Competing Interests Plague European Gas Independence
The unity of purpose displayed by European countries after the Russian-Ukraine gas disagreement in December has dissipated. Readers may remember European vows to diversify natural gas supplies to prevent “political” gas shortages in the future. European Commission Chief Jose Manuel Barroso called the crisis unacceptable; German President Angela Merkel warned of consequences. Among other plans, much attention was centered on the Nabucco Pipeline, a
natural gas pipeline that will transport natural gas from Turkey to Austria, via Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary. It will run from Erzurum in Turkey to Baumgarten an der March, a major natural gas hub in Austria. This pipeline is a diversion from the current methods of importing natural gas solely from Russia. The project is backed by some of the European Union states and the United States.
The project has been plagued with problems from the start and, according to experts, those problems remain. Those problems include filling the pipeline to full capacity, US sanctions on Iran, and Turkey’s occasional politicization of the project. But there is a bigger structural issue at play, one of power politics. The Western European countries like Italy, France, and Germany, more able to match Russian geopolitical power, are more concerned with the unreliability of gas transit countries than with the problem of dependence on Russian gas. These countries oppose EU financing for Nabucco and are pursuing projects which bring gas to Europe while bypassing former Soviet states.
Turkey’s objective with regard to project participation is to become an energy hub for Europe. They are less concerned with the origin of natural gas pumped into the pipeline, even suggesting recently that Nabucco be filled with Russian gas to make up for any Turkish production shortages.
Where’s the rest of me?
Joe the Plumber and McCain finally hook up.
This photo touches a nerve for me, especially after McCain’s “where’s the rest of me” pine for J the P during his speech today.
There’s something pathetic about McCain. Something less than alpha dog. It’s not just the elevation of the ignorant (although that bothers me enough), it’s McCain subservience to it. He’s made himself subordinate to Palin and Todd and Joe the Plumber and those luminaries circle him like bored and irritated trophy dates. I just can’t see how anyone sees McCain as a leader or envisions him as president.
Todd Palin is Sketchy, Part II
This is a reprint and update of the original September post — Cy.
There’s something about this couple. I’ve met them before. Rapid risers who’ve not completely or thoroughly arranged their lives to bear scrutiny. A DUI, an unexpected pregnancy, a vendetta against an ex-brother-in-law, a feud with a mother-in-law, a governor with a husband who takes more than a little interest in how she operates the state. This picture sort of sums it up:
Sarah and Todd Palin are sketchy. Not to be trusted. Up to something. Low brow. As Kagro X at DailyKos points out, the Branchflower report to the Alaska legislature backs this up. Get past the allegations and ethics violations of Governor Sarah Palin; let’s focus on her husband, the so-called “First Dude.” His obsession with his former brother-in-law is revealed by Branchflower for the stalking it is.
For instance, it turns out that Todd followed Wooten 100 miles off the road in order to secretly photograph him during the snow machine trip that supposedly disproved his worker’s comp claims. (It didn’t. The trip was actually pre-approved by Wooten’s doctor.)
It also included this equally intrusive (and equally baseless) gem: that Wooten “had been seen” dropping his kids off at school in him patrol car at 8:01 a.m. Yes, the report notes creepiness of the fact that the time is noted that precisely. And yes, it turns out that this activity, too, was pre-approved, this time by Wooten’s supervisor. Crazy-ass Todd Palin appears to have spent an awful lot of time trying to frame Wooten up for “violations” that Wooten was actually meticulous about having pre-approved, don’t you think?
According to Branchflower, the goal was to interfere with Wooten’s Workman’s Compensation Claim. When you think about it, that tells you that the Palins were so obsessed with their Wooten vendetta that they sought to undermine a source of support for the children of Palin’s sister. Consider the remarks of the judge in Wooten’s divorce case:
Mr. Wooten is now challenged in his income earning ability. He’s making in that $60,000 range, but he may be headed south to more like a $50,000 guy, and that’s, at least in part, because it appears for the world that Ms. McCann and her family have decided to take off with the guy’s livelihood, that the bitterness of whatever who did what to whom has overridden good judgment. Aesop told us not to slay the goose who lays the golden egg. For whatever reason, people are trying to slay the goose here and it tends to diminish his earning capacity.
Such vindictiveness and stalking were justified, according to Palin, because the governor feared for her family’s safety. But the Palins bravely hid that fear until the timing was right:
[T]he evidence presented has been inconsistent with such claims of fear. The testimony from Trooper Wheeler, who was part of her security detail from the start, was that shortly after elected to office, she ordered a substantial reduction in manpower in her personal protection detail in both Anchorage and Juneau, an act that is inconsistent with a desire to avoid harm from Trooper Wooten or others. Moreover, assuming that Trooper Wooten was ever inclined to attack Governor Palin or a family member, logic dictates that getting him fired would accomplish nothing to eliminate the potential for harm to her or her family. On the contrary, it might just precipitate some retaliatory conduct on his part. Causing Wooten to loose [sic] his job would not have de-escalated the situation, or provided her or her family with greater security.
It’s not just the mysterious lies, half truths, stalking, confabulations. It’s not just that the McCain campaign is now running Alaska and all Alaskan press inquiries are now referred to campaign staff. Or that these folks have a mean streak. It’s all of that…and….well, their sketchiness.
As Kagro X notes (with a bit of understatement):
Can you even imagine the disasters in store for us if these guileless, instant gratification-addicted, tantrum pitchers get installed in Washington, with the national security apparatus at their command?
When Dick Cheney selected himself as vice president in 1999, he was a known entity. Not a household name, but the man had held government positions since the Nixon Administration. Unfortunately for McCain, the only pubic knowledge about Governor Palin was that she was a first term governor of a wilderness state. More unfortunately for McCain, what folks have learned since her nomination hasn’t helped her or his approval numbers.
In the Palins, it looks like we have the best of the GOP world order: The mean, the dishonest, the stupid, and the sketchy.
John McCain and the Republican Woody for the Reaganesque
With Christopher Buckley’s “coming out” for Obama, he joins a handful of disappointed conservative icons and leaders. I will sit back and enjoy it, glad of converts and of anything, really, to get this election finished in Obama’s favor. But I can’t help but remark on Buckley’s comments. They hit my nausea center. I want to share the offending paragraphs:
:
McCain rose to power on his personality and biography. He was authentic. He spoke truth to power. He told the media they were “jerks” (a sure sign of authenticity, to say nothing of good taste; we are jerks). He was real. He was unconventional. He embraced former anti-war leaders. He brought resolution to the awful missing-POW business. He brought about normalization with Vietnam—his former torturers! Yes, he erred in accepting plane rides and vacations from Charles Keating, but then, having been cleared on technicalities, groveled in apology before the nation. He told me across a lunch table, “The Keating business was much worse than my five and a half years in Hanoi, because I at least walked away from that with my honor.” Your heart went out to the guy. I thought at the time, God, this guy should be president someday.
A year ago, when everyone, including the man I’m about to endorse, was caterwauling to get out of Iraq on the next available flight, John McCain, practically alone, said no, no—bad move. Surge. It seemed a suicidal position to take, an act of political bravery of the kind you don’t see a whole lot of anymore.
But that was—sigh—then. John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?
All this is genuinely saddening, and for the country is perhaps even tragic, for America ought, really, to be governed by men like John McCain—who have spent their entire lives in its service, even willing to give the last full measure of their devotion to it. If he goes out losing ugly, it will be beyond tragic, graffiti on a marble bust.
Please. What Buckley and all those republican columnists and icons aching for the romance of the Reagan days fail to recognize are the politics of expediency. This is to say that McCain could effectively play his “mavericky” persona when there was room to do so.
Republicans, especially those with access to the media, seem to think the operatic heroes of the right exist without context or history. Reagan could not have sung without the economic and foreign policy travails of the 1970s and the reheated leftovers of the Cold War. McCain could not exist without the silent resentment of conservatives toward the emerging religious right and the nostalgic attachment to a man who suffered nobly in the face of a national defeat. Was it McCain’s fault that his party grudgingly accepted the ascendancy of Jerry Falwell? No. Did he court that silent discontent? Of course he did. He was mavericky.
I should not complain at this unidimensional enshrinement of the likes of Reagan and McCain. Political fanboys and girls, like all other converts, are welcome to my part of the bandwagon. Yes, I’m glad for these types of endorsements, but the collective Republican woody for the Reaganesque still makes me want to throw up.
Cy Cobb
Oh my god, just shoot me now.
I don’t really think it will happen, but what if McCain wins? What if this 72 year old man with serious bouts of cancer in his recent history and a legacy of serious additional physical ailments wins the election and this person is our vice president? What has McCain done to our country?
I’m officially speechless. I’m almost tempted to say, “Yes! Delay the vice presidential debate. Otherwise it would be too painful.” – Cy Cobb
Palin Makes History!
Say what you will about the Palin/Couric interview on CBS, Sarah Palin made history tonight and that must be recognized.
With the release of the interview, Sarah Palin became the first vice presidential candidate to lick themselves on national TV. Yes, folks, she’s reached a level never before contemplated by any vp candidate at any time in the great history of the USA.
I doubt Couric even realizes her part and place in this momentous occasion. Silly woman. Sometimes the visuals count just a little more than the interviewee’s anxious memorization of shallow talking points. Forget content (such as it is), think saliva.
I defy anyone (that means you, Couric) to uncover a single televised vice presidential candidate licking moment in our history. Go ahead. I dare ya. Oh…..you say “I’ll try to find you some and I’ll bring ‘em to ya”?
Well, ok then. Just let me know.
For those of you who insist on context, here’s the link. It’s only five minutes and forty seconds out of your life. –Cy Cobb
Sarah and Todd Palin are Sketchy
There’s something about this couple. I’ve met them before. Rapid risers who’ve not completely or thoroughly arranged their lives to bear scrutiny. A DUI, an unexpected pregnancy, a vendetta against an ex-brother-in-law, a feud with a mother-in-law, a governor with a husband who takes more than a little interest in how she operates the state. This picture sort of sums it up:
Sarah and Todd Palin are sketchy. Not to be trusted. Up to something. Low brow.
And it’s not just the mysterious lies, half truths, confabulations. It’s not just that the McCain campaign is now running Alaska and all Alaskan press inquiries are now referred to campaign staff. Or that these folks have a mean streak. It’s all of that…and….well, their sketchiness.
When Dick Cheney selected himself as vice president in 1999, he was a known entity. Not a household name, but the man had held government positions since the Nixon Administration. Unfortunately for McCain, the only pubic knowledge about Governor Palin was that she was a first term governor of a wilderness state. More unfortunately for McCain, what folks have learned since her nomination hasn’t helped her or his approval numbers.
Paulson will be able to “Catch a Pass He Threw to Himself”
Rep. Jim McDermott (D WA) delivers a succinct description of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson latest bailout plan:
Very amusing.
McCain’s RTC Problem
Setting the stage.
On September 18, 2008, John McCain called for the establishment of an entity like the Resolution Trust Corporation of the 1980s and 1990s.
Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called for the creation of mortgage and financial institutions trust, which would work with the private sector and regulators to identify institutions that are weak and take remedies to strengthen them before they become insolvent. “For troubled institutions, this will provide an orderly process through which to identify bad loans and eventually sell them,” McCain said in a speech.
Let’s Do the Time Warp Again….
What was the RTC? From Wikipedia:
The Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) was a United States Government-owned asset management company charged with liquidating assets (primarily real estate-related assets, including mortgage loans) that had been assets of savings and loan associations (S&Ls) declared insolvent by the Office of Thrift Supervision, as a consequence of the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. It also took over the insurance functions of the former Federal Home Loan Bank Board. It was created by the Financial Institutions Reform Recovery and Enforcement Act (FIRREA), adopted in 1989. In 1995, its duties were transferred to the Savings Association Insurance Fund of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
Between 1989 and mid-1995, the Resolution Trust Corporation closed or otherwise resolved 747 thrifts with total assets of $394 billion. [1]
And what did it cost the taxpayers? According to the FDIC (pdf), plenty. A short summary is available here:
How much did the RTC cleanup cost the taxpayer?
According to analysis by the FDIC, the total amount incurred by the taxpayer came to $75.6 billion, while the private sector absorbed just $7.1 billion. The taxpayer covered more than 90% of the cost of the bailout. The FSLIC also accumulated losses. The total tab to the taxpayer as of 1999 came out to $123 billion, or about 81% of the total costs.
Moreover, the situation today is far, far different than that of 1989. According to Sebastian Mallaby in an Op-Ed in today’s Washington Post,
the RTC, which was created in 1989 to clean up the wreckage of the savings-and-loan crisis, bears little resemblance to what is being contemplated now. The RTC collected and eventually sold off loans made by thrifts that had gone bust. The administration proposes to buy up bad loans before the lenders go bust. This difference raises several questions.
The differences, according to Mallaby, are vast enough to defeat the use of an RTC like entity to save Wall Street’s ass.
In the 1980s, the government did not need a strategy to decide which bad loans to take over; it dealt with anything that fell into its lap as a result of a thrift bankruptcy. But under the current proposal, the government would go out and shop for bad loans. These come in all shapes and sizes, so the government would have to judge what type of loans it wants. They are illiquid, so it’s hard to know how to value them. Bad loans are weighing down the financial system precisely because private-sector experts can’t determine their worth. The government would have no better handle on the problem.
In practice this means the government would make subjective choices about which bad loans to buy, and it would pay more than fair value. Billions in taxpayer money would be transferred to the shareholders and creditors of banks, and the banks from which the government bought most loans would be subsidized more than their rivals. If the government bought the most from the sickest institutions, it would be slowing the healthy process in which strong players buy up the weak, delaying an eventual recovery. The haggling over which banks got to unload the most would drag on for months. So the hope that this “systematic” plan can be a near-term substitute for ad hoc AIG-style bailouts is illusory.
And, according to an article from the Wall Street Journal online:
The RTC seemed controversial and ambitious at the time. Any analog today would be even more complex. The RTC dispensed mostly of commercial real estate. Today’s troubled assets are complex debt securities — many of which include pieces of other instruments, which in turn include pieces of others, many steps removed from the actual mortgages or consumer loans on which they are based. Unraveling these strands will be tedious and getting at the underlying collateral, difficult.
There were other problems with the RTC at the time, which, although tempered by oversight and accountability not yet present in the current bailout structure, ran out of money as Republicans in Congress used the situation to stick it to the newly elected President Clinton:
Resolution Trust ran out of money in late 1990 and only after several unsuccessful attempts did Congress approve more money in March 1991. The delay cost several hundred million dollars in extra losses at savings and loans in Government hands.
The defeat of the House bill highlights the lawmakers’ independence from their leadership. Representative Robert H. Michel, Republican of Illinois and minority leader, actively supported the bill but was unable to contain a large group of House Republicans who are ideologically opposed to the tight regulations on savings and loans and who are eager to watch House Democrats squirm on any vote concerning financial institutions.
So McCain must happily roll in the bed his mouth made for him earlier this week as the Fed will play the RTC card in urging Congress to ride to the rescue. And although Sen. Chis Dodd has said there’s no time to set up an RTC like entity, some of the folks on the left, like Barney Frank and Paul Volcker have supported the idea.
Given the complexity of the underlying financial problems today and the nature of the debt involved, an RTC solution is too little, too late, and too expensive. Given the chance to propose a solution, McCain went to the taxpayer well once again, calling on the American public to save Wall Street’s sorry ass from the excesses deregulators like McCain encouraged.
Senator Obama needs to get in front of this to tell the public that such a tiny slap on the wrist for the banks that got us into this mess at taxpayers expense won’t work and only encourages bad behavior in the future. He needs to call for a solution that helps Wall Street and homeowners and do it even if it looks like Paulson’s proposal will pass. Because the Fed proposal, John McCain’s proposal does nothing to help the American taxpayer and everything to help banks.
An RTC type solution is the natural consequence of vast, GOP-fueled deregulation and the first place politicians like McCain want to go in order to make the taxpayers pay for his cronies’ mistakes.
I predict that McCain will play this big this week, setting the stage for a faux economic populist message to be delivered at the first debate. Obama needs to get ahead of this and do it soon.
UPDATE: And lo and behold, Obama makes a great first move on the topic.
Here’s video of Obama’s speech today. It doesn’t deal specifically with the RTC idea, but if such a program is guided by the principles outlined in Obama’s speech, it’s a more sustainable solution. Obama’s call for international participation gives me hope that if an entity along the lines of the RTC is created, it’s not resurrected from the whole cloth of the old agency.
