Author Archives: admin
The Great Disconnect
Ben Bernanke began his press conference with a touching tribute to the unemployed. Oh, how he cares! And so deeply! His description of the problem was accurate enough. But then out came the smoke and mirrors.
Bernanke said that to remedy the unemployment problem, he will continue the Fed’s program of asset purchases. Specifically, the Fed will continue to buy and hold mortgage-backed securities . . . .
But here’s the disconnect. What the devil does buying bad debt from zombie banks have to do with getting people jobs? The relationship between assets purchases and policy goals is murky at best.
“I need a job, so I hope the Fed buys more bad mortgage debt” — said no unemployed person ever.
Yes, I know about ancient Keynesian theories. There is tradeoff between unemployment and inflation. But those theories have not really explained much at all for the last 40 years. In fact, they blew up in the 1970s with the emergence of “stagflation.” An affliction where unemployment remains high even as inflation roars ahead.
(Read more)
FT’s person of the year is ECB President Mario “whatever it takes to save the Euro Zone” Draghi
ECB President Mario Draghi has been chosen as the FT’s Person of the Year 2012 for his commitment to do “whatever it takes” to save the eurozone. (Read more)
Homeland Security is building a $4 billion 170-acre complex for 17,000 employees
Further proof that the fiscal cliff hysteria is sheer nonsense.
The US Department of Homeland Security, despite budget cuts and construction delays, is planning to add 17,000 employees into its consolidated headquarters in southeast Washington. The department broke ground at their new headquarters in 2009 and was originally scheduled for completion in 2016. The new complex is now scheduled for completion in 2022.
The 4.5 million square-foot “federal mini-city for the Department of Homeland Security” on the site of the former infamous psychiatric St. Elizabeths Hospital and is the largest federal construction job since the pentagon was built in the 1940s. The construction of the project was originally expected to cost $3.4 billion but is now going to cost at least $4 billion and is expected to “create 16,000 direct construction jobs”. (Read more)
Anonymous hack hundreds of Israeli websites, delete Foreign Ministry database in support of Gaza
From last month:
Hacker group Anonymous has launched a massive attack named #OpIsrael on almost 700 Israeli websites, protesting against Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza. Israeli media confirmed the group’s move.
ÂThe hackers reportedly took down websites ranging from high-profile governmental structures such as the Foreign Ministry to local tourism companies’ pages. (Read more)
When Government Kills Students
Unmarried Births
Women are more tribal-oriented. It’s inherent to their reproductive strategy and their greater burden of raising children. They’ve been voting for decades now to have the state replace the father. Unneeded, unwanted, denounced as oppressors, and burden with bias legal standards, men are reverting to individualism and/or a grossly prolonged child-hood.
I Am Liza Long’s Son
Pearl High School shooting (1997)
The gunman, 16-year-old Luke Woodham (born February 5, 1981), killed two students and injured seven others at his high school. Before the shooting at Pearl High School began, Woodham stabbed and bludgeoned his mother to death in his home. . . . The school’s assistant principal, Joel Myrick, retrieved a .45 pistol from his truck and, spotting him near the parking lot, shouted for Woodham to stop. Woodham instead got into a his mother’s car and tried to escape. Myrick, a US Army Reserve commander, detained Woodham until authorities arrived.
Obama’s Crocodile Tears
Super-costly F-35s, a global wrecking ball
There is a stark lesson in the escalating cost nightmare of the F-35 fighter jets that holds more ominous implications for Washington than even for Canada’s Harper government.
Quite simply, it is that allied Western nations are finding the once-vaunted high-tech American weaponry no longer politically affordable. Not in large numbers.
Canada’s grief over its share of the F-35 price tag — now estimated to be almost $46 billion over 42 years — has been shared by a half-dozen countries, including Britain, Australia, Italy and the Netherlands, which have been forced to either cut back on their orders or contemplate outright cancellation.
This political fallout is upending the whole global arms bazaar. Around the world, America’s big-ticket defence items are being increasingly challenged by cheaper products from Europe and now Asia as well.
More developing countries are shunning extravagant U.S. weaponry for the cheaper but quite-good-enough products of Russia, China, India, and South Korea.
India itself recently rejected a large F-35 purchase in favour of buying more Russian and, possibly, French fighters for its fleet.
. . . .
t is a problem that goes well beyond the F-35s.
American insistence on super-smart combat designs has pushed the price tag of one destroyer to $1.2 billion and a new submarine to twice that. Even Congress has started to gag at such numbers.
Ironically, it was Washington’s concern over rising foreign competition that led to the F-35 woes.
The Pentagon recklessly raced the Lockheed Martin F-35 into early production in 2007, even before it was flight tested, in an attempt to corner the market for the company’s new stealth technology.
As aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia told the New York Times, “there was this big desire to kill the competition.”
‘Acquisition malpractice’
Bypassing flight tests before production was extraordinarily risky and some officials inside the Pentagon warned it would end badly. But apparently higher-ups insisted that any kinks would be worked out in computer simulation.
The F-35 was originally to have been a relatively affordable mix of three different plane types. But it turned out to be a far more complex hybrid than imagined.
Start-up costs have already consumed $65 billion, and the whole mess was denounced as “acquisition malpractice” by the Pentagon’s new procurement chief, Frank Kendall, earlier this year.
The F-35s are now the most expensive weapons program in history, so over the top, in fact, that the Pentagon’s original hope to produce some 2,400 of these fighters, spread across nine nations, is fading fast.
The estimated unit price per plane has doubled from $69 million to $167 million today and some industry experts warn that only half that projected production run may be achievable. . . . (Read more)
Jerusalem sites sprayed with anti-Christian graffiti
Vandals sprayed anti-Christian graffiti on a monastery and a Christian cemetery in Jerusalem overnight, in two apparent “price-tag” attacks, police told AFP on Wednesday.
“Overnight, graffiti was sprayed on the gates of the entrance of the Armenian cemetery reading ‘Jesus is a son of a bitch’ in Hebrew, and on a monastery belonging to the Greek Orthodox saying the same thing,” police spokeswoman Luba Samri said.
Samri said the attackers also wrote “Happy Hannukah” and “price tag” at the second site, the Valley of the Cross monastery, and slashed the tyres of nearby cars.
“Price tag” is a euphemism for revenge hate crimes by Israeli extremists, which normally target Palestinians and Arabs.
Initially carried out in retaliation for state moves to dismantle unauthorised settler outposts, they have become increasingly unrelated to any specific government measures.
The attacks tend to involve the vandalism or destruction of Palestinian property and have included multiple arson attacks on cars, mosques and olive trees. (Read more)
Krugman: “The U.S. government is having no trouble borrowing to cover its deficit. In fact, its borrowing costs are near historic lows.”
In his latest propaganda dispatch, Krugman writes:
It’s important to make this point, because I keep seeing articles about the “fiscal cliff” that do, in fact, describe it — often in the headline — as a debt crisis. But it isn’t. The U.S. government is having no trouble borrowing to cover its deficit. In fact, its borrowing costs are near historic lows. And even the confrontation over the debt ceiling that looms a few months from now if we do somehow manage to avoid going over the fiscal cliff isn’t really about debt.
No, what we’re having is a political crisis, born of the fact that one of our two great political parties has reached the end of a 30-year road.
This is such a flagrant distortion that it makes my blood boil.
Basically, the US government is lending money to itself at an artificially low interest rate. This allows professional propagandists like Krugman to claim that the US is having no trouble borrowing money.
The US holds over 6.3 trillion dollars worth of its own debt. By contrast, China holds about 1.1 trillion. (source)
See???
What they’re effectively doing is printing money to buy their own debt. The effect of this is that they steal the saving of everyone in the world who uses dollars. This is going to be a goddamn catastrophe. I recommend guns, gardens and gold.
Marc Faber: “Paul Krugman Should Go And Live In North Korea”
“The views of the Keynesians like Mr. Krugman is that the fiscal deficits are far too small. One of the problems of the crisis is that it was caused by government intervention with fiscal and monetary measures. Now they tells us we didn’t intervene enough. If they really believe that they should go and live in North Korea where you have a communist system. There the government intervenes into every aspect of the economy. And look at the economic performance of North Korea.” (Read more)