April, 2009 archive
When Zombie Banks Walked the Earth, Not Worth a Plugged Nickel Dept. 0
At least with a plugged nickel you can get a penny Tootsie Roll:
In other news, William Black tells Bill Moyers that the federal government is afraid to tell the truth about the banks’ insolvency because
H/T Brendan for the link to the William Black story.
In the Soup. Not. 0
Campbell Soup.
No bull.
Bears.
(snip)
. . . Lassie is long gone and Campbell Soup, which sponsored the popular TV program for its full 19 years, is wondering how to reverse a steep 15.5% decline in soup sales in March.
A. “Just Plain Wrong” 0
Q. What was it Susie didn’t say?
My Idea of a B & B 0
Booze ‘n Breakfast, that is.
“Good Night, Chet.” “Good Night, David.” 0
Atrios cuts to the quick on the struggles of the newspaper industry.
I have argued before (not here, in person–I actually do see real live persons from time to time) that, more than anything else, Craig’s List, which took the classifieds, led the charge. The Saturday classifieds in the Philadelphia Shrinquier, which used to be easily three sections (I have read the Inky off and on for 25 years), not counting the real estate ads, is now seldom more than one section, including the real estate.
Strictly Speaking, Letter of the Law Dept. (Updated) 1
The Booman on Republican attempts to sweep the Bush maladministration under the rug. Read the whole thing:
Digby has more.
Addendum:
Noz says let them do their damndest:
Strictly Speaking 0
In Republicanland, “strict constructionism” means “rulings we like.” “Judicial activism” means “rulings we don’t like.”
Dick Polman, writing about the gay marriage ruling in Iowa, explains “strict constructionism” (emphasis added):
. . . The Iowa judges explain those workings with a minimum of frills: They start by citing the state constitution’s Bill of Rights (“Equal protection of the law is one of the guaranteed rights”), noting that those rights “are declared and undeniably accepted as the supreme law of this state, against which no contrary law can stand,” and they underscore the preeminence of the state document by quoting the exact words of the document. (From Article XII: “This constitution shall be the supreme law of the state, and any law inconsistent therewith, shall be void.”)
You know how conservative critics of the courts always say that judges should be “strict constructionists” who accept the constitutional language precisely as it is written? Well, that’s what the Iowa judges did.
Aside: My position on gay marriage is a resounding “so what.”
When Zombie Banks Walked the Earth 0
One more time, not enough assets to cover liabilities.
That is the textbook definition of “bankrupt.”
Mark Mayo, late of Deutsche Bank, which (according to the story) he exited under a cloud of valuing objectivity too highly, quoted on Bloomberg:
The changes to mark-to-market accounting rules will impact banks’ balance sheets by one-third or less and will have no impact on the economics of bank troubles, Mayo wrote. Banks committed the “seven deadly sins” of banking in trying to compensate for lower natural growth rates and will now feel the costs of those actions, Mayo wrote.
The Free Hand of the Market Watch 0
Rowenna Davis, reviewing an ebook called The Crash in the Guardian, argues that most lefties don’t understand financial markets.
She has a point. Indeed, I think most persons don’t understand the markets. Yet, as is daily proven, the markets are important, not just for those who frequent them.
How many persons actually listen to the business news or read the business section in the paper? For most, that’s eyes-glaze-over territory filled with impenetrable double-talk and inane trivialities like “Jane Tribble just got promoted to Second Assistant Director of Beanie Babies.”
There’s a reason the business news comes at the end of the newscast or in the last section of the paper; only the dedicated pay attention to them.
Drink Liberally 0
On Tuesday, Triumph Brewing Company, three blocks east of the Second Bank of the United States/Old Customs House on the other side of Chestnut, Philadelphia, Pa., 6 p.
Good food, good drink, good company.
Stray Thought 0
If I hear one more blowhard public figure use the phrase, “a conversation we have to have,” I think I shall scream.
How To Make a Disaster 0
Wiliam K. Black on Bill Moyers Journal:
“[T]he way that you do it is to make really bad loans, because they pay better,” he told Moyers. “Then you grow extremely rapidly, in other words, you’re a Ponzi-like scheme. And the third thing you do is we call it leverage. That just means borrowing a lot of money, and the combination creates a situation where you have guaranteed record profits in the early years. That makes you rich, through the bonuses that modern executive compensation has produced. It also makes it inevitable that there’s going to be a disaster down the road.
“…This stuff, the exotic stuff that you’re talking about was created out of things like liars’ loans, that were known to be extraordinarily bad,” he continued. “And now it was getting triple-A ratings. Now a triple-A rating is supposed to mean there is zero credit risk. So you take something that not only has significant, it has crushing risk. That’s why it’s toxic. And you create this fiction that it has zero risk. That itself, of course, is a fraudulent exercise. And again, there was nobody looking, during the Bush years.
Greater Wingnuttery VII 2
And I thought H. P. Lovecraft crafted craziness.
Wingnuts make Cthulu seem like a marshmallow and Nyarlathothep, a boy scout.
The Booman on the murder of the policemen in PIttsburgh:
And yet these deadly incidents keep happening. And evil media clowns like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and even politicians like Michelle Bachmann keep screaming their twisted diatribes of hate over the airwaves, ratcheting up their deceitful, mendacious and dangerous rhetoric to levels we haven’t seen since the days when the Klu Klux Klan dominated vast regions of this country in the twenties and thirties. Days when lynchings were common. Nor do we need to look that far back. It was only 14 years ago, during the administration of another centrist Democratic President that we suffered the worst act of domestic terrorism perpetrated by another crazy bastard who swallowed the far right lies hook line and sinker: a bastard named Timothy McVeigh.
It embarrasses and shames me that the people who do this stuff almost always loudly proclaim themselves to be “true Americans” and “Christians.”
It should embarrass and shame us all, American or not, Christian or not, who understand either the ideals of America, the ideals of Christianity, or both.
End the politics of hate.