Please, Br’er Fox!!!

Drudge [screenshot]:

NBC BANS COULTER FOR LIFE; CUT FROM 'TODAY' SHOW OVER BOOK'S CLAIMS, NO MORE CABLE

Drew M:

How much did she have to pay them?

Zing!


UPDATE 090106 01:30 (Via Ace): NBC says, “No, no, just too much other news and stuff going on in Washington and its not a ban she can come back any time just not right now ...”

So:  Who you gonna believe, some PR weasel at NBC, or Matt Drudge?

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 23:37:31 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Good Time Music

If the name Ferde Grofé prompts any recognition today, it’s most often for being the composer of the Grand Canyon Suite, or as the arranger/orchestrator for George Gershwin’s Rhapsody In Blue. But Grofé had a long career as performer, arranger, and composer, beginning as an accompanist and bar musician, then working for Paul Whiteman as pianist and arranger, going on to lead radio orchestras, teach at the Julliard School, write symphonic works, and compose three film scores. Along the way he recorded 64 piano rolls for the Ampico company, and 23 of them have just been made available, played on a restored Reproducing Piano, on this compact disc.

Grofé made his roll recordings between 1924 and 1927, a period when he was playing in the Whiteman orchestra. The ones on this cd are all “pop” (at the time, they would probably have been called “jazz”)... popular music and showtunes recorded at dance tempo, often “with words (printed on the roll, so they’d scoll by as it was played) for singing.” Some rolls are pure Grofé– reproducing exactly what he played, while others (marked “Played by FERDE GROFÉ Assist’d”) had additional notes or phrases added to the artist’s initial recording to fill out the sound and make the arrangement more interesting.  All were produced using Ampico’s “Reproducing” system, which encoded the pianist’s pedalling and dynamics, as well as the notes he played.

These recordings are just plain fun!  With the CD’s “living room” acoustic, the Pierian folks have captured what it must have been like to sit (or dance!) around the ’ol (player) piano back in the 1920s.  Grofé’s playing is dazzling, the music is cheerful, and the sound (suggestion: Play at “performance volume”) is first-rate.  The songs themselves are guaranteed toe-tappers from the earliest years of the Great American Songbook, and if they all aren’t instantly familiar, they should be.  Liner notes are extensive, just too bad they didn’t include those “words for singing.”

Here’s a little “Charlie, My Boy,” just for a taste.


The details:

(And if you find you enjoyed this one, check out PIR0029: “Let’s Face The Music and Dance.”)

Related:
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Posted by: Old Grouch in Reviews at 22:26:37 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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It depends on how it fits the agenda

Seventy-seven percent of Americans believe that the U.S. media is making the economic situation worse by projecting fear into people's minds.

The majority of those surveyed feel that the financial press, by focusing on and embellishing negative news, is damaging consumer confidence and damping investment, making a difficult situation much worse.  The poll was conducted via telephone, December 4 - 7. - Opinion Research Corporation

Compare the last 6 years (or so) of unremitting (and largely unwarranted- until recently) doom-and-gloom economic coverage, against the press’ bend-over-backward efforts to avoid riling the American public after 9/11.

Via:  IP

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 01:26:25 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Explanations, please?

Okay, can somebody explain this without invoking the usual backroom dealing and corruption?

WASHINGTON -- The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. reached a preliminary agreement to sell the remains of IndyMac Bank -- one of the biggest bank failures in U.S. history -- to a team of high-profile investors, suggesting there is private money willing to invest in troubled banks if the government agrees to shoulder heavy losses.

The investment team, which includes affiliates of private-equity chieftain Christopher Flowers, hedge-fund investors George Soros and John Paulson, and computer mogul Michael Dell, will contribute $1.3 billion in capital toward a purchase of IndyMac Federal Bank, valued by the FDIC at $13.9 billion, which is the amount of deposits, loans, securities, branches, and other assets to be held by the bank on Day 1.

The complex terms also include seller financing that could take the form of Federal Home Loan Bank loans and other sources...

[... Then, 12 paragraphs, and a jump to page A6 later...]

As part of the deal, the FDIC agreed to share future losses on a set pool of IndyMac assets...

...IndyMac will assume the first 20% of losses on these assets, which the FDIC wouldn’t quantify until the deal closes.  The FDIC will absorb 80% of the next 10% of losses, and then 95% of losses on the remainder of the portfolio. - The Wall Street Journal ^[1]

So Soros, Paulson, Flowers, Dell, and friends are getting almost $14 billion assets for a bit less than 10 cents on the dollar.  That feels like a typical fire-sale ratio, although it would have been nice if, for something worth $14 billion, the FDIC could have held out for a better price: Was the only choice to give Soros, etal a $13 billion gift from the taxpayers?  Couldn’t they find somebody who would have paid, say, $2 billion?

And then there’s the other shoe: Those “guarantees.”  Not satisfied with a 90% margin on IndyMac’s “quantified (?)” assets, the “investment team” held out for federal– that means taxpayer, you know– protection against losses for another “unquantified” block, probably (the article doesn’t say) illiquid mortgage derivatives and the like.  The new owners say they will generously accept the first 20% of any losses, but taxpayers get to make up all but a pittance of the rest... which can rise to as much as 74½ % of whatever “value” the FDIC dreams up.

And this stuff is to be valued how?  At “market”?  (No, that would be zero.)  At “book (before disaster)”?  Hel-lo 74%!  At some “best guess”?  And how are losses determined?  If they aren’t based on the entire “set pool,” then this is just another way to privatize profits while sticking the public with the losses... and didn’t we just run ’round that bush with Fannie and Freddie?

All in all, at first glance (and even second glance) this looks to me more like a plan to funnel federal money to specific favored individuals than a way to restructure a bank.  But I’ll admit that I’m just an ordinary clown who doesn’t “do” high finance.  So maybe someone who does can explain where I got confused.

Elsewhere (added 090105 15:43):

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Posted by: Old Grouch in Rants at 19:49:30 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Sites linked - December, 2008

A flurry of posts in the last few days of the month turned what looked to be a dull December into (at least) a respectable one.  Total posts = 46, three better than November and 17 ahead of August’s y-t-d nadir (29). 

The December linklist is below the jump...

more...

Posted by: Old Grouch in Meta at 02:05:28 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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