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Monday, January 26, 2009
Way cool
Click the image, then start zooming in. It's pretty cool.
(H/t reader Bryan.) Read the rest of this post...
(H/t reader Bryan.) Read the rest of this post...
Citibank adding new $50 million jet to corporate fleet
Nationalize this beast now and sack them all. If ever there was a company that was begging for intervention - well, besides AIG - it's Citi. They can't survive without bailout cash and yet they own a damned fleet of corporate jets called CitiFlight.
Beleaguered Citigroup is upgrading its mile-high club with a brand-new $50 million corporate jet - only this time, it's the taxpayers who are getting screwed.Read the rest of this post...
Even though the bank's stock is as cheap as a gallon of gas and it's burning through a $45 billion taxpayer-funded rescue, the airhead execs pushed through the purchase of a new Dassault Falcon 7X, according to a source familiar with the deal.
The French-made luxury jet seats up to 12 in a plush interior with leather seats, sofas and a customizable entertainment center, according to Dassault's sales literature. It can cruise 5,950 miles before refueling and has a top speed of 559 mph.
There are just nine of these top-of-the-line models in the United States, with Dassault's European factory churning out three to four 7Xs a month.
More posts about:
Wall Street
They know where you live. Sometimes.
From WIRED:
On a sunny Saturday, I spotted a woman in Golden Gate Park taking a photo with a 3G iPhone. Because iPhones embed geodata into photos that users upload to Flickr or Picasa, iPhone shots can be automatically placed on a map. At home I searched the Flickr map, and score—a shot from today. I clicked through to the user's photostream and determined it was the woman I had seen earlier. After adjusting the settings so that only her shots appeared on the map, I saw a cluster of images in one location. Clicking on them revealed photos of an apartment interior—a bedroom, a kitchen, a filthy living room. Now I know where she lives.Read the rest of this post...
Disgraced Lehman CEO sells $13+ million mansion for $10
Yes, ten bucks. The amazing sale just happened to be to his wife.
Mr. Fuld said in sworn testimony before a Congressional panel last year that while he took full responsibility for the debacle, he believed that all his decisions “were both prudent and appropriate” given the information he had at the time.Read the rest of this post...
The couple jointly bought the home in Hobe Sound, Fla., for $13.75 million in March 2004, and the sale to Mrs. Fuld on Nov. 10 was first reported by Cityfile.com.
It is possible that he is now transferring properties because of his fears of investor lawsuits or a possible bankruptcy, lawyers in Florida said.
“This is the oldest trick in the books” said Eric S. Ruff, a lawyer with Ruff & Cohen in Gainesville, Fla. “It’s common when you hear the feet of your creditors approaching to divest yourself.”
Mr. Fuld has been accused by some of doing too little too late to save the firm. However, he has said publicly that the blame should be shared by regulators and that he took steps to try to save — or sell — the investment bank.
More posts about:
credit crisis,
Wall Street
'No on 8' leaders: Blame the consultants
The latest "not mea culpa" from the leaders of the failed "No on 8" campaign.
"When I look at what was the biggest mistake, when I lie awake at night prepping my e-mails I'm going to send to all of you and I think about the biggest mistake that we made, it's that we've turned everything over to political experts and political consultants," said Equality California Executive Director Geoff Kors. "And I would never ever do that again. You know, when we started Equality California, everyone was, like, 'Hire professional lobbyists to go lobby on LGBT issues,' and I was, like: 'You gotta be kidding. We're going to do our own lobbying because it's about our lives and we know what we're talking about and we know how to do this.' One thing, you know, that I would never do again ... we should have been in the strategy room and part of those (consultants') conversations, and that was a huge mistake."Shorter "No on 8" (my rendition):
We abdicated all responsibility from the beginning and had nothing to do with any decision after that, so please don't blame us. Oh yeah, and professional lobbyists don't know how to lobby, we should have used people with no experience.And in case you didn't think this was a new CYA talking point, another leader for the No on 8 battle, Lorri Jean, uses the exact same talking point:
"How could we have realized earlier that professional, high-paid consultants were not delivering product?" Jean asked. "I'm trying to say this and not be too provocative, since we have so many professional political campaign consultants in the room. But, you know, there is an approach that people who are professionals use to do this. And I think one of our challenges as a community, given that issues of relevance to our community are different than anything else that goes on the ballot because of the emotion and the other things that are associated with them, we have got to find a completely different way than business as usual to do this work."Yes, hiring professionals - what a wacky idea. Obviously THAT was the problem with the No on 8 campaign, they had too many experts, people with proven experience winning at the ballot box, working on it. Next time, let's have some runaway kid from San Francisco figuring out what media markets we advertise in, and a retired PFLAG mom can create our lobbying strategy and run the get-out-the-vote effort (when she's not volunteering at the senior center). Not to mention, does the "kill all the people with glasses" - I mean, "professionals" - theory apply to the professional homosexuals running the campaign? Read the rest of this post...
Obama ally considering run against 'Senator' Burris
Good. How long before the Congressional Black Caucus starts whining? I lost a lot of respect for that organization after their defense of William "I have $90,000 in my freezer" Jefferson. And even more when they rose to the defense of Blago's buddy Burris. I'll defend gay people, but not when they're wrong. Not when they're tainted. There's more to an individual than the color of their skin or their sexual orientation.
Read the rest of this post...
Caterpillar announces 20,000 job cuts
This is painful. The announcements around the world for job cuts has been picking up pace and has hit every sector including the previously untouchable Microsoft. The Caterpillar announcement is yet another after shock from the credit crisis since new construction is now at a standstill.
Caterpillar Inc said on Monday that quarterly earnings fell more than 32 percent and warned of a tough year ahead as the downturn that began in the United States metastasized into a full-blown global recession that hit sales of its earth-moving equipment.Other announcements today include Home Depot cutting 7,000 jobs and Sprint Nextel slashing up to 8,000. Dutch manufacturer Philips also announced cuts of 7,000 today. Read the rest of this post...
The company also warned that profit in 2009 would be under severe pressure and said that it would cut about 17,000 workers and buy out 2,500 others, to reduce costs in the face of what it predicted would be the weakest year for business since the end of World War Two.
More posts about:
credit crisis,
recession
Pope embraces Holocaust-denying Bishop who says the Nazis only killed 300,000 and didn't have gas chambers
This comes, what, 48 hours after the Vatican lectured Obama about ethics and arrogance? For a pope who was himself a member of the Hitler Youth, this will only feed concerns that perhaps this particular Prada-wearing German is a bit too close to his own Nazi past.
Benedict yesterday welcomed back into the Roman Catholic Church Richard Williamson and three other men who were excommunicated in 1988 after being ordained without Vatican permission. The three had been appointed by breakaway French archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. The Vatican decree issued yesterday spoke of overcoming the "scandal of divisiveness" and seeking reconciliation with Lefebvre's conservative order, the Society of Saint Pius X, which opposes the modernisation of Catholic doctrine.The Pope has a stricter policy against gays than he does Holocaust denialists - or pedophiles for that matter. I suppose if you're both a Nazi sympathizer and a pedophile, the sky's the limit. Read the rest of this post...
But Jewish groups have warned the Pope that the decision could damage Catholic-Jewish relations after Williamson claimed in an interview, broadcast last week, that historical evidence "is hugely against six million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler ... I believe there were no gas chambers"....
In an interview taped last November and aired last Wednesday on Swedish television, Williamson said he agreed with the "most serious" revisionist historians of the second world war who had concluded that "between 200,000-300,000 perished in Nazi concentration camps, but not one of them by gassing in a gas chamber".
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catholic church
Must read: Krugman debunks the GOP's misleading claims about the stimulus
Must read:
As the debate over President Obama’s economic stimulus plan gets under way, one thing is certain: many of the plan’s opponents aren’t arguing in good faith. Conservatives really, really don’t want to see a second New Deal, and they certainly don’t want to see government activism vindicated. So they are reaching for any stick they can find with which to beat proposals for increased government spending.Krugman does debunk the arguments. Everybody who is pushing for passage of Obama's stimulus package needs to read this column -- especially people on "The Hill." The Republicans are lying, which they do so well. They lied to get us into a war. Now, their lying could get us into a depression. Read the rest of this post...
Some of these arguments are obvious cheap shots. John Boehner, the House minority leader, has already made headlines with one such shot: looking at an $825 billion plan to rebuild infrastructure, sustain essential services and more, he derided a minor provision that would expand Medicaid family-planning services — and called it a plan to “spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives.”
But the obvious cheap shots don’t pose as much danger to the Obama administration’s efforts to get a plan through as arguments and assertions that are equally fraudulent but can seem superficially plausible to those who don’t know their way around economic concepts and numbers. So as a public service, let me try to debunk some of the major antistimulus arguments that have already surfaced.
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paul krugman
Impressive approval rating for the new president
Not a bad way to start:
With a 69% job approval rating in the latest Gallup Poll Daily update, Barack Obama continues a strong start to his presidency. That rating follows his initial approval rating of 68% -- based on Jan. 21-23 polling and reported Saturday -- and ranks him near the top of the list of presidents elected after World War II.Of course, Republicans think Obama has no where to go but down. And, they want to accelerate that process. Read the rest of this post...
In fact, only John Kennedy had a higher initial approval rating -- 72% in 1961 -- though Dwight Eisenhower and Jimmy Carter also had ratings in the mid- to high 60s. But Gallup did not measure those three presidents' initial ratings until early February, and new presidents' approval ratings typically increase in the first few months of their presidencies. Thus, Obama's initial approval rating of 68% looks more impressive compared to the average 55% approval rating for the four presidents whose first ratings were measured in January after their inaugurations.
Monday Morning Open Thread
Good morning.
So we begin the first full week of the Obama presidency. I have to say, I like what I see so far. Bold. Decisive. Following through on campaign commitments.
But how long will we have to watch the Hill Republicans play games with the economic recovery package? They don't like it, of course. But, they lost badly in the elections. And, not only did they lose, one huge reason they lost was because they destroyed the economy. At some point, the Republicans really need to quit whining and do what's best for the country. They won't. But, they should.
Start threading the news... Read the rest of this post...
So we begin the first full week of the Obama presidency. I have to say, I like what I see so far. Bold. Decisive. Following through on campaign commitments.
But how long will we have to watch the Hill Republicans play games with the economic recovery package? They don't like it, of course. But, they lost badly in the elections. And, not only did they lose, one huge reason they lost was because they destroyed the economy. At some point, the Republicans really need to quit whining and do what's best for the country. They won't. But, they should.
Start threading the news... Read the rest of this post...
The credit crisis people you should know
The list is generally pretty good and sure, a few more could be added if you want to include the regulators. I also think that if you are going to add the American public - which is more than fair - the British public ought to be there including Tony Blair specifically because they loved personal credit as much if not more than the Americans. The list could also include the European banks who are even more highly leveraged than US banks. Including Bill Clinton is fair for his cooperation with Republicans on the Glass-Steagall Act though less so for the Community Reinvestment Act. Forcing banks to be fair after years of racist policy and then blaming the *global* credit crisis on poor minorities is absurd.
Either way, it's a good primer for understanding the who's who of the credit crunch. Naturally it comes as no surprise who the number one person is on the list.
Either way, it's a good primer for understanding the who's who of the credit crunch. Naturally it comes as no surprise who the number one person is on the list.
Alan Greenspan, chairman of US Federal Reserve 1987- 2006Read the rest of this post...
Only a couple of years ago the long-serving chairman of the Fed, a committed free marketeer who had steered the US economy through crises ranging from the 1987 stockmarket collapse through to the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, was lauded with star status, named the "oracle" and "the maestro". Now he is viewed as one of those most culpable for the crisis. He is blamed for allowing the housing bubble to develop as a result of his low interest rates and lack of regulation in mortgage lending. He backed sub-prime lending and urged homebuyers to swap fixed-rate mortgages for variable rate deals, which left borrowers unable to pay when interest rates rose.
For many years, Greenspan also defended the booming derivatives business, which barely existed when he took over the Fed, but which mushroomed from $100tn in 2002 to more than $500tn five years later.
Billionaires George Soros and Warren Buffett might have been extremely worried about these complex products - Soros avoided them because he didn't "really understand how they work" and Buffett famously described them as "financial weapons of mass destruction" - but Greenspan did all he could to protect the market from what he believed was unnecessary regulation. In 2003 he told the Senate banking committee: "Derivatives have been an extraordinarily useful vehicle to transfer risk from those who shouldn't be taking it to those who are willing to and are capable of doing so".
More posts about:
credit crisis,
recession
UBS approves bonuses
As I've said many times before, the executive bonuses are excessive but so are the rest of the bonuses throughout the company. Everyone focused on payouts for the board room executives and ignored the tens of thousands of workers who have been making inflated annual comp plans. For those who want to complain that they worked hard and deserve it, help me understand why these workers have never been asked to pay back the money made selling garbage the last few years? You know, the billions that have been wiped off of the books? In the real world, when a company loses money, everyone has to tighten their belts. Anyone who wants to leave and try their luck elsewhere, go ahead. Now. Go see how juicy the payouts are elsewhere. Good luck and send us a postcard.
A package of more than £1 billion in bonuses for staff at UBS, the Swiss bank, is expected next month and threatens to reignite the debate over the ethics of exceptional rewards for bankers during the present worldwide banking crisis.Read the rest of this post...
UBS is to pay out around SFr2 billion (£1.3 billion) in bonuses next month, despite heading for a SFr8 billion fourth-quarter loss, the biggest quarterly deficit ever sustained by a Swiss company.
The bonus payments were agreed last week by Finma, the new Swiss financial regulator, whose consent UBS is obliged to seek after it was bailed out by the Swiss Government last autumn.
Although Marcel Rohner, the chief executive, and Peter Kurer, chairman, have agreed to forgo their bonuses for 2008, the bank's 77,000 employees will receive performance-related payments in next month's wage packet.
More posts about:
recession
British hospitals to fight global warming by removing meat
Big deal or not? I'm not a vegetarian but I'm also more than happy eating vegetarian. I opted for a tasty Indian vegetarian restaurant in London last week and it reminded me again how good it can be. The NHS contributes heavily to carbon emissions so if this helps them trim that output, why not? The downside is that this may be a tough transition for older people who grew up eating meat and they may be in hospital more than younger (and more flexible) people. My 70-something year old father in law still says that "chicken is not meat" meaning that it's not a real meal. (The French are definitely carnivores.) It's impressive to see the NHS is making a serious effort on many fronts to improve the healthcare system in the UK. As criticized as it is, it's still ranked well above the US system.
"This is not just about doing things more efficiently, it's about doing things differently, because efficiency is not going to get us to big cuts," said Pencheon. "What will healthcare look like in 2030-2040 in a very low carbon society? It will not look anything like it looks now."Read the rest of this post...
Last year the NHS published what it believes is the biggest public sector analysis of carbon dioxide, the biggest greenhouse gas, which showed the organisation's emissions in 2004 were 18.6m tonnes and rising. This accounts for more than 3% of all emissions in England, and if the NHS was a country it would have been ranked as the 81st biggest polluter in the world that year, between Estonia and Bahrain.
One-fifth of the emissions were from transport, one-fifth from buildings, and the remainder from procurement, including drugs, medical equipment and food.
On Tuesday, Pencheon and the NHS chief executive, David Nicholson, will publish the strategy - Saving Carbon, Improving Health - which will set targets to cut the organisation's carbon footprint, and proposals to meet them. It follows a government pledge last year to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050.
More posts about:
Climate Change,
UK
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