January 2008
You are currently browsing the articles from Jay Currie written in the month of January 2008.
People living in the Gaza Strip held a candlelight march Sunday evening to protest the closure of their main power plant Sunday, due to a fuel shortage….
Defence Minister Ehud Barak halted shipments to Gaza after Hamas renewed rocket attacks against the town of Sderot in southern Israel last week.
About a third of Gaza’s 1.5 million residents were expected to be affected by the shutdown. Hours after the blackout, Hamas said five patients died because of the cutoff of electricity in hospitals but it couldn’t be confirmed independently. cbc
Hamas really are slow learners. The other two thirds of Gazians could be in the dark shortly as their electricity comes directly from Israel.
I can’t imagine that the fuel shutdown comes as any great surprise. It was difficult to imagine how the Palis could be any worse off than they were under the Troll of Ramallah TM but there is a positive Palestinian genius for self inflicted suffering.
Here’s a hint, stop firing rockets into Israel and your lives will get a lot better.
Written by jay on January 21st, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on International and Terror.
I understand that a number of haters - two in particular - have gleefully relied upon Messrs. Lemire and Klatt as sources to viciously defame a good man.
Would you regard two notorious supporters of neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups as “experts” in anything? Of course not. Only a hateful fool would do such a thing. the liar warren kinsella *
Strangley, the liar Kinsella does not for an instant deny that Warman was sock puppeting bigotry. “Defame” is an interesting choice of words. I regularly call the liar Kinsella a liar because I have the evidence sitting on my well backed up harddrives that he lied. It is certainly defamatory. It is also true. When the liar Kinsella accuses people of defaming Richard Warman he implies that what they are saying is not true; but, in fact, it may both defame what little character this shrimp has and be completely true. Which Warren knows and which he is using to mount a defense of the little creep.
But the really fun part is that the liar Kinsella would not know a principled argument if it ran over him…twice. I don’t have to agree with, like or even know Lemire to be interested in the evidence he has found of Richard Warman spewing racist, sexist filth about a black, female Canadian Senator. This “good man” has, apparently, written material which would make even Robert McClelland blanch. Exposing this sock puppet bigot and the Human Rights Commission which enables him is vitally important to anyone who values free expression in Canada. Repellent as I find much of the material that Lemire has helped to put up on the net, the bigger picture is about stopping Warman’s vicious abuse of the CHRC system and investigating the extent to which the CHRC has enabled that abuse.
“Good men” don’t lie. Simple concept Warren. You should try it.
* Yes, I have violated my general policy of shunning the liar Kinsella. If he is willing to go to smear overdrive to defend a racist little man like Richard Warman he needs to be called on it and that means actually linking to the liar’s revolting site.
Written by jay on January 21st, 2008 with 12 comments.
Read more articles on Canadian Politics and Liberals and blogging and culture and media and tech.
Not content with having the Canadian Human Rights Commission act as his own, private, shakedown agency, the easily offended Richard Warman has, apparently, taken to posting vile, racist, remarks under a now traced phony name. I am not going republish this filth on my blog but go over to Free Dominion for the details.
Three observations: first, this is profoundly corrupt. Fake posts written by a serial complainant who then complains about the fake post should be enough to prompt a full scale, judicial, inquiry into the CHRC. How many other bigot-bots has Richard Warman fired into forums and comment sections and then complained about. At a minimum every one of Richard Warman’s complaints to the CHRC - and he has won all of them - should be re-investigated for fraud.
Part of that judicial inquiry should focus on how complicit the CHRC or its staff have been in this Richard Warman fraud and any others which may have occurred.
Second, Richard Warman is a lawyer. As such he is not supposed to be defrauding quasi-judicial bodies such as the CHRC. As this story gains traction it will be interesting to see if, for example, the proprietors of Free Dominion, ask the Benchers of the Law Society of Upper Canada to investigate.
Third, the losing parties in Richard Warman CHRC complaints would be well advised to seek legal advice as to the possibility of re-opening their complaint and/or looking to real courts for damages against Richard Warman and the CHRC.
Frankly, what little credibility the CHRC had has just been shredded. If the Tories had any stones they would shut the Commission down pending the outcome of a really hardcore, judicial, investigation of Richard Warman’s fraud.
Written by jay on January 21st, 2008 with 13 comments.
Read more articles on Canadian Politics and Liberals and blogging and culture and media.
Next to Obama, Edwards comes off as even phonier than last time round. He’s so oleaginous it may be easier to siphon him than drill in ANWR. mark steyn the corner
Steyn is really, really mean…on behalf of good hair day, white guy plaintiffs’ lawyers I am very tempted to turn this nasty piece of work into my local Haman Rights Commission.
Has he no mercy, doesn’t he care who he hurts?
Callous and that has to be against the law..or it ought to be which is good enough for the HRC.
Written by jay on January 19th, 2008 with 1 comment.
Read more articles on Canadian Politics and media.
Thanks to innovations in banking products and regulations over the past generation, lenders don’t have nearly the same dependence on central bankers as a source of capital as they once did.
As a result, the banks’ funding costs have become less and less tied to central banks’ benchmark rates - typically the rates at which banks can borrow directly from central banks on an overnight basis.
Adam Posen, deputy director of the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said the explosive growth in structured-finance products such as mortgage-backed securities has served to further distance commercial banks’ lending costs from those implied by central bank rates. However, he said these products are merely the latest step in an evolution under way since the 1970s.
“The apex of central banks’ influence came and went a few years ago, even if people didn’t realize,” he said. “With every banking innovation, central banks have lost a bit of their ability to influence lending rates.” globe and mail
This is an arguable point. The BIS rules, which essentially encapsulate central bank’s thinking on the appropriate reserve levels, clearly constrain the banks. However there is no legal or financial reason why the banks have to march lockstep with the Bank of Canada or the fed.
We are about to enter a world in which banks go back to the old standards of credit evaluation. They will go there because tere is no one left to lay off the credit risk to.
3 billion plus at CIBC, 9 and counting at Citi: reality bites and it bites hard.
Walking away from the interest rates set by the central banks is a step towards the probity our banks actually need to embrace.
What would be interesting is if a large gap appeared between the BoC and the Chartered Banks lending rates appeared. Myself, I’d bet that the mighty Canadian dollar would drop like the proverbial rock in a sock. Because the banks would be saying…”We don’t believe you”. Cdn dollar buyers could be forgiven for seeing this as a sell signal.
Written by jay on January 17th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Canadian Politics.
Before his execution, in a spirit of reconciliation, Childers obtained a promise from his then 16-year-old son, the future President Erskine Hamilton Childers, to seek out and shake the hand of every man who had signed his father’s death warrant. Childers himself shook hands with each member of the firing squad that was about to execute him. His last words, spoken to them, were (characteristically) in the nature of a joke: “Take a step or two forward, lads. It will be easier that way.” belmont club
There are barricades and there are fences. It is important to remember the difference.
Written by jay on January 17th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Canadian Politics and law and media.
“We are going to have to discuss that very actively if they (the Pakistanis) are not able to deal with it on their own. We could consider that option with the NATO forces in order to help Pakistan help us pacify Afghanistan,” said Mr. Dion in Quebec City, commenting after his two-day trip to Afghanistan last weekend. “As long as we don’t solve the problem in Pakistan, I don’t see how we can solve it in Afghanistan.” national post
This is obviously true - as I pointed out here - but it is more than a little surprising coming from Dion.
Peter MacKay notes:
Defence Minister Peter MacKay told Canwest News Service Dion’s comments were off base.
“Mr. Dion can’t be serious to suggest NATO “intervene,” in another country while simultaneously saying Canada should abandon its United Nations-mandated NATO mission in Afghanistan,” he said in an e-mail.
“He has to explain to Canadians why he wants an “intervention” but wants to turn his back on Afghanistan, which has asked and continues to ask for Canada’s help. It’s inane.” national post
Getting the question half right is just not good enough for a future wannabe Prime Minister.
Written by jay on January 17th, 2008 with 1 comment.
Read more articles on Canadian Politics and Terror.
For example, an investment manager who bought AAA-rated tranches of collateralised debt obligations (CDO) in the past generated a return of 50 to 60 basis points higher than a similar AAA-rated corporate bond. That “excess” return was in fact compensation for the “tail” risk that the CDO would default, a risk that was no doubt perceived as small when the housing market was rollicking along, but which was not zero. If all the manager had disclosed was the high rating of his investment portfolio he would have looked like a genius, making money without additional risk, even more so if he multiplied his “excess” return by leverage. Similarly, the management of Northern Rock followed the old strategy of taking on tail risk, borrowing short and lending long and praying that the unlikely event of a liquidity shortage never materialised. All these strategies essentially earn the manager a premium in normal times for taking on beta risk that materialises only infrequently. These premiums are not alpha, since they are wiped out when the risk materialises. Raghuram Rajan, financial times via equity private
Finance for grown ups. The “sub-prime mess” is a convenient shorthand for “Bankers gone Wild”. Understanding that will make what is coming rather easier to comprehend if not actually enjoy. The weird part being that the sub-prime issue is a really rather small part of the whole. Sort of like the fat girl taking off her bra; ugly but hardly the main event.
Cheap debt does not cause losses. Being on the wrong side of information asymmetry does. When structures are complex, falling back to a careful look at incentives often is the best (and only) behavioral prediction mechanism. going private
Information asymmetry may be inherent in a particular transaction; however, across a bundle of transactions a bit of work should be able to bring information into rough balance. But not if the focus is on deal flow rather than deal quality.
The golden crumbs approach leads directly to deal flow. One piece of financial paper looks very much like another, the covenants are, more or less identical - quality? Well there were the four hundred appraisals but those are pro forma. Or are they. At the moment there are a lot of empty house with their pipes cracking in the frost which strongly suggest that appraisals and risk analysis are not just pro forma. They are what bankers do and if they don’t the information asymmetry bites them in the ass.
Written by jay on January 16th, 2008 with no comments.
Read more articles on Canadian Politics and Fiscal Policy and International.
Huckabee is made to order for the Left: his rhetoric embodies their heretofore lunatic indictment that we’re no better that what we’re fighting against. Let’s “amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards”? Who needs to spin when the script speaks for itself? Where has Huck been for the last seven years? Does he not get that our enemies — the people who want to end our way of life — believe they are simply imposing God’s standards? andy mccarthy the corner
Amen.
Written by jay on January 16th, 2008 with 1 comment.
Read more articles on Terror and US Politics and media and religion.
Nothwithstanding, by the nature of your position, that Muslims are the ones being portrayed as barbaric savages whilst adhering to a radical form of Islamic fundamentalism, your remarks trodden down the path of vigiliantism to justify the perfidious tactics used against legitimate (and seemingly necessary) state censorship.
Comment by Daniel Simard Lawiscool
Part of the problem with lawiscool and the law students who filed the complaint against Mark Steyn is their sheer incoherence - the faux legal language adding another layer of opacity.
Read the sentence quoted. What can it possibly mean? How would one “trodden down the path of vigiliantism (sic)?
On the other hand, Simard is not shy about what he wants “legitimate (and seemingly necessary) state censorship.”
If there was any doubt about fighting for free speech Simard’s call to protect “state censorship” should end it. This is purely and simply totalitarian. Incoherent, but the beauty of totalitarianism is it does not have to make sense because no one is allowed to question it. Which is, apparently, cool with Daniel Simard.
Written by jay on January 14th, 2008 with 11 comments.
Read more articles on Canadian Politics and blogging and law and media.
No older articles
Newer articles »