well...

at least someone has claimed ownership of this mess - you sure as hell wont see our asshole president put his name onto the 'responsible for cleanup' list anytime soon...

They rake the oil and sand into big piles; other workers collect the piles into big plastic bags, and still other workers take them to a plant where the sand is separated out and sent to a hazardous-waste dump and the oil goes on for processing. Then the tide comes in with more oil and everybody starts all over again. Ten dollars an hour. Twelve hours a day. When I joke with one worker that he should pocket the solid gobs of oil he's digging up to show me how far beneath the sand they go, he stops dead and asks me if BP's still trying to use the oil they all collect. "Aw, I knew it!" he says. Another leans on his rake to ask me, "Have they at least shut the oil off yet?" He randomly picks three spots in a three-foot-wide expanse of sand that he's already raked clean and drops his rake in an inch deeper to show me how the oil bubbles up from underneath. He can't count how many times he's raked this same spot in the 33 hours he's worked it since Thursday, but one thing he's sure of, he says, is that he'll be standing right here tomorrow and the next day, too.

walled gardens

on one hand you have apple - with their 'everything needs to be on my proprietary format' bullshit approach to everything (leading to absurdist infighting with adobe which will NOT help them in the end)...

why?

because the 'dont be evil' folks are willing to do things like this

you dont beat that... you really dont...

Happy Friday

Government officials said the blown-out well 40 miles offshore is spewing five times as much oil into the water as originally estimated – about 5,000 barrels, or 200,000 gallons, a day.
At that rate, the spill could eclipse the worst oil spill in U.S. history – the 11 million gallons that leaked from the grounded tanker Exxon Valdez in Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989 – in the three months it could take to drill a relief well and plug the gushing well 5,000 feet underwater on the sea floor.
Ultimately, the spill could grow much larger than the Valdez because Gulf of Mexico wells tap deposits that hold many times more oil than a single tanker.

As if the folks in the delta needed any more pain in their lives...

Not Quite Hyperbole

but it is the guardian

still - the conclusion raises a fair point...
what are banks for... why do we have them... and if taxpayers and directors of federal reserves are busy backstopping the loans and controlling the economy through managing the rates of investment... why not cut out the middleman?

There will still be a role for banks in the world - but lets get them away from the day to day things that actually put the world economy at risk... they're obviously willing to burn the place down for a few bucks...

Nanny Continent

So BA is complaining about how airspace has been closed all over europe because of the volcanic ash...
You'd think they'd understand the problem but i guess not... they're just executives.
I'm sure there are a million americans just as upset over the prospect of the government telling them when they can and cant fly a 600,000 lb box of aluminum and titanium through clouds of debris. What we need is a NYTimes article on 'why it's not safe to fly' so they can cement their belief that it's all lies, a freeper article to stoke the flames of anti-factualism, and an airline made for failing. Hey - those goldman boys made a couple billion - we could even collateralize the debt with companies that want to build Hindenburg II and Titanic Reborn, then buy insurance against it failing at 100x the actual debt - who cares if the insurer isnt solvent to begin with - the feds will pick up the tab!!!11!1 Everybody wins!!!

in the mean time - goldman payed out 5b in bonuses last quarter - half of it to those in the group responsible for the SEC suit... happy monday.

Yesterday

What happened with that Goldman thing...

the short version

Goldman knew for months it was the subject of an investigation here. The gist of it is that someone who was responsible for picking the securities in a collateralized debt obligation (CDO) had a vested interest, through goldman, of it failing. The theory is you're supposed to put all this sort of stuff in a prospectus... but those aren't generated until after the sale anyway (welcome to idiotland for regulation). So they're going after Goldman for this - in a way it's not much different than what they were doing with Greek debt, only writ much smaller.

It's a speeding ticket.

In the mean time, knowing that with a couple of flabbergasted statements and angry uncomfortable looks they could spook the market... and knowing that it was options experation day... the thing is - if you come to the last day and know the market is going to move a LOT - you get an unbelievable amount of leverage... And they played that hand BIG yesterday - betting that the news of the assault on them would drive the S&P down and then feeding into it. They made tens of millions - on paper in public - something that wouldn't have been possible if the SEC had done this on a day other than options expiration day... and that's in the above the board world. Imagine what such a substantial movement of options contracts does to the trillions and trillions of off balance sheet derivatives.

What's going to happen?
No one will change the fact that CDS is gambling backed by the US Treasury implicitly through the fact that we, the taxpayers, will always be left with the bag if they fail.
NO ONE WILL DO ANYTHING because the oligarchs OWN THE GOVERNMENT.
Fabulous Fab will be prosecuted...
Goldman will agree that there's the 'perception of fraud' without agreeing that they did anything illegal...
They'll pay a record fine (much less than they made shorting yesterday)...
and Fabulous Fab will be out in a couple years running his own hedge fund (with money drawn from those who profited by all of this).

The politicians will get nice fat contributions...
the lawyers will get nice new cars...
and the country will be one step closer to the bottom of the drain.

There's no 'fixing' this. It's a cancer that's spread too far.

New Old Ideas

I know.. i'm sure others have long since made the connection here... but i was reading about rats in a prisoner's dilemma test and the piece that struck me wasn't that rats are crafty bastards that played the game the way people do... it was the bit about what happens to the results when they're hungry.
If it's true that amongst rats, the drive to work out the 'everyone wins' cooperation is better than screwing people over solutions is adversely affected by the need for the reward... i wonder if that isnt also true amongst people. So the worse the economy gets, the less able people are to think through consequences clearly and just grab at whatever seems like the best thing in front of them.
This seems to me to be a behavior that would be easy to exploit to economic advantage... imposing stress on a collective would tend to make them far less productive - as they stop working together to solve problems. As I think back to the TED spread mess a year ago - and forward to the impending commercial real estate collapse - i think i see a lot of rat-like behavior.

As I was saying...

I have no problem with the concept of war as an absolute as detailed by Clausewitz... it's a sound philosophical argument that refuses to back off the fact that, sometimes, the only way to solve a problem is to kill the other guy (and everything that helps the other guy). I get it - and our german friend made it pretty clear that when you've gotten to that point - you really need to stop worrying about who you're killing until such time as you decide that it's over.

But if that's how we're going to fight wars - we need to be a LOT more careful about whether we get into them. If the rule is 'war means everyone over there can die at any time' - ok... but you have to SELL it that way to the American people. Don't tell them we're careful - we only kill bad guys - and then tell US Army Snipers to "shoot all the taxi drivers". You can't have it both ways.

The next time...

someone tells you 'they hate us for our freedoms' i hope you remember this video that wikileaks released today:



There are a lot of reasons to dislike america... but the fact that we're able to see something like this and realize how corrupt and evil our government can be is one of the reasons to love the place (even though it means we see truly awful crap like this).

Dont tell me 'it was war - shit like this happens in war'... what we had was a bunch of kids playing video games, lying about what they saw - saying what were clearly civilians were carrying weapons (a camera is not a gun... it's not an RPG) - claiming they were in a hostile situation - shooting them up - then spending years covering it up so they didnt have to admit it.

Oh sure - in the past massacres have been worse - i was, afterall, a history major... but for every video like this, how many hundreds if not thousands of others happened just like it? How many more atrocities were committed by US troops that DIDNT get a leaked video... i've heard anecdotes from some who've been over there, who've said it was much worse than we've been told, who've said they couldnt talk about it... is this aberrant? or is it, as i believe, systemic?

Asking a soldier to 'think' about what they're doing before they do it makes their jobs a lot harder... it's dangerous... if there's a camera watching, and they have to worry about repercussions, then they'll hesitate and that might cost them their lives. But if they DON'T hesitate, and consider what the fuck they're doing, then you're going to get THIS - over and over and over. It turns out that that our leaders are all very aware of this calculation - ie it IS systemic... and 'we the people' dont want to be reminded that our hands are bloody. Afterall - the lead story on CNN? Tiger Woods playing a practice round of golf...

Obama Ratings Boost

Well... he went from a very clear F on health care to getting a bill passed with some things in it that dont totally suck. It's a D- of a bill... right in the 65-66 range... and a lot of the good bits will be gutted and challenged and avoided through corporate legal maneuver... but it's still passing (which is a massive improvement). Is it worth celebrating? Hell no. But it's better than shit on a stick.

The education grant move is much better... call it a B. Anytime you can stick it to the banks on one like that you get points - and it helps shore up a huge problem in this country (at a time when the last thing we need is a bunch more people trying to enter the workforce).

Banking Reform? F. Hell... that's almost a 0.

The recent education grants for Race to the Top? Good stuff actually... Probably another B. Sure, the teachers unions hate it, and it has a lot of pro-charter school focus that will hurt us in the long run, but it's still a lot of money to try some innovative education stuff - and it's worth making efforts to improve there even if they might not all be in the best directions.

So on average - Obama's moved way up... From something approaching W as worst sack of shit president we've ever had to something leaping Hoover and approaching Calvin Coolidge. At this rate he might make it out of the bottom 10.
D'oh... maybe not.

A Question for John Yoo

So I'm reading this one and i wonder 'when do their children get raped in the other room'?

Me? I'd send em all to Bagram... declare them all unlawful enemy combatants... and seize the assets of their churches (well, what's left of their churches after the predator strikes were done).

Then i'd use the outrage to 'be forced' to get rid of all these absurd unconstitutional powers...

but for some reason i doubt our republican president will do much of anything

Jackbooted Thugs

One of my favorite sci-fi authors is Peter Watts... not for Blindsight (which was good) but for the starfish books - which were imaginative and thought provoking.

Well, Peter's a bit of a nice guy... when you read behemoth you might think he's a bit twisted... but he has a paypal link on his page that you can donate to to help him feed cats he rescues from the shelter... i mean - he's really a harmless nice geeky kinda guy.

And he came over into the states to help a friend move out of their apartment.

And on the way back - at the border crossing - some cocksucking asshole holier than thou authoritarian bully pricks who get off on pushing people around because they're worthless sacks of shit the rest of their lives nice young men decided to give him a rough time extend his invitation to visit the United States.

He was charged with something akin to assault - which isnt really assault... it's more 'not doing what you're told by a border patrol person fast enough'... he was out of his car for 20 seconds... 10 of those seconds were being kicked and maced examining the ground around his car... they accused him of choking someone - but it turns out they lied - big shock they might have misremembered... but still - he did get out of his car... apparently that's enough in this day and age and in this country to get you a 2 year prison term.

It's bad enough that we hire these dickheads... it's worse that we give them uniforms that say 'they speak for me'... and it's even worse that a federal prosecutor somewhere decided that THIS WAS WHERE AMERICA WOULD DRAW THE LINE AGAINST TERRISTS. Maybe this was a wrong.

This whole story - front to back - sucked. It never should have happened... it never should have been prosecuted... and the jury never should have convicted. I am embarrassed for my country.

taking it out on everyone else

One of my mother's closest friends is a very very very successful real estate agent in north dallas. In the last 2 months, she's sold 3 homes that had been repossessed by the bank. In each of these cases she warned the buyer 'understand - you're buying this home 'as is'... it might have foundation problems... it might have other issues that you have no idea are wrong with it'... but in each case the buyers, convinced they were getting a great deal, purchased the homes.

In each case, the former owners had done awful things to the homes. Golfballs down the toilet... cement down the sinks... wiring cut with scissors... dead animals in the attic... no joke.

There is some serious anger out there - people are upset that they've spent so long working and trying and felt they were 'owed' their nice little north dallas zero-lot-line mansions... and now that their subprime and ARM ponzi scheming has come to naught - they've decided to take it out on the next guy. The banks dont care - remember - they're offloading 10 billion dollars of these toxic assets to the feds every week. They dont have to balance their books - and they really dont care about the poor sap that gets stuck with the house someone has turned into a death trap.

More of this is coming... no one's factoring the 2nd mortgages and home equity loans into the equation so long as the banks are allowed to avoid mark to market...

anectdotal? yes... but imagine for a moment how a tea-party friendly north dallas will react when the impending commercial realestate bubble collapse breaks the backs of the rest of the underwater homeowners.

If I were smart - i'd be in north dallas starting a company that repairs these houses... but i dont think i could handle all the sobbing new homeowners i'd be taking tens of thousands of dollars from.

at some point

theoretically...
justice is served.

But as i read this... specifically when i got to this passage:

Camp Greyhound held a total of 1,200 detainees in the aftermath of the hurricane, most of whom were African-Americans and all of whom suffered the indignity of having their right to habeas corpus removed.

I want to know 'when does the person responsible for that go to prison' - and is prison really the right answer?
I think a whole lot of americans should be stripped of citizenship, everything they own, and airdropped into the hills of afghanistan... but hey - that's me.

broken systems

There should be little doubt that Goldman is busy abusing the system as much as it ever did - afterall they're pretty upfront about it.

First came the news that Greece had entered into derivatives transactions with Goldman Sachs and other banks to hide its public debt. Then came reports that some of those same banks and various hedge funds were using credit default swaps — the type of derivative that kneecapped the American International Group — to bet on the likelihood of a Greek default and using derivatives to wager on a drop in the euro.

What they've done here isn't much different from your doctor buying life insurance on you before he informs you of your malignant leukemia... it sucks for you, but he's gettin a Lexus. You'd think someone would say 'wow - that's really not right' and put a stop to it - but they've bought off all the people who might do so. When people rig the markets capitalism fails - and in this case catastrophically.

Of course - big financial institutions like this are made up of individuals who dont always take the big picture to heart. Take - AIG for example...

"To be honest with you, I really hope it blows up. I think the U.S. taxpayer deserves to lose a trillion dollars over this thing for the way they have behaved."
And then he turned on politicians who had joined the anti-AIG posse. "They only care about the next election, just like we only care about the next bonus. Well, none of them cares about the country, none of us cares about the institution," he said, adding: "They really don't care, and I really don't care. And frankly, if a trillion dollars gets lost, fine."

They're acting in their own concept of short term benefit... fully aware that they're destroying the system - but they deserve their 7 figure bonuses.

It's like there's a reality disconnect here - and these are supposed to be the best and brightest. You'd think they'd attended Detroit ISD (not an article about mutilate rogues - i promise).