Bailout investments have already lost $9 billion

I still think this had to be done and sure, investing is supposed to be for the long term and not just a few months (during sane times, at least) but this still adds more fuel to the fire on the bonus discussion. If anyone in Congress had a spine they would shoot down any debate over whether bonuses are acceptable in such a state. They're not acceptable in any way. Case closed. With all of the damned Robert Rubin pals in the administration, one might think that someone - even Obama - might pull this bunch together and ask them why they continue to avoid what they must do.

Sheesh, Michael Froman is a Managing Director at Citi and is part of the new Obama team, somehow. Under no circumstances should Obama bring these people in to this administration until this subject is settled. I realize everyone became familiar with the "what does someone have to do to screw up and get fired" routine the last eight years but this is just too much. This Friends of Robert Rubin Club taking positions of power in the Obama team is wearing thin quickly.

Most of the Treasury Department's investments since late October have been in preferred bank stocks, more than $180 billion worth, with investments in giants like Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase, and many small community banks. But the government also negotiated options to buy up to 1.2 billion shares of common bank stock that was valued at $27 billion.

The Treasury Department said it did not expect these common stock options to be profitable immediately and negotiated them so taxpayers could share in the wealth if the bank stocks recover.

Now, however, the value of that common stock is less than $18 billion. If the government exercised all its warrants to purchase the stock today, it would lose money on 51 of its 53 agreements. Taxpayers would be out $9.3 billion.

The government can exercise its options to buy the common stock anytime over the next decade, but the options were "immediately exercisable," according to banks' securities filings.

"The markets are saying this plan isn't going to work for the banks," said Ross Levine, Tisch professor of economics at Brown University. "They're asking where this plan is going."

Where is this going? If we're going to not only allow these banks to continue the 2006 lifestyle and even hire their senior executives, one does have to wonder where the hell it's all going. Read the rest of this post...

I need an expert in Blogspot's new version of html

Guys, I'm on the verge of relaunching the blog, and I need someone who's an expert in the "new" version of Blogger's html that Google created for Blogspot. I'm not talking about someone who knows regular html - I have a decent knowledge of that - I'm talking about Blogger's odd creation that those of us who know the old html can't make heads or tails of. I have a widget-based template that's almost done, but I need someone to help me finish it. And seriously, you need to know Blogger's funny new html in order to do this. Any volunteers? Thanks, JOHN Read the rest of this post...

CNBC: Prosperity is just around the corner, again

At every break in between falls and after every significant event, CNBC is always there with pom-poms in hand talking about the sunny days coming tomorrow. It's about as bad as the US media after 9/11 when they regurgitated everything the White House told them because to go against the grain might make people mad and then they might cut access. Heaven forbid they ever provide any criticism because that might make people ask questions and then what would happen?

If there was ever a time to remind investors that the labor market is a lagging economic indicator, economists say today is such a day. Once the knee-jerk, doom-and-gloom reaction is over, something resembling optimism will prevail with the conclusion that the worst is over for the economy.

“This is history,” says veteran Wall Street economist Ram Bhagavatula. “December payrolls will be weak as well. The leading indicators will come from a slow re-activation of the credit markets and increases in consumer spending. You should begin to see that in the next couple of months.”

Bhagavatula is among a growing number of economists who say the seeds of recovery are already in place, even if they are revising their forecasts for GDP contraction in the fourth quarter to show an even greater decline.

"Every recession has its worst day, and this is probably the worst day," says Chris Rupkey of Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi.

Economists point to historical data and recent developments as solid grounds for optimism.

"This number is a unique number because it reflects an unprecedented economic situation, which began with the bankruptcy of Lehman on Sept 15, “ says long-time Fed watcher David Jones, of DMJ advisors. “The economy has never been shut down as quicly as it was following that bankruptcy. The economic response to that cut off in credit is unprecedented.”

Yep, Lehman was the start of all of this and doggonit, if they hadn't let Lehman fall we'd be just fine. In no way will the firings the last few months scare the bejesus out of families and they will naturally spend the same way as they have in the past so Christmas season will be great! Hooray! Everything is fine and as long as you close your eyes, don't listen and talk loudly over everyone else you'll be fine. Just ask CNBC. Read the rest of this post...

Is it ever okay for the cops to shoot violent protesters?

Or to put it another way: Are violent protests ever justified?

I remember talking to my mom, a few years back, when the anti-globalization crowd was trashing Seattle, and, well, let's just say that mom and I had a different view on the use of force to stop people from turning over cars, looting stores, and more generally setting the city on fire. You might be surprised to know that mom was against the police using more force, I was for it.

I'm reading the news from Greece, and I just can't help but feel that when mobs are turning over private cars, and setting commercial buildings on fire (when hundreds of innocent families live above those buildings), that maybe the cops ought to use more than tear gas. If someone is setting fire to a building that houses hundreds of families, including children, you don't get into an argument about Marxist theory, you shoot them. My gut tells me that the people who were trashing Seattle, and who are setting fire to buildings in Greece, are not "angry students" - they're violent thugs. I've done a lot of pretty hard-hitting political activism in my years, and never resorted to violence.

(And even if you argue that the police in Greece are more corrupt than the police in America (I have no idea if they are), and thus non-violence isn't an effective option, then how does destroying the cars, homes, and businesses of private citizens somehow help the cause? Well, I guess you could argue that you cause so much chaos, so much destruction, that the government feels compelled to fix the problem so that more death and destruction doesn't happen in the future. But is that ever really justified? I don't know. Then again, I don't live in Greece.)

Read this article, then tell me, what am I not seeing here? I get that using violence may only provoke the hoodlums to get even more violent, but putting that practical argument aside, it seems that many people feel that there's a moral argument for not using violence to stop these kids. What is that moral argument, because I just don't see it.

Youth angry over the killing of a teenager by police rioted in Athens and other Greek cities for a second day on Sunday, while the police announced that two officers had been arrested for their roles in boy’s death.

The country’s worst riots in recent years began hours after a 15-year-old boy was shot Saturday night during a confrontation between police and youth in the Exarchia neighborhood of central Athens, a district of bars, bookshops and restaurants where clashes between far-left youth and the police have previously occurred.

As news of the death spread, hundreds of youth took to the streets, burning scores of shops, cars and businesses while throwing fire bombs and stones at riot police, who countered with tear gas. At least six people were arrested in Athens for looting goods from the debris of destroyed department stores and boutiques.

The violence spread to other cities on Sunday, including Greece’s second-largest city, Thessaloniki, as well as Chania on the island of Crete....

Authorities fired several rounds of tear gas, which cloaked parts of Athens with plumes of acrid grey smoke. At least one apartment block was evacuated after masked youth torched a French car dealership and ensuing flames reached the balconies of residents, the private television state Alpha reported.

Use the comments to weigh in, you don't have to register. Read the rest of this post...

December 7, 1941: A date that will live in infamy

Today is Pearl Harbor Day. Here's an excerpt of the speech President Roosevelt delivered to the nation on December 8, 1941.

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A message from the Secretary of State-designate (and Bill)

Courtesy of Saturday Night Live:

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Rep. William Jefferson lost

This was a surprise. Rep. Jefferson has been indicted and is facing a corruption trial. (He's the Congressman who had the $90,000 in cash in his freezer.) But, I don't think anyone saw this one coming.

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Sunday Talk Shows Open Thread

The big "get" today is Obama on "Meet the Press." NBC, of course, has been pumping out excerpts from the interviews, which includes the announcement of General Shinseki as Secretary of Veteran Affairs.

The other shows are paying attention to the situation facing the auto industry and whether the government will help. I do hope that either Scheiffer or the FOX folks will ask Sessions or Shelby about the subsidy Alabama gave to Mercedes Benz and other foreign automakers. Jane Hamsher pointed out the hypocrisy of those, like Shelby, who wail about the U.S. auto industry while state governments provide billions in subsidies to foreign companies. And, while I hope the right questions are asked, I have no expectations.

Here's the full lineup:

ABC's "This Week" — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Ron Gettelfinger, president, United Auto Workers.

___

CBS' "Face the Nation" — Sens. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.

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NBC's "Meet the Press" — President-elect Barack Obama.

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CNN's "Late Edition" — Rice; Govs. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn., and Ed Rendell, D-Pa.

"Fox News Sunday" _ Rice, Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Richard Shelby, R-Ala.

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UN food aid for Zimbabwe is running out

Failed policies by Robert Mugabe combined with drought led to failed harvests in Zimbabwe. The disastrous biofuel policies of the rich nations certainly did not help food relief supplies for the UN. As Zim tumbles to new lows every day, news of UN food shortages will only add to the pressure both inside the country as well as on neighboring countries who found it convenient to support Mugabe for decades.

Half a million people in Zimbabwe will go without food handouts this month, the UN agency responsible for feeding more than two-fifths of the country's population warned yesterday, as shortages of funds force further cuts in rations.

"We are still four months away from the [maize] harvest. We haven't seen the worst yet," Richard Lee, a spokesman for the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in Johannesburg, told The Independent on Sunday. "The situation has worsened more quickly than expected. We have reduced rations in December, and will have to do so again in January."

The food crisis has contributed to the rapid spread of the cholera epidemic now ravaging the country. So far nearly 600 people have died and more than 12,000 have been infected, according to the authorities, but the real figures are believed to be much higher as the disease takes its toll among people weakened by hunger.

The WFP expects 5.1 million Zimbabweans – well over half the nine million people remaining in the country – to need food aid by January. The target for this month was 4.2 million, but rations for only 3.7 million are available.

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Offal sales soaring in UK

I can hear Joelle now asking "did you say awful?" While she's not a fan, I admit I love the stuff. I grew up eating Scrapple and still love it when I'm back in the US and over here, I love eating liver, andouillette, kidney and all of those funny bits. Pigs feet are without a doubt the tastiest meat from a pig, next to perhaps the knuckle. In my family we never ate any of this except for Scrapple because to my parents, it no doubt reminded them of everything they had to eat during the Depression when their families had nothing.

Over this way these pieces are eaten much more and I'm more than happy to try them all. One of these days I'll get to tripe though I'm guessing the Provencal style may be more to my liking than the version from Caen. If we're going to eat animals, we might as well eat it all and not waste. Either that or we could all go veg which is better for us anyway.

Onto the offal.

Take a sheep's heart, its liver, and lungs, mince together with onion, oatmeal, spices, and salt, and boil in the animal's stomach for three hours. It is, of course, haggis, and now, it seems, the English just can't get enough of Scotland's national dish.

UK supermarkets are reporting a surge in the popularity of the dish that poet Robert Burns described as the "Great chieftain o the puddin'-race".

Marks & Spencer has seen a 35 per cent increase in sales of haggis compared with this time last year, while Asda, Waitrose, and Sainsburys have all seen rises of more than 10 per cent.

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Russian police raid human rights office, walk away with files

The more things change... From The Observer:

Eminent British historian Orlando Figes yesterday accused the Russian authorities of trying to 'rehabilitate the Stalinist regime' after armed police seized an entire archive last week detailing repression in the Soviet Union.

Figes, professor of history at Birkbeck, a London University college, condemned the raid on Memorial, a Russian human rights organisation. He said that the police had also taken material used in his latest book, The Whisperers, which details family life in Stalin's Russia.

On Thursday, armed and masked men from the investigative committee of the Russian general prosecutor's office burst into Memorial's St Petersburg office.

After a search of several hours, they confiscated its entire archive - memoirs, photographs, interviews, and other unique documents detailing the history of the gulag and the names of many of its victims.

Yesterday Figes claimed the raid 'was clearly intended to intimidate Memorial'. The confiscated archive included unique documents detailing the 'Soviet terror from 1917 to the 1960s,' he said, adding that the office was 'an important centre for historical research' and a 'voice for tens of thousands of victims of repression in Leningrad'. He said he believed the raid was 'a serious challenge to freedom of expression' in Russia: 'It is part of a campaign to rewrite Soviet history and rehabilitate the Stalinist regime.'

Memorial is Russia's oldest and best-known human rights organisation. It has pioneered research into Soviet-era repression and collaborated with Figes on his latest book, which was published last year, by interviewing dozens of elderly survivors of Stalinism and recording their personal accounts of life under tyranny.

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The White House Web site meets the memory hole

From my alma mater's newspaper, the Daily Illini:

Scott Althaus, professor of political science and communication, and Kalev Leetaru, coordinator of research in the Cline Center for Democracy, recently found that the U.S. White House Web site has modified, and in some cases, deleted key documents in the public record.

When the U.S. invaded Iraq, the U.S. government released a statement on the White House Web site listing the nations involved in the "Coalition of the Willing." However, over a period of several years, different versions of the three releases all appear to be originals. In the case of two releases from the U.S. government Web site, the original document is completely missing from the site.

"I think that it raises the question of whether or not we can trust the government to maintain public records of things that were said or done that later prove embarrassing," Althaus said.

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