Can Republicans read newspapers?, Or, I don't think anybody expected that Tea Partiers could do something catastrophically stupid

Crain's: How a federal default would hit Chicago and Illinois

A downgrade of the federal government's AAA credit rating "would likely lead ratings agencies to downgrade every state," an Illinois Office of Management and Budget spokeswoman said in a statement. "This action would add hundreds of millions of dollars in interest costs to bonds we sell in the future. Money we desperately need in our state to educate our students, ensure public safety and protect our seniors would now be used to pay interest costs..."

If there is some kind of default next week, the market reaction would no doubt be furious: Credit markets might quickly grind to a halt, much as they did after the bankruptcy of Lehman Bros. plunged the world into financial crisis three years ago, at least until Congress and the White House finally come to terms...

Bottom line, the market's behavior indicates that investors just don't believe Washington is stupid enough to let the government default and plunge the economy into full-tilt recession. At worst, they assume that an actual default would spur action without further delay.

The economic damage and political fallout "would be too much for even the Tea partiers to let that go on for too long," said Justin Hoogendoorn, fixed-income strategist in the Chicago office of BMO Capital Markets, a Bank of Montreal unit. "I don't think anybody in the bond market expects that to happen." (Based on what, exactly? - Ed.)
~

Toles on Negotiation

Has there ever in all of time been a negotiation where one side said: “we will not compromise one single tiny bit on any thing whatsoever, even reasonable things, and if you do not yield on all points, completely and massively, we will take an action that we know will hurt everyone, including all innocent bystanders.” One, anyway, that was reported in newspapers as being a “negotiation?” I think tornados negotiate like that.

Meet Congressman-Elect Joe Walsh

He's for cutting people off unemployment insurance (LAZY PHOKKS), while extending tax cuts for these guys and these guys and these guys (the deserving rich). Thanks, Tea Partiers, for bringing us your not-treading-on-me brand of freedom!
~

EXACTLY how I remember Bangkok

News item: City wants high-rise crane removed

No work has been done on the planned 90-story building since last year, and now it stands as a shell about 27 stories tall at the southwest corner of Wacker and Clark.

Iceland : plenty of room

News item: Iceland had to borrow about $10bn yesterday, roughly the size of its entire gross domestic product, to prevent its economy from collapsing. . .

The loans will expose 320,000 Icelanders to a brutal recession, soaring inflation and an enormous debt burden that will haunt them for years in the form of taxes, threatening to trigger mass emigration. Up to a third of the population have said they want to flee the island.

In related news: Market analysts said panic had set in among traders. "Markets are utterly unhinged," said Bill O’Donnell, a strategist at UBS

the upside of hard times

More spam (the edible kind).

AUSTIN, Minn. — The economy is in tatters and, for millions of people, the future is uncertain. But for some employees at the Hormel Foods Corporation plant here, times have never been better. They are working at a furious pace and piling up all the overtime they want.

The workers make Spam, perhaps the emblematic hard-times food in the American pantry. . .

"There are all kinds of people who have an emotional connection to Spam," said Gil Gutknecht Jr., the former Minnesota congressman, who was in the gift shop at the Spam Museum buying a Spam tie, sweatshirt and earrings. Mr. Gutknecht recalled that he once served as a judge in a Spam recipe contest. . .

If we can just find enough pink, gelatinous equivalents in other industries to get behind, we might ride this out...

A 12-ounce can of Spam, marketed as "Crazy Tasty," costs about $2.40. "People are realizing it’s not that bad a product," said Dan Johnson... who operates a 70-foot-high Spam oven.

Is that the same Dan Johnson who sucked all year in 2006 because he had double vision after he shot suntan lotion into his eye? (That was SO k-mad!) If so, it might not be a good idea for him to be standing in front of a 70-foot-high Spam oven.

from the LoC archives: a short recent history of redistribution of wealth

March 12: According to the latest available statistics from the Internal Revenue Service, the top 1 percent of Americans earned significantly more income in 2005 than the bottom 50 percent. In addition, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently reported that the wealthiest 1 percent saw total income rise by $180,000 in 2005. That is more than the average middle-class family makes in three years. The CBO also found that the total share of after-tax income going to the top 1 percent hit the highest level on record, while the middle class and working families received the smallest share of after-tax income on record.

May 5: The gap between rich and poor in the United States has widened exponentially over the past three decades. The Congressional Budget Office reports that since 1979, the average income for the bottom half of American households has grown by 6 percent. In contrast, the top 1 percent of earners have seen their incomes shoot up by a 229 percent during that same period. Under the Bush administration, the average income of most Americans has fallen, but the average income of top wage earners (those above the 95 percentile range) has increased from $324,427 in 2001 to $385,805 in 2006. Only one other year has seen a comparable income gap: 1928, the year before the Great Depression.

October 21: Yet seven years into this economic cycle, most middle-class American households (aka, the WHINERS... Ed.) have less inflation-adjusted income than they had when it started...

The exception in compensation gains was for the top 1 percent of earners, who have considerably widened the pay gap between themselves and other workers. (YAY! Ed.)

So it's not the concept of redistributing wealth that Republicans have a problem with. They're just concerned that it keeps getting redistributed in the right direction.

culture wars (cont'd) - Bubba getting his @ss kicked...

Automakers Apply Brakes to NASCAR

But with the Big Three U.S. automakers struggling to survive, they have begun to dramatically scale back their financial involvement in NASCAR, threatening the economic model that has driven the sport's popularity. Other corporate sponsors that helped transform stock-car racing from a workingman's pastime into the country's dominant form of auto racing also are scaling back their investment as a result of the sagging economy. Some companies may not renew their commitments -- many of which run more than $10 million -- when current contracts expire.

liberal media running with LoC 'squirrel brains' meme

Ready to eat squirrel soup?

The couple would catch wild hogs, feed them corn for a year and eat them once the wild taste was out of the scavenging animals. They also took advantage of available squirrel meat, a common food in the South at that time.

"It was a uniquely disgusting thing ... to see my grandfather take a stewed, skinned squirrel's head, smack the skull's dome with a heavy silver tablespoon, and dine on the brains," LeBlanc (French phokk?) said.

Meme is one of those words you only hear in the liberal (French phokk) media, by the way. See also: underscore, robust.

Fung's property taxes: the Reader knows all, tells some...

There is upside here: 1. If the value of your place tanks, you should reap the tax rewards in a couple of years. 2. We might still have one newspaper, even if it only comes out once a week.

Cook County assessor James Houlihan and Senate president Emil Jones wanted to raise the exemption to $40,000 permanently. Madigan successfully insisted that it only be bumped up to $40,000 for a year, and that’s what was applied to your last tax bill. It fell to $26,000 for this tax bill, and next year it’ll drop to $20,000, the same as it was four years ago...

...your 2007 property taxes — the ones you’re paying now — are based on an assessment done in 2006, when the housing market was still strong. The impact of the current bust won’t be felt on tax bills until the next assessment, in 2009.

Cue plutocrat on ledge: the depression starts...

NOW.

this is probably nothing to worry about

we are now seeing what happens when a 20 to 21 percent of GDP financial sector starts to come unglued... never had so much polarization and wealth disparity and just groaning wealth right at the top of ladder as we have now... the central component of the rise of the financial sector is the rise of the debt industry... it's a package which Americans have to understand is going to be awful... seven sharks in the tank with the economy... first is financialization because we're so dependent on this industry that's sort of half lost its marbles... second is that you have this huge buildup of debt, absolutely unprecedented anywhere in the world... third is you've now got home prices collapsing... fourth is you've got global commodity inflation building up... fifth is you've got flawed and deceptive government economics statistics... sixth is that you've got what they call peak oil where the world is, to some extent, running out of oil... last thing is the collapsing dollar... whenever you get this sort of package in one decade, you got a big one... another variation but on a par with the Thirties... The British were absolutely top dog in the world in 1914. Two world wars and 35 years later, they were having, after World War II, they were having food rationing, the pound sterling crashed, dukes were giving guided tours of their castles because they couldn't afford to maintain them otherwise. Doesn't take long. And I'm afraid the United States is coming right into that period which marks a couple of decades coming up that are going to be very difficult for America.

this is probably nothing to worry about

"Let me tell ya somethin' that's goin' on today in our world, particularly here in our Nation, that needs some shakin' up and some fixin'..."

-- Sarah Palin, 45th President of the United States, on the Yoooge Depression of 2009-2022