alazycowboy.com

From the New York Times we have this article that A.I.G. waived its right to sue the banks whose sh***y mortgages A.I.G was insuring as part of the bailout. Hey, why isn’t Senator Levin complaining about this deal?

Unknown outside of a few Wall Street legal departments, the A.I.G. waiver was released last month by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform amid 250,000 pages of largely undisclosed documents. The documents, reviewed by The New York Times, provide the most comprehensive public record of how the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Treasury Department orchestrated one of the biggest corporate bailouts in history.

The documents also indicate that regulators ignored recommendations from their own advisers to force the banks to accept losses on their A.I.G. deals and instead paid the banks in full for the contracts. That decision, say critics of the A.I.G. bailout, has cost taxpayers billions of extra dollars in payments to the banks. It also contrasts with the hard line the White House took in 2008 when it forced Chrysler’s lenders to take losses when the government bailed out the auto giant.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/30/business/30aig.html

From the Foreign Policy blog we find out that the Russian spies were not charged with espionage since that offence requires them to be involved in transmitting information related to our national defense. For all practical purposes these “Russian spies” appear to be performing a job we normally attribute to political lobbyists or journalists. I suppose this episode speaks volumes about the Russian psyche that they used a covert operation to engage in political lobbying.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/29/why_weren_t_the_russian_spies_charged_with_espionage

Here is a nice article from The Economist on the General McChrystal kerfuffle.

THE national security adviser of the world’s greatest superpower is a “clown”, its vice-president a nobody and its president “uncomfortable and intimidated”. With those words the officers around General Stanley McChrystal, the American commander in Afghanistan, engulfed America in a storm as damaging to its war effort as any Taliban raid. America rightly sets great store by civilian control of its armed forces and on June 23rd a distinctly unintimidated President Barack Obama made General McChrystal pay for his insubordination with his job. But presidential decisiveness cannot conceal a deeper truth. America and its allies are losing in Afghanistan.

http://www.economist.com/node/16432784?story_id=16432784&source=most_commented

Here is a nice article on some current macro-economic issues. The most prominent issue is can we spend our way out of a recession. The economists fall into two camps. On one hand the fans of John Maynard Keynes think we can increased government spending can stimulate our economy and will pay for itself by increased GDP and tax revenues. On the other hand the economists who are fans of Friedrich von Hayek and Ludwig von Mises warn that increased government spending inevitably fails to improve the situation beyond that which would have occurred during a normal recovery. A good argument was made by Amity Shlaes in her book, The Forgotten Man: A New History of The Great Depression, that increased government spending during the The Great Depression extended the problem. An interesting bit of trivia is that Friedrich Hayek’s 1944 book, Road to Serfdom, recently made #7 on the Amazon best seller list. Here is the cartoon version, http://mises.org/books/TRTS/.  One of current economic questions that concerns our future is whether government spending on expanding welfare and unemployment benefits is better at stimulating job growth than spending on road construction and defense. Here is an excerpt on the Wall Street Journal view on the subject. Although I do not believe the “Keynesian multiplier” is negative, I suspect the multiplier is less than one. As Senator Levin might complain, “The stimulus was a sh***y deal”.

President Obama’s tragic mistake was to blow out the U.S. federal balance sheet on spending that has produced little bang for the buck. The fantastical Keynesian notion (the "multiplier") that $1 of spending produces $1.50 in growth was long ago demolished by Harvard’s Robert Barro, among others. That $1 in spending has to come from somewhere, which means in taxes or borrowing from productive parts of the private economy. Given that so much of the U.S. stimulus went for transfer payments such as Medicaid and unemployment insurance, the "multiplier" has almost certainly been negative.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703615104575328981319857618.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h

My inner engineer has been painfully searching for the technical details of the BP spill disaster. For a disaster with so much publicity I find it amazing that the technical details of how the well failed and how the oil companies are implementing new safeguards to make sure it does not happen on any existing or proposed wells is not discussed by the media. In fact most of my links I collected on the subject over the last couple of weeks no longer work. The best source on the subject that I found is The Oil Drum. The administration has been remarkably quiet at justifying the drilling moratorium and almost no effort at getting ahead of this issue since it has a major economic effect on the Gulf states. So I was not surprised Judge Feldman’s decision. The interesting issue for me is how the BP spill was handled compared to how the FAA handles an airplane crash. I remember several times the FAA grounded planes for inspection and repairs. If you use the FAA as your benchmark there are some fundamental problems with the way the MMS and the administration handled this problem. You do not need to complete the review to start implementing new safeguards. If these new safeguards have already been implemented by the oil and the drilling companies, these companies need to start re-establishing public confidence long before the MMS and the administration gets their act together.

Here is another interesting article about rising tax rates. I know several Democratic pundits have argued that we are the most under-taxed people but my gut and my checking account agrees with this article.

Here’s why: taxes are already rising to record levels, with or without legislative changes. It’s not clear why they should rise further, as Hoyer urges.

“If tax increases of this magnitude were proposed explicitly, there’s little chance they could pass Congress.”

As I argued in the Wall Street Journal in 2008, the income tax code is inadequately indexed for the growth of incomes. The income tax brackets—the dollar amounts that designate the tax rates that apply to an individual’s income—are indexed only for inflation, while incomes tend to rise about 1 percent faster than inflation each year. The result is that a greater and greater share of individuals’ incomes will fall into higher tax brackets, increasing taxes even if the formal tax rates remain the same.

The effects of this are larger than you’d think. According to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) data, individual income tax receipts averaged 8.15 percent of Gross Domestic Product from 1953 through 2008. Due to the recession, this year they’re projected to equal around 8 percent of GDP.

Andrea and Bill’s Wedding June 11,1983, originally uploaded by billhuber.

Twenty seven years ago we got married. It’s been a wild ride but I am glad I took it.

Ouch! I have a couple of these covered.

Bookmark this on Delicious – Saved by to email funny humor computer internet fun via:packrati.us technology humour gmail – More about this bookmark

What your email address says about your computer skills – The Oatmeal
Fri, 11 Jun 2010 03:45:01 GMT

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein Quotes

IMG00012-20100605-0909.jpg, originally uploaded by billhuber.

I took this along the side of the road yesterday.

I work at a small business that sells over the Internet. The operation of the business is pretty simple. We get an order over the Internet, one of our employees picks the items on the order, another employee packs the items, and finally another employee labels the package and loads it onto the truck. Like most small businesses that have seen their sales drop 20% to 30%, we have reduced employees hours during our off season months. This caused one of our productive employees to seek employment elsewhere early this year. A little while later two employees crossed the line of what you can do at work and were let go. We noticed something interesting. Our business seemed to be working very smoothly with less employees.

So as we entered our peak season we hired replacement employees.  Not surprisingly we were swamped with job applications. So after going through the job interviews, we hired a packer and customer service representative. The packer did not work out and left after two weeks. Since everyone is working more that a full week, we hired two more packers. On the Friday before Memorial Day one of our long term employees decided to quit. She had a variety of answers including that the commute was too much, she was not getting enough hours, and her husband almost burned down the house. On the same day our new customer service representative decides to quit. Although she was productive, she still had more training to complete before she could handle all of the issues a customer service representative is expected to handle. Mondays are our busy days since we have to pack and ship the order from Friday afternoon, Saturday, and Sunday. When we have a three day weekend we have an extra day to pack and ship. We had over 640 orders to pack when a typical Monday is about 500 orders. So I was quickly trained and spent the day packing orders. Every available management person was helping out with picking, packing, and labeling. After a very long day all of the orders shipped. Every business makes promises to the customers. In our case we promise to ship orders made before 3 pm. Our promise was fulfilled.

What I find very interesting that these employees are leaving on their own and cannot claim unemployment insurance. A Wall Street article, Employers on Strike, and the BLS report shows that businesses are leery about hiring employees. There is a consensus of opinions amongst the economic pundits that the job market is not going to improve for several years. Yet the attitudes of the employees are those that we see in a more robust job market. Business owners have a completely different viewpoint. Since our business is now over the peak selling season, the business strategy is that we add temporary employees and overwork our employees for the next month or so. It is a done deal that we will not be adding permanent employees this year.

I made this Dip twice. The first time it was great and the second time was a little bland. I think “Season to taste” is very appropriate here.

From Recipes

Editor’s note: On Mondays, Kristen Swensson of Cheap, Healthy, Good swings by these parts to share healthy and delicious recipes with us. Take it away, Kristen!

[Photograph: Kristen Swensson]

Back in the olden days of yore, when I began eating a bit healthier, hummus became a major part of my meal plans. I spread it on pita. I ate it with vegetables. I sculpted it into the likeness of Alec Baldwin. Tasty and inexpensive, it provided valuable fiber and protein, as well as a substantial stand-in for richer, dairy-filled dips.

However, I’ve been experimenting with other legumes lately. It’s not that hummus has fallen out of favor. It’s just a big, bean-filled world out there, and I aim to actualize its full dip potential.

This Black Bean Dip comes from RecipeZaar, which is a fairly reliable resource, provided you stick to dishes rated at least four-and-a-half stars. While almost entirely fat-free, the dip is rich and hearty, with a nice kick. Fresh scallions and lime juice keep it lively, even though it’s made largely of pantry ingredients.

Admittedly, it’s not the most attractive dip in the world; and for what could be the first time, that has nothing to do with my ability to take a decent food photo. But appearance doesn’t necessarily coincide with flavor, right? I mean, I think we can all agree that baba ghanoush looks like baby puke, and squid ink pasta is essentially a Tim Burton set decoration.

Despite the aesthetics, it remains pretty dang delicious. Serve some before a Mexican feast or as part of your office lunch. You’ll be sated/happy either way, and it might make you forget about hummus. (At least for a little while, anyway.)

Black Bean Dip

Makes about 2 cups dip.

Adapted from RecipeZaar.

Ingredients

2 cups canned black beans, drained and rinsed
4 teaspoons tomato paste
3 tablespoons water
2 medium cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon lime juice
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 scallions, green parts chopped
2 tablespoons canned green chilies, chopped

Procedure

1. Combine beans, tomato paste, water, garlic, lime juice, cumin, salt, and cayenne in a food processor. Puree until it reaches a dip-like consistency. If you find it’s lacking something, add more. (I like a lot of lime juice.) Pour into a bowl.

2. Add scallions and green chilies to dip. Stir thoroughly to combine. Top with extra scallions and a few lime wedges. Serve with pita chips or vegetables.

Healthy & Delicious: Black Bean Dip
Kristen Swensson
Mon, 26 Apr 2010 13:00:00 GMT

I made this meal twice during the week. The cook time is a little longer than I like for a weekday meal but the prep time is pretty minimal. My wife likes the vegetables so I pile up lots of root vegetables underneath. I use a vertical roaster to cook the chicken evenly.

From Recipes

[Photograph: Caroline Russock]

One-Pot Roast Chicken

- serves 4 -

Adapted from In The Green Kitchen by Alice Waters.

Ingredients

1 three-pound chicken
Salt and fresh-ground black pepper
3 potatoes, peeled and thickly sliced
2 carrots, peeled and thickly sliced
2 onions, peeled and quartered
2 celery stalks, thickly sliced
4 large shallots, peeled
Fennel, squash, turnips, parsnips, or other vegetables (optional)
2 bay leaves
2 or 3 thyme sprigs
2 to 3 tablespoons butter

Procedure

1. First prepare the chicken. To remove the wishbone at the top of the breast, use a small knife to scrape along the bone to expose it, then insert the knife and run it along the bone, separating it from the flesh. Use your fingers to loosen it further, grasp the tip of the wishbone, and pull it out. Tuck the wing tips back and under the neck.

2. Tying the chicken plumps the breast up and brings the legs into position for even roasting. Cut a length of cotton string. With the chicken on its back, slip the string under the tail and bring the ends up over the legs to form a figure eight. Loop over the end of each leg and draw the strings tight to bring the legs together. Draw the string back under the legs and wings on either side of the neck. Pull tight, wrap one end around the neck, and tie off the two ends. Salt the chicken evenly all around. Coarse salt has a good texture of large grains that makes it easy to calibrate how much salt you are putting on the chicken; sprinkle it from up high, so that it falls like snow. Season liberally with fresh-ground pepper.

3. Preheat the oven to 375°F, put all the vegetables and herbs together in the bottom of a large, heavy ovenproof pot, and season with salt and pepper. Set the chicken on top, dot with the butter, and roast uncovered for 45 to 60 minutes (or longer), depending on the size of the chicken. It is done when the leg joint is pierced with a knife and the juices run clear, not pink.

4. Let the chicken rest for a few minutes before carving, and serve family-style with all of the caramelized vegetables and juices from the pot on a platter and the chicken pieces on top.

Cook the Book: Thomas Keller’s One-Pot Roast Chicken
Caroline Russock
Tue, 20 Apr 2010 17:10:00 GMT

For Forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best.
Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved May 23, 2010, from BrainyQuote.com Web site: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alexanderp159987.html