Zee Links and Minifeatures: December 2007 Archives

Carnival of Personal Finance

Sometimes you're closer to major news than you think. Fellow LLP member Rick Sincere was working for Benazir Bhutto.

New video of Bhutto killing, medical report raise doubts about security, government account

Captain's Quarters has the video, if you're so inclined. I didn't see the need to view it (I have the kids today), but his commentary makes plain that the Official Pakistan Government Story has severe credibility problems.

North Korea misses deadline for nuclear declaration

Is anyone surprised? Anyone at all?

One excellent place to cut pork: Subsidies keep flights at small airports in the air

Of course, it's all small potato molecules compared to unchecked growth in entitlement programs.

A worthwhile review of Iraq from historian Victor Davis Hanson

Our modern day system of slavery, at Wizbang

Chinese economy not as big as we thought.

Fred Thompson takes his case direct to the voters in Iowa. Seventeen minutes and worth it, even though I could have done without the overtly religious part.

Senate holds 12-second session to block recess appointments

I'd feel a lot differently about this if the senate was bringing the nominees for floor votes in a timely fashion. The senate has the right to confirm or deny certain appointees. But this together with their current behavior of doing a virtual filibuster on all Bush nominees is partisan politics at its worst, denying the president the constitutionally mandated power to make appointments. How is the job supposed to get done if the president can't put anybody into it? Holding them for a presumptive Democratic president after the inauguration not only means the job doesn't get done for a year while the work and problems pile up. It also frustrates the constitutional separation of powers, not to mention the implicit promise that the person who is president when the vacancy occurs gets to choose who goes into it. The eventual result of this thinking is nobody ever gets confirmed by the senate - "after all, it's only four years until the next election!". Not that I think the government doing more is a good thing, but they've got to have someone responsible for what's already there. I'd be in favor of a constitutional amendment giving the senate three months to vote thumbs down on somebody. Meanwhile, the nominee goes to work right away. And of course, there's always impeachment and all the other methods of removal.

Happy New Year, everybody! I will have a new article, appropriate for the new year, tomorrow and Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate on Wednesday, but I'm not currently certain about Thursday and Friday

Fact Sheet: The Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007

Not good, no matter how you slice it: Benazir Bhutto assassinated.

Now I strongly suspect rival opposition party leader Nawaz Sharif of demagoguing her death. There are, as of yet, no indications that Musharraf, the current leader of Pakistan, had anything to do with her death. Indeed, I see indications against it, as it would have been trivial for him to bar her from returning, equally trivial to order her death. In fact, Musharraf is the one (still living) person I see as losing the most by the creation of an opposition martyr, as well as the death of another powerful figure who doesn't want the country controlled by Islamic fundamentalists. But the fact remains that Pakistan is a dangerous place, not least due to fundamentalist Moslems threatened by the idea of women (or friends of the West) in power. It doesn't exactly help the US, either, as she wasn't any fonder of the extremists than we are, nor were they any fonder of her. Under the "Who Benefits?" question, I'd have to say those Islamic fundamentalists will benefit more than anyone else. Furthermore, the modus operandi is certainly consistent (shot at close range by an assailant who then blew up himself plus about 20 others).

Michelle Malkin has a link to Al Qaeda claiming credit. I was thinking just the other day that if I was Osama, I'd want to be quiet until after the election in the hopes that the Short Attention Span Theater that is US politics will give him a president who has political capital invested in this whole war thing going away. It appears he's gone one better; killing off allies and potential allies who fly under the American Political Radar. Strategic thinking. This whole war thing isn't over yet, folks. Not even close to over. More decades of kicking the can down the road aren't going to help.

The US is investigating the claim.

Jokster Who Died in October at 88 'Sends' 34 Friends Holiday Greetings From Afterlife

I do have a couple of new articles set up and ready to go for the next couple of days, so you might actually want to check back. I won't be in the office tomorrow, though. I'm taking off for my wife's birthday.

Bush signs bill giving struggling homeowners relief

This is temporary relief from the income tax on debt forgiveness. If you're going to do a short sale, get it done now.

Private Papers on California's new healthcare boondoggle.

Arnold had positively flipped his lid on this issue. Talk about how to kill a state economy.

I am reminded of the F. Paul Wilson classic "Lipidleggin'" (read it all. Shouldn't take more than a couple minutes)

It's so nice to read stark, coherent sanity in another real estate site. Here is one beautiful example: Looking Through the Wrong End of the Telescope

Ask yourself what the transaction means to you. If you worry about what the other guy is getting out of it, you're going to hose yourself, certain as taxes. Like the dog in Aesop's fable, grabbing for the other bone only to lose your own. If it's the best deal for you, it simply is not important what how much the seller is walking away with, what you think the market in the area will do for the buyer, how much the agents are making, or what the loan officer is making. I have seen people rape themselves financially over the fact that they didn't want someone else to get a benefit. There is no area of a real estate transaction that seems to be immune from greed envy. Stake it through the heart before it bites you, because it will suck you dry worse than any legendary vampire.

Selectively playing hoaxes: This tale, The Tale of an Ivy-League Hoaxer, suddenly got splashed all over the papers and the blogosphere when it was admitted to be a hoax. I had only read about it on one conservative blog before that, and it hadn't been in any of my news sources. Now it's everywhere.

Compare and contrast the the Columbia noose story, which was all over the news for over a week until Columbia figured out it was likely a hoax and sequestered all evidence, and the media allowed it to fall down the memory hole. Here's search engine results to refresh your memory http://www.google.com/search?q=Columbia+noose&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Here's what I wrote on October 26

Has anybody other than me noticed that the Columbia Noose Incident has fallen into the memory hole? this is the most recent substantive information I can find. And as I said then,

Remember that I promised an apology if it turned out there was credible evidence that the Columbia Noose incident wasn't a put up job? Remember that I also predicted it would fall down the memory hole if evidence surfaced that it was? I've been trying to follow developments, and there just isn't much.

The difference lies in who is being slandered and libeled. Some animals are more equal than others.

I find myself in agreement with John Leo, who notes the important difference, although he notes some news sources who did pick it up before it was revealed to be a fabrication.

Carnival of Personal Finance

San Diego Special Edition

Lieberman endorses McCain for President. The article says former Democrat, which is inaccurate. He was the Democratic nominee for Vice President in 2000. His voter registration says Democrat. When the NutRoots&trade gave defeating him their all, he formed a new party in 2006 and successfully won the general election through that party, but his own registration remained Democrat (there being no law that a party's nominee must be themselves a member of that party). He remains one of the more left-wing members of the U.S. Senate on everything except the War on Islamic Fundamentalism. He caucuses with Democrats and voted for a Democratic nominee to run the Senate.

Here are two key quotes from the article:

"Political party is important, but it's not more important than what's good for the country and it's not more important than friendship," Lieberman said.

When was the last time you heard that in American politics?

Lieberman backed McCain. He said he had intended to wait until after the primaries to make a choice for the 2008 presidential race, but McCain asked for his support and no Democrat did.

In other words, the contenders for the Democratic nomination don't want his endorsement (as they are afraid it'll alienate the NutRoots that hold the Democrats more tightly than the Christian lobby holds the Republicans), but John McCain does. I don't agree with Joe Lieberman about much, other than the War on Islamic Fundamentalism, but he has earned my respect, as has John McCain (although I'm still not planning to vote for him in the primaries).

The press is trying to spin the fact that a former Democratic party nominee to national office has decided to cross party lines and endorse a member of the opposition party, a stinging rebuke to all of the Democratic candidates. And I speak as someone who has decided that if the Republicans nominate Huckabee (whose appeal to Republicans seems to stem entirely from his personal appeal to fundamentalist and evangelical Christians), I'll vote for Hillary Clinton, whom I completely detest personally (although not Obama or Edwards. Bad as Huckabee would be, he wouldn't be that bad). Due to his ongoing attempts to repeal the first amendment, McCain is way down my list of Republican candidates, but I'll vote for him before Ron Paul or Huckabee. My preference list at this point, from the top down: Fred Thompson, Duncan Hunter, Rudy Giuliani, and then I'm not sure who. As things stand, I could and would hold my nose and vote for McCain or Romney in the general election over anyone the Dems have on tap. But there are Republicans who would not likely get my vote in the general election, and Huckabee is one of them.

You can't choose some hypothetical generic candidate. You have to decide which actual person running for the job would do the best, or at last resort, least bad.

I like this embedding thing! Merle Hazard sings a parody of the financial situation set to a possibly recognizable tune. Guest appearance by Arthur Laffer (who is an excellent speaker, by the way).

While we're at it, Iowahawk has a parody that's better than most.

Watching the Watchers: Why Surveillance Is a Two-Way Street

Because otherwise "1984" becomes hopelessly optimistic. Surveillance is here, and it's here to stay. Let's at least even the odds between the rich and powerful and official and everyone else.

UPDATE: I'm probably going to be doing fewer new, never before published articles for the next two weeks until New Year's Day. Reprints will be more common until then, including perhaps the entirety of the Christmas-New Years week. Indeed, the only new work article I'm certain of at this moment will be the consumer focused carnival of real estate on Wednesday.

Spent the day looking at property for clients. I had twenty picked out off MLS, and I only managed to get in to see ten. I had twelve theoretically vacant on lockbox, and eight occupied that needed some kind of contact. Of those eight, I only got into three - and I made at least an initial call the day before before. Of the twelve theoretically vacant on lockbox, five had something going on - pesticide notice on the door, key missing out of lockbox, lockbox itself missing. All I can surmise is that these people don't really want to sell. And if they don't need to sell, they should pull the property off the market until the market improves.

People don't make offers without seeing the property. And good agents don't take clients to see a property unless they've seen it themselves. I had that reinforced today by no fewer than four of the ones I did get to see (For crying out loud, man, that lender is paying you a five digit commission to sell that property. Buy a box of trash bags and put the former occupants' trash in them. Or pay a couple high school kids to do it. If the property sells, and especially if it sells for a higher amount, you're ahead of the game. I understand you're not a contractor, but leaving ankle to knee deep trash strewn about every room says that you just don't care)

via volokh Conspiracy, I find that Jake Guttentag (aka "The Mortgage Professor") has written in the Washington Post (and evidently on his web site prior to that) about many of the problems with proposed fixes to the current mess. The last two paragraphs:

However, borrowers often make their decisions on the basis of incomplete and even misleading information from lenders. Instead of requiring lenders to assume responsibility for borrowers' decisions, let's make them responsible for providing borrowers with the information they need to make their own decisions.

The formulation of disclosure rules has long been viewed as a proper responsibility of government, because this is the only way to assure uniformity of disclosures across the market. But the federal government has proven that it is not up to this task. The existing mandatory disclosure rules are obsolete and shamefully inadequate. Every attempt to fix them gets bogged down in politics. It is time to try making lenders responsible for disclosures.

This should sound familiar to regular readers of this site. I've said many similar things.

I have in the past exchanged a couple emails with the Professor, and was formerly a member of Upfront Mortgage Brokers (which he founded) and from observing his actions, he seems to have his priorities in the right place for consumers. We don't always agree, but I have to say that I respect where he's coming from.

Read the whole thing.

I'm working on an article on yield spread. I hope to have it up Sunday or Monday.

Carnival of the Capitalists

U.S. refuses `Any Wounded Soldier' mail

"Are we going to forget our soldiers because we are running in fear?" Fena D'Ottavio asked. The suburban Chicago woman was using her blog to encourage friends to send mail to unspecified soldiers until she learned of the ban, which she called a sad commentary on society.

Talk to the folks at Soldier's Angels, They'll get you hooked up.

I keep forgetting to add them to my siteroll. Sigh.

Ridiculous Warning Labels

The contest winner was "Danger: Avoid death"

Why Police don't want to be recorded (via Instapundit)

A teenage suspect who secretly recorded his interrogation on an MP3 player has landed a veteran detective in the middle of perjury charges, authorities said Thursday.

Unaware of the recording, Detective Christopher Perino testified in April that the suspect "wasn't questioned" about a shooting in the Bronx, a criminal complaint said. But then the defense confronted the detective with a transcript it said proved he had spent more than an hour unsuccessfully trying to persuade Erik Crespo to confess--at times with vulgar tactics.

The Lying Detective was charged with twelve counts of perjury. I hope they send him to prison for all 84 years and then some, to reflect abuse of position.

Here's the question: How often does this happen where there isn't a recording? How can we trust police when they cover up each other's wrongdoings instead of insisting their fellow officers do the job they were hired to do, in the way they were hired to do it, or get out? This sort of thing does more to undermine the justice system than anything else can possibly do.

Carnival of Personal Finance

Carnival of Real Estate

Sometimes, we'd all be happier if life imitated Scrappleface more often.

Putin eyes full merger with Belarus

One way to stay in power. New political entity, new constitution, no more term limits.

I think I've learned how to embed videos without using bandwidth that I'm paying for.

I've seen this linked to all over the place the last few days:

Here's one of the Not-So-Secrets of the Universe that most people just won't stop and think about:

There's an awful lot of people out there with an awful lot of passive wealth. Often it's inherited. It may also be from a windfall of some sort. The people who have it often suffer from at least two of the following three failings: laziness, excessive greed, and stupidity. They keep hearing about what wonderful returns this or that hot investment paid this last year. Because of this, they spend a lot of time chasing last year's hot investment, buying in when markets are already overheated, and when the inevitable letdown comes, they don't come out very well, and often end up eating a huge loss.

These last few years, housing was the "It" investment. Before that, internet companies. Before that, biotech. Before that...

The thing that all of these investments have in common is that they really are terrific investments, played properly. But if you overplay them expecting a fast payoff, remember the old saying about how "If you can't point to the sucker in the group, it's you."

There is another thing these have in common, by the way. When the performance chasing money exits, there's always an opportunity. That's real estate now.

Quite a while ago, I wrote an article Passive Asset Allocation, which is pretty instructive in how not to be one of the performance chasers.

Hugo Chávez tried to overturn the results of Venezuela's recent vote but was rebuffed by the military

But by midweek enough information had emerged to conclude that Chávez did, in fact, try to overturn the results. As reported in El Nacional, and confirmed to me by an intelligence source, the Venezuelan military high command virtually threatened him with a coup d'état if he insisted on doing so. Finally, after a late-night phone call from Raúl Isaías Baduel, a budding opposition leader and former Chávez comrade in arms, the president conceded--but with one condition: he demanded his margin of defeat be reduced to a bare minimum in official tallies, so he could save face and appear as a magnanimous democrat in the eyes of the world

I am not surprised. Nobody should be surprised at his antics. This is what I wrote December 3. The man has a history of electoral fraud worse than anything Chicago has ever been accused of. If the real tally was as close as Reagan vs. Mondale in 1984, I'd be amazed.

HT: Captain's Quarters

Carnival of Debt Management

Rate Freeze agreement reached

The Bush administration has developed a plan to freeze interest rates for five years for thousands of strapped homeowners whose mortgages were scheduled to rise in the coming months.

The proposal was developed in negotiations led by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson with the mortgage industry. It would freeze introductory "teaser" rates on subprime mortgages, preventing them from resetting to higher rates for five years.

This is a good plan, and about as far as I think the government should go - a voluntary agreement with lenders that gives those lenders public cover for doing something en masse that they were going to have to do for basically all of the people it covers individually.

For negative amortization loans, it's no help. The real rates on those were always in the sevens or higher, so people who fooled themselves into thinking they had 1% loans, or whatever it was the lender dangled out there to make the low payment look legit, have no affordability objection coming. They might have a legal objection for fraud, but that's another story. People who got those were fooling themselves from the start.

For those people who got something with at least an introductory fixed rate they could handle, it will give them up to five years of breathing room, at levels they could afford - and we're talking interest rates, the real cost of the money they've borrowed, not nominal payments. Furthermore, five years of breathing room translates into plenty of time for the markets to recover, so at that point in time, they are not likely to be upside down on their mortgage, which means they'll likely be able to refinance or sell for a profit.

For the lenders and investors, they are making money now, at the rates people have been paying. As I said on Monday, it has become obvious that if they insist upon getting the higher rates and payments, they'll end up with defaults and losses. This allows them to behave as if they did people a favor.

Finally, it doesn't cost people who didn't sign up for mortgages they couldn't afford didn't any money. The federal government doesn't get money from thin air, and a bailout would cost the people who didn't make stupid, avoidable mistakes large amounts of money.

And for those who were using "a coming tidal wave of foreclosures" for thinking real estate markets are going to decline further, I think you need to seriously re-evaluate your position.

Today would have been my father's birthday, were he still with us.

I'm planning to take the family to the Zoo on Saturday, agent or not. My brother and I spent a lot of days there with my father, so it's a good place to go to remember him, even if we can't feed the elephants any longer.

This also gives my girls a place to have memories of us, for when we're no longer around. It will happen, eventually. One generation into another, the activities and time we spend together and the way we treat others - that's what really sticks with kids, not the teddy bear or Game Console or computer we give them for Christmas or their birthday. By this standard, I'm wealthier than a lot of billionaire's kids, and will try to make certain my girls are just as well provided for.

Carnival of Personal Finance

Carnival of the Capitalists.

Deal near on mortgage defaults

Paulson told a national housing conference that this effort involved a "pragmatic response" to current realities as the economy goes through the worst housing slump in more than two decades. The number of homeowners struggling to meet higher payments because their initial introductory rates are resetting is currently soaring.

Translation: The investors are making money on these clients now. They've come to realize that the "hand over fist" action they were anticipating isn't going to happen, and if they insist upon full payment, they're not going to get anything except defaults out of it.

Hit a investor hard enough, with a big enough sledgehammer between the eyes, and they will learn. Real estate loans are not a magic "make money risk free" machine. They are no safer an investment than the underlying property, and usually worse. Of course, an awful lot of lenders didn't have reserves to give them time to take advantage of the learning curve.

I don't write about sports much. Here's something long overdue, but for reasons the article doesn't mention

Walter O'Malley elected to Hall of Fame

O'Malley moved the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles after the 1957 season - a baseball version of the California Gold Rush that helped open the West to the national pastime. He received the minimum nine votes necessary for induction.

"Mr. O'Malley was a visionary by opening the gates to the West Coast. He linked the entire nation to the game of baseball,'' Dodgers Hall of Fame manager Tommy Lasorda said. "What a contribution he's made.''

Now, here's why O'Malley deserves induction in two words: Jackie Robinson.

This is to take nothing away from Mr. Robinson, who was by all reports a fantastically talented ballplayer as well as having the heroic temperament necessary to put up with the abuse heaped upon the first major league ballplayer (outside of the "Negro Leagues" as they were called at the time). But as gifted as Mr. Robinson was, he needed one thing more in order to break the color line:

He needed someone willing to hire him.

That someone was Walter O'Malley, who, in the wake of World War II's end, hired not only Jackie Robinson but several other non-white ballplayers before he even knew if Jackie Robinson was going to work out. Abuse was rampant, not just for Robinson and the other players, but also for O'Malley. Many season ticket holders canceled in protest of O'Malley's decision. It would have been far easier had he given up, or stopped at only one. Nonetheless, he stuck to his guns and continued the process of hiring the best talent he could find, regardless of skin color.

And not only every professional athlete who has benefited from this, but the entire country owes him a debt of gratitude for taking the first concrete step toward ending discrimination in this country. Before any of the Civil Rights Acts (1957, 1964 and 1965), before Brown vs. Board of Education, even before the military was integrated by President Truman's executive order. When the history of civil rights is written, Walter O'Malley deserves a significant mention, right alongside Jackie Robinson.

Sudan President Pardons British Teacher

So she's pardoned for something that shouldn't be a crime at all, after she's already served half the sentence, and she has to leave her job and the country, and that's supposed to make me feel better about Sudan?

Killing bullet for Venezuelan democracy dodged, for now: Chavez loses referendum

Humbled by his first electoral defeat ever, President Hugo Chavez said Monday he may have been too ambitious in asking voters to let him stand indefinitely for re-election and endorse a huge leap to a socialist state.

"I understand and accept that the proposal I made was quite profound and intense," he said after voters narrowly rejected the sweeping constitutional reforms by 51 percent to 49 percent.

Considering Chavez' history of electoral fraud and intimidation, the actual vote must have been something of a landslide.

Chavez, who was briefly ousted in a failed 2002 coup, blamed the loss on low turnout among the very supporters who re-elected him a year ago with 63 percent of the vote.

Translation: Even his former supporters can't see voting his way any longer, even if they have been intimidated into not voting.

Monitors say Russian vote unfair

Foreign election observers and Russian opposition groups accused authorities Monday of manipulating a sweeping parliamentary victory for the party of President Vladimir Putin, who hailed the vote as a validation of his leadership.

In other news, water is wet and dog bites man.

The people of Russia put off worrying about Putin's authoritarian tendencies just a little bit too long.

At this point, he's not going away peacefully.

Many voters said they were pressured to cast ballots for United Russia, said Alexander Kynev, a political expert with the election monitoring group Golos. In Pestovo in the western Novgorod region, some said their they ballots already were filled out for United Russia, he said.

In Chechnya, where turnout was over 99 percent, witnesses reported seeing election authorities filling out and casting ballots.

It's amazing how 95% of those whom he brutally repressed decided to vote to keep him in power!

And if anyone believes this, contact me. I've got a great deal on land in Florida.

Too funny not to mention: Clinton Cranks Up Rhetoric Against Obama

Hillary Rodham Clinton suggested Monday that Barack Obama has too little experience and perhaps too much ambition

As opposed to some other unnamed candidate? Except, of course, for the "perhaps" part.

The introduction of the new puppy went very well. This was the right thing to do for my elder daughter, and not co-incidentally, a certain little black and tan dachshund, whom my daughter named "Julia." Also, Mellon hasn't whined the last couple nights with the puppy for company, something she had been doing since Thing died. I told my wife this was the best idea she's had since she married me.

The new puppy is a chewer, which we'll have to put a stop to, but she's also a cuddler, which Mellon isn't. It was kind of nice to read on the couch with a warm puppy last night.

Here's a picture, taken about 10 seconds after my daughter first saw Julia, who climbed right up into the position you see.

The younger daughter is insanely jealous of course, but she's not old enough for a puppy of her own. But 1) She's learned enough not to hurt the new puppy, and 2) that will furnish me an additional argument on my side for another puppy in a couple of years when she is ready.

Got an email from the guy I got the puppy from the next day. The night I picked the puppy up, her daddy tangled with "the vet said (the tooth mark) was from a HUGE coyote or the mountain lion that's been seen in the area", and evidently gave as good as he got. One tooth mark on him. Blood in and around his jaws. Coyote or Mountain lion, impressive and lucky for a twelve pound dog, even of a breed that was created to take on badgers in their dens.