All Things in Moderation

Morning Report 8/14/12

86 Responses

1. 

   Michigoose, on August 14, 2012 at 7:33 am said:

   Brent–

   Obama is hostile to the Street??????

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2. 

   Brent Nyitray, on August 14, 2012 at 7:54 am said:

   @Michigoose,

   Yes.

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3. 

   Michigoose, on August 14, 2012 at 7:55 am said:

   OK, now you’re going to have to explain to me why, because my 401(k) is much happier than it was three years ago! 🙂

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4. 

   Mike, on August 14, 2012 at 8:01 am said:

   Brent:

   Why the dichotomy between the NFIB report and the NY Fed about small business credit? Is it a regional thing — NY is tighter than the rest of the country?

   Sorry, I haven’t had time to read your links in full yet …

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5. 

   lmsinca, on August 14, 2012 at 8:06 am said:

   This is an intriguing idea to save the USPS. We’re big fans of postal shipping here, business wise, and I would love to see them survive their financial crisis.

   On July 27, 2012, the National Association of Letter Carriers adopted a resolution at their national convention in Minneapolis to investigate the establishment of a postal banking system. The resolution noted that expanding postal services and developing new sources of revenue are important components of any effort to save the public post office and preserve living-wage jobs; that many countries have a long and successful history of postal banking, including Germany, France, Italy, Japan and the United States itself; and that postal banks could serve the nine million people who don’t have a bank account and the 21 million who use usurious check cashers, giving low-income people access to a safe banking system. “A USPS [United States Postal Service] bank would offer a ‘public option’ for banking,” concluded the resolution, “providing basic checking and savings – and no complex financial wheeling and dealing.”

   What is bankrupting the USPS is not that it is inefficient. It has been self-funded throughout its history. But in 2006, Congress required it to prefund postal retiree health benefits for 75 years into the future, an onerous burden no other public or private company is required to carry. The USPS has evidently been targeted by a plutocratic Congress bent on destroying the most powerful unions and privatizing all public services, including education. Britain’s 150-year-old postal service is on the privatization chopping block for the same reason, and its postal workers have also vowed to fight. Adding banking services is an internationally tested and proven way to maintain post office solvency and profitability.

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6. 

   Brent Nyitray, on August 14, 2012 at 8:14 am said:

   “OK, now you’re going to have to explain to me why, because my 401(k) is much happier than it was three years ago! ”

   Thank Bernake for that…

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7. 

   Brent Nyitray, on August 14, 2012 at 8:17 am said:

   @Mike,

   I am guessing it is a regional thing..

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8. 

   bannedagain5446, on August 14, 2012 at 8:51 am said:

   brent:

   why do you think the difference between the bond and equity markets? Is it because bond issues inevitably have less informartion than equities avaialble (or is my equity prejudice showing?)

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9. 

   Brent Nyitray, on August 14, 2012 at 8:53 am said:

   Bonds have always been behind because they historically have traded in a brokered market, not on an exchange that reports trades / markets etc. It wasn’t until the late 90s when you even had time and sales data.

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10. 

    bannedagain5446, on August 14, 2012 at 9:04 am said:

    and effectively speaking there is no “retail” market for bonds?

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11. 

    Brent Nyitray, on August 14, 2012 at 9:06 am said:

    There is Tradeweb, but the NYSE its not..

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12. 

    bannedagain5446, on August 14, 2012 at 9:07 am said:

    One reason I would say for our increasing political polarization is because with the 24/7 media, no one is ever allowed to change their mind or their position.

    To do so is to be labeled a flip-flopper, a waffler, a panderer, a person without principles.

    Thankg God that for the most part reali life is not that way. Imagine that before your second marriage, a reporter came up to your prospective spouse and said, “you know this person you’re about to marry once said this . . . How do you feel about that?”

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13. 

    novahockey, on August 14, 2012 at 9:08 am said:

    http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/news/national/burmese-python-sets-state-record-at-17-feet-7-inch/nRBBf/

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14. 

    Brent Nyitray, on August 14, 2012 at 9:14 am said:

    “One reason I would say for our increasing political polarization is because with the 24/7 media, no one is ever allowed to change their mind or their position.
    To do so is to be labeled a flip-flopper, a waffler, a panderer, a person without principles.”

    I have seen traders like that… That mentality is a recipe for massive losses.

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15. 

    jnc4p, on August 14, 2012 at 9:22 am said:

    David Stockman on Paul Ryan:

    “Paul Ryan’s Fairy-Tale Budget Plan
    By DAVID A. STOCKMAN
    Published: August 13, 2012

    Greenwich, Conn.

    PAUL D. RYAN is the most articulate and intellectually imposing Republican of the moment, but that doesn’t alter the fact that this earnest congressman from Wisconsin is preaching the same empty conservative sermon.

    Thirty years of Republican apostasy — a once grand party’s embrace of the welfare state, the warfare state and the Wall Street-coddling bailout state — have crippled the engines of capitalism and buried us in debt. Mr. Ryan’s sonorous campaign rhetoric about shrinking Big Government and giving tax cuts to “job creators” (read: the top 2 percent) will do nothing to reverse the nation’s economic decline and arrest its fiscal collapse.

    Mr. Ryan professes to be a defense hawk, though the true conservatives of modern times — Calvin Coolidge, Herbert C. Hoover, Robert A. Taft, Dwight D. Eisenhower, even Gerald R. Ford — would have had no use for the neoconconservative imperialism that the G.O.P. cobbled from policy salons run by Irving Kristol’s ex-Trotskyites three decades ago. These doctrines now saddle our bankrupt nation with a roughly $775 billion “defense” budget in a world where we have no advanced industrial state enemies and have been fired (appropriately) as the global policeman.

    Indeed, adjusted for inflation, today’s national security budget is nearly double Eisenhower’s when he left office in 1961 (about $400 billion in today’s dollars) — a level Ike deemed sufficient to contain the very real Soviet nuclear threat in the era just after Sputnik. By contrast, the Romney-Ryan version of shrinking Big Government is to increase our already outlandish warfare-state budget and risk even more spending by saber-rattling at a benighted but irrelevant Iran.

    Similarly, there can be no hope of a return to vibrant capitalism unless there is a sweeping housecleaning at the Federal Reserve and a thorough renunciation of its interest-rate fixing, bond buying and recurring bailouts of Wall Street speculators. The Greenspan-Bernanke campaigns to repress interest rates have crushed savers, mocked thrift and fueled enormous overconsumption and trade deficits.

    The greatest regulatory problem — far more urgent that the environmental marginalia Mitt Romney has fumed about — is that the giant Wall Street banks remain dangerous quasi-wards of the state and are inexorably prone to speculative abuse of taxpayer-insured deposits and the Fed’s cheap money. Forget about “too big to fail.” These banks are too big to exist — too big to manage internally and to regulate externally. They need to be broken up by regulatory decree. Instead, the Romney-Ryan ticket attacks the pointless Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul, when what’s needed is a restoration of Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era legislation that separated commercial and investment banking.

    Mr. Ryan showed his conservative mettle in 2008 when he folded like a lawn chair on the auto bailout and the Wall Street bailout. But the greater hypocrisy is his phony “plan” to solve the entitlements mess by deferring changes to social insurance by at least a decade.

    A true agenda to reform the welfare state would require a sweeping, income-based eligibility test, which would reduce or eliminate social insurance benefits for millions of affluent retirees. Without it, there is no math that can avoid giant tax increases or vast new borrowing. Yet the supposedly courageous Ryan plan would not cut one dime over the next decade from the $1.3 trillion-per-year cost of Social Security and Medicare.

    Instead, it shreds the measly means-tested safety net for the vulnerable: the roughly $100 billion per year for food stamps and cash assistance for needy families and the $300 billion budget for Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor and disabled. Shifting more Medicaid costs to the states will be mere make-believe if federal financing is drastically cut.

    Likewise, hacking away at the roughly $400 billion domestic discretionary budget (what’s left of the federal budget after defense, Social Security, health and safety-net spending and interest on the national debt) will yield only a rounding error’s worth of savings after popular programs (which Republicans heartily favor) like cancer research, national parks, veterans’ benefits, farm aid, highway subsidies, education grants and small-business loans are accommodated.

    Like his new boss, Mr. Ryan has no serious plan to create jobs. America has some of the highest labor costs in the world, and saddles workers and businesses with $1 trillion per year in job-destroying payroll taxes. We need a national sales tax — a consumption tax, like the dreaded but efficient value-added tax — but Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan don’t have the gumption to support it.

    The Ryan Plan boils down to a fetish for cutting the top marginal income-tax rate for “job creators” — i.e. the superwealthy — to 25 percent and paying for it with an as-yet-undisclosed plan to broaden the tax base. Of the $1 trillion in so-called tax expenditures that the plan would attack, the vast majority would come from slashing popular tax breaks for employer-provided health insurance, mortgage interest, 401(k) accounts, state and local taxes, charitable giving and the like, not to mention low rates on capital gains and dividends. The crony capitalists of K Street already own more than enough Republican votes to stop that train before it leaves the station.

    In short, Mr. Ryan’s plan is devoid of credible math or hard policy choices. And it couldn’t pass even if Republicans were to take the presidency and both houses of Congress. Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan have no plan to take on Wall Street, the Fed, the military-industrial complex, social insurance or the nation’s fiscal calamity and no plan to revive capitalist prosperity — just empty sermons.

    David A. Stockman, who was the director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1981 to 1985, is the author of the forthcoming book “The Great Deformation: How Crony Capitalism Corrupts Free Markets and Democracy.””

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/opinion/paul-ryans-fairy-tale-budget-plan.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

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    • 

      markinaustin, on August 14, 2012 at 9:32 am said:

      Stockman’s op-ed is fuel for thought. It is a very different critique than, say, Paul Krugman’s. Brent, I see echoes of Milton Friedman here; do you?

      edit: recall that MF could be very “shrill”.

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16. 

    Mike, on August 14, 2012 at 9:22 am said:

    nova:

    Saw that in the local paper this morning. Perhaps this is how we can get rid of our snake problem, if boas and pythons are close enough relations.

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17. 

    novahockey, on August 14, 2012 at 9:26 am said:

    From Mikes’ link. A pet owner speaking of her 7-ft boa: “”Larry is a member of the family in every respect,” she says. “He gets in bed with us and watches television. He likes American Idol.”

    Well, everyone dies somehow. Might as well make the news?

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18. 

    Brent Nyitray, on August 14, 2012 at 9:30 am said:

    Wow, I never knew Stockman could get that shrill. He sounds like Taibbi or William Cohan.

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19. 

    bannedagain5446, on August 14, 2012 at 9:32 am said:

    the weird thing for me is, if you compare their actual voting records, rather than their rhetoric, they are complete opposites Romney has been a social moderate but a fiscal conservative, and Ryan is definitely a social conservative but a fiscal moderate.

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20. 

    jnc4p, on August 14, 2012 at 9:34 am said:

    Stockman’s “Pox on both houses” has translated into multiple TV appearances and a book deal. He’s gotten shriller as it has gone on because I believe it pays better.

    His original pieces are still good reads:

    “Four Deformations of the Apocalypse
    By DAVID STOCKMAN
    Published: July 31, 2010

    IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.

    More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/opinion/01stockman.html?pagewanted=all

    and

    “The Bipartisan March to Fiscal Madness
    By DAVID A. STOCKMAN
    Published: April 23, 2011
    Greenwich, Conn.

    IT is obvious that the nation’s desperate fiscal condition requires higher taxes on the middle class, not just the richest 2 percent. Likewise, entitlement reform requires means-testing the giant Social Security and Medicare programs, not merely squeezing the far smaller safety net in areas like Medicaid and food stamps.

    Unfortunately, in proposing tax increases only for the very rich, President Obama has denied the first of these fiscal truths, while Representative Paul D. Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, has contradicted the second by putting the entire burden of entitlement reform on the poor. The resulting squabble is not only deepening the fiscal stalemate, but also bringing us dangerously close to class war.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/opinion/24stockman.html?pagewanted=all

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21. 

    bannedagain5446, on August 14, 2012 at 9:36 am said:

    I love the way reporters say nothing while appearing to place themselves in some inside circle or secret handshake society.

    From the NYT and appearing in Chait’s column:

    “Mr. Ryan’s enormous influence was apparent last summer when Representative Eric Cantor, the second most powerful House Republican, told Mr. Obama during negotiations over an attempted bipartisan “grand bargain” that Mr. Ryan disliked its policy and was concerned that a deal would pave the way for Mr. Obama’s easy re-election, according to a Democrat and a Republican who were briefed on the conversation.”

    So look at the above and ask who is actually doing the speaking, Cantor, no, Obama, no, “Two people who were briefed on the conversation”.

    Do we know who the two people were, no. Do we know who briefed them, no.

    but obviously the reporter is a powerful insider to be briefed on such an imaginary conversation.

    Shades of Harry Reid!

    No doubt one of them was an anonymous Bain investor who had reason to know

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22. 

    jnc4p, on August 14, 2012 at 9:37 am said:

    Speaking of shrill – David Stockman on Bill Moyers:

    http://billmoyers.com/segment/david-stockman-on-crony-capitalism/

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23. 

    Brent Nyitray, on August 14, 2012 at 9:41 am said:

    Mark,

    Actually there is much I agree with.

    I agree with him on the necessity to reduce defense spending, the need to means-test SS / Medicare, and his view of the Fed.

    I part ways with him on needing a government “plan to create jobs” and I view his characterization of the banks / Glass Steagal as somewhere in between “specious” and “just plain wrong.”

    I also disagree with the idea that “undisclosed as of yet” = “nonexistent” with respect to lowering deductions. IIRC Romney intends to keep the %GDP the rich pay in taxes about the same as it is now. I do believe that tax expenditures / subsidies create distortions in order to encourage non-economic behavior, and that non-economic activity acts as a drag on the economy.

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24. 

    Troll McWingnut or George, whichever, on August 14, 2012 at 9:41 am said:

    Stockman’s piece is truly funny. His examples of “true conservatives of modern times” with the exception of Coolidge, may be the most intentionally inaccurate list I’ve read in a long time. I guess to Stockman, Ryan is, as Geraghty puts it stupid and evil. Plus, we get the added benefit of dog whistles for the anti-semites.

    And suddenly, Mr. Conservative Stockman’s favorite part of the budget, one that must be spared at all costs it the discretionary spending? I agree with him about means testing the welfare state, but his arguments are designed not to persuade but to offend literally everybody. Reading Stockman now is like watching that HBO series OZ, it’s just torture porn.

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25. 

    jnc4p, on August 14, 2012 at 9:42 am said:

    So how again are we supposed to determine which wars in the Middle East are “good wars” that the United States should involve itself in, and which ones are “bad wars” where the administration should be treated as war criminals if they involve the country in it?

    “In Syria, it’s past time for the United States to act
    By Richard Cohen, Published: August 13”

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-syria-its-past-time-for-the-united-states-to-act/2012/08/13/fec1bcce-e57c-11e1-8f62-58260e3940a0_story.html?hpid=z2

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    • 

      markinaustin, on August 14, 2012 at 9:55 am said:

      Wasn’t Richard Cohen a proponent of the Iraq War as well?

      It will not be time for the US to act until/unless Syria attacks our NATO ally, Turkey,IMO, and if the Turks want that to happen they can create a casus belli I am sure.

      To be clear, I hope that does not happen. After this family Assad is gone from the Syrian scene the next stage will surely be civil disruption on a grand scale. There is no up side for us and no national security interest at stake and no obvious good guys to back. Helping victims get to Turkey and Jordan and giving humanitarian aid is about the best we can do, I think.

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26. 

    jnc4p, on August 14, 2012 at 9:46 am said:

    “Brent Nyitray, on August 14, 2012 at 9:41 am said:

    I also disagree with the idea that “undisclosed as of yet” = “nonexistent” with respect to lowering deductions. IIRC Romney intends to keep the %GDP the rich pay in taxes about the same as it is now. I do believe that tax expenditures / subsidies create distortions in order to encourage non-economic behavior, and that non-economic activity acts as a drag on the economy.”

    I tend to side more with the idea that “undisclosed” does equal “nonexistent”. If they aren’t going to run on eliminating the mortgage interest deduction, then it’s not going to happen after the election and the most likely result will be deficit financed tax cuts.

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27. 

    Troll McWingnut or George, whichever, on August 14, 2012 at 9:47 am said:

    Jnc4p, as Darth Vader said to Princess Leia: “Don’t act so surprised your highness, you weren’t on any mercy mission this time.”

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28. 

    bannedagain5446, on August 14, 2012 at 9:52 am said:

    “So how again are we supposed to determine which wars in the Middle East are “good wars” that the United States should involve itself in, and which ones are “bad wars” where the administration should be treated as war criminals if they involve the country in it?”

    We wait until they’re over and then we fill out a score card.

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29. 

    jnc4p, on August 14, 2012 at 10:18 am said:

    Mark, you saw that Syria shot down a Turkish F-4 already?

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/turkey-investigates-whether-syria-shot-down-missing-jet/2012/06/22/gJQAt8SXxV_story.html

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    • 

      markinaustin, on August 14, 2012 at 10:35 am said:

      Mark, you saw that Syria shot down a Turkish F-4 already?

      Yes. And I know what that was about, and there is much more to that story than you have likely read.

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30. 

    Troll McWingnut or George, whichever, on August 14, 2012 at 10:26 am said:

    Here is another example of the Obama campaign playing the race card.

    http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/313954/biden-republicans-gonna-put-yall-back-chains-daniel-foster

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31. 

    bannedagain5446, on August 14, 2012 at 10:41 am said:

    mark:

    in years to come, I’m sure that just like Libya we will learn that there are Americans currently on the ground in Syria doing some nasty stuff.

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32. 

    jnc4p, on August 14, 2012 at 12:01 pm said:

    Odd way to argue in favor of the stimulus as an employment measure:

    “In what ways has the stimulus been like and unlike Roosevelt’s New Deal?

    The stimulus isn’t the New Deal. But they were both massive exercises in government activism in response to epic economic collapses. And they were both about change. The stimulus was the purest distillation of what Obama meant by “Change we can believe in.” And it’s the essence of Obama-ism—not only the policies, which came straight from his campaign agenda, but his approach to getting them into law, which was more pragmatic and political and messy than his hopey-changey rhetoric had led people to believe. So there was plenty of New, and plenty of Deal.

    The Obama team thought a lot about the New Deal while they were putting the stimulus together, but times have changed since the New Deal. The Hoover Dam put 5,000 Americans to work with shovels. A comparable project today would only require a few hundred workers with heavy equipment. Christy Romer, the Depression scholar who led Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, kept reminding colleagues that the Roosevelt administration hired 4 million Americans in the winter of 1934. At one point she started calling Cabinet departments to see how many employees they could hire with unlimited funds: They’d say oh, a lot, maybe 20,000! So the stimulus didn’t create giant new alphabet agencies like the WPA or CCC. It only created one new agency, a tiny incubator for cutting-edge energy research called ARPA-E.

    People forget that the CCC herded unemployed urban youths into militarized rural work camps—often known as “concentration camps,” before that phrase became uncool—for less than a dollar a day. That kind of thing wouldn’t fly today. The New Deal basically created Big Government, but it’s still here. There was no need to re-create Big Government, and no political desire to expand Big Government.”

    http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2012/08/the_new_new_deal_a_book_argues_that_president_obama_s_stimulus_has_been_an_astonishing_success.html

    Needless to say the line about “no political desire to expand Big Government” is absurd in the context of the Obama administrations desires. See the PPACA.

    However, the note about “urban youths into militarized rural work camps” is a useful reminder of all of the bad policy that was part of the New Deal that has been conveniently forgotten. See also wage and price controls and gold confiscation.

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    • 

      novahockey, on August 14, 2012 at 12:10 pm said:

      “The Hoover Dam put 5,000 Americans to work with shovels.”

      the more I hear shovel ready, the more I don’t think it makes much sense. An extended family member lost her job. there’s no way she’s picking up a shovel.

      also. The Onion on Ryan: Admit It, I Scare The Ever-Loving Shit Out Of You, Don’t I?

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33. 

    bannedagain5446, on August 14, 2012 at 12:47 pm said:

    nova:

    The Hoover Dam wasn’t a New Deal project so so maybe they really DID put 5,000 out there with shovels those dam Republicans!

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    • 

      markinaustin, on August 14, 2012 at 1:19 pm said:

      The Hoover Dam wasn’t a New Deal project

      You have written that here and there several times, Don Juan. The dam was begun before the New Deal. The New Deal prioritized it, poured money into it, allowed for more workers to be hired, and caused the dam to be finished years ahead of schedule – I am not sure how many years, but two or more. Of course, when the dam was finished a lot of folks in Boulder City were suddenly unemployed, I would guess.

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      • 

        markinaustin, on August 14, 2012 at 1:34 pm said:

        Anybody have full access here?

        http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444184704577587643375791660.html

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34. 

    bannedagain5446, on August 14, 2012 at 12:50 pm said:

    “Standard Chartered agreed Tuesday to pay New York’s banking regulator $340 million to settle allegations that it hid transactions with Iran.

    In addition to the civil penalty, the British-based bank agreed to install a monitor for at least two years to evaluate the bank’s money-laundering risk controls in its New York branch, the New York Department of Financial Services said.

    “The Bank shall permanently install personnel within its New York branch to oversee and audit any offshore money-laundering due diligence and monitoring undertaken by the Bank,” said Benjamin Lawsky, New York Superintendent of Financial Services.”

    It really is true that if you’re a banker, you can get away with anything up to and including murder no matter which administration is in power.

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    • 

      ScottC, on August 14, 2012 at 2:57 pm said:

      banned:

      It really is true that if you’re a banker, you can get away with anything up to and including murder no matter which administration is in power.

      Not arson.

      But I know what you mean. I had to search all the way back to almost two whole months ago to find a banker who got convicted of a financial crime.

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35. 

    bannedagain5446, on August 14, 2012 at 12:57 pm said:

    scott:

    Before you respond to my last, I meant criminally of course, not civily. The last time a banker went to jail was in a Frank Capra movie.

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36. 

    bannedagain5446, on August 14, 2012 at 1:41 pm said:

    mark:

    I’m not sure why you consider this to be so, since construction started two full years before FDR’s inauguration and Coolidge signed the authorizing legislation 5 years before.

    If you have any further information I would be happy to take a look

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37. 

    novahockey, on August 14, 2012 at 1:49 pm said:

    Mark: here’s the WaPo cover on that:
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/salazar-plan-puts-half-of-alaska-petroleum-reserve-off-limits-to-drilling/2012/08/13/d542863c-e57f-11e1-8741-940e3f6dbf48_story.html

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38. 

    bannedagain5446, on August 14, 2012 at 2:16 pm said:

    For those of a certain age, “Horshack” dead at 63.

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39. 

    bannedagain5446, on August 14, 2012 at 2:27 pm said:

    “•The 22-year-old singer reportedly purchased a $4.9 million home next to boyfriend Conor Kennedy’s family estate
    •(Taylor)Swift also just released her latest single, ‘We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together’”

    I think we can safely conclude now that Swift is the ultimate stalker celebrity girlfriend (even beyond Alanis Morrisette) . You know the one that you see too much of in the relationship and then really see and hear too much of when you’re out of it.

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40. 

    yellojkt, on August 14, 2012 at 2:30 pm said:

    Wasn’t Richard Cohen a proponent of the Iraq War as well?

    What major pundit during the drumbeat coming up on the invasion wasn’t? The mad rush to be more hawkish than the other guy made for some very strange bedfellows. The list of people who have apologized for or disavowed their support is also a rather motley bipartisan grouping.

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41. 

    Brent Nyitray, on August 14, 2012 at 2:32 pm said:

    For those of a certain age, “Horshack” dead at 63.

    Signed, Epstein’s Mother.

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42. 

    bannedagain5446, on August 14, 2012 at 2:42 pm said:

    I am reminded that until she actually burns donw the Kennedy home, Swift will have to take a back seat to Lisa Left Eye Lopes as the ultimate celebrity stalker girlfrined

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43. 

    jnc4p, on August 14, 2012 at 2:58 pm said:

    “yellojkt, on August 14, 2012 at 2:30 pm said:

    Wasn’t Richard Cohen a proponent of the Iraq War as well?

    What major pundit during the drumbeat coming up on the invasion wasn’t? The mad rush to be more hawkish than the other guy made for some very strange bedfellows. The list of people who have apologized for or disavowed their support is also a rather motley bipartisan grouping.”

    Krugman claims he wasn’t, but I haven’t checked it out. The impressive one for me was when Mary McGrory agreed:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32573-2003Feb5.html

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44. 

    Troll McWingnut or George, whichever, on August 14, 2012 at 3:22 pm said:

    “But I know what you mean. I had to search all the way back to almost two whole months ago to find a banker who got convicted of a financial crime.”

    Scott, you’re getting awfully close to contradicting Taibbi. Please, dial it back.

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45. 

    lmsinca, on August 14, 2012 at 3:27 pm said:

    McWing

    Scott, you’re getting awfully close to contradicting Taibbi. Please, dial it back.

    I don’t think anyone here cares one way or another whether scott contradicts Taibbi or not, as I said he’s certainly fair game. As usual you guys miss my point completely. I must be writing in my broken Spanish again with a French accent.

    On a nicer note, has anyone heard anything about imports/exports, either or both, being down? We received an overseas order this morning from the docks on Friday to our warehouse by about 10 am. That’s some kind of record.

    Edit…………again with the accent. What I meant was it landed at the docks on Friday and cleared customs by this morning and then the hour to our warehouse………….that’s some kind of a record.

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46. 

    yellojkt, on August 14, 2012 at 3:28 pm said:

    For those of a certain age, “Horshack” dead at 63.

    Signed, Epstein’s Mother.

    Ooooh, ooooh, Mistah, Kottah, that would be Ron Palillio.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd4VkBcG2PQ

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47. 

    Troll McWingnut or George, whichever, on August 14, 2012 at 3:55 pm said:

    Lms, no worries, I got both your’s and Scott’s points. There was no offense intended and if any was taken, I apologize.

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48. 

    lmsinca, on August 14, 2012 at 4:03 pm said:

    McWing

    No apology necessary……………….I just assume I’m not communicating up to snuff today. I have that problem where my fingers get ahead of my comprehension sometimes, plus it’s effin’ hot out in that warehouse today. I’m inside taking a quick break and then maybe a dip in the pool before I finish up out there.

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49. 

    Brent Nyitray, on August 14, 2012 at 4:25 pm said:

    Mark,

    Plan Opens Over Half of Alaska Reserve to Drilling

    The Obama administration proposed opening up 12 million acres of Alaska’s 23 million-acre National Petroleum Reserve for oil and natural-gas drilling, while restricting energy production on the rest of the acreage.

    Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Monday the proposal strikes “an important balance” between energy production and environmental conservation. The National Petroleum Reserve, a swath of land on Alaska’s North Slope, is home to bears, wolves and falcons, as well as caribou herds used by Alaska native villages for subsistence.

    The plan quickly attracted critics who say the proposal is too restrictive. “This decision denies U.S. taxpayers both revenue and jobs at a time when our nation faces record debt and chronic unemployment,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska).

    Mr. Salazar said the proposal targets areas that hold the majority of energy resources. The areas targeted for oil and natural-gas leasing are thought to hold 550 million barrels of economically recoverable oil and 8.7 trillion cubic feet of economically recoverable natural gas, the Interior Department said.

    Debate over the National Petroleum Reserve is part of a broader fight over Alaska’s energy resources. Royal Dutch Shell has been pushing for years to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean just north of the petroleum reserve. Having faced opposition by environmental groups, the company is now in a race against time to secure necessary approvals this year before winter ice moves in.

    Washington also remains divided over whether oil exploration is justified in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, located east of the petroleum reserve.

    Companies have conducted exploratory drilling in the petroleum reserve but haven’t reached active oil production. The Obama administration held a lease sale in the area in 2011, attracting 17 bids covering 140,000 acres.

    The proposal released Monday, identified as the administration’s “preferred alternative,” is similar to one of four possible management plans unveiled by the Interior Department earlier this year. The department will make its formal choice later this year.

    Mr. Salazar said the plan would allow for the construction of a new pipeline through the petroleum reserve. Such a pipeline, while not yet proposed, would be valuable for transporting oil from wells in the Arctic Ocean to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

    Environmental groups praised the administration’s preference for a proposal that shields millions of acres from future energy production. “We support the administration’s approach to conserving important ecological and subsistence areas from oil and gas development both on and off shore,” said Eleanor Huffines, manager of the Pew Environment Group’s U.S. Arctic Program.

    Write to Tennille Tracy at tennille.tracy@dowjones.com

    A version of this article appeared August 14, 2012, on page A2 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Plan Opens Over Half of Alaska Reserve to Drilling.

    Copyright 2012 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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    • 

      markinaustin, on August 14, 2012 at 4:32 pm said:

      Thanks, Brent. Because this cannot affect gasoline prices now [right?] and we do not need to tap what is essentially the military reserve, why are they doing this now?

      DonJuan, take a peek at the Wiki article about Hoover Dam. It does report that the first concrete pour was in June 33 and that the dam was completed two years early.

      I tried to find the NRA/WPA link to the accelerated funding, but for now you could take my word for it, or not.

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50. 

    bannedagain5446, on August 14, 2012 at 4:50 pm said:

    Mark

    the foundation work began in March 1931 6 months ahead of schedule because Hoover pushed it up. So time wise it was 40% complete when FDR was sworn in

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    • 

      markinaustin, on August 14, 2012 at 5:32 pm said:

      The diversion tunnels for the Colorado River began after the contract was signed in March 1931. The diversion project, Boulder City, the extended rail lines, these were projects in and of themselves. But the first concrete pour was in June ’33, after the river had been diverted out of its valley.

      I think you would be hard pressed to say the work that began in April ’31 that had to be completed by March ’33 was more than 10% of the actual project. I do not have a citation. Do you?

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51. 

    bannedagain5446, on August 14, 2012 at 4:52 pm said:

    scott:

    he was convicted of insider trading, actually working against his investment house, not as a functionary of it, so that’s what I would say the difference was.

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    • 

      ScottC, on August 14, 2012 at 7:14 pm said:

      banned:

      so that’s what I would say the difference was.

      OK. So I guess you are narrowing your claim fairly significantly from the embarrassingly easy to debunk original of getting away with any crime up to and including murder. 

      I suppose that getting indicted less than a month ago for a scheme in which he was definitely a functionary of the company won’t count for you either, as I suppose a conviction is not assured.  So I guess we will have to reach into the bowels of time…all the way back to, er, May of this year…to uncover bankers who actually got convicted of crimes in which they were working for, not against, the financial interests of their company.

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      • 

        ScottC, on August 14, 2012 at 7:29 pm said:

        BTW banned, you may also want to note that, in the article about the three convicted bankers, the fact that 12 others have already been convicted in relation to similar charges, and 3 more have been indicted and await trial is pointed out.

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52. 

    lmsinca, on August 14, 2012 at 7:19 pm said:

    Shrink just linked this Reuter’s piece wishing jnc was around to debate it with him. I’m not sure I see anything new here but I can see how the pressure to resolve these issues is mounting. Perhaps pretend and extend is finally coming to an end?

    Those repurchase requests are increasing as Fannie and Freddie apply more scrutiny. Both companies have hired more staff to comb through loans and determine which can be sold back to banks.

    In the second quarter, outstanding repurchase requests at Fannie Mae grew by 20 percent to $14.6 billion from the first quarter, according to a filing last week.

    Banks can argue about whether they really did follow guidelines, but the impact of buyback requests on lenders is clear. Bank of America Corp, Wells Fargo & Co, PNC Financial Services Group Inc and others set aside more money in the second quarter to cover repurchase requests.

    Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac say they are trying to recover as much money as possible for taxpayers after receiving more than $188 billion of government support during the housing crunch. They have since repaid about $45 billion.

    Banks believe Fannie and Freddie are nailing them on technicalities. If the two companies bear down too hard on lenders, banks could originate fewer mortgages, further pressuring the housing market.

    That may already be happening. Bank of America has reduced its mortgage lending and is no longer selling most loans to Fannie Mae. And Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s regulator is concerned enough that it is thinking of changing the repurchase process to press the companies to look at loans before agreeing to guarantee or purchase them.

    A suffering housing market hurts Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well.

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53. 

    jnc4p, on August 14, 2012 at 9:25 pm said:

    From the article:

    “Banks believe Fannie and Freddie are nailing them on technicalities.”

    I’m shocked. Banks never use technicalities in their favor, say vis-a-vis homeowners.

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54. 

    bannedagain5446, on August 14, 2012 at 10:01 pm said:

    scott

    very well done

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55. 

    bannedagain5446, on August 14, 2012 at 10:14 pm said:

    mark

    I didn’t say it was 40% of the work, I said time wise. I wouldn;t know how to judge what was the most difficult part either man hours or money wise. But it was a 5 year project and 2 years had already been completed by the time FDR was inaugurated. so yes.

    I’m not sure why this is a matter of concern. I siimply made the point that almost none of the big contruction projects that we associate with the Depression are New Deal projects. Even the Empire State Building had the coporation that built it in place before the market crash.

    In my opinion projects like this are never started when times are bad as a way of making work but only when times are good as a way to celebrates the economic good times that make them possible.

    I’m not trying to briing down the New Deal in anyway, Lord knows my father would kill me, but just to point out that the nuts and bolts of what we know about that time is sometimes different than the myths that have built up.

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    • 

      markinaustin, on August 15, 2012 at 6:35 am said:

      I take your point, that private and RFC projects continued during the thirties are wrongly attributed as having been originated by NIRA, as if everything done during the New Deal was an FDR initiative. And I understand that serious writers should not carelessly attribute.

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56. 

    bannedagain5446, on August 14, 2012 at 10:17 pm said:

    jnc

    I have read elsewhere that F and F are combing through loans like never before also, but I have lost the article. All things considered I would say that DeMarco had done a pretty good job, but is obviously never going to get any credit for it.

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57. 

    bannedagain5446, on August 14, 2012 at 10:18 pm said:

    scott

    BTW, that was my way of saying that I completely retract my statement as being overly broad and therefore incorrect.

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    • 

      ScottC, on August 15, 2012 at 5:46 am said:

      banned:

      BTW, that was my way of saying that I completely retract my statement as being overly broad and therefore incorrect

      It’s probably true that some bankers have gotten away with things that they shouldn’t have gotten away with. But that fact doesn’t distinguish finance from any other industry. And certainly not politicians, who get away with questionable behavior all the time. It’s clear that ever since 2008 there has been a concerted effort, mostly by people on the left but also by some on the right, to turn bankers into all-purpose villains. I confess it gets a little irritating to see these cartoonish notions perpetuated here at ATiM.

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      • 

        ScottC, on August 15, 2012 at 6:51 am said:

        Biden, speaking in Virginia, forgets where he is.

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        • 

          ScottC, on August 15, 2012 at 7:12 am said:

          More Biden, first telling an out and out lie, and then using the imagery of slavery.

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58. 

    jnc4p, on August 15, 2012 at 7:03 am said:

    “bannedagain5446, on August 14, 2012 at 10:17 pm said:

    jnc

    I have read elsewhere that F and F are combing through loans like never before also, but I have lost the article. All things considered I would say that DeMarco had done a pretty good job, but is obviously never going to get any credit for it.”

    I agree on DeMarco. He takes his mandate to protect the taxpayers seriously and isn’t letting homeowners or the banks off the hook. He’s probably one of the best examples of a civil servant/honest bureaucrat that one is likely to find.

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59. 

    jnc4p, on August 15, 2012 at 7:14 am said:

    “ScottC, on August 15, 2012 at 5:46 am said:

    banned:

    BTW, that was my way of saying that I completely retract my statement as being overly broad and therefore incorrect

    It’s probably true that some bankers have gotten away with things that they shouldn’t have gotten away with. But that fact doesn’t distinguish finance from any other industry.”

    What does seem to distinguish banks from other industries is the extent of regulatory capture and the ensuing ability to write off criminal and civil violations as the cost of doing business. The SEC consent decree in which the parties neither admit or deny guilt seems endemic to the banks.

    Whether or not a specific practice is illegal is only one consideration, but not determinative, of whether or not a bank should pursue it as part of their business model. Profitably seems to trump legality.

    What I also believe has been shown by the repeated scandals is that the problem is systematic to the institutions. It’s not a few “rogue” traders.

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    • 

      novahockey, on August 15, 2012 at 7:41 am said:

      CMS put out the final blueprint for the exchanges. states have to submit their application to the feds by Nov. 16, 2012 to receive approval for plan year 2014. 3 months. right.

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    • 

      ScottC, on August 15, 2012 at 8:32 am said:

      jnc:

      What does seem to distinguish banks from other industries is the extent of regulatory capture and the ensuing ability to write off criminal and civil violations as the cost of doing business.

      Have you considered the possibility that that is actually the purpose of much of the regulation that financial institutions fall under and many of the charges made against them, ie a means of producing a revenue stream for the ridiculous number of authorities under which they fall?

      Look at the Standard Chartered case reported today in the NYT.. If the NYT is correct, the Justice department had determined that most of what Standard Chartered had done was not a violation of the law, but that didn’t stop the AG of New York (in the great tradition of Eliot Spitzer) from threatening action in order to extract a sizable settlement, proving that these kinds of settlements are indeed simply a cost of doing business.

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    • 

      ScottC, on August 15, 2012 at 8:42 am said:

      jnc:

      Whether or not a specific practice is illegal is only one consideration, but not determinative, of whether or not a bank should pursue it as part of their business model. Profitably seems to trump legality.

      Can you name me a business in which the above calculation is not made? If it is more apparent in the finance industry than others, it is only because of 1) the high profile the industry has taken on and 2) the huge number of regulations and regulatory agencies under which bank’s fall.

      Note that I am not condoning the calculation. I am simply saying that to suggest that it is particular to banks is to ignore the nature of human beings and reality in general.

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60. 

    Troll McWingnut or George, whichever, on August 15, 2012 at 8:05 am said:

    On the upside NoVa, isn’t there only 13 states setting up their own exchanges?

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61. 

    jnc4p, on August 15, 2012 at 8:53 am said:

    “ScottC, on August 15, 2012 at 8:32 am said:

    jnc:

    What does seem to distinguish banks from other industries is the extent of regulatory capture and the ensuing ability to write off criminal and civil violations as the cost of doing business.

    Have you considered the possibility that that is actually the purpose of much of the regulation that financial institutions fall under and many of the charges made against them, ie a means of producing a revenue stream for the ridiculous number of authorities under which they fall?

    Look at the Standard Chartered case reported today in the NYT.. If the NYT is correct, the Justice department had determined that most of what Standard Chartered had done was not a violation of the law, but that didn’t stop the AG of New York (in the great tradition of Eliot Spitzer) from threatening action in order to extract a sizable settlement, proving that these kinds of settlements are indeed simply a cost of doing business.”

    Absolutely on the collusion between banks and their regulators. LIBOR and the question of regulators being in on it and colluding with it for the “good of the system” is an obvious example.

    Standard Chartered is another example of why trials, not consent decrees, are needed. If the bank didn’t actually break the law, then the behavior of the regulators amounts to extortion. Either way, as Judge Rakoff put it there is a public interest in determining if an actual crime was committed versus sweeping it all under the rug with an appropriate payoff to the corrupt regulator.

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    • 

      ScottC, on August 15, 2012 at 9:15 am said:

      jnc:

      Standard Chartered is another example of why trials, not consent decrees, are needed. If the bank didn’t actually break the law, then the behavior of the regulators amounts to extortion.

      I agree it amounts to extortion. But who is going to pay for the costs faced by the banks when they have to defend themselves from a failed prosecution? You need to change the financial incentives of the entire regulatory structure. Which, BTW, I am happy to support. But banks have to live with the regulatory structure they have, not the one they want. As long as it makes more financial sense for a bank to pay fines than to defend itself, it will do so. And it should.

      Condemn the regulatory system and the politicians who run it all you want, and you will see no criticism from me. But when you start condemning private institutions, and focusing exclusively on banks, for operating rationally within the system we have, I will protest.

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62. 

    Troll McWingnut or George, whichever, on August 15, 2012 at 9:05 am said:

    I guess though J, you assume the purpose of the regulations is to control. What if it’s to extort money? As Glenn Reynolds puts it, laws don’t pass when there is not enough opportunity for graft.

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    • 

      ScottC, on August 15, 2012 at 9:17 am said:

      McWing:

      What if it’s to extort money?

      Exactly.

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63. 

    jnc4p, on August 15, 2012 at 9:20 am said:

    “ScottC, on August 15, 2012 at 9:15 am said:

    Condemn the regulatory system and the politicians who run it all you want, and you will see no criticism from me. But when you start condemning private institutions, and focusing exclusively on banks, for operating rationally within the system we have, I will protest.”

    That’s fine, as long as you concede that the “rational” action in the system we have is also criminal.

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    • 

      ScottC, on August 15, 2012 at 12:36 pm said:

      jnc:

      That’s fine, as long as you concede that the “rational” action in the system we have is also criminal.

      It’s certainly possible that some rational actions have been criminalized. It’s also possible that some criminal penalties are such that it can be more rational to accept the penalty than to avoid it. But with regard to what we were specifically talking about, I don’t think it is criminal to pay settlements (extortion?) rather than fight the powers that be.

      I’d also point out that it makes more sense to me to focus on whether a given action is wrong or unethical, not whether it is criminal or illegal. For example, I would be more troubled by a business that was acting within the law but doing something I thought was morally wrong than by a business that was routinely violating some regulatory rule designed to generate fine revenue for the government.

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64. 

    Troll McWingnut or George, whichever, on August 15, 2012 at 9:25 am said:

    J, are violating Federal regulations criminal? I’m asking in complete seriousness as I don’t know.

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65. 

    jnc4p, on August 15, 2012 at 9:26 am said:

    I believe it varies by regulation. Some are civil, some are criminal.

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