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Citibank is taking $49B in SIV assets onto its balance sheets, which is to say, "as opposed to their $87B face value. This is in response to being downgraded by Moody's. These are not the "subprime" rated, and is a 44% face loss. That's huge, and brings their ability to maintain capital requirements into doubt. For them to be doing this, it must be the least bad option available to them. On the other hand, at least we might know now. That's good.
Honestly, the biggest reason I'm not in the deflationary spiral camp - and by the way, deflationary spirals are really bad, much worse than ordinary recessions or even inflationary recessions - is because I don't know how that's going to interact with oil and other energy prices. Sure, you can talk about demand destruction all you want, but the reality is that light sweet crude production hasn't exceeded November 2005 numbers since, even at $95/barrel. If the only factor was the dollar collapse, you'd be looking at $25-30 or so, all else equal. Add $20 more for political concerns. The other $50+ is coming from somewhere, and it's not a booming manufacturing sector. (The guy who invented the term stagflation is coming down on the side of, well, stagflation. Really bad stagflation.)
No one should ever listen to the current Pope on matters of world peace again, given that he declared that birth control, same-sex marriage, and abortion rights are "obstacles" to world peace on the same scale as nuclear proliferation. Note that this is the charitable reading; the hostile reading would be "give us what we want or we'll make sure there's no peace until we get it." Mmmm, holy war. However, I prefer to think he's just an ass.
Now that Governor Huckabee is gaining real ground in the GOP nominating process, we're getting a lot more looks into his record. And oh, he does hate the queers, saying in 1992 that "homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk"; he's not afraid to go after Mitt Romney on FREAKY MORMON ZOMG grounds - and as several people have said, hey, you built a sectarian party, this is the kind of crap you get. Oh, and by the way, "The governor regards 1968 as the dawning of 'the age of the birth-control pill, free love, gay sex, the drug culture and reckless disregard for standards.'" So I guess he's with the Pope, then, in the h8-on for birth control. And queers. But that goes without saying.
And the government of Iraq is moving to take firearms away from all policewomen in the country, disarming every women member of the police force, because "Females are taken care of by men in this country. They are not out there being police officers."
Nobel-laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu finds that American defense of detention-without-trial a "huge blot on a democracy," asking, "Whoever imagined that you would hear from the United States and from Britain the same arguments for detention without trial that were used by the apartheid government"? Personally, I think that after you've gotten done quoting the Nazis, South Africa's white-only government looks a little bit like a step up.
I'm sleepy so I'm not going to break this all out, but here are two entries on American torture: this one on the use of torture at Abu Ghraib, and this one on what torture really is. It is, of course, about compliance, about getting people to say what you want them to say, independent of whether it is the truth. Torture and truth have nothing to do with each other.
Honestly, the biggest reason I'm not in the deflationary spiral camp - and by the way, deflationary spirals are really bad, much worse than ordinary recessions or even inflationary recessions - is because I don't know how that's going to interact with oil and other energy prices. Sure, you can talk about demand destruction all you want, but the reality is that light sweet crude production hasn't exceeded November 2005 numbers since, even at $95/barrel. If the only factor was the dollar collapse, you'd be looking at $25-30 or so, all else equal. Add $20 more for political concerns. The other $50+ is coming from somewhere, and it's not a booming manufacturing sector. (The guy who invented the term stagflation is coming down on the side of, well, stagflation. Really bad stagflation.)
No one should ever listen to the current Pope on matters of world peace again, given that he declared that birth control, same-sex marriage, and abortion rights are "obstacles" to world peace on the same scale as nuclear proliferation. Note that this is the charitable reading; the hostile reading would be "give us what we want or we'll make sure there's no peace until we get it." Mmmm, holy war. However, I prefer to think he's just an ass.
Now that Governor Huckabee is gaining real ground in the GOP nominating process, we're getting a lot more looks into his record. And oh, he does hate the queers, saying in 1992 that "homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk"; he's not afraid to go after Mitt Romney on FREAKY MORMON ZOMG grounds - and as several people have said, hey, you built a sectarian party, this is the kind of crap you get. Oh, and by the way, "The governor regards 1968 as the dawning of 'the age of the birth-control pill, free love, gay sex, the drug culture and reckless disregard for standards.'" So I guess he's with the Pope, then, in the h8-on for birth control. And queers. But that goes without saying.
And the government of Iraq is moving to take firearms away from all policewomen in the country, disarming every women member of the police force, because "Females are taken care of by men in this country. They are not out there being police officers."
Policewomen say the decree also will leave them unable to protect themselves at work or off duty. Scores of police employees, both officers and administrative workers, have been killed by insurgents. Men and women have traditionally been allowed to carry their Glock pistols with them after hours for security.And in torture state news:
"We are considered policewomen. We face kidnapping. We could be assassinated. If anyone knew where we worked, of course they would try to do something to us," said a 27-year-old interviewed Sunday.
"How can I be a policewoman without a weapon?" she asked incredulously as three female colleagues nodded in agreement.
Nobel-laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu finds that American defense of detention-without-trial a "huge blot on a democracy," asking, "Whoever imagined that you would hear from the United States and from Britain the same arguments for detention without trial that were used by the apartheid government"? Personally, I think that after you've gotten done quoting the Nazis, South Africa's white-only government looks a little bit like a step up.
I'm sleepy so I'm not going to break this all out, but here are two entries on American torture: this one on the use of torture at Abu Ghraib, and this one on what torture really is. It is, of course, about compliance, about getting people to say what you want them to say, independent of whether it is the truth. Torture and truth have nothing to do with each other.
