basket, spent $100,000 of Massachusetts taxpayer money replacing the PCs in the governor's office - in order to destroy all electronic trace of his presence. His aides, too, insured their privacy by buying the hard-drives of their state-issued computers. Wonder what it was they all were so modest about?

Christmas Rush: According to the shoppers themselves, nearly 40% of them are done with the Christmas spending orgy. Black Friday may have been the end and not the beginning of the season.

One View:The series of crisis from 1980's Latin America, Mexico, Sweden and East Asia in the 1990's, Portugal, Greece, Spain, Ireland and Italy now, have all been attributed to different causes - but all have one theme in common: the financial sectors through caution to the wind in search of easy profits, failed to assess creditworthiness and to manage risk as they were supposed to do. In short, the financial sector behaved poorly and brought down their houses on their own heads. Maybe the search for a cure should start where the disease does, instead of always bleeding the poor.

On The Hustings: Documents detailing wannabe Newt Gingrich's ethical shortcomings are public property. Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch (R) thinks public employees should not have any collective bargaining rights. Wannabee Rick Santorum (R) says that no one dies in the US due to lack of health insurance, they die because they make bad choices. He also knows that "almost everything" undocumented immigrants do is illegal.

Porn O'Graph: All in favor,say Aye!

SAR #11338

2011-12-06T07:30:00.000-06:00

The band-aids are becoming less and less believable.

Forecast: When asked if America's covert war against Iran included the Stuxnet virus, the murder of Iranian nuclear scientists and various explosions on military and industrial-nuclear sites, a government spokesman replied, “D'yah think it's gonna rain?”

Grandmother's House: The housing crisis isn't over; BoA/ML says that the foreclosure mess is just getting started and that 2013 will be the worst year yet. There is, they say, at least another 7% decline on the way. Eventually a total of 14 million houses will be foreclosed. That's 25% of all houses with mortgages. And that's the happy view, which assumes a nationwide agreement on “the foreclosure process,” which is not a sure thing.

Multiple Threat: Geoengineering could (a) save the Earth (b) destroy the Earth (c ) the Earth will be fine, it's humans that are questionable.

The Price Is Right: In Wisconsin the governor wants make protesters put up the funds to pay for the police who will quash the protest. In Austin, your free speech rights are only good for three hours. (Cumulative or Consecutive was not spelled out.)

Go Long! Famed investor Jeremy Grantham expects the S&P500 to fall to the 800 level and stay there for the next decade. He bases this on a review of how markets have performed in the aftermath of previous equity bubbles, in which it took on average 14 years for stocks to recover. Patience is a virtue.

And I Quote: “Trump and Gingrich Will Save the Economy By Hiring Ten Black Kids to Scrub Toilets”

Majority Rules: Humans and their livestock make up 90+% of the vertebrate mass on the earth. Only humans count, in our view. Animals are for eating, and other species do not count. We are running out of oil and biofuels must replace petroleum. So we will level the forests and plant our crops and the rest of God's creatures be damned. We we will destroy the earth as we try to save ourselves.

It's My Party... GMAC has taken its ball and left Massachusetts, where its illegal foreclosure practices are no longer tolerated. No more GMAC mortgages for the Bay State until it shapes up and toes the line. And looks the other way.

A Little off the Top: Scientists report that Himalayan glaciers have shrunk by 20% in the last 20 years – much faster than expected (of course). At that rate, most of the glaciers will be gone by 2100. And Antarctic scientists report in this month's Science that Antarctic ice is melting “much faster than previously anticipated”, suggesting that sea levels will, in turn, rise both faster and higher than previously thought.

Christmas is Coming: . If you believe that MF Global was the exception, you probably believe in Santa, too.

Socialist Workshop: Did you ever notice that the Cookie Monster looked a lot like Karl Marx? Well Fox can explain why that is – the Muppets are a Communist agit-prop ploy trying to brainwash our children. Much as Fox is brainwashing our adults.

Say Goodnight, Ricky: More-or-less presidential candidate Rick Santorum says that anything science cannot explain after all this time should simply be taken as proof of a Divine Creator. He also thinks this view is scientific and belongs in the classroom

Porn O'Graph: Crudely, explained.

SAR #11337

2011-12-05T07:30:00.000-06:00

Are you a consumer, a citizen or a member of the audience?

Temporary Suspension of Disbelief: Markets are rallying, Italian bond yields are falling as masses pretend that salvation is neigh for European bankers.

Sanctions and Sanity: Be Careful What You Wish For: The US is trying to stop Iran from selling oil on the world market. Iran exports about 2 mbd of the approximately 40 mbd that are available for export/purchase. If the available oil drops 5%, past experience suggests that the price of petroleum will increase ten times that – to $150 a barrel. A $1 increase in the price of petroleum leads to a 2.5 cent increase in the cost of a gallon of gasoline in the US. So the US government is, in effect, trying to harm Iran by driving the price of gasoline up $1.25 a gallon for the US customer. How long will petroleum stay above $145 a barrel before the US surrenders?

Plan B: The plan to save Europe is simple: Austerity. And if that doesn't work, more austerity. And when that doesn't work, yet more austerity (and maybe some jackboots). The only thing likely to end the reign of terror will be blood in the streets.

Motives: Canada, the nation that has missed meeting its promised reduction in carbon emissions by the widest margin, has decided to save $6.7 billion and just stop trying. Canada is not going to sign a new carbon emission limiting agreement unless the Big Three emitters (China, India and the US) do – which ain't gonna happen. The US, meanwhile, disingenuously complains that some developing nations don't see why they have to suffer for the sins of the US.

MF Portugal: Following down the path blazed by MF Global in being unable to tell 'mine' from 'yours', Portugal has stolen €5.6bn from pension funds in order to meet its deficit-level promises. Soon the Portuguese will have nothing left to lose. Soon none of us will. What then?

South of the Border: Turns out that all those illegal immigrants from Mexico took Texas' drought home with them. Beans, corn and oats are withering in the field and 1.5 million cattle have died as Northern Mexico bakes under the worst drought in 70 years.

Everything: When those who spy on the daily activities of all of us say they gather and correlate and store everything, we think of emails and cellphones and the internet. We don't think of systems that take pictures of license plates and cross reference them to DMV records and the GPS track your cellphone transmits. We certainly don't realize that our water bills are cross checked with visitor logs at museums and filed along with what we bought at the supermarket a week ago. But we should.

Place Your Bets: Goldman Sachs thinks Brent crude will go for $130 a barrel in 2013, and WTI will climb to $126, even in a low-growth environment.

Stick To Your Own Kind: The Israeli government is telling its expatriates not to marry those clueless American Jews or to raise their children in the United States if they expect to be welcomed back to the homeland. Racial purity, that's the goal – learned it from their former masters.

Discuss: Global oil production's difficulty keeping up with demand will only grow worse. The US, which imports about 60% of its oil, sends about a billion dollars a day out of the country to buy oil - the largest component of its trade deficit. The US now produces about 6 mbd and its chances of producing any significant additional amount are slim. The obvious solution would be to move the economy - especially transportation - away from petroleum and - think global warming - away from fossil fuels.

Diagnosis: The whole world has too much debt. There is no known cure. The only question is who will take most of the losses, and the answer is “the usual suspects.” Go down the hall and look in the mirror and you'll see one of 'em.

Blue Danube: Drought in the Danube river drainage has so lowered the river – one of the busiest freightways in eastern Europe – that dozens of cargo ships are stuck on sandbanks. Hydroelectric power supplies are low in Serbia, crops are stunted in Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary, and drinking water is becoming scarce. This is the driest this part of the world has been since record keeping began in 1775.

Porn O'Graph: Mean, very mean & long lasting.

SAR #11335

2011-12-03T07:30:00.000-06:00

Only the credulous find the future in the past.

Magic, Inc. The BLS reports that in November: Unemployment fell to 8.6% (way below the expected 9.0%) and U6 fell to 15.6%. Employers added 120,000 jobs, about 150,000 entered the workforce and 315,000 left the workforce. Labor Force Participation was down to 64.0%. [No, the math doesn't work. This is government economic data, what did you expect?] The the long term unemployed declined to 3.7% of the labor force, the lowest since October 2009, but the average duration of unemployment (for those still recognized as being unemployed) rose to a record 40.9 weeks. As Calculated Risk points out, This says nothing about the quality of jobs - as an example, a college graduate working at minimum wage would be considered "employed". The average hourly wage went down two cents.

Poor Habits: GOP Wannabe Newt Gingrich says that poor kids have no work habits, won't show up, won't stay at work all day and the only cash they get is illegally obtained. Or from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps), which they use to take vacations in Hawaii.

Asked/Answered: Can the euro be saved? Yes. Will the euro be saved? Probably not. Europe's leadership is trying to solve the wrong set of problems by starving the beast, because their ideologies will not let them grasp the need to spend in the face of debt, to embrace inflation to defeat deflation. Forming a sustainable Central Bank of the Eurozone in a financially unified Europe would take too much political rearrangement and would take too long. The game seems over. The really scary thing is that the US is intent on following Europe down the austerity path to economic disaster.

Sign Up Here: Congressional candidate Ray Lutz was arrested in San Diego's Freedom Plaza for registering voters. Other #Occupiers filled in for him as he was lead away.

From Israel to Auschwitz: On the Israelification of America's SWAT police and their coordinated assaults on the #Occupy movement.

Coordination: The day after Fannie Mae evicted a police officer and his family from their suburban Atlanta home, the government-owned mortgage giant demanded the family turn over all its correspondence with members of Occupy Atlanta.

Vow of Silence: GOP wannabe Herman Cain implies that Divine Providence has sent him to preserve the Republic. Right after he preserves his relationship with his wife, who isn't speaking to him.

Machine Politics: The Election Assistance Commission was created in the wake ~~of suspected GOP manipulation of electronic voting in~~ the highly suspect 2000 presidential election. The EAC was charged with improving the safety, security, and accuracy of electronic voting systems. Obviously, those who fear fair and free elections would be against such an agency. That explains why the House, on a 235/190 mostly party line vote, has passed a GOP-sponsored bill to eviscerate “the last line of defense against fraud and tampering in electronic voting systems around the country.”

Lost & Found: Canada and the US are introducing a new entry/exit tracking system that will allow authorities to track the movements of everyone leaving either country.

The Map Is Not The Territory: A high-powered Brussels-based think-tank says the Euro-zone needs a finance ministry with the power to levy taxes and regulate the banks. And if I had some coffee I could have some coffee and dounuts, if I had some donuts.

Waiting: The opposite of progressive politics is no longer conservative politics, it is regressive politics, which is not a political belief so much as an emotional commitment made out of fear. It is those who believe in survival of the fittest and believe they are demonstrably the fittest. That the economic system creates immense suffering is, to their minds, simply the way God intended things to be, just as God wants them to be wealthy and powerful. Someone has to suffer, better you than they. We had best not sit about simply “waiting for the American Eagle to really spread its wings and straighten up and fly right.”

Ah, Then It's Okay: The FBI explains its unconstitutional surveillance of peaceful anti-war protesters as “an ill-conceived project on a slow work day.”

Porn O'Graph: Enthusiasm builds...

SAR #11334

2011-12-02T07:30:00.000-06:00

The banks and countries that were broke last week are still broke.

The View: Is anything about the euro zone mess better today than last week? No, the system is – in technical terms – falling apart. That sound you heard was the panic button being hammered in the marketplace, as the Fed acted to protect US banks (and Goldman Sachs, of course) from their foreign entanglements. This is not the endgame, this is just the beginning; it will get worse, especially if they take the path of enforced austerity, as seems likely. “Steps toward fiscal union and a more proactive ECB, after all, will still not address the fundamental imbalances and competitiveness issues that bedevil the Euro zone.”

OOPS: Last week there were 403K initial jobless claims, up from 393K the week before. The expectations had been for 390K. The 4-week moving average was 395,750, little changed from a vigorously revised 395,250 the prior week. Note that the unemployment data has been revised upward 91% of the time – certainly a mathematical curiosity.

Monkeys Jumping on the Bed: Britain’s experiment in austerity is not going well. Apparently contractionary practices produce contraction. Because austerity hasn't worked yet, Cameron & Company are sure that more austerity is just the thing. As the doctor said, “ this calls for even more bleeding...”

Just The Facts, Ma'am: Ms Wannabe Bachmann, who is living disproof of the concept, says that Intelligent Design is a fact and should be taught to children. Okay, but first let's teach them what a fact is and then what a scientific theory is.

Great Expectations: All the alarm about the Fed and European central banks pumping inflationary money into the system is misguided. The problem in Europe is (as it was in the US when Bernanke flooded the financial centers with trillions) is not inflation. It is deflation. 30% - 40% - 50% of the euros lent the PIIGS have disappeared. Gone. and ink on the mechanics of debt-based money creation. The banks lend someone, say. That is deflationary. And banks have begun to drastically curtail their lending. That is also deflationary. It will have dire consequences.

Perspective:House prices in the US are not depressed, they haven't even returned to reasonable levels yet. Adjusted for inflation, they are still about 10% above 1996 levels. If the house should cost about 3 times annual income – an old rule of thumb – we've got a ways to go. Down.

High Points: The IEA's Fatih Birol says that Middle Eastern oil production will fall by 3.4 mbd by 2015 and 6.2 mbd by 2020 without significant increases in investment to $100 billion a year. Unfortunately the combination of the global economic slowdown and the rise of popular protests in the region which require increases in social spending make it unlikely the funds will be available. All of which leads the IEA to anticipate prices in excess of $150 a barrel. Briefly, of course. Just until the economy collapses again.

Trust Us: The financial mavens are at it again. This time they want Congress to excuse them from regulation and disclosure as long as they steal less than $50 million from fewer than 2000 people – all in the name of encouraging “capital formation” aimed at “job growth.”

From The Front: Our team is way behind and will probably lose the global climate change game. Instead of lowering CO2 emissions, as everyone has promised to do for a decade or more, we keep increasing them. Up by 5% just last year, worse than the IPCC's “worst-case” scenario. This puts the world on course for a 6ºC warmer world before 2100. Even if we managed to drastically reduce our emissions we've already got a 3.5ºC rise baked in.

Blithely: Some glibly suggest that the 'solution' to Europe's problems is to abandon the euro and dissolve the euro zone; presto changeo a new day. Springtime, happiness and flowers. Except the consequences for Europe – including Germany – and the world – including you, wherever you are – would be catastrophic.

Approximations: The more time that passes, the closer we approach learning what actually happened at Fukushima. TEPCO and the Japanese government now acknowledge that the cores of three of the reactors melted their way through their containment vessels, and that the No. 1 reactor has core melted three-quarters of the way through the secondary concrete containment base.

Multiple Listing Service: A record number – 6.3 million, 12% of all mortgages - are delinquent or in foreclosure, with the average loan in foreclosure having gone 631 days since last payment. The average days delinquent for loans in foreclosure are at a new record of 631 days since last payment.

SAR #11333

2011-12-01T07:30:00.000-06:00

There is still some time left; act accordingly.

Constitution 2.0: The Senate voted Tuesday to repeal large parts of the Bill of Rights, Miranda, habeas corpus and all that twaddle, giving the US military the right to arrest anyone, anywhere and hold them indefinitely without judicial proceedings. 'Anyone' includes US citizens and 'anywhere' includes everywhere, even Philadelphia.

Duet: Ratigan eggs Spitzer on, Spitzer admits he wants to put more financial miscreants in jail. Great rants all round.

Knees, Jerking: The market went zoom, up, up and away – all the way back to the levels last seen two weeks ago - because the Fed (and others) had to step in and flood the world with liquidity because one or more big French banks was falling off the edge. The Fed may have bought Europe another week, but not much more. It also seems that the Fed's decision was made over the weekend and leaked – in the Paulson tradition – to a select few bankers and hedgies, which would explain the inexplicable market surge on Monday. It's a trap; none of the underlying problems has been addressed, much less solved.

A Sure Thing: The Republican leadership has agreed to join the Democrats in slowly starving Social Security by extending the payroll-tax cut. Very clever.

What're the Odds? ADP Payroll numbers, the Chicago PMI and pending home sales all came in above the highest expert prediction and each was 4 standard deviations above the average forecast. Can't wait to see what the BLS can do with their data.

Three Card Monte: The Super Committee was a major success. It was never meant to do anything about the deficit, it was a beard behind which the Republicans could let the federal debt ceiling be increased and the imminent shutdown of the government avoided. It worked, and ever since increases in the debt ceiling have passed without a mummer. As for the automatic cuts, there is lots of time to delay, revise or discard them. They were just window dressing, too. Watch their hands, not their lips.

Enlightened Self-Interest: Doctors who own MRIs, CT scanners, and such are more likely to use them than Doctors who do not. Big Wow.

Cut, Print 'em: Mortgage applications fell 11.7% last week, mainly because everyone that isn't underwater has already refinanced. Refinancing fell to 73.9% of mortgage applications, from 75.9% the prior week.

Exaggerations, Inc: The stock pumpers at Goldman Sachs claim that the US will be the world's largest producer of petroleum by 2017. Of course they also claim that the US produces 8.3 mbd today. The EIA says that US production is at 5.65 mbd and Platts puts it at 5.57 mbd.

Drilled, Baby, Drilled: Cairn Energy blew $600 million drilling dry holes of the coast of Greenland. In the Arctic. Where all that oil was supposed to be.

Be Afraid: Something calling itself the North American Electric Reliability Corporation says that if the EPA actually enforces the law and makes the industry retire its oldest, most polluting plants, Texas and New England will run short of power. The NAERC did not mention that the EPA will let power companies apply for more time to comply with pollution standards.

Poor = Powerless: Great Britain says that it's too bad that poor countries are going to bear the brunt of global climate change, but that just the way its going to be. The idea that the rich nations, who got rich polluting the environment, are going to pay to clean up their mess is silly.

All Aboard! Rick 'wannabe' Perry says that when he's president any federal employee who doesn't agree with him and his policies will be sent to “some really God-awful place.” He didn't say what all those civil servants are going to be doing in Texas.

Porn O'Graph: I love it when you blow in my ear....

-> Go read Automatic Earth's “Day X" <-

SAR #11332

2011-11-30T07:30:00.000-06:00

At some point the dawn may come, but first the darkest hour.

Psst, Let's Make A Deal: Mr. Bernanke's Fed not only lent the US financial industry $7.7 trillion at 0.01% interest, it also handed out $10 trillion to international institutions. But, hey, they're a privately owned bank and can do whatever they want.

Fair Warning: The crisis in the euro area is turning into a panic, the leadership is planning to plan one day soon, and there is considerable risk that the euro will begin to disintegrate within a few weeks. The eurozone economies are either in or on the edge of a recession and the concentrated effort of European governments to cut spending will only feed the downward spiral. There will be a number of rumors, plans & promises, none of which will be credible.

Seems Like Only Yesterday: A spontaneous mob in Tehran spontaneously stormed the British Embassy, smashed windows, and spontaneously took a few Brits hostage as they spontaneously protested sanctions imposed by Great Britain on the Iranian government.

Where two or more are gathered... Hundreds of cops in rot gear and hazmat suits simultaneously quashed unauthorized public expressions of opinion in LA and Philly overnight. Must be doing something right.

Democracy Now! The US continues to supply the Egyptian military dictatorship with tear gas to use on protesters in Tahrir Square - 21 tons of it are on the way. Don't worry, us storm troopers have sufficient pepper spray to keep pacifists off the grass.

Definition: Technocrat, an 'expert' appointed by Goldman Sachs to replace the elected leaders of various nations. See also: Puppetry, US Government.

Boring: The September Case-Shiller house price index was down 3.9% y/y. That's five months in a row, and house prices are now back to April 2003 levels.

Everybody Knows: Fraud, insider dealing, outright theft and of course lying have become the essential elements of financial business practice in the US. When senior government officials meet secretly with the heads of investment banks and hedge funds and give them advance notice of the governments intentions, how can anyone pretend that free markets and capitalism exist, much less that they work? Obviously the only reason any of the big banks and investment houses still exist is because the US taxpayer was fleeced to save them. They are, by right, bought and paid for and should be nationalized.

DIY: Go to your local craft store, get a fabric marker, come home and cut the words "Eat More (your favorite veggie)" out of a stencil, then color the message onto a plain T-shirt. Wear it to the mall until Chick-fil-A's lawyers tell you that you look too much like a cow.

As Long As The Grass Grows and Rivers Run... VP Joe Biden is in Iraq, trying to weasel out of the treaty agreement that calls for the US to have all its troops out of the country by December 31st. You can forgive the Iraqis for being dumbfounded; they haven't had the benefit the education the American Indians got from their treaty dealings with the White Father in Washington.

You've Been Poked: That nice young man at Facebook had his hand firmly slapped and he was made to promise that henceforth the social network giant would not be quite so blatant about breaking various privacy laws. Part of the agreement was that they would actually delete privacy and security information ~~after they sold it~~ when the user "deletes" it.

On Getting With The Program: The Australian government has told those parents who do not have their children fully immunized that they will lose their family tax benefits (up to $2,100 per child) if they do not comply with the immunization schedule.

Porn O'Graph: Majority rules, discreetly.

SAR #113311

2011-11-29T07:30:00.000-06:00

Trade is a two headed coin: there are no debtors without creditors.

Amazing Story #426: Now that the IMF didn't give Italy E600 billion, let's try this one: The EC “will propose a new scheme for pricing bank-debt guarantees that seeks to isolate the 'intrinsic' risk of a bank from the risk of its home-country government.” Details were sparse, but Italy complained they wouldn't get a big enough break, and those few eurozone countries that are still AAA rated are against providing joint guarantees on bank debts. Bankers are trying to get someone, anyone, to save their ~~asses~~ assets. Another one for the fiction file.

The Big Sleep: The OECD has cut its forecast for economic growth in the OECD countries from 2.3% to 1.9 for all of 2011, and from 2.8 to 1.6% for 2012. Its main concern was whether the European monetary union would still be around come 2013.

Under Oath: When it learned that the FBI had been lying to the court about the existence of records sought under a FOI request, the judge was not amused.

Fine Print:In the name of security, the Senate is considering a bill that would permit the president to order the Army to pick up and imprison without charge or trial US civilians anywhere in the world, including in their homes in the USA. The actual wording authorizes “the worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial.” Why now?

Read Slowly, Aloud: “Germany insists that Eurozone countries move aggressively to slow growth and raise unemployment.” No, it's not Krugman.

To Infinity and Beyond: Every time I hear the big investment houses claiming that the $707,568,901,000,000 in unregulated derivatives is all hedged and there's no risk of significant losses, I wonder what will happen when just one link in the circular chain of hedging fails. Like AIG. Or MFGlobal. How good is the bet when the bookie can't cover it? A ten percent fail rate would be the loss of more than the entire world's GDP.

W/O Comment: Two Chinese warships have begun a five-day “official visit” to Kuwait.

The Way-back Machine: The professor set the dial for 2003, the previous time the average new house went for $242,300. (The median selling price of all houses was $175,250, down 7.8% y/y.) Annualized new house sales were 307,000, up a tad from last months (downwardly revised) 303,000.

D-Minus, At Best:US District Judge Jed Rakoff reviewed the SEC/Citigroup scam and couldn't give it a passing grade. He concluded “that the proposed Consent Judgment is neither fair, nor reasonable, nor adequate, nor in the public interest." Trail date, July 16, 2012, when Citi will actually have to face a jury.

Hoja's Donkey: Hear the one about Hoja feeding his donkey a little less every day, and just when it had learned to live without eating, it died? Neither did Senator Kyl (R-AZ) who is opposed to extending the payroll tax cut, thus raising the average family's taxes by $1,000 next year while killing another half-million jobs. Kyl didn't mention that he is also against raising taxes on millionaires, but he is.

All Headline: The Probability Of Multiple Defaults By Euro Area Countries Is No Longer Negligible". The rest is details, none of which are new.

Tailored Fit: Companies are telling the Republican-led Congressional committees that there will be layoffs and plant closings if the EPA tries to curb air and water pollution. But when they're talking to Wall Street analysts they downplay regulatory costs, saying compliance will not affect profitability.

G'way Kid, Y'Bother'n Me: When economists talk about “the consumer” they are not talking about you and me. Or at least not me. They're talking about the top 20% of income earners, who account for about 45% of all spending. The rest of us buy groceries and gasoline.

Low-Fact Diet: The Plan, co-sponsored by the Eurozone leadership, the IMF, the GOP, and Great Britain, goes like this: 1) Cut government spending. 2) Then something, something... and then 3) Prosperity! Austerity for the poor and middle class is still their favorite for Step Two, even though it hasn't worked and – following simple math – won't. But Step One is a sure thing in their ideology. Sure to make matters much, much worse.

SAR #11330

2011-11-28T07:31:00.001-06:00

At this point faster may not be better.

It's Only Make Believe: The IMF doesn't have €600 billion ($800 billion) to lend to Italy. €600 billion ($800 billion) wouldn't be enough. And then there's Portugal. And Spain. And France. Jeesh, get a grip.

It's A Free Country: Remember TARP's $700 billion? Okay then, do you remember $7.77 trillion in secret loans and guarantees to the banks? Oh, right. They were secret. Because, Bernanke says, the banks wouldn't take the money if they had to do it in public. And bread eaten in secret is sweet.

History Lesson: Lots of talk this weekend about various ways Germany can take control of the rest of Europe through elaborate charades in Brussels aimed at gaining “closer financial integration... and joint control over the budgets of the member countries, including intervention rights if individual countries should violate the agreed rules.” The last time this sort of dominance was sought, the US had to bail out the whole continent. Probably will have to again.

Can You Hear Me Now? For over three years the 250 million-plus computers with iTunes installed have been open to ~~intelligence and police~~ hackers. Apple, which learned of the vulnerability in 2008, patched its software this month.

It's A Gas: Egyptian security forces are believed to be new crowd control gases against civilian protesters in Tahrir Square, agents that causes epileptic-like seizures and unconsciousness. CN and CR gases are both suspected, while some symptoms found in the afflicted may come from CS gas that is a decade or more beyond its 'best if used by' date.

Blow Some My Away: Denmark plans to get about half of its electricity needs from wind power by 2020.

The Years of Living Dangerously: Nearly half [45%] of Americans do not earn enough to set aside money after their basic expenses to provide savings for things like college or an illness. Most can't cover replacing the air conditioner or refrigerator without paying ruinous interest rates. They are not officially poor, but they are damned near destitute.

Let Them Freeze In The Dark: GOP wannabee Herman Cain is opposed to extending unemployment benefits and wants payroll taxes returned to their previous levels, calling both “distractions” - as though hunger and homelessness weren't pretty distracting. Never mind that the CBO finds the payroll tax cut to be one of the most effective ways to create jobs, right after continuing aid to the unemployed.

We Come In Peace: US-led NATO helicopters and fighter jets attacked two Pakistani army checkpoints, killing 24 soldiers. The last time the US launched such an attack the Pakistanis closed the Torkham border crossing into Afghanistan (through which most of the fuel for US forces is trucked) for ten days. Happy Motoring.

Report Card: Black Friday sales – no matter how strong – do not say anything about the US economy and certainly cannot be interpreted in terms of job creation. The big sales are in TVs, PCs, iPhony things, software and games, none of which is made in the US. All the sales suggest is how much further the customer went into debt.

Drill, Baby, Drill: Over a decade ago the vast petroleum resources in Kazakhstan were said to be the future of oil. Eleven years and $39 billion later, Exxon, Shell and their partners have yet to sell a drop of oil from “the biggest find in 40 years”. The goal is to produce a quarter million barrels a day. Eventually.

Nutshell: In Case You Were Wondering Why We Keep Bailing Out Wall Street... the finance industry has bought both sides of the aisle.

Follow the Money: Why has Homeland Security begun co-coordinating multi-city police raids on #Occupy protesters? What is the clear and present danger they present? Perhaps it is their call to get money and corporations out of politics. Or reform and meaningful regulation of the finance industry. Or perhaps it is their desire that Congress no longer be permitted to enrich themselves in ways that are illegal for ordinary citizens. And DHS does not decide to encourage mayors to order their police forces to make war on peaceful citizens without getting approval from the White House or Congress. Someone authorized this, intending to do away with the movement. Instead it fanned the flames.

Porn O'Graph: Don't upset the voters.

SAR #11328

2011-11-26T07:50:00.001-06:00

I have little faith in the past; none in the future.

Conundrum: Any move towards greater fiscal integration in the eurozone will take years, but the eurozone does not have years to spare. Days, weeks, maybe even a few months; not years.

No, Virginia... European banks have run out of their supply of greater fools and are stuck with a pile of supposed assets that are losing value every day – which is why they can't sell them. This leaves the banks desperately needing to raise cash to survive. And no one wants to buy what they have or to lend to them.

Firstly: On close reading, nothing in the Constitution says that you can't be assaulted, clubbed, dragged, pepper-sprayed, shot with rubber bullets or – for all we know – disappeared, for wanting to reverse most of what happened in the last third of the 20^th Century in the land where money is speech and corporations are people.

All Together Now: The generals managed to turn out a crowd of “thousands” to demonstrate in support of Egypt's ruling military junta, chanting “The military, the police and the people are one.” And in that order.

Over the Horizon: Our economic problems will not end with the 2012 elections, they are likely to be around a decade from now. At 90,000 new jobs a month – our recent average – most of the 14 million unemployed will be permanently unemployed, for it takes the 90,000 new jobs just to keep up with the month's new workers. That sets up a vicious cycle where lower spending leads to slow job formation. Expect the millions of discarded workers to demonstrate for a piece of the pie, while the haves put up walls to guard their privilege. Money will command the corridors of power while the people take to the streets. Eventually, new directions and new approaches will arise. Eventually.

Heads I win, Tails You Lose: Temporarily leading GOP wannabee Newt Gingrich wants the government to make good on your investment losses: " If someone with a personal account retires with benefits lower than those offered by the current system, the Treasury will send them a check to make up the difference." Remember - and this is true of the whole herd of midgets - if you want 'em, don't cry when you get 'em.

The Dickens You Say? In more than a third of US states, debt collectors can get arrest warrants for people who are behind on their bills.

Where the Bouys Are: Since the 'end of the recession'™ in 2Q09, nominal national income has increased 11.6%. But inflation has risen 4.7%, the population has grown 1.9%, and real wages have risen less than 1%, which means that the real per capita labor income has fallen by 1%. However, the FDIC reports that banks earnings in 3Q11 were up 48% y/y at $35.3 billion.

Location, Location... A senior executive at the Bank of England predicts that the UK housing market is “unlikely to recover”, that home ownership rates will fall and that house prices will never return to their former levels.

Kettle, Bubbling: Four were killed and nine wounded in clashes between Shiite commoners and Royal Saudi security forces in the oil-rich Eastern Province.

Report Card: The nation's food banks report that one in five children – and nearly 1 in 3 African-American or Latino households - are at risk of hunger. Hungry children have trouble focusing in school, get sick more often and struggle daily with stress at home. Many are eligible for free or reduced-price food at school, but often have no food available at home at night or over the weekend. Many schools provide backpacks of food for their hungry students' weekends. Remind me again how poor student performance is the teachers' fault.

Calm Down & Look at the Data: Denialists are enthused over a report that suggests global climate change will produce a slower rate of warming than previously suggested. The difference is between the IPCC's estimate of a rise of 3ºC with a doubling of CO2 levels, and 2.3ºC.

SAR #11327

2011-11-25T07:30:00.000-06:00

In the long run, all of this is temporary.

M&A: The European Commissions wants the power to put member states in “administration” which would greatly expand their reach in overseeing national budgets and budget priorities – especially seeing that eurobonds always get repaid and that doing so takes priority over “any other spending in … national budgets.” Tell me again about the popular election of the commissioners.

Plot Development: While everyone has been focused on Europe, Japan's pot has been coming to a boil. The IMF notes that questions of Japan's ability to sustain its debts may set off a sudden upsurge in its bond yields, which would “quickly” render its debt unsustainable.

Dumpster Diving: Moody's tagged Hungary 'junk' and Fitch junked Portugal citing the damage done by the IMF/EU/ECB imposed austerity measures.

Once & Future ~~King~~Union: Fiscal union is, and always has been, the only lasting solution to the eurocrisis. It will not be easy, nor quick. It will take political courage - for what elected leader has the courage to surrender a nation's sovereignty? Maybe none, which would explain the appointed leadership now running Italy and Greece. But the real impetus must come from the streets, which awaits further austerity, depression and suffering. But it does await.

Sad, True: Wannabe Romney, forgetting he's in the Republican herd, not a Democrat, has promised his first trip as president will be to Israel...

Generally Sincere: Egypt's military now says it is sorry that the protesters forced it to beat them, torture them and shoot them. Especially the shooting part, which drew too much attention. But not too sorry, and, oh yeah, they'll be holding sham elections soon! In Yemen, Saleh's pretense of handing control to his long-time henchman and vice-president was a non-starter, too.

Ah, A Clue: Global credit market debt has grown 12% a year for the last nine years, from $80 trillion to $210 trillion, while global GDP has grown at 4%.

Remember, You Break It, You Bought It. Once again the US is getting out of the nation-building business and will make anyone a good deal on Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Not to mention Libya, Somalia, Bosnia and Kosovo...

Noblesse Oblige: UC Davis will cover the medical expenses of the students pepper sprayed by the campus robo-cops. It was, after all, part of their education.

Lest Ye Forget: In the WSJ, November 20,2003, Newt Gingrich declared: "Every conservative member of Congress should vote for this Medicare bill. It is the most important reorganization of our nation's healthcare system since the original Medicare Bill of 1965 and the largest and most positive change in direction for the health system in 60 years for people over 65. ... If you are a fiscal conservative who cares about balancing the federal budget, there may be no more important vote in your career than one in support of this bill." Clip and save.

Ketchup: Megyn Kelly, a Fox News 'host' thinks that pepper spray is “a food product”. And that's one reason those who watch FOX news are less informed about the world than those who do not watch any news programming at all.

Know Thy Enemy: Here's a robocop training film showing the field application of militarized police tactics on peaceful political protesters. Added extra, the action described as "kettling" is demonstrated.

SAR #11325

2011-11-23T07:50:00.001-06:00

Problems are distorted by the lens used to examine them.

Dead On Arrival: Never mind the details of the IMF's new 'Precautionary Credit Line' proposal, the IMF does not have the money to fund it adequately (estimated at $3 to $4 trillion) and it will require the support of the GOP to get the 'contribution' it would require from the US.

Balance Beam: Attempting to position itself as a support of democracy and human rights in the Middle East without upsetting the dictatorships it has and continues to support, the US has called for “restraint on all sides” in the ongoing confrontation between armed police and unarmed demonstrators in Egypt. For example, the demonstrators shot by the police should ideally die quietly and off camera.

Papieren, Bitte: A German executive assigned to the Mercedes Benz factory in Vance, AL was arrested for not having his passport on his person at all times.

Collateral Damage: The failure of the “supercommittee” ensures that the GOP will prevent the extension of last year's payroll tax cuts or the renewal of extended unemployment benefits. They will also insist on the continuation of the Bush tax cuts for those rich enough to be burdened with neither unemployment nor payroll taxes.

Fair Question: In that Keynesian policies led to economic growth in the New Deal Era, why wouldn't they work today?

Our Game: More than a dozen agents spying for the CIA in Iran and Lebanon have been caught and are currently being interviewed by their governments. The US confirmed the loss of number of assets over the last six months, explaining that “Espionage is a risky business” that can “result in occasional setbacks.”

Imitation/Flattery: Egypt’s state security thuggery has been renamed “Homeland Security.”

Moral Choices: Eventually the confrontations between our heavy-handed, highly militarized police and the disgruntled citizenry will reach the point where federal troops will be called in to put down the insurrection. Think now about what you will do then.

When You're Right... US Airlines are finally getting around to realizing that the indignities, inconveniences and frustrations imposed by TSA might be contributing to the decline in air travel. Did they think it was just the fear of having a fat person spilling over the armrest? Certainly the barriers erected by TSA, Homeland Security and the State Department can easily account for the loss of half a million jobs and half a trillion dollars due to a serious decline in foreign visitors.

Easy As Pie: The US deficit/debt problem can be easily solved. It is a mater of reducing spending and increasing taxation to a point where they together equal to about 5% of GDP. All the rest is details.

China Syndrome: Nuclear experts say that it is merely a matter of time before at least one of the Fukushima reactor cores melts through the containment vessel (if it hasn't already) and into the earth below. If (when?) it encounters underground water there will be “a huge steam explosion”.

Inquiring Mind: How long will it be before some hyped up paramilitary police hero produces the Kent Sate moment for the #Occupy movement?

Drug Lords: The US Justice Department has fined Merck nearly a billion dollars to settle criminal charges relating to Merck's illegal marketing of Vioxx, even after it was told to stop doing so. Vioxx was bringing in $2.5 billion a year when it was finally pulled from the market, so Merck's investors did okay, even though a lot of patients died from heart attacks.

A Long, Long Time: The current 'pipeline' of houses in danger of foreclosure in Maryland would take 21 years to sell at the current sales rate. Make an offer.