making threats

The Catholic Church in Washington, DC threatens to shut down its taxpayer-supported social service programmes if DC City Council doesn't reject marriage rights. They're holding 68,000 needy people hostage to try to make the city council keep the queers in their place. What part of this organisation is supposed to work for good again?

Oh, meanwhile, Rep. Stupak is saying that if the Senate alters his anti-abortion amendment in any way, he'll torpedo the health care reform bill for good. He claims he has 40 votes with him.

Now back to songwriting.

Day 12: a little shaky on this one

"Stay Away" is about 3m right now (rounded up a little, to be honest) and wants a bridge it doesn't have yet and possibly another verse. It's actually not a bad song but it's not really done so I hesitate to count it - but if pushed, yeah, it could be performed as-is. So while I don't consider it finished even more NaNoteWriMo purposes, I'm going to give myself a little slack here and count the three minutes so far.

When I revise it more tomorrow it'll end up either a solid three minutes or maybe four minutes, I'm not sure. But: Six songs, 19 minutes of music and just a little behind schedule but still well in striking distance. (I needed to be at 20 minutes at the end of Day 12 and I'm not really quite there.)

All the bits and pieces

Good morning, Cascadia; good afternoon, points east.

I haven't been paying much attention the last week, but there were several news items of note before that which I never mentioned. First is that consumer credit continued to crater in the third quarter. Over time, that's good! But in the short term, it indicates continued contraction in spending is likely - there's not even a slowing in the rate of contraction.

Jonathan Tonge, in a letter to Mish Shedlock, thinks that the Canadian property bubble didn't collapse enough and that you'll see another sharp slide in property values soon after this temporary reprieve. He also notes falling Canadian exports to the US - I'll be curious to see whether that's true in the new trade balance data out today. (US imports surged, jacking up the US trade deficit, but it's not showing up in sales tax receipts. What?) Greater Fool follows up with commentary yesterday on the Calgary real estate bubble, as well as that in Vancouver.

Mind you, the US housing market is not really getting better, despite the mass monitisation of US housing debt. (Click on that and read, really. It's too long to summarise but watch what the Fed has been doing. I mean it.) Also check out this chart of FHA home loan default rates, courtesy Iacono Research:

Over a 30% default rate on 2007 loans, and 2008 loans climbing the same curve. That's nasty. That'll get worse as the job situation continues to worsen. What bothers me really is Chart 2 over here, which shows seasonally-adjusted nonfarm payroll employment, month over month. What I'm looking at here from January 09-October 09 looks suspiciously like - at best - a levelling off of the rate of job losses. That's bad. But worse is the implied bell curve of the negative space (um, sorry, art major speak and I don't know how else to put it) that it looks suspiciously the front half of a standard bell curve, not just the back half of the obvious inverted improvement curve.

There was some talk on the radio when this report came out that discouraged job seekers were re-entering the job market, helping drive unemployment rates up. This is a complete fabrication. It's not in the report at all. Go read Karl's analysis of the data.

Over at The Big Picture, Barry Ritholtz says to beware buyer surveys, but also notes:

The most interesting aspect of the survey response to me is the plan to spend more on home goods — perhaps this reflects an acceptance of the changing lack of mobility in residences. Many underwater or constrained homeowners are realizing they are going to be stuck where they are for some time to come. Hey, might as well make the best of it.

One thing we do know - and which I've seen confirmed other places - is that stores ordered far less merchandise this year than usual.

I don't like linking to Financial Sense, and please do not consider this an endorsement of their goldbuggery ways, but I do think these notes on consumer confidence against stock market performance and spending are of interest. Consumer sentiment fell sharply in today's announcement, as well, so that's not a good trend at all. Karl has the obvious commentary on this and the stock market reaction - which is to say, to spike up.

Myra Saefong at Marketwatch is talking about silver as the "poor man's gold," and a precious metals investment opportunity. I'm not an investment advisor and this is not investment advice, but when you start seeing these articles, it's usually smart to be ready to run like hell from metals at a moment's notice. These usually indicate the start of exposure overhangs.

Oh, and nothing good can come from Goldman Sachs's CEO saying that his bank is doing "God's work." Whenever someone in business says something like - particularly banking, particularly at the top - I assume rational thought is gone. And I wonder whether that's what they were thinking when they were betting on a US housing crash while simultaneously setting up the bubble that lead to that same crash.

US Dollar Index is still hanging out in the mid to low 75 range. Can$ at US95.2¢. Oil continues to decline, despite the flat dollar, to US$76.51. That's all for now; good luck.

Wow okay yeah that's early

SNOW.

Only a little, mixed in with mostly rain, and it melts instantly. (Really, it's melting on the way down.) But it's definitely snow, at Murkworks North, in November.

And now it's already over. That was brief. And weird.

Still catching up on open tabs: ACTA

Michael Geist has extensive coverage of the mostly-secret negotiations ongoing on ACTA, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. This is essentially similar to a global version of the US's DMCA. Notably:

Anti-circumvention legislation that establishes a WIPO+ model by adopting both the WIPO Internet Treaties and the language currently found in U.S. free trade agreements that go beyond the WIPO treaty requirements. For example, the U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement specifies the permitted exceptions to anti-circumvention rules. These follow the DMCA model (reverse engineering, computer testing, privacy, etc.) and do not include a fair use/fair dealing exception. Moreover, the free trade agreement clauses also include a requirement to ban the distribution of circumvention devices. The current draft does not include any obligation to ensure interoperability of DRM.

I am stringently opposed to these sections of the DMCA. Those of you in DMCA-free countries should work to remain DMCA-free. In particular:

If Canada agrees to these ACTA terms, flexibility in WIPO implementation (as envisioned by the treaty) would be lost and Canada would be forced to implement a host of new reforms (this is precisely what U.S. lobbyists have said they would like to see happen). In other words, the very notion of a made-in-Canada approach to copyright would be gone.

This isn't a counterfeiting treaty, it's a copyright-extension treaty on US terms. Avoid, avoid, avoid.

later, i found

The Canadian trade deficit fell by more than half in September, substantially on automotive-related exports to the US. I had been looking for this.