More hopey changiness-

OFA Tries to Get Supporters to Write Letters to the Editor Praising a Federal Worker Pay Freeze

By: David Dayen Tuesday November 30, 2010 9:55 am

That’s right, the organizing project of the Democratic National Committee wants you to organize in support of freezing public worker salaries.

And don’t worry, later in the email, OFA tells you how the Administration has really been responsible on this issue – they’ve frozen salaries of White House officials and political appointees, froze non-defense discretionary spending, and more.

So go out there and sharpen those pencils and tell everyone how great it is to cut people’s pay!

Is there any core principle of the Democratic Party Barack Hussein Obama isn’t willing to sell out?

Ireland Gets $113 Billion Aid as Bondholders Win Bailout-Payment Reprieve

By James G. Neuger and Simon Kennedy, Bloomberg News

Nov 29, 2010 11:42 AM ET

“The notion that a rescue package for Ireland would create a firewall and stop the fear of contagion is clearly discredited,” said Preston Keat, director of research at Eurasia Group, a political consultancy, in London. “Portugal and Spain are already facing pressures in the markets.”

…

Germany, which built the euro on the principle of budgetary rigor, unleashed the latest phase of the crisis by demanding a “permanent” system as of 2013 that would enable fiscally troubled countries to restructure their debts and cut the value of bond holdings.

The German push ran into criticism from policy makers elsewhere, who called it mistimed, and from European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet, who warned it would unsettle bondholders. Merkel, who has faced domestic criticism for aiding EU neighbors, yesterday backed away from the pitch for an automatic penalty, agreeing to give the International Monetary Fund a role in determining losses on a case-by-case basis.

Bank bondholders escape again as a protected species of capitalism

JOHN McMANUS, The Irish Times

Monday, November 29, 2010

FOR A brief moment on Friday, it looked as though for the first time in Europe’s handling of the financial crisis the holders of senior bank bonds were going to join the rest of us in the world of moral hazard.

But it now seems that the issue of the senior bond holders in the Irish banks being asked to participate in the fourth bailout of these institutions was effectively shelved on Saturday.

…

The speed with which even the mere suggestion of burden sharing with Irish bank senior bond holders sent the market into paroxysms indicates that they know the day of reckoning is coming.

…

The authorities may have blinked first, but a process may have been set in train that will see the abandonment of the position that senior bond holders in European banks are a protected species.

Markets Remain Focused on Debt Crisis

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: November 30, 2010

“Ireland’s bailout package has clearly failed to stop the rot in euro zone markets and if anything it has focused attention on other countries in the periphery especially Portugal but also to Spain, Belgian and Italian government debt,” an analyst at Crédit Agricole, Mitul Kotecha, said.

…

At the heart of the problem is that the austerity measures these countries need to take to reduce their deficits threaten to backfire by weakening economic growth and hurting state revenues. That is what’s happening in Greece, which has been able to drastically cut its spending but is struggling to raise tax income as economic and corporate activity wilts.

Just as badly as predicted.

Welcome back to the usual shoddy, sloppy, sleep deprived workmanship you’ve come to expect normal for a while, though you still have those annoying ek’smas specials to deal with, most of which I will ignore if possible.

Skating.

I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue.

• ABC Family– The Dog Who Saved Christmas, The Dog Who Saved Christmas Vacation (didn’t you see them this weekend?)
• AMC– Scrooged x 2
• Animal Planet– Life marathon
• Discovery– American Chopper x 2 (Sr. v. Jr. premier!), Brew Masters (premier)
• ESPN– Throwball, ‘9ers @ Cardinals
• ESPN2– College Hoopies, Virginia @ Minnesota
• Food– New Best Thing I Ever Ate
• FX– There’s Something About Mary
• History– Pawn Stars and American Pickers
• Lifetime– Comfort and Joy, Unanswered Prayers
• MTV– Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde
• Sci Fi– Saw 3 & 4
• Spike– Waist Deep
• TBS– Family Guy night
• Turner Classic– Casablanca
• Toon– New Regular Show, MAD and Robotomy, Johnny Test
• TV Land– My Cousin Vinny
• Vs.– Stars @ Hurricanes (ex Hartford Whalers)

Later-

• AMC– The Perfect Storm
• Spike– National Security
• Turner Classic– The Great Dictator
• USA– The Golden Compass x 2

Dave is repeating 11/5.  Jon has Judah Friedlander, Stephen Dan Savage.  Alton has a 2 part Loin special.  Conan has George Lopez, Chris Colfer, and Kid Cudi.

Boondocks– Home Alone.

“Corona veniat electis.” Victory shall come to the worthy. Today, democracy, liberty, and equality are words to fool the people. No nation can progress with such ideas. They stand in the way of action. Therefore, we frankly abolish them. In the future, each man will serve the interest of the State with absolute obedience. Let him who refuses beware! The rights of citizenship will be taken away from all Jews and other non-Aryans. They are inferior and therefore enemies of the state. It is the duty of all true Aryans to hate and despise them. Henceforth this nation is annexed to the Tomanian Empire, and the people of this nation will obey the laws bestowed upon us by our great leader, the Dictator of Tomania, the conqueror of Osterlich, the future Emperor of the World!

You speak.

I can’t.

You must. It’s our only hope.

Something about Casablamca always makes me want to sing-

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 World scrambles to deal with WikiLeaks fallout

by Charles Onians, AFP

2 hrs 44 mins ago

Pay Freeze Decision Smacks of Too-Cute Political Team Running the Show

By: David Dayen Monday November 29, 2010 12:06 pm

There are two options. One is that Obama necessarily gravitates toward people with really bad economic ideas, and as a result of this advice makes really bad economic decisions. The other, and I would probably say the right, option is that the economic team isn’t really driving the debate, certainly not anymore. The political team thinks in terms of 11-dimensional chess and putting Republicans in a bad spot and all of the things you’d expect out of this federal pay freeze decision. Never mind that this hasn’t worked in the entire history of the Obama Administration. So a politically-minded official saying that unemployment is structural reinforces that we should really get around to those budget cuts which will please centrists in 2012.

There’s a lot of turmoil on the economic team right now, with new people moving in and out. The political team, outside of Rahm Emanuel, has remained basically stable, certainly in terms of worldview. And that worldview (mis)reads polls, and thinks that being the “good guys” who cut worker pay and freeze discretionary spending to “look tough” on the deficit is eminently responsible. It’s also responsible to extend unemployment benefits to people who have no other visible means of support, but that’s out of their hands, and if they fail, ah well. What’s important is to convey responsibility to the elites, who will pat them on the head as they carry out their austerity plans.

Oh, and while raising taxes on or otherwise “punishing” the banksters will instantly result in these “talented” Masters of the Universe going Galt, the same logic doesn’t apply at all to government employees-

"Responsible" Obama Administration Doesn’t Think Federal Employees Facing Pay Cut Will Leave to the Private Sector

By: David Dayen Monday November 29, 2010 11:30 am

On a conference call just now, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer and U.S. Chief Performance Officer and the Office of Management and Budget’s Deputy Director for Management Jeffrey Zients defended the White House’s [proposed pay freeze ] for federal employees from the charge that this will drive talented workers out of government as they see no prospects for individual advancement. Seeking a better return on their talent, the theory goes, they would move to the private sector, probably a government contractor, where their services can be “rented” from the government at a higher rate. If the government has the same amount of services to deliver and less skilled know-how at their disposal, they would need to draw upon that from somewhere. So under this scenario, government would end up paying more for the same pool of talent, despite freezing salaries.

Zients disputed the notion that this pay freeze will lead to a dissolution of talent. “On recruitment and retention, we believe that people come to government service for range of reasons…. We feel comfortable that we have a strong value proposition and can retain the best and brightest.” Given this, Zients didn’t feel that there would be an expanded reliance on government contracting as a result of this decision. They believe they can wring enough out of federal contracting to save $40 billion dollars, in fact.

And finally, the problem with the economy is NOT THE DEFICIT!  It’s a lack of Aggregate Demand!

Obama Flunks Economics with Pointless Federal Wage Freeze

By: Scarecrow Monday November 29, 2010 8:35 am

(F)or the umpteenth time, this President has repeated discredited Republican gibberish that when households are having to cut back spending during a recession, government should do the same thing.

That’s just wrong. Foolishly wrong. Depressingly (literally), tragically wrong.

…

With 15 million unemployed and millions more living in job and health insecurity, typical non-wealthy households have no choice but to cut back. So private spending cannot pull the economy out of the ditch as it has in the past. But that is not true of the federal government.

Government spending can pull the economy up from the bottom. And only government has the resources and the power to fill in the gap in aggregate demand to bring the economy and jobs back.

A government with its own currency is not a household. It has different abilities, different ways of affecting the economy and paying for things. It controls the money supply. And it has different responsibilities, including the obligation to pull the economy out of a deep recession, to help create jobs and foster job creation in the private sector. To do this under today’s conditions requires enhanced spending/investments by government, not less. And there has never been a better time for government to act, nor has the cost of acting ever been lower.

It’s counterproductive and stupid for the President of the United States to keep telling Americans the false argument that government needs to tighten its belt when households are tightening theirs. And it’s even worse to falsely claim that by focusing on deficit reduction, the government is “doing everything we can to help boost economic growth and spur job creation.”

As Krugman said–

(Y)ou have to wonder what it will take for serious people to realize that punishing the populace for the bankers’ sins is worse than a crime; it’s a mistake.

Monday Business Edition

The World is running out of money to insure the fictional assets of ‘senior creditors’ and banksters.

The problem is fundamentally leverage, the intellectual market laziness that makes financial institutions think they are entitled to make unlimited bets on 36:1 payouts every time.

When things get even a little difficult they whine and whine about how badly they are mistreated, but the fact of the matter is that there’s going to be a haircut taken and the obvious target is the biggest one.  Spain is the next to go and Italy after that.  Euros were such a good bet.

And if you were smart and doubled down every chance you could get, you’d build up quite a pile of chips.

Not the kind you can eat.

So what are they worth?  Whatever Rick will pay for them in some medium of exchange that’s good outside the casino.  Unless you want to barter, I have two passes out of Casablanca.

We’ve talked about Ireland and Iceland, but I wonder how many people are familiar with Dubai?

Today, Dubai has emerged as a global city and a business hub. Although Dubai’s economy was built on the oil industry, currently the emirate’s model of business, similar to that of Western countries, drives its economy, with the effect that its main revenues are now from tourism, real estate, and financial services.

I like this one because it has lots of numbers-

Dubai mulls sale of corporate champions

By Simeon Kerr in Dubai, Financial Times

Published: November 28 2010 18:42

Dubai is mulling the privatisation of home-grown corporate champions as a means to start paying down its estimated $110bn in debts, senior officials said.

Let’s just stop right there and recognize that we’re talking about an Ireland.  The proposal is to sell minority stakes in State Owned and Sovereign Wealth Fund Owned industries like their National Airline.

Mr Shaibani was speaking at an open forum held on Sunday, a rare moment of media engagement in an emirate that has faced a deluge of negative press since shocking markets with its standstill request a year ago, which ended with the restructuring of $25bn in debts at troubled conglomerate Dubai World.

Yup, that Dubai World, the one we were going to sell our ports to.  Now Dubai has already had a bailout from the UAE to the tune of $10 Billion in February of 2009 and assures us with the utmost gravity and reliability, just like Spain and Portugal, that they don’t need any bailouts thank you very much.

We are rapidly reaching the point where negative outcomes for the bankster class are inevitable due to the sheer volume of their theft.

Business News below.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 WikiLeaks unleashes flood of confidential US cables

by Joseph Krauss, AFP

1 hr 20 mins ago

244 Stories served.  35 per day.

This is actually the hardest diary to execute, and yet perhaps the most valuable because it lets you track story trends over time.  It should be a Sunday morning feature.

• Sunday 11/21
• Monday 11/22
• Tuesday 11/23
• Wednesday 11/24
• Friday 11/26
• Saturday 11/27

No News on Thanksgiving, but plenty the rest of the week.

Well, it’s that holiday time of year again when all you want is some mindless entertainment to spare you from dealing with your relatives and TV programmers screw with you by replacing all your familiar favorites with sappy specials and marathons of your least liked shows made more inpenetrable by the one line crawl of uselessness that TV Guide channel has become.

Thank goodness kindly uncle ek is here to highlight a few moments of blessed distraction as well as some of the potential pitfalls to be avoided.

I look on it as a public service.

My job is made a little easier because of a neat little network ‘day at a glance’ feature of Zap2it TV Listings.  Click on the channel name.  I’m going from my last diary to Paid Programming.  I’m putting the main meat below the fold because the table is too long for the Front Page.  It’s arranged by time and marathons (4 half hour episodes, 3 hour episodes, double features, themes, and Instapeats) may be noted earlier than you expect, but they do also include the running time so you know when they end.

Nothing like watching A Christmas Story 25 times in a row.

Today is the last day of your special 24 hour Holiday coverage.  Prime Time tomorrow as usual.  I’m rolling publishing again because it’s much easier.  Right now this covers until noon.  Expect an update.

Update: Good until 6 am.

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Bluefin tuna gets scant relief at fisheries meet

by Marlowe Hood, AFP

1 hr 22 mins ago