Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Websites and blogs I recommend
Blog Archive
-
▼
2014
(348)
-
▼
October
(34)
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, October 31, 2014
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, October 30, 2014
- The Corruption and Malfeasance are Absolutely Perv...
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, October 29, 2014
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, October 28, 2014
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, October 27, 2014
- Russ Behrens... Calling Russ Behrens...
- These... ARE... the... DEMOCRATS...
- The NYT Calls For "We The People" to Rise Up and...
- Black on Black Crime in Baltimore
- Weekend Newbites: Sat. & Sun., Oct. 25 & 26, 2014
- Folks... the Left is Vile... It's Just That Simple
- Nah... No Voter Fraud Here... (*SNORT*)
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, October 24, 2014
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, October 23, 2014
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, October 22, 2014
- Judge England vs. Darth V... er... Eric Holder
- Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, October 21, 2014
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, October 20, 2014
- Dining in Key West (Oct. 2014)
- (So...) Bill vs. The Navy
- Bill vs. The Navy... (But First...)
- Nudity... and Fraternity!
- Barker's Newsbites: Monday, October 6, 2014
- A Tale of King Dollar's Invisable Clothing...
- Weekend Newsbites: Sat. & Sun., Oct. 4 & 5, 2014
- Suck It Up and Read David Stockman's Latest Column
- Barker's Newsbites: Friday, October 3, 2014
- That Atlanta Fed "Note" I Mentioned...
- It Really Is A Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy...
- Julia Pierson... The Washington Post... Jeh Johnso...
- Barker's Newsbites: Thursday, October 2, 2014
- More Blood On Obama's Hands... and Congress'
- Barker's Newsbites: Wednesday, October 1, 2014
-
▼
October
(34)
About Me
- William R. Barker
- Pearl River, NY High School Class of '81; Northeastern University, Boston, MA Class of '87.
14 comments:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2778022/UN-Ebola-chief-raises-nightmare-prospect-virus-mutate-airborne.html
The longer the Ebola epidemic continues infecting people unabated the higher the chances it will mutate and become airborne, the UN's Ebola response chief has warned.
Last month in a piece for the New York Times, Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, said experts are loathe to discuss their concerns in public, for fear of whipping up hysteria.
Dr Osterholm warned viruses similar to Ebola are notorious for replicating and reinventing themselves.
http://khon2.com/2014/10/01/patient-in-isolation-in-honolulu-hospital-officials-say-ebola-a-possibility/
The Department of Health has confirmed a patient is currently in isolation and undergoing testing in Honolulu.
The Hawaii Nurses Association said the person is being treated at The Queen’s Medical Center.
Officials told KHON2 Ebola is a possibility, however the patient has yet to be specifically tested for the virus.
* "...THE PATIENT HAS YET TO BE SPECIFICALLY TESTED FOR EBOLA...???"
“We are early in the investigation of a patient — very, very early — who we’re investigating that might have Ebola,” said Dr. Melissa Viray, deputy state epidemiologist. “It’s very possible that they do and they have Ebola. I think it’s also more likely that they have another condition that presents with similar symptoms - a number of illnesses including Ebola, flu, malaria and typhoid.”
* FOLKS. HERE'S MY GUESS: IT'S NOT EBOLA.
* SO WHY THIS NEWSBITE? READ THE FULL ARTICLE. NOTICE WHAT'S NOT THERE... WHAT INFORMATION IS MISSING. IS THIS INDIVIDUAL AN AMERICAN? WHAT PROCEDURES WERE FOLLOWED AT THE AIRPORT - ASSUMING THIS PERSON FLEW IN... OR AT THE CRUISE PORT - ASSUMING THE PERSON CRUISED IN.
* FOLKS... I'M ASKING YOU TO TRY AND CREATE A PICTURE FROM THE DOTS! THINK ABOUT THE TEXAS EPISODE WHERE SOMEONE WITH EBOLA WHO HAD BEEN IN LIBERIA WENT TO THE HOSPITAL TO COMPLAIN OF FEELING ILL... AND THEY SENT HIM HOME!
* FOLKS... READING THE FULL STORY... I CAN'T FIGURE OUT WHETHER TO GIVE HAWAIIAN AUTHORITIES A THUMBS UP OR THUMBS DOWN!
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_RUSSIA_PUTIN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2014-10-02-13-10-11
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday shrugged off the negative impact of Western sanctions, saying they will only encourage Russia to build closer ties with China, India and Latin America.
* YEP...
Speaking at an investment forum, Putin described the sanctions as "utter silliness" that hurt Western business and offered an opportunity for others to expand in the Russian market.
(*NOD*)
Putin said that the Kremlin has no plans to introduce any currency restrictions or capital controls, adding that Russia's Central Bank has enough instruments to ensure the nation's financial stability. He said that the government plans to expand trading in rubles with China and other nations to help lower risks.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/389232/border-whistleblowin-wind-ryan-lovelace
* FOUR-PARTER... (Part 1 of 4)
* VERY LONG... BUT WELL WORTH WADING THROUGH!
A whistleblowing Border Patrol agent alleges that the Department of Homeland Security ignored health and safety concerns in attempting to transport illegal immigrants to a facility in Murrieta, Calif., the site of a high-profile confrontation between DHS and local citizens this past summer.
In a whistleblower disclosure document obtained by National Review Online, the agent alleges that the federal government knowingly transported illegal immigrants to facilities that were unequipped to process them; disregarded repeated warnings from a Border Patrol agent about the public-health risks posed by the immigrants, many of whom were suffering from infectious diseases; rejected multiple offers of assistance from local officials; and suspended law-enforcement operations at part of America’s southern border while denying a congressman’s repeated requests for information about the government’s plan to process the immigrants and about the startling events unfolding in his district.
Murrieta, a suburb of San Diego, became a flashpoint in the national immigration debate when dozens of residents gathered in the streets to protest the federal government’s decision to relocate hundreds of illegal immigrants from the Rio Grande Valley in southern Texas to their town. Buses of Central American immigrants and unaccompanied migrant children were met by local protestors demanding the enforcement of immigration law.
And the agent alleges that the Border Patrol sent officers under cover to infiltrate their activities, too.
The whistleblower disclosure was filed by Border Patrol agent Ron Zermeno, the health and safety director of National Border Patrol Council Local 1613. Zermeno writes in the disclosure about how, as early as May of 2014, when he learned of the government’s plan to relocate the immigrants, he began raising the alarm, reaching out to Border Patrol management, local officials, and a congressman. He gained no ground with these warnings, he says. He also spoke with NRO and other media about his concerns but was disciplined — for the first time in his decades-long career — for allegedly exposing sensitive law-enforcement information to the press. Zermeno declined to comment for this story.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 4)
His disclosure suggests that while the images coming out of Murrieta showed American citizens fighting the arrival of illegal immigrants, the confrontation would have been avoided entirely if only the federal government had heeded the warnings of its employees. Zermeno says in the document that on May 7, he received word from a senior agent of the federal government’s plan to send 140 illegal immigrants every 72 hours to the Murrieta Border Patrol Station, despite its inability to accommodate their arrival. His disclosure says he was concerned for the safety of the agents because of reports that the detainees would be carrying infectious diseases, scabies, and lice. The facility could not safely house the incoming women and children, he writes.
But the senior agent, according to Zermeno, said that immigrants would nonetheless be processed and then released to the community, and that the directive was “concealed for unknown reasons.”
Information about the plan to ship illegal immigrants to Murrieta was concealed from not only the public, Zermeno asserts, but also lawmakers.
Zermeno writes that he expressed his concerns for the health and safety of the agents and detainees to a staffer for Representative Ken Calvert (R., Calif.). The staffer then tried several times to reach San Diego Border Patrol management but never received a call back. Calvert tells NRO that the Department of Homeland Security did not disclose their plan to him or his office, but he confirms that Zermeno did speak with his office before the illegal immigrants arrived.
“We got a phone call a couple of days beforehand from Zermeno — he’s the one that informed us,” Calvert says. “Maybe that’s one of the reasons he’s in trouble.” Other Border Patrol agents also spoke with him privately and appeared fearful of retribution from the federal government, Calvert says.
Zermeno told Calvert’s staff that relocating immigrants to Murrieta would have dramatic and startling consequences: Shifting Border Patrol agents from their posts policing the dangerous I-15 corridor would effectively require the suspension of all law-enforcement operations on a vulnerable stretch of the border.
“We would not be able to intercept or prevent Transcontinental Criminal organizations that use the I-15 corridor to transport illegal contraband Northbound and the proceeds from that contraband going Southbound,” Zermeno writes.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONTINUING... (Part 3 of 4)
The Interstate-15 corridor extends north from San Diego in a region heavily trafficked by drug cartels. In April, federal officials announced the discovery of two tunnels beneath San Diego used by cartels, and revealed that they had thwarted a multimillion-dollar drug-smuggling operation, according to the Los Angeles Times. Victor Clark-Alfaro, a San Diego State University professor and director of the Binational Center for Human Rights in Tijuana, Mexico, told NRO in July that the area is controlled by the Sinaloa Cartel, a global criminal organization with a reputation of brutally beheading its enemies.
The suspension of law-enforcement operations on the I-15 corridor, Calvert says, posed a grave danger to his constituents. “Word gets around pretty quickly with the drug guys,” he says. “They’re not stupid. [They] say, ‘Hey we got a free pass here, come on let’s truck as much of this crap as we can.’”
Calvert is not the only federal lawmaker to have been denied information about the influx of immigrants to their states. Representative Jim Bridenstine (R., Okla.) made national headlines after he was locked out of a federal facility housing unaccompanied alien children in July, and the federal government has largely kept quiet about where it is housing the immigrants who are coming over the border. Several governors have said they learned of immigrants’ arrival in their states from news reports rather than from federal authorities.
Zermeno says in his disclosure that the order to relocate Central American immigrants to Murrieta was suspended and reinstated twice. On June 27, it was reinstated for the second time, he writes, with the first group of 140 illegal immigrants set to arrive on July 1. Murrieta mayor Alan Long says he was notified that the order would be reactivated on the afternoon of Friday, June 27. Long tells NRO that he resisted the order in its first two iterations and expected he could continue to do so successfully. The Murrieta facility was not equipped to house or process the immigrants: “There were no beds, there was no cafeteria, there was no place to make food,” Long says. “It was a room with steel benches, a toilet and a sink next to it — all open. Modest rooms could probably fit maybe 30 people each cell.” As a result, county supervisor Jeff Stone offered the use of a fully staffed mobile hospital; Stone tells NRO that the hospital would have conducted health screenings, treated children for communicable diseases, and immunized them. But federal officials rebuffed his offer, saying it would take too long to approve the facility and would also raise legal concerns about vaccinating foreign children.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 4 of 4)
Approximately 420 immigrants arrived during the first two weeks of July. Nearly a third were diagnosed with scabies, many more were carrying infectious diseases, others had unknown illnesses, and at least one child — who was observed coughing up blood — was diagnosed with tuberculosis, Zermeno writes. Approximately five Border Patrol agents contracted scabies from illegal immigrants who were later released to the public. Zermeno found vomit and soiled sheets strewn on the floor of a holding area and mothers reusing dirty baby bottles.
“All this could have been avoided with proper planning and protocols established,” Zermeno writes. “When I exposed these incompetent managers to government officials and the public, they proposed discipline on me, in retaliation.”
Federal officials were also eyeing the Murrieta protestors with suspicion, according to Zermeno, who writes that a Border Patrol official told other union officials (though not him) that Border Patrol agents dressed in plain clothes had been ordered “to infiltrate the citizens who were having a rally on the public street across from the Murrieta Border Patrol Station.” Zermeno expresses concern that Border Patrol management, in seeking to gather intelligence on law-abiding U.S. citizens, was overstepping its authority.
Zermeno filed the complaint with the Office of Special Counsel, which has not responded to NRO’s requests for comment.
The government’s response to Zermeno’s case could affect the willingness of other agents to share information. By signing the disclosure, Zermeno agreed that any false statement or concealment of a material fact would constitute a criminal offense punishable by imprisonment of up to five years, a fine of up to $10,000, or both. Zermeno has worked with the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee staff of ranking Republican senator Tom Coburn (R., Okla.).
A number of individuals who work at the Department of Homeland Security have contacted the senator’s office to share information, and they now fear retribution for having done so, according to a letter Coburn wrote to DHS secretary Jeh Johnson, which NRO obtained. “A culture of retaliation continues to permeate throughout DHS, specifically the Border Patrol, and I ask that you work with me to correct this,” Coburn wrote. “Viewpoints and information from individuals should not be thwarted.”
The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency did not immediately respond to NRO’s request for comment.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/china-conducts-flight-test-of-new-mobile-icbm/
China’s military has conducted the first flight test of a new variant of one of its road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles in a sign that Beijing is increasing its strategic strike capability against the United States.
The test of a new DF-31B missile was conducted Sept. 25 from a missile test range in central China.
A Pentagon spokeswoman declined to provide details of the test.
“We continue to monitor China’s military modernization, including its missile tests,” Cynthia O. Smith, the spokeswoman, told the Washington Free Beacon.
* NOTICE... NOT "WE CONTINUE TO COUNTER." NOPE. IT'S "WE CONTINUE TO MONITOR." REASSURING, HUH? (NOT!)
Non-government military analysts said the new missile likely is an increased-range or improved performance weapon, and possibly a multi-warhead version of the ICBM.
Mobile missiles are considered a greater strategic threat because tracking their location and targeting them in a conflict is very difficult. The missiles can be hidden in garages or caves to avoid detection by satellites and other sensors.
China has made clear in its state-run media that its nuclear forces are being developed for use against the United States.
The Global Times reported Oct. 28 that a submarine-launched missile attack on the United States would kill between 5 million and 12 million Americans.
The new DF-31B is the latest addition to China’s rapidly growing nuclear missile arsenal that includes older silo-based missiles and five other road-mobile missiles. They include the long-range DF-31, DF-31A and DF-41 ICBMs, intermediate-range DF-26Cs, and medium-range DF-21s—a missile the Chinese have developed into a dual, nuclear-conventional weapon that includes an anti-ship variant. A DF-21 variant also is believed to be used as China’s anti-satellite missile system.
China has some 40 DF-31s and DF-31As, and the DF-41, which is expected to carry multiple-nuclear warheads, is said to be near deployment.
China also has deployed new submarine-launched missiles called the JL-2 that are based on new missile-firing nuclear-powered submarines that the U.S. Navy has said will begin their first sea patrols this year.
* IT JUST KEEPS ON GETTING BETTER AND BETTER... (*SAID SARCASTICALLY*)
China also is working a high-technology hypersonic strike vehicle that is launched atop a missile and travels at extremely high speeds along the edge of the earth’s atmosphere. The glide vehicle is being designed to deliver a nuclear warhead through U.S. strategic missile defenses.
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
“They have an extraordinary selection of cruise missiles, and a ballistic missile force that they developed,” Adm. Jonathan Greenert, chief of Naval Operations, told a security forum in August, adding that in a future conflict, China’s missiles pose the most serious threat.
“If [a conflict is] in their backyard, I’m a little worried about their ballistic missile [force] because of its reach,” Greenert said.
China in late July conducted a flight test of a DF-31A, the fourth known flight test of that new missile in the past two years.
The latest missile test, which was not announced by the Chinese government, highlights Beijing’s largely secret strategic nuclear forces buildup.
Rick Fisher, an analyst who closely monitors the Chinese military, said the testing of a new DF-31 variant should be a worry for U.S. security officials. “The emergence of a third version of the DF-31 raises the question of whether there is a multiple warhead version,” said Fisher, with the International Assessment and Strategy Center.
Fisher said the DF-31B also might be a silo-based missile or one designed specifically for China’s so-called “Great Underground Wall” — a network of 3,000 miles of tunnels and underground nuclear facilities that was first revealed several years ago.
“China has a track record of using warhead systems on multiple missile programs,” he said. “The advent of multiple warheads on the DF-41 may indicate new versions of the DF-31 may be so equipped. If real, this would accelerate China’s warhead growth.”
The testing of a third DF-31 variant, along with Moscow’s nuclear weapons modernization program “places greater pressure on Washington to proceed with modernizing America’s nuclear deterrent,” Fisher said.
* WHO REALLY WON THE COLD WAR, FOLKS? CHINA. THAT'S WHO. NOW CHINA AND RUSSIA ARE ALLIED AGAINST US FOR ALL PRACTICAL PURPOSES AND SLOWLY BUT SURELY THEY'LL PRESSURE US INTO BANKRUPTING OURSELVES - JUST AS WE PRESSURED THE OLD SOVIET UNION INTO BANKRUPTING ITSELF.
The Pentagon’s most recent annual report on the Chinese military states “The Second Artillery continues to modernize its nuclear forces by enhancing its silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and adding more survivable mobile delivery systems.”
“In recent years, the road-mobile, solid-propellant [DF-31A] ICBM has entered service,” the report said, adding that “China also is developing a new road-mobile ICBM known as the Dong Feng-41 (DF-41), possibly capable of carrying multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRV).”
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://online.wsj.com/articles/scott-w-atlas-obamacares-anti-innovation-effect-1412204490?tesla=y
The overwhelming majority of the world's health-care innovation occurs in the U.S.
* AT LEAST... IT USED TO.
This includes ground-breaking drug treatments, surgical procedures, medical devices, patents, diagnostics and much more.
* INCLUDES... OR INCLUDED - AS IN... NO LONGER INCLUDES?
Most of the funding for that innovation — about 71% of U.S. R&D investment — comes from private industry.
But that environment is changing.
* OOPS...
According to R&D Magazine and the research firm Battelle, growth of R&D spending in the U.S. from 2012 to 2014 averaged just 2.1%, down from an average of 6% over the previous 15 years.
* GEEZUS FRACKIN' CHRIST...!!!
According to Congressional Budget Office estimates, ObamaCare will levy more than $500 billion in new taxes over its first 10 years to help pay for insurance subsidies and Medicaid expansion. These new taxes include significant levies on key health-care industries, such as manufacturers of medical devices and drugs, and their investors. As a result, small and large U.S. health-care technology companies are moving R&D centers and jobs overseas.
The CEO of one of the largest health-care companies in America recently told me that the device tax his company paid last year exceeded his company's entire R&D budget.
(*GNASHING MY TEETH*)
Already a long list of companies — including Boston Scientific , Stryker and Cook Medical — have announced job cuts and plans to open new centers for R&D, manufacturing and clinical trials overseas.
* SO... BOSTON SCIENTIFIC IS GONNA BECOME CHINA SCIENTIFIC...???
The bureaucrats at the Food and Drug Administration are also hindering medical-technology and drug development. According to a 2010 survey of more than 200 medical-device companies by medical professor and entrepreneur Josh Makower and his colleagues at Stanford University, delays of approvals for new medical devices are now far longer in the U.S. than in many other developed countries. In the European Union — not exactly known for cutting through red tape — it takes on average seven months to gain approval for low- to moderate-risk devices. In the U.S., FDA approval for similar devices takes on average 31 months.
* RE-READ THAT ENTIRE ABOVE PARAGRAPH AGAIN, FRIENDS! THEN START BANGING YOUR HEAD AGAINST THE WALL!
The 2011 PricewaterhouseCoopers Medical Technology Innovation Scorecard found that "the gap between innovation leaders and emerging economies is rapidly narrowing." And that "although the United States will hold its lead, the country will continue to lose ground during the next decade." It goes on to say that "China, India, and Brazil will experience the strongest gains during the next 10 years."
(*SILENCE*)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Since the signing of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, private-equity investment in new U.S. health-care startups has also diminished. Annual capital investment has decreased to $41 billion in 2013 from $61 billion in 2011, according to quarterly reports by the accounting and audit firm McGladrey LLP.
* GEZZUS...
Similarly, the Silicon Valley-based law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati reported in its semiannual Life Sciences Reports decreases from the first half of 2010 through the second half of 2013 in deal closings and capital raised for startups in biopharmaceuticals, medical devices and equipment, and diagnostics, with only a slight uptick in health-information systems investment.
* F*U*C*K...!!!
Meanwhile, many of the best and brightest who come to the U.S. to study science, technology, engineering and math — the STEM subjects that are so crucial to innovation — are choosing to return to their home countries upon graduation.
In 2008, a survey conducted by Vivek Wadhwa and his team of researchers at Duke, Harvard and the University of California found that only 6% of Indian, 10% of Chinese and 15% of European students expected to make America their permanent home.
Much of this is Congress's fault. Lawmakers have been slow to increase limits on H-1B visas for high-skill foreign workers. Pressure has been brought to bear on Congress to take action, but it may be too late for an increase in the visas to have much effect in health care, given the decline in R&D spending that would make use of their talents.
What can be done to reverse these damaging trends?
First, strip back the heavy tax burdens that currently inhibit innovation, starting with repealing the Affordable Care Act's $29 billion medical-device excise tax and the $80 billion tax on brand-name drugs.
* SURE... BUT THEN YOU'VE GOT TO CUT THE SUBSIDIES BY A MATCHING $109 BILLION... UNLESS WE'RE JUST GONNA ADD IT TO THE NEXT DEFICIT... THE ONGOING DEBT ACCUMULATION...
(*SHRUG*)
Change the tax code to add incentives for investment in early-stage medical technology and life-science companies, as well as for philanthropic gifts to academic institutions that promote tech entrepreneurs.
* FIX THE TAX CODE PERIOD! (BTW... THERE SHOULD BE NO CORPORATE TAXES!) (BUT THAT'S A DISCUSSION FOR ANOTHER DAY...)
And finally, simplify processes for new device and drug approvals, so that the FDA becomes a favorable rather than an obstructionist environment for these life-saving and cost-saving discoveries.
* THE FDA SHOULD BE LIMITED TO GIVING THEIR OPINION. PERIOD.
* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)
http://online.wsj.com/articles/godzilla-defeats-the-thing-1412204855
Federal Judge Royce Lamberth did a service for taxpayers on Tuesday by dismissing claims against the federal government brought by private investors trying to profit once again from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The two mortgage giants would have failed without a 2008 federal bailout that eventually poured $188 billion into the firms. But investment funds including Perry Capital and Fairholme that own shares in Fannie and Freddie have argued that they now deserve to reap the rewards of the taxpayer rescue.
* AND NORMALLY I'D AGREE... BUT WE'RE TALKING CRONY CAPITALISM ALL AROUND - NOT REAL CAPITALISM... NOT REAL RISK.
* READ ON!
These shareholders point out that dividends paid to the Treasury for the rescue have totaled more than $218 billion — apparently exceeding the rescue funds.
They argue that Treasury has used a 2012 amendment to the bailout agreement to unfairly collect all of Fan and Fred's profits.
Nobody has written more about this Administration's legal abuses than we have, but Judge Lamberth appears to be right on this one. His ruling cites the "plain meaning" of the 2008 law under which the government put Fan and Fred into federal conservatorship, which says that "no court may take any action to restrain or affect the exercise of powers or functions" of the company's conservator. The senior jurist suggests that if investors have a gripe, it's with Congress for writing the law.
* YEP. (RE-READ IF YOU'RE NOT FOLLOWING...)
Judge Lamberth is arguably being too kind to the plaintiffs, because the $188 billion in direct support was hardly the only public assistance to Fan and Fred. According to Larry Wall, a researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, "The claim that the taxpayers and Treasury have been fully repaid for their support of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is based on an accounting calculation that does not withstand economic analysis."
* I'M ACTUALLY PLANNING ON NEWSBITING WALL'S PAPER!
He adds that, among other problems, this claim "attributes no value to the government guarantee to absorb whatever losses arose in the pre-conservatorship book of business, and arguably reflects Treasury setting too low of a dividend rate on its senior preferred stock. Moreover, the profits that are being used to pay the dividends did not arise from the contributions of private shareholders but rather entirely reflect risks borne by the Treasury and taxpayers."
* IN OTHER WORDS, THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CHANGED THE RULES OF THE THEN-EXISTING GAME TO CREATE THIS NEW GAME OF "CONSERVATORSHIP." (HAD THEY NOT DONE SO, THE PLANTIFF'S WOULD HAVE - SHOULD HAVE - WON!)
* TO BE CONTINUED...
* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)
Every nickel the mortgage monsters earn comes courtesy of the taxpayers.
The firms have two principal businesses: guaranteeing bundles of mortgages sold to other investors, and investing in mortgages themselves. Neither business would exist without Uncle Sugar.
(*NOD*)
As Alex Pollock of the American Enterprise Institute has noted, "What is the value of a guaranty from a guarantor with hugely negative capital? Zero.
* YA GOT THAT? (RE-READ IF NECESSARY...)
It is solely the fact that the government guarantees Fannie and Freddie's obligations that gives this business any revenue or profit at all."
* MEANING FOR THE "INVESTORS," THE FIX WAS IN. THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SIMPLY LEGISLATED THEIR UNDESERVED EXPECTED WINDFALL AWAY! (VERY CLEVER, ACTUALLY!)
But even the mortgage-guarantee business hasn't been generating profits for Fannie, say Andy Laperriere and his colleagues at Cornerstone Macro. They note that its "net earnings are completely due to its large portfolio of mortgages it holds. These earnings come from earning a spread on its mortgages compared to its cost of borrowing. So how does an insolvent company borrow at close to a risk-free rate and earn a spread on its massive portfolio of mortgages? Only because of the government support, of course."
* DUH!
* IN OTHER WORDS, FOLKS, FREDDIE AND FANNIE ARE STILL ENRICHING POLITICAL INSIDERS (STILL MOSTLY DEMOCRATS I'D BET) AT THE EXPENSE OF TAXPAYERS RISK AND MORTGAGE HOLDERS DOLLARS! A PRETTY SWEET SCAM... IF YOU'RE AN INSIDER.
If Judge Lamberth's ruling withstands appeal, it will have the side benefit of breaking up the political constituency that has sustained the economically disastrous policy at the core of Fannie and Freddie. The two firms were designed to serve Washington and Wall Street. The politicians collected campaign contributions from Fan and Fred while using the firms to allocate credit. Meanwhile, Fan and Fred investors and banks were able to profit from the implied government guarantee.
* WE CAN ONLY PRAY...
The shareholders in the suit are mainly big-money speculators who hope to make a killing on the upside if the politicians revive Fan and Fred. Gambling on politics is their right, but it's a little rich to then whine when the politicians they're canoodling with decide to confiscate their taxpayer-guaranteed profits.
* AHH... BUT DON'T FORGET... THE INSIDERS INSIDE THE FED ARE STILL BENEFITING! SALARIES... PERKS... PUBLICLY PROVIDED LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH AND INFAMOUS...
(*FROWN*)
This brawl has been like watching Godzilla vs. The Thing. With private subsidy-seekers perhaps out of the picture, taxpayers may now have a better shot at beating Godzilla.
* WE NEED TO DO AWAY WITH FANNIE AND FREDDI. PERIOD.
I've enjoyed your blogging today, William. My favorite days are when every time I come back, there's something new! Thank you for the freddie/fannie topic. I look forward to your newsbiting of that paper.
Post a Comment