Recipie for disaster

FT.com.

The booming US housing market has led to a worrying decline in standards in the mortgage lending industry, Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve chairman, has warned.

[. . .]

I've been bitching about this 'creative financing' for a while. They're getting too many people into houses they can't afford.

[. . .]

Mr Greenspan voiced the widespread concern within the Fed about the rapid spread of interest-only loans, floating rate mortgages, and other "more exotic" forms of home financing including loans where borrowers do not pay the full interest cost for an initial period and it is added to the principal.

While these kinds of mortgages had their proper uses, he said, they exposed borrowers to more interest rate and housing market risk than standard 30-year mortgages and some lenders may be pushing them inappropriately.

[. . .]

Please report to the Department of Duh. In this 'fuck everybody but me' and 'regulation is Liberal' world, of course the bottom line is the driving force behind these mortgage companies.

[. . .]

"They are seen as vehicles that enable marginally qualified, highly leveraged borrowers to purchase homes at inflated prices. In the event of widespread cooling in house prices, these borrowers, and the institutions that service them, could be exposed to significant losses," Mr Greenspan said.

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Read defaults and foreclosures. You know what that means.

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Continued price rises will make it harder for the central banker to engineer a soft landing and avoid any abrupt swings in consumer spending. [my emphases]

[. . .]

The Bush Economy is nothing more than a pyramid scheme. Eventually the bottom's gonna fall out and these high oil prices might just be the impetus. We're already seeing it at the shop. Folks ain't got the bread to fix their cars when gas costs $3/gallon. Katrina and Rita might just be the two tough broads who knock Chimpy Inc. on its ass.

Main and Central

A fine man and former naval officer (a rare combination if you ask this old sergeant, heh), Jo Fish of Democratic Veteran is starting a new group blog comprised of ex- and current military. I'm proud he's asked me to be a part of it and I'll be contributing from time to time. He's yet to announce the whole lineup, but those 'enlisted' so far seem like a good bunch. Main and Central gets up to full speed on Monday. Please stop by and say hi.

Respect

Do you think another nation would have done this with FDR? How far we have fallen . . .

Hat tip: Maru

Lynndie England

Good. There's a lot more who should go with her.

Shocked II

Remember my post the other day when I said this?

[. . .]

I don't laugh at the acts themselves. They are heinous and horrible and those perpetrating them should be prosecuted, period. I just laugh at those who are shocked by them, shocked they occur, mostly those from our blogging community and activists. I laugh because none of them have been in combat. I laugh at all of you who have no idea what combat is all about, yet cringe in horror and scream with outrage when these stories come out.

[. . .]

More surprise, related to BL's post:

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My first conscious reaction was "everybody should see these" (hold your horses, gentle reader, read on before you do). To paraphrase John at AmericaBlog, this is what war looks like. It's not like the movies, not some at all, to use a Louisiana expression I learned this weekend at dKos. [my em]

[. . .]

Why in Hell do all you people think I yell and scream about taking war so lightly? Yes, please, all of you, take Shystee's advice and look at what war does, how people die. I especially want all the Dems who were pro-war to see it because you are the ones who should be ashamed of yourselves for giving President Fucknuts a blank check to perpetrate this horror on the Iraqis. You are more to blame than he because you should know better.

Appreciation

After reading the King's post, I have a new appreciation of Jimmy Carter.

[. . .]

The president got Congress to pass the Emergency Natural Gas Act, which would authorize the national government to allocate interstate natural gas. He created a Department of Energy to regulate existing energy suppliers and fund research on new sources of energy, particularly sustainable (wind and solar power) and ecologically sound sources. His Energy Security Act created the U.S. Synthetic Fuels Corporation, which would provide $20 billion in joint ventures with private industry. Carter signed his first energy package into law on November 9, 1978. The deregulation of oil and natural gas prices that resulted would lead to a vast increase in the supply of energy in the 1980s, and consequently a lowering of prices . . . .

[. . .]

File This Under Sick Jokes That are True

CBS Katrina Blog reports the following:

"CBS News correspondent Gloria Borger reports that Michael Brown, who recently resigned as the head of the FEMA, has been rehired by the agency as a consultant to evaluate it's response following Hurricane Katrina. "

Well he hasn't been given a Medal of Honor yet.

Pushing back

HARRISBURG, Pa. Sep 26, 2005 - "Intelligent design" is a religious theory that was inserted in a school district's curriculum with no concern for whether it had scientific underpinnings, a lawyer told a federal judge Monday as a landmark trial got under way.

"They did everything you would do if you wanted to incorporate a religious point of view in science class and cared nothing about its scientific validity," said Eric Rothschild, an attorney representing eight families who are challenging the decision of the Dover Area School District.

[. . .]

You see it coming, don't you? This is gonna be the before the 'soon-to-be-confirmed' (it still torques my sphincter) Chief Justice Roberts eventually. Guess how this court is gonna rule?

Still working . . .

Still working on my bookshelves. Light blogging tonight now that fucking Blogger is finally working. In-progress pics below the fold if you're interested.

The Democratization of Frank Rich

Since Frank Rich's columns now fall under the "Times Select" feature that I'm not about to pay for, I'll post them when and where I find them. From Intransigent Vicissitudes, via Cursor.

Ours will be remembered as the Enron era. Enron itself is a distant memory -- much like all that circa 2000 talk of a smoothly efficient C.E.O. presidency led by a Harvard M.B.A. and a former chief executive of Halliburton. But even as American business has since been purged by prosecutions and reforms, the mutant Enron version of the C.E.O. culture still rules in Washington: uninhibited cronyism, cooked books, special-favors networks, the banishment of whistle-blowers and accountability. More than ideology, this ethos has sabotaged even the best of American intentions, whether in Iraq or New Orleans. Unchecked, it promises greater disasters to come.

YET it's not only the administration that is to blame, any more than it is only the executives who are at fault when a corporation rots. Culpability also belongs to the board that rubber-stamps the shenanigans -- to wit, Congress. Republicans in the Senate are led by Bill Frist, who, in the grandest Enron manner, claimed last week that it was to avoid a conflict of interest that his supposed ''blind trust'' unloaded all of his holdings in a Frist family-founded company just before its stock tanked. (Federal prosecutors and the S.E.C. are investigating.) As for the Democrats, they are nonpareil at posturing about the unstoppable nomination of John Roberts -- a conservative, to be sure, but the rare Bush nominee who seems both qualified for his job and unsullied by ethical blemishes. Yet when David Safavian was up for a job involving hundreds of billions of dollars, and much of his dubious resume was fully known, he was approved by the ranking Democrat, Joe Lieberman, and all his colleagues of both parties on the Governmental Affairs Committee.

Which is to say that the rest of us, the individual shareholders in government who have voted in our Enron-era politicians, are responsible, too.

Go read Daddy Frank. It's important to partake of something you get for free that you're supposed to pay for, as in "the cheaper the grapes, the sweeter the wine".

Worse than Abu Gharib?

I have tried to publish this more than once, Blogger is being a pain.

Go read this at Americablog:

US soldiers allegedly trading pictures of dead Iraqis & Afghanis for porn

I spent the good part of this weekend following up on a report by the East Bay Express, an alternative paper in San Francisco, alleging that US soldiers are posting gruesome pictures of dead Iraqis and Afghanis online in exchange for access to hard-core amateur porn.

What I found suggests the story is correct.

The death photos are hosted on a Web site hosted in Holland, called NowThatsFuckedUp.com. The site is an amateur porn site where people can post their own nude photos and browse the photos of other visitors.

Bullshit Artists

Dear Democratic Party Leadership,

Maybe the Republicans are right? Maybe you don't stand for a fucking thing? Maybe all that Peace, Love, and Vietnam did make you a bunch of hugging, cuddling softies? I've about had it with the lot of you. Ah, you talk a good game, but so does the Chimp when his serum levels are up and earpiece is working. Has one of you come right out and called the President a liar? No. Has one of you come out and said the Republican Party is the most corrupt political organization since Tammily Hall? No. So answer me this, what the fuck good are you? Or are you in the Republican pocket too?

You might be the only game in town for us, the progressive community, but that's gonna change. Mark my words. All you are is a buncha bullshit artists. Lotsa talk, very little action. Grow a spine and put the best intersts of this nation first. If you stand up to the Repubs, we'll cover your backs and keep you in office, but if you don't, I'm more than happy to see you go. As of now, not one of you deserves my vote. Get with it or get out, bitches.

The Fixer

Rita: Epilogue

Lance Mannion:

[. . .]

Coverage of Rita I've seen this morning seems to boil down to a giant collective "Phew!" as if no matter how much damage a hurricane does, no matter how many people die, and no matter how inadequate local and Federal planning and their response were, as long as we didn't suffer another New Orleans, everything's fine.

[. . .]

They got relatively lucky, period.

Killing us slowly

WASHINGTON -- The government wants to stop forcing companies to report small releases of toxic pollutants and allow them to submit reports on their pollution less frequently.

Saying it wants to ease its regulatory burden on companies, the Environmental Protection Agency yesterday proposed adopting a ''short form" that would excuse companies from disclosing spills and other releases of toxic substances if:

They say they release fewer than 5,000 pounds of a specific chemical. The current limit is 500 pounds.

They store onsite but say they release "zero" amounts of the worst pollutants, such as mercury, DDT, and PCBs, that persist in the environment and work up the food chain. However, they must report if they have stored dioxin or dioxin-like compounds, even if none is released. [my em]

[. . .]

You gotta be fucking kidding me. One day, there is gonna be a mushroom cloud. It's gonna be some chemical plant blowing sky high. Either that or they're gonna render our lands inhabitable. Remember all those Superfund sites we paid to clean up? Seems there are more in the making.

Hat tip: Seeing the Forest

Ouch! Watch where yer stickin' that nozzle...

From the WaPo:

When the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline peaked at $3.07 recently, it was partly because the nation's refineries were getting an estimated 99 cents on each gallon sold. That was more than three times the amount they earned a year ago when regular unleaded was selling for $1.87.

The companies that pump oil from the ground swept in an additional 47 cents on each gallon, a 46 percent jump over the same period.

If motorists are the big losers in the spectacular run-up in gas prices, the companies that produce the oil and turn it into gasoline are the clear winners. By contrast, the truckers who transport gasoline, the companies that operate pipelines and the gas station owners have profited far less.

"They obviously are experiencing windfall or excess profits," Dorgan said of the big oil companies. "They are . . . profiting in an extraordinary way at the expense of the American consumer."

For a company like Exxon, producing a barrel of oil from an existing well costs about $20, according to analysts. When the selling price rises above that, the increase is almost all profit, they said. After Katrina bore down on the Gulf Coast, the price of oil set a new high, approaching $70.

Refiners processing the oil into gasoline faced lucrative market conditions. They may have had to pay the producers more for the oil, but they were able to sell their gasoline for higher prices as a result of the short supply and the spike on the mercantile exchange. In their view, the increases were justified because the market dictated that their final product -- gasoline -- had risen in value.

Refiners, particularly those with most of their facilities outside the path of Katrina, cashed in. Analysts predicted a windfall for companies such as Philadelphia-based Sunoco Inc., which continued operating normally during the hurricane.

I wonder if this greed falls under the RICO Act? Come to think about it, maybe the White House cabal does too.

Ha-Ha

I posted this the other day:

[. . .]

Although more than $30 billion in taxpayer funds have been appropriated for Iraqi reconstruction, the administration earlier this month launched an Internet-based fundraising effort that it says is aimed at giving Americans "a further stake in building a free and prosperous Iraq."

[. . .]

Got this today from the Sister:

An extraordinary appeal to Americans from the Bush administration for money to help pay for the reconstruction of Iraq has raised only $600 (£337), The Observer has learnt...

Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

The "House 13"

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has a list. From the LATimes.

WASHINGTON - A watchdog group, naming what it calls "the 13 most corrupt members of Congress," is calling for ethics investigations of some of the most prominent leaders on Capitol Hill in a report to be released Monday.

Its report, titled "Beyond DeLay: The 13 Most Corrupt Members of Congress," is based on news articles and other documents, the watchdog group said. It made the report available to the Los Angeles Times.

The watchdog group has been outspoken in criticizing House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) for what Sloan calls his ethical lapses.

"Nonetheless, we recognize that Rep. DeLay is not the only member of Congress whose behavior merits scrutiny," the report says. "There are a significant number of other members who have engaged in similarly egregious conduct, thus the name of the report: 'Beyond DeLay.' "

Sloan said she had been unable to persuade any member of the House to file ethics complaints that the watchdog group has drawn up against Ney and Cunningham. House rules do not permit outside groups to file complaints.

"It is outrageous that outsiders can't file complaints, since Congress has demonstrated its unwillingness to police its own conduct," Sloan said.

The 13 members of Congress recommended for investigation by the watchdog group are:

Did I mention that I'm a joker and an asshole?

Thanks for your support

Just a little fact. Not one elected representative from the Democratic Party showed up at the protest yesterday. Whazzat tell ya?

Bi-coastal & Beyond Anti-War Protests

Accounts of yesterday's anti-war protests in DC, EssEff, and the UK via Truthout.

Leslie Darling, 60, came from Cleveland with four friends and said it was her first antiwar protest. She said she was moved by what happened after Hurricane Katrina.

"It made clear that while we spend all this money trying to impose our will on other countries, here at home in our own country, we can't take care of each other," she said.

Bush and Cheney were depicted on posters, T-shirts and in makeshift costumes. Several demonstrators wore masks of Bush's likeness and prison jumpsuits. They were often asked to pose for photographs.

Army 1st Sgt. Frank Cookinham, with a Special Forces patch on one shoulder, scorpion tattoos crawling across the back of his neck and "LOCO" permanently inked on his Adam's apple stands out in most crowds. He was pretty uncomfortable yesterday.

"I've never done this before, but here I am, in uniform, figuring this is the only way I can shove it to Bush," said Cookinham, of Newport, R.I., a Persian Gulf War veteran who recently returned from a second tour in Iraq. "This war makes no sense."

Marching past the Treasury Building, Steven Olsen, 57, and his wife, Brenda, 49, of Yonkers, N.Y., held signs bearing a photo of their son, an Army Reserve sergeant sent to Iraq after enrolling in medical school.

"I hear from him about once a month," said Brenda as her husband gently waved a placard that said, "Proud of my soldier: Ashamed of this war." (My bold)

That pretty much says it all.

Working . . .

New bookshelves in my office. See ya's lata.