I assume the morning crew wants to talk New Hampshire. I don’t, but this has been a full-service blog for over 10 years, so here’s a thread for that, or anything else.
Open Thread
by @mistermix.bsky.social| 137 Comments
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Mino
Jim Hightower, my favorite living Texas bomb-thrower, turned 69 today. Happy Birthday.
BO_Bill
Barack is very smart.
Raven
Milbank has an interesting take on what bullshit New Hampshire was:
Later, my editor and I retreated to Jackie’s Diner in Nashua, around the corner from the Huntsman event. Waitress Barbara Justason, 77, told us she had tired of the campaign events. “It’s all reporters and no real people,” she said.
MattF
In the ‘anything else’ category, via jwz.org:
http://exple.tive.org/blarg/?p=2898
I was, honestly, a bit surprised by the fact that a cubic meter of cheese would weigh about a ton. Also, it is clearly not true that a cubic light-year of cheese would ‘immediately’ undergo gravitational collapse, since it would take (at least!) a year for the Big Cheese’s gravitational field to propagate from one end to the other.
amk
My personal poll (pulled out from youknowwhere) had willard winning by single digit margin. :(
Fuck the rethugs.
Schlemizel
@Raven:
I believe it – I read a blog post (Slog maybe?) about attending events in Iowa. The crowd descriptions were something like candidate, 5 team members, 60 press & 7 locals. I’d have a sign up at my place like that one guy in NH “No politicians allowed”
Mino
@Raven: Why would she be fussing. Their economy is boosted by all the outlanders.
flukebucket
I heard Mitt say this morning on ABC that in regards to General Motors all Obama did was finally do what Mitt said he should have done all along.In other words Obama finally did the right thing he just did it slower than Mitt would have done it.
Raven
@Mino: Maybe they were Canadian reporters and didn’t tip?
handsmile
I’m not saying there’s any correlation, but on the day that Mittens won the New Hampshire GOP primary, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday Clock one minute closer to the apocalypse.
“It is five minutes to midnight, the scientists said”:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/10/doomsday-clock-ticks-closer-to-midnight
Also too, last night TCM broadcast Dr. Strangelove. We are all Mayans now, indeed.
AxelFoley
@flukebucket:
Which is funny, because I remember Romney saying he would let Detroit go bankrupt. Basically, he told Detroit to fuck off.
I don’t recall the President doing that.
chopper
@flukebucket:
if we had anything resembling a real media, the bobblehead’s answer to that statement would have been ‘wait, obama let GM fail?’
JGabriel
@MattF:
If I recall correctly, it only needs to propagate from the center to the edge. Where the edge is closest, that would be about half a light year. Where the edge is farthest away from the center, in the corners, that would be a little less than .78 light years.
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WereBear
Unfortunately, a great many local residents never ever ever ever in-a-million-years see it that way.
Like Libertarians, they assume financial infrastructure “just happens.”
Michael D.
@DougJ: If you’re reading, Jenn Rubin just said on the Tweeter that she’ll be doing a live chat at WaPo at 11.
Just in case you’re interested.
chopper
anyhoo, on to SC. this is going to be fun. this is going to make 2000 look like mousefucking.
El Cid
Last night Colbert was having fun with the huge right wing patriot outrage over the latest elitist Obama conspiracy scandal against ordinary Real America:
The super-obscene over-the-top “Alice In Wonderland”-themed Halloween Party with glitzy guests like Johnny Depp which they tried to keep secret.
On Colbert, he showed clips of FOX&FRENDZ’ Deucy’s (Sr & Jr) tenaciously talking about something they had not investigated or verified and Limbaugh screaming angrily about this tax-thieving insult to our jobless and how the Kenyonesian traitor shamefacedly hid it.
Except, of course, it was a shindig thrown for ‘the troops’ (military families & kids invited) and, uh, not secret.
I hadn’t heard about this terrible let-them-eat-cakes ultra-snobbery on the gubmit dime, which obviously means it was a complete coverup by the Nairobian Candidate and his Black Panther PETA activist wife Michelle.
chopper
@MattF:
african or european cheese?
BO_Bill
Michelle is very big. And loves French Fries.
Mino
@Raven: Is that because Canadians don’t have to be bribed to do a good job? (Snark, people.)
Brian R.
@BO_Bill:
Is this really the best troll we can get? DERP DERP FAAAAART.
JGabriel
Blurp.
PeakVT
@Raven: It gets better:
A story just passed you by, asshat.
Mino
@El Cid: Well, hello. Are there any Republicans in the service anymore? I think Michelle has made good Dems out of them.
lacp
@BO_Bill: Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
– Julius Marx
BO_Bill
It’s the only thing that gets past the censors Brian R. I tried to do a plug for Ron Paul to no avail.
“No, if I picked one favorite, favorite food, it’s French Fries, Okay? It’s French fries, I can’t stop eating them.”
Mino
@PeakVT: Yes, and what does it say about their editors, too. That facts are not on the menu.
Maude
First few words about SC on AP Headline: Psalms Before Storm.
Not bad.
Shari
Missed this at digby’s, but like what Kthug added.
JGabriel
BO_Bill:
I guess WordPress filters out butt plugs.
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PurpleGirl
@MattF: The little girl holding the mixing paddle is so cute. (There’s another picture of her a few photos down. Cute, cute, cute.
Brian R.
@BO_Bill:
Great, Michelle Obama likes french fries. That totally means that her efforts to curb childhood obesity are bullshit communism scams to undermine something something, right, and all those kids can go die in a fire, right, because Doctor Ron Paul gold standard inflationary spiral black thugs are starting a race war and AIDS was a federal conspiracy, OK?
There’s your comment. Happy? Go blow it out your asshole, you moronic mouthbreathing fucktard.
Punchy
What happens when Tim Tebow mates for the first time? Will it be with a stripper, a housewife, or a priest?
Schlemizel
@Brian R.:
No, the real winner is little nuts who brought an entire thread (‘granite state’)to a halt with a couple of obvious troll bombs then stood back & watched as the thread melted down.
Bowel Obstruction Pill is just a piker.
Schlemizel
@Punchy:
You missed goat
Suffern ACE
@flukebucket: I thought the complaint was that the administration did it “Too Fast” and it should have slogged through the court system, and that the fact that it was fast meant that Obama was Kim Jong-Il von Buenos Weimar Squared.
freelancer
I was going to be vicarious and magnanimous about BO_Bill making a remark that was lacking in controversy, but he followed up and is once again disgusting if not banworthy. Hey, Bill, I just wanted to let you know that I’ve been watching Curb Your Enthusiasm lately, and Wanda Sykes has been making appearances and putting in yeoman’s work. Tell me, how do you see that comedic actress in contrast to the first lady of the United States?
Raven
Just keep talking to him and he’ll keep posting.
BO_Bill
Sexual gratification is a very primal and therefore healthy human endeavor, and I do know a thing or two about butt plugs, from a sales standpoint (only). You will have to trust me on this one. It continually amazes me at the demand.
Like most things in love however, the best gifts are free. So in the spirit of sharing here is my free gift to those Balloon Juice male members who can be at times, let us say, premature, with their special partner. Simply imagine Michelle the morning after pounding three pounds of French fries, constipated, on the pot.
This is guaranteed to enhance the experience for you, and your loved one.
Schlemizel
Obama Openly Asks Nation Why On Earth He Would Want To Serve For Another Term
http://www.theonion.com/articles/obama-openly-asks-nation-why-on-earth-he-would-wan,26933/
“I have a pen and some paper right here,” Obama said Wednesday morning at a town hall meeting in Ohio. “Let’s list the pros and cons of being president. Con: There are people out there who literally want to shoot you dead. Con: We live in a country seriously considering a Newt Gingrich White House. Con: You can help 40 million Americans receive health care, sign legislation that regulates a financial system run amok, give the order to kill Osama bin Laden, help topple Muammar Qaddafi’s tyrannical regime without losing the life of one American soldier, end the war in Iraq, repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, stave off a second Great Depression, take out more than 30 top al- Qaeda leaders, and somehow everyone still calls you the next Jimmy Carter.”
burnspbesq
Congressman Wally Herger (R, CA-2) has announced that he will not seek re-election in 2012, ending a 26-year run.
Herger was a principal sponsor of the 2005 legislation to impose a three-percent withholding tax on payments to government contractors. Bizarrely, he also led last year’s successful repeal effort. He was also a staunch opponent of a Federal VAT.
Good widdance to bad wubbish.
Mino
What we have to look forward to if the Teatards get their way. From Kthug’s blog:http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-greece-fears-that-austerity-is-killing-the-economy/2012/01/09/gIQA9hAFpP_print.html
Additionally, I saw an article two days ago about Greeks leaving their children at churches and government offices because they can’t feed them.
When is Greece gonna declare war on Germany?
catclub
@flukebucket: Ooh, that is of course another big lie, from the guy who published an editorial saying to let them all fail.
flukebucket
@chopper:
The particular bobblehead we are talking about was George Stephanopolous. Even though Mitt told what was obviously an outright lie it was good to hear him say that Obama did the right thing. I am looking so forward to South Carolina this weekend.
Mino
@Schlemizel: It does defy logic, doesn’t it?
Chyron HR
I’m almost certain I said I wanted VICTORY!! back instead of Time Cube Jr. Not in addition to him. I respectfully request Tunch’s prompt attention in this matter.
EconWatcher
@Raven:
Correct, sir. It’s amazing how people on this blog, who are overall so smart, can’t figure this one out.
burnspbesq
@Mino:
Greece has to default. If it doesn’t, it will end up looking a lot like Zimbabwe.
jonas
@flukebucket: that he has to lie about this shows that it’s an issue they’re scared of. Fact: Romney and the Republicans wanted to liquidate GM and Chrysler, mostly because it would have destroyed the UAW. It also would have done irreparable harm to the entire automotive industry in the US (Ford and Toyota were among the biggest lobbyists for a bailout) and the military as well (which uses many of the same suppliers). But utterly gutting America’s industrial and military infrastructure during a massive economic downturn was a small price to pay for putting the boot in on those fat-cat union workers and their precious retirement benefits.
Schlemizel
@Mino:
And I will openly admit I have been disappointed by a lot of the things that have happened in the last 3 years. But that is because ‘ideal’ is the yardstick not reality. How this guy does not get more credit (and a whole hell of a lot more support from the Dems) baffles me.
Why would any decent human would want the job? Its not surprising the GOP is just a clown car of bozos. That the Dems have found a decent guy who wants the thing is whats surprising.
lacp
@Punchy: Why does it have to be an either/or proposition?
JGabriel
@BO_Bill:
I owe you an apology. About a week ago , I wrote that I did not think you were the real original Brick Oven Bill, because I didn’t think you were bringing the crazy like he did.
Clearly, I was wrong. I no longer have any doubt that you are the real and original BOB.
.
Cacti
I’m interested to see what, if any, effect the Bain Capital attacks have on Romney in SC, a state with unemployment well above the national average, and where Willard is considered a religious and cultural “other”.
Gin & Tonic
Top headline on Google News this minute: “Romney win provokes panic”, credited to Fox News. Won’t click to see who is panicking or why.
jonas
@burnspbesq: Agreed. What the EU is asking Greece to do is akin to handing out medicine droppers on the Titanic and telling the crew to get to work refloating the ship. It’s going down. Question is, who’s it going to take with it?
MattF
@Mino: It’s true that the Greeks spent a lot of borrowed money without a lot of attention to how it would be paid back… but:
Question: Can you guess who lent them the money?
Answer: If you guessed German Banks, you get the banana.
JGabriel
@Raven:
Good. Yes, he’s sometimes over the top offensive, but every once in while BOB says something so completely off the wall that I can’t stop laughing for five or ten minutes.
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Villago Delenda Est
@EconWatcher:
It’s very simple.
Don’t feed the energy creature. If you do, it will be on your porch for days looking for more.
jonas
@Cacti: I think the whole Bain thing is less likely to be a factor than the fact that Romney is a former New England governor who claimed to be a true “progressive” at one time and is Mormon. Although Santorum and Gingrich are both Catholics, expect them to hit Romney hard (overtly) with the “pro-choice, liberal Massachusetts governor” thing and (covertly) with the “he’s a weirdo Mormon” stuff.
amk
uncle tom (clarence) once again proving what a pos he really is.
Mino
@MattF: And our own Goldman Sachs helped them cook the books and keep the party going until the cops came.
Hopefully the rest of Europe will look at Greece and go Iceland-ish.
JGabriel
via lacp:
I keep thinking that should be a Doctor Who scene:
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Annelid Gustator
@JGabriel: If the cheese was just specified as a cubic lightyear but not specified as a cube, it could be as little as 0.62 years (for a spherical cheese).
Schlemizel
@amk:
OMG – just when I think my opinion of him can’t get any lower he starts scraping on the dirt beneath the bottom of the barrel.
jonas
@Gin & Tonic: Who’s panicking is all the Tea Partiers who were under the impression that they now controlled the GOP and had a chance to nominate one of their own for president, rather than serving as useful idiots for the billionaire boys club that really runs the joint.
JGabriel
@Annelid Gustator: That sounds about right. I thought of doing the calculation for that too, but it’s been so long, and I was too lazy to look up the formulas to transform a cube into a sphere of equal volume and then determine the radius.
.
handsmile
@burnspbesq: (#48)
Well, Zimbabwe looks like Zimbabwe mostly because of Robert Mugabe, and the response of Western governments and international financial institutions to his despotism.
Greece may yet default, but it will do so in defiance of those same bodies. At the moment, Merkozy is committed to asphyxiating the patient a while longer and Dr. Papademos has concurred with that treatment plan.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/jan/09/merkel-warns-greece-over-bailout?intcmp=239
Good news about Herger, though. Is there an heir apparent or might that seat be in play?
Cacti
@jonas:
I imagine it will all get rolled up into some form of “That yankee, mormon smartass who came and took your jobs.”
burnspbesq
@MattF:
“Answer: If you guessed German Banks, you get the banana”
And that, as a great man once said, is the crux of the biscuit. If Greece defaults, every major German bank is technically insolvent. And if every major German bank is insolvent, Merkel’s chances of re-election are nil.
It really is that simple.
jonas
@burnspbesq:
Not because of the Greek debt directly, but because Italian and Spanish debt will be immediately downgraded too and that’s what they have a lot of.
Mino
@burnspbesq: Surely the German banks hedged with financial instruments of mass destruction that they sold to German pension funds and perhaps some American ones, too.
RalfW
I just really enjoyed this typically understated takedown of the faith-based GOP in a blog post yesterday at the Economist:
JGabriel
@Cacti:
Dog On Car will probably still win, if only because Paul, Man On Dog, Gingrich, and Perry are all contesting each other in a four-way battle for the state’s rights, social conservative, bigot vote. Huntsman is only polling at 5%, leaving Romney to vacuum up the pro-vulture capitalist, pro-economic sadism, pro-business vote.
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Gust Avrakotos
Note to Wrong Again Cole. Michelle says all that stuff written about her and supposed friction in the WH in that book that was part of a recent story in the NYT is nonsense.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505270_162-57356770/michelle-obama-no-tension-with-husbands-aides/?tag=morningLeadStoriesAreaMain;thisMorningLeadHero
The nonsense you seem to have bought into whole since you are so easily swayed by bullshit.
burnspbesq
@handsmile:
According to the local paper in Chico, Herger has anointed a local Republican state legislator as his designated successor.
As a 13-term incumbent in 2010, Herger won with 57 percent. That’s not terribly impressive.
Don’t know whether or to what extent redistributing might have an impact. It’s a huge, rural district covering the center of the state from just north of Sacramento all the way to the Oregon line.
Cacti
@JGabriel:
I think so too. However, I think it’s more an issue of Gnewt and Frothy splitting the not-Romney vote. Paultards tend to be “if not our messiah, then no one”.
Mino
@JGabriel: You have to wonder if Romney himself is paying to keep them all in. Theoretically, it would be possible. And a smart move.
burnspbesq
@Gust Avrakotos:
Hmm … Which is worse, a flat-out troll like BOB or an idiot who persists in thinking he’s the smartest guy in the room despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary?
Judas Escargot
True New Hampshire Story: It’s mid-Feb 2001, very early in GWB’s Presidency. Went to a nice little Inn in NH with the gf of the time. This was a Sunday night in the off-season, so the whole Inn was completely empty except for us. The nice lady at the check-in desk bumped us up to the “Presidential Suite” at no extra cost.
Nice NH Lady (being very nice): “Oh, it’s a very nice suite. George Bush stayed in it during the primaries.”
Me (being a Masshole, forgetting what State I was in): “Oh, cool, thank you. We can look under the bed for chads.”
Fortunately, Nice NH Lady had a sense of humor, and it was indeed a very Presidential suite. But the first time I sat upon the Throne of Thought, I found myself laughing at the realization that I was sitting exactly where GWB’s Presidential arse had once been. I found myself humming “Hail to the Chief” to myself every single time I used it, in solidarity.
Can’t imagine why that relationship ended a month later… (the gf, not GWB’s arse).
Anyway, I barely remember that all too brief period between Gore v. Bush and 9/11, when GWB was too busy banning stem cells and politely asking China to return our airplanes to do any real damage. (Little did I know that in a little over 2 years, we’d be in two simultaneous land wars in Asia, and well on our way to national bankruptcy).
Ah, Sweet Youth. Simpler times.
JGabriel
@Cacti:
True, generally speaking, but I suspect Paul’s tenther-ism will play well in the state that was the father to the civil war, and create broader appeal among SC bigots beyond his usual libertarian base.
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handsmile
@JGabriel: (#73)
burnspbesq
@Mino:
“”@burnspbesq: Surely the German banks hedged with financial instruments of mass destruction that they sold to German pension funds and perhaps some American ones, too.”
Unknown. But not outside the realm of possibility. If true, would only increase Merkel’s incentive to keep the lid on until after the next election.
Gust Avrakotos
@burnspbesq: You are probably my most loyal groupie and I cherish every obsessive post you make about me….Which happens to be my favorite subject. It’s all about me. Thanks for your support. You make it all the more rewarding.
JGabriel
@Mino:
I honestly have been considering that for about a week now. It’s certainly a possibility.
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JGabriel
@handsmile:
I should have said “about” 5% for Huntsman. I got the figure from Nate Silver’s projection model rather than an actual poll. My bad — I misread it and thought I was quoting a weighted poll average, not the model.
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Yutsano
@Gust Avrakotos: Awww…did Durf get his wittle butt banned again? I see a mark on Harper’s boots you forgot to lick off there.
handsmile
@JGabriel: (#85)
Ah, that piker what does he know!
To you I must say that anyone who can (and chooses to) calculate the gravitational collapse of a light-year of cheese, cubical or spherical, deserves my deep respect.
Chinn Romney
Uncle Mitt is da man! I loved listening to him complain about “the Obama people” taking his words out of context. Gotta have some biggums to do that with a straight face. Some think Uncle is just sociopathic, but that’s not it. It’s the cojones. Cojones Grandes. Yes he had the wherewithal to have those puppies surgically implanted, but so what?
He’s also subtle. It takes a very deft touch indeed to rail against “this pessimistic president” who needs to step aside, in a teevee commercial touting his own sunny optimism.
This election isn’t just “about replacing a president”, it’s about ‘saving the soul of America’. Cojones and deftness in one neat package. Love it.
President Willard M. Romney. God help us.
Kathy in St. Louis
Wow, a whopping 39 percent after years of campaigning. May he do every bit of that 39 percent next November.
Let’s see if Bain Capital can do a corporate raid on the presidency.
Gust Avrakotos
@Yutsano: You are too kind (blush). You know as well as my other platinum club member groupies how much that means to me. I think I will double down on my efforts to tell Cole what a moron he is today. All thanks to you.
Kathy in St. Louis
@Cacti: So true about the Libertarian vote. And they may actually be angry that they were denied their 76 year old Second Coming. Also, too, they will have their own little convention, then vote their “principles” for some Pete Newby type guy.
burnspbesq
No more Twinkies or Wonder Bread?
Hostess Brands, Inc. has filed for Chapter 11, less than three years after emerging from a prior BK. The biggest financial albatross is a $944 million obligation to (wait for it) a union pension fund.
http://my.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20120111/4107ff47-0206-4066-8ca2-c7415d0a603c
I’m sure we’ll hear about this from Romney.
Mino
@burnspbesq: You know, don’t you, that pensions are deferred wages that consist of company and employee contributions. Stop talking like they are sinful, somehow.
Frankly, it’s the Twinkies and Wonderbread that are sinful (snark).
sherparick
@JGabriel: Stop feeding the troll. We should just wait for the sun to come up and turn him into stone.
burnspbesq
@Mino:
Unless you’ve seen the relevant collective bargaining agreements, you can’t possibly know that. Have you? Every deal is different, and in the majority of CBAs that I’ve ever looked at, the pension is non-contributory.
“Talking like they are sinful?” Entirely a product of your overheated imagination. SIUYA.
JGabriel
@burnspbesq:
For the sake of arguement, does it matter whether it’s contributory or not? One assumes that if they didn’t get a pension benefit, they would have asked for a higher salary in recompense.
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Mino
@burnspbesq: Non-contributory is a management term, probably. They are a part of the entire wage packet that is offered, no?
Financial albatross is somehow neutral?
And I’m not up on slang, so don’t waste it on me.
slag
@handsmile:
Excellent! Though it makes one wonder about that 33% of people who think corporations are them.
Benjamin Franklin
Another top Iranian Nukie blown up. They blame the Usraelis.
Pococurante
@Annelid Gustator: Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the cubic lightyear of cheese as it collapsed into singularity was “Oh no, not again”. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the cheese had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.
Mino
@Benjamin Franklin: Nice neologism.
slag
@burnspbesq:
Surprising. I would have thought their biggest financial albatross was the group of people they were paying (what I can only imagine were very generous salaries) to drive the company into bankruptcy. The people who should have known full well what their assets and liabilities were but who still couldn’t manage to keep their company whole.
handsmile
@slag: (#98)
It demonstrates to me that many South Carolinians are so irredeemable that even the trusty “27% rule” is insufficient.
I’m now digging through the poll results to find their response to this related question: “Do you believe that corporations are descended from monkeys?”
Mino
It is also a very common abuse to decare bankruptcy to avoid pension obligations for which management failed to set aside reserves. Sometimes, management’s obligations get passed on to taxpayers at a much reduced rate.
We can thank the Supreme Court for this travesty.
Benjamin Franklin
@Mino:
Well, I can’t take credit for it. But it does seem appropriate.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2012/01/wapo-corrects-iran-sanctions-regime-change-intent.html#more
hitchhiker
@Raven:
Dana files a story about how there is no story. Next we’ll have a story about the story of how reporters filed stories about there being no story.
Srsly, I think all of ’em are saying, Oh f&ck. Now what the hell are we going to write about until next fall?
burnspbesq
@JGabriel:
Undoubtedly they would have asked for it, but it’s by no means a dollar-for-dollar tradeoff. Investment yield and mortality make it much less expensive, in present-value terms, for an employer to provide deferred compensation.
Phylllis
@Mino: This happened with our local hospital.
handsmile
@Benjamin Franklin: (#105)
Thanks for linking (and thus introducing me) to the website “Moon of Alabama.” That looks to be an interesting place, with a healthy amount of traffic as well. (Brecht is a reliable token of quality, in my experience.)
Neologisms aside, should Iran choose to retaliate for this series of assassinations, which would seem to be their sovereign right and which may in fact be the intention of its perpetrators, this all escalates very alarmingly.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jan/11/bomb-kills-iranian-nuclear-scientist
Mino
@Phylllis: Yes, look at all the money management has to play around with in salaries and bonuses if they figure they’ll never have to pay their retirees.
Brachiator
@Mino:
Yep. This is the depressing, human cost of the impact of the European financial crisis.
Meanwhile, Italy is getting some praise for making reforms that may stabilize the euro. Maybe this will help Greece and Spain rally.
burnspbesq
@Mino:
“We can thank the Supreme Court for this travesty”
Wrong again. As is readily apparent from the 1986 GAO report linked to here, Congress has had a quarter-century to fix the well-known funding problems of collectively-bargained plans, and hasn’t done it.
http://archive.gao.gov/d12t3/129082.pdf
In addition, in case you’ve forgotten, Congress writes our laws, not the Supreme Court. Collective bargaining agreements absolutely are within the definition of executory contracts that trustees have the power to reject in a Chapter 11 case. If you think that CBAs should be put in a special category of executory contracts and protected from rejection, feel free to make your case, but make it to the correct branch of government. And be prepared for the law of unintended consequences to bit you on the ass.
PeakVT
@jonas: Depends on how much Greek debt they still hold, and how levered-up they are.
PeakVT
@Brachiator: Even if the government’s debts were wiped away tomorrow, Greece still needs either inflation in the north or spectacular growth at home. Otherwise the country will go through years of deflation because of the differential in productivity between northern Europe and Greece can’t be re-aligned via the currency markets.
ETA: It the currency union, stupid. (Not you, the ECB.)
Mino
@burnspbesq: In National Labor Relations Bd. v. Bildisco, 465 U.S. 513 (1984), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Bankruptcy Code section 365(a) “includes within it collective-bargaining agreements subject to the National Labor Relations Act, and that the Bankruptcy Court may approve rejection of such contracts by the debtor-in-possession upon an appropriate showing.” The ruling came in spite of arguments that the employer should not use bankruptcy to breach contractual promises to make pension payments resulting from collective bargaining.
Now, I am not sure this was the first case of that maneuver being used. But I think it’s the one that got national attention. Soon after, businesses were dropping promised health insurance benefits to retirees and so forth, to the current day, where if you believe a worker’s contract will be enforced by law, you’re stupid.
Though a recent case might slow this down.
http://www.pensionrights.org/newsroom/releases/supreme-court-decision-amara-v-cigna-victory-workers-and-retirees
I did make an error, though. Officialy, the defaulted pensions are made up in whatever-part by corporate self-funding. However, Congress keeps allowing business to skip paying in reserves. So guess what.
http://www.gao.gov/highrisk/agency/pbgc/improving-stability-pbgc.php
burnspbesq
@PeakVT:
Which means that Greece should both default and exit the Euro. It could devalue the New Drachma as much as it needs to.
burnspbesq
@Mino:
Not clear what you’re arguing here. If you’re arguing that the result in Bildisco is bad social policy, I might agree with you, at least in part. If you’re arguing that the Supremes got the statutory-interpretation question wrong, them we are going to have a throw-down.
Mino
I seem to remember back in the eighties/nineties, when corporate raiders were evaluating companies for dismemberment, they looked for cash reserves and well-funded pension reserves.
Mino
@burnspbesq: Why were you characterizing pension debt as a financial albatross? I think workers are more abused than abusers.
Brachiator
@PeakVT:
Greece has got a lot of problems, including a hugely inefficient tax system that winks at widespread tax evasion.
@burnspbesq:
A BBC news story cites some economists who see all kinds of dilemmas if Greece did this.
But their is also the possibility that Greece’s economy might grow rapidly, as supposedly happened in the case of Argentina after a 2001 financial crisis.
The other complicating issue is that at present there appears to be no mechanism to leave the euro.
Are there concerns that a Greek exit might result in other countries abandoning the euro as well?
burnspbesq
@Mino:
You’re reading something into that word choice that I assure you wasn’t there. Any $944 million dollar obligation would be an albatross for Hostess, because it’s big enough to probably make a successful reorganization impossible. Remember, this is the company’s second Chapter 11 filing. Doesn’t seem like the first reorganization was a success, does it?
burnspbesq
@Mino:
Correct. There were a lot of overfunded DB plans in the late 80s and early 90s. Congress shut that practice down by imposing a 20 percent excise tax on reversions (Internal Revenue Code Section 4980).
I tried a case in the Tax Court in the 1990s involving a creative attempt by the owner of a small business to end-run his pre-nup by terminating the corporate pension plan and waiving his benefit, thereby increasing the reversion. He was willing to do that because the stock was his separate property (this all took place before the Section 4980 tax went into effect).
burnspbesq
@Brachiator:
Thirteen years later, it’s kinda hard to find fault with Malaysia’s decision to impose capital controls. Seems to have worked out well.
That would probably have to be part of Greece’s “nuclear arsenal.”
burnspbesq
The problem with Greece’s “nuclear option” is that for maximum effectiveness, all of the pieces (default, new currency, capital controls) have to go into effect at the same time and with no warning. That’s easier to do in dictatorships than in democracies.
Mino
@burnspbesq: OK. I withdraw my bristles.
burnspbesq
@Mino:
And I withdraw my SIUYA.
burnspbesq
House around the corner from me is flying a Packers flag. I’m feeling just pissy and childish enough to go get a bunch of blue and white chalk and put a big “ny” logo in the street at the end of the driveway.
burnspbesq
If you want to know what the real problem in the Hostess bankruptcy is, ask yourself the following question.
All the financial engineering and labor-force sacrifice in the world won’t save a company that makes products that people no longer want to buy. We’re down to the stakeholders fighting over who gets what from the corpse.
PeakVT
@Brachiator: That’s true, but fixing the Greek tax system doesn’t change the productivity mismatch.
Mino
@burnspbesq: Yes, I was being only half snarky in that portion of my post.
Though I have a friend that should own stock, he eats so many Little Debbies. They’re not made by Hostess, however. Don’t know why he still has a pancreas.
Kathy in St. Louis
So, Hostess will raid the pension fund to keep the company afloat, the union wil acquiess because they have no choice,the company will promise that this will preserve jobs, officers and upper management will celebrate by voting themselves huges bonuses,and the company will close or move offshore, one factory at a time.
Assholes of the first magnitude, and the tune is getting pretty familiar.
Mino
Not to flog a dead horse, but more details are emerging. GOS had a diary up with first-hand details.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/11/1053763/-Hostess-Brands-Goes-Bankrupt-(Again),-Stiffs-Workers-For-a-Billion?via=siderecent
As I suspected, mostly corporate shenanigans.
Benjamin Franklin
@handsmile:
You’re welcome. It’s nice to see people who are hungry for info, and not just
anger expectoration.
Matt McIrvin
@MattF: As general relativity does not allow us to magick cheese out of nothing, the cubic light year of cheese would have to be assembled from some preexisting matter, arriving at the cheese-production site at a speed slower than that of light. Therefore, propagation of the gravitational field across the cheese is not a problem and its gravitational collapse can begin in a timely manner once it has all arrived within its collective Schwarzschild radius.
Brachiator
@burnspbesq:
True that authoritarian regimes might have an easier time getting some things done, but you still have to make it work.
A couple of random things about Malaysia’s 1997 response to their financial mess stood out. One was gutsy,
The other was an odd bit of serendipity:
burnspbesq
@Mino:
Not exactly an unbiased post, although you have to get all the way to the end before the reason for the bias is disclosed.
It seems to me that Hostess should just face reality and convert its current case from an 11 to a 7. The IP and the real estate have value. Sell it all and distribute the proceeds pro rata. In the larger scheme of things, dumping another billion of obligations on the PBGC isn’t material.
MattF
@Matt McIrvin: You don’t believe in cosmic cheeseflation?