Category: Uncategorized

WND column

Zombies that ate America

Major U.S. banks and securities firms are on pace to pay their people about $145 billion for 2009, a record sum that indicates how compensation is climbing despite fury over Wall Street’s pay culture. An analysis by the Wall Street Journal shows that executives, traders, investment bankers, money managers and others at 38 top financial companies can expect to earn nearly 18 percent more than they did in 2008 – and slightly more than in the record year of 2007.
– “Banks set for record pay,” Wall Street Journal, Jan. 14, 2010

The American economy is not a zero-sum game. It is also not anything that can be reasonably considered a free-market economy. The reason that more than one percent of U.S. GDP went to pay Wall Street’s bankers in 2009 is that the Republican and Democratic politicians have utilized the power of government to significantly distort the system for their benefit. While bank executives are reporting record profits for the zombie banks that appear to justify their enormous compensation, these reports are fraudulent and the profits are non-existent. Both are based upon false asset valuations and crazy derivative gambles disguised as financial investments. Banking executives are using the additional time given to them by the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve at the expense of American workers and U.S. taxpayers to recklessly loot the system before it breaks down again.

AFC Championship

I’d like to see the Jets upset the Colts. But I don’t think they will. I’ll be live-commenting the Vikings-Saints game and will post it after the game, but until then this will serve as your Conference Championship open post.

Actually, that would be amusing

The Baseline Scenario recommends PAUL KRUGMAN for the Fed. And with a straight face, no less:

The danger here is uncertainty – the markets fear a prolonged policy vacuum. Fortunately, there is a way to address this. Ben Bernanke should withdraw and the president should nominate Paul Krugman to take his place.

The ironic thing is that although Krugman is a willfully ignorant Neo-Keynesian who couldn’t correctly predict the sun rising tomorrow, he would still be a better choice than permitting Ben Bernanke to destroy the tattered remnants of the American economy in order to delay the liquidation of the zombie banks.

I don’t care if Bernanke is reconfirmed or not. Should he be? Of course not. He’s been an unmitigated disaster; only Greenspan was worse. But as Calculated Risk correctly points out, it’s not really a question of the right man for the job, but the right man for the job in the eyes of the bankers and politicians who created the current mess. You can count on one thing regardless of whether Bernanke is kicked out or not; anyone capable of being confirmed is not the right man for the job.

Eve Online players

MB created the first mode for Eve Online, one of around 40 game and application modes that have been produced to date. Have a look at it and if you’ve got any suggestions for improvements, let us know. Also feel free to tell us which mode you’d like to see posted for review next week. And if you’re interested in putting together a layout yourself for a game or application you use regularly, send an email and we’ll send you the spreadsheet.

Purple and Gold

I don’t have any problem admitting that the Prince song is horrifically bad. It’s no Skol Vikings, let alone Men of Football Fame, which happens to be one of the all-time great fight songs. But I quite like the fact that he wrote it anyhow. It’s the sort of irrational thing that an enthusiastic football fan should do.

I’m not afraid of the Saints. If the Vikes were playing at the Hump, I’d be even more confident than I was last week against Dallas. This lack of fear is no disrespect to Drew Brees; I was furious when Culpepper was injured and the Vikings didn’t pursue Brees after the Chargers decided to jettison him in favor of Rivers. Brees is an excellent quarterback and he is protected by a very good line that only allowed 20 sacks all year. But besides home field advantage, the QB and OL combination are probably the only significant advantages for New Orleans. Consider the breakdown:

QB – slight advantage New Orleans -1 (Favre has been incredible all year, but there is no other shoe with Brees.)
RB – solid advantage Minnesota +2 (This would be the right time to show up in a big way, AD.)
WR – push. I like Rice better than Colston this year.
TE – slight advantage Minnesota +1 (+2 if Shockey can’t go. Shiancoe has been reliably great and Favre has loved throwing to the TE since the days of Chmura and Franks.)
OL – slight advantage New Orleans -1

DL – solid advantage Minnesota +2 (+1 if Edwards can’t go.)
LB – slight advantage New Orleans -1 (Vikes miss Henderson.)
DB – push despite INT difference (Yes, Sharper is a ballhawk but we know him; he’s not as good as this year’s stats indicate.)

Special teams – Kluwe and Morstead are practically identical, Longwell is better than Carney or Hartley, Harvin and Roby both average 27.5 yards on 42 returns, and Reynaud’s average is more than 2x Bush’s. Much to my surprise, the slight advantage is to the Vikes. +1

Home field in a dome: Slight advantage New Orleans -1. This is why I was so upset about those stupid losses to Chicago and Carolina.

Coaches: Slight advantage New Orleans -1. But Chilly is improving. Last year, this would have been minus two. Maybe a minus three. I suspect having Favre pushing him to be more aggressive has helped, then again, having a quarterback who can actually see an open receiver and throw the ball to him would tend to open up the playbook a little. I LOVED the dagger at the end of the Dallas game for two reasons. One, 1975. Two, the Vikes have tended to slack late all season.

On paper, it adds up to a slight advantage for Minnesota, so my conclusion is that the Vikes will hold on for a six-point win that isn’t quite as close as it looks on the final scoreboard. The Saints are a very good team led by an excellent quarterback, but if there is one thing we know from past playoffs, it’s that a strong pass rush can throw off even the very best quarterbacks. The focus is all on the quarterback duel, and no doubt the fourth quarter will be full of aerial pyrotechnics, but don’t be surprised if All Day shows up and takes over.

As for the other game, I’d like to see the Jets knock out the Colts. You have to respect Peyton Manning, perhaps even fear him, but you don’t have to like him. And you certainly don’t have to respect the decision of the Colts’ brain trust to throw away the quest for perfection. The football gods can’t possibly permit Indianapolis to win the Super Bowl this year and a loss to the Jets would be the most fitting retribution.

Mailvox: In fairness, you do prefer bad boys

In which we are amused by feminist complaints about t-shirts expressing improper thoughts of which Women Do Not Approve:

The woman in the ‘Annie Hollywood’ t-shirt (produced by ‘Blood Is The New Black’) looks as though she has been roughed up. She appears disheveled and exhausted, her image reminiscent of a crime scenes photo. The other two women have a strip across their eyes, suggesting a loss of identity and dehumanisation. Their semi-naked bodies are pimped through a t-shirt.

The designs are not iconic. They’re not retro (even if adapting a Roxy Music album cover). They’re not art. What we are seeing here is the glamourising of abuse, the suggestion of sexual aggression, a hint that women want to be treated roughly.

Somehow, I seem to have ended up on an Australian feminist mailing list… I can only suspect Jamie. But the best part about the email was the comment that accompanied the link: “This is really appalling and deserves attention. Could they even be charged with inciting violence? I’d be interested in a legal opinion.”

You can always trust a woman to attempt criminalizing opinions with which she disagrees. No, you insanely cretinous would-be fascist, those t-shirt makers cannot reasonably “be charged with inciting violence” anymore than the makers of t-shirts featuring Che Guevara and Mao Tse-tung can. And what did you expect the male reaction would be to the feminist attempt to transform every form of sex that falls short of explicit written consent confirmed by ex post facto notarization by a third party into rape anyway? If rape has become a joke to men; it is only because women, specifically feminist women, have made it so. For example, it would take a heart of stone not to find vast amusement in Amynda’s tale of her terrifying “near-rape” experience that involved neither rape nor actual sex.

It is simply absurd to pretend that no doesn’t often mean yes. There is an abundance of evidence proving otherwise. And there’s a word for men who take women at their collective word with regards to matters of sex, romance, and love. The word is “lonely”. Or, if you prefer, “loser”. Women aren’t particularly attracted to nice men who treat them well, they’re primarily attracted to bastards who don’t give a damn about them, who simply want to nail them and nail them hard.

I don’t agree with everything that Roissy and the players write about Game; I find their interpretation to be a synthetic and subject-limited form of Alpha. But Roissy is nevertheless dead-on correct with regards to what pushes the average woman’s buttons.* This, of course, is exactly why a man wearing an “offensive” Roger David t-shirt is much more likely to score than a man wearing a female-approved Take Back the Night one.

And if you don’t find the tagline “Blood is the New Black” funny, well, there’s clearly something wrong with you.

* NB: On behalf of women who don’t understand the concept of “average”: yes, we already know and acknowledge that there are women who belong to the statistical minority. The group in which you personally happen to fall is totally irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Is Obama serious?

He can come back in a big way if he is really going to take on the banks. But the Market Ticker’s enthusiasm for Obama’s so-called “declaration of war” notwithstanding, that’s a pretty big if. However promising his populist rhetoric sounds, I strongly suspect this is nothing more than another smokescreen fired out of the Federal extend-and-pretend Nebelwerfer. Nor am I alone in these suspicions:

Senior staff at the investment banks themselves were determined to play down the significance of the speech. “What you are witnessing it a political panic,” said one. “Obama lost a crucial vote and is now trying to win back political ground by some serious bank bashing. This has to go through a long and complicated political process before it gets anywhere near being law.”… Last night, David Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial officer, showed the first sign that President Obama faces a fight. “To put rules in place that roll back the financial system by 10 years is going to be a very, very hard thing to do,” he said.

Translation: we will fight in the boardrooms, we will fight in the Congressional offices, we will fight in the Senatorial backrooms, we will never roll over and surrender our fraud, our theft, or our ill-gotten gains! While Obama’s political survival instincts are leading him to take the right tack, Barney Frank has already made it clear that Congress, being largely owned by Wall Street, isn’t about to play ball. When one considers the way Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi rolled Obama last year, I wouldn’t bet the housing market against them doing it again, especially when they’ll have a lot of support from idiot Republicans defending the “free market” right of banks to collect federal subsidies, enjoy federal protection against competition, commit massive amounts of open fraud, and get bailed out when they still somehow manage to bankrupt themselves despite all those advantages.

There is an easy way to determine if Obama is genuinely declaring war on Wall Street or not. If he fires Geithner and Summer, withdraws his support for Ben Bernanke, and promotes Paul Volcker to the Treasury, it’s on. If he gets behind Ron Paul’s bill to audit the Fed, it’s nuclear. But if he leaves all the usual suspects in place, and I have seen no indications that he will not, then this is just a bit of populist window dressing meant to alleviate his plunging poll numbers.

On a tangential note, speaking of those who have to go, check out the latest piece of bank-related corruption in the Obama administration: “Sheila Bair, one of the chief regulators overseeing Bank of America’s federal rescue, took out two mortgages worth more than $1 million from the banking giant last summer during ongoing negotiations about the bank’s bailout and its repayment. Mortgage documents for that 14-room home include a provision, known as a second-home rider, stating that Bair and her husband must keep the house for their “exclusive use and enjoyment” and may not use it as a rental or timeshare. Yet the couple has been renting out part of the house since they left for Washington, with Bair listing income from the “rental property” in Amherst as between $15,000 and $50,000 a year on her most recent financial disclosure form as head of the FDIC.”

These people belong in jail, not running massively influential financial agencies and deciding which corporations will live and which will die. And yet we’re somehow supposed to believe they are capable of salvaging the economic situation?

Blogtalk interview

Avi Davis and I committed science on the lingering economic problems of the United States at Western Word Radio.

And speaking of those problems, Elusive Wapiti reviews RGD on Amazon:

Day’s book starts off with a description of Tokyo in its late 1980’s heyday, before the boom went bust and the nation some thought would rule the world has suffered from nearly twenty years of flat economic growth and stagnation. And Japan’s “lost decades” is an apt metaphor for what Day thinks is in store for America, and indeed, most of the world. Day illustrates the inevitability of credit-fuelled investment booms turning to bust, how the tools used to control the economy are crude, clumsily used, and ineffectual approximations, how it is de rigeur for a central bank with monopoly over the money supply to inflate, inflate, inflate, how stimulus is but more fuel on the bubble-bust fire, and how much further we have to fall today, given the stratospheric heights we’ve climbed to in successive investment booms, than our forebears did in Great Depression 1. In all, it makes for a sobering read.