Supreme Court won’t order emergency measures to prevent Asian carp from reaching Great Lakes

By Associated Press

Updated: Monday, February 27, 3:58 PM

Michigan and four neighboring states wanted the Army Corps of Engineers to install nets in two Chicago-area rivers and to expedite a study of permanent steps to head off an invasion by bighead and silver carp, which have advanced up the Mississippi River and its tributaries to within 55 miles of Lake Michigan. Scientists say if the large, prolific carp spread widely in the lakes, they could starve out native species and devastate the $7 billion fishing industry.

…

They advocate placing barriers in Chicago-area waterways to cut a link between the watersheds created more than a century ago when engineers reversed the flow of the Chicago River to flush the city’s sewage toward the Mississippi. A recent report by groups representing Great Lakes states and cities proposed three methods for doing so, with estimated costs as high as $9.5 billion.

…

The Obama administration has devoted more than $100 million to shielding the lakes from the carp and recently announced plans to spend $51.5 million this year. Plans include operating and monitoring an electric fish barrier near Chicago, stepped-up commercial fishing in the area, and field testing new strategies such as high-pressure underwater guns and pheromones that could lure carp into lethal traps.

Now about that Title Fraud “Settlement”.

Not qualified to judge the veracity of this, simply drawing it to your attention.

Colonialism in Africa helped launch the HIV epidemic a century ago

By Craig Timberg and Daniel Halperin, Washington Post

Published: February 27

Scientists had long known that a blood sample, preserved from 1959, showed that HIV had been circulating in Kinshasa, the capital of Congo, for several decades before the virus first drew international attention in the 1980s. In 2008, evolutionary biologist Michael Worobey sharpened that picture when he reported in the journal Nature the discovery of a second sample of the virus, trapped in a wax-encased lymph node biopsy from 1960.

By comparing these two historic pieces of virus and mapping out the differences in their genetic structures in his lab at the University of Arizona, Worobey determined that HIV-1 group M was much older than anyone had thought. Both samples of the virus appeared to have descended from a single ancestor at some time between 1884 and 1924. The most likely date was 1908.

Taken together, these two discoveries offered the clearest clues to the birth and early life of the epidemic.

Researcher: Obama Budget ‘End Of The Mars Program’

CBS DC

February 27, 2012 7:57 AM

If Obama’s budget sails through as outlined, “in essence, it is the end of the Mars program,” said Phil Christensen, a Mars researcher at Arizona State University. It’s like “we’ve just flown Apollo 10 and now we’re going to cancel the Apollo program when we’re one step from landing,” he said.

…

(R)obotic Mars missions slated for 2016 and 2018 were cut from the president’s new budget proposal, even though NASA has spent $64 million on early designs with the European Space Agency for the two missions. The most ambitious Mars flight yet and one the National Academy of Sciences endorsed as the No. 1 solar system priority – a plan to grab Martian rocks and soil and bring them back to Earth – is on indefinite hold.

…

If NASA ignores Mars for a decade, it runs the risk of a brain drain, said Ed Weiler, who resigned last year as NASA’s sciences chief because of budget battles over Mars.

“Landing on Mars is a uniquely American talent and there aren’t too many things that are uniquely American,” Weiler said.

Everything substantial I wrote about yesterday.  The latest forecast is that there won’t be any more Thunder Storms until 11 pm so they might be able to squeeze in a few laps, otherwise- Plan C.

Daytona 500’s Start Is Pushed Back Until the Evening as Rain Soaks Track

By Erik Matuszewski and Dex McLuskey, Bloomberg News

Feb 27, 2012 11:02 AM ET

Nascar further delayed the start of its season-opening Daytona 500 race until 7 p.m. local time today as rain continued to fall on the track.

The race at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida, was originally postponed until noon today after rain wiped out yesterday’s planned start. It’s the first time the race has been postponed by weather in its 54-year history.

NASCAR postpones Daytona 500 for first time ever

CBS News

February 27, 2012 8:50 AM

Daytona president Joie Chitwood said he understood fans were frustrated about the scheduling change that pushed the race back one week later than usual. NASCAR and the track made the decision to move the start of the season to address an awkward early off weekend and to avoid potential conflicts with the Super Bowl.

…

“I’m sure I’m going to have some customers tell me about the date change and the challenges that we have with it,” Chitwood said. “But I think weather is unpredictable. I think based on the NASCAR schedule, the TV schedule on whole, this was the right move for the industry. We’ll continue to work with the last weekend of February.

…

Chitwood also said trying to wait out the rain any longer Sunday wasn’t an option, because the Daytona 500 deserves better than being crammed into the late evening hours.

Daytona 500 postponed to Monday

Reuters

Monday 27 February 2012 10.40 EST

Joie Chitwood, president of Daytona International Speedway was reluctant to discuss the chances of the race not taking place until Tuesday.

“It is tough to even talk Tuesday until we get into Monday,” he said. “There is inclement weather in the morning but by noon it looks like the weather is better. We’ll play it out the best we can.

“We want to exhaust every opportunity of getting the track dry and running the race. I would anticipate by 5 p.m., 6 p.m. if there was rain on the track you will see us play out some decisions. I don’t even want to talk about Tuesday right now.”

NASCAR says Daytona 500 will begin at 7 p.m. Monday, further delaying start of season

By Associated Press

Updated: Monday, February 27, 12:29 PM

“We hope to have ‘Lady and gentlemen, start your engines,’ at 7:02 and then warm up and go to green flag,” NASCAR President Mike Helton said. “We believe this is a reasonable expectation.”

Helton made the announcement Monday morning when it became clear that steady rain at Daytona International Speedway made an evening start the best option for NASCAR’s marquee event. Helton also said Tuesday has not been ruled out.

…

Greg Busch, executive vice president at GMR Marketing, said ratings for a Monday night race will not better what it would have drawn in its regularly scheduled Sunday afternoon slot. But Busch said the primetime showing will be significantly better than a Monday afternoon race.

…

Ed Goren, vice chairman for Fox Sports Media Group, said the network was unsure what to expect Monday night. He praised Fox’s production crew for its coverage during the rain delay Sunday, when Fox drew a 4.5 overnight rating despite no on-track action during nearly four hours of air time.

Yup, all about the eyeballs.

Which is Pravda and which is Isvestia again?

Obama’s Deficit Dilemma

Obama’s unacknowledged debt to Bowles/Simpson plan

By JACKIE CALMES, The New York Times

Published: February 27, 2012

Mr. Obama has come to adopt most of the major tenets supported by a majority of the commission’s members, though his proposals do not go as far. He has called for cutting deficits more than $4 trillion over 10 years by shaving all spending, including for the military, Medicare and Social Security; overhauling the tax code to raise revenues and lower rates; and writing rules to lock in savings.

…

Three weeks ago Mr. Obama met with Erskine B. Bowles, a former chief of staff to Mr. Clinton who was a co-chairman of the commission along with former Senator Alan K. Simpson, a Republican. In speeches nationwide, the chairmen have expressed disappointment that the president – and Republicans – did not take up their plan.

…

“The president wanted to make sure that we understood that he had had a strategy to take the framework of what we’d negotiated” on the commission, Mr. Bowles said, “and to use that as a vehicle to negotiate a deal.”

It’s a pretty busy day (and week).  You may not be aware that today is also the NBA All-Star Game.

Of course it’s an Open Thread.

Turn Left Racing

I don’t have much respect for the most popular “sport” in the United States.  I’m not talking about Throwball (for which I have very little respect indeed), but Turn Left Racing.  For one thing, the entire skillset is encapsulated in the derisive nickname.

But there are subtleties ek you say, how about that drafting and 4 wide racing?  In the biz they call that packing and makes it one of the most bloodthirsty events in this modern empire of gladiatorial entertainment designed to numb the masses to the atrocities and debauchery of the patrician elite.  These latter day chariot races divide and distract us like the blue and the green.

It’s fortunate for the drivers they build them like bumper cars and make them slow too.  The strict regulations on design and innovation and lack of mechanical connection to their putative brands makes any claim of win on Sunday, sell on Monday mere historic hype.  Who can tell anyway with all the logos?

Motor racing is unique among sports, thanks to its ties to big industry. Nobody ever went to a football game to cheer on a brand of football.

“NASCAR and the Daytona 500 are about as American as you can get, and it’s great to have my campaign represented by one of these incredible machines,” Santorum said in a release. “The race weekend is a wonderful tradition that we’re excited to be a part of as we spread our message. I like how Tony Raines turned some heads last weekend with his qualifying run, and we’d like to keep turning heads, too. I think we’re both looking for a win in the end.”

What’s incredible is that they’re out performed by both the flagship pony cars (and that people still buy this corporate marketing crap).

Packing

(P)ack racing is what the fans want and NASCAR is going to give it to them. Well, so far they got it, and they also have seen multiple accidents in practices/races.

The only way you can push these deliberately engineered bricks through the air is by taking advantage of drafting.  It’s the exact opposite of Formula One.  Drivers are encouraged by physics to get as close as they can.  As if this were not enough, there are frequent cautions mandated like TV time outs simply to draw the field closer together.

So far this year Danica Patrick has crashed twice, once in qualifying (she’ll have to start her backup car) and once in an under card race, booted by a team mate drafting behind her.

Patrick eventually got back into the race after her crew made extensive repairs to her car in the garage area. She finished 38th in a wreck-filled race that was won by James Buescher.

Patrick began the 300-mile event up front after becoming the first woman to win a NASCAR pole position since Shawna Robinson in 1994. She led at the start, spent the first part of the race in the top 10 before getting shuffled out of the draft and falling deeper in the field before the tap by Whitt.

Danica

Personally I think Turn Left Racing fans are only motivated by the prospect of flaming chunks of twisted metal and getting puking drunk on Bud on the Infield.  Danica Patrick represents a chance to broaden the demographic of people who like to watch flaming chunks of twisted metal and getting puking drunk on Bud on the Infield (not that Formula One is noted for its gynocracy and you have the added attraction of having to bribe your way into a seat), just like Jeff Gordon.

It’s a funny thing to call a crash impressive, but that’s what it was, a tremendous, violent, smoldering head-on wreck. All eyes were on Patrick during Thursday’s qualifying races, waiting to see. Basically, waiting to see if the little girl could handle that great big car, and be a worthy competitor when she makes her debut in Sunday’s Daytona 500. What she gave us was something close to a defining moment. We can stop with the haggling over whether to call Patrick a good or bad feminist, and the hand-wringing over her image. Who cares? After watching that wreck, I know exactly what to call her: a pro.

Expect a lot of commentary like that and this–

“It’s great for the sport,” said four-time NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon. “Who doesn’t want to see a female driver come in here and be able to race with the guys and do well and be marketable? It’s great for the sport.”

At least until she crashes out.

Daytona 500 Winner Tough To Predict

Out here machinery is show business, and in service of racier racing, the bosses changed up the tech package this year. Now the constant Rube Goldberg recalculation of fuel injection and restrictor plate and spoiler angle and grill opening and water temperature and suspension tuning has everyone flummoxed. Everything you touch affects everything else — push down here and something pops over there — in new and unexpected ways. All at once the cars are light in the tail and skittish at almost every angle of attack. A harsh word or a hard look at the quarter panel of the car in front of you can send it spinning.

To the extent possible, NASCAR recalibrated all of this in the interest of entertainment to break up not only the traditional mass-draft formations of years past, but the more recent two-by-two bumper car pairings as well. The result of this experiment will be made public Sunday. Forecasts I’ve heard around the tool box call for showers of debris and a partly crashy afternoon.

The fact of the matter is that Turn Left Racing is as predictable as professional wrestling, in the sense of-

Who cares?

There will be 43 bumper cars starting today and those that last until the final five laps will be gathered up for a gripping ‘sprint to the finish’.  Rain is predicted and unlike Formula One and IndyCar, Turn Left don’t do wet.  Might get some rain inside your Bud.

(T)he Great American Race remains the Great American Metaphor. All of us racing in circles as fast as we can, going nowhere, chasing a buck.

Now with pretty table.

Target

W(h)eat Thins

I don’t know what else you can call an 87% haircut.

Greece’s bond exchange: it’s official

Felix Salmon, Reuters

Feb 24, 2012 13:32 EST

Firstly, they’re going to receive new Greek bonds, maturing in 2042. It doesn’t matter whether the bonds you’re holding mature on March 20, or whether they mature in 30 years’ time – everybody gets the same new long-dated bonds, according to the face value of what they now own. In other words, the value of Greek bonds right now is wholly a function of what their face value is, and has nothing to do with their coupon or their maturity date.

The new Greek bonds have a step-up coupon: 2% through 2015, then 3% through 2020, then 3.65% in 2021, and then 4.3% from 2022 through 2042. Bondholders will receive new bonds with a face value of €315 for every €1,000 of old bonds they hold. (Again, remember that it’s face value which matters here, not market price.) What’s the market price of the new bonds going to be? Not very much; my guess is that they’ll trade at roughly 40% of face value. Which means that the “NPV haircut”, as far as the new Greek obligations are concerned, is somewhere on the order of 87%.

Mark to market baby.

Sunday the Washington Post put up a piece by Dylan Matthews that gives relatively serious treatment to Modern Monetary Theory.

You know the deficit hawks. Now meet the deficit owls.

Posted by Dylan Matthews, Washington Post

10:10 AM ET, 02/19/2012

In contrast to “deficit hawks” who want spending cuts and revenue increases now in order to temper the deficit, and “deficit doves” who want to hold off on austerity measures until the economy has recovered, Galbraith is a deficit owl. Owls certainly don’t think we need to balance the budget soon. Indeed, they don’t concede we need to balance it at all. Owls see government spending that leads to deficits as integral to economic growth, even in good times.

The term isn’t Galbraith’s. It was coined by Stephanie Kelton, a professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, who with Galbraith is part of a small group of economists who have concluded that everyone – members of Congress, think tank denizens, the entire mainstream of the economics profession – has misunderstood how the government interacts with the economy. If their theory – dubbed “Modern Monetary Theory” or MMT – is right, then everything we thought we knew about the budget, taxes and the Federal Reserve is wrong.

‘Relatively’ is the key word and there are some serious flaws in Matthew’s piece that letsgetitdone discusses in a 6 part, 4 part series over at Corrente.

WaPo Covers MMT, But Does Its Usual Bad Job: Part One, Some Basics and Solvency

letsgetitdone, Corrente

Tue, 02/21/2012 – 5:48pm

Deficit owls, believe that there is no structural deficit, and that most of the present US deficit will go away when full employment is reached, but probably not all of it, unless the private savings levels in the economy are balanced by an equal or greater foreign sector deficit (trade surplus). They also believe that in times of unused productive capacity like these, Government deficits are caused by the state of the economic system, and that explicitly managing them by taxing more or spending less will not improve its condition, but only result in a downward economic spiral making conditions still worse.

On the other hand, if real economic problems like unemployment, alternative energy capacity and production, infrastructure renewal, education, and industrial innovations are addressed through Government deficit spending, then aggregate demand spurring private sector business activity and ending U6 unemployment will result. In addition, deficit owls believe that in a fiat money system, where there is no debt in foreign currencies, and no “peg” to such currencies, solvency is never a problem for the Government, and that while inflation partly caused by Government deficit spending can become a problem in such a system, this can only happen when full employment is achieved.

…

(N)ecessary for currency sovereignty is to have a non-convertible currency, a floating exchange rate, and no debt in a currency not your own. These qualifications are very important because examples (e.g. Weimar, Zimbabwe) that are often given contradicting the claim that there’s no solvency problem for Governments like the US don’t fulfill these conditions.

WaPo Covers MMT, But Does Its Usual Bad Job: Part Two, Inflation/Hyperinflation

letsgetitdone, Corrente

Wed, 02/22/2012 – 1:00am

(I)t’s easy to wave off MMT by saying there is a risk of inflation in using deficit spending to create full employment, but it is entirely another matter to say what the level of risk is, and to provide compelling arguments about why that risk is appreciable, and more costly than the effects of chronic unemployment in a stagnating economy. This Mankiw doesn’t begin to do. I think Dylan should have pointed this out, rather than just mentioning Mankiw’s opinion. Who cares about his opinion? It’s his arguments, his theories, for expecting inflation that we care about. So, why doesn’t Dylan outline what these are and critically evaluate them?

When Mankiw tells us that default might be a better option than risking inflation by printing money, he is going way beyond his claimed area of expertise in economics. The 14th Amendment to the US constitution prohibits even questioning Government debt, much less defaulting on it. Mankiw in his capacity as an economist is unqualified to say whether a violation of the US constitution is a better option than taking the risk of triggering hyperinflation by “printing money.”

…

What MMT replies is that bond issuance isn’t an inevitability, but a result of choices made by the US Congress and the Executive Branch of Government. The Congress could place the Fed under the authority of the Treasury Secretary in the Executive Branch, and then no debt would have to be issued to deficit spend, since the Fed could just mark up the Treasury General Account (TGA) under orders from the Secretary.

MMT also points out that the Fed controls the Federal Funds Rate which, in turn, heavily influences all bond rates. If the Fed targets a near zero FFR, and the Treasury issues no bonds longer than say, three months in duration, then bond interest rates can be kept near zero no matter how much debt is issued. Japan has proved this is the case since its debt-to-GDP ratio is now in excess of 200% while its interest rates are very near zero on short-term debt instruments.

…

If the Fed buys bonds with money it prints, this will increase reserves in the private sector, but it won’t increase Net Financial Assets (NFA), because buying the bonds is just an asset swap. So with no new NFA being added to the private sector by the Government, this sort of Fed operation won’t be inflationary, as its massive QE programs have just demonstrated empirically. In fact, by removing the payment of interest on bonds from the private sector, and given that most of the Fed profits are returned to the Treasury, some MMT economists say that the end result of such operations may well be deflationary.

WaPo Covers MMT, But Does Its Usual Bad Job: Part Three, Banking, and Default vs. "Hyperinflation"

letsgetitdone, Corrente

Wed, 02/22/2012 – 4:00pm

(I)ncreasing the amount of reserves does not lead to increased borrowing, because banks don’t need more reserves to make loans. All they need are credit worthy borrowers and access to the Fed discount window to make whatever quantity of loans they want to. This is one of the main points about the banking system MMT makes. Put simply: lending is not reserve constrained! It’s constrained by bank willingness to lend to credit worthy borrowers.

…

MMT’s Sectoral Financial Balances (SFB) model is exactly right in its explanations, since they are able to run surpluses without disaster, only because, unlike the United States, the foreign sectors of their economies run deficits (that is Canada and Australia run trade surpluses) large enough to accommodate the private sector savings desires of Australians and also the Government’s desire to run a budget surplus. The US however, currently has a need to run Government deficits of 10% to support both our private sector savings desires of 6% of GDP, and our foreign sector’s desires to export 4% of US GDP to US consumers so they can accumulate US dollars in the form of electronic credits.

…

Governments can voluntarily default if they choose to. MMT economists have always said this and still say it. So why is political stupidity or perfidy counted against the truth of the MMT proposition that Governments sovereign in their currency have no fiscal solvency problems, only voluntary constraints and political problems?

On the contrary, I think the Russian case is one of the primary illustrations of a point that deficit owls have been trying to spread far and wide. Namely, that sometimes default is due to stupidity and perfidy and not to economic forces and that citizens in a democracy need to be aware of that, and of the full capabilities of currency sovereign Governments to always pay debts incurred in their fiat currency and to spend whatever is necessary to enable full employment in their nations. They are never, never, out of money except by choice. So, the real questions are:

• why are they choosing to default?
• Who will benefit from this political choice?
• And who will be asked to pay the price?

And how does the Russian case “prove” that: “Default, while technically always avoidable, is sometimes the best available option”? Is Dylan, through this quote from Gregory Mankiw suggesting that “public purpose” in Russia was better served by its voluntary default than it would have been if the Russians repaid their ruble debts in the rubles they might have created had they wished to? I’m afraid that both Dylan and Mankiw will have to prove that statement to me, since Russian citizens seem to have suffered quite a lot by taking the default choice and accepting austerity when they didn’t have to do so.

WaPo Covers MMT, But Does Its Usual Bad Job: Part Four, The Victory

letsgetitdone, Corrente

Thu, 02/23/2012 – 1:00am

For many years now, MMT economists and others who write in support of them have been trying to make a very important point to the mainstream. And that is that the claim:

The Government is running out of money,

is a myth, a fairy tale, or a deadly innocent fraud.

Dylan doesn’t say that in so many words. But he and the economists he cites, even Greg Mankiw grant this very important MMT/deficit owl point in passing.

If this post is any indication, mainstream economics, and certainly deficit doves, and hawks like Mankiw, now acknowledge that a nation like the US which is sovereign in its own fiat currency can never run out of money, or be prevented by the pure fiscal aspects of any situation from paying its debts or buying whatever goods and/or services it needs that are available for sale in its own sovereign currency.

So, that part of the great debate is now over. It will be very hard from here on, for the deficit hawks to maintain their deficit/insolvency terrorism in the face of the general recognition in economics that the Federal Government is not like a household, because it can never run out of the currency that it has the sole legitimate power to issue.

If they try, they will now be the ones facing ridicule and marginalization. And, increasingly, those politicians who try to claim we are running out of money, will also face ridicule and be viewed as ignoramuses by others.

…

Every critic of MMT cited in the post raises the objection either implicitly or explicitly that MMT policy proposals will lead to worrisome inflation, or hyperinflation. Now, that’s progress, because unlike the level of one’s national debt, or the size of one’s deficit in the abstract, or the nonsense debt-to-GDP ratio, which means nothing in itself, inflation is a real issue, not an artifact of some economist’s fevered theories.

…

In other words, let’s get real. Let’s talk about real problems of real people that can be alleviated through fiscal policy and Government programs. Let’s stop taking about fairy tales, myths, and bogeymen. And let’s get on with the job of rebuilding the United States for our children and grandchildren and using every tool we have, including our fiat currency system, to realize the blessings of liberty and equality of opportunity for everyone.

The WaPo MMT Post Explosion: Dean Baker Weighs In on MMT

letsgetitdone, Corrente

Fri, 02/24/2012 – 12:58am

(Th)ere are some differences that are very significant for policy activism between a Keynesian deficit dove approach employed by people like Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong, Robert Reich, and Dean Baker (op.cite, link added), and a Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) approach employed by people like Warren Mosler, L. Randall Wray, Bill Mitchell, Jamie Galbraith, Stephanie Kelton, Marshall Auerback, Scott Fullwiler, and Pavlina Tcherneva. So, here are some contrasts between the two approaches on seven important issues.

The WaPo MMT Post Explosion: Jared Bernstein’s Cool Up To a Point

letsgetitdone, Corrente

Thu, 02/23/2012 – 12:19pm

• Tax Cuts Hard to Unwind? Not If You Legislate Properly!
• Default vs. Hyperinflation? A False Choice for the US?
• Debt Should Grow More Slowly Than GDP? Why?
• Deficits Must Respond Dynamically To Growth? They Will If They’re the Right Deficits
• MMT Not Effective in Deficit Reduction Mode; or Congress Ineffective In Its Legislation?
• Fiscal Sustainability and the Health Care Issue or Mis-allocation of Net Financial Assets to the Health Care Industry at the Cost of Weakening Our Democracy?
• Does Jared Bernstein Really Understand MMT, Yet?

…

Finally, I also think that Jared doesn’t fully understand that MMT is not just an approach to economic policy and analysis, but primarily embodies certain Macroeconomic propositions and propositions about how modern money works, and what policies could be followed to achieve public purpose. If he did, then why would he keep making objections to MMT policy proposals based on his ideas about how Congress will act in reply to them?

In the end, it’s not MMT’s responsibility to propose policies that Congress will legislate. It is, instead, up to MMT to propose policies that will achieve full employment with price stability and other favorable social, cultural and political impacts for our democracy.

From that point on, it is up to political advocates to make these policies popular enough to get Congress and the President to pass them. And any failings in passing these policies are not failings of MMT economics, but failngs of the oligarchy which will not pass the policies it recommends.