tastes of chicken

Good morning.

Large moves in the US Dollar Index this morning; in about two hours, the Dollar fell 2%. This was primarily due large moves down against both the Euro and British Pound, tho' the US dollar fell against the Canadian dollar a little and the Yen a bit as well - in fact, it fell against everything in the dollar-index basket except for the Swedish Krona, which actually fell a bit against the US currency. Bloomberg quotes analysts saying that the US is going to "attack its currency" and that the US dollar will reach new lows. Some wags note that the 24%-ish rise off the previous lows was about right in both scale and duration to a bear-market equities rally. Heh.

China plans to print to increase money supply by 17% next year. This is official, and not a rumour. It's directly tied to the appearance of price deflation in the Chinese producer price index and is part of government efforts to increase demand for products. I guess that whole "devaluation" thing is no longer a rumour.

Lots and lots of money left the US in October, probably precipitating the November collapse. Everything but US Treasuries got sold, hard. That leaves US treasuries as the only thing standing. If those fall, well. (More raw data here.)

Bloomberg is talking about US$3T in mortgage-rate-reset aid, a programme to cut mortgage rates generally to around 4.5%. There's talk of only doing it for new purchases, but the column outlines how one might arrange house-swaps. Interestingly, there's no news on the US auto bailout programme, and Chief Executive Bush has been kicking around outside the country, having shoes thrown at him in Iraq.

In Japan, the Tankan confidence index fell to -24 from -3, the worst drop in 34 years. The Japan Central Bank is planning on another rate cut, as everyone races to zero. Everyone's expecting the US Federal Reserve to cut the target rate to 0.5%, but with the actual rate being more around .13% over the last week and .35 for some weeks before that, I'm not sure what change this will make, unless they're just going to go ahead and let it go down to zero.

Oh, in response to the latest AIG (bailed-out massive insurance company) outrage, AIG has expanded its looting "retention payments" even further. Yes, in the middle of an unemployment spike and facing truly massive layoffs in finance, insurance, and related industries, they're saying they need to give bonuses worth six months of salary or more to keep people from leaving.

The Financial Times has finally noticed the shipping numbers, and in particular, the recovery in Cape-class ships. They're saying it's China and demand for large-scale imports of iron ore and coal. The Baltic Dry Index broke 800 today, with again most of the action in in the Cape Index, but Panamax-class ship rates have also finally halted their decline. The smallest ships (Supramax) are still losing ground, however. Calculations done by other people suggest that Cape-class ships are now showing a operating profit again. The TED spread and LIBOR rates continue to fall, slowly.

However, Reuters Investment Outlook Summit does not see any quick rebound in consumer spending in the US, and, in fact, thinks that spending will drop more than stock investors are anticipating, leading to a very slow recovery at best. Just out, the New York manufacturing data declined to -25.8. That's actually a little better than expected.

Karl at Market Ticker has a bullet-point list of news about which people are going LA LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU. The above note from Reuters would probably fit in pretty well.

The Vancouver Olympic budget is being obsfucated by the BC government, says Auditor General Doyle. Finance Minister Colin Hansen denies the allegations. Ottawa is also holding off on its auto bailout - and holding off doing due diligence - waiting to see what the US does. This seems rational to me, tho' Mish - in his extensive Economic Potpourri post today - calls it "monkey see-monkey do." Well, in this case, yeah. Talking of such, the Globe and Mail also has an extensive article, "How High-Risk Mortgages Crept North," mostly due to Conservative party rules changes in 2006.

Oh, and bailout fever has extended into mining, forestry, and "other extraction" industries, which no doubt means the Albertan tar sands.

I haven't been talking about it, but there has been a huge ongoing scandal revolving around former NASDAQ chair Bernard Madoff - billions are missing, he himself described his investment products as a ponzi scheme, there's going to be jail time, all that. There are even people saying - on the record! - that it was clear it was a scam, and they jumped in on that basis, hoping to ride along on the way up. It's a real clusterfuck and people are saying it'll have broad ramifications on regulation and have outsized economic impact because of its fear factor. Remember, this guy was chair of the NASDAQ. This morning, one hedge-fund association wanted a bailout due to losses in the Madoff scheme.

Here's a site tracking layoffs in the tech industry, in case you need it. But meanwhile, one area doing well? Pawn shops. They're doing gangbuster business.

And in case you missed it

Here's the full bipartisan Senate report, issued with no dissents, proving that Chief Executive Bush and Secretary Rumsfeld both authorised the Bush administration's torture regime. Also, here's a Harpers article on the report. For more, here's Andrew Sullivan talking about it, tracking the direct import of methodology from Nazi Germany and various Communist regimes, and the possibly-accidental import of Nazi terminology efforts to redefine torture as "enhansed interrogation." In a separate post, he correctly calls Mr. Bush the Architect of Abu Ghraib, pointing out that Mr. Bush irrefutably lied to both Congress and the American public, repeatedly, about all of these topics.

I posted a little about some of this over the weekend, as well. The Bush administration is an administration of war criminals. The failure to act against them is a national disgrace. That so many in both parties are working their fullest to continue this travesty nauseates me at the deepest of levels.

eta: Glenn Greenwald discusses the near-complete media blackout on this story, even though the report puts Mr. Bush and his administration responsible for torture, and deaths under his torture programme, which is to say, murder. And yet there is hardly a word about it on the air.

very simple webcam software?

I need webcam software for Windows XP that'll capture an image off a Windows XP-compatible webcam and stick it in a file on a repeating basis. That's all I need it to be able to do. I also don't want to pay for this because it's a crap webcam (an old Labtec) and I'm mostly doing this because I can. Any suggestions?