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Real Name: Duncan Black
Age: 38
Location: Philadelphia


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Happy Hour Thread

enjoy.

 
Fabulous

No stay on decision in California. Marriages can continue beginning Aug. 18...

 
No Worries, There's Always Plan C

Just a little more time...

 
The Agenda

I suppose one waits until after Labor Day to roll out new product, but is there any expectation that the Dems will have any kind of agenda for the campaign season?

 
Afternoon Thread

enjoy

 
Completely Sensible Policies Which Aren't On The Table

I'm repeating myself, but in a sane world we wouldn't be worried about the catfood commission, instead Democrats would be at least temporarily lowering the full Social Security eligibility age to 62 and lowering the reduced benefit eligibility age to 60. This economy is horrible. It isn't getting better. People who lose their jobs at that age aren't going to get new ones which come even close to replacing the wages they've lost, if they get new ones at all.

I know we don't live in a sane world, we live in a world where Paul Ryan is Very Serious because he usually manages to tie his shoes, but someone has to say it.

 
The Designated Serious Republican

Political journalism is vapid, exhibit #8483247234.

 
Wanker Of The Day

The world's worst person, Jeffrey Goldberg.

 
The Dreams Of Reporters

They really are an awful lot.

MA: (laughing) I don’t know, but I can tell you the press loves the fact that Ken Buck, he’ll definitely be covered. Very colorful, he definitely will be good copy. It’s just like the dream of every reporter is that the Republicans will pick up nine seats, and that Marco Rubio wins in Florida, because Hugh, you know what that means?

HH: Impeachment! No. (laughing)

MA: That’s a 50-50 Senate. That’s power sharing. Ben Nelson suddenly is huge.

That's Mike Allen chatting with Hugh Hewitt.

 
The Forgotten Foreclosure Crisis

It keeps getting worse, but it no longer exists.

RealtyTrac says foreclosure notices rose 4% last month, the 17th straight month filings have exceeded 300,000. And RealtyTrac's Rick Sharga tells MarketWatch News Break that foreclosures may not peak until 2011.

 
Loanable Funds Fallacy

This is why I'm pretty pessimistic about effectiveness of Fed action. Yves Smith:

Can you see why this won’t work? The Fed’s implicit reasoning is that the BoJ didn’t shove money into the banking system in a way that would lead businesses to borrow, but the Fed has a better mousetrap. Huh? This is the loanable funds fallacy, that if you make money cheap enough, firms will borrow and invest.

But the cost of money is only one factor in a business’s decision to expand, and outside of financial firms, it’s typically a constraint, not a spur. If you run a dry cleaner, are you going to say, “Gee, my borrowing rate went down a point, I think I’ll open that new storeâ€?? The fall in the cost of money would change your action only if it was a critical factor, at the margin, and had restricted you. And for the vast majority of enterprises, the decision of whether to grow or not is based first and foremost on their reading of the environment, which includes the strength of the market for their services, the likelihood of competitor response, whether there are steps they can take to alleviate risk, like securing commitments from prospective customers or tying up critical technology or vendors.

The banksters like cheap money. They can bring it to the casino. It doesn't mean they have a desire to lend it, or that the rest of us want to expand our capacity to build widgets that no one has any money to buy.

 
Thursday Is New Jobless Day

Surprise. Still high.

The number of people filing new claims for unemployment insurance unexpectedly rose in the latest week to its highest level in close to six months, a fresh signal of a weak jobs market.


The number of new claims for jobless benefits rose 2,000 to 484,000 in the week ended August 7, the second straight increase, Labor Department data showed on Thursday.

 
Gibby

From where I sit, this flap was really about the Obama administration reassuring fellow members of their New Democrat "centrist" movement that they were staying the course. Erskine Bowles and William Simpson still chair the Catfood Commission. While they have "nominated" Elizabeth Warren, Timmeh's commitment to the new normal will still rule economic policy-making.

There is no chance that the administration will advocate a cheaper, more effective, more popular health care system like the one run by the pinko Canadians. And the manly US war machine will continue to be the foundation of the Beltway entitlement system.

I suppose it would an interesting innovation for the press to discuss whether these policies were a good idea, rather than just whose knickers are just in what state of twistiness. Alas.

Another Gibby, from a younger day:

 
overnight

enjoy

 
Gotta Water The Green Shoots

I don't think I have perfect predictive powers, and more than that my skepticism about the supposedly recovering economy mostly didn't come from my Ph.D in economics (plenty of people with those are idiots), but from some basic common sense combined with a bit of observation. It was common sense at the level which lead me to conclude years ago that we had a housing bubble because I knew that not that enough households have enough money to afford those homes. Some of my skepticism came from knowing what the data meant a bit, but mostly it was just that I never saw any evidence that a jobs recovery was coming, along with a greater appreciation for the problems of the housing/foreclosure markets and what they meant for the macroeconomy.

Once we overshot their "pessimistic" unemployment predictions the administration should have adjusted. Mostly they didn't. Obviously I think more and better stimulus (either fiscal or monetary) would have helped. Fixing the housing problem sensibly would have helped some too. The point isn't that there was some magic obvious solution, the point is that the problem was bigger than they imagined and, frankly, recovery noises from the administration started to remind me of Bush era noises about how things were always improving in Iraq.

While I think they should have actually tried to make the case, I'm sympathetic to the argument that a bigger stimulus couldn't have gotten through Congress. So what did they do wrong? They failed to actively support judicial bankruptcy for primary residence first mortgages (aka cramdown) and they totally screwed up HAMP. The latter was entirely under their control and the former would have stood some chance of passing if the White House had thrown its weight behind it. It didn't.

 
Beach Reading

Some just released lighter fare for those of you who are interested in awesome reports. I support FITs in the US, and though I'm aware of some disagreement about the social inequality aspects of FITs, I think it's a trivial matter to resolve via customer differentiation. Plus, the poor will disproportionately bear the brunt of climate change.

 
Happy Hour Thread

enjoy.

 
WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Another exciting day at the dog track.


Bummer for your retirement fund, if you have one, but maybe a panicky "Street" will spur action.