Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Month: December 2009

George Bush’s 3rd Term

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On December 8, 2009

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Well, well, well:

The openly-gay head of the federal Office of Personnel Management, John Berry, said this weekend that he cannot follow a court order directing him to provide health benefits to the lesbian wife of a federal employee. Why? Because he says that he doesn’t have the legal authority to do so.

Neat trick. We should all try that one next time a court orders us to do something. “Sorry, your honor. Rather than appealing your decision, I’m simply going to state publicly that I don’t believe I have the legal authority to obey your order.”

It’s keen that not giving benefits to gays is so important to Obama that he’s willing to tell the courts to go take a long leap off a short pier.  Wish I could say I was glad to see him take a stand on something.

I’m so glad we got so much “Change”.  Same basic economic policy, same basic financial policy, lots of warmaking.  Oh, and the current suggestion on the “public” option?  Make it run by private companies with no public funding.   Meanwhile, women are being thrown under the bus on abortion and Obama doesn’t care.

Homophobic and sexist.  Maybe not personally (I don’t believe Bush was a homophobe personally) but when it comes to public figures judging by policy is perfectly fair.

Plus ca change.

Hell No Dems Won’t Vote

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On December 5, 2009

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When 40% of democrats don’t want to vote, the solution is not to tell them to vote.  The solution is to institute policies which make them want to vote.  That’s up to Obama and Congress, it is in their hands.

People do not get excited by the lesser evil, and while those of us who studied Obama in detail knew he was a conservative democrat, the overarching themes and rhetoric of his campaign amounted to “Big Change for the better!!”

He has not delivered on that and it is to be expected that people will be disappointed in him.  To expect otherwise is remarkably naive.

Remember the last few years of Bush?  All those conservatives trying to say “no really, the economy is better than it feels to you, I have numbers”?

This is the same sort of thing.  Trying to tell people “no really, it’s not so bad” doesn’t work when their experience is “Yeah, this sucks and no, you didn’t do what I think you said you’d do”.

People feel betrayed, and they should, because Obama has signed on with giving trillions to rich people and screwing over the middle and working class.  Trust me on this, that’s what’s happening and will happen.  The next twenty years economically are going to be worse than the last twenty, and Obama had options which would have made that not so.

Furthermore, only people who threaten to walk, get things. If you will vote Obama/Democrat no matter what, why would they give you anything?

They wouldn’t, and they won’t.

Much Better than expected job figures

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On December 4, 2009

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Comaprative downturns to Nov09 by Stirling Newberry

Comparative downturns to Nov09 by Stirling Newberry

Only down 11,000 this month, which is both better than I expected, and better than anyone else as far as I know.

The average duration of unemployment moved up from 26.9 to 28.5 weeks, which is an all-time record.  Headline unemployment dropped slightly to 10% even.  The broader U-6 measure dropped from 17.5 to 17.2%.   The labor force decreased by 98,000 people, which accounts for the drop in unemployment figures despite no net job gains.

Big winners were the general service sector (58k) and temporary help services (52.4K).Manufacturing dropped 41K and construction 27, both of which are slower rates of loss than typical in the past couple of years. Health care employment continued to increase, government was mixed.

As Stirling’s graph shows this is now the deepest job recession of the post WWII era.

The question now is what happens in the next three months.   My default assumption has been a job recovery in the spring, I suspect whatever we see in December, January will be a net negative (due to layoffs after Christmas), so I will be most curious to see February’s numbers.

Note that because of population increases, to maintain the same percentage of the population employed requires about 93,000 jobs a month be created.

Cutting Through the Public Option BS

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On December 3, 2009

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(Wrote this August 31st.  I think it deserves a bump back to the top.  Remember, the CBO has said that the public option will have higher premiums than private insurance due to a higher cost structure.)

To put it really simply, if you don’t need a profit, and if you are only as efficient as your competitors, you will drive them out of business if you are not constrained in some fashion from doing so. Capital is the usual fashion to wipe out competitors, since non profits have trouble raising it.  In the context of health care, arranging it so the public option takes on more unhealthy people is the more likely way to do it.

Since a real public option properly created to not be constrained from doing so WILL drive private insurers out of business, it will not be allowed to happen. It may be called a “public option”, but it won’t actually be allowed to operate as a public option should. A public option which won’t destroy the insurers in time, is also a public option which can’t drive down prices effectively.

All else is shadow play.

Bernanke at the Jobs Summit

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On December 3, 2009

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Apparently he is pushing for cuts in social spending, and opposing increasing taxes on the rich.

So far Bernanke has been succesful at making sure that the rich weren’t wiped out by their failures and retained their power.

Trillions were spent bailing out the rich, and no taxes were levied on them to pay for it.  Now what will happen is that in order to balance the budget, money which primarily helps the middle and working classes will be cut, while those same middle and working classes will be forced to bail out the insurance and health industries.

At the same time, military spending is up slightly under 100% in real terms from what it was in 2000 (267.2 billion in 2000 dollars in 2000, 490 billion today).  The US economy has militarized and financialized.  Virtually everything that isn’t attached to one of those two streams (and remmber, the housing bubble was ultimately about financialization) is withering on the vine.

The decision to escalate in Afghanistan won’t cost 30 billion dollars a year, it will cost that money plus all the money which could have been saved by withdrawing from Afghanistan and cutting military expenditures significantly.

Coming and going, baby.  Coming and going.  First they used your money and credit to bail out the rich, now they are going to make you pay it all back, not the rich.  Meanwhile banks aren’t lending, jobs aren’t returning and you are due for the 20 worst economic years of your lives.

This is a bipartisan project.  Obama is as on board with it as Bush was.  It’s not an accident that he wants to keep Bernanke or that he hired Geithner, the man who was supposed to watch Wall Street, as his Treasury secretary.

The world’s financial elites blew up the world’s economy.  Now the world’s schmucks (aka. ordinary people) are going to be stuck with the bill.

Enjoy.

Addendum: Paperwight wrote about this in 2005 when it was Greenspan doing it. Plus ca change

One Reason I don’t carry a cell everywhere

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On December 3, 2009

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I’m sure Sprint Nextel insisted on 8 million actual warrants.  Because the lesson of the warrantless wiretapping that took place under Bush and now under Obama was that if you insisted on such warrants you’d be investigated, tried and send to jail, and if you didn’t, Congress (including Senator Barack Obama) would give you retroactive immunity.

So, as I say, I’m sure Sprint got warrants for all of this:

Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with customer location data more than 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009, according to a company manager who disclosed the statistic at a non-public interception and wiretapping conference in October.

The manager also revealed the existence of a previously undisclosed web portal that Sprint provides law enforcement to conduct automated “pings” to track users. Through the website, authorized agents can type in a mobile phone number and obtain global positioning system (GPS) coordinates of the phone.

The revelations, uncovered by blogger and privacy activist Christopher Soghoian, have spawned questions about the number of Sprint customers who have been under surveillance, as well as the legal process agents followed to obtain such data.

Addendum:  Commenter Drewvsea points out:

In fairness to Sprint, if you go and actually read the whole story at Wired, the Sprint spokesperson did give a reasonably plausible explanation for the “8,000,000″ number: it represents the number of pings sent to cell phones. It does not represent 8,000,000 individual law enforcement requests per se. Furthermore there is due process being adhered to regarding warrants, etc.– just go and actually read the full article.

The President’s Afghanistan Speech

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On December 1, 2009

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Actually, pretty good (at least the written form).  Of course, I think he’s just throwing good money and lives after bad, but so be it.  The strategy is clear “surge, get some temporary gains, call it a victory, get the hell out”.  Same as Iraq.

In a larger sense, same as the overall economic/financial strategy.  Throw money at it, without any real intention of fixing fundamentals.

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