Briefly

Harper's Magazine, one of the few outlets covering the show-trial of Pulitzer Prize winning news photographer Bilal Hussein, has an article out on how the media participates in the furtherance of torture by refusing to let people call it torture, such as here:

I discovered that when I gave interviews to major media on this subject, any time I used the word “torture” with reference to these techniques, the interview passage would not be used. At one point I was informed by a cable news network that “we put this on international, because we can’t use that word on the domestic feed.” “That word” was torture. I was coached or told that the words “coercive interrogation technique” were fine, but “torture” was a red light. Why? The Administration objected vehemently to the use of this word.

a quiet exodus?

This first bit comes out of economics, but I think it's also political; in this column in Minyanville, the guest writer notes that 10% of "American households were considering relocation outside the US" in 2004-2005. The largest group? Adults are 25 to 34 years old. Another 10% are talking about leaving part-time:

Adding it up, almost 10% of U.S. households are looking at leaving the country, and another 10% are considering living outside the country part time. This silent emigration is ignored by nearly every population analyst.

I'm probably reaching - it's probably all economics - but maybe a lot of people, like me, are just sick of the raw illegality, the end of pretense of Constitution, and the sham which pretends to be our representative government.

Alternatively, maybe they're just tired of being spied on at every opportunity. Here's some new data on the rampant abuse of "National Security Letters," including widespread fraud and illegality committed by government officials demanding data on individuals - data which in and of itself was often illegal to collect. Nothing will, of course, be done about it. Even better, as several of us have been on about, the Democratic Congress is about to hand over yet more unconstitutional warrantless spying powers to the Chief Executive. That doesn't even get into the tens of thousands of post office intercept assignments a year, also warrantlessly. (Chief Executive Mr. Bush has claimed the power - overriding Congressional law - to open private mail without any form of warrant or process, of course.)

Maybe people are just fucking sick of this shit and voting with their feet. I know I feel that I'm risking getting trapped here by not leaving now. I imagine I'm not the only one.

not getting better yet

Another day, another new low on the dollar index - solidly below 72, today. Oil at $105.47 and change.

Okay, housing. It's brutal. We're still going into the worst of the mortgage resets, but foreclosures, which run six months behind the onset of troubles, are at record highs. (More data here if you want it.) The Mortgage Bankers Association reports that people are pre-emptively walking away before rates even jump. The Treasury denied any intention to nationalise Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac; Kevin Depew at Minyanville is not impressed by the denials and is outraged by the possibility. And home equity overall nationally has dropped below 50% for the first time since 1945. If I'm reading this right, that's all homeowners - not just homeowners with mortgages.

Some of the ABX (CDO-based - call it "mortgage backed" but remember it's an oversimplification) products have dropped into single-digits on the dollar:

Index	Price	High	Low
ABX-HE-BBB 07-1 (0A08AIAC4)	9.09	98.35	9.09
ABX-HE-BBB- 07-1 (0A08AOAC1)	8.88	97.47	8.88

...tho' the BBB tranche as a whole is still above 10¢ on the dollar(!). AA tranches are bouncing off 20¢ on the dollar; AAA - "should never lose value, evar" - is at about 55¢. The spreads on commercial property lending bundles are going asymptotic again. (Remember: up == bad in those graphs.)

It's representative of the greater markets. Bloomberg reports on margin call failures (Carlyle Group, in particular) and other severe credit/trust problems (Citigroup, Washington Mutual) triggering potential market failure. Thornberg Group reported a similar margin call failure. Reuters talks also about a related topic - in that everyone seems to be deleveraging their positions as much as possible, which is totally destroying some credit markets. AMBAC (the monoline insurer) has its latest desperate bid to keep the AAA rating it doesn't deserve - selling half of itself to raise money. The problem is, with trust and transparency gone, who is fool enough to buy?

Also, someone has been asking for a lot of money from the Fed and hasn't been getting it.

This is why Mish can post a list of bad news that'll make anybody show a little ph33r and not be at all tabloid about it, and how Bloomberg(!) can describe the financial system as broken, and the markets as utterly unhinged. John Authers at the Financial Times, in a video presentation only, starts off with "Welcome to New York, where people are very scared," talks also about how the data indicate a "collapse in international confidence in the US financial system," and notes says that the numbers are saying the US is quite possibly "heading to absolute disaster." Somewhat amusingly, he draws some charts very similar to ones I linked to at Minyanville and which wrog generated on my behalf. (If you get a menu, the one you want is entitled "Mar 6: US Markets.")

And finally, Nouriel Roubini notes that we've reached stages 10-11 of his 12-step path to a systemic crisis.

It looks like the situation overall is barely contained panic, which leads one to speculate that either people could calm down, or that one more bad surprise could trigger a genuine, outright panic, and then we'd get to test things like market circuit breakers and have that kind of fun. But even without that, there's a developing vicious cycle of chain unloading of assets at bargain prices - each cycle of which which triggers more of the same - with a lot of traders genuinely unsure as to who is doing what. (Once again, opacity leads to ph33r leads to more negative feedback loops.) Karl, a technicals trader over at Market Ticker who has a petition going demanding action to improve market transparency, noted today in comments that the markets are just barely beneath several technical "support levels," and that if those are broken though (downwards) decisively tomorrow, all hell is going to break loose over the next couple of weeks.

Me? I'm hiding out in treasuries. I think we've got a lot further down to go, and I want no part of that ride. But I'm not making guesses about when or precisely how that starts.

ETA: firni reminds me that Washington Mutual execs voted to protect their bonuses against fallout from subprime losses, making sure that hey, the stockholders and economy might be fucked, but they'll get some anyway!