Grass cut, yard weed-eated, hedges trimmed, sidewalks swept and clean.
House dusted and vacuumed, glass cleaned, all wood lemon-oiled, kitchen clean, laundry done. Sheets changed, bathroom cleaned, toilets and shower spotless.
AND NOW WE NAP.
John Cole started Balloon Juice early in 2002. Those who have followed along know that this has been quite the journey.
by John Cole| 75 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Grass cut, yard weed-eated, hedges trimmed, sidewalks swept and clean.
House dusted and vacuumed, glass cleaned, all wood lemon-oiled, kitchen clean, laundry done. Sheets changed, bathroom cleaned, toilets and shower spotless.
AND NOW WE NAP.
by John Cole| 78 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs
A plane carrying the Polish president and dozens of the country’s top political and military leaders to the site of the Soviet massacre of Polish officers in World War II crashed in western Russia on Saturday, killing everyone on board.
President Lech Kaczynski’s plane tried to land in a thick fog, missing the runway and snagging treetops about half a mile from the airport in Smolensk, scattering chunks of flaming fuselage across a bare forest.
The crash came as a stunning blow to Poland, wiping out a large portion of the country’s leadership in one fiery explosion. at the moment that Russia and Poland were beginning to come to terms with the killing of more than 20,000 members of Poland’s elite officer corps in the same place 70 years ago.
According to other reports, basically their entire leadership was on the same plane. This is a horrible tragedy, but why on earth would anyone allow all those people on the same plane? That just makes no sense to me whatsoever. The Polish government has been essentially decapitated.
by John Cole| 55 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Shaping up to be a beautiful day here, and I’ve got grass to cut and errands to run, so you are on your own.
by John Cole| 15 Comments
This post is in: Free Markets Solve Everything, Assholes, Going Galt, hoocoodanode
Your latest entry into the “hoocoodanode” files:
In late 2005, the booming U.S. housing market seemed to be slowing. The Federal Reserve had begun raising interest rates. Subprime mortgage company shares were falling. Investors began to balk at buying complex mortgage securities. The housing bubble, which had propelled a historic growth in home prices, seemed poised to deflate. And if it had, the great financial crisis of 2008, which produced the Great Recession of 2008-09, might have come sooner and been less severe.
At just that moment, a few savvy financial engineers at a suburban Chicago hedge fund [1] helped revive the Wall Street money machine, spawning billions of dollars of securities ultimately backed by home mortgages.
***How Magnetar pulled this off is one of the untold stories of the meltdown. Only a small group of Wall Street insiders was privy to what became known as the Magnetar Trade [2]. Nearly all of those approached by ProPublica declined to talk on the record, fearing their careers would be hurt if they spoke publicly. But interviews with participants, e-mails [3], thousands of pages of documents and details about the securities that until now have not been publicly disclosed shed light on an arcane, secretive corner of Wall Street.
According to bankers and others involved, the Magnetar Trade worked this way: The hedge fund bought the riskiest portion of a kind of securities known as collateralized debt obligations — CDOs. If housing prices kept rising, this would provide a solid return for many years. But that’s not what hedge funds are after. They want outsized gains, the sooner the better, and Magnetar set itself up for a huge win: It placed bets that portions of its own deals would fail.
Along the way, it did something to enhance the chances of that happening, according to several people with direct knowledge of the deals. They say Magnetar pressed to include riskier assets in their CDOs that would make the investments more vulnerable to failure. The hedge fund acknowledges it bet against its own deals but says the majority of its short positions, as they are known on Wall Street, involved similar CDOs that it did not own. Magnetar says it never selected the assets that went into its CDOs.
They knew.
Once again, can you imagine how devastating it would be for this country if these bastards would please just go Galt?
(via, who you should read for more info on this trade.)
by John Cole| 98 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
This is the news everyone wanted to avoid:
An agonizing four-day wait came to a tragic end early Saturday morning when rescue workers failed to find any survivors in an underground mine after a huge explosion earlier this week.
The news at the Upper Big Branch mine about 30 miles south of Charleston brought the death toll to 29 in the country’s worst mine disaster in four decades.
“We did not receive the miracle we were praying for,” said Gov. Joe Manchin III, looking somber, his voice barely audible. “This journey has ended and now the healing will start.”
The announcement closed a grim Appalachian ritual and the third major mining disaster in the state in the past four years.
What I find odd is that there seems to be very little anger simmering to the top- this has been going on for so long, that we sort of have an odd fatalism about it.
by John Cole| 88 Comments
This post is in: Excellent Links
The new nine part seventy minute review of Star Wars II is now available:
I actually like bagpipes, though. I’ve been known to wake up roommates who kept me up too late with their drunken antics with an early morning Black Watch cd at ear bleeding volume. But I like bagpipes for other reasons, too.
by John Cole| 72 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Because I’ve got the power to do that, and I don’t need no stinking up or down vote, either.
Also, go fill out the petition to thank Justice Stevens.