Month: September 2008

Officer shot Arlington VA

Was watching the SCAN-DC list tonight explode with a police officer shot. Cops were on the scene in moments and they chased the guy upto the 14th Street Bridge in DC. There is live audio from the scanner buffs in Virginia (who record pretty much everything that goes on in the DC area).

Apparently the police officer was protected by his bullet proof vest, but the suspect was apparently killed in the incident. The original lookout was for an Asian male in a Lexus SUV with Washington state tags.

If you listen to the audio advance to about 11:50 for the first call. Goes on from there.

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Idiot kills self in road rage incident.

Ok, you can’t make stuff like this up.

It was the ultimate expression of road rage. A furious woman driver died after ramming another vehicle and spinning her wheels so fast that her own car burst into flames.

Serena Sutton-Smith, 54, burnt to death after refusing to get out of her Vauxhall Nova as she sat with her foot flat on the accelerator.

She spun the wheels so fast that her tyres disintegrated and the metal rims sent a shower of sparks into the engine, igniting the brake fluid and setting the car on fire.

Appalled onlookers urged her to get out of the car as the flames licked around her but she told them to “F*** off”, an inquest in Gloucester was told.

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Russia dealing with Ingushetia, yet another separatist area

Civil war could break out in the predominantly Muslim area of Ingushetia according to human rights groups have been witnessing an uptick in violence of late. Just last month a prominent critic of Moscow was shot dead in Injushetia and Muslim fighters who got their start in Chechnya are now growing bolder and bolder.

We’ll be watching this flash point as the Georgia situation continues to fester.

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Congress stunned by late-night meeting with regulators

Congress was given a choice. Do something, or face global economic meltdown.

Reports are coming in today from the New York Times of the late night meeting between the Fed, Treasury, SEC and the leaders of Congress.

As Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, put it Friday morning on the ABC program “Good Morning America,” the congressional leaders were told “that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally.”

“What you heard last evening,” he added, “is one of those rare moments, certainly rare in my experience here, is Democrats and Republicans deciding we need to work together quickly.”

You do have to wonder if this was an example of coordinated financial terrorism.

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Russian stock exchange halts trading amid chaos

That’s what you get for invading your neighbor.

Regulators halted trading at midday (9am BST) on Russia’s main stock indices – the rouble-denominated Micex and the dollar-denominated RTS – following a similar suspension yesterday.

Russia has been badly affected by the global financial crisis, and has suffered as stocks have sunk in Europe and Asia. But it has also been hit by the rapid fall in oil prices and the flight of foreign investors since the war in Georgia.

Of course had we not bailed out AIG last night, we could have seen something similar in the US, UK, Tokyo etc as a number of institutions fell apart. I was watching shares in my local bastard monopoly electric company Consolidated Energy Group (CEG) yesterday. CEG was tied to Lehman and rumors had some exposure to AIG that would have dragged them through the mud. Their company, which has about $15 billion worth of nuclear power plants suffered from some massive shorts and saw the stock drop from about 60 to 13 in a matter of minutes, then up again, then down. It was really strange.
More excitement today as I deal with a quick sale of Washington Mutual stock (WM).
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French frogmen rescue hostages held by hostile pirates

French commandos launched a raid on a sailboat off the coast of pirate-controlled Somalia tonight, freeing a 60-year-old couple and killing one pirate and capturing six others.

The frogmen from the Commando Hubert, modelled on Britain’s Special Boat Service, were sent into action by President Sarkozy from the Élysée Palace in Paris, 5,000 miles away. It was after midnight, southeast of Somalia, when the helicopter began ferrying commandos from le Courbet, a frigate that had been shadowing the Carré d’As for the past ten days. A maritime reconnaissance aircraft monitored the operation from over the horizon.

The men were dropped by parachute some distance from the stationary yacht and swam towards her with night-vision goggles and undetectable breathing systems, according to military sources. They clambered aboard silently with ropes and light grappling hooks, taking the pirates by surprise.

The West should really just blow up all these pirates. It’s at sea, and it is unlikely our ships will suffer a single casualty in engaging these pirates. Throughout Africa we’re mocked as being unable to control this rabble, and given the drastic disparity in firepower, a few destroyers could put an end to piracy in Somalia in a matter of weeks.

But alas, we don’t do it other than a few times a year, more or less. Would be far more effective to destroy all the pirates ships and their ports and then see how they fare.

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How Wall Street was told Lehman was going to fail

Interesting fly on the wall story in the Wall Street Journal about the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and his top New York lieutenant, Timothy Geithner, summoned some 30 Wall Street executives for a 6 p.m. Friday meeting at the Fed’s offices in Lower Manhattan.

“There is no political will for a federal bailout,” Mr. Geithner told the assembled executives, according to a person familiar with the matter. “Come back in the morning and be prepared to do something.”

That was pretty much it. The NY crowd had to sort it out on their own. The article has some more details and is interesting on how the Fed and Wall Street interact.

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