Lately. . .

. . . I find the most gratifying way to react to the antics of our elected officials, is to use profanity

Ignoring the sad idiot who thinks the word 'rape' requires qualifiers, how about our 'friends' of the 'right' persuasion who, in 'their daily greed', are at it again, or are still at it, or who appear to always be at it. . . (forever and ever amen). . .

(from AlterNet / By Lynn Parramore)
"Ever since the Richmonder blog  posted a story last weekend pointing to suspicious-looking stock trades made by Paul Ryan on September 18, 2008 – the day Ben Bernanke and Hank Paulson met with Congressional leaders to warn of an economic collapse and the need for a giant bailout – the press has been at sixes and sevens. Was it insider trading? Wasn't it? First the story circulated rapidly. Then, when the Romney/Ryan campaign quickly issued denials, some journalists, most notably Benjy Sarlin of Talking Points Memo , leapt to “debunk” the story. Matt Yglesias of Slate , who first credited the story, apologized and backed off.

Earlier this week, I posted an article challenging the denials made by the Romney/Ryan campaign.

John Carney, a senior editor at CNBC.com has responded to my piece on Paul Ryan’s insider stock trades in September 2008. Unlike the Romney campaign, he does not try to claim that Congressman Ryan did not have time to do the trades before markets closed at 4pm. (There is, of course, the possibility that Ryan traded afterhours; that was no part of my story.) Nor does he take refuge in the pathetic argument that some anonymous trustee did it. His objection is that Congressman Ryan’s trading that day followed a larger pattern evident in other transactions that year.

Carney writes:

    He did trade in and out of two financial names in 2008: Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. He sold shares in Citi in January, March, June, August, September and December. He bought Citi in February, April, July and October. In other words, Ryan was following a pattern of alternating between buying and selling shares of Citi throughout the year...

    Ryan sold shares in Goldman in February, August, October, November and December. He bought shares in Goldman in January, March, June and September.

    Notice a pattern here? Each of Ryan’s purchases of Goldman shares coincides with the sale of a share of Citi.

    Ryan follows this pattern of going long Goldman when he sold Citi on September 18. That day, Ryan also took part in a meeting where Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke met with Congressional leaders to make their case that the situation in the financial sector had turned so dire as to threaten the entire economy.

Teasing out meaningful patterns from stock market data is a tricky business. It has a tendency to turn researchers into numerologists – they are constantly tempted to find all kinds of significance in some selection of numbers. But look closely at the qualification with which Carney introduced his discussion of the Goldman purchases:

    “The only breaks in this pattern were (a) when he neither bought nor sold any stocks in his portfolio in May, (b) skipping November’s sale of Citi and selling in December instead, and (c) selling shares in Citi in both August and September .” [emphasis added]

In other words, Congressman Ryan followed a pattern, except when he didn’t. And in what month does Ryan depart from the pattern? Why, by marvelous coincidence, September, of course.

Perhaps half a loaf is better than none, but Carney began his piece suggesting that those who credit the Ryan insider trading story have fallen under the influence of “liberal fantasies.” Yes, he bought Goldman while selling Citi, but the quick second Citi sale was anomalous.  Congressman Ryan, by Carney’s own admission, plainly broke from his routine on September 18, 2008. . . "

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Oh ye. . .

. . . of little faith. . .

(from huffingtonpost.com, by Bernard-Henri Levy)
". . . Could we be living in an era of such madness, one that has lost its compass and its points of reference to such an extent that this affair of one of the three major rating agencies' withdrawal of America's and then France's triple "A" has taken on such importance?

Let's go over the facts.

Here is a firm, Standard and Poor's, which fulfills its company's mission, earns its shares on the market, augments and consolidates its profits, and benefits its shareholders by offering -- as it is entitled to -- a specific product called a rating.

Here is a firm that -- and it remains within its rights, but this should at least raise some suspicions -- has never stopped making mistakes, failing to foresee any of the crises that have led the world to the edge of the abyss, from Enron to the subprimes, from Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy to that of the Greek debt.

And here is a firm, still Standard and Poor's, whose criteria of appreciation are marked by subjectivity, as is the case for every human endeavor, one whose methodologies are not only vague, but opaque and, from the little we know of them, stamped with the seal of a singular amateurism. For, if we believe what we read in Le Monde (15-16 January), this withdrawal of France's triple-A rating was the work of a German analyst who, seconded by a Slovene assistant, spent "a few months" gathering "public data", blending them with the results of "some interviews" with "ministers, members of the opposition, and bankers", and then, finally, being "bombarded with questions" during a "visioconference" by a group of "five to fifteen people", none of whom were particularly familiar with the dossier.

Yet, when the verdict falls, when, ending the mounting suspense cleverly orchestrated by its communications service, the agency renders its decree, when it publicly announces the result of the little reflection concocted by these two analysts, goaded on (once again, Le Monde's investigation) by the five to fifteen other individuals who are "more or less experts", it's a thunderbolt, a tsunami of comments and contrition, a national and global earthquake. It's as though Jupiter had roared, as though God had spoken, it's as if truth itself had just fallen from the sky -- and the few voices that attempt to qualify things with, "Yes, it's an interesting point of view, but it's only one point of view and perhaps we would do well to compare these uncertain conclusions with others" are promptly swept away by the tidal wave. . . "

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