Archive for the 'US Politics' Category
(Chronologically Listed)
Is Feinstein sending Obama a message?
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) was an early (July 2007) endorser of Hillary Clinton’s run for the US Presidency. At the same time, Sen. Feinstein was the one who provided her DC home for a private meeting between Clinton and Obama last June that led to Clinton ending her campaign and endorsing Obama’s candidacy. So, Feinstein has clearly been in the thick of the Democratic campaign for the Presidency.
Now, less than two weeks before President-elect Obama’s inauguration, Sen. Feinstein has fired not one but two shots across Obama’s bow in the same day, namely today (January 6th). The first was her much-covered reaction to the news that Obama had chosen Leon Panetta to head the CIA. Feinstein, as Chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, does not appear to be pleased either with the choice itself or the fact that Obama didn’t give her at least a heads-up, much less seek her input and recommendations. Instead, she learned about it from news reports and when asked for a reaction gave this rather blunt reply:
“I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA Director. I know nothing about this, other than what I’ve read,” Feinstein said in a statement. “My position has consistently been that I believe the Agency is best-served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time.”
Subsequent news reports say that both Obama and Biden have called Feinstein and apologized that she learned about the appointment in this way.
However, later this afternoon, Feinstein fired the second shot. Obama made it clear a week ago that he felt that Roland Burris (Illinois Govenor Rod Blogojovich’s appointed successor to Obama) should not be seated in the US Senate. This afternoon, Sen. Feinstein issued a statement that she felt that Burris should be seated. (She may be looking forward to 2010, when she may well run for the California Governor’s office.) Of course, she’s also bucking Sen. Reid and other Democratic leaders in this, but since Obama — the President-Elect and the new head of the Democratic Party — had already weighed in, she’s clearly opposing him as well.
Feinstein is quite literally old enough to be Obama’s mother (her only daughter was born four years before Obama was) and had a few years, anyway, to observe Obama in the US Senate. I suspect she’s not buying into the “Hope and Change” mantra and is seeking to remind Obama that there are three branches in the US Government, not just one. Interesting times ahead. ..bruce w..
Dave Barry’s annual review
Back when Dave Barry still wrote a weekly column, Sandra and I had a Sunday morning tradition where I’d read the column out loud to her while she was getting ready for church. The highlight of each year was Dave’s annual recounting of the events of that year, in his own style. Well, he stopped doing his weekly column a few years back, but he still does the annual review, and 2008 is now officially in the crosshairs:
Speaking of epic performances, in . . .
JULY
. . . Barack Obama, having secured North and South America, flies to Germany without using an airplane and gives a major speech — speaking English and German simultaneously — to 200,000 mesmerized Germans, who immediately elect him chancellor, prompting France to surrender.
Meanwhile John McCain, at a strategy session at a golf resort, tells his top aides to prepare a list of potential running mates, stressing that he wants somebody ”who is completely, brutally honest.” Unfortunately, because of noise from a lawn mower, the aides think McCain said he wants somebody ”who has competed in a beauty contest.” This will lead to trouble down the road.
Speaking of trouble, the economic news continues to worsen with the discovery that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have sent $87 billion to a Nigerian businessman with a compelling e-mail story.
Also troubling is the news from Iran, which test-fires some long-range missiles, although Iranian President Wackjob Lunatic insists that Iran intends to use these missiles “for stump removal.”
In sports, the government of China, in an effort to improve air quality for the Beijing Olympics, bans flatulence.
Be sure to read the whole thing. ..bruce w..
The consequences of environmentalism
The city of Seattle (WA) has decided not to use salt or other chemicals in clearing ice and snow from roads, with predictable results:
To hear the city’s spin, Seattle’s road crews are making “great progress” in clearing the ice-caked streets.
But it turns out “plowed streets” in Seattle actually means “snow-packed,” as in there’s snow and ice left on major arterials by design.
“We’re trying to create a hard-packed surface,” said Alex Wiggins, chief of staff for the Seattle Department of Transportation. “It doesn’t look like anything you’d find in Chicago or New York.”
The city’s approach means crews clear the roads enough for all-wheel and four-wheel-drive vehicles, or those with front-wheel drive cars as long as they are using chains, Wiggins said.
The icy streets are the result of Seattle’s refusal to use salt, an effective ice-buster used by the state Department of Transportation and cities accustomed to dealing with heavy winter snows.
“If we were using salt, you’d see patches of bare road because salt is very effective,” Wiggins said. “We decided not to utilize salt because it’s not a healthy addition to Puget Sound.”
By ruling out salt and some of the chemicals routinely used by snowbound cities, Seattle has embraced a less-effective strategy for clearing roads, namely sand sprinkled on top of snowpack along major arterials, and a chemical de-icer that is effective when temperatures are below 32 degrees.
Seattle also equips its plows with rubber blades. That minimizes the damage to roads and manhole covers, but it doesn’t scrape off the ice, Wiggins said.
I predict this policy will last until there’s an accident causing death, injury, or major property damage. The resulting lawsuit will likely force Seattle to actually put public safety ahead of environmental concerns. ..bruce w..
CDOs explained (or, “Holy crap!”)
Alan Kohler at the Business Spectator down in Australia does his best to explain CDOs, CDSs, and SPVs, then gets down to brass tacks:
It is now getting very interesting. The three Icelandic banks have defaulted, as has Countrywide, Lehman and Bear Stearns. AIG has been taken over by the US Government, which is counted as a part-default, and Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are in “conservatorship”, which is also a part default – a ‘part default’ does not count as a ‘full default’ in calculating the nine that would trigger the CDS liabilities.
Ambac, MBIA, PMI, General Motors, Ford and a lot of US home builders are teetering.
If the list of defaults – full and partial – gets to nine, then a mass transfer of money will take place from unsuspecting investors around the world into the banking system. How much? Nobody knows, but it’s many trillions.
It will be the most colossal rights issue in the history of the world, all at once and non-renounceable. Actually, make that mandatory.
The distress among those who lose their money will be immense. It will be a real loss, not a theoretical paper loss. Cash will be transferred from their own bank accounts into the issuing bank, via these Cayman Islands special purpose vehicles.
The repercussions on the losers and the economies in which they live, will be unpredictable but definitely huge. Councils will have to put up rates to continue operating. Charities will go to the wall and be unable to continue helping those in need. Individual investors will lose everything.
There will also be a tsunami of litigation, as dumbfounded investors try to get their money back, claiming to have been deceived by the sales people who sold them the products. In Australia, some councils are already suing the now-defunct Lehman Brothers, and litigation funder, IMF Australia, has been studying synthetic CDOs for nine months preparing for the storm.
But for the banks, it’s happy days. Suddenly, when the ninth reference entity tips over, they will be flooded with capital. It’s possible they will have so much new capital, they won’t know what to do with it.
This is entirely uncharted territory so it’s impossible to know what will happen, but it is possible that the credit crunch will come to sudden and complete end, like the passing of a tornado that has left devastation in its wake, along with an eerie silence.
Read the whole thing, a few times preferably. And for those of you keeping score as to how we got into this mess in the first place:
CDOs were invented by Michael Milken’s Drexel Burnham Lambert in the late 1980s as a way to bundle asset backed securities into tranches with the same rating, so that investors could focus simply on the rating rather than the issuer of the bond.
About a decade later, a team working within JP Morgan Chase invented credit default swaps, which are contractual bets between two parties about whether a third party will default on its debt. In 2000 these were made legal, and at the same time were prevented from being regulated, by the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which specifies that products offered by banking institutions could not be regulated as futures contracts.
This bill, by the way, was 11,000 pages long, was never debated by Congress and was signed into law by President Clinton a week after it was passed. It lies at the root of America’s failure to regulate the debt derivatives that are now threatening the global economy.
Interesting times, folks, interesting times. ..bruce w..
Wisdom from the past
I have recently been re-reading The Ancient State by Hugh Nibley and just this morning finished reading “The Hierocentric State” (originally published back in 1951 in Western Political Quarterly 4/2). The article itself suggests that key aspects of the vast nomadic cultures of Central Asia (e.g., the Mongols) were idealized and emulated by more sedentary civilizations to the east and west (e.g., China and Europe). But it was a passage in the final paragraph of the article that struck me as eerily reminiscent of the American political scene over the past year or two, particularly the Obama cult of personality. I’ve reformatted the text to better call out the separate links for each item (numbered in the original):
Men seem unable to leave the dream of a hierocentric state alone. To recapitulate the sections given above, we cannot blame people if they yearn for
(1) the granduer, color, and unity of the great assembly,
(2) the lofty and uncompromising certainty of universal kingship,
(3) the sense of refuge and well-being in the holy shrine,
(4) the high and independent life of a chivalrous aristocracy,
(5) the luxury of hating all opposition with a holy hatred, and
(6) the sheer authority of the institutions established and maintained by force. (pp. 133-134)
Food for thought. ..bruce w..
I don’t know whether to laugh or weep…
…but the Onion, as usual, is right on target:
In The Know: Should The Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole?
Sigh. ..bruce w..
Obama’s New Website
The upcoming Obama administration was so eager to claim some form of government legitimacy, they decided to invent a previously unknown federal bureaucracy: The Office of the President-Elect.
Now mind you, every President-Elect has a transition team that does a lot of work to make sure the day they get into office they can start trying to be effective. But never before has anyone made up a seal and everything for it.
Call it hubris. But then Obama has had this on display for some time. Below are pictures of his seat on “O-Force One”, yes it says “President” on it. Also if you recall that seal he started sticking on the front of his podium.
I hope this is just the sign of a complete political rookie, but I do in fact get nervous about any political organization that stresses symbolism and icongraphy this much.
Looking back five months
Sometimes, there’s a reason for going with your first impression/analysis. Back in early June, when John McCain clinched the Republican nomination, I wrote the following:
I’m listening to John McCain’s speech (live) down in Louisiana as I type this.
My prediction: the Republicans are going to get beat like a red-headed stepchild this fall. Sigh.
There’s been a lot of political analysis lately indicating that McCain has an even-to-very-good chance to beat Barack Obama in the general election. All I have to do is listen to John McCain for a few minutes — and listen to how profoundly uninspired and forced the cheers and chants are at his comments — and it’s clear that he’s just not going to energize the base, which already has deep suspicions about him (and which he has done little to assuage in the past weeks).
McCain’s rhetoric and his delivery are both very underwhelming. We talk about Hillary Clinton’s shrillness, but McCain has a weak, breathy tone to his voice that becomes harder and harder to listen to as he goes on. McCain going up against Obama is going to be like Bob Dole going up against Bill Clinton back in 1996, except that Obama is a better and more attractive orator than Clinton.
Barack Obama won the most convincing Democratic victory — in terms of popular vote — in three decades. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. ..bruce w..