From Pine View Farm

More Bushboroughs:

Showing the labor market’s considerable strain, the number of people collecting state unemployment benefits reached yet another new record, jumping 122,000 to a seasonally adjusted 5.56 million, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

The four-week average of these claims rose 123,750 to stand at 5.33 million — in itself a record high since the U.S. began compiling these statistics — also as of the week ended March 14.

In other news.

Among the things that have driven me away from television news, in addition to the inherent inanity of selecting “reporters” because they have good “anchor hair,” is the relentless emphasis on now, with no thought of yesterday (how we got here) or tomorrow (where we are headed). This perspective has also seeped into political coverage and political partisanship, which cares more for today’s poll results than for tomorrow’s solutions.

One can see it in the daily agonizing over a stuff that makes a Trivial Pursuit question seem like the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

Ian Leslie in the Guardian.

If we tear ourselves away from the talkshows and the RSS feeds and look at what the administration has actually been doing in response to the economic crisis, we discover a series of initiatives that are designed to work together and push in one direction. Alongside the banking rescue plan, there’s the stimulus package, a housing plan, credit relief for small businesses and a budget proposal that addresses long-term problems for which solutions are vital to the nation’s future prosperity.

Obama seems to have retained at least some of his ability to keep his eye on the ball even when everyone in the crowd is screaming their lungs out. Not all of his plans will work, and the whole thing may yet end in disaster. It’s impossible to say. We can’t predict the future with any confidence at the moment. But we can – if we try – see beyond the present.

It doesn’t happen from voters at the ballot box.

It happens before or after, with the ballot box:

In a presentation that could provide disturbing lessons for the United States, where electronic voting is becoming universal, (CIA cybersecurity expert–ed.) Steve Stigall summarized what he described as attempts to use computers to undermine democratic elections in developing nations. His remarks have received no news media attention until now.

Stigall told the Election Assistance Commission, a tiny agency that Congress created in 2002 to modernize U.S. voting, that computerized electoral systems can be manipulated at five stages, from altering voter registration lists to posting results.

I don’t care who it is, no one provides $1,000,000,000 worth of performance in a year.

Espcially not for playing monopoly with other people’s money.

Top hedge fund managers earned 48% less on average last year, but industry chiefs James Simons, John Paulson, John Arnold and George Soros still took home more than $1 billion each, Alpha Magazine said Tuesday.

(snip)

Top 25 top-performing managers made $464 million each on average last year. That’s down from a record $892 million apiece in 2007, before the credit crisis triggered big losses and redemptions across the $1.5 trillion industry. Alpha Magazine cut its list of top earners to 25 from 50 last year.

In the Guardian, Devendra Kodwan explores the failure of the bankrupt busines bonus culture. The article sort of sputters to an unsatisfactory end, but it is still worth the two minutes it takes to read, for there is no question that bonus “pay for performance” schemes produce pay, but not performance.

Just look around.

A nugget:

First, the idea of using performance-based incentives that included bonuses, in particular share options, has clearly backfired. Recent research from US academics suggests that the link between executive incentives and firm performance is tenuous in a best-case scenario, and indeed negative in some cases. There is also disturbing evidence that when firms pay a very high level (90%) of CEO compensation in stock options, it increases the chances of questionable financial reporting in the following years.

No, not out there in Andromeda.

Right there in Potomac River City. Read the whole thing:

The story behind why the DEA sought out the (three new surveillance planes–ed.) planes, only to become the second federal agency to give them up, illustrates the pitfalls of “black,” or classified, budgeting in which Congress approves tens of billions of dollars for intelligence agencies outside the public’s view.

(snip)

Black earmarks, however, receive almost no scrutiny. Even worse, there’s little accountability when the technology doesn’t work.

The lack of transparency has led to some staggering boondoggles. In 1991, then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney canceled the troubled A-12 Avenger II after the secret aircraft program consumed nearly $3 billion of taxpayers’ money.

After all, “Hooverville” is already taken.

Like a dozen or so other cities across the nation, Fresno is dealing with an unhappy déjà vu: the arrival of modern-day Hoovervilles, illegal encampments of homeless people that are reminiscent, on a far smaller scale, of Depression-era shantytowns. At his news conference on Tuesday night, President Obama was asked directly about the tent cities and responded by saying that it was “not acceptable for children and families to be without a roof over their heads in a country as wealthy as ours.”

Republicanism continues to increase our vocabulary.

Unusal British names on the decline.

I have discussed mountaintop removal before. Mountaintop removal kills. It kils streams, towns, forests, and lives.

So this is good news.

The EPA announced on Tuesday that they were putting a hold on dozens of mountantop mining projects until the “projects’ impacts on streams and wetlands can be reviewed.”

These could be your salad days:

A northbound tractor-trailer truck hit the back of an 18-wheel Perdue Farms Inc. tank truck at an intersection here early Monday afternoon, closing northbound U.S. Route 13 and spilling the truck’s liquid contents.

The tank’s signs indicate that the substance is vegetable oil, but crews at the scene did not immediately identify it.

From the Virginian-Pilot. Follow the link for more detail:

The automated telephone message said the car’s warranty was expiring and this was the last notice.

It said to press 1 to talk with a representative. The guy on the other end gave only a first name, but Caller I D showed his number as (416) 523-1121. He asked a lot of questions, wanting the make, model, year of the car and other details.

He’ll call again, tomorrow or the day after, even if told to stop.

The Federal Trade Commission and other groups are trying to find and stop these folks, but the agency doesn’t appear to be succeeding in Hampton Roads and elsewhere.

I don’t normally watch press conferences. I read about them the next day.

I’m beginning to regret missing this one.

(more…)

Well, duh! The judge rules that the federal government (under the previous administration, mind you) really shouldn’t sell out our heritage.

[RANT MODE ON]

Of course, that bunch sold out more than our heritage. It sold out our traditions, our Constitution, our liberties, our laws, the treasure of our labor, and the blood of our young. Pah!

[RANT MODE OFF]

On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Gregory M. Sleet ruled that refuge officials and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service broke federal laws when they allowed farming (at the 10,000-acre Prime Hook National Wildlife Refuge–ed.), and later planting of genetically modified crops, without appropriate environmental reviews to determine the impact on wildlife and wildlife habitat.

The ruling comes as a victory for Delaware Audubon, the Center for Food Safety and Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, the three groups that challenged the agricultural practices at Prime Hook.

(more…)

You should know better anyway.

American workers — whose taxes pay for massive government health programs — are getting squeezed like no other group by private health insurance premiums that are rising much faster than their wages. Today — even as most retirees have health insurance and nearly 90 percent of children are covered — workers now are at significantly higher risk of being uninsured than in the 1990s, the last time lawmakers attempted a health care overhaul.

That’s according to a study released Tuesday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which found that nearly 1 in 5 workers is uninsured, a significant increase from fewer than 1 in 7 during the mid-1990s.

Via Delaware Liberal.

John Cole:

Sucking up to George W. Bush—and maybe even getting your own nickname—elevated a reporter’s status in 2003. Trying to knock Obama off his game now elevates a reporter’s status. It really is that simple.

I broke the screensaver.

Then I fixed it.

Off to drink liberally.

Over at Mudflats.

Here.

Via Phillygrrl.

Discord amongst the financial superheroes:

(Wilbur) Ross’s American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc. and (Bruce) Rose’s Carrington Capital Management LLC are accusing each other of worsening the recession by devaluing homes and the mortgage bonds that sparked it. In a Stamford, Connecticut, lawsuit, Carrington says American Home hurt its hedge funds’ clients by dumping foreclosed homes tied to its subprime bonds at “fire sale” prices. American Home, which countersued on March 20, says Carrington wants to grab bondholders’ money by blighting communities with vacant homes.

Mad Kane:

Fuming About Hume (Limerick)
By Madeleine Begun Kane

The blogs are a threat to the news
Cuz they’re slanted, says Hume, in their views.
A fellow from Fox
Casting “partisan” knocks?
To Hume I must say, “Brit, j’accuse.”

Via Skippy.

Or maybe is was my low-key socially conservative Southern upbringing . . .

I do not understand the urge to have something new, not because I need it or not because I want what it can do or not because it looks like it might be fun or entertaining or useful, but, well, just because it’s new.

Yet, whole segments of our economy seem to be founded on new simply for the sake of new.

Gap Inc.’s upscale Banana Republic chain, struggling with declining sales, plans to open a test store selling limited-edition accessories mostly below $100 to lure ever-more discriminating shoppers seeking both style and value.

Edition by Banana Republic — featuring limited-edition handbags and jewelry, along with some shoes, sunglasses and personal-care products from Banana Republic — will open exclusively in Gap’s hometown Westfield San Francisco Centre in May. A Gap spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the company has plans to open more of the stores, but said that Gap plans to incorporate lessons from the test shop.

Limited edition over-priced unnecessary junk is still over-priced unnecessary junk.

I restrict my shopping to cheap, necessary junk, thank you very much.

“This here next one’s rock and roll”:

A TPM reader wonders

who represents the taxpayers in the compensation decisions at government-controlled firms?

Courtesy of BuzzWhack (http://www.buzzwhack.com/):

menoporsche: Male menopause. Symptoms include a sudden lack of energy, crankiness, and the overpowering urge to buy a Porsche.

Me, I want a Lamborghini.

I’ve wanted one for 45 years, since I first read a review in Motor Trend. In 45 more years, maybe . . . .

. . . that has the capacity to outrage. Rosemary and Walter Brasch take a look at what does and doesn’t have the power to spark outrage amongst Americans:

And why are we outraged? Because it’s money.

As homeless children sleep beneath bridges, as millions desperate for work are told to go home and collect a pittance in unemployment, as innocent Iraqis die, as young soldiers return without limbs, as our earth is being destroyed, we sit and yawn through the news, desensitized to the horror. But, sadly, the one thing we react to, the driving impetus to contact our legislators, and the one thing that moves us to outrage is money.

Terry Gross: “How did they (AIG–ed.) calculate risk when they were putting these complex instruments together?”

Guest Gretchen Morgenson: “. . . they certainly didn’t . . . .”

Listen to the interview here.

Duncan:

This story about “risk” is a pleasing one for people who imagine that the masters of the universe, or their managers, actually worry about such things. I don’t know if Timmeh does or doesn’t believe this, but it’s absurd. The current financial crisis has nothing to do with how much risk the banksters were willing to take on. They didn’t say: oh, well, I think we should tolerate a bit more risk now. They said: CA CHING CA CHING CA CHING CHING!

Investors turn to shamuses (not shamans, as in the past) to look into investment firms. From Bloomberg:

Firms like Shain’s (First Advantage Investigative Services LLC–ed.) say they are seeing an increase in requests for background checks on fund managers in the wake of high-profile fraud cases against Bernard Madoff in New York, Florida’s Arthur Nadel and R. Allen Stanford and his Antigua- based bank. In all, the men are accused of cheating clients out of as much as $73 billion.

“Investors are being more careful in checking out where they put their money,” said Pete Turecek, a senior managing director overseeing hedge funds at Kroll Inc., a risk-consulting company in New York “As the economy continues to weaken, some people including money managers may be drawn to taking shortcuts.”