Downgrade-Happy S&P Shown To Be Partisan Political Hacks

I saw this earlier this week:

Four months after Standard & Poor’s stripped the U.S. of its AAA credit rating and said the world’s biggest economy was no longer the safest of borrowers, dollar- denominated financial assets are doing nothing but appreciating.

Government bonds have returned 4.4 percent, the dollar has gained 8.6 percent relative to a basket of currencies, and the S&P 500 Index of stocks has rallied 1.7 percent since the U.S. was cut to AA+ from AAA on Aug. 5. The cost for the nation to borrow has fallen to record lows since S&P said the U.S. was no longer risk-free, with the average monthly yield in November on 10-year notes below 2 percent for the first time since 1950.

Demand for American assets is increasing as consumer confidence, manufacturing and employment show the U.S. is strengthening as Europe struggles to save its currency union and the developed world weakens. U.S. gross domestic product will expand 2.19 percent next year, compared with 1.55 percent for the Group of 10 nations, Bloomberg surveys of economists show.

“The U.S. is our favorite market,” Hiromasa Nakamura, a bond investor in Tokyo at Mizuho Asset Management Co., which oversees the equivalent of about $42 billion, said Dec. 12 in a telephone interview. “The level of debt is high but I think they will deal with it,” he said. “Financial dislocations are continuing and investor money is flowing to the reserve currency, the U.S. dollar.”

Of course, all the smart folks had predicted this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/opinion/credibility-chutzpah-and-debt.html

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/08/dragon-dictate-20110811-interpreting-the-aftermath-of-the-sp-ratings-downgrade-the-week-following-the-sp-ratings.html

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2011/08/the-first-casualty-of-the-sp-downgrade-of-the-us-treasury.html

http://firedoglake.com/2011/08/05/the-pms-of-sp/

http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/08/08/sps-history-of-relentless-political-advocacy/

http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/08/10/us-debt-downgrades-as-revenge-for-dodd-frank/

S&P, Moody’s and the like are hacks and should be treated as such, not like demigods.

Ouch

Scott Walker has an admirer.

Image from Baraboo News Republic

The new Dark Ages

Juan Cole:

The Scientific Institute in Cairo has been burned [note use of passive voice]. It was the second oldest such institute outside Europe, after the one in Philadelphia. Some 200,000 rare books and manuscripts are abruptly gone. The military government of Egypt allegedly stationed snipers atop the building, who fired on demonstrators, putting the Scientific Institute in the crossfire of Egypt’s current political struggle.

Most of Egypt’s history, poof. No microfilms. No copies. Just… gone.

Now, back to the passive voice. Here is a Google Translation of Reem Abu Fadl at an Arabic site called Shorouk News (via Angry Arab Blogspot):

And the development scene, the third and absurd and bloody in the street of Qasr Al-Aini after the attack on a sit-Council of Ministers on Friday morning, got up by members of the military police and agents of them on the roofs of public buildings and began throwing pieces of marble, bricks and Molotov cocktails at the demonstrators and passers-by and then moved across the surface until they pay the crowds towards the Tahrir Square. Attacks lasted several hours, prompting some demonstrators to respond, followed by the outbreak of fire in a building complex scientific.

It is shocking that the army did nothing to quench the fire, but rushed to the attack on Tahrir Square, firing live bullets and dragged protesters and insulted in the streets while young revolutionaries went to the burning building, risking their lives to save what can be saved from the collection.

But English language media, such as the NYTimes, blame the protestors. Here’s a source, Al Masry Al Youm linked by The Lede at the NYT and David Kirkpatrick amplifies that here.

Added: And our State Department continues to avoid confronting the military’s violence, to the point that a reporter calls it “ostrich head in the sand material”:

QUESTION: Please, the last question. You said you had been speaking out. Are you ready to take any kind of action if security forces are not acting accordingly?

MS. NULAND: Well, I’m not going to stand here with a crystal ball and predict where we’re going to go.

Can I have a “WTF?!?” please?

The eighth day of Christmas

These people make good chocolate.

You know what to do.

Phone hacking scandal snares cop in bribery charges

The Guardian:

The Metropolitan police have arrested a 52-year-old female serving police officer over payments from journalists, Scotland Yard has said.

The 52-year-old woman, believed to be a royal protection officer, is being held at an Essex police station after detectives arrested her at her home at dawn.

She is the first police officer arrested under Operation Elveden, an inquiry into alleged illegal payments to officers which is running alongside the Operation Weeting phone-hacking inquiry.

Guess What: Individual Persons Carry MUCH Higher Tax Burden Than Corporations

Since Tony Sutton, some dude called Love, and the Minnesota College Republicans are now following me on Twitter, this is for them:

Ever wonder whether people or corporations carry a heavier tax burden? Well, it’s not even close: people pay more in taxes by a long shot.

Yes, that’s for both Federal and state taxes. In 2008, corporate entities paid only 12.0 percent of federal revenues, while individual taxpayers contributed 45.3 percent to the Treasury. In that same year, corporations accounted for a measly 4.27 percent of state and local revenues, whereas individuals paid 27.9 percent of state revenues in 2008. State corporate income taxes were $52 billion while state personal income taxes were nearly six times greater at $301 billion, and state sales taxes were, at $ 278 billion, not far behind.

The hate of men will pass, and dictators die…

Via Occupy Wall Street, the speech that the American people need to hear:

BTW, for this and things like it, he was driven out of America.

Another great kidder from the Tea Party

From the Puffington Host:

Jules Manson, a failed Tea Party candidate for local office in California, recently called for the assassination of President Obama and his daughters in a racial epithet-ridden Facebook screed.

The post, originally about his opposition to the recent passage of the controversial National Defense Authorization Act, which includes a measure allowing the indefinite detention of suspected foreign terrorists, referred to the president as a “monkey.” Then it got much worse.

“Assassinate the f—– n—– and his monkey children,” Manson commented on his own post, according to a screen shot captured by Your Black Politics blog.
…
Manson, an avid Ron Paul supporter and libertarian…[announced his plans to run as a fake Democrat]

No, he’s not a senior Tea Partier. But where does this rage against Obama–for that matter, against Democrats– come from? For all I complain about Obama, he’s more competent and less venal than his predecessor. Low bar, I know. But where were these people when Bush was blowing up the economy, turning the US into an authoritarian state, and entangling us in the longest wars in American history?

Helping him swing the axe against the root of the Tree of Liberty, of course.

Just When You Thought Michael Brodkorb Couldn’t Act Any Uglier

Michael Brodkorb, who with Tony Sutton has for years been a leading powerbroker in the Republican Party, seems to be having anger management issues, at the very least:

Around noon on June 5, Eagan Police were summoned to Brodkorb’s home by his wife, Sarah Beth Brodkorb, who told the responding officer that she and her husband had been having “marital issues” and had gotten into an argument that morning.

Sarah reported that Michael had thrown a kid’s toy — though it wasn’t aimed at her — during the dispute, and stormed out of the house. Michael “slammed the door causing a frame to break.”

Sarah Brodkorb called 911 because “the level of anger in Michael’s voice scared both her and their three children,” according to the police report.

[...]

At one point, the officer noticed that Sarah had “what appeared to be bruising on one of her wrists.” Sarah said the bruises came from an IV treatment.

The police report is here.

Another outcome possible in Egypt

It has occurred to me that the recent elections have made another, unanticipated outcome possible in the Egyptian uprising.

The military could very easily co-opt the Islamists by offering them Islamic law in exchange for continued military rule. The Islamists would be fools to reject that deal…and fools to accept it.

What got me to thinking that is looking at what is going on in Egypt. The people fighting in Tahrir Square are mostly westernized youth, although the woman who was assaulted by the military police, beaten, and nearly stripped naked was apparently wearing a hijab [the world owes RT a debt for being one of the few media outlets that got its film out. Most media outlets were stripped of their cameras by the military].

Meanwhile, the Islamic parties are doing even better in the second round of elections than they did in the first. The Muslim brotherhood will have a near majority, and the Islamic fundamentalists about 30%. The assault on the woman should have been an absolute outrage to the Islamists, but they seem to be more interested in putting down the Coptic minority. If they wanted to resist military rule, the humiliation of a conservative woman seems like a helluva missed chance. [Added: the Muslim Brotherhood has filed a complaint about the murder of protesters]

Sharif Abdel Kouddous from Democracy Now:

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Just with regard to the elections, as you mentioned, the Muslim Brotherhood has captured about 40 percent of the seats. The real surprise has been the ultraconservative Salafis, who have made very big gains. And liberal parties have come a very, very distant third. And revolutionary youth parties have captured almost a negligible amount. The Muslim Brotherhood has not really participated in these protests whatsoever. They want the elections to go forward as planned, because they stand to gain the most from them. And they are being very severely accused by the revolutionary youth of political opportunism in the face of a real clampdown by the army 10 months after this revolution began.

If the Islamists go along with the military, they will have absolute power over the government. And the military will have absolute power over them, because they have been so conspicuously absent from the Resistance since the elections were announced that they have no bargaining power with the military. But since the secular Resistance has been isolated and beaten down, the imposition of Islamic law would be very easy. Since the Islamists , especially the fundamentalist among them, are not all that concerned with civil liberties, what do they have to lose by forming a tacit alliance with the military?

Except, of course, any freedom that the uprising might have gained. It’s a deal that even Israel could easily live with.