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Links 2/23/09

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‘Superguns’ of Elizabeth I’s navy BBC

Court Enforces FOIA Request to Release TARP Details Anthony Freed

Microsoft wants refund from some laid off workers CNet

Fire Lloyd Blankfein Independent Accountant

Clinton Encourages China to Keep the Yuan Undervalued Dean Baker

Beijing’s Olympic building boom becomes a bust LA Times (hat tip reader Michael)

The Collapse of Manufacturing CFO

Eastern crisis that could wreck the eurozone Wolfgang Munchau, Financial Times

Antidote du jour:

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18 comments

  2. Uncle Billy

    Uh, Yves, this is (unintentionally?) really creepy in light of the “Judensau” garbage at CR today.

  3. russell1200

    Elizabeth’s super cannons is another example of the “new finds” that are not very new. In any case it is not so much the cannons that they used, but how they used them.

    Angus Konstam’s Sovereigns of the Sea pretty well goes through it, and it is a popular account, not cutting edge work hot of the academic press.

  4. fresno dan

    “dearieme” Couldn’t have said it better. Guess they need to hold those Tarp meetings in an undisclosed location.

  9. lineup32

    re: FOIA:

    “Accountability in the largest disbursement of public funds in history is not only a good idea, it is essential to our democracy, as is ending the revolving door between corporate boardrooms and the regulatory offices of our government.”

    I wonder if this financial crisis is really about who takes the losses.

  10. Anonymous

    ——- The Blanket Trick ——-

    The world’s nations got feisty they were doing quite well,
    And this annoyed the USA,
    They were gobbling ever more of the world’s resource pie,
    Taking more and more each day …

    Uncle Sam just smiled that knowing smile,
    He had seen it all before,
    So he got out his bag of dirty tricks,
    And he spread them all onto the floor …

    False flag operations and horrendous torture,
    Lots of deceptions and devious guile,
    When he saw the small pox in the blankets scheme,
    He smiled a knowing smile …

    He was driven to prevail and rule the world,
    He had a ‘full spectrum dominance’ dream.
    He knew that he could control the world,
    With a variant of the blanket scheme …

    So he altered the blanket of finance,
    That held all the world together,
    He wove in a credit bubble,
    His touch as light as a feather …

    And just as deftly and deviously as well,
    He wove in leveraged derivatives too,
    They functioned just like counterfeit money,
    Soon the world was a fucking zoo …

    “These nations are just like children.”
    Said Uncle Sam with a knowing wink,
    “Why openly spank them when you can deviously tank them,
    and put their economies all in the drink?”

    Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.

    i on the ball patriot

  11. JP

    I like your photo of the bankers and the Treasury.

    Small addition:
    Auto industry comes to a standstill while bankers feed at the treasury.

  13. CCT

    According to a link on Setser’s blog, China’s stimulus package (when combining provincial/local spending alongside central government spending) is nearly 10 times larger than previously expected… at about $5 trillion USD.

  14. lineup32

    New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo filed a motion Monday asking former Merrill Lynch Chief Executive John Thain to provide more information about bonuses paid out on the eve of the bank’s merger with Bank of America last year.

    Cuomo’s office alleges that Thain is not answering the questions under instructions from Bank of America [BAC 4.37 0.58 (+15.3%) ], and as a result, the bank is interfering with its investigation of the bonus payments.

    In a deposition last week, Thain refused to answer questions about how the bonuses were determined for certain individuals, citing instructions from Bank of America attorneys.

  16. demarketeer

    On the Microsoft “tin parachutes” for laid-off employees, I had this idea:

    Let’s say they overpaid $500 to each of the 1400 employees, that’s $700k. Not a huge amount, but this could provide angel investment funds for maybe 7-10 companies.

    Rather than give the money back, what if each employee contributed the amount to a new venture fund for those employees that want to start up companies rather than look for new jobs.

    What great irony if Microsoft ended up funding the competitor that eventually takes it down!

    Is there any precedent of such collective pooling of funds in the wake of mass layoffs? Certainly many people use severance payments to start up new companies, but these are typically executives whose severance packages that can easily sustain them — what about the rank and file coming together with, say, up to a thousand each, that want to support the few among them that are willing and/or able to take a risk and have the best ideas?

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