No Runny Eggs

The repository of one hard-boiled egg from the south suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and the occassional guest-blogger). The ramblings within may or may not offend, shock and awe you, but they are what I (or my guest-bloggers) think.

Archive for July 9th, 2008

Real Men of Genius, North Carolina edition

by @ 16:45. Filed under Compassionate Lieberals.

I was going to lead off tomorrow’s Scramble/Open Thread Thursday with this, but it’s just too good to keep you waiting until tomorrow.

Mary Katharine Ham gives the “Real Men of Genius” treatment to a gubmint drone who gave up his cushy government job rather than honor the request of North Carolina Governor Mike Easley (D) to fly the American and North Carolina flags at half-staff to honor the late Sen. Jesse Helms (R).

Name That Party – crAP edition

by @ 11:18. Filed under Presstitute Follies.

(H/T – Don Surber via Lawhawk)

Former Congressman Gary Condit’s (D-CA) lawsuit against author Dominic Dunne alleging slander over the death of government intern and paramour Chandra Levy was dismissed yesterday. While Reuters properly identified Condit’s party and McClatchy didn’t identify at all, the original crAP dispatch dispatch from Erica Werner slandered the Republican Party in the sixth paragraph (thanks to Google for keeping the original dispatch handy; I do have a screenshot ready just in case this goes into the memory hole):

Condit, a former Republican congressman from California’s Central Valley, has denied any involvement in or knowledge of Levy’s May 2001 disappearance at age 24, or her death….

I do have to note that the current dispatch has the correct party affiliation.

Considering the Condit/Levy affair was the biggest news item on September 10, 2001, I rather doubt that it was an honest mistake. No wonder why The News Organization That Cannot Be Quoted™ doesn’t want to be quoted.

The Morning Scramble – 7/9/2008

by @ 10:29. Filed under The Morning Scramble.

It’s nice to have a reason for the song. Mary Katharine Ham provided one with anotherwise-unnoteworthy story on a dog-on-dog attack in DC.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpkVnBQy5kU[/youtube]

  • Let’s start right off with the Obamination Express; there’s a lot of material today – Ed Morrissey caught Barack Obama tossing English under the bus.
  • Owen found fiscal responsibility stuck under the rear wheels of the Obamination Express.
  • Ed Driscoll has more Obama words well past their expiration date – his philosophy of campaigning.
  • Shoebox found even more curdled Obama words – his view of the danger posed by Iran.
  • The conspiratorial Chris (there are just too many Chrises in my feed reader) sings the Obamination Flip-Flop Song.
  • Silent E uses the opportunity of yet another Obamination Flip-Flop to unleash Barack HUSSEIN ObamaUrkel.
  • Jazz Shaw found a solution to the fuel crisis; use the “refined” Obama positions as high-test gasoline.
  • Geoff discovered Denial is a river in the aisle of the Obamination Express.
  • JammieWearingFool discovered the presstitute photogs are back to their Glowbama photographic tricks.
  • Jim Geraghty calls Strike Three on the third Obama ad’s accuracy. Too bad this isn’t baseball.
  • Jessi is a bit confused on what change the Jr. Senator (in whichever way it can be sliced, whether one talks about Illinois, the ‘Rat candidates for the nomination, or the presumptive nominees) is offering.
  • We’re finally done with the Obamination, so let’s hit the ‘Rats some more – Michelle Bachmann notes the House ‘Rats want to shut up their fellow Congresscritters on blogs.
  • Ed Morrissey (back for round 2) says it’s even worse in the World’s Most Deliberative Body.
  • Mary relays the John McCain smackdown of draft-doding Bill Clinton.
  • Brian explains the difference between an Iraqi-crafted withdrawal timetable and a ‘Rat-crafted one.
  • Janet Evans says, “Like terrorist father, like terrorist son.” My hope for the younger bin Laden’s immediate future (quoting Uncle Jimbo) – “Predator sends Hellfire, now it’s all bad (all bad). Remote sniping yeah, we’re cool like this.”
  • Gabriel Malor explains Authorizations for Use of Military Force.
  • Moron Pundit challenges lieberals (including the presumptive Pubbie nominee) to explain why covering thousands of square miles of land underneath solar panels is preferable to drilling on a copule thousand acres of Arctic wasteland.
  • Todd Lohenry asks, after hearing Joe Lieberman say that Red China’s thirst for gas is growing at 8 times ours, why the focus is not on drilling. He does answer his own question; it’s about the economic crippling.
  • The Unreal one asks whether any country taxed its way into prosperity. Yet half the country meets Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity.
  • We’re finally out of the ‘Rat end of the pool – Josh Schroeder is not happy about the RNC trying a bill collector trick.
  • Michelle Malkin has 15 things we should know about La Raza, which is being actively courted by both candidates and both parties.
  • Christian Schneider has a real way to go green that’s being blocked by a lot of locales; letting ones laundry dry in the sun.
  • More Moron Pundit – he has the Moron Food Pyramid. You’ll have to see it to understand why I put this item where I did.
  • JammieWearingFool notes black holes are going into the memory hole of Political Correctness.
  • Edward Christie observed that crime does pay, at least for British presstitutes.
  • Lawhawk has today’s dose of UN FAIL – once again, thugs walk into a UNprotected (note the lack of a hyphen) refugee camp to beat up on the refugees. This time, it’s in Zimbabwe.
  • Dad29 has shocking (literally) news for those of you who can still afford to fly; the DHS wants to put shock bracelets on you.

Grave Danger? Is There Any Other Kind?

by @ 9:23. Filed under Politics - National.

In yet another incident showing Barack Obama’s inability to hold a position, he now announces Iran to be a “Great threat,” after it test fired nine missiles. In an interview this morning  on Good Morning America, Barack said:

“Iran is a great threat. We have to make sure we are working with our allies to apply tightened pressure on Iran,

What? A great threat? Is this the same Barack Obama who just six weeks ago ridiculed John McCain for saying Iran was a great threat by saying:

I mean think about it. Iran, Cuba, Venezula, their countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to the US.

Maybe Barack considers a “great” threat to be less of a threat than a “serious” threat? If so, it would show Obama out of touch with the majority of America for most of America learned from “A Few Good Men” that when it comes to individual or national security/danger, there is only one kind, and it’s always grave.

What is missing from this story?

by @ 7:12. Filed under Presstitute Follies.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel acted as a megaphone for a conglomerate of groups moaning that the poor economy and high oil prices are squeezing seasoned citizens. They run through the usual bogeymen of health care, mortgages, rent, food, and transportation, but miss the fat 15,000-pound elephant in the room – TAXES. Gee, I wonder why.

Say it Ain’t So!

by @ 5:22. Filed under Miscellaneous.

In another strike of the blinding obvious, the SEC has finally determinedthat the large credit rating agencies responsible for assigning credit ratings for the bundled subprime loans, had conflicts of interest in determining those ratings.

Pause

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

Deep breath.

Back in March I gave you information about  what the typical subprime loan and “bond” (actually bundled loans) looked like.   It wasn’t a pretty description!  I stated at the time:

On the one hand I’m mad. Over 75% of the subprime loans reviewed in this study received the highest bond rating of AAA. How stupid is that when you look at the make up of the borrowers. With real interest rates nearly 5% above the norm, it was clear that there was significant risk in this package. I hate the government involved in business but someone needs to step in and change the way that bond rating agencies do their rating.

Beyond the “irrational exuberance” of ever increasing real estate prices, a big piece of shame for the subprime debacle needs to go to the rating agencies.

The rating that the agency gives the various debt instruments has a large impact on the market’s appetite for that debt. Under “normal” market circumstances, if the agency were to give a rating that was lower than expected, the market would expect higher risk and respond by demanding a higher interest rate thereby increasing the overall costs for the issuer. The impact would be that mortgage providers would have charged higher interest rates to the borrowers and that would have allowed fewer of the mortgages and less of the debt to come on the market. If the rating came back with an unexpectedly low rating (which it should have in at least some of these loans), it could have prevented the issuer from finding a buyer at all and that would have cut short future issuance of subprime loans.

The reason why “normal” market forces didn’t work properly is due to the conflict of interest that the SEC “found” but has really existed for years. Rating agencies get compensated for providing their rating on a particular debt or bond issuance. The payment comes from the entity trying to sell or place the bond. If the rating agency gives a poor rating causing either higher interest costs or an inability to sell debt, they get no future business. If they make the debt easy to sell in the market, the rating agencies could expect to see additional business from the folks trying to sell the debt.

2005, 2006 and early 2007 were very heady days for the stock prices of the large agencies. Note any patterns?

So the agencies were getting paid by their customers, so what? Isn’t that how the market works? The answer is yes except when the incentive is so great that it skews your ability to provide an allegedly unbiased answer.

You may remember the name of a little accounting firm called Arthur Andersen. They used to do the audit for another company you may remember, Enron. At the time it was not unusual for large accounting firms to perform financial audits at a loss. They did this because they also typically had a relationship with the client to perform various consulting services. The consulting services were always higher margin and were what many accounting firms made much of their revenue from…in the day. After Enron’s collapse the SEC figured out that if you made a whole lot of money off of consulting services and virtually no money off of an audit, your client had the ability to hold the consulting services over your head to ensure an acceptable opinion on thier audit….even if they were doing things that weren’t exactly kosher…at least that’s what I’ve heard.

When an entity that holds itself out as independent, like CPA firm or a rating agency, has financial entanglement, it has the potential to destroy that entities independence. My opinion is that the rating agencies were completely focused on generating revenues and never thought that providing an “encouraging rating” would ever matter to anyone. They were wrong and we’re all being impacted by their unintended consequences.

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