Friday, May 14, 2010

Barker's Newsbites: Friday, May 14, 2010


And here's to me...!
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6 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.newsweek.com/id/237196

It's terrifying to live next door to homes filled with human traffickers, drug smugglers, AK-47s, pit bulls, and desperate laborers stuffed 30 to a room, shoes removed to hinder escape.

Last year the U.S. marshal for Arizona, David Gonzales, told me he had some 200 active warrants for Mexicans in and around Phoenix engaged in organized crime. Last week he told me he had 324, and even more in Tucson.

During a month's reporting with police and other law-enforcement agents in Arizona last year, I met many scared people. One man who lived next to a "drop house" for Mexican workers slept with two guns under his bed, his children not allowed to play in the backyard. The sound of gunshots was not uncommon. "Four years ago this neighborhood was poodles and old ladies," he said, too frightened to give his name. "Now it's absolutely insane."

That morning, authorities had raided the drop house. When the neighbor told me how his kids had been evacuated behind riot shields, he began to cry. Others, too, were unhappy: the undocumented workers taken from the house were exhausted, sweaty, and dead quiet as they sat on a curb with their hands cuffed, waiting to be taken away.

Within 24 hours I witnessed another bust, this one prompted by a tip from Tennessee authorities. They reported a threat to kill a kidnap victim, and a ransom demand for $3,500. Sheriff's deputies went to a pleasant house with a two-car garage. Inside, they found dozens of immigrants crammed into unfurnished bedrooms, the windows boarded from the inside, shoes and belts piled up in the closet. The search also turned up a Taser-like device, a sawed-off shotgun, and two pistols.

Another day, I watched the Phoenix police break up a "stash house" filled with guns and hundreds of pounds of marijuana. An hour later they raided a McMansion adorned with hunting trophies and Scarface posters; a white SUV jammed with 300 pounds of marijuana was parked out front. Again, the house was in a high-end development, nowhere near the border.

* AND THESE ARE THE MUSINGS OF A NEWSWEEK REPORTER (*SMIRK*) WHO MAKES CLEAR THAT EVEN WITH ALL THIS... SHE STILL PERSONALLY OPPOSES THE NEW ARIZONA LAW. (OF COURSE, SHE DOESN'T LIVE IN ARIZONA... WRITING THIS STORY WAS JUST "AN ASSIGNMENT."

May 14, 2010 at 8:29 AM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsdqfVA3fqkhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsdqfVA3fqk

* THIS IS FRIGG'N GREAT! YOU'VE GOTTA WATCH/LISTEN TO THIS VIDEO! (HEY... IT'S ONLY 2:34 MINUTES LONG!)

May 14, 2010 at 12:37 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-second-debt-storm-hits-nations-2010-05-14

The debt mountain that brought down some of the world's biggest banks and dragged the international financial system to the brink of disaster has simply shifted to governments. Now it's threatening countries around the globe...

"The problem of the western world is that we have too much debt," said Daniel Arbess, who manages the Xerion investment strategy at Perella Weinberg Partners. "Rather than reducing our debt, we've been moving it from one balance sheet to another." "All we're doing is shifting chairs on the deck of the Titanic," he added.

Some governments have started to respond to market pressure, with the U.K. pledging billions of pounds in spending cuts this week. Spain and Portugal also unveiled austerity measures. But the problem is so big that investors remain wary.

* OF COURSE...! I MEAN, IF ONE AGREES THAT THE RESPONSE OF THE UK, SPAIN, AND PORTUGAL IS LOGICAL AND PROPER... (*SIGH*)... THEN WHEN YOU LOOK AT WHAT THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION AND A DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS HAS BEEN DOING AND CONTINUE TO DO ALL YOU CAN FEEL IS FEAR FOR THE FUTURE! THE U.S. PLAN IS TO PILE ON FURTHER DEBT AND INCREASE FUTURE UNFUNDED LIABILITIES!

Some investors and analysts are increasingly concerned that governments may be no more capable of repaying their debts than the banks and insurance companies they saved. "The sovereign-debt crisis spun out of control in the past week, and we see no easy way to resolve it," said Madeline Schnapp, director of macroeconomic research at TrimTabs Investment Research.

The sovereign crisis has been brewing for months. For much of the financial crisis, investors worried about financial institutions defaulting, rather than sovereign nations. But that pattern has been upended. In early February, the cost of insuring against a sovereign default in Western Europe exceeded the price of similar protection against default by North American investment-grade companies. That was the first time this had happened, according to data compiled by Markit from the credit derivatives market.

Debt to GDP ratios in the world's advanced economies will top 100% in 2014, 35 percentage points higher than where they stood before the financial crisis, the IMF estimated last month. "Public finances in the majority of advanced industrial countries are in a worse state today than at any time since the industrial revolution, except for wartime episodes and their immediate aftermath," Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citigroup Inc. and former member of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, wrote in a recent note on sovereign risk.

May 14, 2010 at 1:11 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704635204575242511992287380.html?mod=WSJ_hps_sections_smallbusiness

Government funding to U.S. banks has done little to ease the credit crunch for small businesses - and the situation doesn't seem to be improving, according to a new report.

The value of large banks' loans to small businesses shrank 9% between 2008 and 2009, more than double the 4.1% drop for overall lending, said a report released Thursday by the Congressional Oversight Panel, a group set up to oversee funds allocated by the federal government's Troubled Asset Relief Program. "Big banks pulled back on everyone, but they pulled back harder on small businesses," said Elizabeth Warren, chairwoman of the oversight panel, in a discussion with reporters.

The U.S. Treasury Department's TARP programs, launched during the depths of the financial meltdown, didn't improve access to credit, the report claims. "Treasury never required banks to lend their new money," said Ms. Warren.

President Barack Obama and the Treasury have proposed several government solutions to get loans to Main Street. But according to the report, few have had success and none have had a significant impact.

(*SMIRK*)

* AS GOMER PYLE USED TO SAY... "SURPRISE...! SURPRISE...!"

May 14, 2010 at 4:27 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2010/05/14/krugman-misleads-on-greece/

* JOHN STOSSEL JUST DEMOLISHES PAUL KRUGMAN. (YOU'LL HAVE TO GO TO THE ACTUAL COLUMN TO SEE THE GRAPHS.)

In his column today, Nobel laureate Paul Krugman claims its wrong to compare the US to Greece: [W]e’re not Greece. We may currently be running deficits of comparable size, but our economic position - and, as a result, our fiscal outlook - is vastly better.

On his blog, Krugman tries to back that up with a graph of projected deficits.

* PROBLEM IS...

[Krugman's] graph hides the fact that, while our annual deficits may shrink - some forecasters expect the economy to get better and stimulus funding to phase out - every year the government will still spend more than it takes in, so total U.S. debt will keep rising.

And Krugman’s graph doesn't get at the important question: are we on track to become what Greece is like now? This graph, which uses the same data set as Krugman's chart, helps answer that: In 10 years, under Obama's budget plan, the USA will likely be in same debt position as Greece is now.

* AGAIN... MY PET PEEVE: IT'S FINE TO HOLD CONTRARY POLICY POSITIONS, BUT WHEN YOU'RE BACKING UP YOUR ARGUMENT OR DISSECTING THE ARGUMENT OF AN OPPONENT, DEBATE HONESTLY...!!! DON'T DELIBERATELY MANIPULATE THE DATA IN ORDER IN AN EFFORT TO "FOOL" OTHERS INTO ACCEPTING YOUR POSITION. KRUGMAN IS ONE OF THE MOST DISINGENUOUS TALKING HEADS OUT THERE.* AGAIN... MY PET PEEVE: IT'S FINE TO HOLD CONTRARY POLICY POSITIONS, BUT WHEN YOU'RE BACKING UP YOUR ARGUMENT OR DISSECTING THE ARGUMENT OF AN OPPONENT, DEBATE HONESTLY...!!! DON'T DELIBERATELY MANIPULATE THE DATA IN ORDER IN AN EFFORT TO "FOOL" OTHERS INTO ACCEPTING YOUR POSITION. KRUGMAN IS ONE OF THE MOST DISINGENUOUS TALKING HEADS OUT THERE.

May 14, 2010 at 5:08 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/07/we-are-out-of-money

According to EU rules, member countries cannot maintain budget deficits above 3% of gross domestic product; nor can their total debt rise above 60% of GDP.

[T]he US budget deficit in 2009 was three times the EU’s limit, and total debt will zoom past the 60% threshold sometime this year.

* HMM... REMIND ME AGAIN... WHO HAS BEEN SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE SINCE JANUARY OF 2007...??? WHO HAS BEEN MAJORITY LEADER OF THE SENATE SINCE JANUARY 2007? WHO HAS BEEN PRESIDENT SINCE JANUARY OF 2009...??? WHAT'S TODAY'S DATE...???

Today may be terrible, but tomorrow is going to be much worse, at least as measured by such metrics as deficits, debt, and entitlement spending. In an April speech, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke laid out the misery that awaits us. “The arithmetic is, unfortunately, quite clear,” he said. “To avoid large and unsustainable budget deficits, the nation will ultimately have to choose among higher taxes, modifications to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, less spending on everything else from education to defense, or some combination of the above.”

Yet in the very next paragraph, Bernanke displayed the kind of cowardice that got us into and has helped extend our awful economic mess: “Today the economy continues to operate well below its potential, which implies that a sharp near-term reduction in our fiscal deficit is probably neither practical nor advisable. However, nothing prevents us from beginning now to develop a credible plan for meeting our long-run fiscal challenges.”

* YES, FOLKS... THOSE OF YOU FAMILIAR WITH THE BILL MURRAY MOVIE "GROUNDHOG DAY" GET THE PICTURE; ONLY THIS IS REAL LIFE... IT'LL TAKE MORE THAN A SCRIPTWRITER TO GIVE THIS STORY A HAPPY ENDING.

States, counties, and municipalities, lacking Bernanke’s ability to print money, do not have the luxury of “beginning now to develop a credible plan” for the future. They are flat out of money in the present. But they too refuse to face reality.

The housing bubble, with its tax-generating wealth, was already bursting in 2007. Yet as recently as 2009, Montgomery County, Maryland, decided to make “phantom” cost-of-living increases to the pensions of government workers, linking contributions to salary increases that did not occur. This sweetheart deal, which added more than $7 million to the county’s annual budget (according to The Washington Post), tasted rather bitter at a time when the county’s revenue was falling short of projections by more than $24 million. Yet after one Montgomery County Council member proposed eliminating this sop to the public-sector unions, four of his colleagues joined a rally on the rooftop of the council’s parking garage, leading a crowd of 400 government employees in chants of “We’ve had enough!” and “No justice, no peace.”

Even bankruptcy isn’t necessarily a harsh enough reality check. The city of Vallejo, California, went bankrupt in 2008, largely due to impossible-to-meet pension obligations. Although the bankruptcy judge declared that pension contracts were fair game in the reorganization process, the city last December cut just about everything except pension contributions for government employees, according to a Wall Street Journal piece by Steven Greenhut. In March of this year, Vallejo agreed to a new contract with firefighters that again left pensions unchanged. “The majority [of council members] did not have the political will to touch the pink elephant in the room - public safety influence, benefits, and pay,” Vice Mayor Stephanie Gomes told Greenhut.

Surveying the fiscal wreckage at the end of 2009, BusinessWeek’s Joe Mysak found that the 50 states had cut their combined payrolls that year by a minuscule 0.25 percent. Mysak’s conclusion: “Politicians everywhere are talking about layoffs, of course. They have been talking about eliminating jobs, often in threatening tones, since at least January. As the numbers show, for most, it’s just talk.”

May 14, 2010 at 5:10 PM

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