LILA RAJIVA: The Mind-Body Politic
Individuals Not Ideologies
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More Agora - Updated 3/6/2010- Stansberry Response/SEC
While googling, I stumbled on some weird material by a blogger Jennifer Lake, who seems to have gotten some facts mixed up about libertarian newsletter publisher, Agora Inc. [I've since had time to read through her archives and many of her entries are overtly anti-semitic]
“Agora Inc. was established as a publishing company in Washington D.C. in 1979 by its founders; William Bonner, Jim Dale Davidson, Porter Stansberry and Lord William Rees-Moog.
(Lila: I don’t believe Stansberry was involved in founding it…he might not even have been born would have been very young at the time; and it’s Rees-Mogg. Moog is the electronic synthesizer. Also, most people who’ve written on the subject don’t mention Rees-Mogg as a founder, except Lyndon Larouche.
Besides Larouche, the person who harps on Rees-Mogg is a minor Internet spammer and web-stalker, Tony Ryals, who apparently lost money in an investment promoted by Davidson and has spent the last five years multiple posting on the company and on anyone connected to it, and as I can testify from personal experience, most of his rants are exaggerations, distortions, disinformation, and “magical” thinking, with some much-mangled facts hidden somewhere, if you have the patience to unearth them)
(Since I wrote this, I’ve found another piece. with this information, by EIR. EIR or Executive Intelligence Review is a Larouche outfit whose macro perspective has generally been regarded as conspiracist, anti-semitic (Christopher Bollyn), and/or paranoid, although many also concede that some of its work is accurate.
I am not linking it here, although I’ve seen it cited by William Engdahl, a credible left-oriented writer, as I’m not sure whether the citation is genuine or a hoax of some kind).
“Notorious for promoting Penny Stock fraud”
(Lila: Not to defend Agora, but it promotes penny-stock and many other investments, not all of which are fraudulent by any means, unless you count any promotion of stocks to be fraudulent. Most penny-stocks in tip-sheets, frankly, are promoted in questionable ways. For that matter, a large proportion of investments of any kind, even in mainstream publications, are promoted quite questionably. Check out the government/real estate industry promotion of the housing bubble, if you disbelieve me).
“and supporting an offshore investment network, Agora has a core membership of world-traveling Libertarians who have connections at the highest levels of government and industry.
Through the illegal practice of naked short-selling, domestic Agorans function as “economic hitmen” and support “sovereign” enterprizes of all descriptions that move national and personal resources overseas to emerging markets.”
(Lila: This seems to be some kind of populist nonsense. Who exactly are “domestic Agorans” and how do they function as “economic hitmen”? I’ve never heard of naked short-selling in conjunction with Agora, but it’s certainly true that penny-stock promoters often work with naked short-sellers, through off-shore havens and exchanges like Vancouver. I know financial reporter Carol Remond has written on this, in relation to some Agora newsletters, and I’ll try to unearth the link. However, I’ve never heard any one at Agora encouraging the moving of “national resources” overseas….unless you include pointing out that employers will go where labor is cheap…..or suggesting diversification abroad)
“The primary operatives of Agora pose as financial experts and advisors, selling information over the internet that targets a variety of consumer interests including “natural health”, real estate, travel and leisure. Agora counts George Soros and known Rothschild agents among its “friends” as well as American “patriots” and “truthtellers”.
(Lila: Never heard that Soros was a friend.
(March 6, 2010): See above for research by EIR/William Engdahl)
Jim Rogers, Steve Forbes, and Marc Faber are.
As a right libertarian outfit, Agora and its original founder/s would likely not be terribly sympathetic to a pro-regulation, pro-one world government, mega currency speculator like Soros. It’s possible that one or other faction within the outfit might sympathize with Soros, but they would likely be more liberal-left in their political leanings than the outfit. I’ve seen Daily Reckoning columnist Rocky Vega mention Soros, not obviously any more sympathetically than he mentions anyone else. Vega cites work experience at McKinsey and at Goldman, and is a relatively late addition to the team. He appears to have joined after my brief stay there)
Now, I’ve been quite critical of Agora (within the limits of what you can say of a place where you once worked and with which you still have a tenuous business association - via my book with Bonner). I’ve noted their strident marketing hype; the SEC conviction of one of their newsletter publishers, Porter Stansberry, in 2007 (a conviction that’s been appealed, and that in all fairness wasn’t a very convincing one…right guy, wrong case, is my opinion on that; you can read why at the website of UK investigative reporter, Brian Deer); the questionable histories of some of their former and current senior people (Davidson, Masterson); and some other bizarre incidents; but in this case, Ms. Lake’s blog seems to have wandered off into fiction.
[Update: You can read Stansberry’s account of what happened at The Daily Reckoning. Here is the SEC’s original case, brought in 2003 and the link to the 2007 conviction.
Update, March 9, 2010: I’m adding a link to the New York Times piece on the SEC case in 2003, which, as Stansberry points out in his defense, treats the case as a First Amendment issue.
That’s not entirely true either, but the case is a weak one, as I blogged before.
On the other hand, it’s also clear from reading some of the marketing literature put out by the company that the hype used by some of the newsletters, the ‘hard sell,’ walks a very fine line and often crosses it. In the case cited by Deer, some language seems fraudulent, even though Deer’s use of the term “pump” (which implies ownership of the stock by the ‘pumper’) is also not warranted by the facts he cites.
Could all this contradictory and exaggerated posting be disinformation? Could be. But why and by whom, is the question.
And, darn. “Rothschild agents”? That sounds exciting. (March 6, 2010: See EIN above, again)
Ms. Lake goes on:
“The Natural News is owned by Truth Publishing International, Ltd, a corporation chartered from Taichung, Taiwan, that also owns the News Target Network and a radio web, viewable here http://www.islaearth.org/community-action.php?page=49 The material from ‘Truth’ is indicative of interlocking relationships with Agora Publishing (or Agora Group) from Baltimore, Md., a large enterprise for international travel, real estate, investment, and health. Subsidiary, Health Sciences Institute (http://hsibaltimore.com) markets products from Northstar Nutritionals (www.northstarnutritionals.com) that has a few items to sell –like ‘Soothanol X2? a DMSO/herbal tincture for pain relief, 1 fluid oz. at $49.95– but this appears to be mostly a business of information. Agora, a name taken from the Greek for ‘marketplace’, is first and foremost about making money with money. The owner/founders of Agora have invested deeply to profit from general and specific disasters like economic collapse and the Swine Flu Pandemic. One associate of Agora founder Bill Bonner, a Mr. Addison Wiggin who heads the multi-million dollar financial research, wrote “The Demise of the Dollar..and Why It’s Even Better for Your Investments” and issues special-reports to its membership like the “Single Best Way to Make Sure You’ll Never Run Out of Money” which appears to be a financial mechanism he calls “The Endless Paycheck Portfolio”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Bonner_(author)
http://www.agora-inc.com/international.htmI’ve a feeling this is just the tip of the iceberg in comprehending the business nature of Agora (see http://webindexnet.wordpress.com ); doubtlessly so in the scope of the debt-for-nature activity. According to the wikipedia, Vilcabamba Ecuador became a haven for international expatriates beginning in the 1960s as a community slowly took root there. By the 1990s, the native Ecuadorans themselves were forced to emigrate for lack of work (or finances), many resettling in Madrid Spain and No. America. Were these engineered real estate turnovers? Vilcabamba is a truly incredible location, poised below the reach of the Podocarpus National Park, one of the most bio-diverse and precious places on earth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilcabamba,_Ecuador
http://www.planeta.com/planeta/98/0598podocarpus.html
http://www.nature.org/wherewework/southamerica/ecuador/work/art5120.html (site of The Nature Conservancy, $5.42 billion in assets for 2007)Bill Bonner, noted from the wiki link above, wrote in his book “Mobs, Messiahs and Markets” that “mass delusions are part of the human condition”. Capitalizing on them, after all, must be good business.
…and if you’re considering some Vilcabamba real estate, Mike Adams wants you to “get it” first by reading this, “Guiding Principles for People Looking for Vilcabamba, Ecuador Real Estate” http://www.greenlivingnews.com/1057_Vilcabamba_Ecuador.html If you ‘pass go’ here are some of the neighbors you’ll have in Vilcabamba http://newparadigmdigest.com/tag/entrepreneurs/ with their own contact info. Btw, I have no problem with ex-pats, I wish them blessed and happy lives. What interests me are the larger forces at work that make these situations appealing in the first place. It’s in everyone’s purview to have a high-quality life wherever and however they choose to live.
Agora Financial publishes a journal called The Daily Reckoning, editor Addison Wiggin, featuring contributions from ’staff’ such as Lew Rockwell (LewRockwell.com), Gerald Celente (Trends Research) and Dr. Ron Paul (US Congress) http://dailyreckoning.com/cast-of-characters/ This group, and the extended arms of Agora, advocate nation-building investments in developing countries that often include international projects funded by US taxpayers. Non-profit Agora Partnerships USA, for example, uses ‘micro’ venture capital and US tax-paid grants to seed entrepreneurial programs abroad and build ’sustainable economies’ for other countries. Agora Partnerships USA shares an office in Washington DC with USAID, United States Agency for International Development, and it’s TechnoServe program.
http://www.agorapartnerships.org/press/Press/press-releases/about/contact/contact-us
http://www.usaid.gov/sa/usaidsa/technoservepress.pdf
The same building hosts the Economic Research Services of the US Dept of Agriculture, it’s primary policy, financing and forecasting service for domestic and global planning. Agora appears to be well within the loop, so this is about far more than hiring a Health Ranger to gatekeep for Shangri-la.”My Comment:
Where to start, with so many mistakes?
For starters, Lew Rockwell, Gerald Celente, and Ron Paul are not staff writers for Agora.
They are libertarian columnists whose writing Agora frequently runs. The Daily Reckoning publishes material from scores of libertarian writers, sometimes without telling the writer. Drawing conclusions from that is plain silly..
Next up, as far as I can gather, Agora Partnerships has nothing to do with Agora Inc. I looked through their website carefully, and could find nothing to confirm the kind of affiliation that is charged here. The identity of the name seems to be purely coincidental. I could be mistaken, and maybe there is some hidden link. But there’s certainly no evidence for it on Ms. Lake’s blog.
(Correction: In light of the EIR/Engdahl piece, I will be doing a little more leg work on this purported association…)
Agora no doubt profits from many of the ideas or concepts it promotes. It’s been an advocate of Americans diversifying into foreign real estate for years….and it sells foreign real estate (correction: it advertises foreign real estate being sold by its affiliates and associates). But as critical as I am of the outfit, I’ve never come across anything to suggest that its libertarian ideas weren’t sincere….
Does Agora enjoy high-level government/business connections? Yes….but not the kind this blog charges, I think.
“Empire of Debt” (2005, Bonner & Wiggin) and its spin-off “IOUSA” (Wiggin & Incontrera) were promoted by the mainstream media, and specifically, by Peter Peterson and his Concord Coalition.
I’ve blogged about Peterson’s political and financial agenda more than once. The Concord Coalition seems to be a part of any bipartisan initiative about government debt you come across….
And the programs it supports are usually social-welfare busting. I’ve also noted connections between Agora and the CIA, including the employment of former CIA agents, and the appearance of former CIA director William Casey’s Colby’s name on an Agora newsletter. But it’s not unheard of for financial newsletters/ tip-sheets to use former government employees or intelligence officers to ferret out economic tips.
In fact, it stands to reason they would…corporate intelligence and state intelligence often melding seamlessly into each other.
By itself, these aren’t damning facts. And by itself, these facts are irrelevant to any public interest.
There are other facts that certainly need untangling, for those involved, and should there be a public interest, but Ms. Lake’s blog seems so wrapped up in its partisan (”economic hit-men”) obfuscations that it seems to have missed those…
Update (March 8 ) I had time to go through her archive and I found overtly anti-Semitic language about “parasites” and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in one of her posts, confirming my decision not to link the material cited by Engdahl (with the EIR byline).
(Note: her blog began only in July 2009, around the time I posted a detailed criticism of Agora that I later took down to avoid claims of defamation)
The Corporate Media: Suffering From Truth Emergency
We have an elite that has a stranglehold on what gets heard through its grip on professional societies and the major print and TV news. Prizes, media attention, peer approval go to very few media outlets. It’s well- known that only reporters and columnists at a handful of papers get serious attention. That’s a truly dangerous state of affairs and we’re suffering the fall-out from it. What makes it even worse is that news itself is more and more swept aside by trashy, sensation-seeking reporting, which leaves the audience with misinformation or simply a great black hole of ignorance.
Mickey Huff and Peter Phillips analyze the “truth emergency” ravaging the corporate media in the West (and to a lesser degree, everywhere):
“Truth Emergency: Keeping the Facts at Bay
The truth comes as conqueror only because we have lost the art of receiving it as guest.
– Rabindranath TagoreWhat are some of these truths, that not knowing them creates a literal state of emergency for human society? Here are two of many possible examples. A 2008 report from The World Bank admitted that in 2005, over three billion people lived on less than $2.50 a day and about forty-four percent of these people survive on less than $1.25. Complete and total wretchedness can be the only description for the circumstances faced by so many, especially those in urban areas of so-called developing nations. Simple items Americans take for granted like phone calls, nutritious food, vacations, television, dental care, and inoculations are beyond the possible for billions of people.6
In another ignored but related story, Starvation.net logged the increasing impacts of world hunger and starvation. Over 30,000 people a day (eighty-five percent of children under five) die of malnutrition, curable diseases, and starvation. The number of deaths has exceeded three hundred million people over the past forty years. These stories should be alarming headlines, certainly more significant than celebrity tripe and tabloid hype.7
Continuing on the theme of human poverty and its ramifications, farmers around the world grow more than enough food to feed the entire world adequately. Global grain production yielded a record 2.3 billion tons in 2007, up four percent from the year before, yet, billions of people go hungry every day. The website Grain.org describes the core reasons for continuing hunger in a recent article “Making a Killing from Hunger.” It turns out that while farmers grow enough food to feed the world, commodity speculators and huge grain traders like Cargill control the global food prices and distribution. Starvation is profitable for corporations when demands for food push the prices up. Cargill announced that profits for commodity trading for the first quarter of 2008 were eighty-six percent above 2007. World food prices grew twenty-two percent from June 2007 to June 2008 and a significant portion of the increase was propelled by the $175 billion invested in commodity futures that speculate on price instead of seeking to feed the hungry. This results in erratic food price spirals, both up and down, with food insecurity remaining widespread.“
My Comment:
Some of this commentary of course paints speculation with too broad a brush. Futures markets can, and do, provide efficient allocation of resources if they function as they should. The problem is not the futures market but the corruption of the market and the constant meddling in it by the state, which blunts the normal checks that the market would otherwise provide.
And again that goes back to public culture and professional standards that have become debased. The deeper question is how they became debased.
Which, of course, leads us to the government’s manipulation of the interest rate. That is where the problem lies.
But meanwhile, where is the media in all this? Providing the context so people can understand what’s going on?
No. It’s rooting around in John Edward’s trash can……
Did Bethany McLean Even Break The Enron Story?
n “Enronathon,” Seth Mnookin of The Wall Street Journal suggests Bethany McLean wasn’t quite the first person to break the story of Enron…and that she had a good bit of unacknowledged help:
“If journalism were in the Olympics, the Enron story might well be pairs figure skating. Bethany McLean, the young Fortune writer who first wrote about Enron’s shady finances a year ago, has, of course, already been awarded the gold.
And with that have come the requisite endorsements: In the past two months, she was hired as a consultant by NBC News and shared in a $1.4 million deal to co-author a book on the scandal. But another team is also vying for top honors — amid complaints about shoddy judging.
Reporters and editors at the Wall Street Journal believe their work has been unjustly ignored, with some wondering whether Pulitzer rivals like the Washington Post and the New York Times have gone out of their way to praise McLean.
Enron did not collapse under its own weight,” says Jonathan Friedland, the Journal editor who’s been in charge of much of the paper’s Enron coverage. “Without our reporting, I don’t think any of this would have happened.”
In response, McLean’s former editor at Fortune and current Time Inc. editorial director John Huey says, “Bethany was the first journalist in a widely respected national publication to suggest that the emperor at Enron had no clothes.” (Not that her own publication took much note: Fortune had to airbrush out Kenneth Lay from a November SMARTEST PEOPLE WE KNOW cover photo.) Let’s recap: In September 2000, Jonathan Weil wrote a long story for the now-defunct Texas edition of the Journal about odd accounting at various Texas-based energy traders; it included four paragraphs on Enron.
James Chanos, a well-known short-seller who was one of the first to start unloading Enron stock, says he got interested in the company after reading Weil’s piece.
Almost six months later, in March 2001, the then 30-year-old McLean (who Times columnist Maureen Dowd has suggested will be played by Alicia Silverstone in the inevitable movie) wrote her little-noticed 2,400-word story, “Is Enron Overpriced?”
Then, in October, the Journal ran a three-day series by Rebecca Smith and John Emshwiller detailing Enron’s unorthodox partnerships. Their articles are seen by many on Wall Street as ultimately sinking the company. Weil’s partisans think he should get credit for crossing the finish line first (an item, “Credit Due,” ran in “Page Six” recently).
But even Chanos says that “Bethany’s piece was the first one to raise really specific questions.”
Most of the Journal’s brain trust, though, are plugging Smith and Emshwiller, who, of course, wrote their stories in 2001 and are thus eligible for this year’s Pulitzers. “The Fortune story basically said this is a company that nobody understands,” says Journal deputy managing editor Daniel Hertzberg. “It didn’t show what was wrong with the company. It took Becky and John to do that.” That’s the competition.
Now for the judging. In January, Howard Kurtz, the Washington Post’s media writer, highlighted McLean as the first journalist to ask questions about Enron. Ten days later, the Times‘ Felicity Barringer wrote her profile of “the financial reporter everyone loves to lionize.” While McLean was being anointed as a journalistic sex symbol in a story hitherto dominated by a balding Kenneth Lay, folks at the Journal felt they were being robbed:
“People are trying to queer the Pulitzer pitch for the Journal,” says one editor there. That’s sour grapes, counters Kurtz: “In this case, a 31-year-old reporter beat them and the rest of the world by a considerable margin.”
In a bit of circular logic endemic to media reporters, Kurtz adds, “I must have been onto something, since after my piece appeared, she was profiled in the Times, given a contract by NBC, and offered a book deal.” As for McLean, she seems slightly embarrassed by all the attention. “I’ve told people I’ve gotten too much credit,” she says. “I did raise alarm bells, but I didn’t know the half of it.” “Read more: Enronathon http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/media/features/5756/#ixzz0dvvQZvUI
My Comment:
Please note also that the book was co-authored with Peter Elkind, who isn’t attributed in many of the stories.
Not that I’m all that sympathetic to the Wall Street Journal on the Enron story, since they don’t give credit to the alternative press either, and what goes around comes around. (My own experiences of plagiarism from articles and books can be found at the tab, ABOUT - half-way down the page).
If liberal columnists steal without attribution even from liberal bloggers, can you imagine the cone of silence that descends when the victim isn’t liberal? Libertarians and conservatives get stripped clean by the vultures of the “free” (of all ethics) press.
With them, it’s never about public welfare or the good of the nation, even though that’s the standard that they like to foist on other people. Even with the global economy melting down under their noses, they’re jealous of sharing the information that activists, bloggers, and ordinary citizens give out generously for the common good.
(Again, there are honorable exceptions).
In short, they make up credit - just like the Federal Reserve.
Or they steal it - like their banker friends.
Or they collude with each other to “take-down” anyone not part of their game - just like their hedge-fund allies.
And no matter what, they always cover for each other.
Notice how other people’s personal lives are fair game for stalking, extortion, and exposes, but never theirs, as this piece on Maria Bartiromo suggests.
(Ms. McLean figures in that piece too. In fact, a brief google tells us that McLean´s had plagiarism problems and conflicts of interest more than a couple of times).
Item One. Here’s an earlier complaint about Fortune magazine plagiarism. A Fortune writer apparently used material from interviews and articles by an outfit called Annex Research, without attributing or acknowledging it. An email to Fortune got no response, either. The Fortune writer? Bethany McLean…
Item Two: McLean at it again, swiping material from the Orange County Register Weekly
Item Three: Libertarian economist, Bill Anderson, in a piece called “The Most Dishonest ´Journalists´ In the Room,” describes how McLean was having a romantic relationship with the lead prosecutor in the Enron trial, Sean Berkowitz, before the sentencing, while she was covering the trial and getting out the government´s side of the story. Omitted in that story as well was the disturbing fact that the prosecutor had suborned perjury in order to get a full conviction of Jeffrey Skilling.
And that´s besides Item Four….
That fetching stock-manipulation thing she had going with hedge buddies Marc Cohodes and Jim Chanos.
No wonder none of them can get the story right.
And no wonder they still won’t get it straight, not until after activists, or bloggers, or less-known writers at their own outfits or elsewhere do the hard work. Then they’ll slide in to take the credit.
Nice work.
Just as cushy and exploitative as anything on Wall Street, in its way.
Business men and real capitalists do the hard work of producing. Then the faux capitalist money-men and their shills in government rush in to cream the money off and cover themselves with glory via their mouthpieces in the shill media.
No wonder the media doesn’t understand capitalism. No wonder they love the crony capitalist bordello they call home. It’s the only one they know, the poor things.
[Again, they really ARE a minority of journalists, just a powerful minority. There are hundreds of honorable hard-working journalists who write their own stories rather than steal them off the net, whose names never get into headlines, and who wouldn't be caught dead behaving like this].
And don’t miss the other telling details:
Enron’s Ken Lay was a Republican.
Goldman Sachs is a Democrat cash-cow, for the most part.
Jim Chanos, hedge-fund master mind, used to work at Deutsch Bank.
And Bethany McLean was once a Goldman Sachs banker….. (Maybe that explains her kid-glove treatment of Hank at Vanity Fair).….
….And her equally interesting white-washing of Spyro Contogouris, who colluded with hedge funds to attack Prem Watsa’s Fairfax Financial.
Honestly. Rielle Hunter has nothing on any of these gold-diggers.
Climategate: Indian Environment Minister Says IPCC Wrong On Glaciers Melting
There are some interesting developments on the climate-gate frontier.
Apparently, the Himalayan glaciers aren’t melting, after all.
Or at least, not as fast as the IPCC (the Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change , the UN body tasked with climate change) thinks they should. (more…)
Doug Valentine On The Impotence Of Progressives
Doug Valentine offers a piece on the futility of much activism.
(Please note: The opinions in this piece are not mine. They are Doug’s. But his point was not to exclude himself or any other writer who claims to be an activist. Its something all of us feel one time or other. I know I do. Frequently. At some level, what writers do is perfectly useless and only a form of self-advancement, if that).
Why Don’t All You People Just Shut Up!
“As my friend Roger says, ‘Never have so many held Washington hangers-on office for so long and talked endlessly to each other for so much money and done so little as the Republic rotted. The utter impotence of the progressive think tanks, lobbies, etc. is a great unwritten story.’
More From The Easter Bunny…
I’ve been curious about the identity of the Easter Bunny, although, strictly speaking, it doesn’t affect the validity of the anti-NSS campaign.
The Bunny has zeal. Bunny-speak is brave, plain-spoken and easy to read:
“The SEC was created to reassure the unwashed masses that it was safe to invest in the markets, after the Great Crash of 1929 proved it was anything but. It was a PR firm for Wall Street, slipped through as an alternative to a regulator who would or could actually do anything to curb the real crookery on Wall Street. At the helm was one of the greatest stock manipulators of all time, Joe Kennedy, who along with Percy Rockefeller and others amassed incredible fortunes running stock pools in the 1920’s.
For those who don’t know what a stock pool is, it’s a hedge fund whose sole purpose is to manipulate stocks, first up, then down, making money in both directions. Which was enormously lucrative for the operators of the pools, and the investors therein - the only losers were always the general investing public, and other participants who weren’t on the inside. I would argue that’s precisely what some of the most lucrative hedge funds of modern times also do - there aren’t a lot of ways to beat the market with 30 or 40% returns, year after year, that don’t involve larceny and criminal behavior, at least in my study of the last century of market history.”
The Bunny doesn’t mince words:
“I concluded a while ago that the rot in the system is pervasive, runs from top to bottom, and is largely unfixable. You have oligarchs, powerful and rich families and corporations, who are having their bought-and-paid-for politicians operate the country for their personal enrichment, at the direct expense of everyone else…..
“My point is that absolute power and wealth enable one to control the safeguards that were put into place to protect populations. By co-opting politicians and capturing regulators, the bad man is allowed to come into the room and do whatever he wants, whenever he likes - and the captured media merely pretends that it can’t hear the cries for help or investigate the countless damaged lives. It’s as bad as Russia under the communists, or perhaps worse.”
The Easter Bunny stays under wraps for a reason I can guess… but maybe not express publicly.
I asked a couple of people in a position to know if it was so-and-so. They denied it stoutly.
I could, of course, go the route of the New York press, which likes to stake out, tap phones, access medical records illegally, go undercover,or violate court orders, or any number of other things.
(If only John Edwards knew how lucky he was to avoid a life as a national figure, official prey for every predator with a pen)
But that particular game doesn’t seem worth either the moral or social candle. And, most often, almost as much can be learned by reading between the lines and studying public evidence as by sleuthing.
But, while sleuthing only requires elbow grease and chutzpah, analysis requires a degree of knowledge, judgment, and intellect that is simply beyond the pay-grade of some journalists, however exalted their professional status. These petty despots have pens and they have power, but they have no clothes, as surely as the emperor they shill for.
A few have figured that out. More will follow suit.
To make the story short, I went and reread a few public records that reference NSS and replayed the stout denials in my mind, recalling as best I could the silences, the gaps, the tone of the answers. I reread The Bunny carefully.
He’s an erudite man, it’s clear. I came to my conclusion about who he was. Right or wrong, time will tell.
I only bring it up to show how looking at the big picture and developing the correct perspective can be as useful and is far more cost-efficient than private-eye sleuthing that reporters think is the one and only credible way to tell a story. Baloney. And morally dangerous baloney. Dirty tricks, even for some intended good you believe in, inevitably corrupt the people who play them, in the same way black ops corrupt intelligence agencies.
Sleuthing is good to add the footnotes and the QED at the bottom of a piece of research and critical analysis. But as a way of curing social cancers - and financial racketeering is more social cancer than legal infraction - it has limited use. By the time you have written your expose to your editor’s satisfaction and done what it takes to avoid libel litigation, the story is old, the crooks have covered their tracks in paper dirt, and a new game is afoot.
Far better to play Sherlock and deduce your conclusions. Leave the investigative reporters to do their thing. You do yours but you do it to appease your own conscience, out of love for what human beings might be (hard to love them as they are, frankly), out of sheer intellectual curiosity (a great part of what drives me), glee at pelting stones at arrogant predators, and…yes…because after life’s fretful fever, we really don’t know what comes next. It might be wise to hedge our bets, as Pascal did.
There may or may not be Judgment Day. But should it roll around, we want to be able to pass muster. Well, at least, we want the She: Who Is Probably Not There to know we tried…
And then of course, we write mainly because it’s fun…
How, my dear Mary, — are you critic-bitten
(For vipers kill, though dead) by some review,
That you condemn these verses I have written,
Because they tell no story, false or true?
What, though no mice are caught by a young kitten,
May it not leap and play as grown cats do,
Till its claws come? Prithee, for this one time,
Content thee with a visionary rhyme.
(Percy B. Shelley, “The Witch of Atlas”)
Bill Anderson On The New KKK: Kleptocrats, Kartels, and Kon Men
“As I see it, the bankers are not clueless at all. They understand the game, they understand that the government is going to clean up the mess that they and their friends in Congress and the Bush and Obama administrations have created, and they understand that their antics are going to give them what they always have wanted: a nice, cozy, financial cartel which will provide sweet political contributions for the political classes, bonuses and high pay for themselves, and very little for everyone else.
Goldman Charity Prompted By PR Concerns
RaceTotheBottom, a law blog on corporate regulatory issues, has this on the latest PR move by Goldman Sachs, one we noted in our previous blog post on Haiti. which mentioned the donations made by the big banks.
“The latest effort by Goldman to ameliorate the criticism is apparently to require top officers and managers to donate a certain percentage of their compensation to charity. As the NYT noted:
* While the details of the latest charity initiative are still under discussion, the firm’s executives have been looking at expanding their current charitable requirements for months and trying to understand whether such gestures would damp public anger over pay, according to a person familiar with the matter who did not want to be identified because of the delicacy of the pay issue.
Apparently Bear Stearns had done something similar in the past, requiring the top 1000 employees to contribute 4% of their compensation to charity.
The specifics have apparently not yet been determined. Nonetheless, unlike the stock bonuses, the approach effectively reduces the amount of compensation paid to each employee.
Goldman could have considered reducing the amounts paid in compensation and contributed the saved amounts directly to charity. The financial institution in fact added an additional $200 million to its charitable foundation. But making direct contributions would have potentially violated state law.
Corporations are obligated to profit maximize. Some portion of the company’s profits can be donated to charity. Companies may do so, however, only if there is a business benefit. See RMBCA § 3.02(15)(permitting “donations, or do any other act, not inconsistent with law, that furthers the business and affairs of the corporation.”). For modest amounts of contributions, the business benefit can be vague, with enhanced reputation in the community enough of a justification.
For more significant amounts, however, there must be a sufficient nexus to the business of the company. Had Goldman chosen to donate 5% of the amount left aside for compensation, an amount that would probably exceed $1 billion, it would have needed to show some type of meaningful connection to its business. Any failure to do so would likely generate lawsuits from shareholders alleging that the board had failed to engage in the required profit maximization.”
My Comment:
Isn’t this exactly why the more laws you have on the books, the more complicated your problems get?
Think about it. Goldman can’t make direct charitable contributions, because companies are obligated to maximize profits. Why are they obligated to maximize profits?
Because that’s what shareholders are due, per company law.
You might ask whether maximizing profits is always in a company’s best interests, versus building long term value or market share or any number of other things that stake-holders in the company might value more than high returns, but those things don’t count, because that’s how a law works - like a blunt instrument.
And then when managers focus on these short-term horizons and start doing legal (or illegal) tricks to show quick gains on their books, then we need another set of laws to curb them, with incentives running in the opposite direction….
The end result is a muddle of misplaced directives and restrictions that distort the market.
And people criticize the free market!Sith-Lord Sweep: AG’s Pending Indictments Cover Major Hedgies, Journalists, and Regulators
Corporate finance generalist, investment banker and expert in derivatives, Austin Burrell, sums up last week’s announcement by Attorney-General Eric Holder that there are 5000 pending indictments [sic] arising out of the investigation of fraud in the capital markets:
[Note: the DOJ is involved in some 5000 odd cases of fraud related to the financial industry… (more…)
Obama’s Man In China - Jon Huntsman Jr.
I’ve been thinking that any real change in the US..or anywhere else… will only come from outside politics, from business, or from technology, or from a cultural trend (such as, off-grid living) or from a spiritual movement. But occasionally, I wonder if some politician could actually push things in a new direction, make some kind of real difference.
Recently, some people have been touting a GOP dark horse who´s joined Team Obama. That’s former Utah governor and current Ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman Junior, who even struck some writer at the Washington Post as a potential ‘next big thing.’ (more…)
Pankaj Mishra On The Strength Of Passivity
The old world, with its failures, weaknesses, and poverty, has at least a proper estimation of the limits of human action, says writer Pankaj Mishra in an oped in the New York Times, last August:
“India may have been passive after the Mumbai attacks. But India has not launched wars against either abstract nouns or actual countries that it has no hope of winning or even disengaging from. Another major terrorist assault on our large and chaotic cities is very probable, but it is unlikely to have the sort of effect that 9/11 had on America.
Kingsford Capital And The Captured Media
Mark Mitchell at Deep Capture has some interesting details about the extensive influence of hedge-funds, specifically Kingsford Capital, on the reporting of stories in the financial press:
“Another focus of my investigation at CJR was the appalling bear raid on a collectibles company called Escala. Not only was Escala the victim of massive amounts of illegal naked short selling, but a hedge fund convinced the Spanish government that Escala’s parent company, based in Madrid, was fleecing investors in philatelic collectibles.
Xmarks’ Top 20 Corruption Sites List Includes Deep Capture
I just happened to notice this ranking of the most popular corruption sites and thought I’d post it as more evidence that the campaign against naked short selling isn’t some marginal “freak” show, as some of the financial blogs have tried to claim it is. (more…)
Why We Believe Propaganda
From a piece I wrote in 2005, “America´s Downing Syndrome,” about why the airwar in Iraq was never represented in media coverage:
“And how does the public conscience square with all this? Simple. The civilians who are fair game are not American civilians. The skies that are threatened are not American skies. It may take a village to raise a child, but given enough air power, we now know also that it only takes a child to raze a village. Our children, their villages. And in return for our invulnerability, we make cultural icons out of bomber pilots, turning a blind eye to their ravages abroad. While the grunt that kills and is killed on the scorched ground bears the burden of public backlash against any horrors of war making that might elude censorship, his mates in the clouds are untouchable. Atrocities are always only committed on earth. So a Lieutenant Calley is court-martialed over My Lai and a Charles Graner is imprisoned for Abu Ghraib, but the bombers who wreak havoc on a magnitude far grander not only walk free, but are feted by a society in which for many reasons the air force is substantially white and the officer corps even whiter.
But there’s more. Strategic bombing directed broadly against a country´s will or morale rather than military targets has nearly always been associated with civilian not military control. Pen-pushers in think tanks and journals, couch-crusaders on Wall Street and Main Street are the most hysterical groupies for total war from the skies. (9) Remote from actual bloodletting, they’re still the quickest to tote up grand calculations of its necessity in bringing about their favorite utopia. It was Lyndon Johnson, not the generals, who first ratcheted up the air war against North Vietnam to genocidal proportions.
And because the civilian leadership unlike the military is always indebted to public opinion for its existence, it´s ultimately public approval rather than military need that drives air war against civilians, which is why the corporate media obligingly does its bit to keep that approval going.
Media and government duplicity, widespread intoxication with technological wizardry, a deadly sense of impunity combined with a deadlier sense of omnipotence, cultural myth making, and socio-economic class are the causes of America’s fundamentally diseased relationship with air power and thus with the raw foundation of imperial might. It is the cognitive disease which periodically manifests itself in redundant “smoking-guns” and “exposes” about memos whose sole purpose apparently is to maintain our illusion of ourselves as eternal naifs duped by an endless procession of charlatans in government.
Clearly, it’s not merely war propaganda so much as the public´s receptivity to war propaganda that’s the problem. The addiction to war-as-Grand Theft Auto reveals an insatiable craving in the bowels of the military-industrial leviathan for physical violence. Air war feeds that craving while disarming us with its technical virtuosity and its remote-controlled, surreal impersonality.
Air war works because it displays naked aggression masked as defense, hard core furtively masquerading as family viewing in the American living room. It’s the secret fix that lets us look like good guys but act like bad guys; it’s the other face of the double-eagle, the predator behind the mask of the protector.
Air war is the white noise of a consumer society so narcotized that only violence makes us feel alive. If we no longer see it, hear it, or talk about it in the heart of empire, it’s ultimately only because for more than fifty years now, we’ve never really done without it.”
Den Of Thieves: Hedge-Hogs Go Into SAC-Remote Mode
Update: Deep Capture indicates that they have some emails proving insider trading, so any attempts to delete files/emails by SAC and other firms might not be any good, since the files just happen to implicate said firms in…insider trading.
Ah, the web we weave…etc. etc.
Terry Buhl at Hedge Fund-Implode.com reports that residents of hedgefund land are going into SAC-remote mode:
“Funds like Blue Ridge, Greenlight, Third Point, Glenview, and Maverick are cutting back on any contact with King Stevie. When we asked major players such as Jim Chanos and others if they’ve been pinging Stevie about a trade lately, you’ll get a very defensive `no.’ Why? Because word on the street is they all think FBI special agent BJ Kang, who is now dogging Stevie, has the goods to deliver the hammer soon in the form of an indictment or arrest for insider trading.
Extra measures are being taken to hire data-miners to comb through any and all emails firms and their trading consultants ever sent to anyone at SAC in an attempt to erase them from internet memory. According to traders we talked with, they are even going as far as getting out of trades that might look similar to any of Stevie’s. So it looks like running due diligence on your `SAC risk’ to prove to your investors that you’re clean – like Larry Robbins of Glenview capital just did – is the new `killing it’.”
My Comment:
Just to recap.
*Steven Cohen is the multibillionaire chief of legendary hedge-fund SAC, which sits at the top of the heap among funds. Cohen, famously reclusive, is said to have had only one bad year of trading.
Now he´s having a bad time from the FBI investigation of the insider-trading case against New York-based hedge-fund Galleon Group, which is proving to have teeth in it.
SAC has a history of elbows-and-knees-style trading practices, according to this 2003 Business Week article.
*The head of Galleon (which once managed $7 billion in assets), Sri Lanka-born Raj Rajaratnam was arrested, along with five others, on October 16 in a $17 million dollar insider-trading case brought by federal prosecutors and the FBI.
(The numbers vary: it´s $20.8 million, according to a later WSJ report, and $25 million in a NY Daily report)
*The case was unusual in that FBI agent B. J. Kang used wire-tapping for the investigation (normally used only in drug-related cases).
*The Galleon arrests were quickly followed by other arrests of traders, lawyers and hedge-fund managers on November 5, including one Zvi Goffer, who, as the brains of the insider network, was referred to as “the octopussy.” This brought the total number of arrests in the case to 14 (Correction on 12/29: I read 20 elsewhere) and added another $20 million to the fraud, already the biggest in Wall Street history since the days of Ivan Boeksy in the 1980s.
*On December 16, Steven Cohen´s ex-wife Patricia accused him of hiding millions from her and of insider trading in a 1986 merger when Cohen was a young trader at now-defunct broker, Gruntal.
*Indicted on December 17 (December 15, according to one source) by a Federal grand jury on multiple criminal counts of insider trading and securities fraud, Rajaratnam pleaded not guilty. Many of the charges against him carry upto 20 year prison sentences. The trial is expected to take place in the summer of 2010.
*The broker Gruntal has an interesting history, in that it seems to be the place where several of the biggest names on Wall Street (aka some of the most crooked players) crossed paths:
Bernie Madoff, Ezra Merkel (Madoff fund associate), Ivan Boesky (infamous 1980s trader), Michael Milken (junk bond innovator), Carl Icahn (famed and feared corporate raider), Steven Feinberg, ,…and yes, Steven Cohen:
From Deep Capture:
“Another of Madoff’s most important “feeders” was J. Ezra Merkin, who managed the Ariel Fund, which seems to have been designed specifically to raise money for Madoff’s fraudulent investment business. In this regard, the New York attorney general has described “Merkin’s deceit, recklessness, and breaches of fiduciary duty…”
While Merkin was “deceitfully” feeding the Madoff Ponzi, he was also a co-owner, along with Steve Feinberg, of Cerberus Capital Management, a fund named after the mythological three-headed dog that guards the gates of Hell.
Previously, Feinberg was a top trader for Michael Milken at Drexel Burnham Lambert. After Drexel, Mr. Feinberg moved (on Milken’s recommendation) to a brokerage called Gruntal & Company.”
Gruntal owed its existence to the generous junk bond finance that its parent company, the Home Group, received from Michael Milken. Its options department was founded by Carl Icahn, who later became a “prominent” billionaire owing to the junk bond finance that he received from Michael Milken.
When Icahn left Gruntal, he was replaced by a Milken crony named Ron Aizer, who proceeded, on the recommendation of Milken, to hire two traders.
The first trader hired by Aizer was, according to a reliable source, investigated by the SEC for trading on inside information that he received from Milken’s operation at Drexel Burnham Lambert. This trader is now a “prominent” billionaire and the manager of a well-known hedge fund. The second trader hired by Aizer is now also a “prominent” hedge fund manager, though he is not quite a billionaire. Both of these traders play important roles in the story of Dendreon. Carl Icahn, the founder of Gruntal’s options department, has a cameo role, too.”
There is more, of course, much more to the story, and many more names, including Michael Steinhardt, Marc Rich who was pardoned by Clinton for tax evasion and dealing with Iran against US law, and many others, but that would make this post far too long, so I will send you instead to this page.…and this...for now.
(Of course, we could ask why hedge-funds with an edge get to be prosecuted, while governments with the biggest edge of all don´t - but there, we won´t spoil the fun).
Sad SAC: Reuters Spikes Hedge Story On Complaints From Steve Cohen
Via Finalternatives:
“Reuters opted against running a story about alleged insider-trading on the part of SAC Capital Advisors founder Steven Cohen after Cohen himself complained about the news agency’s coverage, a journalism blog reports.
Cohen repeatedly called Devin Wenig, CEO of Thompson Reuters Markets Division and the second-in-command at Reuters parent Thomson Reuters, according to Talking Biz News. The hedge fund boss reportedly complained that the story, which the University of North Carolina blog reports would have been an “incremental” advance in the story of alleged insider-trading more than 20 years ago, was part of a pattern of persecution on the part of Reuters.
Wenig forwarded Cohen’s complaints to Reuters editor-in-chief David Schlesinger, who in turn referred the story to editors. Those editors debated the story, written by Matthew Goldstein, before deciding to kill it after three days.
“We make decisions on whether or not to run stories purely on journalistic grounds,” a Reuters spokesman told Talking Biz News.
Goldstein was the first reporter to cite the unsealed court documents that include explosive allegations against SAC and former SAC portfolio manager Ping Jiang. Cohen’s ex-wife, Patricia, last week sued him for $300 million, accusing him of insider-trading, perjury and hiding assets from her and from the authorities.”
My Comment
Looks like more confirmation of the Deep Capture thesis - that major newspapers are bending over backwards…and forwards….for the big hedge funds.
I notice that Hedge World has picked this story up….as well it should, it’s a big one… and very kindly links this blog, as well as the ever-alert zerohedge - the only MSM-touted blog I truly dig, mainly because I dig the characters on it.
Earlier, I blogged that Steven Cohen was also having problems with a militant ex-missus, who has gone public with allegations that he perjured himself, hid money from the government (here we are on Stevie’s side), and did other sorts of naughty things, like insider trading, that reclusive billionaires really shouldn’t do, not if they want to stay either reclusive or billionaires.
We have much more sympathy for Mr. Cohen, of course, than we do for the self-important twits and petty tyrants who fly their bylines at major newspapers with little respect for the body politic. At least, we understand simple greed. But the weedy vanity of the pen-pushing mob needs to be exposed for what it is.
Now comes Mr. Goldstein, who clearly suffers from the delusion that his job is to break important stories, no matter how exalted the net worth of the subjects. That didn’t sit well with his boss, and now the dirty laundry is out in the open.
Meanwhile, as if irate Sith ladies and spiked stories weren’t enough, there’s also a forced oral sex- cross-dressing- cum- sexual-harassment suit coming back from the past to haunt Sad SAC.
Who knew you could have so much fun without getting naked (shorted)?
Ilana Mercer On Subverting Natural Law
“Oblivious to the cameras – or perhaps for them – Amanda Knox, 22, and Raffaele Sollecito, 25, exchanged a slow, sensual kiss in full view of world media. Not far from where the two kissed lay the body of Meredith Kercher, the English girl with whom Knox had shared student accommodation in Perugia, Italy. Her throat slit, Meredith had expired in slow agony.”
I´m sure that opening, from a piece by the always incisive Ilana Mercer, got your attention.
Mercer writes here about an American “media mafia” baying in full-throated support of the murderous Amanda, as an innocent abroad, caught in the toils of Italy´s provincial justice system.
Now, we can always be counted on to get interested in anything at which media mobs bay…and this case proves to be interesting on other counts as well.
For one thing, I have a long-standing interest, nourished by the late William Roughhead, in true crime….but this go round, it´s not the murder itself that strikes me, but this passage in Mercer´s piece:
“In American (positive) law, procedural violations can get evidence of guilt – a bloodied knife or a smoking gun – barred from being presented at trial. More often than not, such procedural defaults are used to suppress immutable physical facts, thus serving to subvert the spirit of the (natural) law and justice.”
Mercer, I suppose, means that sometimes technical details of “how” trip up the more important objective of the law..which, she says, is to do justice. I´m tempted to quote Oliver Wendell Holmes to her (that it´s not the business of the law to do justice..however one construes that), but I´ll pass….
Instead, I´ll ask another question:
By distinguishing between procedural niceties of law and the ends of justice they ought to serve, isn´t Ms Mercer making a rather good argument for the use of extra-legal methods in conducting war….
And wouldn´t that allow for some tactics I am sure she´d condemn ,if they were taken up by one of her most frequent targets, Islamic terrorists?
Five-Minute Guide To Propaganda On The Web
I´m noticing some hilarious (to me) propaganda efforts on the web. Unfortunately, newbie media watchers are liable to be misled quite easily by them.
Here, I offer a quick and handy guide to spotting a propaganda effort, especially one emanating from Wall Street.
1. Predominance of name-calling. Does the writer offer arguments or name-calling? A few ripe names here and there are one thing. But if a piece is entirely devoid of reasoning and simply includes a list of epithets, such as, freak, weird, bizarre, crazy, loon, circus, tin-foil hat..it´s propaganda.
2. False Equivalence. Your man is caught committing an axe murder to which he ´fesses up on tape. He´s also an embezzler, a pathological liar, and kicks his dog. Their guy is an upstanding citizen on all counts, successful, philanthropic, intellectual, but he likes to party .. and got into a couple of fights once. No equivalence.
Trying to make false equivalences is the hall-mark of propaganda. A kid´s theft of a five dollar trinket is not the same offense as the monumental thieving that got us into this financial crisis. Anyone who makes these kinds of equivalences isn´t smart enough or honest enough to be trusted.
3. Talking points. When you hear the same set phrases tripping off the lips of everyone - then it´s propaganda. This doesn´t mean that a catchy phrase can´t be repeated quite innocuously. I´m also not talking about people who stay on message and keep repeating some thing to get it through to the public. I am talking about spinning things by choosing certain phrases. I´m talking about guilt by association. Say, you don´t have reason or evidence on your side. What do you do? You take a picture of Ted Bundy (or Hitler, or any one else), and then try to associate your enemy with that person.
4. Same old, same old. Watch out for the same faces showing up all over again. Propaganda is usually spun by a few favorites and any sidekicks and newbies whom they can con into joining their team. When you´re worried about someone´s honesty, try google. Go back and read the stuff they wrote. See when they wrote it. Do they have a consistent philosophy (changing your mind on a subject is a different thing). Do they have understandable positions..and a coherent intellectual frame work?
5. Separate the name-calling from the facts. Because some supposedly authoritative figure calls something a conspiracy, lies, or anything else doesn´t make it so. We´ve just seen from climate-gate how biased the peer review process is. Well, wiki is manipulated too. And some blogs, including this one, can show you hard evidence that publishing and the media are pretty much manipulated as well.
6. Look at the person´s record. There are a lot of late-comers to the scene claiming credit for things they didn´t discover, happen upon, or explain first. Revisionist history is all over the place. Look to see if the person credits sources - including opponents, enemies, people on the opposite side of the political spectrum, and obscure sources. That´s the hall mark of intellectual honesty. If they aren´t intellectually honest, they´re unlikely to be honest in other ways. If they repeatedly misattribute and twist history (remember, partial truths are the worst lies), watch out.
7. Look at the level of emotion and reason. Emotion..even passion..is good. But emotion without the ability to retract, qualify, substantiate, source, question, analyze, synthesize, and accurately assess, is pointless, dangerous and a possible sign of propaganda, or, at least, sound and fury minus substance. How polite is the person if contradicted? Do they answer criticism? (I´m talking about legitimate criticism, not flaming or obstructionism).
8. Beware of accusations whose significance you can´t assess. Do you know enough about business, accounting, law, and history to judge which mistake is serious and which isn´t? If you don´t, consult people who do. Don´t consult one person. Talk to several experts and get a feel for the issue.
9. Beware of innuendo that lacks relevance. Having a drunk-driving violation doesn´t disqualify you from discussing subsidies for the auto industry. Someone´s hairstyle, body type, love life, and hobbies are irrelevant. Anyone who harps on the personal stuff doesn´t have a case….unless the personal stuff is inextricable from their public professions. Even so, be wary of it.
10. Get to know the history of the players and the issues. Often, the same set of opponents go at each other over years. Don´t show up in year 10 and hope to figure out what´s going on.
11. Research the subject yourself, reading both sides (and any other side, as well). Talk to professionals and experts, but also talk to people on the outside. Sometimes, as with Wall Street, professionals can´t see something because they´re steeped in the ideology of their job.
12. Ethnic and religious solidarity, professional ideology, provincialism, racism, gender bias, nationalism, imperialism…it´s taboo to check for these. I do. When the advocates of a position all look a like, I ask myelf why. It´s not automatic that they´re therefore biased, but it could well be that they all see things the same way because they have in common the same life experience. Someone might use lofty arguments, but the real reason he picks on Greenspan, and not someone else, is because Greenspan is Jewish. And conversely, a Jewish person might pick on someone because he´s Catholic, and not for the reason he professes in public. This might be unconscious. Or it could be quite self-conscious but hidden under disingenous professions of transparence.
No one, especially not people in power, should be believed to be “above” this sort of bias. Major print, TV and online media are part of that power.
13. Money.
This, of course, should be number one on the list. Is the person being paid to say what they´re saying. If so, how much, by whom, and with what degree of disclosure. If they´re upfront, it might not be a problem. After all university professors are paid..but not all of them take positions in politics that have anything to do with their universities´positions. Also, there are many dishonest shills, friends, networks, and fellow travelers, who don´t get paid but still churn out reliable propaganda or PR on behalf of their favorite cause or person. I don´t mean that one should discount the testimony of friendly networks. Not at all. But if a groupie or fellow traveler can´t show evidence and reasoning for their support, then their statement is no more than a testimonial.
Ultimately, all this boils down to one thing. Skip the emotion and invective, and look for the evidence and logic. And don´t be intimidated by celebrity, “authoritative” sources, the popularity of a position or anything else.
Example: A journalist attacks naked short-selling. The industry defends itself by saying short selling is a good thing. Duh.
No one´s objecting to short selling..so why the strawman? Maybe because an attack on short selling would be easier to knock down than one on naked short selling?
Example: Critics of anthropogenic global warming are often criticized for attacking global warming, or climate change. But AGW is not any of these things. And critics aren´t usually denying the existence of anthropogenic global warming. What they´re objecting to is the claim that AGW is large enough to be a problem and the idea that, if so, there´s something human beings could do about it in the way of policies and economic interventions. That´s an entirely different kettle of fish. But climatistas won´t ever spell that out..
Open Letter To The Secretary-General Of UN
Wednesday, December 9th 2009, 2:07 AM ESTCo2sceptic (Site Admin)Dear Secretary-General,
Climate change science is in a period of ‘negative discovery’ - the more we learn about this exceptionally complex and rapidly evolving field the more we realize how little we know. Truly, the science is NOT settled.
Therefore, there is no sound reason to impose expensive and restrictive public policy decisions on the peoples of the Earth without first providing convincing evidence that human activities are causing dangerous climate change beyond that resulting from natural causes. Before any precipitate action is taken, we must have solid observational data demonstrating that recent changes in climate differ substantially from changes observed in the past and are well in excess of normal variations caused by solar cycles, ocean currents, changes in the Earth’s orbital parameters and other natural phenomena.
We the undersigned, being qualified in climate-related scientific disciplines, challenge the UNFCCC and supporters of the United Nations Climate Change Conference to produce convincing OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE for their claims of dangerous human-caused global warming and other changes in climate. Projections of possible future scenarios from unproven computer models of climate are not acceptable substitutes for real world data obtained through unbiased and rigorous scientific investigation.
Specifically, we challenge supporters of the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused climate change to demonstrate that:Variations in global climate in the last hundred years are significantly outside the natural range experienced in previous centuries;
Humanity’s emissions of carbon dioxide and other ‘greenhouse gases’ (GHG) are having a dangerous impact on global climate;
Computer-based models can meaningfully replicate the impact of all of the natural factors that may significantly influence climate…”
For the rest of the post and the complete list of signatories, see Climate realists.
Hedge-Fund Pays Naked Shorting Critic Byrne $5 Million
Copper River Partners (formerly Rocker Partners), the short-selling hedge-fund of David Rocker and Marc Cohodes, and associated entities have settled a case brought against them in 2005 by Patrick Byrne, CEO of embattled internet retailer Overstock, according to The Register.
Note: The suit doesn´t charge naked shorting, but defamation and illegal collusion with research analysts.
Copper River worked with a research firm, Gradient Analytics, that employed well-known financial journalist Herb Greenberg, one of the central figures in the story of the “capture” (corruption) of Wall Street journalists by speculators. Hedge funds stand accused of engaging in illegal collusion with journalists to drive down stock-prices of companies.
Last year, Gradient settled for a figure between $1.5-$2 million and issued an apology. Now comes this further vindication.
Despite the relatively trivial amount won in the Rocker case, $5 million, it´s noteworthy that the settlement does all the things victory in an actual court trial does, without the risk of losing on a technicality.
It also underscores something I´ve been suggesting for a while.
That public interest blogging and journalism alone isn´t enough.
It´s necessary to actually sue or inflict damage of some kind to score victories in these things.
Unfortunately, that´s usually not worth doing for people who aren´t wealthy. Vicariously, however, we “little people” can at least relish the spectacle of the behemoths of finance getting it in the rump.
And this case could prove to be a model for similar lawsuits by other embattled companies.
Still to come is Overstock´s suit against 12 prime broker-dealers (including Goldman Sachs), which will go to trial in late 2010. The suit charges an illegal stock market manipulation scheme.
Also in the works, the SEC, which dropped its investigation of Gradient in 2007, has now turned its sights on Byrne. Given Byrne´s charge of regulatory and media capture, there are some who see this as retaliatory.
The Devious Web (Correction)…
I notice that Gary Weiss commented on Patrick Byrne’ post on this blog, describing the post as a sample of obsessive behavior about naked short selling.
I have nothing to say to that, except that people who’ve had to battle a number of foes can sometimes become what’s called hypervigilant. I’ve certainly had the experience.
But that’s not my point here. I bring up the post only because Weiss writes like someone who’d never come across me before, duly (and snarkily) noting the “obscurity” of this blog. Well and good. No offense taken. We like our obscurity…it keeps us meek. And we’re told the meek will inherit the earth…or at least, what’s left of it after our oligarchs finish raping it.
However, I bring this up not to air any wound to my amour propre but because Judd Bagley the main reporter at award-winning business blog Deep Capture has accused Weiss of using sock puppets on wiki, and has posted screen shots to prove it. [It's not germane to this tale that too uses sock-puppets].
One of Weiss’s alleged sock-puppets on wiki, says , goes by the name, MantanMoreland (other names used there and elsewhere include Samiharris - at wiki - and Tom Sykes - at Daily Kos and other places).
Now, it so happens that when I was trying to get rid of my web-stalker, Tony R, I ran into someone called Mantanmoreland on the message boards that he haunted. Was this Weiss? Or was it someone else? You judge.
Correction: I have crossed out the section below where I have incorrectly identified Tony R as someone by the name of Villasenor, whose postings/m.o. seemed similar to me on many counts. He has denied it (see comment section). My post resumes after the crossed out section.
Interestingly, Ry__s also claims he is not Ry__s.[However, V doesn't deny that - like R__s he uses multiple aliases, some very similar, frequents the same message boards, and attacks similar things].Fair enough. I’ve added a correction. It makes no difference to my claim about R__ls or about Mantanmoreland, only it leaves me still in the dark who this person Ry__ls is.
Since the suit lists multiple aliases for him and some of these aliases resemble the multiple aliases that R___ls uses, their targets are similar, and their venues and forums often identical, it is an understandable error, if it’s one.
In any case, I will use R__ls name and strike through V’s, to avoid giving offense/slandering the wrong person….although it’s clear that neither of these two mind slandering other people.I’ve no axe to grind in the matter.
To recap: Vis a one-time stock-dealer who was fined by the NASD. He’s also a small-time racketeer (http://mindbodypolitic.com/2009/09/27/blogger-credibility/e http://listsearches.rootsweb.com/th/read/ARIZONA/2005-06/1118951523) and a former groupie of securities fraudster, Amr Elgindy and his Anthony Pacific site. (http://siliconinvestor.advfn.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=22945870). In whatever time is left over from that, he’s given to web stalking and harassing, for instance, of a (http://siliconinvestor.advfn.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=15095618mber)Just to be clear, I am agnostic about the merits of any of his claims about, who might be doing something illegal, for all I know. I mention this just to show that has a history of this sort of thing.
[With no cause at all, Tony R has also libeled Georgetown University professor, James Angel, because of a financial film he made that that didn’t conform to his ideas (as far as I recall the subject).
Anyway, I approached a number of of sites (such as, Indymedia, KYCNews, and the SEC complaints board) to have them remove Tony R’s libels and to find out how to make him desist. It turned out he was in Guatemala, so it would be hard for me to do anything legally about him. I was also told he was likely to just switch aliases and ratchet up the harassment, if I went after him. In fact, whenever I mentioned his most common alias name, Tony R, he would show up like lightning on this board and spam me (that’s why I’m not using his complete name).
Now here’s the interesting part. While I was trying to find out more about Ry__s, I came across an irate exchange between him (under one of his many aliases http://www.chillingeffects.org/uncat/notice.cgi?NoticeID=1748) and someone called Mantanmoreland. Note: it was on a message-board (not on wiki).
I wrote to Mantanmoreland (it was in February 2008), asking if he knew anything more about Tony R. and we went back and forth about it for some two weeks, exchanging around two dozen emails, most of which I still have. Those emails went under my name. In them I explained that I’d become the unwitting target of this Tony R, solely because I’d been hired to write a book with the president of a company that Tony R. was fixated about.
Here’s my question. Deep Capture says unequivocally that Mantanmoreland is Gary Weiss. Weiss denies it equally flatly. Now, I exchanged dozens of emails only a year ago with Mantanmoreland about a situation that he could hardly forget, since he had his gripe with Tony R too. But Weiss’ recent blog post seems to indicate that he has no idea who I am.
That leaves only one possibility. Either Weiss or Bagley is in error (to put it as mildly as possible)…
Which is it? And what would that mean? And does that have anything to do with the recent (thwarted) attempt to delete my wiki page?
Added: As a matter of fact, by assessing the various reactions to this post (who posted, where and on what forums), I clarified the answer to the above question to my satisfaction…
Rewriting of History Underway
Taibbi on the tea-parties, being sloppy with his facts again, all in the name of rhetoric:
“It’s amazing, literally amazing to me, that it wasn’t until Obama pushed through a package containing a massive public works package and significant homeowner aid that conservatives took to the streets. In other words, it wasn’t until taxes turned into construction jobs and mortgage relief that working and middle-class Americans decided to protest. I didn’t see anyone on the street when we forked over billions of dollars to help JP Morgan Chase buy Bear Stearns. And I didn’t see anyone on the street when Hank Paulson forked over $45 more billion to help Bank of America buy Merrill Lynch, a company run at the time by one of the world’s biggest assholes, John Thain. Moreover I didn’t see any street protests when the government agreed to soak up hundreds of billions in “troubled assets” from Citigroup, a company that just months later would lend out a jet furnished with pillows upholstered with Hermes scarves to former chief Sandy Weill so that he could vacation in Mexico over Christmas.”
My Comment:
Er, Matt. It was the Dems who rolled over for the bail-outs. It was the Republicans, the Southern Republicans, who stymied it first time round…until they had their arms twisted.
Before you got your consciousness raised on the subject several years late, it was right libertarians who were objecting most strongly to the financializing of the economy…..
The Penson video post wasn’t as big a deal as it was made out to be, to my mind. But this post and his debate on 9-11 with David Griffin (at Alternet) do betray some ignorance…
Update:
Louis Proyect has a review of “Dime’s Worth of Difference” (Cockburn and St. Clair) that has a precis that will disabuse anyone inclined to believe the Democrats are more people-friendly than the Republicans…
Taibbi’s Penson Video..(Correction)
Correction:
(10/12/09, Monday)I should have said “allegedly faked” video. I stand corrected. No weasel words, Mr. Byrne (see Byrne’s comment below).
I often post stories on which I have no comment or opinion one way or other, because I haven’t followed them, but think readers might like to. In my last several posts, in fact, I defended Deepcapture’s, Taibbi’s, and Zerohedge’s work, in spite of occasional alleged or real errors.
But the reason I linked to Wenzel’s blog is because Wenzel’s post is pretty funnily written, and I don’t follow Taibbi, except occasionally. I didn’t like his attacks on David Griffin, where he exposed himself as somewhat ignorant. Taibbi also doesn’t attribute people (apparently others have that complaint too). But arrogance and ignorance in one area don’t equate to being incorrect in another.
I’ll add a separate post with the rather long back and forth between Taibbi and his various critics and defenders. I went by Penson’s dismissal of the video, but I’ve since noted that Penson has some history that is troubling and tends to makes its dismissal less credible.
So what else might be construed as “weasel-worded” in my recent blogging?
Perhaps my rather neutral approach to the Byrne vs. Weiss feud, still going strong. Well, I’m neutral about it - who stalked whom, etc. etc. - because I don’t know the ins and outs of it. I had my own experience of being harassed, and can barely keep up with the details of that, let alone someone else’s stalking experience.
I also don’t know which of the two abuses of the market - “stock pumping and money laundering” (criticized by the Wall Street “captured” media) or “naked-shorting” (criticized by Byrne, Davidson “ “Bob O’Brien,” and many others, including Taibbi) - is the more momentous.
As a libertarian, I think naked-shorting is, but that’s only my opinion. Which is why I’ve been neutral. My sense is both abuses are real and extensive.
Likewise, I really don’t know enough about what the SEC’s investigation of Overstock is about. Could it be punitive?
Quite likely, given all we know about the SEC. But does that mean everything else the SEC does is incorrect? Unlikely.
Does that mean what Byrne wrote about “naked short selling” is incorrect? No.
Final point. I tend not to like shrill personal attacks.
That’s a deferral to civility and complexity, not weasel-wordedness.
ORIGINAL POST:
On Matt Taibbi getting suckered by a “faked” (quotes added for now) naked shorting video:
“Carney is a sharp guy, and he has Taibbi nailed on this one, but, I repeat, naked short selling, like a lot of Wall Street, is a very complex game. Carney in some of his other posts suggests there is nothing wrong with naked short-selling, he is off on that one. Some of it can be justified as simple market maker operations, but some of it is major league abuse by very clever insiders, which is the point Taibbi is taking, but doesn’t have the knowledge to back up properly.
Anyway, once you sit down an analyze the entire naked short selling thing, you realize that the bad naked short selling would go away if the SEC would stop issuing regulations that protect the bad guys. Basic common sense and commercial law would put an end to the bad naked short selling, real fast.
Bad naked short selling exists because there is a power source to manipulate, in this case the SEC, and the bad guys are running circles around the SEC.
What you want to understand naked short sales for yourself? Well pull up a chair, give yourself five hours and read this. It’s a great first step.
But, I tell you, it will be much more fun watching Taibbi attempt to pull the bayonet out of his brain.”
More by Robert Wenzel, at Economic Policy Journal.
Berlusconi Immunity Thrown Out by Constitutional Court
Italy’s top court, the Constitutional Court, has thrown out a law granting immunity from prosecution to the president, Silvio Berlusconi:
“The law overturned Wednesday was pushed through by Berlusconi’s conservative coalition in 2008 when he faced separate trials in Milan for corruption and tax fraud tied to his Mediaset broadcasting empire. It granted immunity from prosecution while in office to the country’s four top office holders — the premier, the president of the republic and the two parliament speakers.
The proceedings against Berlusconi were suspended as a result of the law, drawing accusations that it was tailor-made for the premier.
The corruption trial is particularly threatening because, in the meantime, the premier’s co-defendant has been convicted of accepting a bribe to lie in court to protect Berlusconi in another case.
Still, even if convicted, the premier would not be obliged to resign and could simply appeal, as sentences in Italy are usually not served until all avenues of appeal are exhausted.”
UK Military Protocol for Security & Counter-Intel Ops
An important document on how the British state deals with what it perceives as security threats:
“This significant, previously unpublished document (classified “RESTRICTED”, 2389 pages), is the UK military protocol for all security and counter-intelligence operations.
The document includes instructions on dealing with leaks, investigative journalists, Parliamentarians, foreign agents, terrorists & criminals, sexual entrapments in Russia and China, diplomatic pouches, allies, classified documents & codewords, compromising radio and audio emissions, computer hackers—and many other related issues.
The document, known in the services as the “JSP 440″ (”Joint Services Protocol 440″), was referenced by the RAF Digby investigation team as the protocol justification for the monitoring of Wikileaks, as mentioned in “UK Ministry of Defence continually monitors WikiLeaks: eight reports into classified UK leaks, 29 Sep 2009.”Read more at Wikileaks on UK protocols for dealing with security threats of all kinds, from investigative journalists looking for disclosure of official documents to Chinese officials seeking “influence” (there’s an extensive section describing Chinese intelligence gathering).
Letterman Targeted in Extortion Plot By CBS News Employee
Update: Favourite Letterman-blackmail quote so far is by Stephanie Gutman, at The Telegraph, UK:
“But this follows on the heels of the Travolta family extortion affair, so it points out one of the pitfalls of fame and wealth, that one is continually surrounded with a mosquito cloud of predators trying to draw blood. And even the creepiest, snarkiest, fake-sincere liberal talk show host gets my sympathy for having to live with that.”
“Three weeks ago, Letterman said, he got in his car early in the morning and found a package with a letter saying, “I know that you do some terrible, terrible things and that I can prove that you do some terrible things.” He acknowledged the letter contained proof.
He said it was terrifying “because there’s something insidious about (it). Is he standing down there? Is he hiding under the car? Am I going to get a tap on the shoulder?”
Letterman said he called his lawyer to set up a meeting with the man, who threatened to write a screenplay and a book about Letterman unless he was given money. There were two subsequent meetings, with the man given a phony $2 million check at the last one. Letterman joked it was like the giant ceremonial check given to winners of golf tournaments.”
He told the audience that he had to testify before a grand jury on Thursday.
“I was worried for myself, I was worried for my family,” he said. “I felt menaced by this, and I had to tell them all of the creepy things that I had done.”
He said “the creepy stuff was that I have had sex with women who work for me on this show. My response to that is yes, I have. Would it be embarrassing if it were made public? Yes, it would, especially for the women.”My Comment:
What an irony (but not an oddity) that the comedian who was making vulgar jokes about Sarah Palin’s minor daughter - presumably, to prove how trashy the Palins are - has a history himself.
Letterman admitted to numbers of affairs with co-workers, while revealing a black-mail plot from another CBS news employee, whose name hasn’t been confirmed yet. It’s interesting that this critic of the Palins* - who’ve been married for years and who had children within their marriage - married his long-term girlfriend only in March this year, though he had a child with her in 2003.
This is not a judgment about Letterman’s lifestyle. That’s his business. It’s a judgment about his good sense and his psychological motivations. You’d think the man would zip up about anyone else’s family or sexual history.
File this away as another instance of the corruption of the media. In recent posts, I’ve talked about sexual blackmail as one way in which public figures are ruined or hounded out of office. We’ve had the example of Eliot Spitzer, most famously.
The other point to note is that the perpetrator is a newsman (and not just any newsman - an Emmy award winning CBS producer and crime reporter for “48 hours.” Although this has nothing to do with the “deep capture” of the media in the financial story, it does add to the evidence that the media really is the problem, at every level. When reporters are so intent on making their names that they’re prepared to “out” public (or even less than public) figures over personal matters that are irrelevant to any public interest, why should we be surprised that one of them takes a more direct route and uses the information to make money from his target directly?
*Note: As I’ve said before, I’m not a fan of Sarah Palin’s but dislike the way she was treated.
Matt Taibbi Shills for Neocons?
Well, what a surprise. Not.
Taibbi is a very funny writer and if this excerpt at Alternet is any indication, his new book bashing the 9-11 movement is a great read.
But, if the excerpt is any indication, it’s also a superficial read.
Until the moment I saw this piece, I was undecided about Taibbi. I’ve noted in earlier posts that he seemed to jump far too eagerly on the pair that cooked up the derivative deals that got AIG in a mess I noted that that emphasis steered the focus away from Hank Greenberg, AIG’s corrupt boss. It was the first thing that made me wonder about Taibbi.
[Added on 9/24 10:16 AM: Greenberg is central to the 9-11 story. AIG has a long history that goes back to US corporate and political espionage in China and the CIA's involvement in that. Much of the American housing, medicare, medicaid, and financial industry has been corrupted by nothing more than elaborate versions of old fashioned insurance hustles. No wonder the company at the center of the whole financial crisis is an insurance giant]
The next red flag was the rapid way in which he shot to the head of the Goldman Sachs bashing (almost a decade after any half-awake journalist in New York should have been alert) and only after GS’s name was pretty much mud, no thanks to the New York media. It smacked of damage control and gate-keeping.
The 9-11 movement bashing seems to confirm it. Read through the Alternet piece and you’ll see it’s a mass of non-sequitors, assumptions, strawmen, and red herrings. He uses his writing talents to divert and mislead. He’s the latest in a series of popular names jumping onto the 9-11-bashing bandwagon, even from the libertarian side. I’m naming no names, but you know who they are.
Here’s one single thing any of them have to explain. Why were they all so late in coming to the Goldman story? Why is it that the people who got it right about Goldman, the financial crisis, torture, and everything else…are also those who do NOT accept the official story?
Doesn’t that imply that the world view that’s been most accurate and prescient over the last several years is the worldview that doubts the 9-11 story? The skeptics simply have a powerful and credible hypothesis that makes far better sense of things than the 9-11 fundamentalists.
TAIBBI:
“The 9/11 Truth movement is really distinguished by a kind of defiant unfamiliarity with the actual character of America’s ruling class. In 9/11 lore the people who staff the White House, the security agencies, the Pentagon and groups like PNAC and the Council of Foreign Relations are imagined to be a monolithic, united class of dastardly, swashbuckling risk-takers with permanent hard-ons for Bourne Supremacy-style “false flag” and “black bag” operations, instead of the mundanely greedy, risk-averse, backstabbing, lawn-tending, half-clever suburban golfers they are in real life. It completely misunderstands the nature of American government — fails to see that the old maxim about “the business of America is business” is absolutely true, that the federal government in this country is really just a lo-rent time-share property seasonally occupied by this or that clan of financial interests, each of which takes its 4-year turn at the helm tinkering with the tax laws and regulatory code and the rates at the Fed in the way it thinks will best keep the money train rolling.The people who really run America don’t send the likes of George Bush and Dick Cheney to the White House to cook up boat-rocking, maniacal world-domination plans and commit massive criminal conspiracies on live national television; they send them there to repeal PUCHA and dole out funds for the F-22 and pass energy bills with $14 billion tax breaks and slash fuel efficiency standards and do all the other shit that never makes the papers but keeps Wall Street and the country’s corporate boardrooms happy. You don’t elect politicians to commit crimes; you elect politicians to make your crimes legal.”
And here’s a face-off between Taibbi and theologian David Griffin on 9-11. It’s not pretty. Taibbit comes off as ignorant, belligerent and vulgar, which is unfortunate because he’s a talented writer and has some good instincts. But he’s no match in intellect or the ability to argue for David Griffin, whom I know from his academic writing on process theology.
I’m a strong supporter of 9-11 “truthers” but don’t write on the subject myself for several reasons -
*Keeping track of the story is hard enough; keeping track of the various splinter 9-11 groups is impossible.
*Without absolute mastery of the details, you’re liable to get waylaid by bogus information on the web.
*There are enough people working on the story without my jumping in.But I admit, I’m sorely tempted at times like this…
Ground Hog Ben: Fed Declares Depression Over…
I expanded an earlier post into a diatribe:
That’s it folks. Wrap it up. This here recession…er.. correction…er.. depress…oh, whatever..is over. Time to put away your pens and papers, boys and girls.
Professor Bernanke says there’s going to be no test. You hear that? Or maybe, there’ll be one little teeny-weeny take-home. Better yet, you just get to write in and ask for whatever grade you want.
Billy Gross, Bobby Rubin, and Jamie Dimon, you boys get A’s, as usual.
(The rest of you clods better learn to to suck up if you want A’s).
Everyone else gets B’s….
No one fails. Ain’t life great?
Whew. That depression stuff was so, well, depressing. Glad it’s over.
There. That wasn’t so bad, after all, was it, seeing as how it was supposed to be the worst one in half-a-century and the sky was falling and we were all going to live in the Ozarks or Patagonia on canned peas and raw mackerel until we got raptured up… and really all that happened was some green paper got printed and we had to listen to a lot of speeches about schools an’ stuff in Barackistani (not as weird a lingo as Bushlish, but just as daft) and then, bingo, everything’s back to normal again.
Yessir. The economy is healthy. Grade A, certified organic, flu-vaccinated healthy. A bit weak. But wholesome. Except for jobs, that is. No jobs.
What kind of recovery is that, you ask?
What kind? It’s the new deadbeat, can’t-get-a job, rocketing-inflation, trashed-currency, can’t-sell-my-house, can’t-make-my-payments, bankrupt-mafia-government, kazillions-in-debt, trade-warring-with-China recovery - that’s what it is. Glad you asked.
It’s kind of a new thing. No one’s really tried it so far, but they’re doing it in Europe, we hear. And maybe a bit of it in Asia. But it’s back here in the US of A that we’ve got the whole thing down. Right here in Washington. And from now until the economy gets really going, we’ll be getting the full Bernanke on it - at least, that’s the buzz.
Yep. Professor Ben’s all but promised us he’s going to be inflating grades all around this time.
No F’s. No D’s. Heck, no C’s. It’s A’s and B’s all the way. That’s the way they do it in Princeton. It’s a self-esteem thing.
Like that pep talk back on March 16, when Ben first spotted those green shoots. Now it’s September15 (exactly six months later), and Ben says the recession is over.
He says it’s all in the numbers from the National Bureau of Economic Research. The numbers say the recession ended this summer or fall. Man, the things they can predict these days.
Ole Ground Hog Ben. Puts his head out and the sun comes up. Amazing. Who knew you could even keep score of an economy?
Kind of like a lacrosse game at Princeton. Swat. Swat. Swat Take that, Harvard.
Of course, being a Princeton professor and religious and a pretty nice guy from all we’ve heard, Ben couldn’t bring himself to tell an outright whopper. He let the truth out dribble-drabble at the end.
Something about “impaired credit”…. and “head winds”…. and “digging out from personal debt”…. and “ongoing adjustments”….. and “unwinding massive stimulus efforts”…. and “risking igniting inflation”…. and “lingering high unemployment”…. and “sluggish outlook”…. and “higher gas prices” and…. “consumer reluctance”…. and “widespread job insecurity”…. and “significantly impaired credit”…. and “less lending”…. and “higher costs”…. and “deep freeze in credit”…. and “fearing defaults.”
But they put that way down in the report, after paragraph 5 (”Bernanke: Recession is Over,” Kansas City Star, Sept 15, 2009).
Before that, they just had him muttering something about the economy “underperforming”. ‘ Yeah, underperforming. Like the old geezer just needs a shot of Viagra.
But don’t let any of that bad stuff worry your little head, ’cause you know, the numbers say we’re okay. The numbers say the recession…er correction..er depress…oh, whatever…is over.
And numbers don’t lie, you know.
Like August retail sales. That went up by 2.7% over July. (I know, I know, cash-for-clunkers, high gas prices, blah blah blah. Gimme a break. It was still up wasn’t it?)
And the ISM numbers are good too.
August PMI (Purchasing Manufacturers Index) came in at at 52.9, 4 percent points higher than July.
(A number over 50 indicates an expanding economy. Below 50 is a contracting economy. This is the first time since June 2007 that the number’s been over 50).
Oh you don’t say!
And New Orders came in at the highest reading since December 2004. You know what that means. Businesses are stocking up. GDP is on it’s way up.
Woo-hoo. Ride that gravy train.Ka-ching! Bada boom!
Hold just a moment though.
What’s this Non-Manufacturing Index stuff here?
Oh, you mean those bozos in medicine and law and teaching and real estate and construction and finance and retail?
Yeah, consumers. You know, guys who consume stuff. That stuff the manufacturing guys are producing. Seems like they still aren’t doing so good. So who’s going to buy all the stuff?
Not consumers. They’re cutting back.
You don’t know? That’s what comes of being a grade-inflated B student.
I bet Bob Rubin knows. And Jamie Dimon. And Bill Gross. And Warren Buffett.
And all their hedge-fund managing, private-equity-directing, leveraged-buying-out, sovereign-wealthy speculator buddies lining up to start the casino all over again.
They know whose money they’re using to do it too.
Hey, Professor Bernanke. Can we see you outside class? We have some questions….Note:
The indicators that are looking positive (ISM number, retails sales, the price of copper) are all numbers that could reflect no more than
1. The business cycle restocking of inventories 2. Cash for clunkers 3. The beginning of the school year 4. State purchases/investments being made by China in an effort to get rid of dollars
Stalinist “Libertarian” Fan Mail
The morning mail can always be guaranteed to bring something out of the fever swamps. This one calls itself libertarian. But it shows every sign of a Stalinist disposition, down to the puerile and quasi-racist invective. I’ll parse it after I’ve had breakfast. Just a small sample of the abuse you get for pouring yourself near full time into enlightening people and supporting unpopular positions…when they are unpopular. This one doesn’t even write me a mail under his own name. And so far, his contribution to libertarianism seems to be confined to writing apoplectic email. Hmmm. I am usually less annoyed by such things. I really should go and get some coffee…
“It seems that your beloved barefoot snowbilly from Wasilla has not quite made it through “The Language of Empire” http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2009/09/07/from-the-people-and-sarah-palin-who-brought-us-the-iraq-war/ Do you still defend this vile, statist thug? Will I STILL see more stupid LRC posts in the near future? I have a question. If I asked you to choose a position on the the Socialist-Corporatist TARP Program (I call it the TARD program, for obvious reasons), would your position be closest to… A) “This whole situation is a perfect demonstration of why “doing nothing” and letting failing companies fail would have been much better than sinking valuable money and resources into them.” or B) “inaction is not an option we have got to shore up our economy… ultimately what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the healthcare reform that is needed to help shore up our economy um helping the… oh - its gotta be all about job creation too - shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So healthcare reform and reducing taxes and reigning in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americans and trade we’ve got to see trade as opportunity not as competitive um scary thing but one in five jobs being created in the trade sector today we we’ve got to look at that as more opportunity - all those things under the umbrella of job creation - this bailout is a part of that.” I will give you a hint. The first statement was made by a principled Libertarian, and the second statement was made by an idiot. What if that idiot also “managed a 6 percent increase in part of the state’s budget, as well as being responsible for a windfall tax on oil companies—much like that proposed by Democrats” and gave their state “some of the highest resource taxes in the world”? Do you still defend this vile, statist thug?”
My Comment:
First. Nowhere have I written that I support Sarah Palin’s positions. I’ve clearly stated “I am no fan of hers”. I thought she was unqualified…besides having some criticisms of her personal choices that may or may not be relevant to her candidacy as Vice-President. As a long-time (since 1991) antiwar activist, I obviously don’t support her pro-war position. But let’s see, exactly who were the choices? McCain, Biden, Obama…yes , wow, a bunch of peaceniks, all. I supported only one person this time around - that’s Ron Paul. In 2004, I supported any third party candidate, including Nader. Not because of lack of principle, or because I agree with all of Nader’s positions, but on the principle of support for any one opposed to the status quo. I stand by those positions.
I was opposed to the war in Yugoslavia, when many people thought it was a good war. I opposed the First Gulf War and the Second, as well as the sanctions, when hardly anyone talked about them (in 1995). I’ve signed petitions/letters in support of people as different in their politics as Norman Finkelstein and Ward Churchill, on one hand, and Hans Hoppe on the other. I’ve written in support of Jerry Falwell when he was attacked personally. I also defended Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Sonia Gandhi when they were attacked personally. And, I defended Sarah Palin. No candidate for public office (or anyone else) for that matter, deserves to be trashed personally in such a racial, sexual, and classist way.
Demonizing them as though they were each a mini-Attila the Hun is an exercise in silliness. These politicians are run-of-the-mill people, no worse nor better than those around them. I will bet “principled libertarian” above would never dream of criticizing the people pushing the war on terror - the neo-conservative cabal running the government. Oh no. That would never happen.
And I’ll bet he wouldn’t call them the translation of “Wasilly snowbilly” that would apply to neo-conservatives.
I wrote about Goldman Sachs - more than two years ago - “Why It’s Time to Sell Goldman.”And I’ve written dozens of pieces and posts about them since. A piece I wrote last year was the first to tie Goldman to AIG (”Putting Lipstick on an AIG”). And I took TARP apart almost as soon as it came out.
But I guess, actually reading what people wrote would be asking too much from the underworld of internet forums.
Sorry to be so dour. But reading this sort of thing, I wonder why anyone should bother. Why inform people about the malignant lot at the top? The people at the bottom seem pretty malignant too…
On my darker days, I wonder if they don’t deserve each other…
Norman Podhoretz Admits Liberalism is a Religion..
From The New York Times blog, a round-up of reasons why American Jews have identified so much with liberalism.
There’s a moment of candid speaking from the arch neo-conservative himself:
“Liberalism, he [Norman Podhoretz] argues, “is not, as has often been said, merely a necessary component of Jewishness: it is the very essence of being a Jew. Nor is it a ‘substitute for religion,’ it is a religion in its own right, complete with its own catechism and its own dogmas and obdurately resistant to facts that undermine its claims and promises.”
Michael Medved, the conservative cultural critic, goes past ’support for Israel’ as the irreducible core of Jewish political belief:
“Jews, like all Americans, vote not so much in favor of politicians they admire as they vote against causes and factions they loathe and fear. Jews fear the GOP as the “Christian party,” and as the sole basis of Jewish identity involves rejection of Christianity, Jews will continue to reject - Republicans and conservatism.”
This is territory most non-Jewish writers would hesitate to explore for fear of being labeled anti-Semitic. But the more relevant question might be whether it’s completely accurate. A liberal commentator, Ron Rosenbaum diverges. He has another explanation of Jewish liberalism:
“I won’t say that it isn’t difficult, that there aren’t contradictions with being Jewish and liberal, but I’d rather associate my political orientation with those who supported the Civil Rights movement than with those who have yet to repudiate the racism behind the Southern strategy.”
Another writer, Robert McCain, adds the suburban-urban divide to the mix:
“Most American Jews are fundamentally urban in their orientation, while most American conservatives are fundamentally rural.”
My Comment:
It’s an interesting piece to read, but for me it raises a question about definitions. Most Jewish people might identify with liberalism. But is liberalism itself identified with Jewishness? I may be wrong, but surely it’s not. And surely a great deal of the purported venom of liberalism against Christianity arises from Gentiles.... from former Christians….from lapsed Christians…or from cultural or secularized Christians who loathe the religious aspects of their culture.
Duvall ‘Fesses Up To Bark, Not Bite
Now Mike Duvall admits to “inappropriate story-telling” but denies having had an affair with either of the two lobbyists. That denial is seconded by Ms. Barsuglia. The man to whom he told the story now denies hearing it. He wasn’t paying attention, he says. Duvall talks a lot.
We were wondering ourselves…..
If the denials are accurate, it looks like Ms. Barsuglia and her family might have a case for defamation.
We’re all agog.
And we have another question: Just what level of IQ does it take to be a California assemblyman?
We’re all agog about that too.
Many’s the time we’ve seen a female employee slandered for no more than being more personable and competent than the males around her. Her career is then almost sure to be attributed to her sexual wiles.
If Duvall is any indication, there seem to be married men whose rich imaginations don’t come equipped with the ethical compass that tells them that dragging your associates into your adolescent fantasies does irreparable damage to their professional credibility and personal reputation.
If the denials hold water, Ms. Barsuglia should be paid substantially for the damage done to her career and her family’s sensibilities.
Of course, the denials may not hold water.
White Hats Telling White Lies
My piece on Team Obama’s propaganda effort on behalf of its economic interventions,
“Green Shoots and White Lies,” is up at Lew Rockwell this morning.I’m posting the part that sums up a few of the biggest whoppers the administration is pushing to get those old animal spirits juiced up again. Will the PR work? Well, no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the public. Tell a lie big enough and tell it often enough and people will buy it.
White Hats Telling White Lies:
Fudge One:
Goldman Sachs had a great quarter, making a profit of $3.5 billion and the government made $1.4 billion on its investment in Goldman Sachs. The government also got a 15% return on its investment in the eight biggest banks.
Truth:
Goldman had a great quarter only because it moved its reporting calendar to cut out December 2008, when it had a loss. And the government only made a profit on the TARP money it gave to Goldman because
* It funneled more money via the bailout of insurance giant AIG to AIGs counterparties, including Goldman (which took in $13 billion of the AIG money).
* Warren Buffett made a pre-TARP financial investment in Goldman.
* Goldman got the benefit of exceptionally low interest rates from the government at the expense of savers and to the benefit of borrowers.
* Goldman was issued FDIC-guaranteed bonds.Without that extra welfare thrown at it, Goldman would actually be broke, not showing a profit. Ditto for the other banks.
Fudge Two:
The labor market is getting better because jobs are growing. The unemployment rate fell from 9.5% in June to 9.4% in July.Truth:
That number only shows a slowing in the growth of unemployment. And even that small improvement has been offset by other aspects of the labor market that are worsening quite sharply:
* The duration of unemployment is increasing
* Temporary jobs are declining.
* The percentage of the eligible population receiving unemployment insurance has increased (0.1 percentage point to 4.7%. by September).
* The four-week moving average of initial claims has moved to its highest level in a month.Even when jobs have been added, they’ve been created by government spending and they’ve been in areas like education, health, and government. In the purely private economy, in manufacturing, construction and retail, job losses have been huge. (“Brown manure not green shoots,” Nouriel Roubini, Forbes, July 9, 2009.)
Note: Recent improvement in the ISM (Institute of Supply Management) Index that signals expansion of production (and thus hiring) also needs to be discounted against the huge price inflation an increasingly pressured dollar will entail. That’s beside the effects of a hike in the Federal Funds rate that’s bound to follow a dollar-crashing scenario.
Note: The ISM is a leading indicator of executive expectations for future productions, orders, inventories, hiring, and deliveries.
Fudge Three:
Increases in real personal income in April and May will increase consumer spending.
Truth:
The increases were caused by tax-rebates and unemployment benefits kicking in, and most of it was saved, not spent (80 cents on the dollars). There was a temporary lift in consumer spending, but it petered out quickly. And as unemployment rises, benefits decline, and credit tightens in the future, consumption will decline even further
Fudge Four:
The bank stress tests came out better than expected.
The bank stress tests led Ben Bernanke to conclude that nearly all of the banks had enough capital to absorb higher losses should the economy worsen, and that the Treasury stood ready to provide more.
(AFP, “Hope is alive for green shoots,” May 11, 2009)
Truth:
The bank stress tests used an unemployment figure of 10.3% (the most adverse case). But unemployment is likely to be 11% and above by next year. If you take into account discouraged and partially employed workers, some economists suggest the figure is more likely to be 16%.
Another point. The stress tests overlooked all the other ways in which the government was paying for the banks, through FDIC guarantees and cheaper loans, for instance.Fudge Five:
The housing market is improving.
In July, the Pending Home Sales Index was up 3.2%. Another improvement was in the value of U.S. homes. In the second quarter that number fell year-on-year (the 10th consecutive quarterly decline), but it fell by a smaller amount than in the previous quarter, for the first time since 2007.
Truth:
The improvement in home sales has been mostly in the lower end of the market and it largely reflects foreclosure sales and government credit, not real improvement in the market.
The slowdown in price decline has been offset by negatives in other areas:
* 23% of all homeowners owe more on their mortgages than their houses are worth.
* 22% of all home sales nationwide in June were foreclosure resales.
* 29.2 percent of all homes sold in June were sold for less than the owners originally paid.(Portfolio.com August 11, 2009)
Loan problems aren’t confined to subprime. Prime mortgages are going underwater too.
Meanwhile, the market also has to deal with the decline in commercial real estate, which is undergoing one of the greatest contractions in retail in decades. Rents, even in the best urban shopping districts, have been declining.
(Colliers International Spring 2009 Retail Report, May 14, 2009).
Beyond commercial real estate, there are also all the other plagues about to visit us, when personal loans, auto loans, and student loans tighten over the coming years.
Bottom line?
There is no real basis for sustained optimism about the economy yet.California Assemblyman Duvall’s Hot Mic Loses Him His Job (Updated)
Update:
Following up on whether there’ll be a focus on lobbyist-lawmaker corruption and what favors (if any) were exchanged between Duvall and the lobbyists he’s purported to have sex with, it seems that, fortunately, progressive groups are indeed trying to force a broader investigation of the subject.
Meanwhile, one of the two married lobbyists who are allegedly the subject of Duvall’s graphic boasts, Heidi De John Barsuglia, denies the affair (which means little at this point), and Sempra Energy, the giant utility company that employs her, has issued the usual public statement about how seriously it takes such charges. TPMMuckraker has the go-to round-up of the situation, no seamy detail left unmentioned.
Duvall voted several times against renewable energy measures (that Sempra also opposes), but since that’s a broadly-supported GOP position, it’s unclear that there was a quid-pro-quo in any of it.
My Comment:
I don’t cover sex scandals here unless they raise some sort of ideological point or tie in to the issue of blackmail and media/political control. But coming so soon after the salacious Vanity Fair piece on Palin, I wanted to post this one, which has at its center a California assemblyman and strong “family values” defender ‘outed’ by a mic he didn’t realize was on.
I’d really like to see if the media will treat a male conservative law-maker caught bragging publicly about his adulterous affairs with two lobbyists as viciously as they treated a female conservative governor who hasn’t been caught doing anything at all (she’s been accused not very successfully of some less than major ethical infractions).
Duvall will get a lot of flak for being
a. a hypocrite (which, as I’ve noted before, he may not necessarily be)
b. an idiot (which he clearly is)
c. crude/odious (check)
d. deceitful (check)But I doubt if anyone will post photoshopped pictures that defame him, the way Sarah Palin was defamed.
Why won’t they? Something to do with the strange misogyny that conservative women with children and pro-life views elicit from liberal women. I’ve noticed it before….
The female of the species is [sometimes] more vicious than the male…especially to other females.
Let’s see how the media treats the actual news in this story - Duvall’s unprofessional relationship with lobbyists and what political favors he might have done them - or whether it gets side-tracked by the even-for-politics-exceptionally-racy details and the usual diatribes about hypocrisy.
How Green Are Our Shoots!
I’m working on a new piece on the propaganda effort on the economy coming out of Team Obama. Here’s a part:
“How green are our shoots!
Thus say both Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.
And the public believes them. How come?It all began in March. In the first televised interview by any sitting Fed chairman in 20 years (CBS 60 Minutes), Bernanke used the term, “green shoots” for the first time. He pointed out that the Dow Jones index had recovered from 12 year lows in 2008 and the banking system had stabilized. No more big banks would fail, he predicted (AFP, March 15, 2009).
Two months later, His Timness echoed Big Ben. Geithner cited reduced spreads on corporate and muni bonds, the reduction in costs in credit protection at the big banks, and smaller risk premiums in the interbank market. He too said the economy was recovering. (Tim Geithner, Statement before the Senate Banking Committee, May 20, 2009)
In June, World Bank President Robert Zoellick joined the ’shooters.’ Zoellick is a former US trade representative notorious for forcing US government subsidies and trade policies inimical to small farmers onto emerging markets. Zoellick noted “signs of global recovery,” but cautioned that they might be killed off if protectionism were adopted (Reuters, June 8, 2009)
Translation: foreigners had better not object to US government-managed trade policies…or the global recovery will fold.Put out….or look out.
Zoellick added his own revealing metaphor to the shooter lexicon: “Right now there is a low-grade fever; it isn’t full influenza, but we need to keep a close watch…”.[my emphasis]
[Oddly, Zoellick's own employees at the World Bank contradicted their boss's assessment in a report only a couple of weeks later (See "World Bank Global Economic Outlook" below]
In May billionaire hedge-fund manager George Soros was seeing green. And in July , chief wonk of the Obama economic team Lawrence Summers detected greenery in remarks to the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Green shoots were now being sighted by everyone:
*In July the International Monetary Fund published its World Economic Outlook update
The Fund revised expected global growth in 2010 upward to 2.5%. The main source of the improvement, it claimed, was a brightening outlook for Asia.*Simon Johnson, IMF economist–turned-Peterson-Institute-spokesman-turned green-shooting-star even went on PBS to announce, “we are turning some sort of corner.” (August 20, 2009)
*Surveys of economists and business leaders in the summer showed that, in contrast to only a few months earlier, slightly more than half thought that the economy had bottomed.”
There’s a lot more I’m working on. Hope to have it on Lew Rockwell tomorrow, although I’d like to see it on some left-anarchist sites too. What began as a bit of trivia hunting (I was trying to figure out when the “green shoots” meme started) ended up throwing some interesting light on politics, the media, and the economy….
Samuel Johnson on Hypocrisy
Samuel Johnson writing about the misuse of the charge of “hypocrisy”:
“Nothing is more unjust, however common, than to charge with hypocrisy him that expresses zeal for those virtues which he neglects to practice; since he may be sincerely convinced of the advantages of conquering his passions, without having yet obtained the victory, as a man may be confident of the advantages of a voyage, or a journey, without having courage or industry to undertake it, and may honestly recommend to others, those attempts which he neglects himself.”
Zionist Inquisitors and the Media Narrative
“No media outlet mentioned that in 2003 Zionist media mogul Haim Saban acquired control of ProSiebenSat.1, Germany’s second largest broadcaster.
While wielding a major opinion-shaping media outlet during Merkel’s ascendancy as Germany’s first female chancellor, Saban described himself as an “Israeli-American” and “a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel.” Steve Rattner, Saban’s financial adviser, explained the motive for his media acquisition: “He thinks Germany is critical to Israel.” Rattner re-emerged as president Barack Obama’s auto industry “car czar” before resigning in mid-July due to a pension fund scandal…..
..In June 2006, a Saban-led group acquired Univision, the largest Spanish-language broadcaster in the U.S. With Latinos the fastest-growing voting bloc in the U.S., Univision is critical to Israel’s ability to sustain its control of U.S. foreign policy. Univision is the fifth largest television network in the U.S., reaching 98% of Spanish-speaking households through 62 television stations, 90 affiliate stations and more than 2,000 cable affiliates. [See “How the Israel lobby took control of U.S. foreign policy.”]….
. In addition to emerging as a reliable EU advocate for Israeli policies, Merkel threatened to arrest Williamson for Holocaust denial on a EU-wide warrant. A search of her phone records would doubtless uncover a discussion with a key supporter, Haim Saban.
Zionists and the lawmakers they groom are well positioned to advance a modern-day Inquisition—as when Bishop Williamson simultaneously faced arrest in Europe and expulsion from Argentina, the site of a seminary he directed and home to the largest Jewish population in Latin America.”
Read more about the framing of media narratives by Jeff Gates at Intifada-Palestine.com
The Hundred Who Made the Economy Collapse
Vanity Fair’s piece on the hundred who made the economic crisis manages to include blackberries and VIP rooms, Ralph Nader, George Bush and Bill Clinton, Woodrow Wilson, Republicans Hank Paulson and Hank Greenberg…
But it omits Robert Rubin….and Larry Summers…and Tim Geithner….and any of the numbers of hedge funds that were shorting companies for years….and it forgets AIG….and Barney Frank..[Correction: It does include AIG and Barney Frank, a great improvement] and even good old Eliot Spitzer, who should have done much more, for all that sound and fury about going after crooks…
What a tendentious list.
More anti-Christian Bile at Vanity Fair
I was trying to get a grip on the mentality that produced the Sarah Palin smear job (I carry no water for Palin and think she was a poor choice for veep, but…)
..and I came across this gem, “Blame America (and Jesus), for Jaycee Dugard kidnapping,” from the September edition of Vanity Fair. It implies that belief in the divinity of Jesus is somehow linked up with some kind of kinky sexuality. I kid you not…
[ Just try substituting a few other religious figures for that.
How about "Blame India (and Krishna) for sex-trafficking in Mumbai slums"? How do you think that sounds?
Or "Blame Saudi Arabia (and Muhammed) for terrorism? (Sorry, we already have that going around)
Ok. Here's a anothr one. What about "Blame Israel (and Moses) for torture in military prisons."
Has a ring to it....
[Note to religious fundamentalists - the above is satire meant to deride Vanity Fair's bigotry - no offense is meant to Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, Krishna, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, or Judaism. Offense is meant to Vanity Fair, however, mainly for terminal idiocy and obvious bigotry].
Here’s the piece:
“It’s an American Gothic thing—or, by any other name, a white trash thing. On the fringe of communities across the country there is a mutant culture: trashy, marginal, uneducated, unhealthy, and nutty. People cluck about it, and are fairly careful to avoid it, but are, too, remarkably laissez-faire towards it. This is partly because white trash means…white. And partly because, in America, a white man’s home is his castle (no matter how much debris is in the yard), and you just don’t ask too many questions (and because so many homes in America look like the homes of sex offenders).
And partly because of Jesus.
If Phillip Garrido ranted about there being no God, if he passed out atheist tracts, instead of bizarre-o Jesus-saves stuff, he would likely have been carted off years ago. But Jesus saves you not just from your sins but from public opprobrium. It may not make you any less weird in people’s eyes, but it makes you part of a protected class of weirdos. Jesus is an acceptable refuge for the sex offender. God knows, Jesus may even incite the sex offender.
No matter. If you believe hotly enough in Jesus, you’re a good American—at least for all the other weird Christians with piles of crap in their backyards, which is a considerable demographic.”More here, by Michael Wolff.
Vanity UnFair’s “Me and Mrs Palin” Is a Bit of Odious Fluff (Updated)
Vanity Fair has a piece on Sarah Palin through the eyes of her daughter Bristol’s boyfriend, Levi Johnston. The title itself is slimy, implying that there are cougar-like revelations to be had..
[Please note also the cover with its title, "Keeping up with the Johnston," the positioning of Levi's hand on his stomach and Sarah's photoshopped face over his hand].
O la la - Mrs. Palin is a glass-eating, baby-making monster because, get this, in her family of five with two working parents, the kids do the cooking and the older kids look after the younger kids. Sheesh. Hang the woman.
You can hear the VF staff tinkle - These conservatives are such hypocwites! (Thanks to whichever lefty writer I saw use that little howl of derision). Don’t they know real “family values” means parents should slave for kids so the kids never learn to take care of themselves?
Yep. We get it. “Family values” means helpless, dependent kids, so teachers and counselors can have harder jobs and state social workers can take over their guardianship and create yet another disenfranchised group in need of governmental protection.
And on another point, who invented the hideous word “kids” for teenagers? There was a time not to long ago when girls of 15 and 16 were married and mothers and boys of that age were working like responsible adults.
Dear Vanity UNFair, the piece said more about you than about the Palins, or the wretched adolescent who’s learned how to father kids out of wed-lock and trash the grandparents of the kid all while still just a precious little “kid.”
What a role-model for a young man. Or maybe he’s just another establishment media hack in training….
Note: Shows you how much the media actually cares about children..or anyone in need of consideration. Nice job to have the father of an out-of-wedlock baby (no moral judgment here, merely a recognition that it’s a baby deserving of a little adult sensitivity to its needs) trash the grandparents with whom dad lived not so long ago.
Smacks of those stories of communist spies or Hitler youth turning children against their parents.
Note:
Here’s a good take by Bill Kristol on an earlier Vanity Fair trash piece on Palin. Not that I see eye to eye with Kristol on foreign policy…or much else… but Kristol, unlike the author of the earlier piece, Todd Purdum, is smart.
Note:
Purdum (husband of Clinton press secretary Dee-dee Myers), was called a “scum-bag” by Bill Clinton….who probably knows whereof he speaks..
Further Note:
Check this fawning piece on Henry Paulson, at Vanity Fair. Funny how Todd Purdum, who finds it so easy to pick on a woman’s child-bearing and rearing decisions, her clothes and social class, has nothing except flattery for Paulson:
“It was February 2008, and Henry M. Paulson Jr., a prince of Wall Street turned secretary of the Treasury, was reflecting on his biggest achievement to date: a $168 billion economic-stimulus package that had passed Congress four days earlier after swift, bipartisan prog ress through both houses. In light of all the later twists and turns that the global financial system and the national economy took, this measure would come to seem quaint and fainthearted. But at the time, it was a very big deal indeed, and Paulson felt justifiably proud. The stimulus had been his baby. Paulson had persuaded George W. Bush, whose relations with both parties in Congress were by then close to toxic, to articulate only the broadest principles, and not to present a detailed plan. Paulson himself, in endless night and weekend negotiations with congressional leaders, had delivered the final package.”
Notice the reference to Paulson’s “delivery” of the treacherous bail-out of America’s fattest cats.
Anne Applebaum on Ted Kennedy
Robert Bork’s America,” Kennedy declared, “is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens.”
That image – the women in the back alleys, the doors shutting on the citizens’ fingers – was powerful enough to prevent Bork from winning Senate approval. It is thus not unfair to say that the vitriol that has surrounded Supreme Court nominations ever since is one of Kennedy’s legacies, too….”
— Anne Applebaum in The Telegraph.
My Comment
Ms. Applebaum nails it. The “borking” of not just Supreme Court nominations but of political figures in general goes back to this sad episode in media history.
The Kennedys are American royalty, like the Bushes. So on an occasion like this, it’s probably not appropriate for an outsider to say more. Anyway, I was glad to see that conservatives, even rather shrill ones like Michelle Malkin, have been restrained enough and allowed Ted Kennedy’s family a few days of solemnity and sympathy, before discussing his political or personal flaws.
Why More Swine Flu Deaths in Bangalore?
From Sify.com:
“State health commissioner P.N. Sreenivasachari told IANS: ‘It’s difficult to say why Karnataka, more precisely Bangalore, which is endowed with adequate healthcare facilities, is witnessing large number of swine flu deaths. We too are puzzled.
‘We can say the virus is already in the air and it’s time people became more aware and cautious to stop the spread of the virus. However, from the point of view of the administration, we have provided adequate healthcare facilities to treat swine flu patients,’ added Sreenivasachari.
Principal secretary (Health) I.R. Perumal said people should not get panicky.
‘People with swine flu like symptoms should immediately get themselves checked, as the city is well equipped to deal with the pandemic,’ added Perumal.
On Friday, two deaths were reported from Bangalore, one came from Bijapur.
My Comment
Why? I have no idea. More international travelers is one reason and a plausible one. But I confess I couldn’t help thinking about this piece I wrote in 2005, “Terror Hits Bangalore.”
One result of swine flu scare-mongering will be a shift of money to influenza research - hitherto absent in India. That means funding for drug trials. I wonder who the lucky drug companies are that will benefit?
The two states hit hardest are Karnataka (where Bangalore is) and Maharashtra (where Bombay is). Those are also the states that are the destinations of most foreign travelers and where India’s IT business and stock market are located. Bangalore is the home of a booming biotech business. And a locus of the anti-globalization movement as well. Just thinking out a loud…
Deaths so far are a hundred or less. That’s in a country of roughly a billion and a quarter where tens of thousands die from traffic accidents (300 a day or around 100,000 a year) and from water-borne diseases like diarrhea, typhoid, and jaundice. Hundred of farmers are committing suicide. None of that has qualified for the term pandemic….OR for the accompanying switch in research funding..
Here’s some information on malaria in India in 2008:
“While the official figures state that in 2008 India had 1.5 million malaria cases, resulting in 924 deaths, the real number of deaths is higher by several orders of magnitude.
“These numbers are a joke,” said Sunil Kaul, a doctor who works for a volunteer organization called the Ant that treats villagers. “In Assam alone we had at least 1,500 deaths last year.”
The real number of malaria-related deaths in India was closer to 40,000 in 2008, according to various non-governmental sources and some government officials who didn’t want to be named.”
Under-reporting and lack of knowledge about the disease are two of the main obstacles in retarding the spread of malaria. But interestingly, it’s also international organizations like WHO that obstruct progress in many ways:
“These problems are further complicated by foreign agencies such as the World Health Organization (WHO), which — under the influence of global lending agencies like the World Bank and big pharmaceutical companies — have pushed India to adopt prevention methods that don’t suit the local conditions and to initiate huge, ill-considered projects rather than targeted ones. ….”
More here at The Global Post.
Swine-Flu is a Man-Made Panic..
My new piece on swine-flu is up at Lew Rockwell.
Please note, I have it as Harold Varnus in the piece. It should be Varmus, as in my previous blog post on the subject. In my defense, I wrote it mostly in very dim light…
“The latest in the barrage of media reports on swine flu is a Bloomberg news report (August 25, 2009) that it might hospitalize 1.8 million patients in the US and over-burden hospital intensive care units.
This comes from a planning scenario released by the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology
The Bloomberg story cites some theatrical numbers:
- Half of the US population infected (that is, over 150 million people)
- 300,000 people in hospital intensive care units
- 30–90,000 people dead
- By-pass surgery emergency operations disrupted
But hidden in paragraph 5 of the Bloomberg piece is the most pertinent part:
These numbers are only “scenario projections” that were “developed from models put together for planning purposes only,” says a Centers for Disease Control spokesman.
So.
- Statistical projections.
- Projections from models of past pandemics. (And not the past, as in 1968 or 1957, but way back, as in 1918.)
- Projections developed for planning purposes only.
That’s three stages removed from anything you could call reality.
But perish this tenuous link with facts, PCAST wants Obama to rush through vaccine production so that 40 million people can be infect – er – injected by mid-September.
And who should make that decision?
A doctor? The surgeon-general? A medical team?
Why, the homeland security adviser!
That’s John Brennan, a former CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia, deputy executive director of the CIA under George Tenet, and the director of the National Counterterrorism Center (CTC) from 2004 to 2005 during the exact period when the CIA became most heavily involved in torture practices in Iraq and elsewhere.”
Note:
I wanted to state here that my social views are quite liberal, and I do not have any objection to voluntary family planning and contraception. I’m also firmly pro-choice. And in terms of the environment, I support far greater consideration by each of us, as individuals and as communities, for animal life, nature, and conservation.
But those are my personal views. Putting the legal and physical force of the corporate- state behind those preferences, in the form that Holdren apparently thinks will work, is, in my view, completely misguided.
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