Motley Moose – Archive

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Cross-posted at River Twice Research.

With a slew of major companies reporting earnings so far, it’s clear that expectations were severely skewed to the negative. Once again, Wall Street analysts overshot – this time to the downside. The substantial margin expansion reported by Intel; the higher-than-anticipated profitability of IBM; and the blow-out quarters of Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan all stand in contrast to sentiment just a few weeks ago, which was grim and getting grimmer. So what happened?

First, the robust results of some of the banks so far is the result of trading revenue and changes in accounting rules rather than a sudden improvement in losses from bad loans. Still, income is income, and the more they generate, the easier it will be to absorb those losses from consumer, commercial and business loans that will continue to go sour for some time.

This is too good not to share. I know there are people that are mad about the financial situation and Goldman Sachs part in it, but this guy is really angry. At one point in the video he says that he blames GS for a personal loss of $10,000. Maybe that’s where his anger comes from, maybe it’s more than that.

Anchorage Daily News reports that an amorphous blob of unknown biological matter stretching across miles of open ocean is threatening the Alaskan coast. North Slope Borough Planning and Community Services Department officials, joined by the U.S. Coast Guard, flew out to Wainwright to investigate. The agencies found “globs” of the stuff floating miles offshore Friday and collected samples for testing.

One state official, on condition of anonymity, noted that there have yet to be any sightings of the blob and Sarah Palin in the same place at the same time.  “I’m not suggesting that there is any connection between the two – like a Secret Identity of anything”, the well-connected source was heard to comment, “I’m just sayin’.”

With health care the topic of the week, I found a friend of mine on Facebook…my old Republican foil at PBS…with an interesting status;

Obama wants universal healthcare solved by the august recess…HAHA how about we resolve THE ECONOMY FIRST so that WE can AFFORD healthcare…and the plan is to take money from the wealthy so the poor can waste time all day going to the hospital….AWESOME.

The thread the followed went for 30 comments and included mostly those in support of healthcare reform…but I got lumped into a spirited debate between my friend (titled as FRIENDS below) and some other dude (titled as OTHER GUY). Suddenly, I found myself in a scene remiscent of the one I was told occured in the 1960’s between Pat Buchanan and Hunter S. Thompson…minus the Wild Turkey.  

Michael Steele and the GOP sent me another survey today.  This time asking for my opinions about the state of healthcare in America.  As anyone who has read my thoughts on the topic would know, I am a hesitant supporter of reform and am generally fraught with concern about the implications of any solution to the current dilemma, so I am precisely the kind of moderate voter that the GOP should be trying to win over to its side on this issue.

Let’s see how well they do.

I’m home in New York for a few weeks…the good old melting pot. I grew up in Southwest Queens, a fabulous mixture of cultures and ethnicities…and a plurality of white Italian/Irish Catholics who didn’t flee to Long Island in the 1980’s despite their obvious xenophobia.

My block is still mainly of the latter kind…my family absolutely screams xenophobia. Those “there are no white people here” and “We speak English in this country” types.

So needless to say, an uproar occured when a group of Latinos moved in across the street last fall.  

Every year, malnutrition kills five million children – that’s one child every six seconds.  Many do not get the milk, vitamins and minerals their developing bodies need. Furthermore, some mothers in these villages can’t produce enough milk themselves and can’t afford to buy it. Even if milk was available, its very difficult to store — there’s no electricity, so no refrigeration. Powdered milk is useless because most don’t have clean water.

However ‘Doctors Without Borders’ or ‘Médecins Sans Frontières’ believes that there is a product that can save millions of these children.  And could possibly be the most important advance ever to cure and prevent malnutrition.

Plumpy’nut.

“Don’t bet against us. We are going to make this thing happen,” said Barack Obama to reporters yesterday when he announced that he expected a Senate Health Plan to come out of Max Baucus’ Finance Committee by the end of the week.

Obama is committed to having this plan out before Congress takes its August vacation (does it dawn on you that these guys take a lot of time off? I guess when you’re collecting from insurance companies and other lobbyists you have to make appearances at their summer gatherings…), and time is running out.

Montazeri issues a fatwa.

Things in Iran have gotten interesting.  With Montazeri making such a bold statement, and Rafsanjani scheduled to make his first public statement in weeks, it is a new stage in the Iran situation.

The NYT is running a similar story from their Asia desk.

News outlets have died down with their coverage, with news trickling down to bare commentary, but like the revolution that catapulted the current Ayatollahs into power, this struggle for power within Iran is taking time. Especially given that the protesters aren’t calling for a change in the system, but demanding it live up to the ideals that it’s declared.

To catch folks up The Green Brief is dang handy.