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.

[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.

[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]

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.

[mojave-wolf.livejournal.com]

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