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Deja vu all over again

Monday, December 14, 2015

Last week we saw shades of 2007 with both a hedge fund and junk bond mutual fund halting the ability of investors to withdraw funds. An additional credit hedge fund announced it is shutting down. The problem this time around is a dearth of liquidity (read buyers’ strike) for junk bonds. In 2007 the problem was subprime mortgage backed securities and related derivatives.

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Suddenly last week, complacent investors in mutual funds, Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and hedge funds invested in junk bonds awakened to the Will Rogers’ wisdom that: “I’m not as concerned about the return on my money as I am the return of my money.” There is now a stampede for the exits – and in some cases, no exit ramp.

The Third Avenue Focused Credit Fund, a mutual fund which is supposed to be able to meet daily redemption requests, announced late last week that it is freezing withdrawals of investor money until it is able to liquidate its $788.5 million in corporate debt and junk bonds (also known as “high yield” bonds). Reuters reports that “Third Avenue’s fund had nearly half its assets in below ‘B’ rated debt, compared to the peer average of just 12 percent, according to Morningstar Inc data.”

In addition, a hedge fund, Stone Lion Capital Partners, said last week that it is suspending withdrawals of investors’ money from its $400 million credit portfolio.

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The question on everyone’s mind this week is if the junk bond market could trigger the kind of systemic contagion that unraveled the financial system in 2008. One major concern is just how large the perpetually blindfolded regulators have allowed this market to grow. Moody’s, the ratings agency, puts the high yield bond market at $1.8 trillion today, versus the $994 billion it represented at the end of 2008.

Via Wall Street on Parade

If it happens between now and the election, it will almost certainly put a Republican in the White House, a Republican sure to pursue policies that will not only make things worse, but will guarantee a repeat. The only bright side, and it’s fairly dim, is that the Democrats would likely be called back in 2020 to clean up the mess, which, if they are still controlled by Wall Street, they will promptly proceed to do as effectively as they did in 2009.

Filed in Corporate Crime, Uncategorized | | Comments (0)

Bernie should count his blessings

Friday, December 11, 2015

An analysis of network television news coverage reveals what supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders have long suspected; the three broadcast television networks are intentionally ignoring the Sanders campaign.

Eric Boehlert of Media Matters has the revealing details:

So in terms of stand-alone campaign stories this year, it’s been 234 minutes for Trump, compared to 10 minutes for Sanders. And at ABC World News Tonight, it’s been 81 minutes for Trump and less than one minute for Sanders.

via Politicus USA

I wouldn’t complain if I were Bernie (I just found out that he did). His message is getting through to the people who are receptive to it, since there are a lot more channels for information now than there were, say, 16 years ago. If the corporate media choose to ignore Bernie, it means they are passing up the chance to smear him. That may come all in their good time, but there does come a time when the public perception is set in stone, and it becomes much harder to change opinions, particularly in a time when people have so many choices of news sources. No doubt the corporations will someday squeeze the independent voices off the internet, but that hasn’t happened yet. So Bernie is lucky that the Sunday morning shows or whatever are ignoring him. They are losing their chance to shape the narrative about him, and when they get around to doing that they may find it’s too late.

Filed in Media, Uncategorized | | Comments (0)

Why am I not jittery?

Monday, December 7, 2015

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself

Franklin Roosevelt

What a quaint notion.

I’m told by the New York Times that Obama recently addressed a “jittery” nation. I read elsewhere that more than half of us now want to get ourselves into a another quagmire in the Middle East, because doing so will apparently ease our jitters.

Apparently, we get jittery if Muslims use automatic weapons to kill us, but when white males do so we say a few prayers, bemoan the omnipresence of mental illness, and promptly forget about it. Not a single jitter, really, and yet the victims of the white male are just as dead as the victims of the Muslims, and they die so very much more often.

I’m not at a total loss to explain my own lack of jitters. At least I have a theory. My spouse shares my affliction. We speculated, (alas, I have no scientific basis for this), that our jitter level is directly proportional to our consumption of non-print media. That consumption being zero, we are not exposed to the constant barrage of media coverage of these events, the subtext of which is that we should all be very jittery indeed. Fear itself is now a very good thing. We are encouraged to be fearful by the media; law enforcement types; politicians (mostly Rs, but some Ds); and presidential candidates of only one stripe. We are an impressionable people. Who are we to question such a consensus? If they say we should be jittery, then we do as we are told, despite what math may tell us about the odds of being killed by a Muslim as opposed to, say, a white male. If that means taking precisely the actions most likely to increase killings by Muslims (the white male killings will go on of course, but that’s just background noise), then we must take that action now. After all, what could go wrong?

Filed in Crazies, War fever | | Comments (0)

This country is going bananas

Friday, December 4, 2015

So today I went to my bank (Chelsea Groton, a local bank that is not too big to fail) to deposit a check. All the tellers were wearing a button that notified me that it was okay to say “Merry Christmas” to them, as they wanted to keep Christ in Christmas. The probability is that they had no choice in the matter, so I said nothing, other than to wish the teller “Happy Holidays” when I left. The buttons were provided by the Knights of Columbus, which one must imagine is an organization stocked almost solely by aging white males who are spending their golden years watching Fox News.

This war on Christmas stuff is yet another, and to my mind a significant sign, that this country is going bananas. Apparently, Christmas is not endangered by rampant commercialism, but it is endangered by the recognition that there are non-Christians in this country who deserve consideration.

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Cognitive dissonance

Friday, December 4, 2015

In case you are not familiar with the term, “cognitive dissonance” is defined as follows:

In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time, performs an action that is contradictory to one or more beliefs, ideas or values, or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values.

via Wikipedia

So here’s something akin to cognitive dissonance. Today I received an email from Joe Courtney telling me he voted to restrict people on the terrorist watch list from getting guns. I’ve differed with Joe on a couple of things lately, see here and here, but I’m totally with him on this one. Also, totally against him. How’s that for dissonance?

I’m totally with him because in any rational world the proposed legislation makes perfect sense, though it of course only scratches the surface so far as what’s needed by way of gun control.

But I’m totally against him because the terrorist watch list is stocked full of people who aren’t terrorists, and moreover, never were. They are denied any due process or method to clear their names. There’s a legal term for the process used to put people on the list: arbitrary and capricious.

Not surprising, is it? This is the U.S. in the age of paranoia after all.

So, is it fair to single these “terrorists” out? Probably not. Are the Republicans being hypocritical for failing to do so in this instance? Is there any doubt? They’d be happy to vote to put them all in concentration camps, but take away their guns? Never!

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Who’s the greatest grifter of them all?

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

The evil stepmother’s magic mirror would have a tough time with this question, but I think Mike Huckabee is making a strong run for the title. He has branched out beyond politics in his hucksterism:

Last year, a man named Brian Chambers announced a world-changing advance: An international research organization called the Health Sciences Institute had found an incredible cure for cancer hidden in the Book of Matthew. For just $74, you, too, could discover the secret.

That was the breathless pitch emailed to hundreds of thousands of Huckabee’s followers in January, beneath a “special message” from the Republican presidential candidate trumpeting “important information.” Upon closer inspection, the divine remedy—eating fewer carbs—was never recommended by St. Matthew. Chambers is not a doctor, and the studies on starvation diets he cited make no mention of “cures.”

via Mother Jones

If it’s true that there’s a sucker born every minute, Huckabee seems to want to make sure that there’s a dead sucker for every newborn. You would think he’d have a vested interest in keeping them alive, inasmuch as once they’re dead, he can’t grift them anymore. Okay, I know that Carson has also been flogging quack cures, and it’s arguably worse when he does it, given that he really is a doctor, incredible as that may seem. Still, Carson is a relative newcomer. Huckabee is a seasoned veteran, so right now, he’s my candidate for greatest grifter of them all.

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A tiny point of light

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

George the first promised a thousand of them, but they never seem to have appeared. However, there’s one point of light about this story, documenting some shady corporate entities funneling money into Jeb! Bush’s PAC:

In February, a limited liability company called TH Holdings LLC donated $100,000 to Right to Rise, the super-PAC supporting Jeb Bush’s bid for the GOP presidential nomination. That’s not extraordinary; quite a few LLCs have donated to the super-PAC, which has so far raised more than $103 million. But TH Holdings is a special case—one that represents the worst-case scenario in the post-Citizens United campaign finance landscape: untraceable corporations shoveling untraceable cash into the political system. Beyond this six-figure contribution, the company appears to have no history of doing business anywhere. And its incorporation records reveal no owners, managers, or officers.

The article goes on to detail a number of other examples of shadow corporations donating money to the Bush campaign.

So where’s the point of light? Well, at least so far as the examples cited in this article, the money is all going to Jeb!, which means it might as well have been flushed down the toilet. He’s going nowhere. If Trump doesn’t get it, it will be Cruz, who may very well be getting dark money contributions of his own. But these days, you take your points of light where you can get them.

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All together now: Just a disturbed loner

Saturday, November 28, 2015

From the New York Times:

Officials from both law enforcement and Planned Parenthood said they did not know whether the group’s Colorado Springs center had been specifically targeted. But the attack carried echoes of other violent assaults on abortion providers, and it prompted the police in New York City to deploy units to Planned Parenthood clinics in the city.

But we know, don’t we? If you’ve seen pictures of the building, you know that the words “Planned Parenthood” were written in letters about 10 feet high. You also know that Planned Parenthood has been the target of a vicious smear campaign organized from the beginning by the Republican Party, which has made charges that have been found to be bogus by investigations all over the country. There is a clear and direct line from these vicious and unfounded attacks and this incident in Colorado. We all know that.

So I ask you, WWTRD (What would the Republicans do?) if the situation were somehow reversed, and the Democrats had, let’s say, accused the NRA of being the criminal’s lobby and enabling terrorism, after which Wayne Lapierre met an oh so delicious and ironic fate?

Let’s first put aside the fact that the Democrats charges would have been true and the scenario itself unlikely (as this one was not). That’s irrelevant to this discussion. The Republicans would immediately blame Democrats, Obama first and foremost. The lines of attack would have been coordinated. Every Republican would be making statements that were variants of an agreed upon theme, and despite the fact that in this scenario the Democrats would have no moral responsibility, they would all immediately assume defensive crouches. Their response, if any, would be entirely uncoordinated, consisting mostly of mumbled half apologies.

That’s what would happen, more or less. So here’s a prediction about the Democratic response to this Republican inspired massacre. A few lonely voices will point out the connection. They will be met with a furious Republican counter-attack, both from the Republicans themselves and Fox News. Other Democrats will remain silent. The white male shooter will be written off as a disturbed loner. The lying attacks in and out of Congress on Planned Parenthood will continue, until the next disturbed loner comes along.

UPDATE: Well, good for Bernie:

In a statement, Sen. Sanders said, “While we still do not know the shooter’s motive, what is clear is that Planned Parenthood has been the subject of vicious and unsubstantiated statements attacking an organization that provides critical health care for millions of Americans. I strongly support Planned Parenthood and the work it is doing and hope people realize that bitter rhetoric can have unintended consequences.”

Via Politicus

Not quite as specific as I’d like, we really need to make it clear that it’s Republicans doing this, and lets not presume the stuff about “unintended consequences”.

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Yet another modest proposal 

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

The Black Lives Matter movement has been criticized for failing to advance concrete proposals to deal with the issues it’s raising. Here’s a suggestion that should, but won’t, give the critics pause. The group should demand the appointment of a special prosecutor in Chicago to pursue the murder prosecution of the cop who gunned down Lacquan McDonald. The elected DA, Anita Alvarez, has proven beyond reasonable doubt that she is in the tank for the cops, and will do what needs doing to secure an acquittal. If you’ve watched the video you know that it shouldn’t have taken her a year to bring charges. Once the identify of the shooter was established (and that was never in question) no reasonable person would take more than 5 minutes to make the decision it took her a year to make, and then only because a judge ordered the release of the video. The community should have some degree of confidence that the person in charge of the prosecution is actually interested in securing a conviction. The Black Lives Matter folks should really push to get Alvarez off the case.

Filed in Equal Justice | | Comments (0)

A history lesson

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

I know it’s a waste of time to bring up facts when talking about Republicans, but sometimes you just can’t help yourself.

Marco Rubio is quoted as follows on the issue of gay marriage:

“The debate is about how do you define an institution, the institution of marriage, which has been defined the same way for all of human history,” [Rubio] said at the Presidential Family Forum in Des Moines on Friday. “That’s what the debate is about. It’s not about discriminating against anyone. The debate is about how do you define an institution.”

via Daily Kos

First of all, let’s cut Rubio some slack, and grant that human history started on Saturday, October 22, 4004 BC, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. That still means that human history has a good six thousand years under its belt, during most of which time, in many cultures, marriage was anything but the heterosexual one Adam-one Eve arrangement Rubio espouses. If memory serves, Jacob, from whose seed all Jews are sprung, was duped into marrying poor Leah, though he much preferred her sister Rachel, who he also married in due course. He remained married to Leah, and God, being the vindictive bastard that he was in those days (he softened up a bit, we’re told, after torturing his only begotten son to death and resurrection), chose to curse Rachel with barrenness, because Jacob always liked her best. But the point is that polygamy has been common throughout history, there being multiple other instances of it in the Bible and real history too, and it is still practiced widely to this very day. Nor is same sex marriage a new thing. Just ask Nero.

This is what is called fact. It is a concept that Republicans have a hard time getting their heads around. For them, truthiness is all.

Filed in History | | Comments (0)