Ultimately, this is what can both help cause and lead to catastrophic consequences of even a modestly falling stock market. Margin calls force people to liquidate stocks, further driving down prices, and people who borrow multiples of the amount of cash they invest stand to lose more than everything.
Anyway, there seems to be a thing about bands who hit it bigger joking about the bad old days when they played the Khyber when they come through Philly.
The Khyber isn't a bad place to see a band, but it's probably an awful place to perform as a band. There's a tiny little stage, and it seems you have to sneak through a little panel door out the front to get your equipment in.
The Decemberists made the same "joke" when I saw them. That would have been interesting. Almost as interesting as seeing Gogol Bordello at Tritone.
As I said previously, these potential catastrophic drought conditions fortunately never seem to materialize. Perhaps, at least in the "potential" version, they serve as a welcome wakeup.
But even if an agreement is reached soon, the mayor said her city, which has doubled in population since 1980, needs to do a better job of conserving water.
Franklin also admitted that the Atlanta area did little to add to storage facilities during years of recent explosive growth, but says the city has now purchased a stone quarry to be developed into a new reservoir.
Atlanta is spending $4 billion to fix the city's water infrastructure. According to Franklin, 14 percent of the city's pipes, many of which date back to the 1890s, leak. Though the mayor says the percentage of leaky pipes has dropped each of the last six years.
But the remaining repairs will take four to five years and won't address the current crisis. Atlanta may soon have to resort to drastic action like some other Southeastern towns have already taken.
I have no opinion about the guy, but it must be said that certainly no one that Bush is going to appoint to the position of Attorney General is going to admit, at his confirmation hearing, that in his opinion the Bush administration has spent the last several years engaged in rampant lawbreaking. This is certainly not a defense of him, but an acknowledgment of reality.
The failure to hold the Bush administration accountable for their numerous admitted crimes has its roots deep in the culture of Fred Hiatt's Village, in David Broder's Town. At least, as far as we know, little George has never gotten a blowjob.
Police are investigating how the personal files of 1,200 Ameriquest Mortgage customers turned up in a dumpster at an Atlanta apartment complex. Police say the 40 boxes of records contain sensitive financial information, including customers' credit histories, bank account information, tax and salary records and social security numbers.
Management of the Montego Apartments complex immediately alerted police after the abandoned boxes were discovered last month.
...
An Ameriquest representative has reviewed some of the documents, and spokesman Chris Orlando says the company believes they were stolen from Ameriquest in late 2002.
According to Orlando, "We take the security of our records very seriously...and have been working to locate the person or persons responsible for the theft. We are pleased that the files have now been secured by authorities in DeKalb County, and we are working with local law enforcement to determine what information is contained in the files and who stole them."
Deputy Chief Burrows says so far his department has uncovered no evidence that the files were stolen from Ameriquest.
In campaign finance reports that cover the period ending Sept. 30 and made public on the Federal Election Commission's website this week, Wynn said he had raised $592,602 for his campaign and had $400,286 on hand to spend. Edwards, meanwhile, reported raising $214,365 but spending almost half, leaving her $100,511.
Both sides declared themselves pleased with the numbers. Edwards noted that almost half of Wynn's contributions came from political action committees rather than individuals. The two are more evenly matched in the number of individuals donating--with 121 giving $200 or more to Edwards in the last quarter and 189 donating $200 or more to Wynn. Wynn's campaign manager meanwhile notes that much of Edwards' money comes from people who don't live in the 4th district--or even in Maryland.
Wynn's $290,000 from PACs include contributions from several telecommunications companies, natural gas and propane interests, the Nuclear Energy Institute Federal PAC, Wal-Mart's PAC and other industry groups. They also include donations from unions, like the AFL-CIO, the Communications Workers of America and airline pilots and flight attendants. By contrast, Edwards has taken in only $2,100 from PACs (the Feminist Majority, the Friends of the Earth and Moderates Against Corruption.)
...
"The vast majority of our money comes from individuals in our district, in Maryland," said Wynn campaign manager Lori Sherwood. She said Edwards' money seemed to come from "individuals and organizations she's been affiliated with" as executive director of the Arca Foundation. "Our opponent has special interest. She's receiving money from Barbara Streisand, Hollywood money and New York money. I'm not sure if Barbara Streisand knows what the policies are in the 4th district."
translation: "Jew money."
It's only 4 months until the primary. While the fundraising ability of the netroots is in some sense impressive, I don't think it's quite been tapped and directed as well as it could. No hard sell here, but having Donna Edwards in Congress would be great.
This is a good approach, and echoes what I've suggested in the past. It won't help everyone who's about to experience a foreclosure - and nor should it - but it should stabilize things for those who have a reasonable chance of covering their mortgage if it doesn't have insane rates.
THERE have been many proposals to deal with the problems in the mortgage market. But the best place to begin is by looking at the poor lending standards and weak consumer protections at the root of the problem — in particular, the troubling loans called 2/28 and 3/27 subprime hybrids. They have starter interest rates of 7 percent or more for the first two or three years, and “resets” that raise rates to as much as 12 percent, causing monthly payments to increase by at least 30 percent.
...
So subprime servicers should take a more standardized approach: restructure all 2/28 and 3/27 subprime hybrid loans for owner-occupied homes in cases where the borrower has been making timely payments but can’t afford the reset payments. Convert these to fixed-rate loans at the starter rate.
This would be no bailout. These borrowers would still be required to make their monthly payments — at rates higher than what prime is today. Billions in savings would be generated by avoiding the administrative, legal, marketing and other costs of foreclosure, which can run to half or more of the loan amount. And avoiding foreclosure would protect neighboring properties and hasten the recovery of markets burdened by an excess supply of houses.
As Dean Baker reminds us, resets aren't the only problem. Lots of people were given mortgages under terms they couldn't afford even before a rate reset. But they are some of the problem, they certainly represent a big chunk of the mortgages granted under absurd lending terms..
As I said previously I honestly don't know who I support or who I plan to vote for. This honestly isn't just a matter of deliberately maintaining a pose to keep this blog relatively "neutral." I really don't feel like a supporter of any candidate. Still it's useful to use the power of my mighty blogs to nudge the candidates one way or another, if possible, and so I appreciate the 217 of you who demonstrated your support for Dodd's actions by contributing $11,861 to his campaign.
As Glenn Greenwald keeps saying over and over again, the Washington conventional wisdom is that spying on Americans without warrants and locking them up indefinitely without charges are the Very Serious Positions. This is a deeply sick political culture in a deeply corrupt and deeply sick city, composed of people who have turned their backs on everything most of us grew imagining this country stood for, and it's important to support and be inspired by those who "dare" to stand up for what we all thought were American values.
Unlike Ann Coulter, I'm no constitutional scholar, but I have been a wee bit puzzled why the prohibition on ex post facto laws would't prevent this telecom immunity bullshit. Of course there's a prohibition on suspending Habeas Corpus, too, so what do I know.
SPARTANBURG, S.C. (AP) — Republican presidential candidate John McCain took one look at a nursing school's training mannequin and asked if the dummy's name was Hillary.
Campaigning Thursday at the University of South Carolina Upstate nursing school, McCain couldn't resist a swipe at Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton.
"I was very glad to meet the dummy, named 'Hillary,'" McCain said to laughter after a tour of the school. "Is that the name?"
It wasn't. The dummy, or human simulator, doesn't have a name.
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