Totally Out of Touch with Reality Google

Congress is totally out of touch with reality.
Now most have long been aware of that for quite some time, but following are a few extreme cases reported just today. The first is a interview with Connie Mack, the Chairman of the President’s Advisory Panel on Tax Reform.

Here are some Questions for Connie Mack, followed by his replies.

NYT: You have already announced a proposal to eliminate the alternative minimum tax for individuals, which will cost the government $1.2 trillion in lost income over the next decade. Do you find it difficult to cut taxes post-Katrina, when the government is desperate for revenue?
CM: The Congress and the president can address that issue. Of course, the president already has addressed that issue. He said there won’t be any increases in taxes.

NYT: Well, the U.S. government has to get money from somewhere. As a two-term former Republican senator from Florida, where do you suggest we get money from?
CM: What money?

NYT: The money to run this country.
CM: We’ll borrow it.

NYT: I never understand where all this money comes from.
CM: When the president says we need another $200 billion for Katrina repairs, does he just go and borrow it from the Saudis? In a sense, we do. Maybe the Chinese.

There you have it.
The President’s Advisory Panel on Tax Reform and has no idea where money comes from other than we borrow it from the Saudis and perhaps the Chinese. If the president needs another $200 billion, no problem, we just borrow it.

These are the clueless running our country. There is no hint of fiscal sanity by anyone in this administration or this Congress. Here we are, well into Bush’s second term and the President has yet to veto a single appropriations bill, or for that matter any bill. No one seems to think of this as real money. We just borrow it.

Well it really isn’t real money since it is not backed by gold or any other for that matter. We need money, we just borrow it.
If no one will loan it to us, we just print it. No one cares, for now anyway.

Given that the appropriations process is painless (until this mess blows up in a credit crunch), there is simply no limit to the stupid things we spend this borrowed money on incluing (as ridiculous as it may seem) spending money to prevent terrorists from playing Bingo.

Are Terrorists playing Bingo?
One might think so given this funding to prevent it:

Kentucky lands grant to protect bingo halls from terrorists.

Kentucky has been awarded a federal Homeland Security grant aimed at keeping terrorists from using charitable gaming to raise money.

The state Office of Charitable Gaming won the $36,300 grant and will use it to provide five investigators with laptop computers and access to a commercially operated law-enforcement data base, said John Holiday, enforcement director at the Office of Charitable Gaming.

The idea is to keep terrorists from playing bingo or running a charitable game to raise large amounts of cash, Holiday said.

“The idea is to keep terrorists from playing bingo…”. Wow, I sure am glad we are solving that problem. The devastation that could be caused if terrorists started playing bingo instead of blowing up subways could be catastrophic.

It’s hard enough to believe someone would even propose such silliness let alone it would receive actual funding. Granted, the amount of funding is small, then again this stupidity all adds up.

Speaking of stupidity adding up, please consider the Bridge to Nowhere.

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, sponsored legislation to build a “bridge to nowhere” that would connect Ketchikan, Alaska, to an offshore island where only 50 live, appears to be indestructible. The highway bill allots $223 million for that project and $229 million for another boondoggle bridge near Anchorage.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., violated an unwritten rule when he dared to advance a measure to trim some of his colleagues’ expensive and unnecessary pet projects from that bill. Coburn wanted to withdraw funds for the bridges and shift $75 million to rebuild a Louisiana bridge damaged by Hurricane Katrina. It should be a no-brainer that the needs of the devastated Gulf Coast are greater.

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, was personally insulted, however. Alaska, which ranks No. 1 in per capita federal spending, was being unjustly singled out, he argued. The 37-year Senate veteran threatened to resign and “be taken out of here on a stretcher” if the Senate killed off perhaps the most egregious example of wasteful spending in the massive highway bill.

Senators were so moved by Stevens’ sense of outrage — or the idea that their own pet projects could be next — that they voted 82-15 to keep funding the bridges. The Senate also refused to defund a $500,000 sculpture park in Seattle and $950,000 for a Nebraska museum parking facility.

Those wasteful projects are only a few of the 6,371 “earmarks” legislators pushed into the transportation bill alone.

With our federal highways in a sad state of repair (at least they are around Chicago), I sure am glad we have our priorities straight. I can think of no finer use for transportation funding than a $500,000 Sculpture Park in Seattle. Can you?

Pray tell, what else is buried in that transportation bill?
Bah, who cares? It’s all borrowed money anyway. Or so says, the Chairman of the President’s Advisory Panel on Tax Reform.

Mike Shedlock / Mish
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

“Greenspanism” the Root Cause of this Depression Google

Bernanke, Geithner, and others have stated the biggest mistake in this depression was the failure to rescue Lehman. I have long disagreed, instead declaring the Bankruptcy of Lehman was one of the few things the Fed got right, even if by accident.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has similar thoughts in Lehman is a footnote in the great East-West globalisation crisis.

As my colleague Jeremy Warner puts it, Lehman no more caused the economic convulsions of the last year than the assassination of an Austrian prince caused the First World War. There was the little matter of a rising Germany then, and a rising China now. Both scrambled the international system, albeit in different ways.

As of last week, the ABX index of sub-prime debt showed that AAA-rated securities from early 2007 were trading at 28 cents on the dollar – AA was at 4 cents, near all-time lows. No one can say that $2 trillion (£1.2 trillion) of sub-prime and Alt-A debt is still trading at panic levels, exaggerating losses. The dust has settled. What we can see is that creditors will never recoup their money.

Foreclosures reached 358,000 in August alone. More Americans are being evicted each month than during the entire Depression year of 1932.

We know why the bubble occurred. Call its Greenspanism. rescued each time there was a hiccup, but let booms run unchecked. They pulled “real” rates ever lower, creating addiction to monetary stimulus. Larger doses were required with each cycle, until we hit zero, and it is still not enough. Debt burdens rose to records across the OECD.

Couldn’t they see that this was cheating: stealing from the future? No, they were seduced by “inflation targeting” – watch goods, ignore – just as cheap imports from China rendered the doctrine obsolete. It always takes ideology to consummate massive error.

China is trying to plug the gap, belatedly, by ramping up credit 70pc this year, but it will take a cultural revolution to induce the Chinese to spend. The liquidity is leaking into stocks, metals, and property.

The Great Game can continue only as long as deficit countries – currently, US (-$628bn), Spain (-$109bn), Italy (-$62bn), France (-$58bn), Britain (-$53bn), Greece (-$42bn), and east Europe – are willing to bankrupt themselves buying Asian goods. Obviously, this is absurd.

Absurd is correct.

China, in spite of all those misguided souls who believe otherwise, is not close to decoupling. Proof is easy to find in China’s need to ramp up credit and force banks to lend.

In the US, Great Britain, etc, the “Great Game” depends not on US consumers who long ago threw in the towel, but on stimulus packages that shift the demand curve forward. As soon as the stimulus runs out so will purchases.

An economic relapse is coming as sure as night follows day.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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Financial Services Bloodbath Google

Turmoil in Credit Default Swaps and other derivatives is now affecting the Australia & New Zealand Banking Group. The CEO of ANZ says Credit “Bloodbath” Cuts Profit.

Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. fell to a 2 1/2-year low in Sydney trading after Chief Executive Officer Michael Smith said the “bloodbath” in debt markets will erase profit growth this year.

“Credit costs are going up, well above underlying earnings growth,” said Smith, who joined ANZ from HSBC Holdings Plc last year, in a webcast briefing. The Melbourne-based bank, Australia’s third largest, will also take a $200 million charge for derivatives linked to U.S. debt insurer ACA Capital Holdings Inc.

ANZ spokesman Paul Edwards confirmed the insurer as New York-based ACA, which had its rating sliced 12 levels to CCC by Standard & Poor’s in December, casting doubt on more than $75 billion of debt the company guarantees, including $69 billion of securities such as collateralized debt obligations.

“This is a financial services bloodbath,” Smith said of the subprime fallout in credit markets. He said the Australian banking system was in “remarkably good shape” given global conditions.

ANZ had bought default protection on a portfolio of investment grade companies from ACA using a credit-default swap, a derivative used to speculate on corporate credit quality. After ACA was cut to non-investment grade, the bank was required to raise an “individual provision” of $200 million, it said.

Ambac To Split Up?

The is reporting Ambac in Talks to Split Itself Up.

Ambac Financial Group Inc. is in discussions to effectively split itself up in a move aimed at ensuring that municipal bonds backed by Ambac retain high credit ratings, according to a person familiar with the situation.

A deal could fall apart because of the complexities in such a move, this person said. Bond insurers in recent weeks have become ground zero in the global because the companies contractually have agreed to stand behind billions of dollars in securities underpinned by U.S. subprime … rest by subscription only.

Ripple Impact If Monolines Split Up

Bloomberg is reporting Asia-Pacific Bond Risk Increases on Proposal to Split Insurers.

Corporate default risk rose on concern that a proposed breakup of MBIA Inc. and Ambac Financial Group Inc., the world’s two biggest bond insurers, may deepen losses linked to U.S. home . Banks globally may write off $400 billion of losses, according to Group of Seven estimates.

“There are worries about the credit contagion from the U.S. subprime and monoliners,” said Tim Condon, head of Asian research at ING Groep NV in Singapore. “Any weak data contributes to the poor sentiment in the credit markets.”

FGIC Corp., the bond insurer stripped of its Aaa ranking by Moody’s Investors Service last week, asked to be split in two to protect the ratings on municipal bonds it guarantees.

Fraudulent Conveyance

I am not a lawyer but the proposal to split up Ambac looks like Fraudulent Conveyance.

A fraudulent conveyance, also fraudulent transfer is a civil cause of action. It arises in debtor/creditor relations, particularly with reference to insolvent debtors. The cause of action is typically brought by creditors or by bankruptcy trustees. The usual fact situation involves a debtor who donates his , usually to an “insider”, and leaves himself nothing to pay his creditors as part of an asset protection scheme.

Ripple Impact If Monolines Downgraded

Banks and municipalities worried about the Ripple Impact of a $534 Billion Debt Downgrade are hoping this all gets straighted out to everyone’s satisfaction. It won’t come close. Expect some significant ripples over this no matter what happens.

For a moment, assume the proposed split gets approval. Lawsuits would start flying over who gets stuck with the worthless CDOs. And exactly what would Ackman and others bears be short? Such lawsuits would leave lingering doubts of the guarantees of the monolines. More doubt is the last thing the market needs right now. Those doubts have virtually frozen the muni bond market.

Currently there is No Underwriter Support For Failed Muni Auctions.

In contrast, the simple Buffett solution puts all that complexity to bed. However, it does kill the monolines so they will fight it. Also look for legal battles if Rescue Plans Fail and New York Governor Eliot Spitzer carries out his threat to step in within days to fix things.

In the meantime, calling this a bloodbath is a bit premature. Events now are but a small down payment for what’s to come.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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One Idiot Stands in the Way Google

One Idiot Stands in the Way

Polls show Most Iraqis Favor Immediate U.S. Pullout.

A strong majority of Iraqis want U.S.-led military forces to immediately withdraw from the country, saying their swift departure would make Iraq more secure and decrease sectarian violence, according to new polls by the State Department and independent researchers.

In Baghdad, for example, nearly three-quarters of residents polled said they would feel safer if U.S. and other foreign forces left Iraq, with 65 percent of those asked favoring an immediate pullout, according to State Department polling results obtained by The Washington Post.

iraqipoll One Idiot Stands in the Way

The director of another Iraqi polling firm, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared being killed, said public opinion surveys he conducted last month showed that 80 percent of Iraqis who were questioned favored an immediate withdrawal. Eight-five percent of Sunnis in that poll supported an immediate withdrawal, a number virtually unchanged in the past two years, except for the two months after the Samarra bombing, when the number fell to about 70 percent, the poll director said.

“The very fact that there is such a low support for American forces has to do with the American failure to do basically anything for Iraqis,” said Mansoor Moaddel, a professor of sociology at Eastern Michigan University, who commissioned a poll earlier this year that also found widespread support for a withdrawal.

A US poll shows that 72 percent of troops want out of Iraq in a year

Seventy two percent of U.S. troops in Iraq believe the United States should pull out within one year, a column by Nicholas Kristof in Tuesday’s reveals. The poll was conducted by Zogby International and is the first poll to examine the attitudes of those currently serving in the wartorn nation.

Only 23 percent backed Bush’s position that they should stay as long as necessary. In contrast, 72 percent said that U.S. troops should be pulled out within one year. Of those, 29 percent said they should withdraw “immediately…”

While the White House emphasizes the threat from non-Iraqi terrorists, only 26 percent of the U.S. troops say that the insurgency would end if those foreign fighters could be kept out. A plurality believes that the insurgency is made up overwhelmingly of discontented Iraqi Sunnis…

By a 2-1 ratio, the troops said that “to control the insurgency we need to double the level of ground troops and bombing missions.” And since there is zero chance of that happening, a majority of troops seemed to be saying that they believe this war to be unwinnable.

This first systematic look at the views of the U.S. troops on the ground suggests that our present strategy in Iraq is failing badly. The troops overwhelmingly don’t want to “stay the course,” and they don’t seem to think the American strategy can succeed.

A poll of U.S. citizens shows that 58 percent want U.S. troops out of Iraq by 2008.

Nearly six in ten Americans want to see U.S. troops leave Iraq either immediately or within a year, and more would rather have Congress running U.S. policy in the conflict than President Bush, according to a CNN poll out Tuesday.

The poll found most Americans support a withdrawal from Iraq, with 21 percent wanting an immediate pullout and 37 percent saying troops should be home within a year. Another 39 percent said the troops should stay in Iraq as long as needed.

They were more closely divided on the issue of funding the president’s “New Way Forward,” with 52 percent saying Congress should block funds for additional troops and 43 percent opposing such a move.

On May 11 2007 the Iraq parliament expressed the need for a timetable for U.S. to get out of Iraq.

A majority of Iraq’s parliament has expressed support for a proposed bill that would require a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Iraq and freeze current troop levels.

Much like what Democrats have demanded in the U.S. Congress, the Iraq draft would create a timeline for a gradual departure and would require the Iraqi government to secure parliament’s approval before further extensions of the U.N. mandate for foreign troops in Iraq, which expires at the end of 2007.

President Bush has fought similar efforts in Congress to impose a timetable for a U.S. withdrawal. He vetoed legislation last week that would have required U.S. forces to begin leaving Iraq this year. The House on Thursday passed legislation that would release $43 billion immediately for military operations but would tie future money to Iraqi approval of laws dividing oil revenues among Iraq’s ethnic groups and permitting some former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath party to hold government jobs.

In both Iraq and the United States, frustration is deepening among lawmakers and the public over Bush’s elevated troop levels, a policy that has yet to prevent widespread violence. At the same time, Bush and al-Maliki are dispatching emissaries in an urgent trans-Atlantic gambit to shore up support.

The draft bill is being championed by a 30-member bloc loyal to al-Sadr, and it has gained support from other Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish legislators. As many as 144 lawmakers have signed the proposal, a majority in the 275-member parliament.

“We think that America has committed a grave injustice against the Iraqi and against the glorious history of Iraq, when they destroyed our institutions, and then rebuilt them in the wrong way,” said Hussein al-Falluji, from the largest Sunni coalition in parliament, and a supporter of the timetable proposal.

Summary

  1. Iraqi citizens want the U.S. Out of Iraq
  2. U.S. Troops want the U.S. Out of Iraq
  3. U.S. citizens want the U.S. Out of Iraq
  4. Iraq parliament wants the U.S. Out of Iraq
  5. U.S. Congress wants the U.S. Out of Iraq

One idiot stands in the way.

Mike Shedlock / Mish
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

Beware The Ice Age Cometh: Hackers Prove Global Warming Is A Scam Google

It’s now official. Much of the hype about global warming is nothing but a complete scam.

Thanks to hackers (or an insider) who broke into The University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and downloaded 156 megaybytes of data including extremely damaging emails, we now know that data supporting the global warming thesis was completely fabricated.

are reading Hacked: Hadley CRU FOI2009 Files on The Reference Frame by Luboš Motl, a physicist from the Czech Republic.

The University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), usually working together with the Hadley center (recall HadCRUT3 global temperatures), has been hacked.

So far, the most interesting file I found in the “documents” directory is pdj_grant_since1990.xls (Google preview, click) which shows that since 1990, Phil Jones has collected staggering 13.7 million British pounds ($22.6 million) in grants.

Phil Jones, the main criminal according to this correspondence, has personally confirmed that the website was hacked and that the documents are authentic. See Briefing Room.

He says that he “can’t remember” what he meant by “hiding the .” Well, let me teach him some English. First, dictionaries say that hide means

1. to conceal from sight; prevent from being seen or discovered: Where did she hide her jewels?
2. to obstruct the view of; cover up: The sun was hidden by the clouds.
3. to conceal from knowledge or exposure; keep secret: to hide one’s feelings.
4. to conceal oneself; lie concealed: He hid in the closet.
5. British. a place of concealment for hunting or observing wildlife; hunting blind.
6. hide out, to go into or remain in hiding: After breaking out of jail, he hid out in a deserted farmhouse.

Here Are A Few Choice Emails

From: Phil Jones
To: ray bradley ,mann@virginia.edu, mhughes@ltrr.arizona.edu
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 13:31:15 +0000
Cc: k.briffa@uea.ac.uk,t.osborn@uea.ac.uk

Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,
Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow. I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the . Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998. Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers
Phil

Prof. Phil Jones
Climatic Research Unit Telephone +44 (0) 1603 592090
School of Environmental Sciences Fax +44 (0) 1603 507784
University of East Anglia
Norwich Email p.jones@uea.ac.uk
NR4 7TJ
UK

===================================

From: Gary Funkhouser
To: k.briffa@uea.ac.uk
Subject: kyrgyzstan and siberian data
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 1996 15:37:09 -0700

Keith,

Thanks for your consideration. Once I get a draft of the central and southern siberian data and talk to Stepan and Eugene I’ll send it to you.

I really wish I could be more positive about the Kyrgyzstan material, but I swear I pulled every trick out of my sleeve trying to milk something out of that. It was pretty funny though – I told Malcolm what you said about my possibly being too Graybill-like in evaluating the response functions – he laughed and said that’s what he thought at first also. The data’s tempting but there’s too much variation even within stands. I don’t think it’d be productive to try and juggle the chronology statistics any more than I already have – they just are what they are (that does sound Graybillian). I think I’ll have to look for an option where I can let this little story go as it is.

Not having seen the sites I can only speculate, but I’d be optimistic if someone could get back there and spend more time collecting samples, particularly at the upper elevations.

Yeah, I doubt I’ll be over your way anytime soon. Too bad, I’d like to get together with you and Ed for a beer or two. Probably someday though.

Cheers, Gary
Gary Funkhouser
Lab. of Tree-Ring Research
The University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona 85721 USA
phone: (520) 621-2946
fax: (520) 621-8229
e-mail: gary@ltrr.arizona.edu
================================================

There is much more in that first link on The Reference Frame, including ways to download all the data yourself. Thanks Luboš!

Hadley CRU says leaked data is real

When this story broke, many assumed it was a fake. Nope.
Hadley CRU says leaked data is real

The director of Britain’s leading Climate Research Unit, Phil Jones, has told Investigate magazine’s TGIF Edition tonight that his organization has been hacked, and the data flying all over the internet appears to be genuine.

In an exclusive interview, Jones told TGIF, “It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago that someone had hacked into our system and taken and copied loads of data files and emails.”

“Have you alerted police?”

“Not yet. We were not aware of what had been taken.”

Jones says he was first tipped off to the security breach by colleagues at the website RealClimate.

Alert The Police?

Yes, someone ought to alert the police and have Phil Jones and everyone else involved in this fraud arrested.

Market Ticker On The Scam

Carl Denninger was also commenting on the scam on Friday in “Global Warming” SCAM – Hack/Leak FLASH.

…..
Yes, I have the file. So do a few million other .

There’s enough evidence in there, in my opinion, of outrageously fraudulent conduct to make this the scandal of the 20th and 21st century.

Sorry folks, there’s no science here – this is, from what I see, a massive and outrageous fraud, and now that the documents have been confirmed as authentic, it is time to pull the curtain down on this crap and start locking up all of the proponents – starting with AL GORE.

Here are some interesting “meta statistics” on the documents, and the number of times the words referenced appear:

  • Fraud: 79
  • Falsify: 6
  • Inflate: 14
  • Conceal: 5
  • Hide: 19

Just for starters.

If you think that’s bad, you might like this – from the file “ipcc-tar-master.rtf”:

47 out of 91 models listed in Chapter 9 assume that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing at the rate of 1% a year when the measured rate of increase, for the past 33 years, has been 0.4% a year. The assumption of false figures in models in order to boost future projections is fraudulent. What other figures are falsely exaggerated in the same way?

And then there’s this…

From: Phil Jones p.jones@uea.ac.uk
To: “Michael E. Mann” mann@meteo.psu.edu
Subject: IPCC & FOI
Date: Thu May 29 11:04:11 2008

Mike,

Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4? Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.

Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.

We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.

I see that CA claim they discovered the 1945 problem in the Nature paper!!
Cheers
Phil

Rules Of The Game

Here is an interesting snip on Rules of the Game posted in What’s Up With That?

I downloaded the zip file, unpacked it, browsed a bit. I opened a .pdf file entitled “RulesOfTheGame.pdf”. Very interesting document. Most compelling is that I broke open the metadata for this file. The file date stamp is Oct. 3, 2006, the metadata says it was created Oct 14, 2005 using QuarkExpress v.6.1 (released in 2004). All properties and metadata for this file definitely appear genuine to me.

Interesting that this document describes methods of convincing the public of the “crisis”.

Excerpt:

a new way of thinking

Once we’ve eliminated the myths, there is room for some new ideas. These principles relate to some of the key ideas emerging from behaviour change modeling for sustainable development:

5. Climate change must be ‘front of mind’ before persuasion works
Currently, telling the public to take notice of climate change is as successful as selling tampons to men. don’t realise (or remember) that climate change relates to them.

6. Use both peripheral and central processing Attracting direct attention to an issue can change attitudes, but peripheral messages can be just as effective: a tabloid snapshot of Gwyneth Paltrow at a bus stop can help change attitudes to public transport.

7. Link climate change mitigation to positive desires/aspirations Traditional marketing associates products with the aspirations of their target audience. Linking climate change mitigation to home improvement, self-improvement, green spaces or national pride are all worth investigating.

8. Use transmitters and social learning learn through social interaction, and some are better teachers and trendsetters than others. Targeting these will ensure that messages seem more trustworthy and are transmitted more effectively.

9. Beware the impacts of cognitive dissonance Confronting someone with the difference between their attitude and their actions on climate change will make them more likely to change their attitude than their actions.

How To Avoid Taxes On Grants

Mike Abbott (17:06:59):

Here’s a quote from one of the emails:

“Also, it is important for us if you can transfer the ADVANCE money on the personal accounts which we gave you earlier and the sum for one occasion transfer (for example, during one day) will not be more than 10,000 USD. Only in this case we can avoid big taxes and use money for our work as much as possible.”

Reducing “Blips”

Ric Werme (19:43:43):

This sounds like a “get rid of the MWP,” I hope it’s just a what if
speculation/exploration that might lead to research directions.

tux:mail> cat 1254108338.txt
From: Tom Wigley
To: Phil Jones
Subject: 1940s
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 2009 23:25:38 -0600
Cc: Ben Santer

Phil,

Here are some speculations on correcting SSTs to partly explain the 1940s warming blip.

If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s blip (as I’m sure you know).

So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say, 0.15 degC, then this would be significant for the global mean — but we’d still have to explain the land blip.

I’ve chosen 0.15 here deliberately. This still leaves an ocean blip, and i think one needs to have some form of ocean blip to explain the land blip (via either some common forcing, or ocean forcing land, or vice versa, or all of these). When you look at other blips, the land blips are 1.5 to 2 times (roughly) the ocean blips — higher sensitivity plus thermal inertia effects. My 0.15 adjustment leaves things
consistent with this, so you can see where I am coming from.

I downloaded the document and found some interesting stuff

Wang Fabrications

From: “D.J. Keenan”
To: “Steve McIntyre”
Cc: “Phil Jones”

Subject: Wang fabrications
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 20:45:15 +0100
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.3138
X-UEA-Spam-Score: 0.0
X-UEA-Spam-Level: /
X-UEA-Spam-Flag: NO

Steve,

I thought that I should summarize what has happened with the Wang case.

First, I concluded that the claims made about Chinese stations by Jones et al. [Nature, 1990] and Wang et al. [GRL, 1990] were very probably fabricated. (You very likely came to the same conclusion.)

Second, some investigation showed that Phil Jones was wholly blameless and that responsibility almost certainly lay with Wang.

Third, I contacted Wang, told him that I had caught him, and asked him to retract his fabricated claims. My e-mails were addressed to him only, and I told no one about them. In Wang’s reply, though, Jones, Karl, Zeng, etc. were Cc’d.

Fourth, I explained to Wang that I would publicly accuse him of fraud if he did not retract. Wang seemed to not take me seriously. So I drafted what would be the text of a formal accusation and sent it to him. Wang replied that if I wanted to make the accusation, that was up to me.

Fifth, I put a draft on my web site–
http://www.informath.org/apprise/a5620.htm
–and e-mailed a few , asking if they had any recommendations for improvement.

I intend to send the final version to Wang’s university, and to demand a formal investigation into fraud. I will also notify the media. Separately, I have had a preliminary discussion with the FBI–because Wang likely used government funds to commit his fraud; it seems that it might be possible to prosecute Wang under the same statute as was used in the Eric Poehlman case. The simplicity of the case makes this easier–no scientific knowledge is required to understand things.

I saw that you have now e-mailed Phil (Cc’d above), asking Phil to publish a retraction of Wang’s claims: http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1741#comment-115879
There could be a couple problems with that. One problem is that it would be difficult for Phil to publish anything without the agreement of Wang and the other co-authors (Nature would simply say “no”).

Another problem is that your e-mail says that you presume Phil was “unaware of the incorrectness” of Wang’s work. I do not see how that could be true. Although the evidence that Phil was innocent in 1990 seems entirely conclusive, there is also the paper of Yan et al. [Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, 18: 309 (2001)], which is cited on my web page. Phil is a co-author of that paper.

Phil, this proves that you knew there were serious problems with Wang’s claims back in 2001; yet some of your work since then has continued to rely on those claims, most notably in the latest report from the IPCC. It would be nice to hear the explanation for this. Phil?

Kind wishes, Doug

That is just an accusation but it looks pretty damning.

This whole thing with tree rings is pretty fascinating. There was a reference in the emails to this site: Ross McKitrick: Defects in key climate data are uncovered

Only by playing with data can scientists come up with the infamous ‘hockey stick’ graph of global warming

Beginning in 2003, I worked with Stephen McIntyre to replicate a famous result in paleoclimatology known as the Hockey Stick graph. Developed by a U.S. climatologist named Michael Mann, it was a statistical compilation of tree ring data supposedly proving that air temperatures had been stable for 900 years, then soared off the charts in the 20th century. Prior to the publication of the Hockey Stick, scientists had held that the medieval-era was warmer than the present, making the scale of 20th century global warming seem relatively unimportant. The dramatic revision to this view occasioned by the Hockey Stick’s publication made it the poster child of the global warming movement. It was featured prominently in a 2001 report of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as well as government websites and countless review reports.

Steve and I showed that the mathematics behind the Mann Hockey Stick were badly flawed, such that its shape was determined by suspect bristlecone tree ring data. Controversies quickly piled up: Two expert panels involving the U.S. National Academy of Sciences were asked to investigate, the U.S. Congress held a hearing, and the media followed the story around the world.

The expert reports upheld all of our criticisms of the Mann Hockey Stick, both of the mathematics and of its reliance on flawed bristlecone pine data. …

Thus the key ingredient in most of the studies that have been invoked to support the Hockey Stick, namely the Briffa Yamal series, depends on the influence of a woefully thin subsample of trees and the exclusion of readily-available data for the same area. Whatever is going on here, it is not science.

I have been probing the arguments for global warming for well over a decade. In collaboration with a lot of excellent coauthors I have consistently found that when the layers get peeled back, what lies at the core is either flawed, misleading or simply non-existent.

Ross McKitrick is a professor of environmental economics at the University of Guelph, and coauthor of Taken By Storm: The Troubled Science, Policy and Politics of Global Warming.

That is a fascinating read in and of itself, implicating U.S. climatologist Michael Mann.

By the way, I am questioning if this was really the work of hackers. It could just as easily be an inside job of some disgruntled worker deciding to expose the CRU.

It’s a good thing Cap-And-Trade “Three-Card Monte” Dead For 2009.

Now let’s kill it permanently. Global warming is a hoax. At least the data presented is a hoax. If there is a problem then the free market will find a solution. The idea that a bunch of politicians with an agenda can do anything about it is ludicrous.

The earth has gone through cooling and warming cycles for millions of years. Attempting to measure one small period and then thinking one can find the true cause of that change (assuming it even exists), goes beyond hubris.

It would just be just as correct to say …

Beware The Ice Age Cometh

Because given enough time I am sure it will.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Blue Dogs Google

Following is a Metrofax list with phone and fax numbers for the Blue Dogs (supposedly fiscally conservative Democrats).

Blue Dog Democrats Voting Yes The First Time

D Y,Mike Arcuri,NY,2022253665,2022251891
D Y,Melissa Bean,IL,2022253711,2022257830
D Y,Marion Berry,Ark,2022254076,2022255602
D Y,Sanford Bishop,GA,2022253631,2022252203
D Y,Dan Boren,OK,2022252701,2022253038
D Y,Leonard Boswell,Iowa,2022253806,2022255608
D Y,Allen Boyd, FL,2022255235,2022255615
D Y,Dennis Cardoza,CA,2022256131,2022250819
D Y,Jim Cooper,TN,2022254311,2022261035
D Y,Jim Costa,CA,2022253341,2022259308
D Y,Bud Cramer,AL,2022254801,2022254392
D Y,Joe Donnelly,IN,2022253915,2022256798
D Y,Brad Ellsworth,IN,2022254636,2022253284
D Y,Jane Harman, CA,2022258220,2022267290
D Y,Tim Mahoney,FL,2022255792,2022253132
D Y,Jim Marshall,GA,2022256531,2022253013
D Y,Charlie Melancon,LA,2022254031,2022263944
D Y,Dennis Moore, KS,2022252865,2022252807
D Y,Patrick Murphy,PA,2022254276,2022259511
D Y,Earl Pomeroy,ND,2022252611,2022260893
D Y,Mike Ross,Ark,2022253772,2022251314
D Y,Zack Space,OH,2022256265,2022253394
D Y,John Tanner,TN,2022254714,2022251765
D Y,Charlie Wilson,OH,2022255705,2022255907

Blue Dog Democrats Voting No The First Time

D N,Joe Baca, CA,2022256161,2022258671
D N,John Barrow,GA,2022252823,2022253377
D N,Christopher Carney,PA,2022253731,2022259594
D N,Ben Chandler,KY,2022254706,2022252122
D N,Jim Matheson,Utah, 2022253011,2022255638
D N,Mike McIntyre,NC,2022252731,2022255773
D N,Mike Michaud, Maine,2022256306,2022252943
D N,Gabrielle Giffords, AZ,2022252542,2022250378
D N,Kirsten Gillebrand, NY,2022255614,2022251168
D N,Stephanie Herseth Sandlin,SD,2022252801,2022255823
D N,Baron Hill,IN,2022255315,2022266866
D N,Tim Holden, PA, 2022255546,2022260996
D N,Nick Lampson,TX,2022255951,2022255241
D N,Lincoln Davis,TN,2022256831,2022265132
D N,Collin Peterson, MN,2022252165,2022251593
D N,John Salazar,CO,2022254761,2022269669
D N,Loretta Sanchez,CA,2022252965,2022255859
D N,Adam Schiff,CA,2022254176,2022255258
D N,Heath Shuler,NC,2022256401,2022266422
D N,David Scott,GA,2022252939,2022254628
D N,Gene Taylor,MS,2022255772,2022257074
D N,Mike Thompson,CA,2022253311,2022254335

Please thank those who courageously voted “No” the first time, let them know you expect another “No” vote. Mention the pork that was added to the bill, let them know that handing $700 billion dollars to an unknown entity at the Treasury with no controls on how the money is spent, is fiscally and politically reckless. Mention that there are better alternatives that must be considered. And let them know you will back their opponent if they switch votes.

For those who voted “Yes”, mention how fiscally irresponsible their vote was, that handing $700 billion dollars to an unknown entity at the Treasury with no controls on how the money is spent, is fiscally and politically reckless. Mention that there are better alternatives that must be considered.And let them know you will back their opponent if they do not vote against the bill. Tell them this is a second chance to get it right.

Create your own faxes and tell them in your own words.
Please call and fax everyone on the list.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Gold, Silver, Crude, Copper Update Google

Gold, Silver, Crude, Copper Update

The question of the day is “What are commodity charts suggesting?”
Let’s take a look starting with the commodities index itself.

Click on any chart for a better view.

Monthly $CRB chart

%24crb 2007 01 05 monthly Gold, Silver, Crude, Copper Update

The monthly $CRB chart is busted. It is right now on the 50MA that I believe is not likely to hold. A drop to the 200MA near 250 just might be in the .

$CRB Weekly Chart

%24CRB 2007 04 Gold, Silver, Crude, Copper Update

Trendlines do not get much easier to follow than that. This one was right along the 50 MA for over 3 years. The trendline on crude is very similar. Given the weight in energies, that should be expected. This can easily be either an A-B-C correction lower or the start of something more serious. For now, it looks ominous.

Monthly Crude

cl 2007 01 07 monthly Gold, Silver, Crude, Copper Update

This is another clear trendline.
It has also busted.
Very few thought we would ever see crude at $40 again.
I thought $45-50 when it was near $80.
That does not seem so outrageous now and $40 is clearly not out of the question.

Weekly Crude

cl 2007 01 07 weekly Gold, Silver, Crude, Copper Update

Crude weekly is another busted chart.
Support zones are as shown.

Copper Monthly

Copper 2007 01 04 monthly Gold, Silver, Crude, Copper Update

Dr. Copper seems to have a date with 220.
If it goes no further the monthly trendline will hold.

Copper Weekly

Copper 2007 01 04 weekly Gold, Silver, Crude, Copper Update

The weekly chart of copper suggests a bounce off 220 as well.
If that fails to hold, the monthly chart will be busted as well.

Silver Monthly

silver 2007 01 05 monthly Gold, Silver, Crude, Copper Update

Silver monthly is still intact.
Technically this chart can go either way but I suspect a breakdown as opposed to a breakout.

Silver Weekly

silver 2007 01 05 Gold, Silver, Crude, Copper Update

Silver is still holding the weekly trendline. It is now do or die with the 200MA long in the rear view mirror. A move there is not out of the question but as for now I suspect $10 will hold.

Gold Monthly

gold 2007 01 04 monthly png Gold, Silver, Crude, Copper Update

For all the consternation over gold, the monthly trendline is nowhere close to being in jeopardy but a drop to $500 is not out of the question.

Gold Weekly

gold 2007 01 04 weekly png Gold, Silver, Crude, Copper Update

Weekly gold has broken its trendline. But unlike crude or copper or the $CRB this pattern does not lend to possible impulsive interpretations. Also (for now anyway) the 50 MA is still holding unlike $CRB, copper, or crude.

In light of the above I still favor junior miners in gold and silver over other commodity plays. Several junior exploration stocks had a decent day today including MRB (nice bounce off the 50 EMA), GBN (bounce off the 200 EMA), and DLKM (strong bounce off support in what appears to be a bull flag forming).

If commodity prices hold, the value remains in juniors. If commodity prices collapse (and they could), bulls could be in trouble. Given my beliefs about deflation and gold, for safety preferences I prefer gold over silver and energy. For bigger swings both ways, silver may be more attractive to others. Given the situation in Iraq and Iran, as well as a likely US recession, energy is a huge wildcard. Does anyone really know what Bush will do? Because of the collapse in housing I have not been enthusiastic about copper for a long time.

Mike Shedlock / Mish
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

Quicken Loans Insider | Demand for Home Purchase Loans Push … Google

Last week there was an increase in demand for home purchase which in turn pushed applications higher. CNBC’s , “Home Loan Demand.

See original here: 
Quicken Loans Insider | Demand for Home Purchase Loans Push …

The $3.6 Trillion Leveraged Loan Wall of Debt Google

The Deal Magazine has an interesting discussion about That Worrying Wall Of Debt.

The leveraged loan market got accustomed to big numbers over the past decade. There’s $3.6 trillion, the amount of leveraged made since 2000, according to Thomson Reuters’ Loan Pricing Corp. There’s 735-fold, the amount of growth between 2003 and 2007 in the volume of collateralized loan obligations — the funds that helped fuel the loan market’s surge after the tech and telecom bust of 2001. And there’s $375 billion, the amount of bank debt used to fund leveraged buyouts completed between 2005 and 2007.

But right now, the leveraged loan market is fixated on one number: $430 billion, the amount in leveraged due to mature between 2012 and 2014. Despite the big numbers of the past, this might be simply too big. Indeed, the $430 billion figure is already worrying , and loan-market investors alike as they struggle with the possibility that a large portion of those will neither be repaid nor refinanced, raising the specter of a wave of defaults among the debt-fueled LBO of 2005 through 2007.

As one executive at a private equity firm describes it, the availability of so much cheap debt profoundly affected how sponsors did business because it encouraged them to change their focus. “The PE firms were not investing in specific industries,” he says. “They were investing in the capital markets.”

This strategy was predicated on faith that could be continually refinanced, that exit options in the form of the equity markets or mergers and acquisitions fueled by more financing would be easily available and lead to profits that justified the outsized risk the sponsors were taking. There was also the belief that an ever-expanding economy would allow companies to keep increasing their Ebitda and pay down debt. The strategy had more than a few similarities with the one used by who borrowed in increasing amounts to finance home purchases and hoped for either a quick flip or continually rising prices that would make debt more manageable.

The discusses various ways that this debt can be paid back, but I am inclined to go with what The Deal calls the nuclear option: bankruptcies.

Recent examples include General Growth Properties, owner of some of the nation’s most prominent malls, including Chicago’s Water Tower Place (See Major mall operator here files for bankruptcy) and the June 14th filing of Six Flags one of the largest regional amusement-park companies in the country (See Six Flags Files Chapter 11).

Casinos are also at risk. On May 5th 2008 Tropicana casino group files for bankruptcy and on June 10th 2009the lavish Fontainebleau was another Las Vegas Wheel of Misfortune.

Fortunately, the appetite for new leveraged has ceased. Equity piranhas can no longer come in, strip companies of their , load them up with debt, pay themselves huge salaries, and watch the bones slowly go bankrupt, unable to make debt payments.

For now, Wall Street is unconcerned about the $430 billion in leveraged due to mature between 2012 and 2014. 2012 is simply too far away.

However, the clock is ticking on many things at once: Leveraged , boomer retirements and subsequent downsizing, Pay Option ARMs recasts, Alt-A recasts, and last but certainly not least, a jobless recovery that ensures massive credit card defaults. Such structural problems in conjunction with changing consumer attitudes towards debt all but guarantee an L-Shaped Recession. The recession will end, but don’t count on a recovery.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Construction Mortgage Loans for Physicians Google

The Good News keeps coming: one of the we refer clients to will allow construction with only 5% down for physicians, all the way up to $1M.

See the rest here: 
Construction Mortgage Loans for Physicians