Increased insurance claims may be due to climate change GreenBlorge (hat tip reader Sugar Hush)
Brisbane floods: before and after ABCNews (hat tip reader Skippy). The visuals are cool even though the situation most decidedly is not.
Despite efforts to improve, U.S. patent approvals move slower Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Reader Francois T, commenting on the fact that patents are published 18 months after filed, regardless of whether they have been acted upon:
This has to be the most incredibly stupid SOP I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen quite a few. Isn’t the USPTO supposed to protect a patent application? I wish the journalists would’ve dig deeper into this.
Trust me, patent attorneys are well aware of this fact, but yes, more profile and public pressure would be useful.
Man Bites Dog! Web Publisher Pays Writers Peter Kafka. I am waiting for Felix Salmon to parse the economics. But since the writers have no audit rights, how can they know if they are actually getting the promised compensation for the traffic they generate?
Dating site creates profiles from public records IT News. Ugh. This is enough to make one glad to be an old fart.
Israeli Test on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay New York Times (hat tip reader Crocodile Chuck). Suspicions confirmed.
The brutal truth about Tunisia Independent (hat tip reader May S)
China Leader’s Limits Come Into Focus as U.S. Visit Nears New York Times. Any China mavens willing to translate? This reads like a cover for some anticipated outcome next week (as “no big deal if we don’t get a deal, not clear who/Hu is in charge”). Or could this be the reason: Hu questions future role of US dollar Financial Times
Hedge funds bet China is a bubble close to bursting Telegraph (hat tip reader Michael Q)
Central Bank steps up its cash support to Irish banks financed by institution printing own money Independent (Ireland, hat tip Richard Smith). You have to love this, no one else seems to be reporting that the Irish Central Bank is “printing” euros. Yes, they did inform (note merely inform) the mother ship, the ECB, which is pretending this is all OK. Now if the Irish can take the position that they don’t need approval, what is to prevent any other eurozone central bank from doing the same?
One Step Forward in the Euro Zone? Claus Vistesen, CreditWritedowns (hat tip Richard Smith)
Steel price rise stokes inflation concerns Financial Times
No hunger at the Fed Asia Times (hat tip reader John R)
A German-led eurozone rescue Wolfgang Munchau, Financial Times
The Economy and Business for journalists in 2011 Global Print Monitor
Finnish lesson on principles for Goldman Lucy Kellaway, Financial Times (hat tip reader Peter J)
More banks walking away from homes, adding to housing crisis Chicago Tribune (hat tip reader aletheia33)
Big Lenders May Lose With Simpler Mortgage Disclosure Bloomberg
Utah’s “Quiet Title Law” Bypasses MERS, Awards Homes Free and Clear; One Homeowner Had $417,000 Debt Erased MIchael Shedlock
Lawsuit Loans Add New Risk for the Injured New York Times
Endogenize ideology Steve Waldman
Antidote du jour:
66 comments
Comments are closed.
The trouble with “See no evil” is that you also see no fish.
Still waiting for wild – and free – nudibranchs.
Re: ICB printing
[Drat this new firefox! *grumbles about changes to user interfaces*]
The Irish Central Bank has to seek approval for ELA (Emergency Liquidity Assistance) in excess of €500 million. So I am guessing that the approval has been sought and given.
ICB obligations fall on the Irish state, whereas ECB obligations (i.e. in the event of insolvency/recapitalisation of the Central Bank) fall on all members of the euro. My guess is that this is part of the quid-pro-quo of the bailout deal “you issue from your own Central Bank and we’ll pretend that we don’t see it; just don’t send it to us”.
A couple of interesting documents released recently about Civil Service (Department of Finance) advice given in February 2008 on imaginary liquidity/solvency problems in Irish banks: http://www.thepropertypin.com/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=35376
Re bank walkaways:
These are also called Toxic Titles. This is another example of the antisocial essence of the banks, and why we should reject their “ownership” of land. They’ve proven that they’re not willing to assume citizen responsbilities, so therefore they have no rights.
We need an organized land redemption movement in these neighborhoods to reclaim this derelict land and put it to productive use as affordable housing and for food production. It must start with organized squatting, while the squatters legally and politically demand the right to adverse possession of land the banks themselves intentionally abandoned and intentionally inflicted as a cost and social burden upon the locality and/or state. The penalty for this must be total forfeiture.
This and many other such reclamation ideas are the proper direct response on the part of the victims of the banks (that’s all of us non-rich, the American citizenry) to the crimes of the banks. It’s redemption, restitution, and retribution all in one, and satisfies every imperative of morality, justice, and the need to rebuild the real economy.
But I suppose “Mish” wouldn’t approve. Although I’m glad he discussed the quiet title phenomenon, he has a completely wrong idea about it. Far from being contrary to justice, it’s the epitome of justice.
What have the banksters and MERS wrought? To use a physics metaphor, they wanted to smear out all nominee status and ownership status in principle, so that the wave function could collapse wherever MERS and the banks wanted it in any particular case.
So the correct social response to this is clear. We must turn it right side up. We must forcibly collapse the wave function in any particular case wherever is most beneficial for society. The banksters unilaterally set up this ambiguity, but we can finish it to our own satisfaction.
Mish doesn’t like that because it hurts the investors? Tell them to sue the banksters. And if they can’t sue according to the bankster-rigged law, then who would be stupid enough to give money to obvious crooks who have already gamed the system against them? That’s like gambling in a casino with posted notices that the games are rigged in the house’s favor. In that case, the investors deserve what they get. That’s what they signed up for. That’s the genius of “the market”.
But maybe his core objection is contained in the inevitable debtor-bashing. Someone who owed money on a house got the house for free and didn’t have to pay the debt! Horrors!
I agree that not every such debtor is the equivalent of Rosa Parks. But it’s insane to let ourselves be sidetracked into getting angry over rare examples of somebody non-rich getting something for nothing when the level of robbery and destruction and parasitism of the banks overwhelms this by countless orders of magnitude. Everyone recognizes this as pro-bankster divide-and-conquer, yet so many still fall for it.
Let’s be better than that. We’re human beings with the potential for discipline and self-control. Let’s use those for our own protection when we’re under such vicious assault. No more debtor bashing. It’s self-cannibalism. Let astroturfers like Mish go sadly peddle that to their reflections in the mirror, since no one else will any longer listen to it.
When a hail of rocks and flame is being thrown down upon us from black towers of death, we should absolutely reject any words which don’t call upon us to attack upward.
Re: abandoned houses and, by doing nothing, passing the costs of abandonment on to the local and state governments – this is yet another externalizing of costs, while all profits of course remain internalized. It’s yet another (unacknowledged) public underwriting of the banksters.
It also looks like yet one more proof that they were all gambling with a lot more than they either admitted or knew, when costs like these appear.
The problem with adverse possession is, it takes a very long time to gain title rights – I think the customary period is 10 years, but it will vary from state to state. Squatters could squat on the property and use or even improve it, however they would be vulnerable to legal action for trespass and also possibly any change to the property as “damage.” That’s not to say that there isn’t a lot to be gained for free use of a property for whatever period, and damage would likely be difficult to prove. The potential threat of legal action, though, would likely deter this sort of action. In a perfect world, permission to use the property could be gained by consent, because everyone would win. But considering the (lack of) success of getting mods, another win-win but which takes consent to accomplish, this does not seem very likely.
I say the cities/counties/states that bear these costs should be able to pursue the banksters for them, at the very least.
You’re right about the technicalities of adverse possession. I was using the term in a more loose, political sense. I assume that the movement would have to encourage cities and states to themselves engage in anti-bank civil disobedience, meaning that cities and states would simply refuse to enforce the banksters’ phony rigged-law “rights”.
Since the banksters launched this criminal assault on America, are in fact levying war against the United States, as the Constitution puts it, we certainly have zero obligation to keep legal faith with them, and an obligation to ignore and override their odious rigged pseudo-law.
Plus, to the extent we could take back lower level government we could revise and update things like adverse possession in their technical legality as well.
Redemption movement:
Quiet title actions on all these abandoned homes. The banks can’t respond to these actions. They have no way to prove ownership.
Yes, but who files? The local government on behalf of whom?
Well, if we changed the adverse possession laws in the case of bank-abandoned lots, we could quickly turn producitve squatters into owners, and they could then file.
I know that won’t be done anytime soon. What could be done today? I don’t know – I guess there’s no good way for cities and towns to legalistically seize these abandoned, unmaintained lots, although in some places the city puts a lien on it for any costs incurred by the public.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_02/b4066046083770.htm
The homeowners who have walked away. They should file. And move back.
Wouldn’t that be more in the nature of Eminent Domain?
Re: defaulted homeowners getting “free” houses. When a mortgage is 45 days past due, the servicer triggers default,which triggers an insurance payment.i.e.PMI,ambac,mbia,cds,etc.So at that time most if not all of the mortgage would be paid.In actuality,when the mbs are set up,the note has to be sold twice to set up mbs as a bankruptcy-remote entity. When the note is sold,and paid for,it then is a stock. It can’t be a stock and a mortgage note at the same time. That’s why all the promissory notes are photoshop copies of forgeries. The assignments or the mortgage note conveyences weren’t done either,that’s why the assignments are forged,fabricated &backdated-millions and millions of them, so that the investment banks could sell the same things to different pension funds,cities,municipalities and other investors the world over. Now,it comes time to prove that they own the mortgage in question and have a right to foreclose? They can’t,without lying,forging,fabricating and introducing fake evidence to the courts. And then to be bailed out by taxpayers again and again? And the bill for the bailouts passed on to our kids and grandkids to be paid (with interest) virtually forever? This is a national disgrace,and if someone gets a free house,because the entity foreclosing has no right to do so, then great-and the foreclosing entity should pay a fine equal to 10x the value of the forged documents they are trying to enforce by duping the judge. And then be sentenced to a jail term equal to the remaining years on the borrowers’ mortgage.
Yes…I continue to have a feeling that there’s something unique about each mortgage, something so essential, which prevents their “securitization” on the model which was followed.
Belief that that could be done, is not enought to change the fact that it can’t.
But I simply don’t have the theory to properly connect the dots.
I suppose that’s just the conservative in me, distructing new practices which have never been proven to be robust.
“distrusting”…stoopid typos!
What’s with this “free house” talk??? Are you a banker?
NO ONE HAS BEEN UP-IN-ARMS THAT BANKS HAVE BEEN GETTING FREE HOMES!!!
This quiet title action MEANS the BANK DOES NOT OWN THE HOME!!!! If you are so freaked out about “free houses” why don’t you go protest at Chase, BOA, Citi, US Bank, Wells Fargo. So far this year, they have all gotten over ONE MILLION FREE HOMES.
Banks getting back free homes? Of course if they don’t really own the mortgage, then they’re getting it free. In what percentage of repossessions does the bank truly not have a legitimate interest? As for the rest, they are taking possession of collateral, the value being perhaps less than what they’ve loaned out minus the payments.
Free? Yes, perhaps in a certain percentage of cases. That percentage has yet to be quantified, but I doubt it is millions as you claimed.
Spend a day going through your local land records. Nearly every single one I’ve gone through is hopelessly corrupt. Forgeries, fraudulent filings, notary fraud, robo-signers. It’s a mess.
And yes, nearly every foreclosure the banks proceed with, they are obtaining a free house. Why aren’t you up-in-arms over that???
If the property has been securitized, they have given up the rights to the collateral. That is the key to this whole damn game. They have screwed themselves by ditching the paperwork….they had to ditch to get rid of the criminal evidence. They cannot “repurchase” the note from the REMIC Trust due to banking rule FAS 140. They are screwed.
oops….accounting rule FAS 140…..that was meant to say.
Erick,
Given that the heart of the matter is standing to foreclose, we have no reason to believe that any given bank filing a foreclosure has any legitimate financial interest in the house.
So statistically, they are getting free houses.
That is, unless you are saying that every bank is an arm of the same organization, so giving a house to Chase is as good as giving it to Deutsche Bank, then you might have a point. I might agree with that.
Curious you linked to Shedlock’s blog (Mish?) instead of the Utah news article (linked on Shedlock’s blog), re: Quiet Title. http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/51006287-78/mers-property-mortgage-loan.html.csp?page=1
I had the idea of suing for Quiet Title six months back. The outcome in Utah was pretty much as I expected. Papers were filed, there was no challenge, the motion was granted & the property awarded. I presume there will be appeals, but I don’t give them much chance. Property law is well-settled.
Back in Brooklyn many years ago, a seat-of-the-pants attorney told me the law was what you can get away with. That, and the fact that, until recently, most private bankruptcy filings were unopposed (a fairly close parallel to Quiet Title), was really all I needed to know.
Shedlock whined. “Is that justice? In what way?” For my part, I’ve been down this road too many times, I’ve been burned too often. No mercy – no prisoners. If the big boys refuse to act responsibly (Timmy, Ben, Barry, et al), then they deserve what they will get.
What is this talk of city & state bankruptcy I hear? Do I hear correctly that Washington’s response is they should twist slowly in the wind?
Okay. And while California’s dangling, what’s to stop Jerry Brown from calling for a Constitutional Convention? Article V, look it up. Thirty-four states, acting together, can end the Washington/Wall Street evil. Jerry wanted to be President once. Maybe he’s still hungry for a bigger role.
Would that be a Pandora’s Box? Sure would. The mere threat would be a great big stick to beat sense into the New York/Washington idiots.
State legislatures are beginning their 2011 terms – many of which are limited in duration by their state constitutions. If the states don’t want to be road kill on the Wall Street Express, a resolution for a Constitutional Convention ought to be No. 1 on their legislative agendas.
Denver would make a nice place for a new Federal Capital.
Why does Yves subject us to Mish? I agree that a link to the original article is all we need. I don’t need to read Mish’s editorializing to the effect that there is some sort of injustice taking place when banks fail to register their security interests in land lose that security interest for failing to register it properly. This is precisely how the system is supposed to work. The debt isn’t extinguished (the money is still owed to someone) there’s just no security for the debt against the property, because it was never properly registered in the first place.
Why does Mish oppose certainty in the system of titles to land? How is it an injustice when banks lose their security interests entirely through their own failure to register said interests according to the law? His bias is just that, bias, in favor of banks and against the rule of law.
Because these notes were securitized, there is no way of registering a stock in land records. The banks give up the security interest when they turn the debt into a stock. They will lose at their own game. How funny is that?
If the banks gave up the security interest as a deliberate part of the process then I really can’t see how anyone else but the banks is to blame for it. Investors who bought this crap should have done their due diligence.
Awesome Antidote! Hilarious
Further along in the Utah article was the admission that however badly the deeds were (not) transferred, the underlying debt was handled even more poorly.
The eventual note holder(s), secured or not, may in fact have no recourse.
Banks-as-servicers have no skin in this game. They could walk away both from the properties, and the investors. Right now, they’re Germany & it’s March 1945. Is this not true?
Dear Ms. Smith,
I’m a big fan of your blog, I loved ECONNED, I read naked capitalism every day, I enjoy listening to your interviews. To be absolutely clear: I’ve learned a lot from following your work and hope to learn more.
That’s why it distresses me greatly that you seem to have an anti-Israel bias that appears every once in a while, mostly in the comments of the links list.
For example, the comment today about the link to a NY Times article demonstrating that the Stuxnet virus was created by Israel and the US, the comment was, “Suspicions confirmed”.
My response is, “So what?” and “Good for Israel”.
Do you think the President of Iran is kidding when he calls for Israel to be wiped off the surface of the earth? this Holocaust denier?
There is an unconscionable double standard on the “Left” in the Anglo-American world that’s very destructive in a number of ways, but it would take a lot more space to go into that than I have right now.
And if I’m incorrect in my understanding about the views about Israel very faintly expressed on this blog, then please excuse me and accept my apologies.
Very sincerely,
George Balanchine
… while Israel’s refusal to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and subject its nuclear arsenal to international inspection is, of course, not a double standard. No-o-o-o-o-o, of course not!
Really Jim? Is that the best you can do? How often has Israel threatened to wipe its neighbours off the map? Have they done anything to date in terms of aggressive surface-to-surface missile testing? Have you looked at what their neighbours routinely call for in their state-controlled media? If not, pull up the MEMRI project for some great translations of TV shows, Newspaper articles and cartoons. Coverage of the Hamas Children’s TV Shows are particularly eye-opening (glad they use charitable educational funding for those beauties). In case you are unfamiliar with the Jew-Hate that dominates Israel’s neighbours, besides Saudi Arabia which doesn’t allow Jews at all, another great example was the other day when an Egyptian official indicated they couldn’t rule out the shark attacks on the Red Sea beaches weren’t coordinated by Zionist agents. Hoping your reply has more content that the underlying “Jews are bad” which was the foundation of your first post on the subject.
@JimHaygood
You illustrated the anti-Israel bias I was talking about perfectly.
You only criticized Israel for not signing the Non-proliferation treaty, but to the best of my knowledge there are at least 4 other countries who’ve also not signed it, including I believe, Pakistan.But you didn’t criticize them did you?
So what other country collectively punishes 1.5 million humans in a open air cage? Let me know so I don’t miss anyone when I say how despicable it is.
Also, are supposed to believe that even if Iran gets a few nukes that they are going to guarantee the obliteration of their country by using them offensively?
Iran can’t get rid of Israel for the simple reason that internal centripetal forces in every “Muslim” country but especially in post revolutionary Iran and the modern oil states would cause these countries to erupt were there not an Israel to act as the focus of all accusations of injustice in the region.
What is sad is that many Israelis cannot see this fact and indeed jump to take up the “victimizer of Arabs” role as well as the other flavors of minority in the ghettoized occupied territories. When Israel’s Likud stops demanding the right to be villainous, the implosion of Shia vs. Sunni vs. Druze/other Christian vs. animist, plus Persian vs. Arab vs. Turk vs. Kurd vs. etc. can proceed.
Thanks for your kind words about the blog, but we differ on this topic. It isn’t a bias to point out large scale human rights abuses. In fact, it reveals a bias to consider that sort of discussion to be somehow impermissible. And there is a small left wing in Israel that is critical of what is happening in Gaza, so those who point it out can hardly be called “anti-Israel”.
As for the widely reported “wipe Israel off the map” remark, it’s a mistranslation:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/jun/14/post155
Dear Ms. Smith,
Thank you very much for replying.
I realize this could be an endless discussion, so I’ll try to keep it simple.
There’s an anti-Israel bias on the “Left”, because ONLY Israel is criticized for human rights violations(for its admittedly harsh treatment of the Palestinians). Without going into a discussion about that, let me point out that there are a number of US client states that have much worse human rights records than Israel but these aren’t mentioned at all, EVER. Colombia should top the list, since its been slaughtering its citizens by the hundreds, if not thousands, for decades, but it’s never talked about as much as Israel in the non-existent “Left” in the Anglo-American world.
My point finally, is that many countries have human rights problems, including the United States, why is only Israel mentioned?
re:Ahmadinejad
You’re really defending Ahmadinejad? A man who organized a Holocaust denial conference, among whose speakers was David Duke, an American Neo-Nazi?
Here’s a quote from the Guardian article you linked to:
“The version of the October 26 2005 speech put out by the Middle East Media Research Institute, based on the Farsi text released by the official Iranian Students News Agency, says: “This regime that is occupying Qods [Jerusalem] must be eliminated from the pages of history”
Do you really see a lot of difference between “wiped off the face of the earth” and this presumably more accurate translation?
Sincerely,
George Balanchine
My final two cents on this topic:
you wrote:
“It isn’t a bias to point out large scale human rights abuses.”
My response:
It is, if you only point it out, over and over again, for one country and no one else.
You also wrote:
“In fact, it reveals a bias to consider that sort of discussion to be somehow impermissible.”
My response:
Please let me know where I wrote that it was impermissible to say what you were saying. I’m suggesting that it reflects a bias against Israel. But in no way do I believe that you should not be able to express what you believe. You owe me an apology on that one.
And since I’m not going to get an apology from you, I leave you and your mostly excellent blog with this final comment:
The fact that you take the neo-Nazi, Holocaust denying, psychotic President of Iran seriously(as far as I can tell from your comment)is quite distressing and just really hard to credit to someone who writes so well about economics and politics.
But then, you accused me of censorship with no evidence at all, so…anything’s possible.
The brutal truth about Tunisia (Independent) might be better titled The brutal truth about Algeria. It is amazing that the history of the suppression of democracy and the FIS in Algeria was not more part of the debate last decade about the War on Terror and the invasion of Iraq. It casts some light on the French refusal to be involved in the invasion. And, of course, it reflects negatively on the Clinton and Bush I administrations, but particularly the former since most of this history was under the Clinton watch.
On this point at least we are in agreement.
I completely disagree. The extraordinary atrocities carried out by the Algerian Islamists following the cancellation of the elections–and they were extraordinary, even by Islamist standards–demonstrated that they were in no way fit to hold power, and were in no way friends or supporters of freedom.
There is a direct corollary with the ascendance of the National Socialist Party in Germany (and please do not ring the Godwin’s Law bell; this is a direct and relevant point); that they won an election did not make them supporters of democracy, and the other Western powers’ opposition to the outcome of the election did not make them opponents of democracy. Any political group of any ideology can win an election; it is the commitment to protections of freedoms and the peaceful transition of power that distinguishes groups committed to modern democracy from those that are not. By that standard, the Islamists fail miserably and the West was absolutely correct in not supporting them.
None of that is to excuse the behavior of the Algerian government. But while Western powers may have been wrong in supporting the government, they were absolutely correct in opposing the Islamists. It was a terrible lesser-of-two-evils situation, and the West would not have benefited in the slightest by supporting the Islamists.
I do appreciate the article, however, as it has helped to expose the extraordinary contempt that Fisk has for Arabs and Arab society, second only to his contempt for Western society. Why exactly is he one of the world’s leading foreign correspondents?
‘An ideology that treats all taxation as theft — as illegitimate, coercive, perhaps even morally equivalent to violence — is now sufficiently prominent that it effectively renders policy ideas that involve use of resources by government and potentially even redistribution impractical.’ — Waldman, in praise of Kurgman
Cheer up, Steve — today the renowned Times of New York, in an editorial which may well have been ghost-written by Kurgman, issues a mighty cri de coeur for ‘tax them to their knees’ Austerity-with-a-Capital-A:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/opinion/17mon1.html?_r=1&hp
This government-worshiping screed makes me laugh out loud in its sheer other-worldly fatuousness. Particularly rich is the hearty ‘welcome to the high-tax club’ greeting. One pictures the other shabby taxaholics — Cali, New York, New Jersey — gathered round a fire barrel, warming their chapped hands as they slug down MadDog 20/20 and rotgut gin to ward off the DTs, welcoming newly-homeless and still respectably-dressed Illinois to their degenerate club. You’ll do just fine here, they assure the rosy-cheeked young initiate, eyeing her watch and necklace and wallet.
Ominously, the editorial goes on to urge that ‘too many states, including New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Washington, have rejected higher taxes on high incomes, even though those at the top have experienced a windfall at the federal level’ — thus illustrating that untreated taxaholism almost invariably progresses to fiscal bingeing and collapse, followed by supervised rehab.
There’s something both sad and comical about the forest-slaying, ink-swilling, buggy-whip mongering Times lecturing Illinois to emulate Europe’s Austerian lacuna. One doubts whether either of these intellectually-bankrupt institutions — the NYT or bleeding Illinois — will survive the decade in their current state of grasping, orally-fixated, addictive delusion.
‘An ideology that treats all taxation as theft — as illegitimate, coercive, perhaps even morally equivalent to violence — is now sufficiently prominent that it effectively renders policy ideas that involve use of resources by government and potentially even redistribution impractical.’ — Waldman, in praise of Kurgman
Cheer up, Steve — today the renowned Times of New York, in an editorial which may well have been ghost-written by Kurgman, issues a mighty cri de coeur for ‘tax them to their knees’ Austerity-with-a-Capital-A:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/opinion/17mon1.html?_r=1&hp
This government-worshiping screed makes me laugh out loud in its sheer other-worldly fatuousness. Particularly rich is the hearty ‘welcome to the high-tax club’ greeting. One pictures the other shabby taxaholics — Cali, New York, New Jersey — gathered round a fire barrel, warming their chapped hands as they slug down MadDog 20/20 and rotgut gin to ward off the DTs, welcoming newly-homeless and still respectably-dressed Illinois to their degenerate club. You’ll do just fine here, they assure the rosy-cheeked young initiate, eyeing her watch and necklace and wallet.
Ominously, the editorial goes on to urge that ‘too many states, including New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Washington, have rejected higher taxes on high incomes, even though those at the top have experienced a windfall at the federal level’ — thus illustrating that untreated taxaholism almost invariably progresses to fiscal bingeing and collapse, followed by supervised rehab.
There’s something both sad and comical about the forest-slaying, ink-swilling, buggy-whip mongering Times lecturing Illinois to emulate Europe’s Austerian lacuna. One doubts whether either of these intellectually-bankrupt institutions — the NYT or bleeding Illinois — will survive the decade in their current state of grasping, orally-fixated, addictive delusion.
Yves – Gavyn Davies has a reaction to “Inside Job” in his current FT column that is fascinating. No specific criticism, but he wants us to know that it’s not “impartial”, wouldn’t have made it past a competent editor.
And that’s the view from Planet Davies. Sheesh!
Here’s the clip:
“5. Hollywood hates Wall Street – and Harvard. Courtesy of the FT and Pi Capital, I have been able to see an advance copy of the film “Inside Job” prior to its release in Europe. Apparently, it has already been seen by a million people in the US. Made by Charles Ferguson, it is a documentary which suggests that the credit crunch was caused by a massive conspiracy of evil and greedy people, including many or all of those in office in Washington, Wall Street, the regulators and academia. The movie is compelling in its way, and some of the criticism levelled at parts of the financial industry is clearly valid. But, if you see it, please remember that this documentary would never have been passed by the editorial process at the BBC, or the FT for that matter. Impartial it was not.”
firedoglake: “10,000 GMAC FORECLOSURES STOPPED IN MARYLAND”
http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/01/16/10000-gmac-foreclosures-stopped-in-maryland/
note mention of recent maryland law requiring mediation as part of foreclosure. vermont passed a similar law last july. how many other states have done the same? we need a national map showing what state and local governments are doing as they wake up to the foreclosure abuses and what they’re costing them, not just financially but in terms of social stability and the common weal, as court cases like this one are decided, and as judges and legislatures move to protect the rule of law and the well-being of the people from the banks’ depradations. there is way too little reporting on these state-level matters.
also can anyone explain how TPTB at the national level can impose a national-level “solution” on property law problems, where states, not the national government, have jurisdiction? (this has been discussed here before, but not in relation to third way’s recent proposal to fix the housing market rat’s nest by further abuses of the people.)
possibility?: as the recognition spreads of the national government’s total capture by the financial elite, state and local governments emerge as alternate centers of power relatively more responsive to citizens’ needs. note chris whalen’s prediction that local governments will begin to instruct homeowners who have lost income to stop paying their mortgages but just pay their local taxes as much as they can, as happened in 1933.
is the next step after that a national tax revolt, with possible redistribution of resources from the national to the local level?
such once unthinkable developments seem quite possibly on the horizon now.
also can anyone explain how TPTB at the national level can impose a national-level “solution” on property law problems, where states, not the national government, have jurisdiction?
They certainly can’t legitimately do it, but then by now little then do has even nominal legitimacy.
For example, as we see in the arguments over the constitutionality of the health racket mandate, the corporatists’ (un)holy grail is an interpretation of the commerce clause so expansive as to disintegrate the Constitution completely. They demand a literally totalitarian interpretation of “interstate commerce”, which would extend the command economy to literally every action and even every inaction.
If that “jurisprudence” prevails, it’ll be child’s play for Congress and the SCOTUS to declare the mortgage market TBTF, therefore integral to interstate commerce, and therefore an essential interest of the federal government under the commerce clause.
Now we see the full totalitarian logic of globalization, and how it’s intended to dissolve all nations and civil societies, including our constitution.
thanks for answering.
still i wonder how far some states can be pushed. how much of their sovereignty will some states willingly surrender if/when the federal government is simultaneously starving municipalities of life support?
i know so little of state-federal relations that i must educate myself much more to understand how they work in the best of times, but as the storm gathers i can easily imagine existing local centers of power simply taking matters into their own hands. and then what can the feds do? freeze all the states’ assets? hm.
well, probably there’s a lunatic fringe element who have got the states’ takeover all planned out already, with imaginations way ahead of mine.
how much of their sovereignty will some states willingly surrender if/when the federal government is simultaneously starving municipalities of life support?
That’s a question I’ve been wondering about. State conformity has always been enforced by the carrot of the federal gravy train and the stick of threatening to withhold it.
But now that there’s increasingly nothing but the stick, how do the feds expect to continue to enforce this conformity?
Perhaps through the hierarchy of the two “parties”, that is criminal gangs. The state governors and legislatures will take orders not in a statist sense, but as junior members of party hierarchies. That’s a possibility.
All the more reason for us to absolutely renounce and reject both Washington gangs.
I’d like to know if the bubble in China is creating a bubble in the US stock market, especially in financials and stocks that are immersed in the global economy? As I’ve said before, there seems to be something phony about this recent run-up in stock prices. Maybe a bubble in the Chinese economy can help explain this.
What we clearly have is a “bubble in bubbles”.
Bubbly Ben just took credit for the stock rally. Says he misspoke about QE2 lowering interest rates, and that he meant to say QE2 is supposed to make the stock market go up. Still no official comment on commodities tho. That was probably the Chinese doing that.
Of course the Chinese have a bone to pick with Ben. They say QE2 in US make Chinese inflation go up. Confucius say if something good happen, take credit, if something bad happen, blame foreigners.
Doctor Who, China Premier, is visiting this week to talk over their differences with DC. Should be a short meeting.
guardian: “UN investigator accuses US of shameful neglect of homeless”:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/12/un-investigator-us-neglect-homeless
“Hedge funds bet China is a bubble close to bursting”
It’s ok, China has a stimulus plan. Their plan appears to be buying debt of western countries keeping the westerners spending on Chinese made goods.
But seriously now, I have been wondering how long the Chinese can keep up those high real estate prices and with all those vacancies. At some point the cost of keeping all those vacant buildings maintained without sufficient cash flow should be enough in itself to slow the Chinese economy down.
About 150 years or so ago, trying to rid their countrymen’s addiction to opium, Qing China ended up warring with an European country.
Now, the table is turned and they are trying to keep the Europeans addicted to a differnt opium…debt.
I’m sure you’re joking, but I suspect we’ll start to see serious rhetoric as deeply flawed and offensive as this comparison soon enough. Our elites will do their best to shift the blame for what’s happened to our economies onto the dastardly Chinese to absolve themselves, and put a shine on their ill-gotten gains. Let’s avoid holding hands with our corporate masters on their stroll toward anti-Chinese pogroms, shall we?
And what makes you think the US/Europe elite isn’t on the same side as the Chinese Communist Party elite? Dan Briody wrote The Iron Triangle; Inside the Secret World of the Carlyle Group about its first fifteen years of gathering former and future government power players to practice “access capitalism”, a heady mixture of lobbying and investment.
Thet’ve mostly used their connections to promote the military-industrial complex and its interests, such as the conquest of Iraq. In the epilogue, the Group had just formed the China Venture Capital Association. Nobody knows what that’s about.
The Carlyle Group is notable because it was where the Bush family began working for the big Laden family. No paranoia, just the world’s elite sees themselves more like foreign elites than fellow citizens. The current scapegoats are Iran, because Israel doesn’t like them, and North Korea, because it’s run by crazy people who aren’t customers of the IMF.
“And what makes you think the US/Europe elite isn’t on the same side as the Chinese Communist Party elite?”
I never said such a thing. Just observing that equating the vicious social, economic, military, and political assault of the colonial Europeans on the Chinese with the funny-money debt that the Chinese are somehow inflicting on the supposedly unwilling West is exactly the kind of absurd rhetoric we can expect to hear to deflect attention from that very elite. Some ads which ran during the 2010 US elections were illustrative- projecting us into a Chinese history classroom of the future, with the professor describing the fall of various empires due to debt, ending with the American empire, which, he says, “works for us now”. Cue sinister laughter. Surprised me to see such openly eliminationist sentiment in a television ad, though I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by anything anymore.
I heard a radio ad over the weekend regarding lawsuit loans. “Waiting to settle a lawsuit but need money NOW? ‘My lawyer says my case has a really good chance’…”
Absolutely appalling. Just when you think they have scraped the bottom of the barrel, it’s only to find a new layer of sludge. Fine, maybe there shouldn’t be laws to protect stupid people but there still should be laws to protect the desperate. Any lawyer that enables this should be stripped of his or her license.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and reader Francois T are correct that patent applications are published at 18 mo regardless of their status of being acted on and that patent pendency is (too) long. That publication is failing to protect U.S. innovation is incorrect however, and the U.S. was pretty much the last country in the world to publish at 18 months. In fact, failing to publish was highly criticized within the U.S.
Publication of patents is one of the quid pro quos of obtaining a patent right. Disclosure of innovation is intended to spur more innovation by building on the base as well as inventing around what’s already protected. This is public policy and evidence supporting it was been documented widely. Publication at 18 months in particular was driven by movements toward global harmonization of patent rules. The U.S. carved out an exception to publication by allowing an opt-out for those who do not file an application outside the U.S. So if you don’t file in another country for protection (where your application would be published) you can keep your application in the U.S. secret.
The criticism to keeping applications secret has been that publication at grant is a SURPRISE and others who have been developing in the same area are now caught in a trap. They had no idea that they might be infringing (because no notice by publication). These kinds of patents are called “submarine” patents. Jerome Lemelson was infamous for this strategy – delay patent grant until the technology was in place and commercialized, then having a patent issue and going after users for license fees. And guess who has the upper hand in negotiations then! Allowing opt-out allows this strategy to persist, although limiting patent terms to 20 years from date of filing, instead of 17 years from date of issue, has at least tempered the effects of submarine patents.
The article is unfortunately a typical tirade written by the partly informed author without consulting a patent lawyer or other knowledgeable person before publication. Yes, I am a patent lawyer….
Just a shout-out to skippy.
Amazing images from ABC. Mamma mia!
Thanks Tea,
The duality of the situation is a bit madding, on the one hand the commons has united (across all socio economic strata) and on the other massive amounts of destruction has occurred ie: infrastructure, productivity, toxification, health legacy on land and sea. Much of the productive areas within Australia are effect in one way or another.
Skippy…a task is at hand, best we get about it.
How is my mother-in-law and antidote to anything?
I wonder if anyone has tried this kind of quiet title action in California yet? It is also a title theory state…God this is funny.
“WikiLeaks to Publish Data From Ex-Julius Baer Banker”:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-17/wikileaks-to-publish-client-data-from-ex-julius-baer-banker.html
WikiLeaks plans to release data on about 2,000 cross-border bank accounts provided by a former Julius Baer Group Ltd. employee, who says they may have been set up to evade taxes.
Rudolf Elmer, who was dismissed as chief operating officer by Julius Baer Bank & Trust Company Ltd. in the Cayman Islands in December 2002, handed over the information today, including data on 40 politicians, to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
40 politicians evading taxes. Now we know what the big deal is.
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Beware of writers who cite earthquakes in articles about disasters due to global warming. Earthquakes and global warming are still disconnected.
I think global warming is happening. At least some of it appears to be due to anthropogenic causes. However, from my civil engineering persepctive, many of the disasters are due to anthropogenic causes that would have caused the same disasters a century ago.
We have far more people today building in places they shouldn’t be building using poorly designed and constructed systems in areas that have been destabilized by poor logging and agricultural practices.
Wikipedia has an interesting listing of pre-1900 floods. Many of these would cause unimaginable devastation in modern America: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floods_in_the_United_States_until_1900
The GreenBlorge article cites Katrina. The devastation from Katrina was because of poorly designed, poorly constructed, and poorly maintained flood control systems. Katrina was a man-made disaster in the same way that the 2008 financial cris was.
We are creating unstable systems related to climate-caused events but people living in them believe that they are stable.
I don’ want no fish, I jus’ want mah bukkit!!!