I have fallen into the despicable habit of vegging in front of the TV after dinner. The Wife can watch re-runs to her heart’s content on the LCD and I am in the den on the other side of the kitchen, close enough to fetch things for her as she is held captive by the evil lap kitty.
I may in fact be in the living room. The Wife has yet to make up her mind. In any case, I’m watching our old 23″ which the end of my recliner is touching, so that Ice Road Truckers appears between my feet.
During commercials I scan the channels. Somewhere, someone was braying (I just remembered it was Dick Morris at C-Span. He has a new book.) that the American Clean Energy And Security Act would cause electricity rates to rise 90%. He was excited and beginning to turn red and sweat. It was the last thing I wanted to see between my legs, so I moved on.
The 1,200-page House bill prescribes nationwide limits on CO2 emissions. It then spends thousands of words describing broadly how to divide various allowances, including such arcana as whether an entity qualifies as a “merchant coal unit” if its retail rates are set by an Indian tribe. What’s important to note is that there’s lots of wiggle room for regulators to exploit.
Now, some people argue that, if we’re going to charge for carbon emissions, it would be more fair and economically efficient to have a carbon tax levied on all emitters equally. They’re right.
But they’re wrong if they think it won’t happen because Congress fears the repercussions of passing a tax. Congress is talking openly about all sorts of new taxes right now, and in any case everyone knows that “cap and trade” is really “cap and tax.”
Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) inserted a last-minute 310-page amendment into the cap-and-trade climate change bill just hours before the bill reached a House vote last Friday evening, and the amendments included indecipherable provisions for something called a “central procurement state.”
The bill would grant a majority of the permits free in the early years of the program, to keep costs low. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the average American household would pay an additional $175 a year in energy costs by 2020 as a result of the provision, while the poorest households would receive rebates that would lower their annual energy costs by $40.
At least Kraut Woman and Al Gore can enjoy the summer before the Class Clowns convene:
U.S. Senator James Inhofe ( R-Okla. ), Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, commented today on the House passage of the “America’s Clean Energy and Security Act,” ( Waxman-Markey bill ) by a vote of 219 to 212. The bill now moves to the Senate where Senator Inhofe vowed to lead the opposition to what he called the “largest tax increase in American history.”…
“The Waxman-Markey bill is just the latest incarnation of cap-and-trade legislation that will destroy American jobs by pushing them overseas, force consumers to shoulder the burden of higher gasoline and electricity prices, and drastically increase the size and scope of the federal government. In the Senate, I have worked with my colleagues to successfully defeat cap-and-trade legislation in 2003, 2005, and most recently in 2008. Now, just a year later, and with the economy in a deep recession, it is hard to believe that many more senators would support legislation that would strangle any hope of economic recovery and impose the largest tax increase in American history.”
Larry Seagle has quit as public information officer for the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office…
Seagle apparently quit shortly after learning that a second public information officer had been hired without him being informed. The new PIO is Jon Mayhew, who has worked as a journalist for several area news outlets, including the Times-News.
Since last year, Mayhew has operated his own online “news” site, The Carolina Scoop, which focuses heavily on photos and reports related to law enforcement.
Several sources have indicated that Daugherty never told Seagle about his plan to hire Mayhew and Seagle had to read of it for the first time when it was announced on Mayhew’s site…
Sources have said Seagle handed in a resignation letter and stopped coming to work, but has not met with Daugherty, who has apparently told others he “has not accepted” Seagle’s resignation.
Seagle, a veteran radio personality in Lincoln County, joined Daugherty’s team when the position of public information officer was created more than two years ago.
Since that time, he has been the main contact for news media seeking information about the sheriff’s law enforcement activities.
What about this……The RatPat starting spending this years budget already. They started spending it two weeks before July 1. They ordered 10 new Chargers, 8 Glocks, and several thousand rounds of ammo. Thye are going to run through this money quick cause they know that they’re not going to be around to enjoy it. Really, BT why would you be ordering NEW uniforms for yourself, unless its the orange jumpsuit kind. They will probably give Stanley a nice big raise to him since he has been appointed to the New hiring review board. ???? What does a hardware man know about hiring Officers? He may know about hiring employees for Lowes but how does that equate to Officers?? Especially since he is still on his 6 months probation period and has only been in law enforcement for maybe 6 months. I also hear that once BT takes the fall that the Sheriff is going to hire him back in non sworn status, sorta like he did with Bruce. Has what does TD have on the County Commissioner? How about DD who used to make a regular visit to meet with him when he first got appointed. Shes lining herself up nicely for the asst. Co. manager position. Oh yeah are you sure that they are in TD’s office in the mornings on their knees “praying” Miss Mary Kay, just the two of them??? Must be a very strange sight to behold.
Avid…….I’m back, anger management went very well thank you
I have read where Sheriff Daugherty fails to maintain his cruisers.
I may have personal knowledge of Mr. Seagle through my travels. I have emailed LNB for confirmation, if he can provide it. If true, and I have high confidence, Seagle is a human being of the highest caliber. It is a heartbreaking private story of loving dedication.
Buried within the 88-page Obama administration proposal to overhaul financial regulation is an overlooked option called a “rapid resolution plan”. It mandates that systemically important financial companies be required regularly to file a “funeral plan”: a set of instructions for how the institution could be quickly dismantled should the need to do so arise. This simple step would have both short-run benefits if another wave of panic occurs and longer-term pay-offs that would complement other reform efforts. It could be implemented now, without the need for legislative action. Regulators should do so immediately.
You can see how such resolution planning might go wrong – particularly if banks were only forced to consider whatever they now regard as “normal” risks. Remember the head of quantitative equity strategies who said, in early August 2007, “Events that models only predicted would happen once in 10,000 years happened every day for three days.”
A commenter makes a frightening allusion to Atlas Shrugged:
“Are there critical individuals who would need to be kept on to wind down positions (as was claimed to be the case with AIG FP)?”
It is the case for AIG FP or more precisely for its affiliate Banque AIG, that bank is regulated in France by the Commission Bancaire, and the regulator has the sole authority to approve who is or isn’t a fit person to run the place, not AIG. When 2 top individuals resigned, efforts were made to keep them on board (successfully) as their departure would have triggered a change of control event which in turn would have given banque AIG counterparties the right to terminate their contracts. I will let you guess the cost but since the notional CDS outstanding was at the time well north of $200 billion, it is sure to be many orders of magnitude that of the retention bonus.
I suppose it is true French-speaking Gerry Pasciuccos are pretty rare.
Otto Kernberg believed psychopathy should fall under a spectrum of pathological narcissism, that ranged from narcissistic personality on the low end, malignant narcissism in the middle, and psychopathy at the high end.[19] Because of the psychopath’s inability to internalize superego precursors, they are typically unable to learn from past mistakes, and are completely devoid of a conscience…
Today, primary psychopaths are considered to have mostly Factor 1 traits from the PCL-R (arrogance, callousness, manipulativeness, lying) whereas secondary psychopaths have a majority of Factor 2 traits (impulsivity, boredom proneness, irresponsibility, lack of long-term goals). Secondary psychopaths show normal to above-normal physiological responses to (perceived) potential threats. Their crimes tend to be unplanned and impulsive with little thought of the consequences.
It has been suggested by them traditional therapeutic approaches actually make psychopaths if not worse, then far more adept at manipulating others and concealing their behavior. They are generally considered to be not only incurable but also untreatable.
Sanford and his staff have said repeatedly this week that he will not resign. He wrote in a message to his political action committee e-mail list Monday that while he considered resigning, “I would ultimately be a better person and of more service in whatever doors God opened next in life if I stuck around to learn lessons rather than running and hiding down at the farm.”…
“While I believe an investigation should still be done to determine the full extent of Mark Sanford’s abuse of power, [through] his long stream of confessions he has already revealed enough immoral and reprehensible behavior to justify asking him to step [down],” state Democratic Party Chairwoman Carol Fowler said in a statement…
The Greenville News, one of the largest papers in South Carolina, also issued a sharply worded editorial Wednesday telling Sanford to go. It wrote that Sanford has “acted like a heart-sick school boy, and he’s revealed facts that clearly demonstrate he is capable of exceptional deception, arrogance and narcissism.”
While California lawmakers struggle with budget deadlines practically every year, this year’s budget fight is taking place amid the state’s worst drop in revenues from personal income taxes since the Great Depression as recession and rising unemployment aggravate the damage done to the state’s economy from its long housing slump.
Democrats, who control the legislature, could not convince Republicans late Tuesday to either back their plans to tackle a $24.3 billion budget shortfall or make a stopgap effort to ward off the IOUs. The two sides agree on the need for spending cuts, but are split over whether to raise taxes to help fill the gap…
Fitch last week downgraded its rating on California’s general obligation debt by one notch to A-minus, placing it four notches above speculative, or “junk” status, and making it the lowest rating of any U.S. state, and warned of further downgrades.
A state appeals court ruling Tuesday created more difficulties for lawmakers trying to reach a budget agreement. The decision by the 3rd District Court of Appeal barred the state from raiding local transportation funds to pay for other programs. In his budget proposal, Schwarzenegger had counted on shifting nearly $1 billion in transit money from local governments to the state…
One challenge in reaching a compromise has been Democrats’ refusal to accept the deep cuts to college aid, children’s health care and welfare programs contained in Schwarzenegger’s budget proposal…
California will not run out of cash immediately. While spending obligations will begin outpacing revenue without a balanced budget in place, the IOUs will delay a cash crisis until September. At that point, the state will be in jeopardy of running out of cash unless lawmakers figure out a way to pass a balanced budget.
The California governor’s office says federal officials are threatening to seize six state parks if they are closed to help balance the state’s budget.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed closing 220 state parks.
But the National Park Service warned in a letter to Schwarzenegger that six of those parks are on former federal land that could revert to the U.S. government if they are not kept open as parks.
From Matt Taibbi at True/Slant on his recent Rolling Stone article:
Actually I did contact Goldman and gave the bank every opportunity to respond to the factual issues in the article. I’m bringing this up because their decision not to comment on any of those questions was actually pretty interesting…
Instead, here is the response that we got:
“Your questions are couched in such a way that presupposes the conclusions and suggests the people you spoke with have an agenda or do not fully understand the issues.”
Taibbi’s article is a compilation of just about every conspiracy theory ever dreamed up about Goldman Sachs, but what real substance is there to support the theories?
We reject the assertion that we are inflators of bubbles and profiteers in busts, and we are painfully conscious of the importance of being a force for good.
Edward M. Liddy, listened sympathetically as shareholders expressed dismay about their losses and complained that they had never been able to vote on the terms of the bailout, which wiped out the value of their holdings. He said he was sorry, and agreed that A.I.G. might be worth more if the government owned less of it than the 79.9 percent stake it now holds. But he said the terms would not change.
I suppose they would have preferred Chapter 11?
Although credit-default swaps were at the heart of A.I.G.’s disaster last fall, the insurer had said until now that the swaps sold to the European banks did not pose the same type of problem. It said that the securities it had insured through those swaps were of a higher quality and were easier to evaluate. A.I.G. also said that the regulatory capital requirements in Europe were scheduled to change at the end of 2009, and at that point the banks would no longer need A.I.G.’s swaps and would probably terminate them. Then the swaps would be moot.
The technical term for the above is “a fucking lie.”
It said that many of the securities were held in blind pools, meaning that while A.I.G. had insured them, it did not know “the identities of the obligors.”
It gets better:
He said the swaps could be terminated at the discretion of the European banks, not A.I.G., and noted that the terminations had been tapering off lately. He thought this meant the banks were holding onto the swaps that insured their worst investments, keeping A.I.G. on the hook for those losses.
Bloomberg has an update on chief undwinder, Gerry Pasciucco:
The report that Pasciucco brandishes shows that the value of the derivatives still to be unwound had fallen 16.7 percent to $1.5 trillion as of May 12. The number of trade positions was down 24 percent, to 26,700 from 35,000, during the same period.
AIGFP was in effect a multistrategy hedge fund engaged in a variety of businesses. In addition to CDSs, it wrote and traded equity, currency and commodity derivatives. It even owned a collection of solar power plants in Spain.
Most of the trades were profitable, Pasciucco says, and many of them still are. The blowup happened only because AIG couldn’t come up with the collateral on fewer than 200 CDO swaps. Even today, 97 percent of the underlying CDOs continue to pay, Pasciucco says.
We know now Goldman Sachs made many of those collateral calls and got 100% reimbursement from the taxpayers for its trouble. Matt Taibbihas our back:
“The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.”
As of March 31, AIG had about $192.6 billion outstanding of the swaps, which were primarily written for European financial institutions. Continued declines in the value of the contracts could have a “material adverse effect” on the insurer’s financial results, according to the filing submitted late Monday to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Airbus plane that crashed off Comoros Island, according to Reuters, was owned and leased by a subsidiary of AIG.
Yesterday, TheStreet reported that AIG is the largest consumer of Airbus and Boeing(BA Quote) planes, as the owner of a fleet of about 955 aircraft, through its subsidiary International Lease Finance.
The ILFC subsidiary has been a cash cow for AIG, and the insurer is currently in the process of looking to sell the company to help repay its massive $180 billion government debt.
The plane was carrying 153 people when it crashed into the Indian Ocean Tuesday morning as it tried to land during strong winds on Comoros.
Earlier in the year, AIG was put on the hook for the losses in the US Airways(LCC Quote), plane crash in the Hudson River. It was argued that the crash was covered under a hull and liability policy led by AIG.
If you were concerned about lending them more money, too late:
American International Group announced yesterday that it has reached a deal to reduce its debt to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York by $25 billion.
The troubled insurance giant, which has received multiple federal bailouts since September, said that it would give the New York Fed preferred stakes in two of the company’s crown jewels — Asian-based American International Assurance, or AIA, and American Life Insurance Co., or Alico, which operates in more than 50 countries.
From Poggi at The Street again on today’s annual meeting:
Executives of the insurance giant said there is an “excellent chance” it will be able to repay the government’s massive loan and that AIG is actually “more stable than before.”
Meanwhile, investors are awaiting a reverse stock split that is expected to come into affect later today. This would mean if you own 1,000 shares you now own 50.
AIG will initially multiply the share value by a like amount, so investors will retain their equity, but it’s unlikely they can grow their investment.
David Goldman of CNNMoney.Com said “Shares of AIG tumbled Tuesday afternoon after shareholders ratified a 20-1 reverse stock split, which will take effect at 5 p.m. ET.” I wonder why? I wonder why other business journalists from the New York Times, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, NBC, ABC, CBS and reports on Anderson Cooper, Lou Dobbs and The Today Show never highlighted this split as a disastrous move? Where were the notes on Facebook or videos on You Tube?
Sure the big bailout of AIG helped Goldman and other banks holding CDOs. But if AIG had collapsed, all those lesser known European banks that purchased CDS to lower their required levels of regulatory capital, would have faced the prospect of raising tens of billions in capital during last autumn’s market meltdown.
Mahmoud explains that the dam leaks, but is structurally sound. This is confirmed, he says, by data from a full array of piezometers–mostly downstream, but some above the dam. The foundation rests on three strata of gypsum. There is some seepage beneath. But the dam engineers, a German-Italian joint venture called GIMOD, designed an aggressive grouting program to deal with this. Concrete lined grout galleries, each some 1,600 m in length, extend from each wing to the center, in the dam’s core. Mounted lines on the gallery walls deliver bentonite, cement, water and air to make grout for portable drilling machines. Four crews are working in one gallery. There are 12 machines in all. Another wall-mounted line extracts water. Grout injection wells are evenly spaced approximately 10-20 m apart. The grout curtain extends to a depth of 90 m. The dam consumes some 50 mt of grout a day, under normal maintenance. Voids throw the program into emergency status and have consumed up to a quarter million tons of grout a day. Mahmoud believes better grout would reduce the consumption. Quality grout is one more material that has been hard to come by, either because of post-Desert Storm sanctions or because of the regime’s other priorities.
Meanwhile, the Turkish Ilisu dam upstream has yet to receive funding.
FAIRVIEW, N.J. (AP) - For five years, immigrant day laborer Leo Chamale wired money twice a month from New Jersey to his family in Guatemala. Recently, he stepped up to the money transfer window for a different purpose—to ask that his family send some of his savings back to him.
“I hadn’t worked for five months, and I was two months behind on rent, so I had them send $1,500,” the 21-year-old Chamale said in Spanish. “My mother said, `That’s a lot of money!’”
Recent Comments