Past Peak: September 2007 Archives

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September 29, 2007

Where We're Headed

Say hello to the future, which is already in progress. ABC:

A car circles a high-rise three times. Someone leaves a backpack in a park.
Such things go unnoticed in big cities every day. But that could change in Chicago with a new video surveillance system that would recognize such anomalies and alert authorities to take a closer look.

On Thursday, the city and IBM Corp. are announcing the initial phase of what officials say could be the most advanced video security network in any U.S. city. The City of Broad Shoulders is getting eyes in the back of its head.

"Chicago is really light years ahead of any metropolitan area in the U.S. now," said Sam Docknevich, who heads video-surveillance consulting for IBM.

Chicago already has thousands of security cameras in use by businesses and police including some equipped with devices that recognize the sound of a gunshot, turn the cameras toward the source and place a 911 call. But the new system would let cameras analyze images in real time 24 hours a day.

"You're talking about creating (something) that knows no fatigue, no boredom and is absolutely focused," said Kevin Smith, spokesman for the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communications.

For example, the system could be programmed to alert the city's emergency center whenever a camera spots a vehicle matching the description of one being sought by authorities.

The system could be programmed to recognize license plates. It could alert emergency officials if the same car or truck circles the Sears Tower three times or if nobody picks up a backpack in Grant Park for, say, 30 seconds. [...]

"The eventual goal is to have elaborate video surveillance well in advance of the 2016 Olympics," said Bo Larsson, CEO of Firetide Inc., the company providing the wireless connectivity for the project.

Neither Smith nor IBM would reveal the cost of the network, but Smith said much of it would be paid by the Department of Homeland Security. The cost of previous surveillance efforts has run into the millions of dollars. Just adding devices that allow surveillance cameras to turn toward the sound of gunfire was as much as $10,000 per unit. [...]

Jonathan Schachter, a public policy lecturer at Northwestern University, said there are no studies that show cameras reduce crime. And the idea that placing cameras near "strategic assets" would prevent a terrorist attack is "absurd," he said. [Emphasis added]

This is only the beginning. The endgame is complete and perfect surveillance. Technology will get us there sooner or later, and probably sooner than we think.

Fear leads people to make poor choices, and these days we're certainly encouraged to be afraid. Of terrorist attacks, for example, despite their being exceedingly rare and improbable events. But we want to feel safe, so we willingly trade our liberty for the illusion of safety. Lambs to the slaughter.

[Thanks, Maurice]

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Saturday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

Today's Gumpagraph. Kent is 'Gumpa' to his grandson Sebastian.

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Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

Vicente Fox, the former president of Mexico, has a book coming out where he talks about George Bush. He said that Bush, the cowboy, is afraid of horses. Well actually, he's not afraid of them, but he had a bad experience. Back in college, a horse defeated him in a debate. — Bill Maher

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September 28, 2007

The Mother Of All Shocks

Black Ops Corporations, Globalization War and Peace

I'm reading Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, and I think it's an enormously important book. One of those books that can fundamentally restructure your mental model of how the world works. A real paradigm shift. I'll have more to say about it later. Still reading.

In the meantime, John Cusack does a good video interview with Klein, here. Go watch it.

The thesis, in a nutshell, is that recent history has seen a series of conscious, highly-organized efforts to exploit shocks — economic catastrophes, natural disasters, wars, 9/11, Katrina — to jam through "reforms" that people would never tolerate otherwise. Economic shock therapy, suspension of civil liberties, the Patriot Act and Gitmo, etc., etc. But above all, disaster capitalism — privatization of all kinds of formerly public functions, extending now even to privatized war-fighting. Enormous fortunes are being made by companies that now have a vested interested in more and bigger catastrophes. And it's not only about dollars. Each shock drives us further to the right politically. In the event of another shock of national scope — another 9/11, or worse — the groundwork has been laid to fundamentally alter just about everything about how the US government functions and the rights of US citizens.

Which brings us to Iran. I've been generally skeptical that Bush/Cheney will, when all is said and done, attack Iran. I've reported the warning signs, because I think that's the responsible thing to do, but I've been skeptical. Because the results of such an attack would be cataclysmic. Surely, they're not that reckless, that self-destructive, that crazy.

One of Past Peak's readers, however, raises a terrifying question: what if that very cataclysm is the desired result. The mother of all shocks, the one that will let our world be remade in undreamed of ways, practically overnight. The mother of all shocks — but in the eyes of some, the mother of all opportunities. I'm not saying it will happen, but here's the point. Should it happen, don't let yourself be swept away in the tide of shock and horror. Don't let yourself be paralyzed by fear. Realize what you are witnessing: the deliberate instigation of a catastrophe for the purpose of creating a window where anything goes. Keep your wits about you. Recognize the shock doctrine and disaster capitalism when you see them.

That's the ultimate importance of Naomi Klein's work: a psychological innoculation before-the-fact, so that next time we won't sit by dumb-founded as the jackals move in to pick our bones clean.

Even better, let's not sit by passively beforehand and just let the shock come. War with Iran is madness. We must prevent it.

[Thanks, Miles]

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Friday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

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Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

This Saturday, in Washington, DC, they will hold the Seventh Annual National Book Festival. First Lady Laura Bush will deliver a speech about the joys of reading. And then, President Bush will give the rebuttal. — Jay Leno

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September 27, 2007

Fun With Fugues

Humor & Fun

This is a hoot.

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Dollar Hits All-Time Low

Economy Peak Oil

The dollar continued its slide, falling to 1.4189 against the euro today, the dollar's all-time lowest point since the euro was invented. The dollar's set a new low each of the last six trading days.

Meanwhile, oil prices rose $2.58 (3.21%) for the day, to close at $82.88 a barrel, after topping $83 a barrel in intraday trading.

But stocks? They're up. Who says markets are rational?

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Masculinity As Conquest

Culture Ethics War and Peace

Making the connections:

From Stan Goff and Audrey Mantey. Goff is a veteran of the US Army Rangers, Airborne, Delta Force, and Special Forces. He served in Vietnam, El Salvador, Grenada, Panama, Honduras, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Somalia, and Haiti. Which is to say, he knows a whole lot more about combat than you or I.

Here's his advice for people considering joining the military. Excellent:

(Via Feral Scholar)

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Thursday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

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Today's Joke

Humor & Fun

I was a little disappointed to hear this. Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney and John McCain all said they cannot attend the minority debate this week at Morgan State University because they have scheduling conflicts. They're scheduled to meet with rich white people. — Jay Leno

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September 26, 2007

Winding Down — Not

Iraq Politics

Bush's request for war funding in 2008 will be the biggest of the war. LAT:

After smothering efforts by war critics in Congress to drastically cut U.S. troop levels in Iraq, President Bush plans to ask lawmakers next week to approve another massive spending measure — totaling nearly $200 billion — to fund the war through next year, Pentagon officials said.
If Bush's spending request is approved, 2008 will be the most expensive year of the Iraq war. [...]

The funding request means that war costs are projected to grow even as the number of deployed combat troops begins a gradual decline starting in December. Spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is to rise from $173 billion this year to about $195 billion in fiscal 2008, which begins Oct. 1.

When costs of CIA operations and embassy expenses are added, the war in Iraq currently costs taxpayers about $12 billion a month, said Winslow T. Wheeler, a former Republican congressional budget aide who is a senior fellow at the Center for Defense Information in Washington. [Emphasis added]

Good thing we elected all those Democrats last year. What a difference it's made.

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US Home Prices: Worst Drop In 16 Years

Economy

Housing news keeps getting worse. AP:

The decline in U.S. home prices accelerated nationwide in July, posting the steepest drop in 16 years, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index released Tuesday.
Home prices have fallen by more every month since the beginning of the year.

An index of 10 U.S. cities fell 4.5 percent in July from a year ago. That was the biggest drop since July 1991. [...]

[Robert] Shiller, an economist at Yale University, told lawmakers in written comments last week that the loss of a boom mentality among consumers poses a "significant risk" of a recession within the next year. [Emphasis added]

The big wave of adjustable-rate mortgage resets hasn't even hit yet. The economy has been kept afloat in the Bush years by people taking cash out of their homes and spending it. That spending is coming to a screeching halt, so housing's problems are going to impact a whole lot more than just housing.

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Privatizing War

Corporations, Globalization Iraq War and Peace

A startling piece of information from John Robb. Private military contractors probably provide almost as many "trigger pullers" in Iraq as the entire US military does:

There are currently 20,000 PMC [Private Military Company] trigger pullers in Iraq. These men are guarding facilities and key people across the country. This is likely nearly the same number of trigger pullers (as opposed to support personnel) as the entire US military currently has in the country. Without these men, the US military would barely be able to field a force large enough to patrol Baghdad. [Emphasis added]

Privatization of war-fighting is bad news for a variety of reasons. It undermines democracy, because it is infinitely easier to sell a war that's fought by mercenaries than one fought by uniformed soldiers that people still think of as their sons and daughters. It removes accountability for the conduct of the fighting, since the contractors are not bound by the Uniform Code of Military Justice. It supports the creation of standing private armies and fosters the further militarization of domestic law enforcement. And it creates a built-in constituency for more war. When war is a profit center, the obvious way to grow profits is to promote war. When PMCs have soldiers on the ground (not just in Iraq, but in many hotspots around the world), they have all sorts of opportunities to drum up business.

Where is this all headed? LA Times:

[Erik] Prince, the former Navy SEAL who founded Blackwater, is straightforward about his company's goal: "We're trying to do for the national security apparatus what FedEx did for the Postal Service."
Since FedEx rendered the post office irrelevant for all but the most trivial forms of mail, this means you can kiss our national security apparatus goodbye. [Emphasis added]

The Founders considered any form of standing army a grave threat to liberty. And now we're going to convert much of the standing army into a profit-making enterprise under private control.

Whatever else corporations are, they are undemocratic: what the boss says, goes. And corporations are committed to maximizing growth. So when corporations have armies — when corporations are armies — how can it end well?

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Wednesday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

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Today's Joke

Humor & Fun

The Democrats are so useless that they could not even pass a bill to get our troops more time between deployments. Only the Republicans could make an argument that a bill that literally supports the troops didn't support the troops. And only the Democrats could lose that argument. Next week, the Democrats are going to vote whether to give Republicans all their lunch money or just some of it. — Bill Maher

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September 25, 2007

3800

Iraq

The carnage continues in Iraq.

US troop deaths in Iraq hit 3800 today.

And hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead, millions displaced. For what?

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Tuesday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

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Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

It's getting pretty nasty out there on the campaign trail. This week, Hillary Clinton referred to Vice President Dick Cheney as Darth Vader. And today, he demanded an apology. Not Dick Cheney, Darth Vader. — Jay Leno

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September 24, 2007

A Shameful Racket

Corporations, Globalization

Some things simply don't work as unregulated, for-profit activities. NYT:

Habana Health Care Center, a 150-bed nursing home in Tampa, Fla., was struggling when a group of large private investment firms purchased it and 48 other nursing homes in 2002.
The facility's managers quickly cut costs. Within months, the number of clinical registered nurses at the home was half what it had been a year earlier...Budgets for nursing supplies, resident activities and other services also fell. [...]

The investors and operators were soon earning millions of dollars a year from their 49 homes.

Residents fared less well. Over three years, 15 at Habana died from what their families contend was negligent care in lawsuits filed in state court. Regulators repeatedly warned the home that staff levels were below mandatory minimums. When regulators visited, they found malfunctioning fire doors, unhygienic kitchens and a resident using a leg brace that was broken.

"They've created a hellhole," said Vivian Hewitt, who sued Habana in 2004 when her mother died after a large bedsore became infected by feces.

Habana is one of thousands of nursing homes across the nation that large Wall Street investment companies have bought or agreed to acquire in recent years.

Those investors include prominent private equity firms like Warburg Pincus and the Carlyle Group, better known for buying companies like Dunkin' Donuts.

As such investors have acquired nursing homes, they have often reduced costs, increased profits and quickly resold facilities for significant gains.

But by many regulatory benchmarks, residents at those nursing homes are worse off, on average, than they were under previous owners,. [...]

The Times analysis shows that, as at Habana, managers at many other nursing homes acquired by large private investors have cut expenses and staff, sometimes below minimum legal requirements.

Regulators say residents at these homes have suffered. At facilities owned by private investment firms, residents on average have fared more poorly than occupants of other homes in common problems like depression, loss of mobility and loss of ability to dress and bathe themselves, according to data collected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. [...]

In the past, residents' families often responded to such declines in care by suing, and regulators levied heavy fines against nursing home chains where understaffing led to lapses in care.

But private investment companies have made it very difficult for plaintiffs to succeed in court and for regulators to levy chainwide fines by creating complex corporate structures that obscure who controls their nursing homes.

By contrast, publicly owned nursing home chains are essentially required to disclose who controls their facilities in securities filings and other regulatory documents. [...]

When Mrs. Hewitt sued Habana over her mother's death, for example, she found that its owners and managers had spread control of Habana among 15 companies and five layers of firms.

As a result, Mrs. Hewitt's lawyer, like many others confronting privately owned homes, has been unable to establish definitively who was responsible for her mother's care. [...]

The typical large chain owned by an investment company in 2005 earned $1,700 a resident, according to reports filed by the facilities. Those homes, on average, were 41 percent more profitable than the average facility. [...]

"The first thing owners do is lay off nurses and other staff that are essential to keeping patients safe," said Charlene Harrington, a professor at the University of California in San Francisco who studies nursing homes. In her opinion, she added, "chains have made a lot of money by cutting nurses, but it's at the cost of human lives." [...]

[W]hen Mrs. Hewitt's lawyer, Sumeet Kaul, began investigating Habana's corporate structure, he discovered that its complexity meant that even if she prevailed in court, the investors' wallets would likely be out of reach.

Others had tried and failed. In response to dozens of lawsuits, Formation and affiliates of Warburg Pincus had successfully argued in court that they were not nursing home operators, and thus not liable for deficiencies in care.

Formation said in a statement that it was not reasonable to hold the company responsible for residents, "any more, say, than it would be reasonable for a landlord who owns a building, one of whose tenants is Starbucks, to be held liable if a Starbucks customer is scalded by a cup of hot coffee." [...]

Advocates for nursing home reforms say anyone who profits from a facility should be held accountable for its care. [...]

[E]ven when regulators do issue fines to investor-owned homes, they have found penalties difficult to collect.

"These companies leave the nursing home licensee with no assets, and so there is nothing to take," said Scott Johnson, special assistant attorney general of Mississippi. [...]

Last year, Formation sold Habana and 185 other facilities to General Electric for $1.4 billion. A prominent nursing home industry analyst, Steve Monroe, estimates that Formation's and its co-investors' gains from that sale were more than $500 million in just four years. Formation declined to comment on that figure. [Emphasis added]

These guys should be brought up on racketeering charges. They say they need to set up the layers of shell corporations that make them virtually lawsuit-proof because the industry had been the target of overzealous lawyers. But if that's all it is, why cut staff and services to dangerously low levels? Obviously, they've made themselves lawsuit-proof because they know they are going to do things that make them lawsuit-worthy.

It's practically a truism in America today that if you want something done right, you put it in the hands of a deregulated private sector. But over and over again, the facts prove otherwise.

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Monday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

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Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

So obviously, the president has a better [health care] idea [on screen: Bush saying, "I believe the best approach is to put more power in the hands of individuals. By empowering people and their doctors..."] Okay, I'm just going to stop him right there. I think I figured out the disconnect here. I think I figured out the problem. "Empowering people and their doctors." See, he thinks the uninsured have doctors. — Jon Stewart

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September 23, 2007

I'm So Proud

9/11, "War On Terror" Iraq Politics

Our president:

(Via Cryptogon)

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Sunday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

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Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

Just today, President Bush gave a press conference to talk about an issue on everyone's mind — health care. Specifically, this so-called SCHIP insurance bill. It's a Democratic measure that would expand what children would be eligible for federally funded health insurance. And you know why that's bad [on screen: Bush saying, "The SCHIP plan is an incremental step toward the goal of government run health care for every American."] Oh my God, they're gonna put Communism in our kids' drinking water — and then inject them with the gay and load them on Michael Moore and float them to Cuba! — Jon Stewart

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September 21, 2007

President Creepy

Politics

Sidney Blumenthal reviews Robert Draper's Dead Certain in Salon. It's creepy stuff. Excerpt:

In his interviews with Draper, [Bush] is constantly worried about weakness and passivity. "If you're weak internally? This job will run you all over town." He fears being controlled and talks about it relentlessly, feeling he's being watched. "And part of being a leader is: people watch you." He casts his anxiety as a matter of self-discipline. "I don't think I'd be sitting here if not for the discipline ... And they look at me — they want to know whether I've got the resolution necessary to see this through. And I do. I believe — I know we'll succeed." He is sensitive about asserting his supremacy over others, but especially his father. "He knows as an ex-president, he doesn't have nearly the amount of knowledge I've got on current things," he told Draper.
Bush is a classic insecure authoritarian who imposes humiliating tests of obedience on others in order to prove his superiority and their inferiority. In 1999, according to Draper, at a meeting of economic experts at the Texas governor's mansion, Bush interrupted Rove when he joined in the discussion, saying, "Karl, hang up my jacket." In front of other aides, Bush joked repeatedly that he would fire Rove. (Laura Bush's attitude toward Rove was pointedly disdainful. She nicknamed him "Pigpen," for wallowing in dirty politics. He was staff, not family — certainly not people like them.)

Bush's deployed his fetish for punctuality as a punitive weapon. When Colin Powell was several minutes late to a Cabinet meeting, Bush ordered that the door to the Cabinet Room be locked. Aides have been fearful of raising problems with him. In his 2004 debates with Sen. John Kerry, no one felt comfortable or confident enough to discuss with Bush the importance of his personal demeanor. Doing poorly in his first debate, he turned his anger on his communications director, Dan Bartlett, for showing him a tape afterward. When his trusted old public relations handler, Karen Hughes, tried gently to tell him, "You looked mad," he shot back, "I wasn't mad! Tell them that!"

At a political strategy meeting in May 2004, when Matthew Dowd and Rove explained to him that he was not likely to win in a Reagan-like landslide, as Bush had imagined, he lashed out at Rove: "KARL!" Rove, according to Draper, was Bush's "favorite punching bag," and the president often threw futile and meaningless questions at him, and shouted, "You don't know what the hell you're talking about."

Those around him have learned how to manipulate him through the art of flattery. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld played Bush like a Stradivarius, exploiting his grandiosity. "Rumsfeld would later tell his lieutenants that if you wanted the president's support for an initiative, it was always best to frame it as a 'Big New Thing.'" Other aides played on Bush's self-conception as "the Decider." "To sell him on an idea," writes Draper, "aides were now learning, the best approach was to tell the president, This is going to be a really tough decision." But flattery always requires deference. Every morning, Josh Bolten, the chief of staff, greets Bush with the same words: "Thank you for the privilege of serving today."

Draper reports a telling exchange between Bush and James Baker, one of his father's closest associates, the elder Bush's former secretary of state and the one the family called on to take command of the campaign for the 2000 Florida contest when everything hung in the balance. Baker's ruthless field marshaling safely brought the younger Bush into the White House. Counseling him in the aftermath, Baker warned him about Rumsfeld. "All I'm going to say to you is, you know what he did to your daddy," he said.

Indeed, Rumsfeld and the elder Bush were bitter rivals. Rumsfeld had scorn for him, and tried to sideline and eliminate him during the Ford administration because he wanted to become president himself. If George W. Bush didn't know about it before, he knew about it then from Baker, and soon thereafter he appointed Rumsfeld secretary of defense. Draper does not reflect on this revelation, but it is highly suggestive.

Quoted in an Aug. 9 article in the New York Times on the lachrymose father, Andrew Card, aide to both men, lately as White House chief of staff, and a family loyalist, spoke out of school. "It was relatively easy for me to read the sitting president's body language after he had talked to his mother or father," Card said. "Sometimes he'd ask me a probing question. And I'd think, Hmm, I don't think that question came from him." [...]

"History would acquit him, too. Bush was confident of that, and of something else as well," writes Draper. "Though it was not the sort of thing one could say publicly anymore, the president still believed that Saddam had possessed weapons of mass destruction. He repeated this conviction to Andy Card all the way up until Card's departure in April 2006, almost exactly three years after the Coalition had begun its fruitless search for WMDs."

Bush grasps at the straws of his own disinformation as he casts himself deeper into the abyss. The more profound and compounded his blunders, and the more he redoubles his certainty in ultimate victory, the greater his indifference to failure. He has entered a phase of decadent perversity, where he accelerates his errors to vindicate his folly. As the sands of time run down, he has decided that no matter what he does, history will finally judge him as heroic. [Emphasis added]

What kind of jerk lets his chief of staff greet him, day after day, with the words, "Thank you for the privilege of serving today." I mean, come on. And how delusional does he have to be to still think Saddam had WMDs?

And all the rest of it, the constant nasty, petty ways he humiliates and bullies the people around him. It would be one thing if he were some kind of genius prima donna — a George Patton, maybe, or a Winston Churchill — but the guy's an absolute fly-weight, grotesquely out of his depth, without even a hint of self-awareness. What an asshole.

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Blackwater Un-Banned In Iraq

Iraq

Well, that didn't take long. Blackwater is going back to work in Iraq.

In case you were wondering if Iraq's supposedly sovereign government actually has final say-so.

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Friday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

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Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

In political news, Vice President Dick Cheney is very upset about the way General Petraeus has been treated by the Democrats. Vice President Cheney said it is horrible that people mock and insult a soldier. I'll be sure to pass that on to John Kerry when I see him. — Jay Leno

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September 20, 2007

US Dollar In Free Fall, Hits All-Time Low Against The Euro

Economy

When you spend way more than you earn, there comes a time when nobody wants any more of your damn IOUs. True for individuals, true for nations. The US is about to learn a painful lesson.

Yesterday (Telegraph):

Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve for the first time, signalling that the oil-rich Gulf kingdom is preparing to break the dollar currency peg in a move that risks setting off a stampede out of the dollar across the Middle East.
"This is a very dangerous situation for the dollar," said Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas.

"Saudi Arabia has $800bn (£400bn) in their future generation fund, and the entire region has $3,500bn under management. They face an inflationary threat and do not want to import an interest rate policy set for the recessionary conditions in the United States," he said.

The Saudi central bank said today that it would take "appropriate measures" to halt huge capital inflows into the country, but analysts say this policy is unsustainable and will inevitably lead to the collapse of the dollar peg.

As a close ally of the US, Riyadh has so far tried to stick to the peg, but the link is now destabilising its own economy.

The Fed's dramatic half point cut to 4.75pc yesterday has already caused a plunge in the world dollar index to a fifteen year low, touching with weakest level ever against the mighty euro at just under $1.40.

There is now a growing danger that global investors will start to shun the US bond markets. The latest US government data on foreign holdings released this week show a collapse in purchases of US bonds from $97bn to just $19bn in July, with outright net sales of US Treasuries.

The danger is that this could now accelerate as the yield gap between the United States and the rest of the world narrows rapidly, leaving America starved of foreign capital flows needed to cover its current account deficit - expected to reach $850bn this year, or 6.5pc of GDP.

Mr Redeker said foreign investors have been gradually pulling out of the long-term US debt markets, leaving the dollar dependent on short-term funding. Foreigners have funded 25pc to 30pc of America's credit and short-term paper markets over the last two years.

"They were willing to provide the money when rates were paying nicely, but why bear the risk in these dramatically changed circumstances? We think that a fall in dollar to $1.50 against the euro is not out of the question at all by the first quarter of 2008," he said.

"This is nothing like the situation in 1998 when the crisis was in Asia, but the US was booming. This time the US itself is the problem," he said. [Emphasis added]

Today (FT):

The Canadian dollar rose to parity against the US dollar for the first time since 1976 on Thursday, buoyed by soaring oil prices and broad-based weakness in the greenback. [...]
Late in New York, the Canadian dollar rose 1.4 per cent to C$1.0012 against its US counterpart.

Elsewhere, the dollar dropped to a record low through the $1.40 level against the euro as the US currency continued its slide following the Federal Reserve's decision to cut interest rates this week.

Traders said the euro's rise through the psychologically important $1.40 level – seen as a pain barrier for eurozone exporters – triggered a host of stop-loss buying, sending the single currency higher.

The euro rose 0.8 per cent to $1.4071 against the dollar...

The dollar fell 0.4 per cent to $2.0093 against the pound, lost 1.5 per cent against the yen to Y114.44 and dropped 1 per cent to SFr1.1717 against the Swiss franc.

Some analysts put the dollar's weakness down to speculation that Saudi Arabia was set to abandon its peg against the US dollar. [Emphasis added]

When Bush took office, dollars were worth more than euros. Back then, it took about 90 cents to buy what a euro could buy. Now it takes $1.40.

It's not all Bush's fault, but the war — his war — is an important factor. We pay for it by, in effect, printing more and more dollars. That makes dollars worth less and less, which is a huge hidden tax on everybody who holds dollars. We may be approaching the point where the big dollar holders say "Enough!" and start dumping their holdings. Then, look out.

And then there's this, from today's BBC:

Losses from sub-prime mortgages have far exceeded "even the most pessimistic estimates", US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke has said. [Emphasis added]

This isn't going to be pretty.

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Thursday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

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Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

Congratulations to Al Gore! Al Gore won an Emmy the other night. Actually, you know the secret to his win? This time, they actually counted the votes. — Jay Leno

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September 19, 2007

Wednesday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

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Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

In a new book, Mexico's former president, Vicente Fox, says that President Bush's Spanish is at grade school-level. Fortunately, Bush's feelings weren't hurt, because Fox made the comments in Spanish. — Conan O'Brien

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September 18, 2007

2007 Foreclosures To Top 2 Million

Economy

As the Fed frantically tries to reinflate the bubble, housing continues to tank. CNN:

Late summer brought no relief from soaring foreclosures. The number of homes in some stage of default jumped 36 percent month-over-month in August, according to a regular monthly survey.
Delinquencies and defaults more than doubled year over year to 243,947, according to August figures released Tuesday by RealtyTrac, a marketer of foreclosed properties. RealtyTrac's forecast is for total foreclosure filings to exceed 2 million this year.

"The jump in foreclosure filings this month might be the beginning of the next wave of increased foreclosure activity, as a large number of subprime adjustable rate loans are beginning to reset now," James Saccacio, chief executive of RealtyTrac, said in a statement

October is expected to be a peak month for hybrid adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) to reset, with the interest rates on some $50 billion worth of loans poised to go up dramatically. [Emphasis added]

October, eh? Brings to mind this and this.

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Free Speech

Rights, Law

Guess they don't like it when you ask about Skull & Bones:

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Oil Tops $82 A Barrel

Peak Oil

Oil jumped $1.81 today to close at another new record: $82.38 per barrel.

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Tuesday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

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Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

The other night, President Bush gave his eighth speech to the nation about Iraq. In it, Bush promised to have the troops home by speech number 73. — Conan O'Brien

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September 17, 2007

Barbarian Invasion

Iraq

In Iraq, five millenia ago, civilization began. Today, among the many bitter fruits of the US invasion is this: the ongoing — and soon to be complete — ransacking, looting, and destruction of thousands of the world's most ancient archaeological sites. Robert Fisk:

Today, almost every archaeological site in southern Iraq is under the control of looters.
In a long and devastating appraisal to be published in December, Lebanese archaeologist Joanne Farchakh says that armies of looters have not spared "one metre of these Sumerian capitals that have been buried under the sand for thousands of years.

"They systematically destroyed the remains of this civilisation in their tireless search for sellable artefacts: ancient cities, covering an estimated surface area of 20 square kilometres, which – if properly excavated – could have provided extensive new information concerning the development of the human race.

"Humankind is losing its past for a cuneiform tablet or a sculpture or piece of jewellery that the dealer buys and pays for in cash in a country devastated by war. Humankind is losing its history for the pleasure of private collectors living safely in their luxurious houses and ordering specific objects for their collection."

Ms Farchakh, who helped with the original investigation into stolen treasures from the Baghdad Archaeological Museum in the immediate aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, says Iraq may soon end up with no history.

"There are 10,000 archaeological sites in the country. In the Nassariyah area alone, there are about 840 Sumerian sites; they have all been systematically looted. Even when Alexander the Great destroyed a city, he would always build another. But now the robbers are destroying everything because they are going down to bedrock. What's new is that the looters are becoming more and more organised with, apparently, lots of money.

"Quite apart from this, military operations are damaging these sites forever. There's been a US base in Ur for five years and the walls are cracking because of the weight of military vehicles. It's like putting an archaeological site under a continuous earthquake."

Of all the ancient cities of present-day Iraq, Ur is regarded as the most important in the history of man-kind. Mentioned in the Old Testament – and believed by many to be the home of the Prophet Abraham – it also features in the works of Arab historians and geographers where its name is Qamirnah, The City of the Moon. [...]

The legions of antiquities looters work within a smooth mass-smuggling organisation. Trucks, cars, planes and boats take Iraq's historical plunder to Europe, the US, to the United Arab Emirates and to Japan. The archaeologists say an ever-growing number of internet websites offer Mesopotamian artefacts, objects anywhere up to 7,000 years old.

The farmers of southern Iraq are now professional looters, knowing how to outline the walls of buried buildings and able to break directly into rooms and tombs. The archaeologists' report says: "They have been trained in how to rob the world of its past and they have been making significant profit from it. They know the value of each object and it is difficult to see why they would stop looting." [Emphasis added]

Millenia have passed, empires have come and gone, and the antiquities have survived it all. But now, in the blink of an eye, they will be gone.

It's disgraceful and appalling, but it fits: we trash the world with reckless disregard for the generations to come after us, so of course we care nothing for the ones who came before. But these things, once done, cannot be undone. It is cause for deep and everlasting shame.

[Thanks, Miles]

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Blackwater Banned In Iraq

Iraq

Iraq's Interior Ministry says it has banned the infamous mercenary outfit Blackwater USA from further operations in Iraq. CNN:

Iraq's Interior Ministry has revoked the license of Blackwater USA, an American security firm whose contractors are blamed for a Sunday gunbattle in Baghdad that left eight civilians dead. The U.S. State Department said it plans to investigate what it calls a "terrible incident."
In addition to the fatalities, 14 people were wounded, most of them civilians, an Iraqi official said. [...]

Sunday's firefight took place near Nusoor Square, an area that straddles the predominantly Sunni Arab neighborhoods of Mansour and Yarmouk.

The ministry said the incident began around midday, when a convoy of sport utility vehicles came under fire from unidentified gunmen in the square. The men in the SUVs, described by witnesses as Westerners, returned fire, the ministry said.

One witness told The Associated Press that he heard an explosion before the gunfire began.

"We saw a convoy of SUVs passing in the street nearby," Hussein Abdul-Abbas, owner of a mobile phone store in the area, told the AP. "One minute later, we heard the sound of a bomb explosion followed by gunfire that lasted for 20 minutes between gunmen and the convoy people who were foreigners and dressed in civilian clothes. Everybody in the street started to flee immediately."

A team from another security company passed through the area a few minutes afterward.

"Our people saw a couple of cars destroyed," Carter Andress, CEO of American-Iraqi Solutions Groups, told CNN on Monday. "Dead bodies, wounded people being evacuated. The U.S. military had moved in and secured the area. It was not a good scene."

An Interior Ministry spokesman, Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf, said, "We have revoked Blackwater's license to operate in Iraq. As of now they are not allowed to operate anywhere in the Republic of Iraq. The investigation is ongoing, and all those responsible for Sunday's killing will be referred to Iraqi justice." [Emphasis added]