Contempt? Yes. Right now? No. Ditto for perjury

The House Judiciary Committee, on party-line vote yesterday, approved contempt citations on Josh Bolton and Harriett Miers, but an anonymous top Democratic official said the full House wasn’t likely to take up the matter until after the August recess.

Now, this A. None Mouse may argue this gives Bush more time to rethink his stance, and for Fielding to reach an acceptable compromise with Congress.

I’m here to tell her or him: “Ain’t gonna happen.” All you’re doing is giving Bush one more month on the calendar to stall this out until the end of his term. Look at how much time he has already gotten.

On Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy now says he is giving Attorney General Alberto Gonzales until late next week to revise his testimony.

Hell, give him ’til Christmas; it ain’t happening. There’s a proper pace for proceedings like this, yes, but given how much Gonzo testimony water has already passed under the bridge, Leahy needs to stop confusing “proper pace” and “snail’s pace.”

Web to surpass e-mail as virus source

Expert says websites make an easier target than e-mail.

There is an increase in Web threats compared with normal worms...the number of worms has increased by 22 percent since first-quarter 2005, while Web threats have increased by 540 percent.

The main effort is to convert a home computer into a bot. Security strategies include security software, regular downloads of operating system and Web browser updates, and using another browser than the “default” Internet Explorer.

Tightened lending from subprime crisis has ripple effect

For example, skittish lenders are demanding that Cerberus Capital dig up $2 billion in cash to help pay for its acquisition of Chrysler.

Other fallout? GM’s sale of Allison Transmission is on hold; so is KKR’s plan to buy electric utility TXU. Expedia’s desired stock buyback was cut by 80 percent, by number of shares, because it couldn’t raise the necessary loans.

What do investors want? Higher rates and stiffer covenants governing what a company can or can’t do with the money. In the last year or so, buyout firms have been able to sell lots of so-called covenant-lite bonds — bonds with virtually no conditions attached.

But now that investors are cooling to those deal terms, investment banks have to lend the money themselves, in what are called bridge loans, to make deals happen.

Investment banks don’t like being in that position because they are hired to find money, not to lend it. Lending money ties up capital that could be used for other deals. And that means other deals have to wait.

But they are doing it. JPMorgan’s Dimon told analysts last week that banks have committed to take $100 billion on bonds on deals and to make $200 billion in bridge loans so deals can close.

The root of the crunch isn’t corporate deals. Instead, it’s a result of the subprime mortgage mess. Banks gathered huge pools of mortgages, then sold securities backed by the loans that reflected the risk tolerance of various investors.

With many homeowners defaulting on their mortgages, big investors are worried they’ll never see their money again. They want more before financing anything that smacks of high risk: The yield on a typical midgrade bond has jumped from 6.9 percent to 8.6 percent in a month, according to the Telegraph newspaper in London.

Here’s the bottom-line question: How much will this affect economic performance in the next 9-12 months?

I think it’s going to be minimal, in and of itself. Maybe 0.2 percentage points. But, combined with other factors, that can add up. It depends on how much of an inflationary ripple this has.

Maybe John Edwards HASN’T been so good to the poor

Or, at least not to lower-middle class people

His investments include subprime-mortgage funds. His salary includes hedge-fund consulting, and remember, there’s controversy about how hedge funds should be taxed.

Plus, how many of these hedge funds, with their “global strategies,” are based on the type of free trade, without environmental or labor rights concerns, that affect a number of working-class Americans?

Not so fast on that “new home sales are up, what housing bubble” attitude

That’s because existing home sales took another plunge off a cliff in June. The 3.8 percent falloff was much steeper than the 1 percent advance prediction by Wall Street.

Texas is No. 1 — in dirty power plants

A work e-mail I received from the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) rates the country’s 50 dirtiest power plants:

The report will show that the 12 states with the heaviest concentrations of the 50 dirtiest power plants (in terms of one key pollutant) are: Texas (five); Pennsylvania (four); Indiana (four); Alabama (three); Georgia (three); North Carolina (three); Ohio (three); West Virginia (three); Wyoming (two); Florida (two); Kentucky (two); and New Mexico (two).

Standing by for comment from Gov. Rick Perry.