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Real Name: Duncan Black
Age: 38
Location: Philadelphia


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Wednesday, July 28, 2010
 
Gambling Our Way To Prosperity

I don't have a problem with gambling, just the idea that it's a decent way to raise revenues. Whatever the arguments for or against it, FOUR POINT TWO BILLION DOLLARS PER YEAR is peanuts and shouldn't even really come into the discussion.

 
Oh My

People should stop picking on this nice man.
WASHINGTON — The chief executive of Moody's Investors Service sold almost $3 million in company stock this year, and $7.1 million last year, both times right before his company's stock price fell from its peak levels, a McClatchy analysis has found.

In one case, CEO Ray McDaniel sold 100,000 shares of Moody's stock on the same day that the Securities and Exchange Commission notified Moody's that it was under investigation. The notice followed months of federal inquiries into Moody's business practices.

...


However, experts question McDaniel's sales because he had key information about the company's finances that ordinary investors didn't have, because his stock sales' timing is curious, and because Moody's won't disclose when he set the terms of his plan's prearranged stock sales, or whether he changed those terms.

 
No Clue

Once you get above extreme poverty/unemployment, there are roughly two kinds of households in this country, those which live paycheck to paycheck and those who aren't counting down the days until the next direct deposit shows up every month. Even people who live paycheck to paycheck might be living pretty well, that is those paychecks might be pretty good but they've made housing/transportation/lifestyle choices which still put them at the edge.

I doubt too many senators know what that's like, or know what it's like when you're living paycheck to paycheck and then suddenly no longer have a job.

...adding, commenters not getting my point, which is that even people who are decently well off often live paycheck to paycheck and have all of the associated stresses. I meant no judgment of such people (and in fact count myself among them most of the time).

 
He's Their Governator

There's been surprisingly little national news coverage of the fact that everybody hates Arnold and he's done a good job destroying the state.

 
Afternoon Thread

enjoy

 
Duopoly

The reason it isn't just a business to business concern is that Visa and Mastercard are a duopoly, acting effectively as a monopoly, and absent breaking them up they need to be regulated. The have all the market power, and convenience stores are stuck with them and are unable to negotiate or choose a competitor.

 
Getting What They Wished For

Well, you're getting rid of all the Latinos.
Katchi's store isn't the only business suffering. The vast shopping center that holds his small shop is almost empty. The Food City supermarket closed this spring. Then the furniture shop. Then the pizzeria.

The giant apartment complex across the street, once brimming with tenants, is two-thirds vacant. Katchi is behind on his rent.

"The business is broken," said Katchi, who has operated his shop at this intersection for 14 years. "After the 29th of July, what happens? Maybe I have to close the store."


..and good news.


Among the provisions U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton put on hold are the "reasonable suspicion" section that would allow police to arrest and detain suspected illegal immigrants without a warrant. She also temporarily blocked the part of the law requiring the carrying of federal immigration documents.

 
Extend, Gouge, And Pretend

HAMP was announced with great fanfare, a big budget, and a promise that the program could help millions of homeowners. Instead it's mostly gouged desperate people, extracting a few more mortgage payments out of them while doing little to help them.


I don't know if this is how the program designers intended it to work, but either way it's wrong. Heckuva job.

 
Wanker of the Day

Karen Hyer.

 
We'll Do Nothing Until It's Too Late




Mark Thoma:


To reduce the chance of this happening, policymakers should have already put policies in place to provide additional stimulus as insurance against this outcome. But they will wait until another dip actually happens before even beginning to deliberate seriously, and by then it will be too late for policy to do much to offset the dip in the economy. Thus, even though it will be too late to get insurance once the economy is already evidently sick -- insurance that is a bargain due to low interest rates -- we have decided to go forward uninsured, and hope for the best.

 
Doing It Wrong

Spending a few days in a city like Las Vegas provides an opportunity to observe a place which is completely doing it wrong. I get that 3 months a year the weather is hellish, but otherwise the area around the strip is built at walkable and transit scale, but the walkability is damaged by regular interruptions, and decent transit isn't possible on the strip without a dedicated lane or elevation because the place is completely choked with traffic. Yes there's the monorail, built by people who obviously had no clue how to make transit useful instead of a novelty ride.

 
Oh Dear

Time for another blogger ethics panel.

 
Not Just The Math, The Plan

Krugman says "we" knew the stimulus wasn't big enough because of the math. You know who else knew the stimulus wasn't big enough? Larry Summers.
The best estimate for the output gap was some two trillion dollars over 2009 and 2010. Because of the multiplier effect, filling that gap didn’t require two trillion dollars of government spending, but Romer’s analysis, deeply informed by her work on the Depression, suggested that the package should probably be more than $1.2 trillion. The memo to Obama, however, detailed only two packages: a five-hundred-and-fifty-billion-dollar stimulus and an eight-hundred-and-ninety-billion-dollar stimulus. Summers did not include Romer’s $1.2-trillion projection. The memo argued that the stimulus should not be used to fill the entire output gap; rather, it was “an insurance package against catastrophic failure.â€?

I have no idea why someone who thought stimulus would be effective would think that a too small "insurance package" was a good idea, but we fix the economy with the awful rulers we have not the ones we want.

 
Morning, Morning

114 Congresscritters voted against funding the wars/. I guess it's a start. I was hoping for better.


Tuesday, July 27, 2010
 
Overnight

Rock on.


 
Run Away

Laws and potential consequences vary from state to state, but no one should feel any guilt or remorse about walking way from an underwater house, especially if you've made good faith attempts to negotiate with lenders.

 
Excellent Job Opportunities Available

I mentioned recently that I had been rather annoyed at all of the assholes who hated on my local transit authority bus drivers because they had the temerity to earn FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS PER YEAR. Well now you too can drive a bus.

 
Tony Haz A Sad

His poor fee fees are hurt.

The outgoing boss of BP believes he was "demonised and vilified" over the firm's Gulf of Mexico oil spill crisis.






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Drinking Liberally