Meanwhile, in the House…

The House of representatives passes a stand alone bill to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell:

After impassioned debate both for and against the measure, the House of Representatives today passed a standalone bill to repeal the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy. The measure passed by a vote of 250 to 175, and the House broke into applause at the announcement of the final vote.

The measure was introduced Tuesday, in the final days of the Democratic-led 111th Congress, after the Senate last week failed to pass a defense authorization bill that included a repeal of the policy. "Don't ask," which has been in effect since 1993, prohibits gays from serving openly in the military.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said today that repealing the law would fix a "fundamental unfairness in our nation" and "honor the service and sacrifice of all who dedicated their lives to protecting the American people."

Considering the relatively efficiencies of the House and the Senate, I am thinking that the "World's greatest deliberative body", i.e. the Senate, is nothing more than growth media for sociopathic narcissists.

How to get a Nobel in Prize Economics

You have to cover an area of economics that has not been studied in detail before, and is relevant.

Even better if you create a new field of study.

And commenter Hugh at Corrente Wire finds just such an area, though I am unsure if he is aware of this:

… This is my primary criticism of virtually all current economists. None of them write on, or try to construct an economic theory for, kleptocracy either because they are still in denial or because the sheer notion undercuts almost everything they believe and were taught. …

The economics of kleptocracy, whether it be Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, or the United States, tremendously relvant and almost completely unexamined, at least by economists.

Certainly, it does lend itself quite as well to neat equations as do, for example, monetarism or the efficient markets hypothesis, but there is clearly gold, or at least academic glory, in "them thar hillls."

Interestingly enough, I do think that a lot of the framework has already been laid with the fields of behavioral economics (already Nobels there, Allais, Becker, and Simon) and the the theory of asymmetric information in markets (Stiglitz, Akerlof, and Spence won their Nobel for this).

It seems to me that in the intersection of these two fields, we can find the makings of a rigorous, and relatively quantitative, study of the operations of the economy of a kleptocracy, though I am neither an economist or an Academician, I am an engineer, dammit,^* so your mileage may vary.

Even if this does not result in a Nobel, it would certainly generate a buzz, leading to tenure, and the inevitable academic economist groupies.<sup>†

*</sup>I LOVE IT when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!
^†I'm not certain about the groupies, but that is what classic economic theory seems to imply.

Senate Passes Obama's Assault on the Democratic Party

Otherwise known as the kiss the asses of rich Republicans tax bill.

It passed 81-19.

Seriously, that's kind of pathetic.

I understand the reluctance of Democrats to vote against their own President, but the fact that after this bad a deal was cut that you can't even muster enough votes against it to keep the total below 70?

Pathetic.

Economics Update

The Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee held its benchmark rate at effectively 0%, and said that it will continue its policy of monetary easing. (printing money)

It's really no big surprise, but the other two pieces of news, that the small business optimism survey hit a 2 year high, and that retail sales rose for the 5^th straight month are a bit of a surprise, though definitely ont he plus side of the ledger.

Your Corruption Update

Pedro Espade, who switched parties in the New York State Senate and switched control of the body back to the Republican before being tossed out in the primary, has now been charged with embezzling over $½ million from the charity that he ran.

And in the "if you are going to be corrupt, be sure that you are too big to prosecute" category, the winner is Dick Cheney and Halliburton, who are bribing Nigeria to get out from under charges of bribery.

This Ain't a Bad Thing

The folks at the Financial Times blog, FT Alphaville, are running around like chickens with their heads cut off because inflation is approaching 3¼%:.

They refer to the number as "dismal", and note that, "While today’s reading won’t surprise the BoE — it expects inflation to average 3.2 to 3.3 per cent in the fourth quarter and circa 3.5 per cent early in 2011 — there’s bound to be (further scepticism) that the inflation genie will be back in the bottle by the end of 2011."

These are people who do not understand.

This financial crisis is because too many people owe too much debt, and lack the wherewithal to dig themselves out of this hole.

Inflation serves to devalue the currency and so devalue the debt.

It's not a bad thing when we are in a liquidity trap, it's a good thing.

It's more than a good thing, it's essential to recovery.

The Good News

The 6^th Circuit of Appeals has ruled that law enforcement agencies must secure a warrant before seizing emails from Internet Service Providers.

While I am certain that Barack Obama, Eric "Place" Holder, and their Evil Minions^™ will attempt to get this overturned by the Supreme Court


The full EFF press release is below the break:

Breaking News on EFF Victory: Appeals Court Holds that Email Privacy Protected by Fourth Amendment

News Update by Kevin Bankston

In a landmark decision issued today in the criminal appeal of U.S. v. Warshak, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the government must have a search warrant before it can secretly seize and search emails stored by email service providers. Closely tracking arguments made by EFF in its amicus brief, the court found that email users have the same reasonable expectation of privacy in their stored email as they do in their phone calls and postal mail.

EFF filed a similar amicus brief with the 6th Circuit in 2006 in a civil suit brought by criminal defendant Warshak against the government for its warrantless seizure of his emails. There, the 6th Circuit agreed with EFF that email users have a Fourth Amendment-protected expectation of privacy in the email they store with their email providers, though that decision was later vacated on procedural grounds. Warshak's appeal of his criminal conviction has brought the issue back to the Sixth Circuit, and once again the court has agreed with EFF and held that email users have a Fourth Amendment-protected reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of their email accounts.

As the Court held today,

Given the fundamental similarities between email and traditional forms of communication [like postal mail and telephone calls], it would defy common sense to afford emails lesser Fourth Amendment protection.... It follows that email requires strong protection under the Fourth Amendment; otherwise the Fourth Amendment would prove an ineffective guardian of private communication, an essential purpose it has long been recognized to serve.... [T]he police may not storm the post office and intercept a letter, and they are likewise forbidden from using the phone system to make a clandestine recording of a telephone call--unless they get a warrant, that is. It only stands to reason that, if government agents compel an ISP to surrender the contents of a subscriber's emails, those agents have thereby conducted a Fourth Amendment search, which necessitates compliance with the warrant requirement....

Today's decision is the only federal appellate decision currently on the books that squarely rules on this critically important privacy issue, an issue made all the more important by the fact that current federal law--in particular, the Stored Communications Act--allows the government to secretly obtain emails without a warrant in many situations. We hope that this ruling will spur Congress to update that law as EFF and its partners in the Digital Due Process coalition have urged, so that when the government secretly demands someone's email without probable cause, the email provider can confidently say: "Come back with a warrant."

Attachment Size

warshak_opinion_121410.pdf 316.97 KB

(emphasis original)

My Faith is Restored in Ron Paul

While I am in favor of clipping the Federal Reserve's wings, limiting its scope to monetary issues, and taking regulation largely out of their hands, along with reducing the role of private banks in staffing the boards of the regional Fed banks, Ron Paul just went off the rails again, arguing that the Federal Reserve is an illegal cartel:

Rep. Ron Paul, (R-Texas), who will head a subcommittee overseeing the Federal Reserve in the new Congress, called the central bank a “cartel” and said it had “monopoly control” over the US dollar. “I think we should start ending the Fed by allowing competition. I don’t like the idea that they have monopoly control. It’s a cartel: They get to print the money,” said Paul, who wrote a book called End the Fed.

Paul said that he wanted to “legalize competition,” so that Americans can use gold and silver as legal tender.

The idea that the government, which is what the Federal Reserve is, in a completely f%$#ed up kind of way, should not have a monopoly on the idea of coining money is completely nuts.

I am so over agreeing with him yesterday.

The world is back to normal, though I do rather relish the idea of seeing Dr. Paul grill Bernanke on CSPAN.

Now I Wish I Were Irish

And it has nothing to do with harps, beer in its various forms, the natural beauty of the land, or the stunning red heads with milky white skins.

Instead, I envy them their banking regulators:

Allied Irish Banks, the lender that is being bailed out by the government, has decided not to award senior staff about 40 million euros ($53 million) in bonuses for 2008 after the country’s finance ministry intervened late Monday.

Ireland’s finance minister, Brian Lenihan, told RTE radio on Tuesday that it was “galling to think” that at a time when taxpayers were investing in the bank, 36 million to 40 million euros “would be paid out of that bank to employees in respect to bonuses during a period that the bank got itself into the difficulties it is now in.”

The bank has already received 3.5 billion euros in government aid.

The ministry acted after months of public outrage over the bonuses to be paid to 2,400 senior bank managers at a time when Ireland was seeking an international bailout of 85 billion euros, largely because of weaknesses in its banking sector. In a letter Monday to the Allied Irish board, Mr. Lenihan said that further cash injections by the government — which the bank desperately needs — were dependent on the condition that no bonuses be paid.

“The provision of further state funding to A.I.B. will be conditional, inter alia, on the nonpayment of any bonuses, no matter when they may have been earned,” Mr. Lenihan wrote. He told the cabinet at a meeting Tuesday that the provision on the bonuses would be added to a bank restructuring bill being discussed.

I wish I lived in a country that regulated its banking sector as honestly and effectively as the Irish.

If you are uncertain as to whether that last sentence is serious of sarcastic, well so am I.

Oh, and I forgot to Add

Blah, blah, blah!

The US Air Force is now blocking the New York Times, The Guardian and a number of other news outlets because they are reporting on the contents of the cables.

You know, I think that the fact that US authorities have gone completely batsh%$ insane over this might be doing a lot more damage to our credibility worldwide than anything in those damn cables.

Julian Assange Granted Bail

We are all Julian Assange

But the Swedish prosecutors promptly appealed the decision, meaning that he spends at least another 48 hours in custody, which in his case means rather harsh isolation.

On the other hand, it appears that reports of a grand jury investigating an indictment under the 1917 espionage act may be baseless.

Truth be told, a good prosecutor can find an sitting already sitting grand jury, and Mr. Assange from a legal perspective is certainly a ham sandwich.

Were I a prosecutor, I would not begin any process until Assange were in Sweden, where extraditions appears to be more likely than in the UK.

Of course, while this is going on, the internet is still being roiled by attacks on both sides of the issue, with Anonymous emerging from 4chan to hit the financial and IT companies that cut Wikileaks off, and other hackers going after Wikileaks, in a game of dueling DDOS attacks.

Hanging over all this is Assange's poison pill file, which has been distributed to tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people, waiting for the decryption key that will be distributed if anything happens to him or Wikileaks by a dozen or so of his colleagues.

And then there is the absurdity that Amazon, after tossing Wikileaks from their servers, is now selling copies of the cables for the Kindles.

In the mean time, here are the crucial government secrets that we now know as a result of the cables:

• The pharmaceutical company Pfizer, after engaging in illegal human tests on children during a meningitis epidemic in Nigeria, attempted to dig up blackmail material to be used against the attorney general to prevent him from investigation.
• That senior officials in the ZANU-PF, including Robert Mugabe and his family, are heavily involved in the "blood diamonds" mined in Zimbabwe's Marange diamond fields.
• That a US security contractor (mercenaries), DynCorp, paid for with US tax dollars, "threw a party for Afghan security recruits featuring trafficked boys as the entertainment. Bacha bazi is the Afghan tradition of "boy play" where young boys are dressed up in women's clothing, forced to dance for leering men, and then sold for sex to the highest bidder."
• That British security forces were likely involved in the assassination of an Irish civil rights attorney.

Of course there is some truly sensitive and shocking information out there, specifically that, the DPRK (North Korea) was willing to take significant steps to  reassure the US and the ROK (South Korea) in exchange for an Eric Clapton concert in Pyongyang.

Merciful heavens, we can't let the citizenry know about that.

The final word on this is Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg's, "EVERY attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time."

Barack Obama Wants to Gut Social Security and Medicare

Click for full size

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Social Security and Medicaid together do not match Medicare's costs

Really, he just expressly said that to Steve Inskeep of NPR:

Actually, I think that if you talk to economists, both conservative and liberal, what they'll say is the problem is not next year. The problem is, how are we dealing with our medium-term debt and deficit, and how are we dealing with our long-term debt and deficit? And most of that has to do with entitlements, particularly Social Security and Medicaid.

(emphasis mine)

It's not helpful that he leads with a lie.

Anyone who has the vaguest idea of how to count knows that the elephant in the room (pun not intended), is not Medicaid, but Medicare, but Obama realizes that that the political consequences of going after that are simply too dire for him to mess with the seniors.

The alternative, of course, is something private, which means higher costs, since we know that both Medicare and Medicaid deliver healthcare for a lower cost than the private sector, and the expense ratio (the cost of managing the money) for Social Security is on the order of ¹⁄₁₀ that of most private plans out there.

We now understand why Barack Obama has been so deferential to the insurance and finance industries:  It's because they own him, and he wants to sell the rest of us to them.


H/t Gaius Publius.

This is a Fascinating Analysis of the Koran

Essentially, the speaker notes that the Koran is a far more nuanced document than either the fundamentalists or the islamophobes would imply, and that you really cannot understand it in translation.

Certainly that is my experience with the study of Torah, where I really don't think that I can claim to have ever even read it, since with my pathetic grasp of Hebrew, I do not know more than a smattering of words and a few greetings.

In any case, listening to Lesley Hazelton is a good way to spend 9 minutes.



H/t Yves Smith.

China's Central Bank Hold Rates Steady

Considering China's recent problems with inflation, this decision is a bit of a surprise.

My guess as to what is going on here, I think that this is a reflection of the fact that the People’s Bank of China is more concerned about the Yuan appreciation than it is about inflation, and increases in interest rates would tend to drive their currency up.

Of Course the Fix is In

The Senate voted for cloture on the Republican wet dream tax bill.

Notwithstanding the "nonbinding" vote in the House Democratic Caucus last week, I expect it to pass the house largely unchanged.

I simply do not think that there is enough guts in the house to push back in a meaningful way against this.

Point 1: Mark Penn is always wrong......

Point 2: he is now arguing that Democratic Party support of Obama's awful tax deal is essential to the survival of the party.

Taking political advice from Mark Penn is like taking investment advice from Jim Cramer.

I Hate This,

Of course, he manages to throw in a big of bigotry here

But once again, I agree with Ron Paul, organizations like Wikileaks are a necessary, and beneficial, force for openness and transparency.

He draws the proper parallels between Wikileaks and the Pentagon Papers, and notes that these sorts of operations are essential in uncovering official wrongdoing.

What Atrios Said

Basically if craptacular DINO Senator Mark Warner wants to rail against regulation in an editorial, then perhaps he should name a few regulations that he actually thinks harm the economy.

It's classic, "The problem is too much regulation ……… Except for that regulation ……… And that regulation ……… and that regulation ………"

This sort of posing does a great deal of damage to our body politic.

Pass the Popcorn…

Thank God!!!

Michael Steele has announced that he is running for reelection as chairman of the RNC.

His special blend of stupidity, arrogance, and an uncanny ability to put his foot in his mouth up to his hip socket make my life as a blogger, and the lives of innumerable professional comedy  writers. so much easier.

Federal Judge Rules Insurance Mandate Unconstitutional

Note however, that the judge, Henry E. Hudson, is a well known serious wingnut, and even he did not have the stones to issue an injunction, nor did he rule the rest of the law unconstitutional, and two other Federal District Court judges dismissed the cases pretty much before the ink was dry on those petitions.

Of course, this does mean that it is likely to make it to the Supreme Court, where Justice Roberts is busy trying to recreate the bogus "Freedom of Contract". (See also Schechter).

In any case, the Obama administration's response is predictable:

The administration acknowledges that if the insurance requirement falls before taking effect in 2014, related changes would necessarily collapse with it, most notably provisions that would prevent insurers from denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions or charging them discriminatory rates.

Once again, the Obama administration is capitulating before the fight has even started.

Let's assume that the Supreme Court rules the mandate unconstitutional.  What happens then is that, if nothing is done, the insurance industry is in risk of collapse in the very short term (less than 18 months).

It's time to ask for single payer, or a public option, not to wring your hands and repeal the bill.

With the threat of a veto, and the ensuing collapse of health insurers across the US, you can get some decent non-insurance company friendly provisions, like the public option and a repeal of ERISA preemption.

But of course, in Obama's world, the predators that are the health insurance industry are "partners" to be protected, not a profit driven source of pain and suffering, so he will go to the mat for them.