Austerity dragging down Portugal as well

The situation in Greece is bad, but it's not looking much better in Portugal. Unemployment is rising, debt is increasing and the economy is shrinking. The unemployment levels have not yet hit Spanish levels, but if the economy continues along this path, that still may occur. The so-called rescue model in Europe is failing, badly. Austerity is not and will not be the answer. NPR:

Antonio Nabarrete, a 56-year-old schoolteacher, says the government has slashed his salary by 28 percent. "We lost our salaries and you have young without employment, and you have old people without money," he says. "And so there is no future for a country like that." Last May, Portugal received a $104 billion bailout from the European Union and International Monetary Fund, in exchange for deep spending cuts and structural reforms. While the budget deficit was cut by more than a third, the economy is rapidly shrinking, consumption has plummeted, and unemployment has soared to 14 percent. Among the young, it reaches 30 percent.

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Freeway Blogging

Freeway blogging is... well this:

It's a brilliant idea, started several years ago during the Bush administration by a blogger out west.  Post a politically impactful sign above a highway and get tens of thousand of impressions during the morning rush hour before it gets taken down.  He's got an amazing collection, and now is running a contest for a good sign/slogan about global warming.  The winner gets their slogan plastered along the west coast and a thousand bucks.  Check it out.

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Banker sues for bonus using whistle-blower laws

At first glance the headline made me wonder if this was just another greedy banker who was throwing a temper tantrum because he didn't get a bonus for selling garbage. The real story may be something worth investigation by authorities. If the banker in question did report an actual violation of the law or procedures, it needs to be made public. The bankers clearly prefer a protected status above the law, but if they're going to require bailouts to stay afloat, the public deserves to know the full details. Why should the public not know the details behind their investment? Bloomberg:

A senior investment banker at Credit Agricole SA (ACA) sued the French lender for millions of pounds, claiming he missed out on bonuses and was dismissed for reporting colleagues under whistle-blowing rules. Edward Willems, former deputy head of fixed income markets at Credit Agricole’s corporate and investment banking unit, was “subjected to detriment as a result of making protected disclosure,” his lawyer Tom Croxford told a London employment tribunal today. Willems’ bonuses in 2010 and 2011 were “inappropriately low” because of the whistle blowing, Croxford said, without describing the conduct he reported. Willems “is seeking millions of pounds,” Credit Agricole’s lawyer Nicholas Randall said at the hearing this morning.

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Krugman and Salmon: The new Greek bailout is doomed

Just as Chris in Paris wrote here, Paul Krugman and Felix Salmon are saying, in effect, that the current EU bailout of Greece is doomed. (Click the links above for their articles; my emphasis everywhere.)

Here are some selected comments. First, Salmon. Problem one is that the Greek plan is going to eliminate Greece's independence as a state:

Greece is now officially a ward of the international community. It has no real independence when it comes to fiscal policy any more, and if everything goes according to plan, it’s not going to have any independence for many, many years to come.

Are Greeks going to stand for that? Unlikely, says Salmon:

More to the point, the plan assumes that Greece’s politicians will stick to what they’ve agreed, and start selling off huge chunks of their country’s patrimony while at the same time imposing enormous budget cuts. Needless to say, there is no indication that Greece’s politicians are willing or able to do this, nor that Greece’s population will put up with such a thing. It could easily all fall apart within months; the chances of it gliding to success and a 120% debt-to-GDP ratio in 2020 have got to be de minimis.

Notice the part in bold? That's the part where the bankers not only impoverish the victim, but start carving off his flesh.

For Salmon, the plan is fiscally unworkable as well. It assumes, in effect, magic results — similar to Paul Ryan's "medicare" plan, for example. ("We do X and Y and Z, magic happens, and we get the result we want.")

The effect of all this fiscal tightening? Magic growth! A huge amount of heavy lifting, in terms of making the numbers work, is done by the debt sustainability analysis, and specifically the assumptions it makes. Greece is five years into a gruesome recession with the worst effects of austerity yet to hit. But somehow the Eurozone expects that Greece will bounce back to zero real GDP growth in 2013, and positive real GDP growth from 2014 onwards.

Check the chart that Salmon provides. Do you see that deep dip at the bottom? That's "now." Every thing after is the effect of assumptions. For the record, Greece now as negative GDP growth of greater than 6%.

Salmon's one note of optimism is that Europe's leaders know that they're just buying time:

[A]t the very least they’re buying time: this deal might well delay catastrophic capital flight from Greece, and give the Europeans more time to work out how to shore up Portugal if and when that happens. Will they make good use of the time that they’re buying? I hope so.

Now Krugman, who seems to think that if Europe's leaders don't learn, they will never solve this problem:

The problem with all previous rounds here has been that austerity policies depress the economy to such an extent that it wipes out most of the topline fiscal gains: revenue fall, so does GDP, so the projected debt/GDP ratio gets, if anything, worse.

Now we have another round of austerity — which is assumed not to do too much damage to growth. The triumph of hope over experience. ... What’s happening is that nobody is prepared to take the plunge into either of the paths that might eventually lead out of this: sustained aid (not loans) to Greece, or departure from the euro, leading eventually to higher competitiveness and faster growth. Both options would be politically catastrophic, which means that they can’t be taken until there is literally no alternative.

And there's your prediction, from the Professor (and also yours truly).

European leaders are buying time alright, but they want the crisis to mature to the point where it dictates the solution, and they, like Pilate, can wash their hands of it. It's a Bankers Rebellion — no banker takes a loss — and the bankers have European elites by the hearts and minds. No European leader will cross the line that forces a banker-loss until that line crosses itself.

What does this mean for Greece? They get to suffer even more before they fail. As Krugman says: "Greece will be strung along some more." What does this mean for Portugal, Spain, Italy? No one wants to look that far, it seems.

The Euro is up as I write, above $1.32 from its recent bottom of $1.26. In my view, graphic evidence of the "triumph of hope over experience." Unless you're traveling, I wouldn't touch it with a pole until Greece defaults. (Mes petits sous, of course — heh.)

GP Read the rest of this post...

WSJ editor repeats Obama is Muslim smear

The Wall Street Journal pretty much jumped the shark when Rupert Murdoch, king of UK sleaze and American yellow journalism, bought them.  Today's comment from an editor of the Journal, James Taranto, suggesting that President Obama is a Muslim, pretty much sums up the sorry state of that once-great newspaper.

Imagine a Washington Post editor, or a New York Times editor, getting away with that kind of filth.  They wouldn't.  Because, for all the criticism we sometimes give them, they're still real newspapers, rather than propaganda arms of one political party.

Here is what a top Wall Street Journal editor tweeted today:

And here is the link to Snopes 100% debunking of the lie.  Taranto - again, a Wall Street Journal editor - not only tried to lie in suggesting that Obama actually meant to say that he is in fact really a Muslim, but Taranto also lied about the lie.  As Snopes explains, that's not even what happened.  Obama was talking about the "I'm a Muslim" lie when he referred to people targeting him for his supposed "Muslim faith" - he wasn't talking about his "own" Muslim faith.  From Snopes:

The Wall Street Journal has editors that race-bait the President of the United States with political smears that are lies wrapped in lies, and already debunked.  If the Journal wants to convince folks that it's not an appendage of the Murdoch machine, it should fire Taranto.  But of course, the WSJ is an arm of the Murdoch machine, so they very likely won't do a thing to clear their name.

UPDATE: Taranto is now claiming, in a series of Tweets back and forth with AMERICAblog Elections' Kombiz, that all of us simply didn't understand what Taranto meant in his tweet - he was, you see, simply restating that the President had never really said he was a Muslim, Taranto now claims.

Right.  First off, the tweet is obviously sarcastic on its face (sarcastic about the President's denial).  It's not an attempt to clarify that the President is innocent, so to speak.  Second, we are to believe that the opinion editor of the Wall Street Journal is so imprecise with his written word that one might understandably misinterpret his sentence to be a racist slur against the President of the United States (it wasn't just Kombiz, a lot of us interpreted it that way).  Because, you know, the Wall Street Journal editorial page editor just isn't that good with nuance in English.

That's one possibility.

The other is that he intentionally floated a racist attack against the President of the United States in his official capacity as a senior editor at the Wall Street Journal (note that his Twitter account clearly links to his workplace). Read the rest of this post...

Someone at an ad company surely got fired for this one

The ad is real.  I did a good deal of Googling last night and found an original version of the same ad campaign in an old PDF of Parade Magazine from 2010 (you have to scroll through the mag to find it).  At first blush, it looks like a cute little ad for Nancy's "petite quiches," with the adorable tag-line: "Petite bites. Big compliments."

The only problem?  If you speak French, like I do, when you see this ad, like I did for the first time last night, the ad doesn't say "Petite bites. Big compliments."  It in fact says, "Small dicks. Big compliments."

Nancy's sales must have gone through the roof on that one.

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Strauss-Kahn arrested in France for involvement in prostitution ring

This is much more in line with the type of sex scandal that most imagined Strauss-Kahn would be involved in. The rape charges always sounded beyond anything most would have expected from DSK. Even now those charges sound like a set up. Prostitution rings, however, sound a lot more believable.

DSK's political career was already dead, but now it's being buried six feet under. The previous scandal from New York somehow liberated a few people to go after him in a way that never would have happened a few years ago. It's not necessarily a bad thing, and this may be payback time for someone that he sunk in the past. Having politicians who are not above the law is never a bad thing.

The Guardian:

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former head of the International Monetary Fund, has been formally placed under arrest by French police investigating an alleged prostitution ring. The 62-year-old socialist politician turned himself in at 8.55am on Tuesday in the northern French city of Lille and is being held for questioning over allegations that he aided the procurement of prostitutes and benefited from fraud. Detectives want to ascertain whether Strauss-Kahn, a former French presidential hopeful, knew that the women he had sex with at orgies in Paris and Washington were prostitutes and if he was aware how they were paid. It is alleged the money came from the corporate funds of a major French construction company.

It's hard to believe that only a few months back, DSK was the leading candidate and expected to route Sarkozy in the spring presidential elections. Not that these latest charges are shocking in any way, but it's still quite a fall from grace. Read the rest of this post...

Video: Women hold hearing on men’s reproductive health (humor)

In response to the Republican men and Republican catholic bishops holding a hearing last week on the Hill, an all male panel, to discuss female reproductive health, the folks at Second City deciding to hold their own hearing, of all women, to discuss male reproductive health.

Note that the aspirin reference in the vid is in response to this recent comment by a top male Santorum donor, explaining why women didn't need to have contraceptives paid for in their health insurance plans:

"This contraceptive thing, my gosh it's so inexpensive. Back in my days, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put them between their knees and it wasn't that costly."

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EU memo shows Greek austerity trashed the economy. So let’s try it here!

As unbelievable as it should be, the EU has just finalized a new bailout of Greece, thereby extending the misery. It remains hard to believe how this new bailout can solve the problem, or not damage the Greek economy even more. Even though they know the existing economic assumptions are wrong, they're still moving forward. How is this not complete madness? FT via Business Insider:

Under the tailored scenario described above, the debt ratio would peak at 178 percent of GDP in 2015. Once growth did recover, fiscal policy achieved its target, and privatization picked up, the debt would begin to slowly decline. Debt to GDP would fall to around 160 percent of GDP by 2020, well above the target of about 120 percent of GDP set by European leaders. Financing needs through 2020 would amount to perhaps €245 billion. Under the assumption that stronger growth could follow on the eventual elimination of the competitiveness gap, the debt ratio would slowly converge to that in the baseline, but likely only in the late 2020s. With debt ratios so high in the next decade, smaller shocks would produce unsustainable dynamics, leaving the program highly accident-prone.

It's no wonder people are protesting in the streets of Greece. How could people not march at this point?

And keep in mind, they tried the same madness in the UK to similar results, and the Republicans, with the help of the Democrats, are cutting spending in the US as well.  Was there ever a better definition of voodoo economics (or voodoo politics)? Read the rest of this post...

Coastal real estate—the time has come to "plan an orderly human retreat from more development"

As the climate changes and sea levels rise, the world of coastal real estate is changing — but not yet adapting.

As always, it's ultimately a battle between developers who want to make money — and have lots to spread around to make sure their "needs" are met — and the public, which has to clean up the messes left behind with their hard-earned tax dollars.

There's an excellent view of that dynamic in what's happening around Chesapeake Bay. This report via grist.org and the Bay Journal News Service is thorough and revealing (my emphasis and some reparagraphing):

In Northumberland County, Va., the Board of Supervisors has tentatively approved a massive home/resort/marina complex on Bluff Point, a marshy, wooded peninsula jutting into the Chesapeake Bay from Virginia’s lovely Northern Neck. The rural county — four stoplights, 13,000 residents — acknowledges in its master development plan that sea levels are rising, and places Bluff Point in a “conservation” zone; but after consulting experts paid for partly by the developer, the supervisors granted an “exception.”

It’s the latest example, on the shores of North America’s largest estuary, of science getting drowned out when developers wave big money at county officials craving revenue. And it’s an important story, as the Chesapeake is something of a ground zero for climate change: At the same time sea levels are rising, the land around the bay is sinking as a result of local geology. Larger-than-ever storm surges are a certainty.

As my old Uncle Straight Talk reminds me: "What do you call it when developers are the only ones with money? Mission accomplished."

The article is very good on the list of issues, from loss of wetlands to increased water levels to increased storm surges:

At Bluff Point, the developer may put some houses on poles as high as 8 feet in the air if needed; and that might seem reasonable, given sea level could rise about 3 feet in the next century, according to Virginia’s Climate Change Commission. But this ignores that a foot of rise, with the Chesapeake’s flattish edges, can move the Bay inland as much as 180 feet, and you can’t put roads and sewer lines on 8-foot poles. Then there are storm surges. In 2006, Tropical Storm Ernesto caused surges along Virginia’s Bay shore of 4-5 feet, with 6-8 foot waves rolling atop that.

Chesapeake Bay is also home to naval shipyards, posing additional problems (for the shipbuilders).

As the writer says, the time has come to "plan an orderly human retreat from more development" along the once desirable coastline and edges of the Bay.

Will that happen? Almost certainly; at some point in the next 100 years even the diehards won't touch a coastal house.

I'm more concerned about the social cost. The war between people with money and those without can only sharpen with every "win" the greed-and-ego freaks manage to notch. That war is driven from one side only — the money side — and unless Money stands down, it will be increasingly opposed.

What will that opposition look like? It will look like the War on Terror come home, partly because it will be marketed as "domestic eco-terror" — and partly because that's what popular rebellions always look like. Don't you think Syria is ringing the "terrorist" bell as loudly as it can, at the same time as the state's enemies are ringing that bell back?

The clocks are ticking; and I think this clock is ticking more slowly than others (the "peak oil" bell is clanging rather loudly in my poor ears). But there are no guarantees. If the Mother of the Daddy of all Storms takes out the whole of Hilton Head next year, well ... you can bet the climate wars will pop to the top of the stack, for both sides in the battle.

Action Opportunity — The good news is that these are all local battles and can be locally won by activists. Do you live near the Chesapeake? Read the article carefully, then get involved in the issues outlined there. You can make a difference.

As the article intimates, there are lot of Chesapeake "opportunities," just waiting for your help to fix themselves.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Why is the Washington Post publishing conspiracy nut Glenn Beck as a "religious voice"?

I mean come on, the guy was too far out there for Fox, and the Washington Post is treating him like he's some mainstream priest on their religion page?  Why is he a guest voice on the religion page at all?  None of the hate group leaders like Tony Perkins available, who the Post likes to normalize every chance they can get?  Or is this about Glenn Beck being a sure-fire chance to rile folks up and get the Post, known to be in hard financial times, some much-needed page views?

Well, don't count on me to link to this kind of trash.

Beck even went so far as to claim that President Obama's having adopted Mitt Romney's policy of making contraceptives available under employer health insurance plans is just like anti-semitism.  Uh huh.  Funny thing for a Mormon to claim - and Glenn Beck proudly proclaims his Mormon faith at the beginning of the article (presumably that's his only bona fide to even be published as a guest voice on a religious page, that he has a faith) - that they're just like persecuted Jews.

As a Mormon, Beck is likely familiar with the face of anti-semitism. The Mormons have been busy harassing Jews for decades, when they're not busy persecuting gays, African-Americans, or women.  The Mormons have been secretly converting dead people of all faiths to Mormonism, often without the knowledge, nor consent, of their immediate non-Mormon relatives.  The Mormons have taken a special fancy to going after the souls of Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust.  Though it's not just Jews.  The Mormons were kind enough to include Hitler and Stalin alongside the Jews each of them loathed, prompting Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel to demand public accountability from America's most famous Mormon, Mitt Romney.  None is forthcoming.

Considering the Mormons' history of trying to use the wheels of government to legislatively jam their faith down the throats of every American, it takes a lot of chutzpah for Glenn Beck to claim that he, as a Mormon, is simply interested in defending freedom of religion.

Since most Catholics agree with President Obama on this issue, rather than their own bishops (or Glenn Beck), just whose freedom are they fighting for? Read the rest of this post...

Spanish police rough up protesters in Valencia

It's not Oakland, but it's not pretty either. Lots more videos and photographs from the protests in Spain here. The overall unemployment level in Spain is 23% but the youth unemployment is now over 50%. It's hard to see how this is not a lost generation. If you look at how Greece is being treated in the bailout, the other troubled countries can see where things are going. There's lots of stick and very little carrot which means pain for years to come. As much as we hear about immoral leaders in places like Libya (under Gaddafi) or Egypt or now Syria, destroying a generation or more in Europe is no better. Too bad the political class is more worried about what the banking sector will get rather than the destruction that the banks have left in their wake. Read the rest of this post...