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International Developments
❖ “According to the latest polls, all center and left-wing parties [in Israel] will win fewer seats than in the current Knesset.” It appears the right wing has about 50% of the potential vote. Elections are due next month.
❖ “Syrian Vice-President Farouq al-Sharaa has said neither the government’s forces nor rebels can win the 21-month-old conflict.” He noted the “worsening situation” and said the stalemate could be ended by an “historic settlement”.
❖ Libya will be closing its southern borders temporarily and declaring “seven southern regions restricted military areas.” There is official concern about “stemming the flow of illegal immigrants and goods” but an “upsurge in violence and drug trafficking, and the presence of armed groups that act with complete impunity” are also worrying.
❖ The International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea has ruled that Ghana “shall forthwith and unconditionally release” Argentina’s ship the Libertad which was seized on October 2nd “at the behest of a US fund [Elliott Associates] seeking to collect on defaulted bonds.” Argentina is to fly the 98-member crew back to Ghana tomorrow. Argentina’s Economy Minister tweeted “Vultures, you shall not pass.” Caution: the fat lady hasn’t sung–yet.
International Finance
❖ Iceland shines! Iceland’s Parliament will soon be considering a motion to form a committee “to report on the benefits/costs of full reserves banking”–that is, separating money creation from money lending in banks. (Iceland’s Parliament is called the Althing. Would that our Congress were an Althing rather than the Special Interest things too many members seem to be.)
❖ While the US and the eurozone are bogged down in their economic situations, much geopolitical shifting is occurring elsewhere. Latin America, where many economies are rising, is establishing links with Gulf countries, and both groups are engaging with China and other Asian countries. Stay tuned.
❖ What will FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) do? Barclay’s is complaining that the proposed fine of $470 million for manipulating US power prices in 2006-08 is “‘unjustified’ and the allegations will not stand up in court.”
❖ German Chancellor Angela Merkel is urging Europe to “‘work very hard’ . . ., spend more on research and education and overhaul its tax and labour markets to restore competitiveness.” She’s concerned there is too much social spending and with the population in the eurozone, including Germany, aging, something must be done, though she didn’t specify what. Yep.
Politics USA
❖ Speculation: Former MA Gov Michael Dukakis (D) to be interim replacement for Sen. John Kerry (D) who appears headed for the State Department?
❖ On 14 Dec 12, the NRA tweeted this about the Newtown mass shooting: “Until the facts are thoroughly known, NRA will not have any comment.” As of the 16th, the NRA had taken down its Facebook page.
❖ According to the Club for Growth, senators must vote “No” on a proposed $60 billion post-Superstorm Sandy recovery package.
❖ “The left-leaning Center for American Progress on Monday named Treasury Secretary Larry Summers a ‘distinguished senior fellow.’“ Larry has “insights, keen intellect, and policy creativity.” Really.
❖ The Farm Bill looms larger, since “most U.S. farm support programs expired on Oct 1 and livestock programs lapsed a year earlier.” The House wants to trim the bill by cutting out $16 billion in food stamps, while the Senate wants to cut food stamps by $4 biilion. More.
❖ Poll results from Pulse Opinion research show that 59% of Americans think we’re “on the wrong track”, they are “deeply pessimistic about their chances for future prosperity”, and 54% “believe their children will be worse off as adults than their parents.” Republicans polled were far more pessimistic than Democrats.
Women & Children
❖ Domino’s Pizza owner, Tom Monaghan, devoutly Catholic billionaire, has “sued the Obama administration over the mandate that health plans cover birth control.” There are now 40+ such suits around the country.
❖ “If you don’t educate you must build prisons,“ says Waldemir dos Santos Corea, who founded Caixa de Surpresas which provides “cultural and sports activities for [children of Rio de Janeiro's favelas] to built up their self-esteem and confidence. Their inspiring program is supported by a modest ($8,000) grant from the Global Fund for Children.
❖ An “old mine” exploded while several girls (9 – 13 years old) were gathering firewood near a village in eastern Afghanistan. Ten of the children were killed, two seriously injured.
Working for A Living
❖ Michigan State Police will be investigating the collapse of the Americans for Prosperity Tent and an altercation involving a Fox “news personality” during last week’s uproar in the capital as the legislature prepared to and passed “right-to-work” and other anti-labor measures.
Heads Up!
❖ Announcement: Tar Sands Blockade’s Mass Action and Training Camp to held January 3 – Jan 8, 2013 in southeast TX.
Planet Earth News
❖ 107 medical and scientific experts signed a petition to President Obama warning that plunging ahead with fracking without proper research in terms of its impact on health and the environment “could potentially cause undue harm to many Americans”.
❖ The Center for Sustainable Economy (CSE) has filed suit in the US Court of Appeals District of Columbia, “challenging the Interior Department’s plan to conduct new offshore oil-and-gas lease sales over the next five years.” CSE claims “the economic analysis underlying the plan is ‘critically flawed, biased and incomplete’.”
❖ The Norwegian government, Thor Energy (Oslo) and Westinghouse are conducting a four-year test using thorium, which many consider superior to uranium, in nuclear reactors. Thorium, supposedly, is meltdown-proof.
Mixed Bag
❖ Silvio Berlusconi’s sex trial (“Ruby the Heart Stealer”) should be over with the February 4th hearing just set by a Milan judge; Italian elections will likely be at least two weeks later. Although he’s not yet divorced from his second wife, Berlusconi has announced his engagement to his 27-year-old girlfriend (who is not Ruby the Heart Stealer).
❖ Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has joined Facebook. No one else in Iran can, at least theoretically, since it’s officially blocked. Funny how that works.
Latin America
❖ 14 landless Paraguyan peasants are being prosecuted for land invasion, criminal association and murder, resulting from land struggles in Canindeyu Province that resulted in 17 people being killed.
❖ 53% of eligible voters turned out for elections in Venezuela on Sunday. Hugo Chavez’s Socialist Party won 20 of the country’s 24 governorships.
Break Time
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Regarding Dukakis, CBS local says Dukakis says “No.”
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/12/17/michael-dukakis-will-not-be-interim-senator-if-kerry-resigns/
He’s going back to UCLA to teach.
Well, that’s too bad, but thanks so much for the follow-up, maa8722.
The cave-in nears completion:
Obama reportedly makes new ‘fiscal cliff’ offer
It’s so disgusting, isn’t it, allan? BTW, David has two articles today related to that. They’re functioning like a couple of horse-traders, as though the American people and their well-being were secondary to the sheer thrill of their game.
“protections for the vulnerable populations” = $25 gift card for Ralston-Purina products.
There’s scuttlebutt here about Capuano, Lynch, and Meehan being interested.
If there’s to be a special election in ~160 days Dems really need to avoid a divisive primary. In the meantime an interim appointment might favor Vicki K, but somehow I’d bet she wouldn’t want to.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2012/12/15/democrats-face-dilemma-how-hold-onto-kerry-senate-seat/khjBeJqYL4rlfsUs5N3A2L/story.html
I especially like Capuano, who reminds me slightly of Alan Grayson. But MA is bigger than the “Graysonesque” Somerville district, and Brown is liked outside the 617 area code. Lynch or Meehan would be safer I think.
Someone needs to look around for an independent straw to also run and “help” Brown spread his message. For that task I nominate Steve Pierce, who was an intraGOP nemesis for Weld. He’s waaay too far right for the state, and might be annoyed by some of Brown’s more moderate votes, and. . . I doubt a straw will appear after all, come to think of it.
Add Markey to that list
The compromise is worse than the cliff.
Obama thinks people making $250,000-$400,000 can’t tolerate having their taxes revert to what they were before the Bush administration, but seniors living on fixed incomes can afford to pay more?
The chained CPI is effectively a 0.3% annually-compounded tax on Social Security and other benefits. And it hits you coming and going because various taxes and penalties are also tied to CPI. (The ACA already has crappy inflation indexing built into it–one of the main reasons why I opposed it–and we are going to be reaping the pain of that “feature” starting in a few years.)
We can only pray that this is some kind of trial balloon and it gets walked back immediately.
Tell me about it. Social Security was supposed to be protection for vulnerable populations!
The ultimate cruel irony would be if the “special protections for vulnerable populations” were also indexed to chained CPI!
That was excellent, allan, just excellent.
Nice analysis there, maa8722. I’m not that familiar with MA politics, but based on my sense of things there, I do agree with you about Vicki K. And I see what you mean about Capuano. At least, y’all have some decent-to-very-good candidates, which is more than can be said for many other areas in the US.
To make all this happen, Mr. Obama proposed fast-track procedures to help Congressional tax writers overhaul the individual and corporate tax code and make changes to other programs.
What could possibly go wrong?
“What could possibly go wrong?” . . .
And who will be most negatively affected?
I think we ’bout got it, allan.
Even Brad DeLong is throwing in the towel.
From the NYT article:
Reading between the lines, it sounds like chained CPI won’t be used for VA Benefits or SSI. If we’re going to be throwing people under the bus, I don’t understand sparing VA benefits as disabled vets are financially better off than seniors in general and much better off than the disabled in general. Oh well…
Upfront spending on infrastructure is a fig leaf without a hard number, and the horse has already left the barn on unemployment benefits.
A 10 year fix for the AMT would cost $600 billion and a 10-year doc fix would cost $300 billion–these are things that predominantly benefit the upper-middle class. These are the big winners in this deal.
Heck of a roundup tonight, Fatster. Sorry for the late response.
This is a nice overview of the effect of chained CPI on Social Security:
http://www.nwlc.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/cuttingsocseccola.pdf
As the report points out, the current CPI is already inadequate because it doesn’t take into account fast-rising health care costs.
Most importantly, why is social security being dragged into a general budget deal???
Because it’s a cash cow. Those greedy fucking republicans and democrats want every penny they can squeeze from its udders before they butcher the entire program.
Dean Baker has some good coverage of the chained CPI mess, and has written an eye-popping report on how Social Security has already been slashed relative to the previous generation:
http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/ss-cola-2011-09.pdf
One interesting statistic from Baker:
Chained CPI results in a larger cost to seniors, as percent of income, than letting the Bush tax breaks expire for the top 2%.
Just geeking here because what more can be said about Obama’s obsession with putting our seniors on a diet of cat food?
I’m not a thorium advocate, but the linked article is a bit misleading.
The type of thorium reactor that advocates discuss has already melted down before it even starts…
… that’s a good thing :)
Good because you’re not trying to keep the core solid while running hot enough to run steam turbines.
Good because if a bit too much heat is generated the liquid fuel expands out of the carefully-designed core and automatically becomes subcritical as a result.
Good because if site power fails the hot fuel melts a chilled plug of cold fuel at the bottom of the reactor and drains out into a non-critical and passively cooled storage area.
But the Norwegian experiment is not anything like that… they’re just putting solid thorium in a uranium reactor because the reactor is already licensed. So it won’t be all that much safer than with the uranium fuel it was designed for.
What it is, is an attempt to get around our owners’ decree that uranium plants are the only viable source of nuclear power…
… so we will still have to burn coal and oil for a hundred years more don’tcha know?…
… and it is being done this way to simply be able to say “See, power from thorium!” and to try clear the institutionalized logjams to building reactors designed for thorium.
India and China are pressing ahead on thorium, and are not having to play games like this.
Is thorium better and safer than uranium?
Yes, it has issues that advocates gloss over but it is far safer and more efficient than uranium and with less waste and much shorter lived waste at that.
Had we gone with thorium from the beginning so many decades ago then things really would be different now.
… but that ship sailed in the 1950′s when our owners decreed that expensive, meltdown-prone and bomb-capable uranium reactors were the only option for civilian nuclear power.
It’s a little late to be trying to go there now.
Your link shows that SS tax rates haven’t increased in over 20 years. That’s the real fix.
Love the way that Libyan humanitarian intervention turned out.
Good morning, fatster.
Rumor has it that Cerebus will “sell off” its “investments” in “firearms”.
Someone must have noticed, and then, someone must have quailed …
(Get “out” while the “getting” is still “good”, no doubt …)
DW
HuffPo has a headline article by Ryan Grim that says much the same thing.
This particular Obama offer show that this is not about the so-call “Fiscal Cliff,” which is a package of de-stimulating tax hikes and spending cuts that will diminish the GDP. The entire fiscal-cliff package cuts the deficit by $550 billion per year. But the impact of the different components differ.
The the expiration of the Bush tax cuts would decrease the deficit by $220 billion per year, but it has a multiplier of .29, which means it would decrease the GDP by only $64 billion. And, Obama is proposing to keep yet more of the Bush cuts in place.
What he now want to expire is the payroll-tax holiday, which will cut the deficit by only $120 billion but has a multiplier of 1.29 which means that it will cut the GDP by $155 billion.
Lets repeat that:
* Letting the Bush tax cuts expire cuts the deficit by $220 billion and the GDP by $64 billion. Obama is backing off on that.
* Letting the payroll-tax holiday expire cuts the deficit by $120 billion and the GDP by $155. Obama likes that.
Let’s also note the letting the Bush tax cuts expire mostly hurts the wealthy, while letting the payroll tax-holiday end hurts the working class.
Colorado murder suicide this morning, five dead.
I just caught that one while doing my early-morning news walk-though, DWB. I had to laugh because of our discussion about the three-headed dog just the other evening. Many thnx!
Just pleased to know you’re ok, Gothrykke. :)
zapkitty, thanks so much for the info! Your informing us of the pros and cons is very helpful, indeed.
Oh, mafr, I just despair.
May our collective day improve–a lot. And on that note . . . Good Morning!
On the Military waste front, this:
If more money buys a smaller fleet, what does less money buy?