links for 2008-10-10
Posted by Thomas Nephew on October 11th, 2008
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“Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia.”
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Imagine my surprise: “Sarah Palin unlawfully abused her power as governor by trying to have her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper, the chief investigator of an Alaska legislative panel concluded Friday.”
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“This graphic shows where those CEOs fit into Paulson’s network starting as recently as in 2003. Connections include employment at the same company or a position on the same board of directors, but not necessarily at the same time. We did not include every company at which these CEOs have worked – just those within this network.”
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“Regrettably, this rescue is necessary to restore confidence and stability in our economy. The final version that passed is vastly improved from the three page bill that President Bush and Secretary Paulson originally sent to Congress. It protects tax payers, provides oversight and transparency, and rejects using tax payer dollars to finance golden parachutes for Wall Street CEOs.”
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“Temporary nationalization could serve as a kind of fast-track bankruptcy. Creditors, counterparties, and customers would have some certainty that firms in conservatorship would continue to function, and most could expect to be made whole (although the state could and should force haircuts or debt-to-equity conversions on the some junior claimants).” Via Ezra Klein.
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Quotes from former McCain chair Weaver, David Gergen, Joe Klein, Greg Sargent, Frank Schaeffer, digby, Andrew Sullivan, Ta-Nehisi Coates. This has to stop *yesterday*.
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Former supporter, in an open letter to the McCain campaign: “If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as “not one of us,” I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence.”
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“VAR is charlatanism because it tries to estimate something that is not scientifically possible to estimate, namely the risks of rare events. It gives people misleading precision that could lead to the buildup of positions by hedgers. It lulls people to sleep. All that because there are financial stakes involved. [...] To know the VAR you need the probabilities of events. To get the probabilities right you need to forecast volatility and correlations. I spent close to a decade and a half trying to guess volatility, the volatility of volatility, and correlations, and I sometimes shiver at the mere remembrance of my past miscalculations.
(tags: derivatives risk var blackswan economy) -
“At this stage central banks that are usually supposed to be the “lenders of last resort” need to become the “lenders of first and only resort” as, under conditions of panic and total loss of confidence, no one in the private sector is lending to anyone else since counterparty risk is extreme. And fiscal authorities that usually are spenders and insurers of last resort need to temporarily become the spenders and insurers of first resort.” Since Roubini saw it coming when others didn’t, his recommendations carry some weight.
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