Political payback, Chicago-style

The Chrysler bailout is going from tragedy to farce: several bloggers have all but proven that the Obama administration is rewarding political supporters and Democrats at the cost of Republican supporters and non-political owners. A small list of links:

• A quote showing that the government is choosing the plan.
  
• Joey Smith has an entire blog at http://chryslerdealershipshutdown.blogspot.com/
  
• Doug Ross is documenting a lot of evidence of political favoritism over at http://directorblue.blogspot.com/
  

I could post at least 10 other links, but I think this is a good start. It's clear: the Obama campaign is rewarding its supporters, Clinton's supporters, and other Democrats, and punishing Republican supporters under the color of a Government Motors bailout.

Why is GM's stock above 0?

According to Reuters, GM is going to go bankrupt soon, becoming Government Motors. Even ignoring the insanity of the government essentially nationalizing two car builders at the same time, the markets are past irrational.

GM will go bankrupt. Their good assets will be bought to pay off their secured debt (at least they're not robbing bondholders like Chrysler). The trash gets left to pay off the unsecured debt (hah!). Yet, at the time of writing GM's stock is 1.29 and rising.

Essentially, GM is going to destroy itself and void the stock. The current stock will at best be worth pennies on the dollar, and most likely is now worth 0. Even so, people are buying it.

As Milady pointed out, perhaps there's a deal to save the stockholders over the bondholders. Maybe program buying of the Dow or S&P 500 is holding up GM. Or maybe people are just plain dumb.

I would short GM with borrowed money if I wasn't afraid that the fix was in.

Jeff posted! Jeff posted!

I knew if I kept Jeff of Think Sink fame in my RSS Folder, he would finally post. And he did!!!.

Now, if I could just post more...

Why the Stress Tests were fraud

Karl over at The Market Ticker has nothing good to say about the "Stress Tests":

Second, some of the data points and "expected losses" are comical. For example, the banks are expected under the "more adverse" situation to believe that prime mortgage losses will not exceed 4%, and ALT-A (liar loans and Option ARMs) will not exceed 13%. HELOC loss (most of which is unsecured!) is expected not to exceed 11%.

Commercial Real Estate, in total, is not expected to produce more than a 12% loss.

...

If these numbers have any sort of credibility then this paper should be trading at 85 cents or so.

The truth is that you can't find a bid for anything over 40 cents, and the reason is that for those pools where the internals are exposed the known loss figures are high enough to make the actual "today" value of that paper 40 cents, not 85 or 90.

I suspect we're looking at the complete insolvency of most of the banking system by 2011. We would be much better off in just allowing them to die now, and spread what's left of their capital out to work. Until then, I think we're stuck in a Japan-style deflation.

Would you like a little cheese with that whine?

Michelle Caruso-Cabrera over at CNBC is in full whine mode. Why? Amazon has released a new Kindle too soon. Her 3 month old one is now obsolete.

Ms. Caruso-Cabrera needs to go back to her brick analog cell phone and her two-ton 486 IBM clone (with the turbo button!). Technology improves. The whiz-bang cutting-edge item of today is second-string tomorrow.

To steal a phrase: Give me a break! Unless you're obsessed (and rich), you can never stay on the cutting edge. You buy what you need at the time, and then you use it. If Michelle really needed the Kindle DX, then she should have waited. Instead, she'd jealous (and covetous), and wants someone else to fix her lack of judgement and toy money.

I am glad that we no longer have the dish, so that we don't get polluted by CNBC.

Why I am still a bear

Several people, including Mark Perry over at Carpe Diem, are becoming bullish about the economy. The stock markets seem to be going with them, rising from bottoms over the last month.

Don't buy in. Yes, manufacturing inventories are dropping, but that's because factories are closing or furlowing, dropping supply, not because of an increase in demand. The fundamental problem, a crushing debt load, hasn't yet been solved.

Until all of that debt is unwound, one way or another, this economy is a dead cat bouncing.

The loan sharks have taken over

If I were a hedge fund manager with a secured loan from Chrysler, I'd be so pissed off right now. They are getting all but raped in order to give Chrysler to Fiat and the UAW.

Fiat? Are they the only car company greedy (or insane) enough to get in bed with this merger?

If it was my hedge fund, I'd insist on getting the asset or a 100% payoff, just on the principle of the matter. With asset in hand, you can at least threaten to box it up and ship it to China, or scrap it.

I used to think it was the Republican neo-cons that wanted business socialism. I had no idea that the neo-lib Democrats were in on it too.

What I'm Listening to today

As I've mentioned in comments on other blogs, I have grown tired of Contemporary Christian Music. I've not heard many people who are new, fresh, or even very interesting. Until Wednesday.

Every Tuesday, Apple releases 3 or 4 free songs on iTunes, and I make sure I grab the free music. I enjoy joking about creeping out Little Miss with If I Had A Heart, which was a free tune a couple of weeks ago. I freely admit to liking strange songs; they are something new and different. I've grown tired of hearing the same old formula from the same over-produced pop singers.

This week, I downloaded Come Save off of Sweet Sweet Sound and was amazed. Sarah Reeves knocked me off my feet. Her voice is good, the song is powerful, and it's the first Christian song to make me cry since Rich Mullins.

Go download Come Save now. Or even better, go buy all of Sweet Sweet Sound.


(Disclosure: I am a new iTunes affiliate, and clicking the links will throw a few cents my way. Go get the songs anyway. If the links don't work, please try again in an hour.)

Filing taxes

I hate tax day.

The little company would have made money if the county government wouldn't take their $100 off the top, and if the state wouldn't take their $175 off the top. Yes, it's sad for a business to only pull in less than $275 profit, but that was going to be $275 profit....

Looks like I need to put a little more elbow grease into it.

Welcome Coach Cal

OK, we now have the richest coach in college basketball. Nothing like how a little constructive desperation can make a "rough" choice sound good. I just hope that Sandy Bell keeps the NCAA on speed dial, and that Cal keeps a short leash on "World Wide Wes" (or even better, leaves him in Memphis).

Please stay clean, John. I'll sacrifice a title or two for a fun, clean set of seasons.

G's gone

Billy Gillespie was fired. Good job. One down, one Mitch Barnhart to go...

I think Billy would have gotten a third season if he'd just have signed the contract. Yes, the UK coach gets millions a year, but most of that money doesn't come directly from UK. UK pays around $600k - $800k (or so) of the salary directly from the Athletic Association. The rest comes from advertisements, endorsements, and speaking engagements. I think Billy G. wanted to keep getting his millions of dollars, but not do the advertisements, endorsements, and speaking engagements that paid for those millions. That just wasn't going to happen.

I'm disappointed that UK is paying some of the $6 million parachute, but I can understand why they did pay it off. First, they have to fire Gillespie to hire someone else. Second, the next coach has to know that UK will pay off their golden parachute if the deal doesn't work out. I don't think that the letter was a contract (they can argue that Gillespie failed to make a good faith effort to sign a deal), but it's cheaper to pay out that sue.

I personally like the idea of Travis Ford for UK coach. Donovan needs to really consider it, but his wife is probably already told him no way. (Tip to Mitch Barnhart: woo Mrs. Donovan more than you've ever romanced your own wife. It might just get you the #1 coach in the country.)

If John Calipari comes to UK, then we need to take pitchforks and torches to Maxwell Place. Calipari is a sleezeball who cuts corners and leaves storm clouds behind him. If we hire him, we'll have the death penalty within 10 years.

One final aside: I'm surprised that Billy G. can't outrun Alan Cutler.

Evaluating Dave Wilkerson

Dave Wilkerson has had a vision of New York City burning. He is advising the stockpiling of food and water. In general, I find most modern-day "prophets" unreliable. I used to watch Hal Lindsey's TV show, until I started totaling up his predictions and realizing how many hadn't come true. I also like Perry Stone, and think he can speak the truth more often than not. Even so, he has a tendency to go towards the deep end of "connecting the dots".

David Reagan is one end-times ministry leader I like. He doesn't make predictions or set dates. He just preaches God's word. However, on Lamb and Lion Ministry's blog, he is supporting Wilkerson a second time. Since I believe that David Reagan is a Spirit-filled man, I took a second look at Wilkerson's message and some of his others.

I'm not sure about his message. I do know it's easy to test: it will either happen in the next couple of years, or it won't. I do think his suggestions are wise: storing up supplies are essential, just given this economy. Any significant jolt could disrupt our current "just in time" supply chain (like the Atlanta-area gas shortages).

Fortunately, I'm not headed anywhere near the Megalopolis until next year at the earliest, so I don't have to put this theory to the test.

UK rant, based on a post for Vox Day

(The original post is here.)

Jamsco: 3/19/09 12:15 PM:

Nate: 3/19/09 12:10 PM:
10 losses a year at UK gets you fired.

Okay, I'm ignorant: Why is that?

A historical culture to win more? Better players? They pay the coach more?

Yes, to all three. We have a "tradition of excellence" and a record of good coaching. Rupp was in a league nearly all his own, and Patino was close (I still respect Patino as a coach). I still believe that Tubby Smith is one of the best active Division 1 coaches, but his last 2 UK years showed a deep level of burnout and lack of quality in his staff. He wasn't recruiting players that played well together, and he wasn't taking the kids he did recruit and make them into a cohesive team. I wish him well at Minnesota, because he needed to go when he did.

Now, if we can just get some minor-league professional basketball team to unload Billy Gillespie from UK, life would be perfect. He has a work ethic that can be admired, but its obvious that he's not that good of a coach.

First, you can't ask a team to do every-day full-speed practice sessions, even on game day, for 5 straight months and then expect them to have that extra step at the end of the season. You could tell in the SEC tournament that there just wasn't much left in the Cats. He needed to work them hard at the start of the season, and then back off (physically, at least) towards the end.

Also, our current team was a two-trick pony. Let Jodie Meeks drive. Post Patrick Patterson up. Run Man to Man. Lather, rinse, repeat. While Meeks and Patterson are two of the best players in college basketball today, they aren't God's gift to basketball. They set their early scoring levels because they played (and LOST!) to teams like Virginia Military Institute. When the SEC got to around the halfway mark, the opposition finally figured out how to shut down Meeks and Patterson (can we say zone and "double team"?). Gillespie showed no ability to change things up, or to vary UK's style to match what was happening. No other player could come out of the doghouse long enough to make an impact, letting an SEC full of other "two good player" teams compensate for Meeks and Patterson.

I'm also not a fan of "doghouse" coaches. UK would have a player shine for a game, but then said player will enter the doghouse and never come out again. OTOH, a non-doghouse player will quit or commit a rules violation, and the entire thing goes away. I don't care how great a coach is, that randomness messes with a team.

Finally, I have no respect for whining. Gillespie said our pre-conference schedule was too hard. No, says I. We lost at home to VMI and Miami! UK has the longest home winning streak record, and probably has the highest home win percentage, in Division 1. With the SEC in the toilet this year, UK was ranked 236th in schedule strength. You expect that from VMI or Miami, NOT from a team bringing VMI in to play at home. If Gillespie can't coach through that kind of schedule with two all-SEC players (one in contention for the Naismith Trophy), he needs to pack it in.

The players on this year's UK team should have taken the SEC championship and tournament, and at least made the elite 8. In my humble, and completely unexpert, opinion, they were overworked and miscoached. A better coach could, and would, have taken this team much farther than Billy G did. When a coach fails a team like he did, then he needs to go.

No, I don't feel the need to rant about this....

Fraud on the Scientific Method

Normally, I won't post on something Vox Day talks about, because I can rarely add to the discussion (and if I can, I post there). I just couldn't ignore this post.

To trail the links back to a root post, Scott Reuben did all of the foundational work in multimodal analgesia. Unfortunately for analgesia, Dr. Reuben partially or completely fabricated enough data to undo most of the foundational studies he did.

I find it most interesting that peer review had absolutely no part in discovering Reuben's fraud. Instead, he forgot to falsify patient consent and human test permission forms. A hospital administrator went to verify the patient consent forms, and didn't find them.

Essentially, an auditor found what a peer reviewer couldn't. How appropriate.

Feed update

I've got most of the feed stuff sorted out.

feed://feeds2.kypackrat.com/KentuckyPackrat will work correctly now. feed://feeds.kypackrat.com/KentuckyPackrat will start working sometime today or tomorrow.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

"Leopard Theology"

"The Bible is inspired in spots, and I'm inspired to spot the spots." -- Robert Jeffress paraphrasing W. A. Criswell on Christ in Prophesy.

I absolutely adore this quote.

Feed change

I thought that I had to create an all new blogger feed because FeedBurner wasn't going to recognize my old one. Then, I logged in and magically, it converted. Supposedly, all 4 of you will automatically get redirected to the new feed address.

If you don't, please manually change over to feed://feeds2.feedburner.com/KentuckyPackrat .

Sorry for the trouble.

EDIT: If you're trying to use feeds.kypackrat.com or feeds2.kypackrat.com, they may be broken. Sorry. Use the address above.

Save Me, Obama!

There's one minor bad word, but I think it's worth the risk. Just put your headphones on at work, since it's certainly not politically correct.

Save Me, Obama from The FuMP Project:



My favorite line from the lyrics:

Purge the graft from hell-holes like Zimbabwe
And Illinois!

Go download it now!

Secret White House Transcripts

Staffer: Sir, Mr. Brown brought some gifts. He brought your kids some expensive clothes, and you some nice books and a pen set.

O: That's nice. We have something to give him back, right.

Silence

O: [deleted expletive] Flunky #1, run over to the gift shop and purchase something for the kids. Flunky #2, there's a box of swag in the back of my closet in the bedroom. Find something nice looking with the wrapper still on it.

Fearless Leader has outdone himself. He received two priceless historical artifacts, one that relates to his own personal history and the second the paperwork that goes with the desk. His kids gets expensive clothes.

What does he do? Hands out two toys from the White House Gift Shop, and gives a nearly-blind man who doesn't like movies a collection of DVDs. It sounds exactly like what I would have done before marrying Milady.

Not very reassuring for the professionalism of the White House.

Selling Sqlite encryption patches, maybe

While I'm not fond of programming, I am capable of doing it. I tend towards filling needs I see in my own life. One of the needs I've seen is -- well, let's not go too deep into that since I'm still working on it before looking to sell it.

That said, I needed a product called Sqlite to do my database storage. Sqlite is an awesome embedded SQL database product that I've already used for stuff at work. Because of "Program1", I needed it to do encryption inside its code. Since I'm broke, I couldn't pay for the encryption that Hwaci sells for Sqlite. Rather than give up on encrypted Sqlite, I went ahead and rewrote the code myself.

Now I'm divided. Normally, I'd just put this kind of code up under a BSD or GPL license and let it be free. OTOH, Hwaci sells it, why not me too? rms would be terribly disappointed, but I've always been a BSD kind of guy anyway.

The fundamental problem is that the value of software is approaching zero. The work that has funded Hwaci and Sqlite cost me a couple of bus ride's worth of code; a pastime that would have otherwise been wasted elsewhere. I could price my labor at $100, and drive their $2000 down. If I license it with the new BSD license, then it drives their $2000 down to $0.

So, if you need Sqlite encryption and can't afford Hwaci, talk to me. Otherwise, wait and I might just pull an rms and release it for free.