RBS warns customers of 'cliff-edge' in banking and economy

From my perspective, it's hard to argue against this warning. Besides shifting the banking problems to the taxpayers, little has changed.

The credit team at RBS in London are getting very bearish and warning clients to "get ready for the cliff-edge," where prices of stocks and commodities will "collapse."

RBS credit chief Andrew Roberts said the edge is just around the corner for the European banking industry and the economies of Europe and the US.

"Surely risks associated with us being wrong are low, i.e. rates stay where they are," Roberts wrote in a research note.

"But risks associated with us being right are 10 percent returns in (10-year US Treasurys) and at the same time that equities/commodities will collapse far beyond what even some equity bears anticipate."

As a result Roberts is advising investors to get into maximum long-duration bonds in safe-haven markets.

Read the rest of this post...

Woman on oxygen dies after power cut by utility company

This unfortunately reminds me of the horrible incident when an elderly man in Michigan died over the winter when his power (and heating) system was shut down. What is the matter with a system that can't help someone like this?

A woman who needed powered oxygen equipment to breathe died after she did not pay the power bill and a utility shut off her electricity, police said Friday. State officials were investigating whether any regulations were broken.

Kay Phaneuf, 53, died Thursday at Caritas Holy Family Hospital in Methuen, Mass. She had been in critical condition since her husband found her unconscious Monday about an hour after power was cut to their home in Salem.

"She can't survive without it," Salem Police Capt. Shawn Patten said of the oxygen equipment. "They cut the power to the house, the power to whatever machine she had went out, and that was it."

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Banks survive global regulations at G20 summit

Nothing pays back quite as much as a heavy dose of lobbying and good friends inside world governments. Will they be as powerful after the next round of banker layoffs begins? Probably. Even after causing the global recession and in their weakened state, they remain as powerful as ever.

Giant banks, while bracing for a wave of tougher regulation in Washington, will not have to face a new set of global rules on capital and liquidity anytime soon.

The world’s biggest economies have been developing rules that would require banks to hold more capital and be better equipped to absorb losses when financial conditions sour. But it became clear on Sunday at the meeting of the Group of 20 countries that it could be years before they take effect.

The rules are to be finished at the next G-20 leaders’ summit talks, in Seoul, South Korea, in November.

While the participants here said they aimed to adopt the rules by the end of 2012, they cautioned that the standards would be “phased in over a time frame that is consistent with sustained recovery and limits market disruption.”

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GOP invites rebuked religious right general, who says he speaks with the Holy Spirit, to testify at Kagan confirmation hearings

This should be a riot. The Republicans want to make the hearings about who should be running America. So who do they bring to testify against Kagan? A religious right general with a long, long, long history of embarrassing controversy.

From Steve Clemons:

I just learned that the Senate Judiciary Committee is calling none other than the God-connected, crusade-obsessed saber rattler retired Lt. General William G. "Jerry" Boykin as one of four military witnesses raising questions about Kagan's policy of making it tough for the military to recruit at Harvard when there was a conflict over the Pentagon's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policies.

I think DADT is a relic that should be tossed out -- but reasonable people can disagree and debate.

But Boykin? If this party is engaged in such self-destructive theatrics, why can't the White House do a better job of dividing up the Republicans into smart and not-so-smart factions.

Because they're spending far too much time dividing their friends into different factions? More from Wikipedia on this nut - this is just a sampling, there's a lot:

Boykin achieved widespread media coverage for his statements that appeared to frame the War on Terror in religious terms, first broadcast on NBC News, October 15, 2003. William Arkin, military analyst for NBC-TV News, was the source of the video and audiotapes of Boykin. The following day the Los Angeles Times ran a piece on Boykin. Amongst several quotes, the LA Times article revealed Boykin giving a speech about hunting down Osman Atto in Mogadishu: "He went on CNN and he laughed at us, and he said, 'They'll never get me because Allah will protect me. Allah will protect me.' Well, you know what? I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol." Boykin later clarified this statement, saying that he was implying that Atto's true "god" was money.

President George Bush distanced himself from the statements, saying that Boykin didn't "reflect my point of view or the point of view of this administration."

Some news commentators, such as Republican Patrick Buchanan, believed that there was nothing wrong in what Boykin said.

Boykin also believes that he speaks with the Holy Spirit. Read the rest of this post...

Joe Stiglitz needs to stop making sense

He's getting in the way of some fantastic right wing nutty rants around the world who believe chopping budgets (and punishing the poor) somehow makes sense. By the time the budget choppers realize their mistake it's going to be too late. If anyone is looking for places to cut, corporate handouts and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq sound like much better options. Unfortunately the poor have a really crappy lobbyist program so they're going to take the brunt of the new nastiness programs.

There's so much more in this article so click through and read it all. Reading this is frustrating though because Obama has chosen an economic team who are part of our economic problem rather than part of the solution, like Stiglitz.

The result is that, following the attacks by the financial markets on Greece and then Spain, everybody is now in a mood of retrenchment. "It's not just pre-Keynesian, it's Hooverite," he says. By which he means governments are not just refusing to stimulate, they are making cuts, as Herbert Hoover did in the US in 1929 – when he turned the Wall Street Crash into the Great Depression. "Hoover had this idea that, whenever you go into recession, deficits grow, so he decided to go for cuts – which is what the foolish financial markets that got us into this trouble in the first place now want."

It has become the new received wisdom throughout Europe. But it is the classic error made by those who confuse a household's economics with those of a national economy.

"If you have a household that can't pay its debts, you tell it to cut back on spending to free up the cash to pay the debts. But in a national economy, if you cut back on your spending, then economic activity goes down, nobody invests, the amount of tax you take goes down, the amount you pay out in unemployment benefits goes up – and you don't have enough money to pay your debts.

"The old story is still true: you cut expenditures and the economy goes down. We have lots of experiments which show this, thanks to Herbert Hoover and the IMF," he adds. The IMF imposed that mistaken policy in Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Argentina and hosts of other developing countries in the 1980s and 1990s. "So we know what will happen: economies will get weaker, investment will get stymied and it's a downward vicious spiral. How far down we don't know – it could be a Japanese malaise. Japan did an experiment just like this in 1997; just as it was recovering, it raised VAT and went into another recession."

Read the rest of this post...

Santorum, who doesn't exactly have an Anglo-Saxon name, says Obama can't relate to Americans because of his background

Among the reasons failed former GOP Senator Rick Santorum thinks President Obama isn't very American is the fact that he grew up in the American state of Hawaii.

"Obama is detached from the American experience. He just doesn't identify with the average American because of his own background. Indonesia and Hawaii."

I have my issues with the President (who I voted for), but to suggest his background isn't American based on which American state he was raised in, well that's simply bizarre. And then to talk about Obama having spent some time living abroad as a child, that this is also a disqualifier. My mother lived abroad as a child, as she immigrated from Greece. Lots of people's parents and grandparents and ancestors immigrated to this country - actually, most of them did. What is Santorum suggesting, that our immigrant ancestors weren't fully American? The founding fathers? Read the rest of this post...

EPA is 10 years behind schedule on some air quality standards

Hmmm, now what happened in the year 2000 that might have caused such a delay?

The Environmental Protection Agency is 10 years behind schedule in setting guidelines for a host of toxic air pollutants, according to a report from the agency’s inspector general.

The report, which was released last week, found that the agency had failed to develop emissions standards, due in 2000, for some sources of hazardous air pollutants. These included smaller sites often located in urban areas, like dry cleaners and gas stations, but also some chemical manufacturers.

The inspector general also found that the agency had not met targets outlined in a 1999 planning document, the Integrated Urban Air Toxics Strategy, including tracking urban dwellers’ risk of developing health problems from exposure to pollutants.

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After slamming 'activist judges, Beauregard Sessions III doesn't think Kagan is activist enough

From ThinkProgress:

Sessions laid out a simple test that judicial nominees must overcome: They must not use the courts to thwart democracy:

SESSIONS: The question is: does the judge understand that they can’t utilize the power, the lifetime appointment, to redefine the meaning of the constitution — to have it promote an agenda in an activist way that the American people won’t vote for.

Yet, just seconds earlier, Session attacked Kagan because she does not subscribe to a radical “tenther” philosophy that would eliminate elected national leaders’ power to address national challenges:

SESSIONS: I think this nominee does have serious deficiencies, issues that need to be raised. The American people are concerned about their courts. They’re concerned about a growing expansive government that seems to be beyond anything they’ve ever seen before. And they’d like to know what their judges might have to do about it. So I think that’s kind of where we are.

I wonder how much government we could contract if we removed southern racists from office. Read the rest of this post...

Krugman says we're heading for a Depression

And there you have it. He and I differ as to motive, but not as to result.

Paul Krugman (emphasis mine):

The Third Depression

Recessions are common; depressions are rare. As far as I can tell, there were only two eras in economic history that were widely described as “depressions” at the time: the years of deflation and instability that followed the Panic of 1873 and the years of mass unemployment that followed the financial crisis of 1929-31.

We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs — will nonetheless be immense.

. . . I don’t think this is really about Greece, or indeed about any realistic appreciation of the tradeoffs between deficits and jobs. It is, instead, the victory of an orthodoxy that has little to do with rational analysis, whose main tenet is that imposing suffering on other people is how you show leadership in tough times.

And who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.

Read it and weep.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Supreme Court strikes down gun law, and tells anti-gay bigots to take a hike

Two important Supreme Court cases decided today:

1. Supreme Court rules college doesn't have to recognize group that discriminates against gays

The Supreme Court says a law school can legally deny recognition to a Christian student group that won't let gays join.

The court on Monday turned away an appeal from the Christian Legal Society, which sued to get funding and recognition from the University of California's Hastings College of the Law.

2. U.S. Supreme Court strikes down Chicago gun law in key gun rights case

The U.S. Supreme Court today found that the constitutional right to bear arms applies to local and state efforts to regulate guns, a ruling that could place limits on some gun control laws across the country.

Read the rest of this post...

When will West Virginia's special election be to replace Robert Byrd?

From Cillizza at the Post:

West Virginia law states that if there is a Senate vacancy more than two and a half years before the incumbent's term ends, a special election would be called for this November. That two and a half year mark is July 3 -- four days from now.

But, as the Post's Paul Kane notes, the language of the law is unclear as it sets up a schedule that would begin the special election process after the "primary next", meaning, according to Democrats, in the spring of 2012. Such a schedule would place the special election in November 2012 when Byrd's 9th term would have ended anyway.

The decision of how to read the law will almost certainly come down to Gov. Joe Manchin, a Democrat and the person seen as the most likely long term successor to Byrd in the Senate.

And, either way, Manchin will be required to appoint someone to serve out Byrd's term -- whether it is determined that the term ends this fall or in the fall of 2012. One name being mentioned for that caretaker appointment is state Democratic Party Chairman Nick Casey.

More from Hotline OnCall:

State law says Manchin's appointment will be valid "until a successor to the office has timely filed a certificate of candidacy, has been nominated at the primary election next following such timely filing and has thereafter been elected and qualified to fill the unexpired term."

The WV primary took place May 11, making it unlikely that a special election will take place this year. And odd-year elections, used in many states to pick local officials, are a rarity in WV. In recent years, voters went to the polls only in '05, when they voted on a constitutional amendment. No elections were held in '07, '03 or '01.

Because the primary has already occured, the next opportunity to "timely file" will be Jan. '12 -- when Byrd's seat would have come open anyway. A primary would follow in May, with a special election to be held in concurrence with a general election later that year.

There is settled case law on the point. In '94, Kanawha Co. Circuit Court Judge John Hey resigned in April. A local GOP party chairman sued then-Gov. Gaston Caperton (D) to try and compel a special election for the following Nov. The state Supreme Court, in Robb v. Caperton, ruled against the local party chairman and said Caperton's appointee would serve until the '96 election, when the office would have come up for election anyway.

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Kagan hearings start today. Barring 'extraordinary circumstances,' GOP won't filibuster.

The Kagan confirmation hearings start at 12:30 PM Eastern time today. We'll get opening statements from all of the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee during today's session. That will be painful and boring, but we'll get some clues about the GOP's strategy. Tomorrow, Kagan will begin answering questions from the Senators:

But influential GOP members of the Judiciary Panel say they have not yet seen any “extraordinary circumstances” that could justify a filibuster. Extraordinary circumstances is the standard the Senate adopted in 2005 for judicial filibusters.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) has declined to rule out a filibuster but other Republicans have said that President Barack Obama has a right to appoint his preferred choice to the court.

“I want to challenge this judge but my view of my job next week is not replace my judgment for President Obama’s; he won this election,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters on Thursday. “I go into these hearings with a view that these elections do matter.”

Graham said he has not yet seen anything in Kagan’s record that would qualify as an extraordinary circumstance and call for a filibuster.

So, Republicans have won't be filibustering Kagan's nomination, barring some kind of "extraordinary circumstances." Of course, who really know what "extraordinary circumstances" means to Republicans. They probably don't even know themselves, yet. But, they'll know it if they think they see it -- or something like that.

The New York Times would like to hear some real answers from Kagan:

If these hearings proceed like the information-free set pieces we have seen in previous cases, we may never find out. Republicans will, as always, rouse their supporters with provocative challenges on guns, gay rights and abortion. Democrats have the tougher task, and should not stick to inoffensive questions. They have much at stake in holding back the aggressive activism of the Roberts court, which will soon have to rule on the health care law, the rights of corporations, and the evolving balance between civil liberties and national security. Both parties should cast aside their talking points and try to illuminate the authentic mind of Elena Kagan. Her moment to oblige them has finally arrived.

That's a worthy goal, but I suspect real answers could result in "extraordinary circumstances." Read the rest of this post...

Oil hits Mississippi yet no skimmers in sight

Perhaps Haley Barbour is using them to deflect criticism of his own efforts. After all, he has assured everyone that the oil really wasn't a problem and people would be safe from the problems that everyone else claims are problems. McClatchy:

A morning flight over the Mississippi Sound showed long, wide ribbons of orange-colored oil for as far as the eye could see and acres of both heavy and light sheen moving into the Sound between the barrier islands. What was missing was any sign of skimming operations from Horn Island to Pass Christian.

U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor got off the flight angry.

"It’s criminal what’s going on out there," Taylor said minutes later. "This doesn’t have to happen.”

A scientist onboard, Mike Carron with the Northern Gulf Institute, said with this scenario, there will be oil on the beaches of the mainland.

“There’s oil in the Sound and there was no skimming,” Carron said. “No coordinated effort.”

Read the rest of this post...

Monday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

Lots of news today.

Obviously, the big story is the death of Robert Byrd. Then, there ar the implications of that on upcoming Senate legislation, including the Wall Street reform bill, which hits the Senate floor this week. Then, there will be lots of talk about his succession.

Confirmation hearings begin today for Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan, before the Senate Judiciary Committee. We'll actually hear her speak this week. And, we'll see that committee's leading Republican, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, in action again.

The President is back in town after the G-8/G-20 summits. He doesn't have any public meetings on his schedule today, but that can always change.

Expect another busy week... Read the rest of this post...

Robert Byrd dead at 92

The longest serving member of Congress in the counry's history died earlier today. From the Charleston Gazette:

Robert Carlyle Byrd, the longest-serving member of Congress in United States history, who spent much of his career as a conservative Democrat and ended it by fiercely opposing the war in Iraq and questioning the state's powerful coal industry, died Monday. He was 92.

"I am saddened that the family of U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., tearfully announces the passing" of the senator, Jesse Jacobs, Byrd's press spokesman, said in a statement.

Byrd's life was the Senate -- and his little dog. Byrd was "one of Congress's most famous dog lovers."

There are, of course, immediate political implications from Byrd's passing, which the NY Times was quick to point out:

Mr. Byrd’s death comes as Senate Democrats are working to pass the final version of the financial overhaul bill and win other procedural battles in the week before the Independence Day recess. In the polarized atmosphere of Washington, President Obama’s agenda seemed to hinge on Mr. Byrd’s health. Earlier this year, in the final days of the health care debate, the ailing senator was pushed onto the Senate floor in his plaid wheelchair so he could cast his votes.

So, yes, immediate implications, which will unfold this week. Read the rest of this post...

British Conservatives launch attack on welfare recipients

This is so typical of either the Tories or the US Republicans. Attack those who are the least advantaged and talk about cost savings. Nobody really doubts that there are cases of abuse but to suggest there's so much there that it will impact the budget deficit in any noticeable way is laughable. How stupid does one have to be to really believe such rubbish? As always it's too easy to attack people at the bottom while giving a free pass to the richest who have indeed bee profiting enormously from welfare handouts. Bankers, anyone? Wouldn't it be nice to see the right wingers be half as aggressive with going after the biggest spongers of them all rather than the poor? It's all too predictable and the same old nastiness that we've come to expect from the Tories.

Ministers are to signal a tougher approach to incapacity benefit this week as the next stage of its welfare reforms, by reducing the benefit levels of those tested if they are found capable of doing some work.

Details are expected to be announced by the work minister, Chris Grayling, this week. Early pilots suggest half of those assessed are being taken off the higher rate benefit on the basis that tests reveal they are fit to do some work, government sources say.

Those deemed capable are likely to be required to do more to make themselves available for work if they are to continue receiving benefit.

Ministers have also looked at whether they can speed up the testing, but denied a suggestion that they could treble the number tested.

Read the rest of this post...

International Whaling Commission fails to conclude new deal

The Japanese government is upset and "regrets" the hard work they put into the process. The new deal that had been discussed was allowing limited whale hunts in the southern ocean. The blame game is in full force now as environmentalists are blaming the governments from failing and the governments are doing their best to dodge blame and responsibility. Environmentalists believe the whale populations in the Antarctic are not sustainable so any hunting is destructive. BBC:

Failure to agree a common way forward at the International Whaling Commission (IWC) annual meeting is "unfortunate", says Japan's minister attending.

In an interview with BBC News, Ms Yasue Funayama said Japan had had to "sweat and bleed" to bring agreement closer.

Other countries had insisted on an end to whaling in the Antarctic, which was not justified by science, she said.

Read the rest of this post...