Greg's Ramblings LIV

[Owlman]

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[10ac]

Aren't John {sic} Stewart and O'Reilly both just a couple of clowns?

[Bklyn]

yes, but only one does it on purpose.

[10ac]

Which one?

[Bklyn]

The one who works for the comedy channel.

(that may not be a big enough hint, come to think of it)

[Owlman]

pettifogging??? What the 'f' is pettifogging?

Let's see. One is a comedianne as a profession, the other is a trained journalist

[10ac]

"Let's see. One is a comedianne as a profession, the other is a trained journalis"
That understands how to make lots money getting on the bedwetters nerves.

[ReinaMissy]

O'Reilly is a journalist like Kobe Bryant is a faith healer.

[10ac]

...and they both make a ton of money.

[Owlman]

No, O'Reilly is a journalist like Jeff Van Gundy is a basketball player. He knows what you're supposed to do, he just won't do it.

[10ac]

I don't watch O'Reilly but Im glad he drives DSL nuts.

[Mad]

Pettifogging

In the later middle ages, there was a class of lawyers who earned their livings making a great deal of fuss over minor legal cases. About 1560 they came to be called pettifoggers. They often had limited concern for scruples or conscience and the term was deeply contemptuous.

Petty, then as now, meant something minor or trivial (from the French petit, small), so that part is obvious enough, but where does fogger come from?

Theories abound. One of the better known, and quoted as fact in a few dictionaries, is that it originated in a German family named Fugger, who were successful merchants and financiers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, based in Augsburg. German, together with Dutch and other Germanic languages, also had variations on fugger as a word for people who were wealthy or grasping about money, or whose business methods were disreputable. Hence in English fogger, dating from the later sixteenth century but long obsolete, was a word for an underhand dealer; this might just be the source.

Another form used at the time was pettifactor, which might have come from an old sense of factor for a person who acts as an agent, so somebody who looks after small matters for others. However, most experts think that pettifactor actually came along later as a corrupted form of pettifogger. People were trying to make sense of this odd word fogger that didn’t then exist in the language and converted it to one they knew.

The lawyers called pettifoggers spent their time arguing about matters of small importance. The term became popular, and spawned derivatives like pettifogging. These survived the original term, which is now considered archaic, but we retain in the latter word the idea of somebody who places too much emphasis on trifles or who quibbles about minor matters.

[10ac]

"In the later middle ages, there was a class of lawyers who earned their livings making a great deal of fuss over minor legal cases"

And so it goes...

[Bklyn]

Heh. So the lady of the house was effectively a "Mother Fugger."

(Try the veal, I'll be here all week)

[Bklyn]

Fuck I care? If he's a rapist, put him in jail. If that is enough to force Greece into default, then so be it. It's like a modification of that bullshit reality we had in 2008, "too important to fail."

(May 17, 2011) -- The risk of Greece defaulting is increasing since the arrest of of International Monetary Fund (IMF) head Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Pacific Investment Management Co.’s (PIMCO) Mohamed El-Erian said.

In an article featured in Reuters, El-Erian wrote, referring to Strauss-Kahn, or, as he is commonly known, DSK: "We must wait to make a full assessment until we know the outcome of ongoing police investigations into allegations that, according to his lawyer, DSK intends to 'contest vigorously.' Having said that, some commentators are already taking the view that the IMF could lose its managing director, and that France could lose a leading candidate for next year’s presidential elections."

According to El-Erian, if Strauss-Kahn were forced to step down, confidence in the IMF would be eroded. "And it would pull the rug from under initiatives aimed at enabling it to play a more effective role in global policy coordination and, more generally, in improving global economic governance and filling a damaging vacuum at the center of the international monetary system," El-Erian stated.

In an interview with Bloomberg TV, El-Erian described Strauss-Kahn’s arrest and the impact on the IMF: “This stunning development could not have come at a worse time. The IMF is like an army and the general is very important in that institution. The IMF is involved right now in the debt crisis in Europe, newly democratic countries like Egypt are looking to it for help and you need the IMF to coordinate this global healing. It is the worst possible time to lose your general.” He added that one should not underestimate the importance of Strauss-Kahn, and that without him, "it’s going to be much more difficult to coordinate the European governments.”

Yesterday, a New York judge ordered Strauss-Kahn to be held without bail. After being charged with sexually assaulting and trying to rape a hotel housekeeper on May 14, he was sent to the city's Rikers Island jail complex. Meanwhile, Straus-Kahn has vehemently denied the allegations.

Just a couple of days before the arrest of Straus-Kahn, the IMF calmed fears on Greece, noting that the country is well-positioned to avoid the restructuring of its debt. However, the IMF also warned that Europe's debt crisis could still spread to core euro zone countries and the emerging economies of eastern Europe.

According to the organization, substantial measures have already been put in place in the euro area to overcome the crisis. Nationally, new policies are being implemented to bolster confidence. Regionally, the governance framework is being revamped. "Important actions are still required to deal decisively with weak banks across Europe’s advanced economies, and to follow through with implementing the EU-wide reforms that have been agreed in principle," the IMF noted.

[Bklyn]

Via the indefatigable Marbury, proof of power in simplicity. This is Napolean’s failed Russian invasion of 1812, shown in graphic form. Constructed by a French engineer by the name of Charles Joseph Minard, the beige line represents the army starting its march eastward; when it turns black, it is in retreat from Moscow. Overlaid on the picture is the temperature dropping as the army retreats, as well as physical impediments, such as rivers, that the army encountered. You’ll notice that the line gets thinner and thinner as it approaches Moscow and pulls back. This is men dying. Near the end of the retreat, you’ll see a sharp cut in line size. It was at this point that half of what was left of the force drowned attempting to forge the Berezina River. In the end, 10,000 of the 420,000 soldiers – 1

[Hizzy III]

I've got that exact same map on my wall here at the office.

[Bklyn]

Since the day of Alexander Hamilton, the United States has never defaulted on the federal debt.

That’s what we budget-watchers always say. It’s a great talking point. One that helps bolster the argument that default should not be an option in Washington’s ongoing debt limit slowdown.

There’s just one teensy problem: it isn’t true. As Jason Zweig of the Wall Street Journal recently noted, the United States defaulted on some Treasury bills in 1979. And it paid a steep price for stiffing bondholders.

Investors in T-bills maturing April 26, 1979 were told that the U.S. Treasury could not make its payments on maturing securities to individual investors. The Treasury was also late in redeeming T-bills which become due on May 3 and May 10, 1979. The Treasury blamed this delay on an unprecedented volume of participation by small investors, on failure of Congress to act in a timely fashion on the debt ceiling legislation in April, and on an unanticipated failure of word processing equipment used to prepare check schedules.

The United States thus defaulted because Treasury’s back office was on the fritz.

Some may quibble about whether this constitutes default. After all, the United States did eventually make its payments. And the disruption applied to only a sliver of its debt – certain T-bills owned by individual investors.

And the nation still stands. But that hardly means we should run the experiment again and at larger scale. Zivney and Marcus examined what happened to T-bill interest rates as a result of this small, temporary default. They find a surprisingly large effect. As best they can tell, T-bill interest rates increased about 60 basis points after the first default and remained elevated for at least several months thereafter.

http://blogs.forbes.com/beltway/2011/05 ... ury-bills/

[Chuck Nevitt]

Have we talked about this? Your stereotypical striving "Hollywood" blonde and the guys who focus on bagging them exclusively for fear of what other guys think must find it threatening that Arnie seems to have been attracted to a heavy Latin housekeeper type. My guess is that while Maria Shriver was once a rather hot Seventies rich hippie chick, she isn't doing that damned if you do, damned if you don't war against aging. Plus, she's a political female by heredity and by choosing - in a word, boring. So I can see where a woman, far from a "10" but presumably with a lot of animal spirits got the Governator's attention.

http://jezebel.com/5805029/the-obsessio ... ugly-women

[T Dot O Dot]

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