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By Erich Vieth on November 18th, 2009

We’re another step closer to auditing the Federal Reserve

This has been a long time coming. The Federal Reserve has never been audited. Ever. The House has now moved us a step closer to shedding real light on all of the secret deals:

The measure, cosponsored by Reps. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), authorizes the Government Accountability Office to conduct a wide-ranging audit of the Fed’s opaque deals with foreign central banks and major U.S. financial institutions. The Fed has never had a real audit in its history and little is known of what it does with the trillions of dollars at its disposal.

Economy • Featured • Politics
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By Erich Vieth on November 18th, 2009

When do the prosecutions begin?

In the St. Louis alternative newspaper, The Riverfront Times, James Lieber sizes up the prosecutions now underway for the economic collapse. Oh, wait. There aren’t any prosecutions:

As it stands now, there is only one federal prosecution related to the credit crash and bailout cycle, and it was begun by the Bush administration’s Justice Department in June 2008.

Not that there aren’t culprits. Bernie Madoff and other accused Ponzi schemers like Allen Stanford are mere pickpockets compared with Wall Street’s institutional buccaneers, who so far have carted off up to $12.7 trillion — that’s nearly equal to the entire gross domestic product. They’ve multiplied their booty with billions in subsidies and a flood of derivatives — some of them merely old soured wine in new bottles. Today’s pirates are sailing away from the light regulatory scrutiny that apparently will continue in our benighted, weakened, financially top-heavy and bubble-addicted economy. [Former regulator William] Black says Obama’s current efforts are doomed to fail — and, in a twist, it’s for lack of trying. “There is not a single successful regulator giving him advice,” Black notes.

I’ve posted about William Black previously. Lieber describes him as follows: “a Ph.D. criminologist and lead lawyer at the Office of Thrift Supervision, who helped steer the brilliant federal effort that cleaned up the S&L industry and won more than 1,000 felony convictions of senior insiders while recovering millions of their ill-gotten dollars.” Black is someone to whom Obama should be listening. He states that there are two reasons why there aren’t vigorous ongoing prosecutions resulting from this collapse

1) “It’s difficult to prosecute others for securities fraud if you condoned the deals to begin with,” and

2) Obama administration lacks the will. Obama was the candidate most preferred by Wall Street and he has surrounded himself with lackeys for big finance, including not only Lawrence Summers and Tim Geithner, but also Attorney General Eric Holder, who has made it clear that white collar crime is something which he’d rather not prosecute.

Keep in mind that “Wall Street’s institutional buccaneers [have] so far have carted off up to $12.7 trillion, and that in 2008, In 2008 American households lost 18 percent of their wealth. Why aren’t there more prosecutions? There’s no good reason. This is an excellent in-depth article. The title: “No Justice: We’ve bailed out the banks. When do we go after the crooks behind our financial collapse?”

Economy • Featured • Politics • Psychology Cognition
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By Erich Vieth on November 16th, 2009

Chris Mooney: New Atheists’ attack on religion is counter-productive

Chris Mooney is the author of The Republican War on Science, Storm World, and Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future (co-authored by Sheril Kirshenbaum). He is also an atheist who, for years, has engaged with believers on the validity of religious claims. He strongly believes that those who respect the scientific method should question religious claims.

In this interview with D.J. Grothe at Point of Inquiry, however, Mooney takes on the New Atheists (starting here at about the 10:30 minute mark). Instead of attacking religions, Mooney advocates that we should promote scientific literacy. Yes, we should refute the baseless claims of fundamentalists, but it is equally critical to “mobilize the religious moderates,” and not alienate them by attacking all religions.

Mooney argues that the New Atheists have painted with much too broad a brush, and that they have used an aggressive tone that achieves “nothing at all.” He points to P.Z. Myers as being one of the most prominent culprits.

Featured • Religion • Science
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By Erich Vieth on November 16th, 2009

String around the Earth: excellent math question

Have you ever considered snugly wrapping a string around the entire Earth? If you did that, and then you added merely one additional meter of string (which would then raise the string uniformly off the surface of the Earth), how much higher off the ground would that new string be (the original long string, plus one additional meter)? Here’s a simple statement of the problem, allegedly first used by Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Here the math. Wonderful problem and surprising solution.

Featured • Statistics
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Buffett’s bet on peak oil
By Brynn Jacobs on November 15th, 2009

Buffett’s bet on peak oil

Warren Buffett is lauded as one of the greatest investors of all time, if not the greatest. He’s the second-richest person in the world, and known as the “Oracle of Omaha” for his seemingly prescient investments. For example, in the wake of the collapse of Bear Stearns and during the height of the market panic that followed it, Buffett stepped in and negotiated a deal with Goldman Sachs. He acquired $5 billion worth of preferred shares, which would pay him a 10% dividend, as well as warrants with the rights to sell those shares at any time within 5 years from the time of the transaction. As of September this year, those warrants were “in the money” to the tune of $3.1 billion, and that doesn’t include the $500 million in premium payments that Goldman pays every year. Those lucrative terms (punitive for Goldman Sachs) left others wondering why the Treasury Department could only negotiate a 5% dividend, but that only added to the mystique and legend of Warren Buffett. At the time, Buffett was quoted as saying “If I didn’t think the government was going to act, I would not be doing anything this week,” referring to the massive bailout bill which was indeed enacted by the government.

It’s deals like that that enable one to become one of the richest people in the world. But it’s also that background that has some on Wall Street scratching their heads at the news that he was purchasing Burlington Northern railroad. The Wall Street Journal discussed how the acquisition seemingly broke two of Buffett’s cardinal rules on investments: 1) buy undervalued stocks or companies, for obvious reasons and 2) don’t split your own stocks, as it dilutes the equity of the existing shareholders. Bloomberg quoted a hedge fund principal as saying, “It could be five years before the logic of [Buffett's purchase of] Burlington Northern becomes clear.” Even Buffett admits that the purchase was “not cheap” and that it represents an “all-in wager”on the future of the American economy. And there can be no doubt that it is a significant investment– he’s liquidating other rail investments totaling $691.3 million while the Burlington Northern purchase will cost some $26 billion– an increase in his railroad holdings of some 3,600%. And this bears repeating, he’s splitting stock to get it done. This is the first time ever that Berkshire Hathaway (Buffett’s investment company) has split shares. He’s so reluctant to split shares, the class A shares regularly trade over $100,000 per share, an unheard-of valuation.

Current Events • Economy • Energy • Featured
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By Mike Pulcinella on November 14th, 2009

An atheist’s response to a religious greeting

I have an acquaintance at the gym, let’s call him “Greg”. I like Greg. Whenever I ask him how he’s feeling Greg answers, “I am blessed!”

If I see him when I’m on my way out and I say, “See ya later Greg!’, he always says something like, “God bless!” or “God willing!”

Greg is obviously a devout man. He hurt his wrist in a bad fall recently and told me how God was looking out for him because it could have been much worse. I nodded silently. Greg doesn’t know I am a doubter and I would never bring it up in the gym.

The strange thing is that lately I have found myself returning his greeting in kind. The other day Greg saw me before I saw him and he greeted me first.

“How’s it going today Mike?”

“I am blessed!”, I found myself saying (much to my surprise) and I meant it!

“You know it!”, he said with a knowing smile, and walked on.

It’s true! I do feel “blessed”, whatever that means. I’m very grateful for the things, the people, my health and the opportunities that I have in my life. I think about it every day. I often say that I feel like I live in a constant state of thankfulness. If that isn’t blessed I don’t know what is!

So now whenever I see Greg I greet him in a way that I’m sure leads him to think that I am a believer like him. My beliefs haven’t changed, I’m still an atheist, but it makes me feel good to say it and hear him say it back.

Is that wrong??

Featured • Meaning of Life • Religion
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By Hank on November 13th, 2009

In Which I Render God Speechless

Robots. Whilst not yet able to disguise themselves as innocent-looking assault vehicles which drive themselves, make ghastly jokes and lay waste to entire cities & provide fodder for truly reprehensible motion pictures, robots will one day be our oppressors. To attempt in some small way to understand our eventual machine overlords (and perhaps locate a weakness that can be exploited) before the inevitable enslavement of humanity, I recently went to this website: http://www.titane.ca/concordia/dfar251/igod/main.html and had a chat with a rudimentary AI which has been named God. I decided to treat it as the all-knowing all-seeing creator of the universe, whom you may have encountered as a central character in a series of very popular books.

[more . . .]

Entertainment • Featured • Humor • Internet • computers
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By Erich Vieth on November 12th, 2009

Ashleigh Banfield’s story of wartime censorship

Ashleigh Banfield has finally gotten hired back to work at a major network, after losing her job at MSNBC in 2003 for speaking out against the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Here’s what she had to say back in 2003, which caused her to lose her job. She is speaking of what you are not shown by the news media when the nation is at war:

What didn’t you see? You didn’t see where those bullets landed. You didn’t see what happened when the mortar landed. A puff of smoke is not what a mortar looks like when it explodes, believe me. There are horrors that were completely left out of this war. So was this journalism or was this coverage-? There is a grand difference between journalism and coverage, and getting access does not mean you’re getting the story, it just means you’re getting one more arm or leg of the story. And that’s what we got, and it was a glorious, wonderful picture that had a lot of people watching and a lot of advertisers excited about cable news. But it wasn’t journalism, because I’m not so sure that we in America are hesitant to do this again, to fight another war, because it looked like a glorious and courageous and so successful terrific endeavor, and we got rid oaf horrible leader: We got rid of a dictator, we got rid of a monster, but we didn’t see what it took to do that.

Banfield also has some critically important things to say about the “Fox News effect” (the patriotizing and glorification of war).

Reading this Huffpo post about Banfield reminds me of this post featuring similar comments by Amy Goodman. It also reminds me how Phil Donahue also lost his job at MSNBC for being critical of the Iraq invasion (more about Donahue’s views here). These sorts of firings are actually predictable. The documentary “War Made Easy” reminds us that hawks close ranks around Presidents who start wars and they also put tremendous pressure on networks to do the same. Banfield’s story reminds us that we need to strive to keep dissenting voices prominent during times of war because something about war makes us insanely fearful and even less able to reason than in times of peace. It is during times of war that we become collectively willing to let ourselves run amok wrapped in the flag.

Featured • Media • War
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“Going Muslim” as the new “going postal”
By Brynn Jacobs on November 11th, 2009

“Going Muslim” as the new “going postal”

The shootings at Fort Hood last week have provoked a media feeding frenzy. Questions abound, and there is no dearth of speculation as to the shooter’s motives. Most articles I have seen waste no time pointing out that the shooter was a Muslim, that he exclaimed “Allahu akbar” before shooting, and that he is linked with radical imams and possibly Al Qaeda. That’s from the ostensibly “impartial” media, but there are also a few extremely distasteful editorial perspectives that are unfortunately quite mainstream that I wanted to comment on today. I’m afraid my ability to edit sarcasm out of my posts declines in direct proportion to the insanity and hypocrisy with which I’m confronted, so bear with me.

First, Forbes featured an article by Tunku Varadarajan entitled “Going Muslim“, a play on the old phrase “going postal”. He describes it thusly:

As the enormity of the actions of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan sinks in, we must ask whether we are confronting a new phenomenon of violent rage, one we might dub–disconcertingly–”Going Muslim.” This phrase would describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated Muslim-American–a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood–discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in an act of messianic violence against his fellow Americans. This would appear to be what happened in the case of Maj. Hasan.

Bigotry • Current Events • Featured • Military • Religion
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By Mark Tiedemann on November 11th, 2009

Church To State: “Do What We Want Or Else.”

The divide between church and state seems on the one hand to be growing but on the other narrowing, especially when you consider how intrusive established religions have been. Representatives of the Catholic Church sat in Nanci Pelosi’s office of late while negotiations for the health care bill were ongoing, overseeing what she would do about abortion.

Now this.

Any way one reads this, it comes out as a threat. The quid pro quo is explicit. “If you don’t bend to our will on this, we will stop services your city relies on.”

I have in the past believed that the tax exempt status of religions was a necessary work-around to preserve the fiction of separation. In the past, there have been instances of state intrusion directly into religions in, for one example, state funding for programs in parochial schools. There was always a quid pro quo in such offers and practices.

But never has a representative of the state sat in the office of a minister while he drafted a sermon to be sure certain details got left out or included. Never, despite massive abuses by religious institutions in real estate and related financial areas, has the state moved to revoke 501(c)(3) status. It may be that any state official who tried it would be booted out of office summarily, but nevertheless that has been the unspoken law of the land.

Seems the courtesy doesn’t go both ways. If that’s the case, I think it is time to revisit the whole issue. If the Catholic Church sees itself as providing services as an arm of the civil service sector and allows itself the conceit that it may use that service as a lever to influence political decisions, then they have implicitly given up due consideration as an inviolate institution, free from state requirements of taxation and regulation.

Seems fairly clear cut to me. Obviously, there will be those who disagree. But it’s time, I think, to seriously reconsider the state relationship to so-called “nonprofit” “apolitical” tax exempt institutions.

American Culture • Culture • Current Events • Featured • Law • Media • Noteworthy • Politics • Religion • hypocrisy
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Jeffrey Sachs: Democrats and Republicans both offer only snake oil for the economy
By Erich Vieth on November 11th, 2009

Jeffrey Sachs: Democrats and Republicans both offer only snake oil for the economy

Jeffrey Sachs, the Director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, has sharply criticized both the Democrat and Republican approaches to dealing with our failing economy.

For instance, Sachs complains that President Obama is seeking to kick up consumer spending through “near-zero interest rates, massive Fed financing of mortgages and various consumption incentives, such as rebates for new home-buyers and cash for clunkers.” According to Sachs, though this will simply get us into a new bubble, as the US consumer is encouraged to over-borrow. This is a terrible strategy “with budget deficits of about 10 per cent of gross domestic product.”

How about those Republicans? Their “solution” is equally terrible:

For every problem there is a single Republican answer: tax cuts. Simple arithmetic reveals the stunning shortsightedness of this proposition. The federal government collects about 17 per cent of GDP in tax revenues. That roughly equals the outlays on social security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, defence and interest payments on debt.

All the rest – roads, rail, clean energy, science and technology, diplomacy, international disease control, space, education, job training, water, transport, courts, poverty relief, homeland security, conservation, climate adaptation – is financed on borrowed money. All of these critical areas are underfunded, which hinders productivity, national security and private investment.

What a good idea that is being largely ignored? Sachs likes the idea of jump-starting the green economy:

One where the jobs would come through a massive expansion of low-carbon energy. We were told about plug-in hybrids, intercity fast rail and new water and sewerage plants to replace the crumbling infrastructure. We were told about a new infrastructure bank to fashion complex multi-state projects that would employ huge numbers of workers while building a cutting-edge economy.

Economy • Featured • Politics
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By Mark Tiedemann on November 10th, 2009

Sepuku, Republican Style.

It’s been absurd for a long while, but the apparent self-destruction of the Republican Party is reaching new depths. Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina is being censured by the state G.O.P. organization for working with Democrats on a climate bill.

Here is the Fox News report.

For contrast, here is the Huffington Report.

All one can do is stare and ask “What is wrong with those people?”

Despite party leader calls for bipartisanship, we see repeated motions by the grassroots elements of the embattled party to circle the wagons and harden their resolve to do nothing to aid and abet what they perceive as The Enemy.

Which is what, exactly?

Anything, it seems, which suggests that people cannot manage their own affairs, no matter how much they might affect other people, is disallowed. If legislation is proposed to control behavior of individuals, it is anathema to the Republicans.

Unless we’re discussing abortion. Then the full weight of the state must be brought to bear to prevent individual choice.

If the Democrats are smart, all they need do is continue to discuss issues in rational, thoughtful ways, and let the Republican Rabid Dog Wing continue to vociferate mindlessly, and in 2010 there will be another bloodletting of Republican presence in Congress. All the Republicans seem able to do anymore is bang their shoes on the desk and repeat “No! No! No!”

At some point, surely, there will be a schism (much like the one we saw in upstate New York) and the sane and rational Republicans will split away from the hydrophobic microcephalics that have been destroying them for so long. That cannot but be a good thing in the long run.

Current Events • Featured • Politics
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More to the peak oil story
By Brynn Jacobs on November 09th, 2009

More to the peak oil story

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post entitled “The Unspoken Reality of ‘Peak Oil’“, in which I tried to convey the scale of the problem we face. “My main motto never changes, the era of low oil prices is over,” said Dr. Fatih Birol who is the Chief Economist for the International Energy Agency (IEA). Now we have even more confirmation that peak oil has arrived. Today, the IEA released their 2009 version of the annual World Energy Outlook, in which they attempt to forecast supply and demand through 2030. And once again, the IEA continues to forecast that there will be plenty of supply, if only we can muster the needed capital investments. Unfortunately, the needed capital investments are enormous:

The capital required to meet projected energy demand through to 2030 in the Reference Scenario is huge, amounting in cumulative terms to $26 trillion (in year-2008 dollars) — equal to $1.1 trillion (or 1.4% of global gross domestic product [GDP]) per year on average. (p.43)

As if that weren’t bad enough, the release of the report has been almost completely overshadowed by yesterday’s Guardian which has alarming allegations from two different whistleblowers within the IEA

Current Events • Featured • Sustainable Living
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