199th POST, ODDS AND SODS

The Libby sentence is as good a jumping-off point as any. We have no idea whether 30 months of federal time with no chance of parole plus a $250K fine is the appropriate sentence or not. It's what the prosecution asked for, fits the rigid "guidelines" apparently, and seemed appropriate to Judge Walton despite the entreaties of General Peter "Queer Fear" Pace and James "Apostate" Carville. Nevertheless, it is ALWAYS the policy of Kelso's Nuts (tm) to side with the individual over the institution, so we wish peace to Irving The Scooter, Jr., and his family and girlfriend Judith Miller plus all our heartfelt bruchas in what must be a terribly anxiety-ridden time. We take no pleasure in the prospect of Libby's doing the 30 of durance vile and we don't countenance prison rape jokes on this site. If only Dick Cheney would have acted like a man and taken the heat, Libby wouldn't be going through this, but what did anyone expect? Libby's probably not a bad guy overall. We admired his representataion of Marc Rich but resented his Zionism and his involvement with PNAC. If Bush pardons him, fair enough. If an appeals court overturns the verdict, fair enough. None of that is particularly interesting.

To quote Dennis Kucinich's remark about Iraq, Libby's sentence creates a "teachable" moment. Every Republican on the dais during last night's debate, especially Adolf Giuliani, was pretty incensed about the verdict and the overall comportment of prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Oh really? The knee-jerk evidence of hypocrisy is the comparison of those same folks' attitudes towards Bill Clinton's lies under oath (Clinton did not commit a crime as he had no intent to deceive as we've said before but go watch the Paula Jones deposition and decide for yourself), but there's a bigger issue than the bullshit of Libby good, Clinton bad. 30 months and $250K kind of does feel excessive for political acts and if the Republicans had one hair on their collective asses or one remaining uncorrupted brain cell, they'd take this moment to rethink this zero tolerance, punishment based society of yours. And so would the Democrats. And the bloggers. And Kelso does not give a crap whether or not Libby was a so-called "law-and-order" conservative.

The entire criminal justice system needs an overhaul. Let's say goodbye to the death penalty. Let's say goodbye to mandatory sentencing guidelines. Let's say goodbye to the privatization of prisons and it's concurrent de-facto use of slave-labor. If Hugo Chavez is ready to pay the equity holders of Venezuela's private banks far over the odds, the U.S. Government can do the same for Wackenhut equity and bond holders. Let's say goodbye to the "war on drugs". Let's say goodbye to "broken windows" policing. Let's say goodbye to goodbye to habeas corpus. Let's say goodbye to warrentless wire-tapping of Americans by Americans. Let's say goodbye to the Patriot Acts. Let's say goodbye to Echelon. Let's harmonize cellular phone tapping (no restrictions) with land-line tapping. Let's redress the ethnic imbalance in sentencing by making them all more lenient, not more strict. Let's put Pell Grants back. Let's fund The Legal Aid Society at appropriate levels. Let's give federal judges more sentencing discretion. Let's stop prison overcrowding. One person to one prison cell works. Let's demiliatrize the police. And if the lights ever do go out, won't somebody get Dick Wolf and Stephen Bochco and "go medieval"? Irving Libby, Jr.'s future gives Kelso no pleasure. Why should such a future for a garden-variety car thief or dope dealer give you so much pleasure? And never mind the economic costs which brings us to an email from Anonymous FB....


U.S. Rule of Law Is One Explanation for Strength
6/5/2007 7:30 AM EDT
People who have earned large fortunes want to retain them.
U.S. is still one of the safe havens.

The process of repatriation will only end when the political winds change abroad.At the end of the day, one of the things that continues to keep our U.S. markets highly liquid is the notion that we are still one of the few nations in the world of large size where there is rule of law. So it only makes sense that those who earned their money in places where they took advantage of the lack of rule of law are quite likely to want to retain their wealth by investing in a place where it is safe. Sure, places like Switzerland are considered safe. However, the size of its domestic market is not very large and thus, one of the reasons we see a lot of money from Switzerland in the domestic hedge fund community.

I believe this foreign flight to safety capital to be a long-term process that has been building for some time. One of the places that we first saw it was in our fixed income markets, which have consistently been strong despite a vicious bought of inflation. Clearly the petrodollar repatriation in equities is in its early days. [emphasis Kelso's].

Only time will tell if the sovereign governments have the willpower to continue investing in our markets. After all, the political winds for their own domestic investment must be strong. However, for now they are one of the tailwinds pushing things higher.

The email came to Kelso with neither the author's name nor copyright, so please forgive any transgressions of copyright law or intellectual property rights, and let's see what's there. As of now, pragmatically speaking, the author of the piece is right as far as the relative safety of the U.S. dollar is concerned but there are some problems with his evidence and his conclusion. His evidence is somewhat flawed because the performance of the USD has been atrocious. Practically every currency in the world is beating the tar out of the dollar. The Colombian Peso is way stronger, for God's sakes. And we all know why: the U.S. debt, the U.S. deficit, the Wars, and the housing and commodity booms. The pressure is just too strong and despite the prevailing philosophy of monetary neutrality, there is an equally persuasive argument that raising interest rates is just replacing demand-pull inflation with cost-push inflation. The global currency markets are telling us this and letting some steam out bit by bit, but the big one is coming. It may come when China cries uncle because of Bush saber-rattling. Or it may just come out of the blue one day, as in Keynes' "animal spirits."

Kelso would also like to know what evidence the author of this piece has that money from private Swiss Banks is coming in greater numbers into dollars than into Euros.

But let's get back to the so-called "rule-of-law." So far, so good, but tell that to Ruth Peacock, one of the founders of Party Poker and in the top 5 of 2005's Forbes 300 of the world's wealthiest women. She may have even topped the Queen Of England that year at least as far as income if not outright wealth. One sneaky little move by Bill Frist and George W. Bush and Ruth Peacock's net worth fell by 98%. This after both Donald Rumsfeld and Republican Senator John Warner of Virginia told Frist to fuck himself and his Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. Rule of law, my eye! Hugo Chavez's darkest fantasies don't include anything like that.

So, "invest in our markets"? Why bother?

And big deal, we were wrong about Federer's vulnerability. We're wrong about everything else!

Kelso's Nuts love you.