The thrill of the the Newt Opera hits the pause button after February 4 as we must wait until the March Super Tuesday to enjoy the Romney bashing again. By then, we will have two more jobs numbers and three more measures of the housing market for the Spring selling. The big wind that will shape the year is blowing foulweather from the East. The situation in Europe faces a climax in Greece in March, and speaking to Landon Thomas, NYT, and Jack Ewing, IHT, there does not appear an acceptable remedy. The ECB bought Greek bonds at 70-75 cents on the Euro, and it wants all its money back. Hedge funds and banks bought Greek bonds at 40 cents on the Euro, and it wants the same as everyone else gets in the managed failure, which could mean 50 cents. Meanwhile, the negotiators argue that the hedgies are "free riders"and must take a loss. Now you see how funny this will get, as everyone who bought Greek bonds weeks ago is trying to dump them at 30 cents on the dollar or less. And the Obama administration is counting on a recovery in 2012.  Also, Gordon Chang and Patrick Chovanec and Joe Sternberg convincingly present the case that the China economy is sagging with capitol flight as the property bubble deflates. Again, the Obama team is counting on China and Europe to stabilize? Can the US recover while the Greek-fuelled EU (below, happy days ever again in Athens?) and Asia stagnate? Unknown.

RNC compares all three Obama SOTU to discover a consistently platitudinous repetition. If it didn't work last year, or the year before, then let's make sure it doesn't work again this year. Watch the Fed announce it does not plan to raise rates until the end of 2014, after the mid-term Elections. This is unhappy portent. Speaking to Landon Thomas, NYT, about the protracted negotiations in the Eurozone re the Greek debt due in March. The ECB wants to be paid in full. The banks and hedgies holding Greek debt will bot take less than 50% on the Euro. What does this mean for 2012 Election? It means that POTUS in SOTU skipped the European recession mention because the White House knows that this is already a year of struggles and blame-shifting. China's slowdown is because the global economies are slowing. All this aims at a sluggish jobs picture, as the employers here hesitate again in mid-Winter to hire. The excellent weather in January will help boost the jobs created number due next week. Is it enough to boost Obama re-elect to IA, AZ, NM, NV (the Western path to 270)? Unknown. Spoke Ed Lazear, Hoover: 

Wednesday, 1/25/12 - John Batchelor's Heads Up Minute:   Is the jobs picture improving, or stagnating, or deteriorating? I'm John Batchelor; this is the Heads-Up Minute. The Obama administration is delighted with the gain of 200,000 private-sector jobs in the final month of 2011. Also positive was a separate report that showed the US jobless rate is back down to 8.5%. Another positive is that first-time unemployment claims declined to about 350,000. I learn from Stanford professor and Hoover Fellow Ed Lazear, who was chairman of George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, that another important measure is not so rosy. It compares the number of people fired to the number who quit in a month. At long last, the quits outnumber the fireds- but just barely. Also, the number of monthly hires today is just about the same as it was in January 2009, at the depths of the collapse. Conclusion: the jobs market still needs a long, long recuperation. I'm John Batchelor. Listen or Download this show

Newt Gingrich's passionate one-man victory in the South Carolina primary has established the 2012 GOP nomination as a comic opera to enjoy during another winter of discontent....  more

"We can go in two directions, one is for less opportunity and less fairness...I am going to lay out a blueprint...homegrown and alternative energy sources...getting people the skills they need...a return to American values...how we do it... " 

POTUS Obama presents the fog of the campaign early in order to give time for his team to build an alternative narrative that argues that a vote for the GOP is a vote for plutocracy. This implies that a vote for Obama is a vote for democracy. Simple, goofy, paint-by-numbers rhetoric. The general rules say that the incumbent gets to name the game.  The game is Pirates of the GOP.  Can the GOP nominee Mitt Romney present American capitalism in some fashion other than as piracy?  Unlikely to the satisfaction of the referees (TV).  There is something fun about this game.  Obama is the Federal collective from Heaven, protecting the needy civilians, the self-named 99%.  The GOP is the feudal pirate ship from Hades, raiding the shoreline at the bidding of the 1%.  What's the solution to this cartoon contest?  (Whisper:  the Q2 GDP has the final vote.)  

 

Above is a small clip of POTUS singing for his cash in NYC, and it is a measure of how effective Mr. Obama can be on the trail.  The GDP is the major challenge for Obama; however, in the meantime, the Chicago re-elect will gather acorns.  The GOP squabble in SC and FL, and then the February and March primaries, will shape Mitt Romney as he prepares to confront Obama next August.  Spoke Dan Henninger, WSJ, re the work that Bain Capital did in the 20th century, the new face of private equity refashioning the bigness of American business into a full value for the new century.  Henninger argues that Mitt Romney has a grand story to tell about the struggles of his father, George Romney, struggles from Mexico, to a wipe-out in the Depression, to the head of American Motors and Michigan governor.  Mitt Romney made the same climb to become super-wealthy, and if he can get past his reluctance, the Bain success is as admirable a trajectory as the climb of POTUS Obama.  Romney is the only man who can tell the story of what he did and why.  Capitalism is under assault by political professionals in the GOP and in the Democratic party.    POTUS Obama will make the case that his administration will protect the American people from the ravages of Wall Street; and Obama can sing the blues better than anyone.  Romney has the defense case, methodical, fact-filled, necessary.  

 

 

Related articles

• Obama caves into Chick from "Blade Runner" - Rejects Keystone XL Pipeline (ferrellgummit.wordpress.com)
• Can We Call the Keystone Cops? (freedomfighterusa.wordpress.com)
• Anti-Labor Koch Brothers Launch $6 Million Solyndra 'Workers' Attack Ad (thinkprogress.org)
• Pipeline Protest: The 99% Strike Back Against Keystone XL (thinkprogress.org)
• Obama's Rejection of Keystone A Sensible Decision (texasvox.org)
• Solyndra fails to garner bids for sale (reuters.com)
• Koch-Funded Americans For Prosperity Spends $6 Million on Another Bogus Solyndra Campaign (thinkprogress.org)
• Obama Picks Bainie for OMB Boss, OWS Pickets Obama's House (scrappleface.com)
• Aide: Solyndra layoffs 'no es bueno' (politico.com)
• Group spends $6 million linking Obama to Solyndra in ad (politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com)

The DNC launches a well constructed attack on Mitt Romney as a plutocrat who pays profoundly less than his fair share of taxes. The DNC does nto mention, but I will, that the reason Romney pays as little at 15% is that this is the tax codes of the US as constructed by a thousand thousand hands over the last one hundred years.  The Obama re-elect is putting the IRS code on trial, and of course we all cheer the Obama team for its genius.  Guilty!  Completely, it becomes more clear each week that the Obama re-elect aims to accuse Mitt Romney of the crime of capitalism and so forth piractical practices, such as taking advantage of the 15% capital gains tax that the wealthy folk pay on the income of their investment portfolios.  Does Obama plan to be re-elected as a champion of fairness?  Puzzle.  Note that the White House hired a Bain veteran, Jeffrey Vients, to become the new OMB director.  Note also that POTUS will give his inspirational acceptance speech next September in the "Bank of America" stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina.  Other smirking tricks will emerge from the Chicago directed Obama re-elect.  The IRS to the axe!  Wall Street to the axe! None of this will come to much if the World Bank new estimates of global growth for 2012 and 2013 are accurate.  The World Bank lowers its estimates (cruel word: slashes), because of the Euro crisis.  The US is in the category that will grow 1.4% at best in 2012.  The public -- I learn from Lara Brown of Villanova, on the basis of her reading of the Gallup records of past incumbent president re-elects -- will make its decision on the election by Memorial Day, 2012.  Will a 1.4% at best be enough to give Obama another four years?  Unknown.  The IRS is still guilty of a century of fickleness and farce.

The Myrtle Beach debate is a vanity, and if it encourages the locals to vote in the primary, and raises some money for the state party, okay; but truly, is SC in doubt either now or in November? More compelling study is the Gallup polls published these hours that underline the troubles for POTUS Obama. The election does not turn on Mitt Romney's operatic villainy at Bain. The election is about Obama and the electorate's opinion of POTUS over the last 36 months. Gallup offers grim and cloudy comparisons to the losing incumbents Ford, Carter, GHW Bush. We focus on the jobs number, but the more telling for me is the GDP. Obama's trend is headed to flat-lining or downward from the 1.3% GDP recorded in September 2011.  Only Carter's was worse, and GHW Bush was whipped with a 4.3 GDP that Obama can dream about.  The GDP points to job growth or shrinkage.  The prospects for recovery in the next nine months are slight to nil, and the news from Europe points to a crisis sooner.  Also, Joe Brusuelas tells me that the Fed will enter into the MBS market again for up to $650 Billion of securities in order to support the still sinking housing.  A ruin.  Obama can win, but it is going to be unprecedented in a stormy global economy where in the US will look like a haven only in comparison to the sunken ships of state in Europe and Asia.

Jon Huntsman gone, unloved, unmourned, unremembered.  Jon Huntsman folds his odd tent and leaves the Republican field of battle, throwing his endorsement to Mitt Romney for the South Carolina vote on Saturday 21. Romney is the runaway winner, and the Huntsman departure is exceptional only in its timing, just after Huntsman received endorsement of the significant SC newspaper, the State.  The general election is underway.  The Gingrich and Santorum ankle-biting will continue into February, and Ron Paul will not step down until Romney seals the delegate count; however the election is fixed.  It will be Bain capitalism vs. Obama populism, or whatever the re-elect calls it.  Do I think that POTUS can win re-elect by bashing private equity and villainizing Wall Street that contributed greatly to his 2008 election?  Sure.  But I do not believe that Obama can easily overcome the sluggish economy that will continue to underperform as long as housing, the banks, Europe and Asia are in trouble.  Mona Charen has a fine cartoon to describe the GOP embrace of Romney: "Oh, All right.  Fine."

It is a puzzle to see my colleagues unhorsed by the commonplace polite challenge of the deeply committed and slightly stubborn. These Ron Paul supporters are cautious, insistent, not without a point of view, and wonderfully vigorous.  I do not know much to speak of Dana Bash (I could not recognize her unless prompted), but I do know some of how TV (cable) works: the on-air characters are news readers at best, often no more than repeaters of the same terse, ordinary script no matter how many "hits" in a time slot.   They cover the already known and repeated event without much wit or focus, just here and there. However I do know of the responsibilities of public speaking.  Bash is said to have spoken poorly and loosely of Ron Paul.  I have spoken disdainfully of many candidates and will again.  It is the business of political speech.  Bash knows this, and Bash can answer for herself.  It is not clear to me that CNN knows the difference between news reporting and news analysis.  If Bash trash-talked candidate Ron Paul, let Bash correct or explain.  Dodging behind the ceremony of television (bless me, TV is such a trite engineering feat, almost a comedy of manners) creates a cloud on the necessary illusion of fair-mindedness. Truly, Bash is guilty of nothing but chattering fashion.

 

The assault on private equity firms (aka LBOs) is a strangely well timed campaign to make Mitt Romney into a villain and Wall Street into the New Axis of Evil. Will it convnince the critical EV states of NM, NV, CO, IA, that Obama is the Chicago cop on the beat who (Chicago Rules) can defend the women and children from outlaws?  It is wonderful to consider that the 2012 election will give the American electorate a referendum on Wall Street.  Do the Independents vote thumbs down out of fear of worse?  Or will the Indies vote thumbs up out of envy, greed, affection, respect, recognition, comprehension (chose one)?  The Obama re-elect in Chicago jumps on board with an assault on Bain down to the testimonials of the displaced and disaffected:

How will Romney respond?  Does not signify in the end.  This remains a contest about POTUS Obama's performance in office.  The Bill Daley exit from the White House is the critical tell.  Spoke Charlie Gasparino, FBC, re the Daley tour of duty at WH.  Gasparino wrote a column last September that identified how Valerie Jarrett had elbowed him out of the way and made it unlikely he would gain access to POTUS ear re the rift with Wall Street and American business.  Daley called Gasparino to complain, however when Gasparino quizzed him about what was true or not, Daley returned non-denial denials.  One fact did emerge that Daley and FLOTUS had called Geithner to ask him to remain Treasury, and to to believe the rumours that Daley was about to take SecTreasury.  Gasparino says that Daley left when it became clear that Obama was going hard left anti-Wall Street, pro-OWS.  Daley family opinion is that Obama is hurting the down tickey and the party -- that a win as aan anti-Wall Street reformer will leave the Democratic Party adrift, perhaps for a generation.

Mitt Romney is the runaway Republican nominee for 2012, and the remaining primaries will not contribute much light to the nature of the contest with the White House. The Obama re-elect is readying to attack Romney as a plutocratic pirate who schemed and plundered worthy American companies in order to make himself a 1%er. The charge will work for all the loyal Democrats and about half of the Independents. Dave Brady, Hoover, tells me that the 2008 polling of the Independents (at 40%, outnumbering the partisans of either party) showed that Obama won Indies by 8% over McCain. For 2012, if Obama splits the Indies, he will win again. Romney must win the Indies outright in order to win he White House. What do Indies care most about? The economy, and after that, they are sympathetic to Democratic issues of healthcare and education. This means that the Indies are not concerned with class warfare, or with the envy card that the Obama re-elect aims to play. How will Romney outlast the charge of plutocrat?  Romney immediately starts talking about opportunity for the middle class, and that may work.  Advantage Obama when the topic is healthcare and schools.  Advantage Romney when the topic is jobs and investment.  The Indies will exhaust themselves swiveling back and forth right up to Election Day.

  

Bill Daley's quick exit of the White House underlines what is the reported case for some time, that the Obama administration is a handful of insiders from the Chicago campaign days, and that there is no prospect of a change in weather in the event POTUS is returned in 2013. The Obama presidency is entirely about the Obama elections. This is not unprecedented. However, the undermanned state at the White House means that business will wait until POTUS can convince a new Cabinet and a new staff to give him direction. With the likelihood of a GOP win in the Senate in November, and the GOP continuing comfortably in the House, an Obama return will produce a White House of few ambitions. Daley was the last hold of the Democratic Party on POTUS Obama. From now till Election Day, POTUS is a lone operator with a fundraising operation to pay for his re-elections staff in Chicago and nationwide. It is striking that there is so little made of the the Daley jolt. Who is Jacob Lew?  Am told he is an observant Jew (Orthodox) and trustworthy.  Will Lew have operating room at the White House?  Unlikely Lew will have more success that the previous CoS.  There is one authority at the WH, am told: FLOTUS with her agent Valerie Jarrett.  It is not ideology.  It is Shakespeare Lite.  We look forward to the tell-all from the Obama years, starring FLOTUS.

Gingrichian forces construct the Mitt Romney story in such a way that what emerges is the Father of Potterville. Does Romney have the ground game to respond to the blunderbuss charges of greed, gluttony, villainy and a touch of evil?  The assumption is that the Obama re-elect will lavish this scale of condemnation and more on Mr. Romney, and the Romney team is wise to anticipate these waves of fear-mongering.  The general election will turn on a handful of states, and specifically will depend upon the vote of the independent professionals in those few states (NV, NM, CO, IA, MI, OH, PA, VA, NC, NH, perhaps FL).  Does a female professional with children and a mortgage who has voted for both Democratic and Republican candidates in the past concern herself with the fairy tale of Romney the Dark Lord?  Perhaps.  It is the risk the GOP takes by endorsing a needy 1%er in the land of the lost 99%ers.  A year from now, will we see a narrative that states that the reason Romney lost to Barack Obama was that he could not convince Middle America he was worthy because he was too rich to trust?  Does Middle America keep Obama in place because it believes his shortcomings are acceptable?  In a debate between them, does Mr. Obama accuse Mr. Romney of greed and pride?  How does the Independent vote choose between a president who is amiable and unaccomplished and a rich man who is amiable and accomplished?  Unknown.  Mention that Salena Zito, PTR, tells me that the Obama re-elect in Chicago called her after her warm Romney profile piece on the Romney family values in order to complain that she was too one-sided.  Team Chicago is fretful about the Pittsburgh vote being fooled by this chatter that Old Nick Mitt has a heart.

Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Rob Paul continue to harass each other while they aim their barbs at the runaway leader in NH, Mitt Romney.  Spoke Salena Zito, PTR, at a Santorum event in New Hampshire on Thursday eve.  She reported that Santorum was giving discursive and droning answers to questions.  Salena Zito worked on the Hill for Santorum, and she confirms that his voting record in the Senate, and before that in the House, was most partial to Democratic policy positions.  In sum, Santorum has a centrist reputation, and his ceaseless concentration on so-called conservative social issues is an attempt to distract.  The Gingrich problems are self-inflicted.  The Ron Paul story plays out predictably.  Paul is a clever pol who can declare, "Space travel isn't in the Constitution," and then can sign a letter with 26 other members in support of the porky rocketship program, Constellation.   Salena believes Romney has an 18- or 20-point lead.   What is most critical about New Hampshire is that this is the state in the general election that POTUS must win.  (POTUS has no intrinsic connections to NH; POTUS lost NH to Mrs. Clinton in January 2008; NH is trending GOP ever since the Kelly Ayotte easy win in 2010; Kelly Ayotte is easily the most popular politician in the state, and she supports Romney in the primary, no hesitation.)  Romney's popularity in New Hampshire may be the most obvious Electoral College weakness that POTUS cannot answer.  Mention that the NYT publishes excerpt from a new book on FLOTUS that reveals a dynamic that has been a White House problem since 2009: FLOTUS uses Valerie Jarrett to spy on the Executive Brane and to keep watch on POTUS. (FLOTUS tangled openly through Jarrett with Rahm Emanual and Robert Gibbs.  FLOTUS used Jarrett to drive away all presidential counselor rivals.  FLOTUS is most potent with regard POTUS public postures.)  This is a glimpse of an Obama re-elect campaign that may be in much turmoil because of the FLOTUS intrigue.  I have long been told that FLOTUS harries and bullies even POTUS by using Jarrett as the whispering go-between.

  

Spoke Jed Babbin re the Obama appearance at the Pentagon to announce the sharp troop reductions for all services, especially for the Marine Corps.  POTUS Obama's speechifying is re-election palaver and not of interest.  POTUS claims he knows history.  History says that after wars, the US reduces the troop levels until the Devils come calling, and we are short hundred of thousands of troops the first months of a new crisis.  Mobilization follows in catch-up fashion.  Jed Babbin and I told stories about the Marines in WW2 and Korea.  Jed has a photo of his dad on Guadalcanal in 1942 with a rifle from 1903, because the US was not ready for war during its first major deployment after Pearl Harbor.  I spoke of Wes Fox, a decorated Marine veteran who joined in 1950 and found himself in Korea with an M-1.  However, he had not received sufficient infantry training, and when he tried to shoot several Chinese soldiers attacking his position, he shot well short of the mark and missed all of them.   Wes Fox (who retired from the Corps in 1993, a full colonel with the Medal of Honor for a firefight in Vietnam) was rushed out to Korea (below, 1950, in the battle of Seoul) without adequate preparation.  Harry Truman had reduced the Marine Corps from 600,000 to 68,000, and the clawback against the North Koreans and Chinese required a lot of young Marines to struggle and not make it through.  Is this what POTUS means when he says he knows history?  It seems significant that the threat in the Pacific Rim in 2012 is that same as in 1950.  Does POTUS know that history, too?

Will Mitt Romney run the table with the primaries? Must he? The squeaker in Iowa suggests that the opposition to Romney in the GOP is able to create friction, to fashion a story line of anybody but Romney, but not to choose a substantial alternative. Rick Santorum emerged the last days in Iowa like a deus ex machina. Santorum is a solitary crank, the sum total of 17 years of self-indulgent preachiness and a surprisingly warm-hearted incoherence. Santorum survived in Pennsylvania politics by the luck of his diffident opponents in 1994 and 2000, however he was tossed out in a landslide in 2006 by the most savvy Bob Casey. Santorum is not the brightest bulb, and this talent for the ordinary and the stubborn serves him well. Will he harry Romney in New Hampshire, South Carolina or Florida? No. Gingrich and Perry remain in the race chiefly because there is no advantage to leaving this early, and they are set to enjoy Florida's breezes. The plain political story is that Romney will face POTUS after the primaries spin to Romney's favor by March. The Obama re-elect is choosing weapons now. The debate is between Romney the flip-flopper; Romney the One Percenter; Romney the Repugnik.  The contest is still about POTUS Obama.  Romney's remark --"He's a nice fellow, but he's over his head" -- is clever and curt.   Will it win OH and FL?

 

   

The hottest gaming for the last decade was for deep outlaws: Speaking Misha Glenny, author, Darkmarket: Cyberthieves, Cybercops and You, re the global trade in plifered credit card account PINs and passwords, a frantic whodunit that covers from the US to the EU to the Russian Federation and South Asia. The foundation for "carders" looks to be about 1999-2003, when Internet transactions climbed exponentially and hackers turned from virus-spreading pranks to cracking into banking files to access tens of thousands of credit cards.  An early foundational site was called CarderPlanet.com (the names are not much original or artful), which attracted thieves and hangers-on. The sites are forums for carders to share information and to trade. No one does everything in the transaction, from hacking, phishing, and skimming to obtain the card number, PIN and password to cashing out at an ATM or other venue. The forum is to sell what part of the chain is your specialty for a piece of the whole. The forum works as a way to sort out the trusted from the thieves who prey on thieves, the "rippers." 

CarderPlanet.com eventually attracted law enforcement that rolled up the operators (administrators) and took down the site with tricks and double agents. The carders moved on to new sites, such as Shadowcrew.com, theftservices.com, darknet.com, thegrifters.com, scandanaviacards.com. Shadowcrew.com reigned for a while, permitting sharp-eyed carders to plunder millions in a short time. What is striking is that the strength of the carder business started in Eastern Europe. The Soviet state could not compete with Silicon Valley, and after the Soviets failed, the fledgling cyberpunks turned to crime. The grand bargain was that if you didn't attack Russian properties, the FSB (new name of the KGB) left you alone. Law enforcement in the West grew more sophisticated along with the carders. Competing cybercops include the US Postal Inspection Services, the US Secret Service, the FBI National Cyber Forensics Training Alliance (N C F T A) in Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon -- and then there the UK SOCA (Serious Organized Crime Agency) and the French OCLCITC (Central Office for the Fight Against Crime Linked to Information Technology and Communication).  It is a matrix of hunted and hunter. The carders hunt each other, too, because there is always suspicion that a carder on the site is a rate or undercover cop. Glenny's tale turns on the cyberwar between 2005-2008 between two masterpieces of card sites, CardersMarket.com vs Darkmarket.com. This is major-league gaming. The thrill for the carders is the chase, the score, the bragging rights. The money is not how they judge each other. The nom de guerre's reputation as a carder site administrator (thankless job of doubting, judging, challenging) is the payoff. The profiles of the carders in Glenny's investigation describe alienated males 18-35, evidencing Asperger's or other aspects of anti-social dysfunction, many with compulsive drug and alcohol patterns; also, they are routinely quick learners who apply the same energy to carding that once upon a time they might have used with pickpocketing. When they are caught, they become passive, listless, depressed, harmless without their community of fellow carders. The chase and the action are much of why they keep coming back until they fall. 

Lessons Learned. 

Change your passwords regularly. Cover up the keypad when you punch in your password at the ATM.  Major Russian hackers have quit the Anglophone world of carding because it is too much grief to deal with the cybercops; they focus on the rest of the planet in many languages. No one state or country has the resources to defeat carders; all they can do is take down the flashier sites and ops.

DarkMarket price list

Trusted vendors on DarkMarket offered a smorgasbord of personal data, viruses, and card-cloning kits at knockdown prices. Going rates were:

Dumps Data from magnetic stripes on batches of 10 cards. Standard cards: $50. Gold/platinum: $80. Corporate: $180.

Card verification values Information needed for online transactions. $3-$10 depending on quality.

Full information/change of billing Information needed for opening or taking over account details. $150 for account with $10,000 balance. $300 for one with $20,000 balance.

Skimmer Device to read card data. Up to $7,000.

Bank logins 2% of available balance.

Hire of botnet Software robots used in spam attacks. $50 a day.

Credit card images Both sides of card. $30 each.

Embossed card blanks $50 each.

Holograms $5 per 100.