i personally resent all of this

I've spent so much fucking time on all this fucking political warfare over so many fucking years and hated every fucking minute of it. Tonight I spent a couple of hours discovering the previous post's new obscenity, chasing down reasonable sources, thinking about historical precedent, and trying to figure out what the fuck to say this time, and it's a complete fucking waste of time because it is not going to get any fucking better for it, and I could have, and fucking should have, spent those two hours on music, or something I don't hate and that might be worth something, and fucking well didn't.

And that's my own goddamn fault.

Look - those of you following my journal for the politics, here's my schedule. I'm still paying attention through the end of the FISA amendments/PAA extension/retroactive immunity/domestic spying fiasco. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Reid should have everything Chief Executive Mr. Bush, the GOP, and the telcos want through the Senate by the end of the week, unless something big changes. (And the Presidential candidates in the Senate are reportedly going to be skipping these votes, which, if true, means none of them get my vote, period.) It has been suggested that the idea is to run it up against some deadline - I forget which - so that there's not a conference committee on the bill, and the House just votes to accept the Senate version. That's just rumour, but it's credible - it's good parliamentarianism, and Senator Reid knows his way around Congress. It's certainly a good way to pretend to oppose something while doing everything you can to get it passed.

Regardless, though; win, lose, or draw on this - and I'm suspecting I'll be on the losing side yet again, but you never know - politically, after this fight, I'm going to ground for a while. At least, I'm going to try to. I needed to walk away already, and I didn't, because I wanted to see the FISA/PAA thing out, and because at this point there's a lot of habit, and a lot of investment, and a lot of pain already endured. (Yay, priour investment fallacy!) But really, I've lost. I need to get that into my head, and figure out how to cope.

I know a lot of you Obamaniacs are convinced he's the Real Deal and will Turn Things Around. I'm pretty sure that won't happen, at least, not in a direction I care about. The limited-powers Constitutionally-constrained government - necessary for any concept of rights as innate rights, rather than privileges awarded by government - is dead. (Maybe it's time for another reminder that I'm not a liberal? Assume I wrote one here.) Maybe he'll Be Something New. Or at least, maybe he'll be a benevolent and less incompetent Chief Executive. Who knows? Hopefully, you fans of his are right. Good luck.

Looking for very short-term contract work (1-3 weeks)

I'm looking for short-term contract work to try to fill in some of the gaps in our financial situation caused by all the medical hell over the last four years. I'm interested in 1-3 week (not month) contracts, because that's what I imagine my arms can tolerate.

So if you know somebody looking specifically for very-short-term work, let me know! I have worked professionally as a software developer (C and C++ mostly), software tester, systems manager (mostly but not exclusively mail-related), and technical writer. I've also done some professional graphic design work, so that's not entirely out of the question either - but it's not really what I'm trying to get. This'd have to be Seattle-area only - preferably Seattle proper - unless the're willing to have me work by remote, which I'm happy to do, or are willing to pay me extra for very-short-term travel.

Resume and/or C.V. available upon request.

Pillows

Pillows

this is in fact more relaxing than the politics

So, where are we economically today?

I have an unspecific (and accordingly difficult to validate) sense that we are approaching or at a significant acceleration event in the markets. That's just a sense, not a prediction, tho' there's plenty of environment priming for it. It's had me chasing around the net a lot tonight, trying to see if I can find what's going on. Sure, the stock market was in the tank today (down 3%ish), and the Japanese markets are down almost 5%, now, and Hong Kong down well over 5%, and sure, that's a lot, but, you know, whatever.

So instead of trying to figure that out, here's today's context. The new CMBX data is very bad (remember, up is bad in these graphs), which means commercial real-estate lending is falling over and may be about to implode in ways similar to the still-essentially-frozen CDO market. I'm hearing from financial chat boards that the only mortgages anybody is seeing move are top-grade fully-conforming loans that can go to FreddieMac and FannieMae, and that if you can get a nonconforming loan, it's probably because the lender has decided it's worth holding as a portfolio loan, at least for a couple of years. If true - and while it fits observable market conditions, that doesn't confirm it - then this should get very interesting fairly soon.

Similarly, corporate debt is similarly becoming extremely difficult to move, thus making all sorts of investment deals more difficult. Lending standards continue to be jacked way up as the Fed tries desperately to keep the banks afloat and stop a complete credit seizure. The CMBX data above rather show that that market ate the two major rate cuts in about a week - that's not real good. Genesis over at Market Ticker also noted in a video post that the Fed overnight funds rates showed some really strange action last night, including a low loan rate of 0.01%, indicating that the Fed may already be virtually out of ammunition.

In terms of general psychology, things have gotten fairly grim, with Marketwatch posting articles on the FDIC gearing up for a large bank failure. And Nouriel Roubini is describing what happens if Mr. Bernanke falls off that slackrope, and how you get to a long, hard, and deflationary recession from here. (See also here, and here.)

Finally, today's surprising tidbit: did you know second mortgages and HELOCs - even "secured" ones - become automatically unsecured if a house's value drops below the value of the first mortgage? And did you know that these loans can then be discharged with zero repayment under current bankruptcy law? I didn't know that either! But apparently:

The Tenth Circuit United States Bankruptcy Appellate Panel issued a ruling in December 2005 clarifying that second and third mortgages that are wholly unsecured can indeed be stripped off in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy -- leaving homeowners with only the first mortgage to pay on the house.

In a falling-values market, as we are in, I would now suspect that the value of HELOC and second-mortgage CDOs and SIVs as a rule is simply going to be zero.

So, clearly, key elements in the economy are on the crash cart and not responding, but that's been true for a couple of months now. Maybe it's just something in the air. Who knows?

I did say I'd keep up with PAA/FISA, and I have

...but you don't get much of a briefing today. emptywheel at firedoglake is doing a lot of liveblogging of the debate, if you want lots of details. Here's my summary from that and a couple of other sources:

Today (Tuesday) was a debate day, so we got to see Democratic senators arguing against an amendment to make rulings of the FISA court continue to have any meaning. Historically, it had some tiny amount of meaning; under the new bill, it really has none, even when it is invoked. Chief Executive Mr. Bush also issued his list of amendments he'd consider accepting.

The Republican talking point on retroactive immunity currently seems to be "liability protection," which ties in with their assertion that the only people opposing retroactive immunity for separate and specific telco lawbreaking are "trial lawyers" who just want to go at it for the money. In reality, the cases moving forward - that this bill would stop - are primarily run pro-bono by people like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but reality never matters.

Senator Kit Bond (R-MS) attacked Quest for following existing law and refusing to illegally spy without warrants; what do you expect from the kind of jackass who says water torture is like swimming? And, also, Director of National Intelligence Mike "Zero Sum" McConnell and Democratic Senator Rockefeller (D) spent much of the day saying that if the Chief Executive doesn't get carte blache warrantless domestic spying, Al-Qa'ida will blow us up tomorrow, just as they did last time.

And that's about it. Amendments to make this better require 60 votes and amendments to make this worse require 50, as Senator Reid continues to support GOP silent filibusters while making the rump opposition wing of his own party do it for reals. So a bit of debate noise, but not much changed.