It's a festival of linky politics!

First, I want to link to this fantastic series of photos from the volcanic eruption in Iceland, link courtesy filkertom. It's not political, like there rest of this, it's just awesome.

I've also got a few important economics things to talk about, but not in this post. Most of these are politics.

Really, what more can you say about the Catholic Church's pedophile protection programme than what they have to say themselves:

A bill in Connecticut’s legislature that would remove the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases has sparked a fervent response from the state’s Roman Catholic bishops, who released a letter to parishioners Saturday imploring them to oppose the measure.

The proposed change to the law would put “all Church institutions, including your parish, at risk,” says the letter, which was signed by Connecticut’s three Roman Catholic bishops.

I mean, I'm not thrilled about indefinite extensions of statues of limitations either, to be honest; I see it as yet another manifestation of the police-state/surveillence-state cowardice endemic in American society today. But the ongoing disgrace and ongoing cover-up here is so repugnant that I can't side with the Catholic Church even on this one.

Meanwhile, Dick Cheney new most of the detainees were innocent. And had them tortured anyway. (Just, you know, if you want to talk about ongoing disgraces and ongoing cover-ups.)

Mr. Obama's justice department is trying to sweep email messages without warrants, mostly to prove they can, as far as I can tell from this. They're also going after whistleblowers in the NSA. The "leak" in this case came from Thomas A. Drake, who leaked data showing massive cost overruns and technical failures inside NSA, and - I don't think even slightly incidentally - now the NSA had "rejected a program that had the promise of collecting communications while protecting Americans’ privacy" during the Bush administration. Glenn Greenwald, given the refusal to investigate or prosecute Bush administration torture and illegal domestic spying programmes, wants to know what the hell happened to 'look forward, not backward', and we all know the answer to that. Or, as Mr. Greenwald notes:

Under the Obama DOJ's two-tiered justice system (and it's an Obama political appointee, Lanny Breuer, trumpeting the indictment), engaging in serious wrongdoing entitles you to immunity (Look Forward, Not Backward), whereas exposing it to the public merits a lengthy prison term.

It is worth noting that the Bush administration investigated and threatened whistleblowers, but never got around to prosecuting them. (That link also contains more details about the extent of the failures and overruns Mr. Drake helped expose.)

Oh, remember those torture tapes that got destroyed, an illegal act of obstruction of justice? We all knew it was on purposes, but now it's proven. They have the documents, it was specifically ordered and done to prevent prosecution of CIA torture trimes.

The trial-ballooned replacement for Justice Stevens on the US Supreme Court is Elena Kagan, who everyone agrees will move the court far to the right in areas of power; she's far more deferential to claims of unitary executive power than Justice Stevens. Her nomination, should it proceed, should severely damage the "it's all about judicial appointments" argument for voting Democratic rather than third-party.

Andrew Sullivan says you can't dislike the executive order requiring Federal-aid receiving hospitals to allow partners of same-sex couples visitation rights - tho' it's actually allowing any patient to designate anyone they want - but this would all be a lot quicker and simpler if the government simply stopped officially and legally discriminating against GBLT people in marriage. Still, it's a legitimate good. Unlike all of the above, awesome volcano pictures excepted.

Support your artists

This graphic shows how many copies of songs/CDs/etc a musician must sell per month to make the US Federal minimum wage for that month.

Support your artists. It's daunting out there.

I have a problem and I need advice

So I’ve been working on this CD, and I’ve been mastering against a couple of sets of really pretty decent studio headphones. And that’s all lovely and good. But lately I’ve been also playing things on this old Pioneer amp I picked up… somewhere… a long time ago… and a couple of halfway-decent cheap speakers, and all the levelling and such sounds totally different and not so awesome.

Obviously I shouldn’t level to the 35-year-old transistor Pioneer amp. But given that: against what should I be working? I can’t afford good studio monitors and amp; that’d be awesome and HAHAHAHAHAHA <cries>

So…

…what do I do here?

Anybody?

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Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil.

Three charts I want you to look at

I'm afraid I don't have a lot of time for things, but there are two charts I want you to look at. The first is here, from Deutschebank, but courtesy Global Gorillas:


Keep in mind pretty much all of that refund comes from a combination of bailout and mark-to-myth pricing on securities exchanged to the Fed.

The second is here, at Market Ticker:


Now this isn't entirely up to date, but it gives you the idea; reported GDP is inflated by massive government outflow (see above) and borrowing.

Keyesnians will say, "That's good!" for various reasons long discussed here. And debt is important and borrowing is good - if and only if it is productive to do so, in the aggregate. Most of the boosters are refusing to remember that part.

When is borrowing profitable? When the net economic activity produced as a result pays for 1) the money borrowed and spent (so you can repay the principal), 2) the interest on the money borrowed (so you can repay the interest), and 3) leaves some left over. The third of these is real economic growth in terms of producitivity; if nrs. 1 and 2 are met but not 3, you have no material / production gain, but also no loss, and the financial industry makes a few bucks (see, again, above), and if only nr. 1 is met, well, the economy as a whole has broken even; no blood, no foul.

It's when nr. 1 is not met that you have economic contraction.

After the Great Depression and during World War II and for decades after, additional debt produced substantial additional productive economic output. That number has slowly been declining over time as additional debt has produced less and less productive gains, in a fashion typical of the K-cycle. Where are we right now?


It's not getting better. This is only the M1, and that's a big, big, big problem, but I don't have a good way to generate the broader data. (I have the M2 money multiplier; it's not prettier.) And this chart has been... the closest to following the overall economy of those I can get. If it hasn't picked up - and it hasn't - I have to question whether the larger situation has improved.

Borrowed money counts as economic growth. But it's only actual growth if the debt is repaid, with interest, and profit. We don't have that. Watch out.

okay fine some links

I have a bunch of tabs open, let's clear the economics deck:

Consumer sentiment fell unexpectedly in April. That's not awesome. Weekly jobless claims started rising again, which people are hoping is some sort of glitch, but the four-week moving average has started to rise too, and that's scary.

Another huge wave of housing foreclosures is coming. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, but the timer's about run out. first quarter 2010 already set a new record, so that's fun.

Greece has been sorta-kinda stabilised for the moment; here comes Portugal! Europe is running around like mad trying to contain all these problems; it won't be easy.

If you watch one presentation this week, watch Richard Koo at Nomura Research talk about why this recession is different. (And see previous post.) I have issues with his suggestions moving forward (see also: previous post) but you may not.

Goldman Sachs is finally, finally, finally getting into fraud trouble over its CDO issuances. It's a start. There's also a bit of a stink over the WaMu takeover, which is also overdue.

Eight more banks fell on this week's FDIC Friday.

That's all for now; just a taste, really. Have a good weekend.