Space Car Driver will be playing a special early set
Saturday July 26th, 2008
at O’Gara’s Garage: 164 Snelling Avenue North, St. Paul MN
One-hour set starting at 9pm sharp

Space Car Driver’s entire debut album is currently available for FREE listening at spacecardriver.com. The album is also available for download at eMusic, iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, Lala, Napster, and more.

“Americans came back from their Independence Day holiday … and found their Empire of Debt in worse shape than ever — $1.6 trillion in potential losses from the credit crunch!”
- Bill Bonner

Freddie Mac (NYSE:FRE) and Fannie Mae (NYSE:FNM) are to America’s great empire what the East India Company was to the British Empire in the 19th century … and the Louisiana Company [see John Law] was to France in the 18th. Huge, stupid, and probably fatal.

Freddie and Fannie are huge government-chartered mortgage lenders. In 18th century France, speculators bet on the riches of Louisiana, through the government-chartered Louisiana Company. In the 19th century, they wagered their money on the riches of India, through the government-chartered East India Company. And in the 20th century, they gambled on rising housing prices through Fannie and Freddie.

- Bill Bonner @ GoldSeek.com: Link.

What more fitting name for the man “said to be the father of finance, responsible for the adoption or use of paper money or bills in the world today” than … John Law??

Album: Space Car Driver
Release Date: May 09, 2008
Genre: Alternative
Copyright 2008 Space Car Driver

Space Car Driver recently released their first album.

I attended their CD Release show [May 9, 2008]. Excellent show — solid grooves, interesting arrangements, wide range of dynamics, good chemistry between the musicians.

• Home page: spacecardriver.com
• Space Car Driver @ iTunes - (download iTunes)
• Space Car Driver @ MySpace
• Space Car Driver @ Minniwiki: “Dancy, improvisational jam-rock”
• MP3’s available by request

Special Bonus Download — I got permission from bassist Adam Lutz to sponsor an MP3 download here at karljones.com:

• Minus Ten by Space Car Driver

Enjoy!

“Backing paper money with mortgages is nothing new. The French tried it in the late 18th Century, and it lead to hyperinflation.”
- Peter Schiff


Peter Schiff makes some interesting — and alarming — observations about the mortgage crisis in America:

This week, as the financial sector began to give way under the unbearable weight of bad mortgage debt, the Federal Reserve stepped in to save the day. At least that’s what it says in the script.

In a surprise move, the Federal Reserve announced its intention to swap $200 billion of treasury debt for $200 billion of potentially worthless mortgage-backed securities. The Fed may have been partially spurred to take the step as a result of the rapid collapse of Carlyle Capital Corp. a publicly traded private equity firm that is a subsidiary of the Carlyle Group. The Dutch firm could not meet margin calls on its depreciating collateral of AAA-rated mortgaged-backed securities guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. On Friday, the Fed then took the unusual step of providing emergency “non-recourse” funding to Bear Stearns, collateralized by that firm’s similarly worthless mortgage debt. Apparently the Fed now stands willing to assume any mortgage-related risk that no other private entity would touch.

… According to the Fed, its new plan does not amount to buying mortgages but simply accepting them as collateral for 28-day loans. However, will the Fed really return these ticking time bombs to their true owners in 28 days, inciting the very collapse its actions were originally designed to postpone? Why does the Fed believe that the mortgages will be marketable next month; or the month after that?

… The problem with these mortgages (other than the borrowers lacking any means or desire to repay them) is that the underlying collateral is worth a fraction of the face amount. With recent foreclosure recovery rates amounting to less than 50 cents on the dollar, it is no wonder that no one wants them. The real estate bubble allowed borrowers to leverage themselves to the hilt using inflated home values as collateral. However, now that the bubble has burst, mortgage balances far exceed current property values. It is a trillion dollar time bomb that no one can possible defuse.

Paper dollars are technically Federal Reserve Notes, which means they are liabilities of the Fed. When it puts newly minted notes into circulation it does so by buying assets, usually U.S. treasuries, which it then holds on its balance sheet to offset that liability. By swapping treasuries for mortgages, the Fed effectively alters the compilation of its balance sheet and the backing of its notes.

… Backing paper money with mortgages is nothing new. The French tried it in the late 18th Century, and it lead to hyperinflation. Assignats, which were first issued in 1790 to help finance the French revolution, were backed by mortgages on confiscated church properties. Although the stolen underlying collateral did have some value, the revolutionaries saw no reason to limit how many Assignats were printed, which resulted in massive depreciation. Within three years, price controls were introduced and failure to accept Assignats, initially an offence subject to six years in prison, was made a capital crime. By 1799 the currency was completely worthless.

- Peter Schiff @ For Sou 15 Mar 2008: Link.

- Prise de la Bastille by Jean-Pierre Houël: Link.

Global markets are “a voting machine. And they vote whether or not they believe in the value of this currency.”

“Think of the dollar as another commodity,” said [Chris] Farrell. “It’s worth less. Therefore you’re gonna try and charge more to make up for the decline of its value.”

… The global markets are operating on the fundamentals of the economy, but according to Farrell, they also operate on a psychological level.

“They’re a voting machine. And they vote whether or not they believe in the value of this currency. What we’re dealing with right now is we’re right on the edge where the international capital markets are saying, ‘We don’t trust this currency anymore, we don’t think it should be the world’s currency,’” said Farrell.

- Jason DeRusha @ wcco.com: Link.

Free market economy? Level playing field? I don’t think so:

• The US Trade Representative makes trade concessions to the European Union, related to internet gambling.
• The deal is not subject to Congressional scrutiny or approval.
• A US Congressman requests that the USTR disclose the concessions.
• USTR rejects the request, “claiming the agreement was classified for national security reasons.”

Congressman Calls for U.S. Trade Representative to Provide Details of WTO Internet Gambling Settlement

Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-OR) has requested the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) disclose trade concessions made to foreign trading partners without Congressional approval. DeFazio’s inquiry raises the possibility of Congressional intervention to void new market access commitments granted by USTR to the European Union and other complainants as compensation for a United States trade violation regarding Internet gambling.

In a letter circulated to all members of Congress last week, DeFazio encouraged his colleagues to join him in calling for the USTR to provide a copy of the concession agreement between the United States and the European Union. The USTR had recently rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for the same document, claiming the agreement was classified for national security reasons. “There is a concern that the USTR may have been ambitious in its use of a ‘national security’ classification to avoid any publicity of which new business sectors are to be subject to the GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) treaty,” said DeFazio’s March 6 letter.

… The DeFazio request comes following a contentious trade dispute over Internet gambling, in which the Caribbean nation of Antigua successfully challenged the regulation of Internet gambling in the United States. The European Union announced earlier this week that it will open an investigation into a possible international trade violation by the US on this issue. The investigation is the result of a Trade Barriers Regulation complaint filed by the Remote Gambling Association (RGA), which represents the largest remote gambling companies in Europe. The RGA claims the US is in violation of international trade law by threatening and pursuing criminal prosecutions, forfeitures and other enforcement actions against foreign Internet gaming operators, while allowing domestic U.S. online gaming operators, primarily horse betting, to flourish.

- @ Eye on Gambling: Link.

Office of the United States Trade Representative @ Wikipedia: Link.

“It is precisely Obama’s experiences in Hawaii, Indonesia, and Kenya that are soul-forming for a future global leader.”
- William Irwin Thompson

Thompson explains why he likes Barack Obama, and what’s wrong with Hillary Clinton and John McCane:

… We are now heading into a period of enormous cultural transformation, and Obama is the kind of soul that can instinctively feel and understand, indeed, articulate a new planetary civilization. Obama is not a messianic figure that we need fear as some crazed cult leader; he more simply, and more enduringly, embodies a paradigm shift in American political leadership. Hillary may scoff at him and claim that his years in an Indonesian Muslim elementary school do not count as foreign policy experience, because she is thinking as the technocratic policy wonk that she is. It is precisely Obama’s experiences in Hawaii, Indonesia, and Kenya that are soul-forming for a future global leader. Hillary and McCain are the old paradigm of politics: the Eastern technocratic manager and the sunbelt suburban Goldwater-Reagan reactionary calling for tax cuts and militarism to solve all problems with a hatchet or a bomb.

- William Irwin Thompson, 3/3/2008: Link.

Thanks, E.B.

“Google will join with five other companies to invest in a 10,000 km trans-Pacific submarine cable to carry data to and from Asia.”

Google said it would join with five other telecom companies — Bharti Airtel, Global Transit, KDDI, Pacnet, and SingTel — to invest $300 million in the construction of a 10,000 km submarine cable.

The high-speed fiber optic trans-Pacific cable, called Unity, will have a capacity of up to 7.68 Tbps and will run between the United States and Japan, about 6,200 miles. It is planned to accommodate demand for trans-Pacific bandwidth, which has grown at a rate of 63.7% annually between 2002 and 2007 and is expected to double biannually from 2008 through 2013, according to TeleGeography, a telecommunications consultancy.

… What Google gets is bandwidth at cost, said Stephan Beckert, director of research for TeleGeography, in an e-mail. Google, along with Comcast, is one of the few companies that have opted to purchase and light long-haul dark fiber, he said. It is the first non-telecom company to take an active role in submarine cable ownership.

- Thomas Claburn, InformationWeek: Link.

More details from SingTel

Using state-of-the-art Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) technology, it will support up to 960 Gbits per second per fibre-optic pair with a maximum of eight fibre pairs. By having a higher fibre count, it is able to offer more capacity at lower unit costs. Unity will have a potential design capacity of 7.68 Tbits per second, making it one of the highest capacity cables of its kind. This data rate is equivalent to more than seven million Internet users simultaneously having real-time access to a 1 Mb file.

NEC Corporation and Tyco Telecommunications have been jointly awarded the contract to implement this project.

- SingTel press release: Link.

“Anybody who’s half white and half black is considered black anyway. That’s one drop of blood.”

Philip Roth, interviewed by Spiegel:

SPIEGEL: What made you interested in Obama?

Roth: I’m interested in the fact that he’s black. I feel the race issue in this country is more important than the feminist issue. I think that the importance to blacks would be tremendous. He’s an attractive man, he’s smart, he happens to be tremendously articulate. His position in the Democratic Party is more or less okay with me. And I think it would be important to American blacks if he became president.

SPIEGEL: It could change society, couldn’t it?

Roth: Yes, it could. It would say something about this country, and it would be a marvelous thing. I don’t know whether it’s going to happen. I rarely vote for anybody who wins. It’s going to be the kiss of death if you write in your magazine that I’m going to vote for Barack Obama. Then he’s finished!

SPIEGEL: The discussions around Obama remind us of your figure Coleman Silk, the hero of “The Human Stain,” who is black with unusually light skin and then invents a Jewish biography. What we mean is the questions of belonging, of right and wrong behavior. Is Barack Obama black enough?

Roth: I know this discussion goes on, but I think it will disappear if he gets the nomination. The reality of his running will wash that away. Anybody who’s half white and half black is considered black anyway. That’s one drop of blood.

SPIEGEL: For whites to consider him black, yes. But the question is whether the blacks consider him black.

Roth: They will once the election goes on. If he gets the nomination.

- Philip Roth, Spiegel: February 08, 2008: Link.

Via FreeInternetPress.

“Interviewing Cory Doctorow is easy. You just flip the on switch by asking the first question, and he emits a constant stream of brilliant, insightful stuff.”
- R.U. Sirius

America became an industrial power by being a pirate nation. After the American revolution, America didn’t honor the copyrights or patents of anyone except Americans. If you were a European or British inventor, your stuff could be widely pirated in America. That’s how they got rich. Only after America became a net exporter of copyrighted goods did it start to enter into treaties with other countries whereby American inventors and authors would be protected abroad in exchange for those foreign authors being protected in America.

- Cory Doctorow (interviewed by R.U. Sirius) @ 10 Zen Monkeys: link.

“The United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, making it the most heavily armed society in the world, a report released on Tuesday said.”

U.S. citizens own 270 million of the world’s 875 million known firearms, according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies.

About 4.5 million of the 8 million new guns manufactured worldwide each year are purchased in the United States, it said.

… On a per-capita basis, Yemen had the second most heavily armed citizenry behind the United States, with 61 guns per 100 people, followed by Finland with 56, Switzerland with 46, Iraq with 39 and Serbia with 38.

Reuters: Link.

Via Armchair Generalist.

“Open-records laws in Ohio mean anyone can follow the machines’ paper trail to see who voted for which candidates.”

Ohio’s method of conducting elections with electronic voting machines appears to have created a true privacy nightmare for state residents: revealing who voted for which candidates.

Two Ohio activists have discovered that e-voting machines made by Election Systems and Software and used across the country produce time-stamped paper trails that permit the reconstruction of an election’s results–including allowing voter names to be matched to their actual votes.

[Declan McCullagh, CNET News.com, August 20, 2007: Link]

Via SlashDot.

Comments @ SlashDot
In the UK, polls aren’t really secret either.

In the 1980s (and probably subsequently) it was normal practice for Special Branch to inspect the ballot papers of those who voted for parties which were considered potentially subversive (Communists, BNP, National Front.) They could then match those voting papers to the voters (by dint of the fact that the voter’s name was written on a list next to the voting paper number) and keep a handy database of undesirables.

[Harold Halloway: Link]

Big tragedy in my home town:

“On August 1, 2007 during the weekday evening rush hour at 6:01:38 PM CDT the entire bridge collapsed from abutment to abutment, falling into the river and onto its banks. On August 3, officials confirmed five deaths and eight people missing, while hospitals reported 79 injured.” Link.

Bridge collapse blog roundup @ Boing Boing.

From the White House web site, July 17, 2007:

Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, as amended (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.)(IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.)(NEA), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code,

I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, find that, due to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by acts of violence threatening the peace and stability of Iraq and undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, it is in the interests of the United States to take additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 of May 22, 2003, and expanded in Executive Order 13315 of August 28, 2003, and relied upon for additional steps taken in Executive Order 13350 of July 29, 2004, and Executive Order 13364 of November 29, 2004. I hereby order:

(more…)

Lottery game flop stirs school fund concerns
10:27 AM CDT on Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Brad Watson / WFAA-TV

As the Texas Lottery game the Texas Two Step appears to be going broke, some are concerned that may ultimately lead to dipping into school funds to pay the jackpots …. Not enough people are buying tickets to support the guaranteed jackpot of the Texas Two Step.

For the first time since 2002, the sales and reserve fund couldn’t cover Monday’s $225,000 jackpot, which had two winners.

One North Texas lottery watchdog, Dawn Nettles of Garland, said she calculates low Two Step sales will lead the state to look to school funds to dole out the winnings. Her numbers have been right before. Nettles tracks lottery games and money in an online newsletter called www.LottoReport.com.

“Well, somebody is going to be shorted, the schools in this case,” she said. “It’s just that simple.”

But officials at the Texas Lottery says winners still get their payouts and the school fund is never touched until reserves and an emergency lottery account are tapped out.

“We hope that it doesn’t happen,” said Bobby Heath, Texas Lottery, about any risk directed towards school funds. “And we hope that we can generate enough sales through making the games, fun and exciting.”

Nettles shook up the Texas Lottery in 2005 when she revealed it advertised Lotto Texas jackpots higher than ticket sales. She said she believes the lottery should scrap guaranteed jackpots since the Texas Two Step’s number is up.

[Link]

Via Fark.