this ain't close to over

[solarbird]

That was neat, some of this went away. Lemmie try again.

This article makes it sound like the credit crisis is mostly a problem in BBB CDOs, which is to say Collateralised Debt Obligations. Here are the graphs for all classes. Note AAAs are trading at under 90c/dollar, which is to say, trading at a capital loss. That ain't right. (AA is around 65c, and it gets worse from there, bottoming out at BBB's 20c/dollar.)

Also, that "new home sales rise" report is basically just a lie, which, pleasantly, Marketwatch notes; sales are only "up" if you compare this unrevised number against last month's heavily-revised downward "revised" number. The problem with that is that this month's number will also be revised, so you are comparing apples to oranges, as it were. Comparing to the unrevised number - making the apples-to-apples comparison - you have a 3.2% drop month-to-month, aside from the 35%-odd drop from a year ago. And, of course, existing home sales weren't pleasant either.

Meanwhile, in ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! news, over at Global Guerrilla, we have an introduction to the concept of oil production peak, with this amazing little codicil:

One of the reasons I brought up this topic is that I was surprised to find that nearly all of the top people in the CIA, NSA, DHS, DoD, etc. that I have talked to/with over the last few months didn't know anything about the topic. Hopefully, I can put this on their forward looking radar.

Christ, I hope that's wrong. I mean godt dammit. [ETA: that codicil has been redacted. Good.]

Other items of interest:
Fox News floats the theory that the California wildfires were caused by al Qaeda, lying about key facts to make it seem more likely; Rudi Giuliani just comes out and says that whether torture is torture depends upon who is doing it, clearly meaning that if it's the US, it's not; the new Atty. General nominee refused to testify whether he considers the torture technique known as waterboarding to be torture, so some of the Senators on the committee - none of the Republicans, but I think all the Democrats - wrote a letter, oooooooooo; Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee repeats the fundamentalist canard that "most" of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were clergy; this is a lie that has been gaining some popular-knowledge traction in that community as of late. And Bernard Lewis in the Wall Street Journal writes that we should be more like the Soviet Union in application of terror tactics, somehow managing to miss that hello, the USSR fell, you moron; accordingly, they probably weren't the "strong" ones. Stop emulating the oppressive torture-wielding failures. Christ on a fucking pogo stick.

And finally, in a momentary gasp of sanity, Senator Chris Dodd is fighting the Democratic leadership to stop a deal with the White House granting retroactive immunity to telecom industry lawbreaking in the warrantless-wiretapping cases. Since Congress won't investigate these, and the Justice Department won't either, the only avenue remaining open are the private lawsuits; retroactive immunity would shut those down. Senator Dodd has a page of people up to contact. I suggest doing so.

Comments

[rosepurr.livejournal.com]

The housing market is crashing and it's just going to continue to get more ugly.

deflation yuckiness

[angharads-house.livejournal.com]

Yeah, looks like, also on the northern side of the Smith and Wesson Line. Our local credit union (up there) is offering five year closed mortgages at 2.2%, which is markedly lower than they had been. Talked with manager about it: he allowed as how deflation, --on our side of the border-- was likely within next year.

aargh,

Angharad
safely home in Brier for the nonce
and going to have frank money talk with family tonight

Re: deflation yuckiness

[solarbird]

agh deflation

of course, after the inflation blowoff, that's what you get in the cycle. some of the minyanville people have been arguing that we've been in the inflation blowoff already and deflation is next. i disagree in that i think there's a bigger blowoff triggered by the dollar implosion - that demand drop isn't enough to stop inflation if input prices rise regardless, like happens with a collapsing dollar.

then you get the deflationary rebound.

lulz Brier. I am in Lake Forest Park Town Centre borrowin' their internetz.

Re: deflation yuckiness

[(Anonymous)]

lulz indeedy...

Brier is nice, warm, safe, toasty by fire, getting multi-cat therapy and people squish and plenty of yummy retsina -- everything that is good and proper about life and certainly illustrating the idea that family is worthwhile.

will write more anent economics late sunday night --- till then am allowing self to be fussed over. yayness in ardence. needed this. :-(

but yeah, bigger nastiness awaits --

oh by the way, steel plates in SR-522 make for sucky driving, and vinnie's thrift store was thoroughly picked-over. household does, however, agree that thriftway is worthwhile. will likely find tomorrow's dinner-rohstoff there.

axayim,
ang--

Re: deflation yuckiness

[solarbird]

There are about two good things about the Bothell Way (SR-522 through Kenmore) rebuild. No, wait, three. 1) Burke-Gilman trail gets an underpass under 73rd Avenue NE, and that's the worst intersection on the trail line. This trail is very important and a major commuter trail corridor so that's good. 2) Improved transit lanes. Kenmore already has transit lanes for all but about a block of town (on the Bothell side), but these will be better and will go true edge-to-edge of city limits, with opportunity for Bothell to pick up where Kenmore leaves off. 3) Proper, correctly-designed sidewalk with spacers and trees (needed for psychological reasons so people will actually use 'em) on the north side of the street. The south side will be served by Burke-Gilman instead of a separate sidewalk, but with better linkages, that'll work fine.

There's also some noise-reduction stuff but that's less important.

Now if we can just get the downtown rebuild started. Nang.

[solarbird]

I wish it was just housing. These CDOs are in everything. They're the high fructose corn syrup of the financial system. And they're all going seriously bad. It's a problem.

[rosepurr.livejournal.com]

The CDOs are very, very, very bad. AAA MBS's were considered the most stable investment going, and so they are lots and lots of "low risk" places such as pensions and companies that have conservative investment policies. I suspect at the ratings orgs are going to be at Congressional hearings before this is all over.

[solarbird]

EVERYTHING IS CATCHING
YES
EVERYTHING IS CATCHING
ON FIIIIII-RRRRRRE
IS CATCHING ON
FIIIIIRE IS CATCHING ON
FI-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-ER

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I thought ex post facto laws were unconstitutional? Admittedly this is an unusual application of it, but still.

Oh. Right. This isn't a Republic anymore, it's an Empire. Constitution? We don' need no steenking constitution.

*spit* There goes my support for Guiliani, too. Damn his hide.

[solarbird]

ex post facto has traditionally been interpreted (not just in US terms, but in English law as well) to apply to a move to criminalise something retroactively, not so much to let someone off of a criminal charge. So that clause isn't really likely to be applicable in this case.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

Re: telecom immunity:

Chris Dodd has definitely gained some of my respect. I'm kind of worried that Dianne Feinstein is going to vote yes on this in committee, because that's just the kind of move she's known for. I hold out hope for the other five not-yet decided Democrats and even a slight amount for Republicans Arlen Specter and Lindsey Graham. Of course, even if retroactive immunity is stopped in committee it can be brought back as an amendment to the bill.

And...Giuliani is an authoritarian thug; news at 11. He's really the one GOP candidate who scares me the most, because he has the same people and ideas behind him that were responsible for the Iraq War and the push for the unitary executive, probably the two most worst policy areas of the Bush administration. The other GOP candidates are bad but each of them has a silver lining: McCain is slightly more moderate on torture, for example. Romney talks madness with his "triple Guantanamo" and "Osama--er Barack Obama" moments, but I have a sense he'd be a Reaganesque disaster, which is an improvement over Bush or Giuliani. The two dark horses who will have any further influence on the campaign--theocon Huckabee and states-rights militia nut Paul--are more moderate on both the war and the unitary executive, and their madness is more constrained to areas that are less general threats to Constitutional government. Giuliani makes all of them look good by comparison, and that's saying a lot.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

I realize I completely forgot about Fred Thompson. His somnolent campaign makes him a likely irrelevancy, but if he wakes up I kind of put him in the category with Romney. He's Reaganesque in his fuzzy but wrong-headed conservatism, without the real political and personal skills of Reagan. So he'd be a disaster, but a shade less disastrous than those in the Bush/Giuliani/neocon axis of evil. He's so unimpressive that I almost hope that he wins the nomination by default because the base splits over their hate of the other candidates. I think you'd be talking Nixon vs. McGovern levels of landslide in favor of the Democrats if Thompson's the GOP nominee.

Clinton's candidacy is beginning to look so inevitable that I'm beginning to think that the best bet for those who fear her foreign policy and potentially low willingness to repeal the expansion of presidential power is a VP who will balance her on these issues. I'd love to see progressives form a bloc at the Democratic convention demanding a VP who wants to repeal the worst aspects of the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act, end the Iraq War as soon as possible, and hold Bush administration officials accountable for their crimes against the Constitution. Russ Feingold would fit the bill nicely. Chris Dodd wouldn't be a bad fallback if he keeps up his current efforts. James Webb, though generally very conservative for a Democrat, is right on the war and the Constitutional issues and would be someone I could see her choosing. Unfortunately, I see her more likely to choose someone like Biden (among her current rivals) or an empty DLC suit like Evan Bayh.

[wrog]

I completely forgot about Fred Thompson

people are figuring out that

• character actor is not the same as a leading man
• movie/TV actor who can film scenes a few lines at a time is not the same thing as a stage actor who can do the whole Presence Thing.

I don't want to totally write him off, since if he ever does get his act together he could be more dangerous than Reagan.

Clinton's candidacy is beginning to look so inevitable

we're not dead, yet.

Latest is that the Iowa caucus has been moved back to the point where the college students will still be home for New Years -- which means it'll be Iowa college students scattered around the state rather than non-Iowa students clustered in a few cities, which I suspect will make a big difference w.r.t. turnout at the rural caucuses where more of the delegates are and not particularly good news for Hillary.

[llachglin.livejournal.com]

(apologies to solarbird for hijacking her journal for a side conversation)

College students attending out-of-state schools are not generally known for high turnout numbers, so I don't see that as being a decisive factor. Also, it seems to me that as a group college students would be more likely Obama or Edwards voters, so if anything the schedule helps Clinton. For Iowa, it comes down to ground-level operations, and it's too early to say who has the best operations. But I don't get the sense that any campaign is misspending in the way Howard Dean did in 2003-2004. If it's just a matter of money, Hillary's going to win. Edwards can rely upon his 2004 groundwork, so he's probably going to do well. I think Obama's going to have trouble out of the top three, and my hunch is that Richardson will do better there than most places. I suspect we'll quickly have a top-two primary season that includes Clinton and one anti-Clinton. How long the campaign lasts depends upon how long it takes to settle on an anti-Clinton and how formidable that candidate is going out of the first wave of states.

I have to say that Obama is not impressing me at all, and aside from his position on the war I don't see any reason for voting for him over Hillary right now. My current plan is to show up at the caucus uncommitted and see how I can most affect the balance of power in my precinct.

[solarbird]

(apologies to solarbird for hijacking her journal for a side conversation)
eh, np.

[wrog]

College students attending out-of-state schools are not generally known for high turnout numbers

we don't really know; nobody's ever tried to have a caucus so close to the holiday season before. It's a fair bet that the college students from out-of-state wouldn't have had quite have the same kind of interest in the various communities, may not even have been registered to vote in Iowa, and/or thus far hadn't seen the point in turning up in massive numbers for a downtown caucus that only has a fixed number of delegates anyway. I think there's a whole new ballgame here.

(and yes, if they all vote for Obama, I'll be somewhat annoyed, but the main thing is Hillary has really low support amongst this group).

[wrog]

My current plan is to show up at the caucus uncommitted and see how I can most affect the balance of power in my precinct.

At this point I think I'm going to start out with my preference being Dodd.

Of course since I'm most likely going to be the Area Convener (...unless being Jurisdiction Coordinator for the entire 41st burns me out -- we have 17 schools to lock down this week...), my precinct will probably have to spend a fair amount of time running itself while I go around putting out the various fires.

[wrog]

One of the reasons I brought up this topic is that I was surprised to find that nearly all of the top people in the CIA, NSA, DHS, DoD, etc. that I have talked to/with over the last few months didn't know anything about the topic. Hopefully, I can put this on their forward looking radar.

Christ, I hope that's wrong. I mean god dammit.

Depends if by "top people" he means the top-level career folks or the political appointees. Figure if we're talking about the same "top people" who bought into the notion that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11, that Saddam's Iraq had nuclear weapons, delivery systems, and mobile bioweapons labs, who are now pushing for an attack on Iran even when we don't have enough armed forces left to actually do anything other than drop bombs (all while supporting a yet another surge to suppress an insurgency against an Iraqi government that is pro-Iran and not paying too much attention to where the arms and shit they're sending is actually going), then I'm not in the least surprised.

[solarbird]

"We have top men working on it right now."

"WHO?"

"Top. Men."

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

a couple of non-political appointee CIA officers recently put out books slagging the Bush administration's handling of this, Tyler, um, crap, I read the book 6 weeks ago and already forgot his last name and the name of the book, used to be head of European operations, and Valerie Plame. Both of these admittedly have an anti-Bush agenda now, but it's not like reason and sanity left them any choice . . .

[mathmuffin.livejournal.com]

Regulations at my place of employment prevent me from directly commenting on the Global Guerilla (http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2007/10/thinking-about-.html) quote. However, I noticed that the article has been edited and no longer contains the quote.

[solarbird]

It's good to have indicative changes to text highlighted. Thanks.

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

Your writing is so much fun to read when you're extra pissed off. =)

[solarbird]

Oh, you think this is funny, watch as this goes on for another year. They'll have to give me my own goddamn cable show. They could call it KILL EVERYONE.

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

Hee! Definitely sounds like my kind of show. *g*