Weekend Economists' Repentance Weekend March 27-29, 2009

[Demeter]

Yes, it's Friday again. After the Nazifest Cabaret two weekends ago, and the totally escapist Princess Bride weekend last, we are going right into hellfire and damnation. Why not? It's Lent. Palm Sunday next week, Easter the week after. Even atheists quote Scripture for their own purposes!

And our text today comes from-----Godspell!

Godspell (like Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat) is a grassroots-born depiction of a grassroots movement, forming, changing the world, and changing the audience in the process.

My favorite song (among many favorites) and our focus for the weekend will be:

TURN BACK "O" MAN, FORSWEAR THY FOOLISH WAYS!

("O" referring of course, to our newly-inaugurated President.)

If you have never seen the film version, I highly recommend it. The scenes shot with the World Trade Center towers in the background are particularly poignant, and suitably hallowed for anyone.

(personal note: I just read the above to Sis, who said "this is really put together, your emails to me never make this much sense!" Kid sisters, what can you do with them? She's slowly losing her mind dealing with Dad, so please, count your blessings!)

A stylish performance of this number:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6BGoKH0mzg

the Lyrics:

Mary Magdalene:

Turn back, O man
Forswear thy foolish ways
Old now is earth
And none may count her days
Da, da, da, da, da
Yet thou, her child
Whose head is crowned with flames
Still will not hear
Thine inner God proclaim

Turn back, O man (is your seat comfortable sir?) (mm, I like that)
Turn back, O man (is my seat comfortable sir?) (Handle with care)
Turn back, O man (can you take it?)
Forswear thy foolish ways
(See ya later I'm going to the front of the thee-ay-ter)
(Hold me while I slip into something more comfortable)

Earth might be fair
And all men glad and wise
Age after age their tragic empires rise
Da, da, da, da, da.
Built while they dream
And in that dreaming weep
Would man but wake
From out his haunted sleep

Turn back, O man...
Turn back, O man... (hard as a rock)
Turn back, O man...
Forswear thy foolish ways

Jesus:

Earth shall be fair
And all her people one
Not till that hour
Shall God's whole will be done
Now, even now
Once more from earth to sky
Peals forth in joy
Man's old undaunted cry
Earth shall be fair
And all her people one

Mary Magdalene:

C'mere Jesus, I got something to show ya!
(chorus repeat first verse)
Forswear thy foolish ways!

Everything You Need to Know about Godspell
http://www.geocities.com/cugodspell/index.html

[Demeter]

1. First, the Weekend Bank Closing

FDIC seizes Atlanta's Omni National Bank
By MarketWatch


SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Omni National Bank of Atlanta was closed Friday by regulators and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The seizure follows last week's move by the FDIC to close three banks and put two large corporate credit unions into conservatorship. The failure of Omni National brings the number of bank failures so far this year to 21.

To protect Omni depositors, the FDIC said it has entered into an agreement with SunTrust Bank of Atlanta to act as paying agent for the insured deposits of Omni National Bank.

As the FDIC's paying agent, SunTrust will operate the six former branches of Omni National, on behalf of the receiver, until April 27. Omni National had branches in Atlanta; Dalton, Ga.; Tampa, Fla.; Chicago; Dallas and Houston.

As of March 9, Omni National Bank had total assets of $956.0 million and total deposits of $796.8 million. At the time of closing, there were approximately $2 million in uninsured deposits that potentially exceeded the insurance limits. This amount is an estimate that is likely to change once the FDIC obtains additional information from customers, the FDIC said.

Brokered deposits are not a part of this transaction. The FDIC will pay the $320.1 million in brokered deposits directly to the brokers for the amount of their insured funds.

The FDIC said it will retain all the assets for later disposition except for cash, correspondent accounts, and loans fully secured by deposits. The cost to the FDIC's Deposit Insurance Fund is estimated to be $290 million...Omni's failure marks the 46th bank seizure since the beginning of the subprime credit crisis. End of Story

[Demeter]

2. Next, a Request!

the Redoubtable Tansy Gold specifically ordered the following for this weekend:

http://www.alternet.org/module/feed/mobile/?storyID=133627

IG Exec Whines About Public Anger, and Now We're Supposed to Pity Him? Yeah, Right
Matt Taibbi, AlterNet
March 26, 2009

"I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to AIG. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down." via Op-Ed Contributor -- "Dear AIG, I Quit!" -- NYTimes.com

Like a lot of people, I read Wednesday's New York Times editorial by former AIG Financial Products employee Jake DeSantis, whose resignation letter basically asks us all to reconsider our anger toward the poor overworked employees of his unit.

DeSantis has a few major points. They include: 1) I had nothing to do with my boss Joe Cassano's toxic credit default swaps portfolio, and only a handful of people in our unit did; 2) I didn't even know anything about them; 3) I could have left AIG for a better job several times last year; 4) but I didn't, staying out of a sense of duty to my poor, beleaguered firm, only to find out in the end that; 5) I would be betrayed by AIG senior management, who promised we would be rewarded for staying, but then went back on their word when they folded in highly cowardly fashion in the face of an angry and stupid populist mob.

I have a few responses to those points. They are 1) Bullshit; 2) bullshit; 3) bullshit, plus of course; 4) bullshit. Lastly, there is 5) Boo-Fucking-Hoo. You dog.

AIGFP only had 377 employees. Those 400-odd folks received almost $3.5 billion in compensation in the last seven years, a very large part of that money coming from the sale of credit default protection. Doing the math, that averages out to over $9 million of compensation per person.

Ask yourself this question: If your company made that much money, and the boss of the unit made almost $280 million in just a few years, exactly how likely is it that you wouldn't know where that money was coming from?

Are we supposed to believe that Jake DeSantis knew nothing about Joe Cassano's CDS deals? If your boss and the top guys in your firm were all making a killing selling anything at all -- whether it was rubber kayaks, generic Levitra or credit default swaps -- you really wouldn't bother to find out what that thing they were selling was? You'd really just mind your own business, sit at your cubicle and put your faith in the guys up top to fill you in if there was something you needed to know?

This would be a believable claim for an employee of some other wing of AIG, a company with well over 100,000 employees. But DeSantis works for tiny, 377-person AIGFP, a unit that had only two offices -- one in London and one in Greenwich, Conn.

And we're talking about financial professionals, the most shameless group of tirelessly envious gossips ever to walk the face of the earth. The likelihood that Cassano would pull in $280 million for himself, and his equally greedy, hopelessly jealous employees wouldn't know not only exactly how he made that money but every last ugly detail about his life -- from what skank he's sleeping with to what side of his trousers he hangs on -- is almost zero.

I know plenty of people who work in this world, and I've met very few who didn't hate with every cell in their bodies anyone in their own companies who made more money than they did or got bigger bonuses at Christmastime. Gossiping about each others' bonuses, and bitching about each others' compensation, is the national pastime for these people.

So forgive me if I don't buy this story that poor Jake and his buddies didn't know about Cassano's CDS business.

Also, there's this: let's just say, Jake, that you're telling the truth, that you don't know anything about this toxic portfolio. If that's the case, then why the fuck does anyone need to retain you at an exorbitant salary to help unwind that very portfolio? If these transactions aren't and never were your expertise, then where the hell is your value here?

When I spoke to Christine Pretto, the AIG spokeswoman, and asked about those bonuses, she said that AIG needed to retain people like you in order to take advantage of your "knowledge of these transactions." So if you don't have knowledge of these transactions, what are you being paid for? Your winning attitude?

Then there's the matter of Jake's other job offers. About that: It was apparent as early as last February that Cassano had basically destroyed not only the unit but perhaps AIG itself. The company announced over $11 billion in losses around that time.

If I'm Jake DeSantis, and I'm really innocent, I'm looking for a job that very instant. And I'm taking the first good job anyone offers me. Because by then I'd have realized that I was working for the latest version of Enron. That the man I've been working for the last six or seven years has turned out to be one of the most irresponsible Wall Street villains of all time, a man who single-handedly destroyed the 18th-largest company in the world. If I'm Jake DeSantis, I'm quitting out of moral disgust, because I don't want to be associated with this kind of behavior.

The only reason I'd stay is if I didn't have a choice. Which I feel sure is what happened here. If Jake DeSantis didn't take advantage of an opportunity to get a better job elsewhere with a company that didn't hide billions in losses and make $500 billion bets with money they didn't have, that's his fucking problem.

The notion that I the taxpayer have to pay this asshole a million-dollar bonus because he turned down a better job at a less-guilty company is repugnant to begin with; the notion that he stayed at AIGFP because he expected me to pay him this bonus makes me hate him even more.

But it's all moot, because I feel quite sure it's a lie. As one trader for another firm told me not long ago when I asked what he thought about the need to pay these "retention bonuses" to these "valued employees" at AIGFP:

"Yeah, right. Who would hire these guys? They'd stay for a dollar if you offered it to them, much less a million."

I mean, half of Wall Street is unemployed right now. There are plenty of unemployed traders out there whose resumes don't include such entries as "Worked for years at small unit of AIG that helped destroy the universe; throughout that time was completely ignorant of burgeoning global disaster unfolding 5 feet from my desk."

The idea that other companies would be so eager to pass over the seas of truly innocent available people in order to scoop up some still-employed veteran of AIGFP -- and that they would be so enthusiastic in their pursuit of said AIGFP employees that AIG would need to pay those AIGFP folks million-plus retention bonuses to get them to stay -- is so ludicrous it almost defies comment.

Show me, anywhere, the Wall Street firm that's willing right now to spend more than a million dollars poaching still-employed midlevel executives like DeSantis, when they can just put an ad in the paper and have 500 recently unemployed CEOs begging for work at almost any salary in five minutes.

So the idea that the rest of Wall Street is breaking down AIGFP's doors to lavish its idiot personnel with million-dollar offers is just utterly preposterous. The fact that DeSantis expects us to believe this is insulting in itself.

Also, remember, DeSantis until this year was probably the recipient of performance bonuses. This year, obviously, there was no performance, so AIG doled out these "retention" bonuses instead. And the value of these retention bonuses is seriously in question if AIG never really needed to pay extra to retain this personnel, which I personally believe they didn't.

I personally believe these "retention" bonuses were a ruse cooked up by management to suck a few more dollars out of the company before it sank to the ocean bottom. So if DeSantis is "owed" these bonuses, it's only in the sense that someone up above agreed to cheat the shareholders by paying these bonuses when they weren't really necessary; they weren't "earned" in any real sense.

But all of this is really secondary to the tone of DeSantis' letter. He acts like he's a victim because he didn't get to keep his after-tax bonus of $742,006.40 in the middle of a global depression. And he really loses his fucking mind when he writes:

"None of us should be cheated of our payments any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house."

First of all, Jake, you asshole, no plumber in the world gets paid a $740,000 bonus, over and above his salary, just to keep plumbing. Second, try living on a plumber's salary before you even think about comparing yourself to one; you're inviting a pitchfork in the gut by even thinking along those lines. Third, Jake, if you were a plumber, and the electrician burned the house down -- well, guess what? If you and that electrician worked for the same company, you actually wouldn't get paid for that job.

Out in the real world, when your company burns a house down, you're not getting paid by that client. It's only on Wall Street, where the every-man-for-himself ethos is built into an insanely selfish and greed-addled compensation system, that people like you expect to get paid in a bubble -- only there do people expect their performance bonuses no matter how much money the shareholders lose overall, no matter how many people get laid off after the hostile takeover, no matter how ill-considered the mortgages lent out by your division were.

You expect that money because you think it's owed to you. But what money? The money is gone. Your boss, if not you, set it all afire. You want the money, but where exactly do you think it's coming from?

YOU'RE RIGHT, TANSY. IT IS A CORKER!

Do you just not understand that that money now would have to come out of someone else's pocket? That it would have to come from middle-class taxpayers, real plumbers, people who didn't make millions over the years in equity and commodity trading?

Here's the real problem with people like Jake DeSantis. Throughout this whole period, they never were able to connect the dots -- to grasp the fact that when they skimmed a million here or a million there off the great rivers of capital that flowed through their offices, that that money came from somewhere, from someone. To them, it wasn't someone else's money, it was just money, and why shouldn't they have it?

It's remarkable that when DeSantis, in his letter, touts the reason he deserves his high compensation, all he can talk about is how much money he made: "The profitability of the businesses with which I was associated clearly supported my compensation."

For a guy like this, his worth as a human being is wrapped up in buying a bag of beans for $10 and selling it for $11. He states this like it's a law of nature: he was a good equities-and-commodities trader, therefore he should make a lot of money.

Only a person with a habitually overinflated sense of self-worth could think he deserves a $700,000 retention bonus, even if it has to be paid by taxpayers, when in reality no one "deserves" that much money. It may be that some people do get paid that much, but most people who make that much money have enough sense to realize their cushy lifestyles are an accident of fate, of birth, of class, not something that is "supported" by some unwritten natural law of compensation.

Hey Jake, it's not like you were curing cancer. You were a fucking commodities trader. Thanks to a completely insane, horribly skewed set of societal values that puts a premium on greed and severely undervalues selflessness, communal spirit and intellectualism -- values that make millionaires out of people like you and leave teachers and nurses, the people who raise your kids and clean your parents' bedpans, comparatively penniless -- you made a lot of money.

Good for you. Consider yourself lucky. But your company went belly-up and broke, almost certainly thanks in part to you, and now you don't get your bonus.

So be a man and deal with it. The rest of us do, when we get bad breaks, and we've had a lot more of them than you. And stop whining. Jesus Christ.

Matt Taibbi is a writer for Rolling Stone.

[DemReadingDU]

57. So be a man and deal with it.

That was great!

[girl gone mad]

109. Ooohh... that's going to leave a mark!

I have the biggest crush on Matt Taibbi.

[Demeter]

3. I Think We Are Going To Need a Lot of Humor This Weekend

First a Herd of Oliphants!

[Hugin]

8. I'm really enjoying my retirement.

In the last week I've had scads of time to pursue my budding hobbies...

I've developed a tremendous Celebrity Crush on Christina Applegate. I haven't started a household shrine to her yet, but, I might.

and...

I've begun the research on my next book... It's a work discussing the difference between 'theory' and 'application'. I'm beginning with a case study of the infamous "D.B.Cooper". I'm sure what seemed to him to be a good plan on paper became clouded as he stepped out of the back of a 727 at 200 mph into an ice storm. He probably missed his penny-loafers as they blew away and he couldn't grab them because he was burdened by 25 pounds of 20 Dollar bills tied to him in a canvas sack.

But, in retrospect, planning like this may be On Topic here in the WEE.

[Demeter]

10. ????

You lost me.

[Hugin]

13. Which part?

Where did I lose you in my scattered babblings? :shrug:

[Demeter]

14. Where Did I get Lost?

Retirement? Hobbies? Christina Applegate? Book?



"But, in retrospect, planning like this may be On Topic here in the WEE."?


What planet are we on? Start from there.

[Hugin]

19. Oh, that...

"But, in retrospect, planning like this may be On Topic here in the WEE."

It was a reference to D.B.Cooper's elaborate skyjacking scheme's resemblance to Tim G.'s plans to fix the financial system.

Picture AIG jumping out of the back of a 727 into an ice storm and you'll get the simularity between the situations.

Sorry if I confused you with my incomplete lateral thinking, but, as I stated... I'm retired from trying to make sense of the economy and attempting to explain it... It's a Quixotic task.

[Demeter]

21. I Thank You, I Now Understand You

If Sis were reading this, even she could understand...

[philly_bob]

63. I got the joke, Hugin, & thought it relevant to today's bumbling bank barons

Recommend folks read up on D.B. Cooper (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.B._Cooper).

Cooper hijacked a plane, got ransom $, then parachuted out -- into an ice storm.

Enjoy your retirement, Hugin, hope to join you soon.

[Demeter]

4. And now, from the Cubicle....

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-03-25/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-03-26/

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-03-27/

It's Dogbert the CEO, and instant classics!

[Demeter]

5. Everybody Wants to Get in the Act!---Ah, cha-cha-cha-cha!

Anybody care to venture a guess as to that quotation (NO GOOGLING!)

Here's Mark Fiore with his latest commentary on the economy:

LEVERAGE ME TENDER!

http://www.markfiore.com/political/leverage-me-tender

[DemReadingDU]

24. Here's an earlier Fiore

3/4/09 Hoppin Mad
http://www.markfiore.com/political/hopping-mad

P.S. Everybody Wants to Get in the Act!- Jimmy Durante!

[Demeter]

26. Jimmy Durante Is Absolutely Right! Bonus Quotes from the Man with the Schnozz

""Be nice to people on your way up because you meet them on your way down."

"I hate music, especially when it's played." (Sorry about that)

And perhaps the most useful one of all:

“Politics is developing more comedians than radio ever did.”



And thanks for reprising the previous Fiore!

[dixiegrrrrl]

32. Durant? ( no google, honest)

[Demeter]

35. Close, but No Cigar!

I'm da only man in America who can smoke a cigar in da shower.

Humorous Quotes attributed to Jimmy Durante
1893-1980, American Comedian, Singer

http://www.workinghumor.com/quotes/jimmy_durante.shtml

[dixiegrrrrl]

62. E !!!! Here's the E I left off Durante ..honest, did.

My Mom loved Jimmy Durante.
I never got him, much.

[Demeter]

74. Well, Okay then!

[Demeter]

6. Back to the Salt Mines: Fed needs to double balance sheet: PIMCO

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE52P1H920090326

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Bond giant Pacific Investment Management Co said the Federal Reserve needs to double its balance sheet up to $6 trillion to replace the amount of wealth destroyed in the United States, an executive said on Thursday.

Liabilities on the Fed's balance sheet should rise to between $5 trillion and $6 trillion later this year amid the financial crisis that roiled global markets, said Brian Baker, chief executive Pimco Asia Ltd.

"Right now, the Fed has spent about $3 trillion. We believe there has to be further stimulus policies put in place," Baker told Reuters.
......

Pimco is a unit of Allianz Global Investors, which managed about $970 billion in client assets at the end of 2008 and says it is the world's biggest fund house.

Pimco's chief investment officer Bill Gross is one of the industry's most widely watched figures.

Pimco is buying high-yield bonds in some U.S. banks that have received government support.

"We are investing in Citibank. We are investing in Bank of America. Those are, we believe, national champion banks or financial institutions that will survive," he said.

The asset manager is also buying corporate and government bonds of South Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Pimco is underweight emerging markets after cutting its exposure recently, Baker said.

.........

WAIT A MINUTE! WHY SHOULD ANYBODY REPLACE THE PAPER ASSETS? FAKE IS FAKE. WHAT ABOUT ALL THOSE HAIRCUTS?

[Demeter]

7. Greenberg critical of AIG rescue tactics (Is Comedy His New Career?)

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a42dba74-1a3c-11de-9f91-0000779fd2ac.html



American International Group, the stricken US insurer, should not have paid out bonuses to staff at its troubled financial products unit, Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, its former chief executive, said on Thursday.

Mr Greenberg also questioned why the company’s counterparties were paid out in full and argued that AIG should have been placed in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection instead of being rescued by the US government.

“There’s no reason to pay them bonuses,” Mr Greenberg told a business function in Hong Kong. “Compensation did get out of hand in financial services.”

Mr Greenberg led the company for 38 years before he was ousted in 2005 and is suing AIG for alleged securities fraud...Mr Greenberg said AIG should have been placed in Chapter 11 protection because that would have allowed the insurer to renegotiate its positions with counterparties, which would have been reclassified as general creditors.

“Why did Goldman Sachs get $12.9bn as a counterparty? If that question has been answered, I haven’t seen it,” he said. “Why was so much money allowed to pass through and go out the back door? Were we bailing out foreign banks? Was that the intention? Someone knows .”

Mr Greenberg said the government’s rescue package, which totals about $180bn, was a “failed strategy”, adding that “right now AIG is going no place, just downhill, and that doesn’t make any sense”.

Mr Greenberg said the bonus furore had further damaged the AIG brand.

“The brand can still be rebuilt,” he added. “There’s only one way to pay back taxpayers and that is to rebuild AIG.”

Mr Greenberg called on the government to convert as much of the debt into guarantees for AIG collaterals, extend loan repayment terms to 15 years from five years and cut interest rates on the loans.

He urged the government to reduce its stake from 79.9 per cent to 15 per cent, freeing AIG to raise private capital and called the government to halt asset sales until markets recovered.

[Demeter]

9. Krugman Is Preaching to the Choir, Here--And In OUR Key! The Market Mystique By PAUL KRUGMAN

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/opinion/27krugman.html?_r=1

On Monday, Lawrence Summers, the head of the National Economic Council, responded to criticisms of the Obama administration’s plan to subsidize private purchases of toxic assets. “I don’t know of any economist,” he declared, “who doesn’t believe that better functioning capital markets in which assets can be traded are a good idea.”

Leave aside for a moment the question of whether a market in which buyers have to be bribed to participate can really be described as “better functioning.” Even so, Mr. Summers needs to get out more. Quite a few economists have reconsidered their favorable opinion of capital markets and asset trading in the light of the current crisis.

But it has become increasingly clear over the past few days that top officials in the Obama administration are still in the grip of the market mystique. They still believe in the magic of the financial marketplace and in the prowess of the wizards who perform that magic.

The market mystique didn’t always rule financial policy. America emerged from the Great Depression with a tightly regulated banking system, which made finance a staid, even boring business. Banks attracted depositors by providing convenient branch locations and maybe a free toaster or two; they used the money thus attracted to make loans, and that was that.

And the financial system wasn’t just boring. It was also, by today’s standards, small. Even during the “go-go years,” the bull market of the 1960s, finance and insurance together accounted for less than 4 percent of G.D.P. The relative unimportance of finance was reflected in the list of stocks making up the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which until 1982 contained not a single financial company.

It all sounds primitive by today’s standards. Yet that boring, primitive financial system serviced an economy that doubled living standards over the course of a generation.

After 1980, of course, a very different financial system emerged. In the deregulation-minded Reagan era, old-fashioned banking was increasingly replaced by wheeling and dealing on a grand scale. The new system was much bigger than the old regime: On the eve of the current crisis, finance and insurance accounted for 8 percent of G.D.P., more than twice their share in the 1960s. By early last year, the Dow contained five financial companies — giants like A.I.G., Citigroup and Bank of America.

And finance became anything but boring. It attracted many of our sharpest minds and made a select few immensely rich.

Underlying the glamorous new world of finance was the process of securitization. Loans no longer stayed with the lender. Instead, they were sold on to others, who sliced, diced and puréed individual debts to synthesize new assets. Subprime mortgages, credit card debts, car loans — all went into the financial system’s juicer. Out the other end, supposedly, came sweet-tasting AAA investments. And financial wizards were lavishly rewarded for overseeing the process.

But the wizards were frauds, whether they knew it or not, and their magic turned out to be no more than a collection of cheap stage tricks. Above all, the key promise of securitization — that it would make the financial system more robust by spreading risk more widely — turned out to be a lie. Banks used securitization to increase their risk, not reduce it, and in the process they made the economy more, not less, vulnerable to financial disruption.

Sooner or later, things were bound to go wrong, and eventually they did. Bear Stearns failed; Lehman failed; but most of all, securitization failed.

Which brings us back to the Obama administration’s approach to the financial crisis.

Much discussion of the toxic-asset plan has focused on the details and the arithmetic, and rightly so. Beyond that, however, what’s striking is the vision expressed both in the content of the financial plan and in statements by administration officials. In essence, the administration seems to believe that once investors calm down, securitization — and the business of finance — can resume where it left off a year or two ago.

To be fair, officials are calling for more regulation. Indeed, on Thursday Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, laid out plans for enhanced regulation that would have been considered radical not long ago.

But the underlying vision remains that of a financial system more or less the same as it was two years ago, albeit somewhat tamed by new rules.

As you can guess, I don’t share that vision. I don’t think this is just a financial panic; I believe that it represents the failure of a whole model of banking, of an overgrown financial sector that did more harm than good. I don’t think the Obama administration can bring securitization back to life, and I don’t believe it should try.

MAYBE IF WE EMAILED A MILLION COPIES OF THIS TO THE WHITE HOUSE---THE MAN'S A NOBEL LAUREATE, FOR GOD'S SAKE!

[Hugin]

17. I've been struck by the extent to which the Admin's viewpoints are from the Supply-side.

I'm slowly being convinced that not one of them Timmeh, Summers, Congress, Big Business, Obama... etc. realizes they're ALL fishing in the same pond... and It's a SMALL pond!

People! The Taxes (both Regressive and Progressive), Insurance Premiums (Health, Home, Auto, etc.), Retail Purchases, Services... ALL of it comes from the same source. US! and dear reader, we're tapped out.

I wish they'd just come up with one charge for everything... One that hopefully I could afford. I promise I'd pay it. But, I have to make choices in my spending. Unlike, apparently, Administration Officials.

Also, there is a collective belief among TPTB that everyone is employed by SOMEBODY ELSE! Not true...

Talk about an unsustainable situation.

[Demeter]

20. What Cannot Continue, Won't

that's the only thought that lets me sleep at all any more.

I can't figure out where I first read this, or if I made it up all by myself. If so, I stand on the shoulders of giants....

[Hugin]

40. Very good.

Congrats if you thought of it. :bounce:

[tclambert]

93. Henry Kissinger is a Nobel Laureate, too. The Nobel hasn't carried as much weight in my mind since

then. Kissinger and Le Duc Tho shared a Nobel Peace Prize for ending the war in Vietnam in 1973. Unfortunately, the war actually ended in 1975. Kind of tarnished the award.

The reason I would listen to Krugman is that he was warning about the housing bubble and foreclosure crisis long before Lehman went bankrupt. I would listen to Peter Shiff, too. Go back and check their batting averages when it came to predicting the financial future in 2007 and early 2008. Those who said, "Things are fine, invest in financial companies" should be sent to the back of the room.

[Demeter]

100. When the GOP Is In, the Honors Are Debased

that's just the way it is. Unless we went around on cleanup, repossessing honors and medals and money after throwing the bastards out....not a bad idea, actually.

[Demeter]

11. On Cuomo's Forays Against Financial Chicanery at the Big End of Town

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/03/on-cuomos-forays-against-financial.html

Yves Smith says:

Since I haven't put together a detailed timeline, I run the risk of having the sequence wrong and therefore being at risk of putting foot in mouth and chewing too. But from where I sit, the only person in the US who seems to be doing anything meaningful to try to contain the looting of the taxpayer is Andrew Cuomo. And that is a pretty sad commentary on Congress.

Yes, we've had Congressional hearings galore on various controversies du jour. They've made for the occasional worthy You Tube clip, little more. The format of these hearing is designed for them to be mere theater. Too short, too superficial, strict time constraints on the time allotted to each questioner.

And worst of all, too much tolerance for intransigence by witnesses. For instance, John invoked the Fifth Amendment in refusing to answer certain questions about Bank of America's bonus payments. But the issue was not self incrimination, but that he deemed the information to be confidential. Thain got a lecture, but was not threatened with contempt of Congress charges. In fairness, Thain may not have been testifying pursuant to a subpoena, so that option may not have been available. However, contempt of Congress is a criminal offense.

Although the lack of contempt of Congress sabre-rattling is what has caught my attention, it symbolizes how toothless Congress has become. Lyndon Johnson would be spinning in his grave if he could see the shenanigans now. When witnesses start ducking questions, they are seldom pinned with the Senator or Representative acting as if they are in charge.





When I was in Caracas for a couple of days of meetings, the president of the local subsidiary invoked a turn of phrase that I suspect is a local saying: "They are getting in front of a mob and trying to pretend it is a parade." I sense a bit more of that than is desirable. For instance, the New York Times tonight depicts both Congress and Cuomo as trying to get to the bottom of whether the AIG collateral payments were warranted, particularly at the scale they were made. But if the reports are correct, it is Cuomo who is issuing subpoenas, which is the real investigative work. Am I wrong in seeing Congress as merely riding on his coattails?

And that raises another issue. One or two day hearings are grossly inadequate venues to get to the bottom of anything. The US needs a full bore major investigation, ideally on the scale of the Pecora Commission. Those took nearly a full two years of hearings, including testimony of pretty much everyone who counted in the world of high finance. These half way measures instead create the illusion that Something Has Been Done at the expense of making real inroads.

From the New York Times:

Members of Congress and the New York State attorney general demanded detailed information Thursday on how tens of billions of taxpayer dollars flowed through the American International Group during its crisis last fall and ended up in the coffers of several dozen big banks, shielding them from losses.

The new inquiries shine a spotlight on a question that is exponentially bigger, in dollars, than the $165 million in bonuses that A.I.G. paid out this month, but which has been overshadowed until now by the uproar over the bonuses.

“We would like to know if the A.I.G. counterparty payments, as made, were in the best interests of the taxpayers who provided the funding,” said Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, in a letter to Neil M. Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The letter was also signed by 26 other members of the House, all of them Democrats.

The representatives asked Mr. Barofsky to find out who had made the decision to shield A.I.G.’s trading partners from any losses during last fall’s crisis, and what factors had shaped the decision.

Their letter mentioned that Mr. Barofsky’s office had been created to investigate the uses of TARP money, and that A.I.G., the biggest recipient of government aid in recent months, was among the largest recipients of money from the TARP.


Yves here. Note setting the TARP inspector general onto the matter is an alternative route to Congress having its own investigation. However, Cuomo announced his subpoenas on the question of whether AIG counterparties were improperly compensated on Thursday. While a full court press is welcome, Congress has been exercised about AIG much longer than Cuomo has been on the case. Why weren't tougher questions asked earlier?

[Demeter]

12. Pension Funding Gap Deteriorates in February by Leo Kolivakis, publisher of Pension Pulse.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/03/guest-post-pension-funding-gap.html

Pension funds for companies in Standard & Poor's 1500 Index met 74% of future obligations in February, down from 89% before the market crashed, Bloomberg reports:

The amount by which U.S. pensions are underfunded has almost doubled since October to $373 billion, increasing pressure on companies to give more to retirement plans as the global recession saps earnings.

U.S. retirement plans are able to meet 74 percent of their future obligations, down from 89 percent five months ago, after global stocks fell and contributions were delayed, according to Mercer’s Financial Strategy Group, a Marsh & McLennan Cos. unit. DuPont Co., Caterpillar Inc. and Lockheed Martin Corp. are among the companies that say they expect higher pension costs in 2009 (click on chart above to enlarge).

Last year’s drop in U.S. stock prices, the deepest in seven decades, will saddle the 53 percent of companies in the Standard & Poor’s 1500 Index with defined-benefit plans with about $70 billion in pension expenses this year, a sevenfold increase from 2008, as they seek to close the funding gap, Mercer analyst Adrian Hartshorn said yesterday in an interview....

MORE AT LINK

[Demeter]

15. Hey Paul Krugman (A song, A plea)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOYAuk809fY

More grassroots!

[Demeter]

16. US retail investors flee to savings

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/182e200a-1973-11de-9d34-0000779fd2ac.html

By Deborah Brewster in New York

Published: March 25 2009 23:37 | Last updated: March 25 2009 23:37

US retail investors poured close to $250bn (€184bn) into bank accounts in the first months of this year, sharply accelerating a flight to safety as they continued to flee volatile stock markets.

Bank savings deposits rose by $246bn to a record $4,343bn in the nine weeks to March 9, according to data from the Federal Reserve. This is more than the whole of 2008, in which savings deposits rose by $229bn.

The big plunge into cash comes in spite of repeated government attempts to restart frozen fixed-income markets and restore confidence in the financial system.

It is not clear where all the deposits came from but in the first two months of the year investors pulled $20bn from stock mutual funds – almost half the total $43bn redeemed during the whole of 2008 – as they appeared to lose confidence in stock markets, according to data from Financial Research Corporation.

During the first nine weeks of the year, investors pulled a small amount – $15bn – from savings accounts with a period of notice, in an apparent indication they were reluctant to lock up cash for even short periods of time.

Charles Biderman, chief executive of TrimTabs, a research group, said: “Net flows into savings have gone into only two places – bank savings and US Treasuries. Both . . . offer extremely low yields with a high degree of safety.

“During an economy where equity prices are down about 50 per cent and home prices down about 30 per cent or so, is there any question as to why money is flowing only into the safest bets?”

Historically, money flows more strongly into bank accounts when stock markets are falling. In 2005 and 2006, when US equities rose, retail investors put less than $100bn into savings and current accounts each year.

The previous record year for a rise in bank deposits was 2002, following the dotcom boom, when deposits rose by $465bn. “During hard times people worry about return of principal, not return on principal,” Mr Biderman said.

As retail investors seek cash, hedge fund managers are placing big bets on gold in the belief that paper currencies will be debased.

The Federal Reserve tracks assets held in bank accounts, not actual inflows. But with interest rates at typical savings accounts hovering below 2 per cent, the rise in deposits – which includes current accounts – is overwhelmingly due to an inflow of new money rather than returns.

[Demeter]

18. Toxic Assets Were Hidden Assets; We can't afford to allow shadow economies to grow this big.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123793811398132049-email.html

By HERNANDO DE SOTO

The Obama administration has finally come up with a plan to deal with the real cause of the credit crunch: the infamous "toxic assets" on bank balance sheets that have scared off investors and borrowers, clogging credit markets around the world. But if Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner hopes to prevent a repeat of this global economic crisis, his rescue plan must recognize that the real problem is not the bad loans, but the debasement of the paper they are printed on.

Today's global crisis -- a loss on paper of more than $50 trillion in stocks, real estate, commodities and operational earnings within 15 months -- cannot be explained only by the default on a meager 7% of subprime mortgages (worth probably no more than $1 trillion) that triggered it. The real villain is the lack of trust in the paper on which they -- and all other assets -- are printed. If we don't restore trust in paper, the next default -- on credit cards or student loans -- will trigger another collapse in paper and bring the world economy to its knees.

If you think about it, everything of value we own travels on property paper. At the beginning of the decade there was about $100 trillion worth of property paper representing tangible goods such as land, buildings, and patents world-wide, and some $170 trillion representing ownership over such semiliquid assets as mortgages, stocks and bonds. Since then, however, aggressive financiers have manufactured what the Bank for International Settlements estimates to be $1 quadrillion worth of new derivatives (mortgage-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, and credit default swaps) that have flooded the market.

These derivatives are the root of the credit crunch. Why? Unlike all other property paper, derivatives are not required by law to be recorded, continually tracked and tied to the assets they represent. Nobody knows precisely how many there are, where they are, and who is finally accountable for them. Thus, there is widespread fear that potential borrowers and recipients of capital with too many nonperforming derivatives will be unable to repay their loans. As trust in property paper breaks down it sets off a chain reaction, paralyzing credit and investment, which shrinks transactions and leads to a catastrophic drop in employment and in the value of everyone's property.

Ever since humans started trading, lending and investing beyond the confines of the family and the tribe, we have depended on legally authenticated written statements to get the facts about things of value. Over the past 200 years, that legal authority has matured into a global consensus on the procedures, standards and principles required to document facts in a way that everyone can easily understand and trust.

The result is a formidable property system with rules and recording mechanisms that fix on paper the facts that allow us to hold, transfer, transform and use everything we own, from stocks to screenplays. The only paper representing an asset that is not centrally recorded, standardized and easily tracked are derivatives.

Property is much more than a body of norms. It is also a huge information system that processes raw data until it is transformed into facts that can be tested for truth, and thereby destroys the main catalysts of recessions and panics -- ambiguity and opacity. To bring derivatives under the rule of law, governments should ensure that they conform to six longstanding procedures that guarantee the value and legitimacy of any kind of paper purporting to represent an asset:

- All documents and the assets and transactions they represent or are derived from must be recorded in publicly accessible registries. It is only by recording and continually updating such factual knowledge that we can detect the kind of overly creative financial and contractual instruments that plunged us into this recession.

- The law has to take into account the "externalities" or side effects of all financial transactions according to the legal principle of erga omnes ("toward all"), which was originally developed to protect third parties from the negative consequences of secret deals carried out by aristocracies accountable to no one but themselves.

- Every financial deal must be firmly tethered to the real performance of the asset from which it originated. By aligning debts to assets, we can create simple and understandable benchmarks for quickly detecting whether a financial transaction has been created to help production or to bet on the performance of distant "underlying assets."

- Governments should never forget that production always takes priority over finance. As Adam Smith and Karl Marx both recognized, finance supports wealth creation, but in itself creates no value.

- Governments can encourage assets to be leveraged, transformed, combined, recombined and repackaged into any number of tranches, provided the process intends to improve the value of the original asset. This has been the rule for awarding property since the beginning of time.

- Governments can no longer tolerate the use of opaque and confusing language in drafting financial instruments. Clarity and precision are indispensable for the creation of credit and capital through paper. Western politicians must not forget what their greatest thinkers have been saying for centuries: All obligations and commitments that stick are derived from words recorded on paper with great precision.

Above all, governments should stop clinging to the hope that the existing market will eventually sort things out. "Let the market do its work" has come to mean, "let the shadow economy do its work." But modern markets only work if the paper is reliable.

Government's main duty now is to bring the whole toxic environment under the rule of law where it will be subject to enforcement. No economic activity based on the public trust should be allowed to operate outside the general principles of property law.

Financial institutions will have to serve society and fully report what they own and what they owe -- just like the rest of us -- so that we get the facts necessary to find our way out of the current maze. They must begin learning to put on paper statements about facts, instead of statements about statements.

Mr. de Soto, the author of "The Mystery of Capital" (Basic Books, 2000) and "The Other Path" (Harper and Row, 1989), co-chairs the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor.

[Demeter]

22. The Real AIG Scandal, Continued!The transfer of $12.9 billion from AIG to Goldman looks fishier and

PLEASE! NO! MERCY! NOT THIS AGAIN AND HIGHER AND DEEPER!


http://www.slate.com/id/2214407/?from=rss


The Real AIG Scandal, Continued!The transfer of $12.9 billion from AIG to Goldman looks fishier and fishier. By Eliot Spitzer

The AIG scandal is getting ever-more disturbing. Goldman Sachs' public conference call explaining its trading relationship and exposure with AIG established, once again, that Goldman knows how to protect itself. According to Goldman, even if AIG had failed, Goldman's losses would have been minimal.

How did Goldman protect itself? Sensing AIG's weakening capital position through 2006 and 2007, Goldman demanded more collateral from AIG and covered outstanding risk with instruments from other firms.

But this raises two critical questions. The first is why $12.9 billion of taxpayer money went from AIG to Goldman. What risk—systemic or otherwise—was being covered? If Goldman wasn't going to suffer severe losses, why are taxpayers paying them off at 100 cents on the dollar? As I wrote earlier in the week, the real AIG scandal is that the company's trading partners are getting fully paid rather than taking a haircut.

Goldman's answer is that it was merely taking a commercial position—trying to avoid any losses at all on its AIG positions. I suppose we can hardly expect Goldman to reject government assistance in the form of pure cash that seems to have had no strings attached.

But what were the government officials possibly thinking? The only rationale for what we should call the "hidden conduit bailout" to AIG's trading partners is that the cascading effect of AIG's inability to pay would have been devastating. But Goldman has now said very clearly there would have been no cascade. Not even a ripple.

Is the same true of AIG's other counterparties, including several foreign banks? What examination of the impact of an AIG failure did federal officials undertake before deciding to spend countless billions bailing out AIG and its trading partners?

The government decision to bail out AIG was made after the private parties, supposedly at risk, had declined to structure a private series of investments that might have avoided the need for use of public money. Perhaps they knew the impact of an AIG default would be small, or perhaps they knew that the federal officials in the room would blink and ante up. In a post-Lehman moment when panic, not reason, was dominating the discussion, perhaps they figured they could walk away with extra billions—and, indeed, they did.

This issue cries out for immediate government inquiry. Maybe one or two of the more than two dozen government entities now beating their chests about bonuses can redirect their energies to this much larger issue confronting us: Who signed off on this $80 billion bailout—now approaching $200 billion—and why?

The second question, of course, is why Goldman was wise to AIG's declining position two years ago but nobody else appears to have known. There is always the operating premise that Goldman is better than the rest in the field, but where were the federal agencies that should have been taking a look at AIG's leverage situation and general financial health?

And were AIG's public statements accurate in revealing a decline? Or did Goldman, with its multiple trading relationships with AIG, get an early warning? This series of questions also demands immediate inquiry and resolution.

What continues to be fundamentally disappointing is that the "too big to fail" institutions continue to absorb enormous sums of taxpayer support without either demonstrating the genuine need for such support or altering their behavior after receiving it.

After getting $12.9 billion in what now seems to be a mere gift, has Goldman begun to lend in a way that will restore the credit markets? Were they asked to do so?

It is time the government realizes it has two simple options: tightly regulate entities that are too big to fail or break them up so they aren't.

[AnneD]

70. Well, if there is anyone that know about higher and deeper....

it's Elliot :evilgrin:

Said with teasing admiration-He was the best consumer policeman we ever had patrolling WS for us, IMHO. Any moral failing one has is between your self, your family, and God. I believe in tending to my own knitting. I will always think he was set up by folks on WS because he was too agressive.

[Demeter]

23. Yves Smith Reads the Lesson for Today's Service--or rather, invites you to read

Geithner Wants New Rules to Check Risks

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123799575291939189.html#mod=testMod

and AIG Fights a Fire at Its Paris Unit

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123802506167942421.html#mod=testMod

Read these two in sequence. Have you heard Geithner say word one about imposing restrictions on them? The AIG terms may have been non-standard, but a regulatory takeover would trigger a default on CDS written on a firm, and apparently also on CDS written BY a firm. So either he hasn't done his homework or, as we said before, the receivership proposal is a sham. Take your pick.

[Demeter]

25. Time for the Musical Interlude for Meditation (or Prayer, whatever)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRPOdsNEOmU


When wilt thou save the people?
Oh God of mercy, when?
Not kings and lords, but nations,
Not thrones and crowns, but men!
Flow'rs of thy heart, o God, are they;
Let them not pass, like weeds, away,
Their heritage a sunless day.
God save the people.

Shall crime bring crime forever,
Strength aiding still the strong?
Is it thy will, o Father,
That men shall toil for wrong?
"No", say thy mountains;
"No", say thy skies;
Man's clouded sun shall brightly rise,
And songs be heard instead of sighs.
God save the people.

When wilt thou save the people?
Oh God of mercy when?
The people, Lord, the people,
Not thrones and crowns, but men!
God save the people, for thine they are,
Thy children as thy angels fair.
God save the people from despair.
God save the people.
Oh God save the people!
God save the people!
Oh God save the people!
God save the people.
Oh God save the people!
God save the people!
Oh God save the people!



When wilt thou save the people?
O God of mercy when?
The people, Lord, the people,
Not thrones and crowns, but men!
God save the people, save us,
For thine they are, for thine they are.
Thy children as thy angels fair:
O, God save the people,
Save the people,
God save the people,
From despair.
God save the people!

God save the people,
O, God save the people,
God save the people,
O, God save the people,
God save the people,
God save the people,
God save the people.

[InkAddict]

83. And the service continues with more music for the soul

Idol lamentations...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvwcJUhIa0U

[Demeter]

87. Thanks!

That's a new one for me.

[Demeter]

106. From the Film 1973

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNE-h-K_jQA

[Demeter]

27. More Evidence of Volcker Being Marginalized

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/03/more-evidence-of-volcker-being.html

We have what is arguably the best Fed chairman ever ready to roll up his sleeves during the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.

Team Obama has asked him to work on.....the tax code. From Reuters:

A panel led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker will study options for U.S. tax reform and report back to President Barack Obama by December 4, the White House budget director said on Wednesday.

Peter Orszag, director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget, said the panel would study tax simplification, tackling tax evasion, and reducing "corporate welfare."

He said the board would look at streamlining U.S. tax credits and being more aggressive at bringing in some $300 billion in annual uncollected tax revenues....

Volcker was chairman of the Federal Reserve during the Carter and Reagan administrations. He is now chairman of President Barack Obama's new Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

Orszag said the board would select a task force to study tax reform. He said Obama would like to see board members Laura Tyson, Martin Feldstein, Roger Ferguson and William Donaldson as part of that team.

[AnneD]

67. THIS....

is what disappoints me about Obama. He has picked well in so many areas-but this is a glaring exception.
Here is a smart honest man, who fell on his sword to do what needed to be done and has FAR more creditably that Geitner EVER will. And yet he's just sitting around with his dick in his hand-to put it bluntly. Makes no sense to me-I want an experienced captain at the helm during the storm.

[Demeter]

88. I Hope Volcker Fixes the Bastards Good

Never give an 80-year-old man a chance to even scores.....

[Demeter]

28. Did SOMEBODY Say "Asteroid"?

It's getting to be a running joke---

[Demeter]

29. HOOPPLA! The Beauty of Bonds? by Leo Kolivakis, publisher of Pension Pulse.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/03/guest-post-hooppla-beauty-of-bonds.html

President Obama presented a sober assessment of the state of the economy in a prime time news conference Tuesday, but he insisted his administration has a strategy in place to "attack this crisis on all fronts."

I listened to the news conference and I was not impressed with the puffy questions that were being asked. I would have stood up and asked him straight out: "President Obama, according to two Nobel-Prize winning economists, your Treasury Secretary's plan is flawed and will not work. Why are you and your economic advisers pandering to the Wall Street cronies that got us into this mess?"

On Monday I wrote about Krugman's criticism in my post, Hedge Fund Socialism?. On Tuesday, I read that another Nobel-Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz , believes the Geithner plan will rob American taxpayers:

The U.S. government plan to rid banks of toxic assets will rob American taxpayers by exposing them to too much risk and is unlikely to work as long as the economy remains weak, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said on Tuesday.

"The Geithner plan is very badly flawed," Stiglitz told Reuters in an interview during a Credit Suisse Asian Investment Conference in Hong Kong.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's plan to wipe up to US$1 trillion in bad debt off banks' balance sheets, unveiled on Monday, offered "perverse incentives," Stiglitz said.

The U.S. government is basically using the taxpayer to guarantee against downside risk on the value of these assets, while giving the upside, or potential profits, to private investors, he said.

"Quite frankly, this amounts to robbery of the American people. I don't think it's going to work because I think there'll be a lot of anger about putting the losses so much on the shoulder of the American taxpayer."

Even if the plan clears banks of massive toxic debt, worries about the economic outlook mean banks could still be unwilling to make fresh loans, while the prospect of a higher tax burden to pay for various government stimulus plans could further undermine U.S. consumers, he said.

Some Republican lawmakers have also expressed concern over the incentives offered by the government, which could end up providing private investors with more than 90 percent of the funds to buy the troubled assets. But President Barack Obama has said the plan was critical to a U.S. economic recovery,

........

Stiglitz has long called for the U.S. dollar to be replaced as the only reserve currency. Basing a reserve system on a single currency whose strength depends on confidence its own economy is not a good basis for a global system, he says.

.........

Responding to a question, President Obama shot down the idea of a global currency. He basically knows that the almighty American dollar is what keeps the world anchored to the U.S. military industrial complex.

As far as the Geithner plan, it stinks but the spin doctors like PIMCO's Bill Gross will have you believe otherwise:

"From PIMCO's perspective, we are intrigued by the potential double-digit returns as well as the opportunity to share them with not only clients but the American taxpayer," Gross said.



Gross's endorsement is important after the lack of big investor interest in the debut of the Federal Reserve's consumer lending program last week.

The Fed's Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF, received only $4.7 billion in requests for loans out of $200 billion on offer, heightening fears that big money managers will also shun the government's toxic-asset plan.

Gross' vote of confidence also comes after last week's political furor surrounding the American International Group Inc bonus payment debacle and the anti-Wall Street mood, which raised the risks for private capital firms thinking about partnering with the Treasury.

Congress is moving to clamp down on companies receiving financial bailout money by severely taxing bonus payments.

There is concern that any financial firm getting involved in the toxic asset plan could face retroactive limits on compensation or profits.

"There's a sense of having gone too far and that there's fear that anyone that participates in this or any other government program would be subject to increased scrutiny and standards that didn't exist in the past ... I couldn't discourage that thinking," Gross told Reuters Financial Television.

MUCH MORE AT LINK--TAKE A PICNIC BASKET, OR AT LEAST A SANDWICH!

[antigop]

30. "They can't take it with them, but what do they care?"

One of my favs from Godspell:

http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/godspell/allforthebest.htm


When you feel sad, or under a curse
Your life is bad, your prospects are worse
Your wife is crying, sighing...
And your olive tree is dying,
Temples are graying, and teeth are decaying
And creditors weighing your purse...
Your mood and your robe
Are both a deep blue
You'd bet that Job
Had nothin' on you...
Don't forget that when you go to
Heaven you'll be blessed..
Yes, it's all for the best...


Some men are born to live at ease, doing what they please,
Richer than the bees are in honey
Never growing old, never feeling cold
Pulling pots of gold from thin air
The best in every town, best at shaking down
Best at making mountains of money
They can't take it with them, but what do they care?
They get the center of the meat, cushions on the seat
Houses on the street where it's sunny..
Summers at the sea, winters warm and free
All of this and we get the rest...
But who is the land for? The sun and the sand for?
You guessed! It's all for the best...


When you feel sad, or under a curse
Your life is bad, your prospects are worse
Your wife is crying, sighing...
And your olive tree is dying,
Temples are graying, and teeth are decaying
And creditors weighing your purse...
Your mood and your robe
Are both a deep blue
You'd bet that Job
Had nothin' on you...
Don't forget that when you go to Heaven you'll be
blessed...
You guessed! It's all for the


Some men are born to live at ease, doing what they please,
Richer than the bees are in honey
Never growing old, never feeling cold
Pulling pots of gold from thin air
The best in every town, best at shaking down
Best at making mountains of money
They can't take it with them, but what do they care?
They get the center of the meat, cushions on the seat
Houses on the street where it's sunny...
Summers at the sea, winters warm and free
All of this and we get the rest...
But who is the land for?
The sun and the sand for?
You guessed! It's all for the


You must never be distressed
Yes, it's all for the....
All your wrongs will be redressed
Yes, it's all for the....
Someone's got to be oppressed!


Yes, it's all for the best!!!

From the movie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnIW-eIAJxE

[Demeter]

33. You Beat Me to It!

I love it too, just didn't want to overwhelm the less enthralled.....and it's so appropriate to the topic!

How did you find a segment from the movie?

[antigop]

34. Yes, absolutely appropriate. I just went to Youtube and did a search on the title

antigop
--theater lover who would go crazy without theater

[Hugin]

37. One of my favorites from the show.

"My name is known: God and King. I am most in majesty, in whom no beginning may be and no end."

"Learn Your Lessons Well"

I can see a swath of sinners settin' yonder
And they're actin' like a pack of fools.
Gazin' into space lettin' their minds wander,
'Stead of studyin' the good Lord's rules.
You better pay attention,
Build your comprehension,
There's gonna be a quiz at your ascension.
Not to mention any threat of hell,
But if you're smart you'll learn your lessons well!

Ev'ry bright description of the promised land meant,
You can reach it if you keep alert.
Learnin' ev'ry line and ev'ry last commandment
May not help you, but it couldn't hurt.
First ya gotta read 'em, then ya gotta heed 'em.
Ya never know when you're gonna need 'em
Just as old Elijah said to Jezebel
"You better start to learn your lessons well!"

[antigop]

41. Hugin, that's from "Jesus Christ Superstar" n/t

[Hugin]

42. Oops.

My mind ain't wot it used to be.

I have a fave from that one too. BRB.

[Demeter]

43. Sorry, Wrong Show!

That is from JC Superstar, which is much more about politics than it is money....

Still, it's a good show. My favorite from that show is: all of it. I cannot chose among the songs.

I was introduced to that show at a sleep over the week before I left my native land (Detroit) for the suburbs north of Boston. (Talk about culture shock!)

[Hugin]

44. Fixed.

Politics? Money?

Of all of the things Jesus was silent about... The Money Changers weren't one of them. ;)

Anyway, sorry about the glitch. It had been awhile since I'd looked at the OP. I just remembered something about Mary. ;)

[Demeter]

46. I Meant The Two Shows Have Different Aspects

not referring to the teachings of Christ, per se.

[Hugin]

49. No problem.

I just had to retool my Googling. :blush:

:)

[tclambert]

107. Money changer!

"I shall turneth this earthly den into a parking lot!"

Wrong movie? Well, it had an angel.

Personally, I like to say Jesus threw the Republicans out of the temple.

[tclambert]

94. Damn. That's the one I was gonna quote.

And I was going to do it from memory, no googling the lyrics. And I would have forgotten "Someone's got to be oppressed."

[antigop]

137. HA! I could have done it from memory, but posted a link so others would know where it came from.

I always wanted to go on Jeopardy! when they had Broadway Show Tunes as a category. I would clean up.

[tclambert]

96. Oh, shit, I watched the clip of It's All for the Best, and they sang the last verse on the roof

of the World Trade Center.

[Demeter]

31. 10 Headlines You Won't Read After Obama's Press Conference Joe Weisenthal

http://www.businessinsider.com/top-10-headlines-you-wont-read-about-tonights-press-conference-2009-3

Once again, President Barack Obama will be addressing the nation live in primetime tonight, talking about the economy, of course. We already know that one message he'll give is that "America Will Recover". Here are 10 headlines you won't be reading tonight:

Obama To America: Whoops! I Made Things Worse

Obama:Turns Out We Won't Recover, Sorry

Obama To America: We're Screwed, Really

Obama: Actually, We Forgot To Add A Zero At The End of the Debt total, But It Was Tim Geithner's Fault

Obama: Yes, I do Hate Capitalism

Obama: All Your 401(k)s Are Going To Zero HAHAHAHAHA!!!

Obama: I Wasn't Born In America, But I Love It Anyway!

Obama: Screw China, Hell No We We Aren't Going To Pay Them Back

Obama: It's A Great Time To Buy American Stocks, But Stay Hedged By Buying Long-Dated Puts!

Obama: Your Dollars Are A Joke

[dixiegrrrrl]

36. Another one: "All your dollars are belong to us"

[tclambert]

99. Freakin' mind readers around here today.

I was going to suggest an AIG exec, probably Joseph Cassano, pulls off his mask revealing his inner lizard creature and says, "All your monies are belong to us. Bwahahahahaha."

[antigop]

38. Watch Bill Greider on Bill Moyers Journal

For years best-selling author William Greider sounded the alarm about Washington's unholy alliance with Wall Street and the failure of the Federal Reserve and other regulators to take preventive measures to avoid disaster. Now, he offers some suggestions to the question everyone is asking: "What do we do now?"

Video is at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03272009/watch2.html
Transcript is also at the link.

BILL MOYERS: We saw Secretary Geithner on Monday. We saw President Obama on Tuesday night. We saw Secretary Geithner again on Thursday. And the storyline seems to be, we're going to get tough on the financial industry. Your old newspaper, "The Washington Post," says, calls it, "A sweeping expansion of Federal authority of the financial system. A rebuke of raw capitalism, and a reassertion that regulation is critical to the healthy function of financial markets." That's the storyline as I read the week, but if you read between the lines, what's missing?

WILLIAM GREIDER: Well, among other things that are missing from that story is that we had the rules and regulations, the agencies created some 80 years ago and afterwards to prevent this sort of catastrophe. And these same political players, Republicans and Democrats holding hands, stripped them away, eviscerated them. The same agencies these reformers want to put in power to prevent this from happening again. Starting with the Federal Reserve, the Securities Exchange Commission, other regulators, utterly failed in their duty to do that. Now, we're going to give them new power.

I'm offering a breath of skepticism toward this grand transformation of government. I don't want to be a cynic, but it feels more to me like trying to restore the old order that failed. And I mean by that these big mega banks that had been liberated by deregulation to do as they pleased and the other rules that were undermined. I think this President, and I'm a big fan of this President, but I think his first priority seems to be to recreate those institutions which, some of which are now insolvent, as healthy again.
...
WILLIAM GREIDER: President Obama and if the Democratic leaders in Congress follow along, he'll put the Democratic Party on the wrong side of history. At this critical moment. What we ought to be seeking, the goal of reform, and government aid, is creating a new financial and banking system, of many more, thousands more, smaller, more diverse, regionally dispersed banks and investment firms. That's first obligation is to serve the economy and serve society. Not the other way around. What the administration's approach may be doing is consecrating too big to fail, for starters. Which, of course, everybody in government denied was the policy until the moment arrived. And secondly, and this will sound extreme to some people, but I came to it reluctantly. I fear what they're doing, not intentionally, but in their design is setting the crown for a corporate state.

BILL MOYERS: A corporate state?

WILLIAM GREIDER: A corporate state. And by that I mean a rather small but very powerful circle of financial institutions the old Wall Street banks, famous names. But also some industrial corporations that bought banks. Or General Electric, which is already half of big financial capital, GE Capital. And that circle will be our new Wall Street club. Too big to fail. Yes, watched closely by the Federal Reserve and others in government, but also protected by them. And that's a really insidious departure. To admit that and put it into law. And then think of all those thousands of smaller banks. How are they going to perform against these behemoths that have an inside track to the government spigot? And for just ordinary enterprise in general? Before you even get to the citizens. How are citizens supposed to feel about that? And I-- my point is, in this situation, with if the leading banks and corporations are sort of at the trough, ahead of everybody else in Washington, they will have the means to monopolize democracy. And I mean that literally. Some of my friends would say, hey, that already happened.

[Demeter]

48. Thanks for That! Good Interview!

[Demeter]

39. Why a second best bailout may not be good enough

http://compulsivetheorist.blogspot.com/2009/03/its-not-often-i-find-myself-disagreeing.html

It’s not often I find myself disagreeing with Mark Thoma, but on the issue of the Geithner bailout plan I think I do. Thoma is a careful and reasoned writer, so what comes below I say cautiously, but nonetheless with some conviction.

Thoma writes:

So I am not wedded to a particular plan, I think they all have good and bad points, and that (with the proper tweaks) each could work. Sure, some seem better than others, but none — to me — is so off the mark that I am filled with despair because we are following a particular course of action.


Let me start by nailing my colours to the mast: I am not convinced the Geithner plan is a good one, and would greatly prefer to see a much more thorough reform of the financial sector, including a bankruptcy-like reorganization of insolvent firms. I understand that this sort of “solution” is much easier to consider in the abstract than implement in the real world and that such a plan would encounter formidable political obstacles at a time when the policy response needs to be rapid. So my argument below against Geithner-type plans is made neither lightly, nor simply to play devil’s advocate to optimists.

My opposition to the Geithner plan stems not primarily from outrage, concerns about equity, or even book losses borne by taxpayers, but from major concerns about future economic output and stability. The other issues are important and certainly things I care about, but my feeling is that even these are of secondary concern next to the signal issue of how today’s bailout will affect tomorrow’s broader economy.

For the moment, let’s categorize bailout plans into those which seek to recapitalize the banks while maintaining the current system in roughly its present form and those which go the route of bankruptcy-type proceedings and (given the breadth of the current crisis) would involve a much more thorough overhaul of the financial system. The Geithner and Paulson plans are of the first kind, and the “Swedish” plan (and its many variants) of the second kind. I’ll call these “bailout” and “restructuring” plans respectively. Clearly this nomenclature hides a lot of detail, but I think captures a key axis of difference between the various plans.

Two things about the aetiology of the crisis stand out. First, perverse incentives for agents within the financial sector played a central role in bringing about the crisis. Second, there were (and remain) issues of poor system design in the financial sector: even perverse incentives might have had limited consequences in a robust system. The problem with the Geithner plan is that even it works in terms of stabilizing the economy in the short-term, it does relatively little (the uncharitable would say almost nothing) to correct either incentives or system design. But the business and cultural norms and system-wide conflicts of interest which form the backdrop to the crisis run deep, and will not change without substantial impetus. It is precisely these deeper issues that we must address if we are to reduce the risk of a re-run of the crisis, probably on a larger scale, in a few years time.

I sympathize with the point of view which says that the political window of opportunity is narrow and the need for action urgent, so let’s accept the bailout plan for now, and deal with these wider issues later on. But the very fact that political momentum is limited means that if these wider changes are to be brought about, the process has to begin in earnest at once. Does anyone seriously believe that in a years time, if following massive government support the banks are stable - or can be made to appear stable – there will be any political will to break up very large institutions, or any real change to underlying norms in the financial sector?

However, absent these deeper changes, it is entirely possible that we will see a replay of the crisis - but on a larger scale - in a few years time. Naturally, one cannot say with certainty that such a cataclysm (and if it were much larger than the current crisis, it really would be a cataclysm) will occur. But if it does, the resulting costs will be huge. Martin Wolf has written persuasively about the costs of major economic dislocation. Net of unemployment, political instability and even wars, the human costs of a sequel could dwarf even the current crisis. Then, the choice in the present between the “bailout” and “restructuring” plans hinges on whether expected cost (in the broadest sense), conditioned on the “bailout” strategy is higher than expected cost conditioned on “restructuring”. One could formalize this argument as a decision problem, but it comes down to a judgement call on the relative probability of such a cataclysm under the two strategies and the magnitude of the dislocation. My feeling, admittedly subjective, is that the gloomy cataclysm scenario is substantially more likely under the “bailout” than “restructuring”, and that the costs would be immense.

This case can be put very simply: if we do not use current political momentum to fundamentally reform a system which has shown itself to be unstable and even dangerous, a second opportunity may come at a very high price. And this is not a gamble I wish to see our leaders make.

[Demeter]

45. Turning Japanese and understanding the consequence of policy half-measures by Edward Harrison

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/03/turning-japanese-and-understanding.html

by Edward Harrison of the site Credit Writedowns

Edward Harrison here. Yves is away today, so I thought I would spur discussion with a thought regarding the Geithner Plan and Japan.

As I see it, the Geithner Plan is inadequate because it assumes illiquidity where insolvency is the problem. The long and short of it, from my perspective, is that this plan will not get at the heart of the issue, leverage, debt and unsustainable levels of credit growth. (Dan Roberts of the Guardian has an interesting take on this, suggesting the US is following the UK lead here).

Nevertheless, I want to suggest that the liquidity thrown at the U.S. economy by this and other stimulus plans is so great that it may induce a cyclical upturn. Heresy? Hardly, as I mentioned in my previous post, this is what essentially transpired in Japan in the 1990s. So, let's look at Japan for a second.

Last July, I wrote a post, "Japan circa 1996 - forgotten already?" to remind readers of what took place in Japan in the 1990s. The Yamaichi Securities episode of 1996, as told by the International Herald Tribune, was the event I highlighted:

DETAILS AT LINK

[Demeter]

47. Well, Since We Seem to Have a Quorum Now

I'm going to bed. Talk amongst yourselves, post them if you've got them...sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite!!

[Tansy_Gold]

50. Not repentance -- resistance

I've just read OhioChick's OP regarding Obama's announcement that we don't need no stinkin' outsourced jobs and I'm so furious I can hardly keep my fingers on the keyboard.

I've already posted there just a few basic flaws in Obama's "logic," if you want to call it that, so I'm not going to repeat that here.

and I've also just watched the first few minutes of Olbermann, with his quotes from Rep. Bachmann -- R-Batshitcrazy -- about the necessity of a revolution. And as totally whacko as she is, and as totally clueless as the pukes are, THEY'RE RIGHT.

Obama is doing exactly what Ronald Reagan did, only in reverse. Reagan fueled the working class's fears and they voted for him because they saw him as the savior of their jobs, their livelihoods, their ideals. It took a generation for the policies begun by Reagan, exacerbated by booooosh I, and exalted by Clinton (NAFTA, GATT, Gramm-Leach-Bliley) to bring the working class to its senses and repudiate Reaganism.

The problem is, we voted in a man who is more Reagan than Reagan!

Harry Reid is whining that John Roberts lied during his confirmation hearings. Oh, cry me a fuckin' river, Harry. All of us out here knew Roberts was a lying sack of shit, just like everyone with any connection to the booosh administration.

What we should all be crying about is that Barack Obama was every bit as much a liar as John Roberts.

His fine campaign speeches about protecting working families? BULLSHIT
His promises of health care for everyone? BULLSHIT
His call to end the war(s)? BULLSHIT
His mantra of change? BULLSHIT BULLSHIT and more BULLSHIT.


A few days ago I got an email from an old friend who still lives back in the midwest. Jess and her husband Cam and their families were rare Dems in an almost entirely puke county for years and years and years. I had worked with her brother Mike years and years ago, and I knew her dad Vonn through another job connection. Cam's mother was also a friend of mine. Even though I moved away from there almost 25 years ago, we've kept in close touch, so the note I got from Jess announcing the death of her Uncle Lou wasn't exactly out of the blue by any means. I'd like to share part of it with you, slightly edited and with names and locations changed to protect the guilty:

We were all glad Lou lived long enough to see the Bush administration come to an end. He was a big Obama supporter even though Kucinich was his first choice as I'm sure you can imagine. But he wasn't in good shape. A few days after the inauguration Aunt Dina had to call the paramedics because Lou was having trouble breathing. He spent a couple days in the hospital with pneumonia and then went home but was back in the hospital just a few days later, worse than before. On the pretext that he'd get better care in a rehab center than the hospital we all convinced Dina to get him admitted. She couldn't take care of him at home and I think she knew what was really going on even if he didn't. It's a good thing we did because he went downhill fast. My cousins came in from Nebraska and Colorado in time to see him while he was still able to appreciate their visits, and then he just slipped away one night very quietly and peacefully.

Aunt Dina took it all very well, and she's been busy since the funeral getting all Lou's stuff taken care of. I go over a couple times a week to help her with the bills and the checkbook and that stuff because she's terrible with numbers and Lou always did it for her.

Last week-end we started her taxes and I suggested we take everything to the accountant Cam and I have used for years. I knew she and Lou had a couple of small hobby/business ventures as well as some rental properties and frankly I thought they had someone doing their taxes too. I was kind of surprised when she told me Lou always did their taxes. I never thought of him as much of a number person either but apparently he was. She showed me the file cabinet filled with copies of their tax returns going all the way back to 1968.

I asked her why they only went back to 68. I knew she and Lou were married 55 years because we had a big golden anniversary party for them so I figured there was some significance to 1968.

"That's when that crook Nixon was elected. We weren't gonna give him a dime if we didn't have to."

It's not easy to think of your 80-something-year-old aunt as a hippy but she kind of was. What she and Uncle Lou did starting in 1968 was to stop paying income taxes. They set up a bunch of little businesses that they used as tax shelters. Some years some of them were profitable and other years others made money but they always fixed it so whatever withholding they had from their real jobs was refunded. Then they turned around and gave what they would have owed in taxes to whatever organization or charity that shouldn't have had to wait for government money. They gave a lot to the schools and the food bank and then used those donations to lower their taxes the next year. State and local taxes and property taxes they paid because that stayed in the community and paid for the schools and so on, but they refused to pay federal income taxes for 40 years.

Back then it was the war in Vietnam and now we've got these wars and the bailouts and it doesn't seem like any of the things we hoped would happen after Obama was elected are going to happen. I'm glad Uncle Lou got to see that, but I'm also glad he hasn't had to see what's happened since then. It's pretty damn sad.

I know you have your little businesses and we have the rentals and maybe tax avoidance is the only way to stop this. I told Cam about it and he didn't have much to say which could mean he's thinking about it or could mean he didn't pay any attention to me. But it does make you wonder if there's a real reason to continue to give the government a third of your income when you know they're only going to give it to some billionaire crook living in some villa in the south of France.



What was that about the dirty fuckin' hippies were right? :toast: Here's to ya, Lou and Dina.



Tansy Gold

[Demeter]

51. Resistance for Us, Repentance For Obama Administration

Give 'em hell, Tansy!

[Tansy_Gold]

58. It's the principal of the thing.

No, that's not a typo.

Friend of mine is a retired schoolteacher. I didn't know until yesterday that he had also been principal of the school where he taught, but only for a couple years, in small rural/suburban district in Montana. "I hated it," he said. "I always wanted to teach, and when they offered me the principal's job because I'd been a good teacher, I was enormously flattered. I thought I could help make all the other teachers as effective as I was. It didn't work that way. The principal was a job for someone who enjoyed being a figurehead. I had nothing to do with teaching any more. It sucked. I finished my contract, then asked to go back to being what I was good at, teaching junior high social studies. The guy who succeeded me was a crappy teacher but a great principal. He loved it. He ate it up."

Obama came into office with little experience of the ways of Washington, and I get the distinct impression that he's really out of his element. He may be a great senator, and certainly a great speaker, and he may have great ideas, but he's also got to have a tremendous ego. I don't care about the drinkin' a beer out of a plastic cup at a basketball game or going to parent-tacher conferences. I'm talking about a tremendous instinctive sense that everything he does is right. Unfortunately, that makes him tremendously vulnerable to those "advisors" who can recognize his weaknesses and turn them to their own advantage. But with that enormous ego comes a flip side: an enormous insecurity and inability to even listen to criticism.

In that sense, he may be little different from the piece of shit we just sent back to Texas. Boooooosh was more obviously manipulated/controlled by cheeeeeney; the control exerted by Geithner, Rubin, Summers, Greenspan (by osmosis) and the other architects of our catastrophe may be more subtle, but I do not doubt for one moment that it is there.

We just went through seven or eight years of watching the historians (who don't get a lot of air time) pan boooosh as the worst ever. Now we've got a whole lot of economists saying Obama is doing the wrong thing with this depression. If he can't set his monstrous ego aside -- an ego that is almost essential for any major political office-seeker -- and start listening to dissenting points of view, he, too, will go down in history as one of the worst.

Unlike his predecessor, however, he won't get a second term. He made the mistake, probably ego-driven, of making promises he didn't really know how to keep. And then he surrounded himself with "experts" who came out of the status quo and had every intention of maintaining it.

Do you wanta know how to fix the economic catastrophe you've exacerbated, Mr. Obama?

1. Slap an income tax surcharge on personal net incomes over $1,000,000. Is this the "worst time" to increase taxes? No, it's not. It's the BEST time to increase taxes on those who are already doing very, very well. They're the ones who have siphoned, skimmed, funneled, and scammed the wealth from the working people.

2. Increase the income tax rate on short-term capital gains.

3. Lower the tax rates, even if only by a single percentage point or by raising deduction/exemption rates, on individuals with net incomes under $125,000/families under $250,000. (And by families I mean any "family" that consists of at least one person with an income and at least one dependent, who may or may not also have an income. A single parent with a child falls into the "family" category, as would a two-income married couple without children.)

4. Get rid of the health insurance companies. Offer employers a Medicaid option: They can provide health insurance to their employees or they can opt into Medicaid via a higher FICA rate. For example, if the employer currently pays $500/mo and the employee pays $300/mo for family coverage, each would be able to opt-in for a 3% (for each side) Medicaid increase. For someone making $10,000 a month, this is no bargain, but for someone making $3,000 a month it is. Any employer who does NOT already provide health insurance would have no option: they would be required to opt in (and yes, I know that's contradictory). We already have something similar in the current FICA funding in that even those employers who have pension plans or contribute to employees' retirement plans still have to pay into Social Security. If the health insurance companies are suddenly starved of premiums, they will either simply go away or become more efficient. (I think it's called competition and it's something the right wing shrieks about all the time.)

5. Read "The Far Pavilions." Don't bother with the movie. Read the book.

Oh, and

6. Tell Joe Biden to give me a call.




Tansy Gold

[Demeter]

59. I'll bite. What Did Joe Biden Do?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again--Tansy Gold for President!

[Tansy_Gold]

61. I have secret plans for Joe Biden

and they do not involve sex.


:evilgrin:




Tansy Gold

[DemReadingDU]

66. Biden - good or bad?

I always liked Biden

[Demeter]

75. I don't think Tansy Is Telling

so it must be pretty bad, what she has in mind.

[Tansy_Gold]

82. Tansy was away from her computer.. . . . . brb

tg

[Tansy_Gold]

85. Je suis revenu -- des sans-culottes, Mme. Defarge, M. Biden, et Citoyen Obama

Mes amis:

It's really quite amazing how one little idea morphs into so many others.

In the other post downthread there are the references to the sans-culottes, hence FRSPs and Madame Defarge. I thought maybe I'd change my avatar or just add something to my sig line. So I went looking via images on the google and I found a bunch of bizarre stuff including clips from a French film version with English subtitles, looked like from the mid to late 30s.

But then there was a link to a DailyKos posting about Bruce Springsteen, with a whole bunch of pictures of The Boss at a free voter registration concert in Philadelphia in October 2008. And looking at those photos, all those thousands of blurred faces, I got choked up all over again, but this time my empathy/sympathy was liberally (pun intended) mixed with anger.

Now, I've never been a big Bruce Springsteen fan. He must have come along just at the time I was moving out of pop music and into wife- and motherhood in an area of the country that didn't have good pop music radio reception. So it's not that I don't like him or his music but rather that I never got exposed to it very much. But as I watched him during the '04 Kerry campaign and then through the four years leading up to the '08 election, I saw, felt, sensed the working class soul that his music represents. It's very much apparent in the photos here.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/10/4/194845/253/86/620286

I was furious with John Kerry in 2004 for his failure to "bond" with John Edwards. I felt that there was an aura of elitism about Kerry that Edwards could have mitigated. And discounting what Edwards did to his own prospects later, I suspect that perhaps there was an element in Edwards that kept him from pushing a more working-class image in that campaign. Kerry was clearly the leader and he set the tone. He had the experience that Edwards did not. He would not have tolerated dissent from the running mate.

For sheer politics, I think that had Obama selected Hillary Clinton as his running mate, there would have been far less rift in the electorate and a victory would have been assured long before November. But I also understood why, in sheer political terms, that ticket wasn't feasible. I had no problem with the choice of Biden -- reservations over his ties to the banks and cc companies, yes, but an acknowledgement also that there is no such thing as a perfect candidate, myself excepted. And there were the same working class and personal tragedy in Biden's background as in Edards' that could make him a powerful candidate.

By the fall of 2008 the economic crisis I had foreseen years ago was coming to fruition. The loss of manufacturing jobs had been going on for years, and was now accelerating. The housing boom was a balloon searching for a pin. The banks were in trouble -- remember, I had worked at Charlie Keating's Lincoln Savings after its collapse in the early 90s -- and the stock market was plunging. So along comes Joe Biden, in some ways an unlikely VP choice for the polished and almost charismatic Obama.

Here's what Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden has to say:

With a net worth between $59,000 and $366,000, and almost no outside income or investment income, he was consistently ranked as one of the least wealthy members of the Senate.<84><85><86> Biden stated that he was listed as the second poorest member in Congress, a distinction that he was not proud of, but attributed to being elected early in his career.<87> Biden realized early in his senatorial career how vulnerable poorer public officials are to offers of financial contributions in exchange for policy support, and he pushed campaign finance reform measures during his first term.<44>

During his years as a senator, Biden amassed a reputation for loquaciousness,<88><89><90> with his questions and remarks during Senate hearings being especially known for being long-winded.<91><92> He has been a strong speaker and debater and a frequent and effective guest on the Sunday morning talk shows.<92> In public appearances, he is known to deviate from prepared remarks at will.<93> According to political analyst Mark Halperin, he has shown "a persistent tendency to say silly, offensive, and off-putting things";<92> The New York Times writes that Biden's "weak filters make him capable of blurting out pretty much anything".<90> Political writer Howard Fineman has said that, "Biden is not an academic, he’s not a theoretical thinker, he’s a great street pol. He comes from a long line of working people in Scranton—auto salesmen, car dealers, people who know how to make a sale. He has that great Irish gift."<25> Political columnist David Broder has viewed Biden as having grown since he came to Washington and since his failed 1988 presidential bid: "He responds to real people—that’s been consistent throughout. And his ability to understand himself and deal with other politicians has gotten much much better."<25>

Further in that same wiki article there is a lot of emphasis placed on Biden's VP campaign as his working-class roots were highlighted. We all know about his daily Amtrak rides, his sometimes salty "gaffes." As one of the "poorest" senators in that very exclusive club of millionaires, Biden was and is able to bond with ordinary people's real interests that Bush II could only project in a kind of vicarious camaraderie.

But there was also that element of independence, almost defiance, in Biden's acceptance of the VP spot. He said he didn't want to be just someone to bring in votes or a yes man. And yet he did campaign extensively in those working class areas of Ohio and Pennsylvania taht were crucial to the Obama victory.

So where has he been since then? Where is the voice of working class Joseph Robinette Biden when the bankers and hedge fund gamblers and naked CDS bettors are raking in the dough and the mills and factories and family-owned businesses are going bust? Where is the blunt, off-the-cuff, unscripted and maybe profane "This is fucking nuts!" from the vice president whose net worth is less than half a million dollars? http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=5641372

That's why I want Joe Biden to give me a call. He needs someone to remind him that he doesn't have to sit in Obama's shadow. He needs to knock on the door to the oval office and remind Obama just who voted them -- yes, them -- into the White House. He needs to play the role Obama picked him for. He doesn't need to be another Dick "the snarl" Cheney. He just needs to be Joe Biden.


And I just need to be




Tansy Gold

[DemReadingDU]

89. Where is Biden?

Almost weekly he was on the Sunday talking shows. Nary a peep out of him lately. Did he take up residence in Cheney's undisclosed location?

I'd like him to call me, so that I can also remind him who voted them into the White House.

[Ghost Dog]

113. Mr. Biden was in Chile, Saturday:

US' Biden cautions against over-regulating markets
Sat Mar 28, 2009 1:30pm EDT
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idINN2828966220090328?rpc=44

VINA DEL MAR, Chile, March 28 (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Saturday urged world leaders to act cautiously when redesigning global financial market regulations, amid growing calls for supervision from nations grappling with the global financial crisis.

Biden made the appeal to a clutch of fellow world leaders at a meeting in Chile billed as a pre-G20 warm-up, at which British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for cross-border banking supervision and revamped international financial institutions.

Biden said the United States was eager to coordinate international policy at the G20 in London next week to reduce the systemic risk to global markets, but warned over-regulation could hurt healthy markets.

"We should not over-react. It is not a choice of markets or governments," Biden told a round-table discussion that included Brown, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

"A free market still needs to be able to function. It seems to me, we need to save markets from free marketeers," he added...


Biden says U.S. does not plan to lift Cuba embargo
Sat Mar 28, 2009 2:33pm EDT
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idINN2829352420090328?rpc=44

VINA DEL MAR, Chile, March 28 (Reuters) - U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on Saturday the United States would not lift the country's embargo on Cuba.

"No," Biden told reporters at a meeting in Chile when asked if the United States planned to lift the embargo.

"We think that Cuban people should determine their own fate and they should be able to live in freedom and have some prospect of economic prosperity," he added...

(The above would appear to be two self-contradictory statements: The Cuban people would like to 'do business' with the USA; the embargo denies them this freedom.)



Biden appeals to G20 protesters
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7970185.stm

US Vice-President Joe Biden has called for G20 protesters to give governments a chance to tackle the economic crisis.

At a G20 warm-up meeting in Chile, Mr Biden said heads of state would agree proposals to remedy the crisis at next week's meeting in London.

As they spoke, tens of thousands of protesters marched in the UK capital and in Germany, France and Italy.

...

At a news conference in Vina del Mar, Mr Biden said he hoped the protesters would give the politicians a chance.

"Hopefully we can make it clear to them that we're going to walk away from this G20 meeting with some concrete proposals," he said...

[DemReadingDU]

116. I think Biden is being 'coached'

Only a few things he can talk about now, and he must measure what he says
:(

[Demeter]

123. If "Coached" Means Suppressed, I Agree

[Demeter]

90. Ah! Well, I See Your Point. Biden Has Been Very Quiet

and I blame Rahm. He was the first clue that all was not well in the kingdom of Oz. I had hoped that pulling Rahm out of the Senate, where he was a royal pain in the ass, and stuffing him in a supporting role would restore some direction to the Democrats as a whole, but I think rather Rahm has hijacked the administration, instead.

[Tansy_Gold]

111. Response to #89 & #90 -- Heeeeeeeeeeere's Joey!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/us/politics/29biden.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all

Also posted in Editorials by elleng


<snip>

But they also acknowledge that the verbose vice president has struggled to adjust at times to working within a White House that prizes discipline.


<snip>

Mr. Biden’s public statements and appearances have been closely monitored inside the administration, and at times fretted over. “Like every single human being, his strength is his weakness, his weakness is his strength,” said Mr. Axelrod, now Mr. Obama’s senior adviser at the White House. “I think the strength outweighs the weakness to a large degree. And it’s all related to someone who speaks his mind and is forthright.”

Mr. Biden has taken steps to rein himself in — or others have insisted on it. He has begun to use a teleprompter more. He often uses note cards to stay focused while presiding over meetings. He has given few interviews since Election Day, and those have focused mainly on discrete policy topics.

“He knows a lot, and he is extremely experienced,” Mrs. Clinton said of Mr. Biden, with whom she has breakfast each Tuesday. “I think sometimes he has to be a little aware he could literally educate the rest of us on an issue for a long time.”

<end snips>


It's an interesting article, but as is often the case, what's left out is more interesting: "Members of Mr. Biden’s staff said, however, that Mr. Biden would not be made available for an interview for this article. But they helped make others available to testify on his behalf: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mr. Obama, who took a few minutes on a day when he was setting a new course for the war in Afghanistan to express appreciation for, among other things, Mr. Biden’s willingness to speak his mind." Odd, when the title of the article is "Speaking Freely, Biden Finds Influential Role."

Yeah, right.



Tansy Gold, with one eyebrow (metaphorically) raised

[DemReadingDU]

114. Ah, It's not that Biden doesn't want to be seen and heard

The administration is keeping Biden from the media.

[Tansy_Gold]

118. Yeah. And that worries me

Because it's virtually a contradiction (surprise surprise) of the impression Obama gave when he selected Biden.

Obama knew what he was getting with Biden, far more so than the other way around. Now he's trying to rein in the tiger and turn him into a bunny rabbit. That almost never works. Just ask anybody who's ever been in a relationship with a partner who says something like "When we were dating, I liked you because you always looked so sexy in public and it made me proud to be seen with you, but now that we're together I don't want anyone else looking at you like that so you need to stop wearing those clothes, stop wearing make-up, and cut your hair. Oh, and don't go out in public ever without me. Ever."

the fact that Obama didn't get the message and didn't have Joe call me yesterday tells me he's got the VP on a very short leash. This is not a good sign. Not a good sign at all.




Tansy Gold

[DemReadingDU]

121. It may not be Obama reining in Biden

I think there is an invisible group of people running the administration, just like there was an invisible group of people running the Bush administration. I am not sure if this group is made up of the same people, but the policies sure do seem the same. I think they told Obama what to do, just like they are telling Biden what he is allowed to talk about. And it all has to do with transferring our money to the elites, before the system collapses.

[Tansy_Gold]

125. So in other words. . . . .

1. They "let" us elect Obama as a sop to our otherwise revolutionary instincts?

2. Obama is in on the deal?

3. Biden is in on the deal?

4. All of Congress is in on the deal?

5. All the state, county, and local elected officials are in on the deal?



No, it's too big a conspiracy and even I'm not that :tinfoilhat:-ish.

Conspiracies are always small. They have to be. Remember Kissinger on 9/11/01 carrying on about how it had to be a big well organized outfit with hundreds of people behind the highjackings? I sat there in my social movements class, watching it on the tv, and I said right out loud hell no, it wouldn't take hundreds of people. For four planes, maybe twelve, fifteen people. People around me protested that the highjackers needed years of preparation. They had to be trained pilots, etc., etc., etc. And I said no, they didn't need to be pilots. They didn't need to know how to take off and they didn't need to know how to land. Just steer. And a few days later we found out it was 19 people. a few of whom had taken a few flying lessons.

In a conspiracy as big as you're suggesting, over as many years as it would take, it'd be like the Prieure de Sion, that whacked out fantasy from the mind of Pierre de Plantard. Even "secret" organizations like the freemasons, the mormons, the Vatican -- they aren't completely secret. They can't be that secret and still operate in the world as we know it.

No, what happened was that Obama fucked up and he fucked up big time. He let his ego rule, and he had the oratorical skill and the sheer blind luck (which I think the opportunist in him was very much aware of) to come along at a time when a simple mantra of "change" could put him in power. He had acquired a taste for power, perhaps too much of a taste.

Remember that there was a dark side to JFK, too.



Tansy Gold

[Demeter]

129. Gergen on NPR Was Hinting At the Obama Ego

Well, we all know how far one can get on ego in these circumstances....

[DemReadingDU]

130. Nah, I didn't imply anything so grand

A handful of wealthy banksters or lobbyists or insiders, who are advising Obama. Congress is not in on this 'conspiracy', nor Biden, nor any other governments. Just a mere handful of advisers. Obama is listening to them, not us. That is all.


edit: They're invisible to us, not Obama.

[Demeter]

122. Have You Tried Calling Biden?

Surely he has his own phone, or email?

If worse comes, we can buy a full page ad in the NYTimes. Somebody is sure to mention it to him!

[wovenpaint]

132. GMTA

:thumbsup:
I'll second that!

[Tansy_Gold]

133. Awww, you guys. . . . .

:blush:

But seriously, I wouldn't pass the vetting for local school board :evilgrin:



And proud of it!



Tansy Gold

[DemReadingDU]

56. Splendid letter

Thanks for sharing with us

[Demeter]

52. On The Eve of the Ultimate Economic Meltdown, We Commemorate Two Natural Ones

30 years ago, Three Mile Island put paid to the concept of free, clean nuclear power. Today the nuclear industry is trying to claim that "nothing happened", but we who sweated it out in the Northeast know better:


Daniel Kessler: Remembering the Three Mile Island Meltdown:

Thirty years ago, the word "meltdown" was seared into the American consciousness when the Unit 2 reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant near Harrisburg, PA melted the radioactive fuel rods in the core of the reactor and began leaking radiation into the environment in the early morning hours of March 28, 1979.

Radiation leaked from the damaged reactor for days as government regulators scrambled to get radiation monitoring equipment into surrounding communities. The Governor of Pennsylvania eventually ordered an evacuation of pregnant women and children. The accident at Three Mile Island sent the nuclear industry into a tailspin. Already staggering under the weight of over $100 billion dollars in cost overruns, the meltdown showed Americans that not only was nuclear power expensive - it was also dangerous. The nuclear industry turned a multi-million dollar asset into a multi-billion dollar liability overnight, and demonstrated that both the government and industry were thoroughly unprepared for the accident and its aftermath.

But now that memories of the meltdown and the ensuing panic have faded, the nuclear industry and those in their employ are claiming that that Three Mile Island was really a success story and that the radiation was contained.

Remarkable! When you're being paid to promote a "nuclear renaissance," I suppose you have to dispose of some problematic facts. Contrary to the claims of the nuclear lobby, the Three Mile Island accident spewed radiation into the environment for days and crippled the U.S. nuclear industry. The question that has persisted since the accident isn't whether radiation was released but how much radiation was released.

Even the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) fact sheet on the Three Mile Island accident acknowledges that the meltdown resulted in a significant release of radiation. According to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 10 million curies of radiation escaped the damaged reactor core (a "curie" is a unit of radioactivity that denotes how many radioactive atoms in a particular collection of atoms are giving off radiation; 1 curie = 37 billion atoms giving off radiation). However, independent and unbiased nuclear engineers who reexamined the accident estimate that as much as 150 million curies of radiation may have escaped to the environment.

According to government reports on the accident, the radiation monitors went off scale before 8:00 a.m. on March 28, eliminating the only direct means of assessing the quantities and rate of release of radiation from the reactor. This information was vital to an accurate evaluation of the consequences of the meltdown.

The Department of Energy (DOE) later dispatched a helicopter to take measurements in the radioactive cloud escaping the damaged reactor core. The radiation detected by the DOE's helicopter indicated that the atomic plume could be detected out to a distance of 16 miles from the reactor. Yet the nuclear industry and their lobbyists would have the public believe that the release of as much as 150 million of curies of radiation into the communities near Three Mile Island was without consequence. Don't believe it.

Despite the government and nuclear industry denials, a peer-reviewed study conducted in 1997 by Dr. Steven Wing of the University of North Carolina found that lung cancer and leukemia rates downwind from Three Mile Island were two to ten times higher than cancer rates upwind of the accident.

Even the nuclear cheerleaders at the NRC acknowledge that "exposure to any level of radiation is assumed to carry with it a certain amount of risk." The scientific community generally assumes that any exposure to ionizing radiation may cause undesirable biological effects and that the likelihood of these effects increases as the dose increases. The NRC's fact sheet on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation states that, "any amount of radiation may pose some risk for causing cancer and hereditary effect, and that the risk is higher for higher radiation exposures." There is no such thing as a "safe" dose of radiation.

On this 30th anniversary of the accident at Three Mile Island, it's important that we remember the meltdown and its aftermath. As nuclear corporations attempt to resell reactors as clean and safe, we must remember that Three Mile Island revealed the truth about the nuclear industry. Not only is nuclear power expensive; it's also dangerous and deadly.

- Jim Riccio is the Nuclear Policy Analyst for Greenpeace in Washington, DC.

More information on the abysmal economics and dangers of nuclear power can be found on the Greenpeace web site. http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/campaigns/nuclear

The government documents referenced in this article can not be found on the NRC's web site but have been posted online by Dickinson College. http://www.threemileisland.org/resource/index.php?aid=00027

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-kessler/remembering-the-three-mil_b_179955.html?view=screen

.....................................................

10 years later, the Exxon-Valdez polluted Alaskan shores and waters, destroying the ecosystem and the local communities.

http://www.evostc.state.ak.us/ for official reports

"...Even after 79 percent of the world supertanker fleet has been replaced by craft with two hulls, Exxon Mobil Corp. remains the biggest Western user of the older designs. It hired more of the tankers last year than the rest of the 10 biggest companies by market value combined, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Exxon, the world’s largest oil company, has kept using tankers with one hull even as 151 countries have decided two are better than one for preventing oil spills and pledged to ban single-hull vessels by 2015...."

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/03/exxon-valdez-oil-spill-alaska-20-years.php


Exxon Valdez Anniversary: 20 Years Later, Oil Remains

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/03/090323-exxon-anniversary.html

[Demeter]

53. And for that Unnatural Disaster Known as "Octomom" Capitol Steps Chimes In:

http://www.capsteps.com/sounds/octomom-whatchild.mp3

[Demeter]

54. They Also Have Captured Obama Mania

http://www.capsteps.com/sounds/obama-mania.mp3

[Demeter]

55. And then, There's Their Retirement Plan Advice

http://www.capsteps.com/sounds/401k-0812.mp3

[Demeter]

60. Still Searching for a Recovery by Bill Bonner

http://www.dailyreckoning.com/still-searching-for-a-recovery/

Paris, France


The mobs are forming...

Give the sans-culottes a chance...and they'll turn violent. So far, two bosses have been held hostage in France. Employees wanted something the bosses either couldn't or wouldn't give.

In England, the yahoos attacked poor Sir Fred Goodwin's house. Fred ran the Royal Bank of Scotland into the ground; you'd think the rabble would be delighted.

In America, meanwhile, they organize bus tours to gawk at AIG executives' houses...and howl for blood. Apologize, resign...or commit suicide, suggested Senator Grassley.

"The corporate security business is booming," says the International Herald Tribune.

Until now, the whole bonus/executive pay/bailout spectacle was just an amusing diversion - diverting the public's attention with a trifling few million dollars, while the feds picked their pickets for trillions. But now, it's turning ugly.

Our guess is that the blood will flow...but later. It's still fairly early in the correction. Investors have lost money - lots of it. Homeowners have lost their homes. Working stiffs and Wall Street sharpies have both lost their jobs. But the violence-prone yahoos still expect something for nothing. The bailout plans will work, they believe. The government will step in and save them. They haven't figured out that the government's bailouts are just making their situation worse.

Today's International Herald Tribune tells that "shanty-towns" are beginning to appear throughout the United States. People are setting up tent communities...shacks...and Rio-style favelas - in America. The paper shows a photo of a group of tents under a California freeway. It's not hard to understand why. Many families live paycheck to paycheck...just one week ahead of the rent payments. If the paychecks stop - even for a short time - they're in trouble.

When credit is expanding, jobs are plentiful and credit is willing. Lose a job and you can always get another. And you can fill in the gap in your budget with credit cards. But that was then...this is now. Advertise a job opening now and you're likely to get hundreds of applicants. And not only is it harder to get a job...it's harder to get a line of credit too. And even people who still have credit are more reluctant to use it. They know where that leads; many would prefer to live under a highway than to run up more debt.

A big change in attitude has taken place. People used to think that whatever they needed, they could get it 'just in time.' That's why we have 24-7 liquor stores, all-night convenience shops and cash machines on every street corner. But something has gone wrong with the 'just in time' system. The cash machines aren't as yielding as they used to be. Neither is the housing market. Or the job market. Sometimes, they just say no.

Now, people want a little cash in their pocket...just in case.

But what do we know? We missed the whole credit cycle. When we were young and in need of credit, the banks were still smart enough not to lend to us. When we got older, we were smart enough not to borrow.

But pity people about 20 years younger than we are. They were just starting out...having children...buying houses...at a time when the banks had lost their minds. Credit was as easy to get as a social disease. Now, the debt is even harder to get rid of. Old people...and young people...tend to have little debt. It's the people in between who are hurting.

But enough rambling...

Everyone's looking for the recovery. The commentators think they see signs of it everywhere. Commodities are rising. Stocks are going up. Even houses are said to be selling better than they were a few weeks ago.

"Risk appetite grows on hope US is near bottom," says the FT today.

The Dow rose 174 points yesterday. Oil, the dollar, and gold moved little.

Maybe you should stop reading here...before we get to the 'rest of the story'...

[Tansy_Gold]

64. "Give the sans-culottes a chance..."

FRSP here we come!




Tansy Gold, warmin' up her knittin' needles (or at least a crochet hook)

[AnneD]

65. Hid-dy ho there weekenders.....

:toast: Another week over. Demi, I think I have been on a Lenten binge too. This week end is The Story of Ruth, The Robe, One Night with the King (Sounds like an Elvis movie:evilgrin: ), Greatest Story Ever Told, and the Song of Bernadette. I want to find a copy of my fav-Ben Hur. I also have Passion of Christ-but I have to work up to that one.

I like Jesus Christ-Superstar myself, Herod's song...
So, you are the Christ, you're the great Jesus Christ.
Prove to me that you're divine; change my water into wine.
That's all you need do, then I'll know it's all true.
Come on, King of the Jews.
<snip>
So, you are the Christ, you're the great Jesus Christ.
Prove to me that you're no fool; walk across my swimming pool.
If you do that for me, then I'll let you go free.
Come on, King of the Jews.

I only ask what I'd ask any superstar.
What is it that you have got that puts you where you are.
I am waiting, yes I'm a captive fan.
I'm dying to be shown that you are not just any man.
So, if you are the Christ, yes the great Jesus Christ
Feed my household with this bread.
You can do it on your head.

More....

This week has taken a toll on my economics psyche. I am just so bummed over the crap being spewed out but Geitner et al, and the realization that the one person that I entrusted and even given my own hard earned money to has forgotten who brung him to the dance. If Obama doesn't get this right-it will be several generations before another minority get elected into office or someone comes in not beholding to corp interests. This is a great do over of 1968. We took a wrong turn then and have been hurt every since. I have prayed in my heart of hearts for him to get this right-but time is slipping away.

[DemReadingDU]

68. It will be interesting to see what Obama does

after all the advice from his economic team, that nothing worked. The economy is going to implode, sooner or later. We are going to be broke from all that money of ours that was handed to the banksters. What's Obama going to do when so many are jobless, homeless, penniless and hungry?

[AnneD]

71. Let's hope he can....

feed the multitude with 2 fish and 5 loaves of bread because that may be all that is left for us.

[antigop]

69. So is this a way to take it to the streets? Protests on April 11....

http://anewwayforward.org/demonstrations/rally-list.php

The idea:
http://anewwayforward.org/the_idea/

NATIONALIZE: Experts agree on the means -- Insolvent banks that are too big to fail must incur a temporary FDIC intervention - no more blank check taxpayer handouts. (see Krugman on nationalization)

REORGANIZE: Current CEOs and board members must be removed and bonuses wiped out. The financial elite must share in the cost of what they have caused. (see Simon Johnson on reorganizing)

DECENTRALIZE: Banks must be broken up and sold back to the private market with new antitrust rules in place-- new banks, managed by new people. Any bank that's "too big to fail" means that it's too big for a free market to function. (see Mike Lux on decentralization)

Big bankers ruined our economy and now they are gaming the political system so they can profit even more off the crisis they caused. They must be stopped.

On April 11th, 2009, the public will come out in cities across the country to express their frustration and disapproval with how our elected officials have handled the economic crisis. No one has been left unscathed; this protest is yours.

The bankers' failure to see anything beyond short-term profit for themselves has torn this country apart and jeopardized our future. But the blame doesn't lie only with the banks; it also lies with the U.S. government that failed to protect its citizens through regulation and oversight.

Through their blind and unconditional faith in the financial markets, the banks and the government have made us all into victims of greed gone out of control. This crisis is an opportunity for President Obama to lead the U.S. in a new direction; one that values economic growth, but protects the well-being of the public before the bank accounts of the world's financial elite.

More at the link...

I hope they have permits for each city protest.

[DemReadingDU]

72. I just saw that site

Maybe enough people will show up to make the nightly news

[antigop]

73. They are having protests in different cities...it's a nationwide protest

The site has a list of cities that are already registered and has a way to register new sites.

I think I'll go.

[Karenina]

108. We need a little Max Keiser Drum & Bass

to go along with that:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=385&topic_id=290129&mesg_id=290129

[Demeter]

145. Thank You!

I probably would have missed that if you hadn't crossposted. I agree with them.

[Pale Blue Dot]

136. I just signed up for Hartford. nt

[DemReadingDU]

76. Six Bloggers of the Apocalypse

3/27/09 Six Bloggers of the Apocalypse

If you spend enough time surfing the Web, you might think Nouriel Roubini, the pessimistic economist profiled in the April issue of Condé Nast Portfolio, is taking a walk on the sunny side of the street. There are bloggers who have been forecasting much worse for several years.

While bankers were still ordering $1,000 bottles of wine in trendy Manhattan restaurants, these internet Sybils of the impending economic apocalypse were already prophesizing food shortages and endless gas lines.

Some are on the right side of the political spectrum, others on the far left, but they all share one thing—traffic on their sites has increased exponentially since Wall Street began to implode last fall.

We caught up with a few of the more provocative doommongers to see what they think is coming next. Hint: Before reading further, you may want to uncork your most expensive bottle of wine. You’ll need it.

Clusterf**k Nation
James Howard Kunstler

Novelist and journalist James Howard Kunstler is the leading popular voice of peak oil, the theory that says we have gone through more than half the world’s supply of this much-needed resource. Kunstler’s regular Monday morning posts foretell a world beset by oil shortages, which he believes will lead to everything from financial shenanigans (sound familiar?) to food riots, not to mention attacks on the wealthy, abandoned suburban housing developments and a forced return to small-town living.

Prediction: High potential for civil unrest and violence. “It won’t be good for your health to be a conspicuous consumer.”
http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/


The Trends Research Institute
Gerald Celente

Not a blogger per se, trends researcher Gerald Celente publishes his predictions for the future in a quarterly journal. In December 2007, he called “The Panic of '08,” featuring “failing banks, busted brokerages, toppled corporate giants, bankrupt cities, states in default.... When the giant firms fall, they’ll crush the man on the street.” The journal is by paid subscription only, but Celente makes frequent radio appearances, which his many fans record and post online.

Prediction: The current economic crisis will be worse than the Great Depression, with a rise in alternative living arrangements. He’s thinking self-storage units. “People are going to self-store themselves.” FYI, Roubini’s offices just happen to be located in the same building as a Manhattan Mini Storage facility. Coincidence? You decide.
http://geraldcelentechannel.blogspot.com/


Speaking Truth to Power
Carolyn Baker

The site run by Carolyn Baker, an adjunct professor of history in Vermont, is structured her site like an Utne Reader of global collapse lit, with links to sites ranging from the very mainstream Marketwatch.com to some of the bloggers on our list. Her goal is to connect the dots between peak oil, global climate change, financial collapse and other ongoing trends and debates. The common thread: Our way of life cannot be sustained. And it will all end badly.

Prediction: “It’s not going to be like falling off a cliff but a slow descent with tipping points. There are going to be different kinds of Katrinas, economic crises, natural disasters, and nuclear exchanges—but I really hope I am wrong about that.”
http://carolynbaker.net/site/


Generational Dynamics
John Xenakis

Xenakis, a computer consultant, analyzes previous and current generations in American history to predict catastrophe to come. He believes the exit of the Greatest Generation from the workforce in the 1990s set the stage for disaster as Baby Boomers, who are uncomfortable with authority, fell prey to the amoral Gen Xer’s right behind them. The two groups combined to bring us the current financial crisis as the Baby Boomers want money badly enough not to ask many questions about its provenance, while the equally greedy Gen Xer’s are nihilistic enough to do what it takes to get it.

Prediction: The misbegotten combination of the Boomers and the Gen Xers will continue to cause trouble for several more decades, leading to complete financial collapse and war before Xers are able to turn things around in their old age. Says Xenakis, “I don’t expect to live through it.”
http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi-bin/D.PL?s=InRzoK&d=ww2010.weblog


Itulip
Eric Janszen

Janszen, an investor and analyst, first started Itulip at the height of the tech bubble. The tulip is, of course, a reference to the infamous Dutch tulip bubble of the 17th century. He retired the site when the Internet bubble burst, only to return in 2006, when he saw a housing bubble developing. Janszen predicted it would end badly, with a mass deflation leading to a multi-year economic crash. Parts of the site—including its many reader forums—are subscription only.

Prediction: The United States will, over time, right itself, but will first have to survive a period where one million folks will be added to the unemployment rolls every month by the end of 2009.
http://www.itulip.com/


Irvine Housing Blog
Larry Roberts

Many bloggers are writing about the housing bust but perhaps Larry Roberts, a.k.a. IrvineRenter, has found the best way to demonstrate how everyone from the lowliest buyer to the highest paid financier was implicated in the bubble. Almost daily, he posts a house for sale in Irvine, California, taking readers on a journey through the home’s recent financial history. He reveals the price the home was originally purchased for, how much money was taken out of the home during various re-financings, and what the potential loss to the bank is if the house sale goes thru. Needless to say, sardonic comments abound.

Prediction: Roberts is the cockeyed optimist of our bunch. He plans to change his handle to IrvineHomeowner in 2011, when he believes the housing market will bottom out.
http://www.irvinehousingblog.com/

article...
http://www.cnbc.com/id/29913689/



eidt to add blogger websites

[DemReadingDU]

120. and don't forget The Automatic Earth

Ilargi and Stoneleigh are the co-editors

An old-time picture at the top, followed by commentary, usually by Ilargi, sometimes Stoneleigh or a guest, then financial articles from around the world, lastly the comments section. Check out the primers on the upper right of the page. The 'How to Build a Lifeboat, is excellent.
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/

[Joe Chi Minh]

126. Also, ClubOrlov at:

http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=dtxqwqr_25g7bchc

and,

on more of a survivalist theme, The Silver Bear Cafe at:

http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/10.08/tshtf1.html

[DemReadingDU]

131. have read some of both. good info. n/t

[Demeter]

77. Swiss banks ban top executive travel

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/df9ce572-1a36-11de-9f91-0000779fd2ac.html

By Richard Milne in Geneva

Published: March 26 2009 19:08 | Last updated: March 26 2009 19:08

Switzerland’s private banks have started to ban their top executives from travelling abroad, even to neighbouring France and Germany, because of fears they will be detained as part of a global crackdown on bank secrecy.

The head of one leading private bank in Geneva said the growing determination of countries such as the US and Germany to tackle tax evasion and secrecy meant banks felt they had to take extra measures to protect employees.

“Some banks have taken this precaution,” he said. “If today I go to Germany to visit two banks I deal with...German customs can take me in and question me.”

The travel bans, which have not been brought in by all banks, have focused on those visiting the US, following the detention there last year of a senior private banker from UBS, Switzerland’s biggest bank, as part of a federal tax investigation.

The head of the private bank, which itself has no travel restrictions, said: “Today if you are a banker from Switzerland going to the US you have to fear you will be taken in for questioning. I am thinking twice about going to America.”

However, four people in the private banking industry in Geneva told the Financial Times of banks bringing in total travel bans for staff, even for adjoining European countries.

“Private bankers aren’t even travelling to France. The partners are not leaving Geneva at all,” said a senior industry figure close to several private banks. No bank contacted by the Financial Times wanted to discuss the matter publicly.

The restrictions come ahead of next week’s Group of 20 summit where a clampdown on tax havens is set to be discussed.

Under pressure from other countries, Switzerland, which is estimated to account for about a third of the world’s $11,000bn in clandestine personal wealth, agreed this month to ease its bank secrecy laws and accept international standards on tax transparency...

[Demeter]

78. Regulation is necessary: a market that is not fair is, by definition, not free

http://www.worldnewstrust.com/wnt-reports/commentary/the-free-market-flaw-and-the-spaghetti-effect-hal-cohen.html

Hal Cohen -- World News Trust

March 22, 2009 -- I personally don’t like contortionists. I can appreciate the extent of their skill, flexibility and even artistry in a particular routine, but as someone who has difficulty touching his toes by simply bending over, there is something off-putting about a person who uses their toes to touch their ear. You might wonder what that has to do with free market economic theory. I claim it is the very basis of the mess we are in now.

Most people are at least vaguely familiar with Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand and the Law of Supply and Demand. However, what has brought the global economy to its knees has been a contortion of economic instruments of Guinness Book of World Records proportions. One looks at the physical instrument and wonders how a knee can possibly appear where it does.

Wall Street wizards managed not only to tie their financial bodies in knots, but to do so in a way that creates what I call the “Spaghetti Effect.” Think about a mortgage as an uncooked strand of spaghetti. At one end is the bank, and at the other is the borrower. The strand is straight and easily breakable under stress. Take a handful of this mortgage spaghetti and cook it. What happens is where we are today.

The spaghetti has grown exponentially. What’s more, it has been twisted and mangled, bent and contorted. Say that some of this spaghetti turns out to be bad. When it was raw, it was easy to pick out the bad strands and not cook them. Now, however, they’ve been cooked and you cannot distinguish them from the good strands. Grab two random ends and you’d have better odds of hitting the lottery than picking ends from the same strand.

So, the entire volume of spaghetti has increased. It looks good. The plate is full. But the increase in volume is really only water. You don’t have more spaghetti; it just looks like you do. What’s more, you’ve insured less than 3 percent of that spaghetti. Say 20 percent has gone bad. Now you are in the hole 17 percent that you don’t have just to satisfy the customers who ate bad spaghetti.

The value of the other 80 percent of the spaghetti is now rapidly approaching zero because people aren’t buying it and the water is evaporating. The government comes in and buys much of that rotting spaghetti because there is way too much, and people need to eat.

The people who bought the bad spaghetti to begin with are happy with this solution. They are made whole in spite of their bad decisions. Someone rationally proposes regulation to ensure that bad spaghetti doesn’t make it to market, and they howl. That would be Socialism! That would cripple the Free Market! This is said with a straight face as if the government buying up the bad spaghetti is not socialism.

In the minds of these people the free market is the ultimate regulator. Evidence be damned! Whereas individuals may cheat the system (see welfare people driving Cadillac’s), Businesses cannot cheat. The free market prevents it. Here is their thinking in a nutshell, and pardon the pun.

We recently had a catastrophic breakout of Salmonella involving peanut products. It involved fatalities. The Salmonella was traced to a plant in Georgia that had been inspected and received a superior rating for its sanitation. The inspector had no idea that peanuts could spread salmonella, and was an employee of the peanut industry.

Free market doctrine tells us that a Peanut plant would voluntarily prevent salmonella because if word got out that people died from eating their product, they’d go out of business. Too bad, by the way, for the people who died before the market forces had the chance to do their magic.

Imagine a football game without referees. One team has more money than another, and therefore has more cameras. On questionable calls they are better equipped to show or not the best angle on a replay. Another thing they could do is place pole under the field that would pop up slightly to trip the opponents at the right time. Hey, no regulation why not? The richest teams get to game the system.

And that is the Free Market Flaw. People try to game the system. If you accept the premise that business doesn’t cheat, but people do, remember that business is run by people. Remember, too, that you cannot spell Business without BS. Regulation is necessary for the simple reason that a market that is not fair is by definition not free.

Hal Cohen is editor and publisher of Mollynyc.com

[tama]

142. Regulation does not work

because the PTB will just deregulate, as they did - been there done that.

Says this guy:
http://vimeo.com/1962208

And proposes democratization of economy - workers collectively deciding for themselves and the enterprizes they give they work to.

[Demeter]

79. Worst Case: The Day The Dollar Falls

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22305.htm


This is a Dutch (Netherlands) documentary from 2005. It is about a 'Worst Case' scenario where speculation on the currency exchange market plus a substantial sell-off of dollars from a hedge fund cause a chain reaction in the market, the economy and the political system.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhtTfK6Vuz8&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI7L2vSX-hA&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNzyWPxxXvQ&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8QatTcuOSE&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr_Rl9vRfRo&feature=player_embedded

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrM7TzpERSo&feature=player_embedded

[Demeter]

80. Stocks Will Drop; Banks Will Go Belly Up - Roubini

http://www.chartingstocks.net/2009/03/stocks-will-drop-banks-will-go-belly-up-roubini/

By Charting Stocks

March 27, 2009 "Charting Stocks" -- - The stock market will drop as major banks go belly up says Nouriel Roubini, the NYU economist that successfully predicted the current economic collapse. Below is the text from an interview Mr. Roubini gave today on Bloomberg TV.

U.S. stocks will fall and the government will nationalize more banks as the economy contracts through the end of 2009, said Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who predicted last year’s economic crisis.

“The stock market is a bit ahead of the real macroeconomic and financial news,” Roubini, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business and the chairman of consulting firm Roubini Global Economics, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television in London today. “We’ll have some major banks going belly up that will need to be taken over.”

The global equity rebound in March that sent the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index to its best monthly advance in 17 years is a “bear-market rally” and U.S. Treasury yields will “remain relatively low” as investors flock to the safest assets, Roubini said. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s new plan to remove toxic debt from financial companies won’t be enough for insolvent banks, he said.

Roubini’s outlook contrasts with predictions this week from Templeton Asset Management Ltd.’s Mark Mobius and Traxis Partners LLC’s Barton Biggs, who said that equities are poised to rally as government efforts to revive the economy and banking system begin to work. Investors are “way too optimistic” about the prospects for a recovery in the economy and earnings, Roubini said.

Stress Tests

The S&P 500 surged 7.1 percent on March 23 after Geithner unveiled a plan to finance as much as $1 trillion in purchases of illiquid real-estate assets, using $75 billion to $100 billion of the Treasury’s remaining bank-rescue funds. The government is conducting stress tests of banks to determine how much more capital each will need.

Roubini, who predicts loan and securities losses in the U.S. will reach $3.6 trillion, said the stress tests will reveal that some banks need to be taken over and have their good and bad assets separated before being sold to the private sector. He didn’t name which companies he thought would need to be rescued.

Critics of Geithner’s plan including Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, a professor at Princeton University, say the government should take over banks loaded with devalued assets, remove their top management, and dispose of the toxic securities. Sweden adopted the temporary nationalization approach in the 1990s.

‘Deflationary Forces’

“Some banks are going to have to be nationalized,” said Roubini. “It’s going to be bumpy ahead of us.”

Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke this week called for new powers to take over and wind down failing financial companies. They said the U.S. also needs stronger regulation to constrain the risks taken by firms that could endanger the financial system.

With “deflationary forces” lingering for as long as three years, Roubini said U.S. government bond yields will remain low and American house prices will fall as much as 20 percent in the next 18 months. While the dollar will initially benefit as investors seek a safe haven in the U.S., the currency will ultimately drop as the nation’s trade deficit shrinks, he said.

Roubini dismissed China’s call for the creation of a new international reserve currency as a “pie in the sky idea” that’s unlikely to gain traction any time soon.

China’s central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan this week urged the International Monetary Fund to expand the use of so- called Special Drawing Rights and move toward a “super- sovereign reserve currency.” Geithner sent the dollar tumbling yesterday by saying he would consider China’s idea, only to drive it back up by affirming that the greenback should remain the world’s reserve currency.

“This was a political call and in a nut shell - it ain’t going to happen any time soon,” Roubini said.

Mobius, who helps oversee about $20 billion of emerging- market assets as executive chairman at San Mateo, California- based Templeton, said March 23 the next “bull-market” rally has begun. Biggs, the former chief global strategist for Morgan Stanley who now runs New York-based hedge fund Traxis Partners, predicted the same day the S&P 500 may jump between 30 percent and 50 percent.

The benchmark index for U.S. equities has surged 11 percent in March, poised for its biggest monthly gain since 1991. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index of equities in 23 developing nations is headed for the steepest monthly advance on record after rising 20 percent in Ma

[Demeter]

81. The Free Market, Financial Style: How the Scam Works By MICHAEL HUDSON

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22306.htm

March 27, 2009 "Counterpunch" -- Newspaper reports seem surprised at how high banks are bidding for the junk mortgages that Treasury Secretary Geithner is now bidding for, having mobilized the FDIC and Fed to transfer yet more public funds to the banks. Bank stocks are soaring – thereby bidding up the Dow Jones Industrial Average, as if the “financial industry” really were part of the industrial economy.

Why are the very worst offenders – Bank of America (now owner of the Countrywide crooks) and Citibank the largest buyers? As the worst abusers and packagers of CDOs, shouldn’t they be in the best position to see how worthless their junk mortgages are?

That turns out to be the key! Obviously, the government has failed to protect itself – deliberately, intentionally failed to do so – in order to let the banks pull off the following scam.

Suppose a bank is sitting on a $10 million package of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) that was put together by, say, Countrywide out of junk mortgages. Given the high proportion of fraud (and a recent Fitch study found that every package it examined was rife with financial fraud), this package may be worth at most only $2 million as defaults loom on Alt-A “liars’ loan” mortgages and subprime mortgages where the mortgage brokers also have lied in filling out the forms for hapless borrowers or witting operators taking out mortgages at far more than properties were worth and pocketing the excess.

The bank now offers $3 million to buy back this mortgage. What the hell, the more they bid, the more they get from the government. So why not bid $5 million. (In practice, friendly banks may bid for each other’s junk CDOs.) The government – that is, the hapless FDIC – puts up 85 per cent of $5 million to buy this – namely, $4,250,000. The bank only needs to put up 15 per cent – namely, $750,000.

Here’s the rip-off as I see it. For an outlay of $750,000, the bank rids its books of a mortgage worth $2 million, for which it receives $4,250,000. It gets twice as much as the junk is worth.

The more the banks holding junk mortgages pay for this toxic waste, the more the government will pay as part of its 85 per cent. So the strategy is to overpay, overpay, and overpay. Paying 15 per cent is a small price to pay for getting the government to put in 85 per cent to take the most toxic waste off your books.

The free market at work, financial style.

Michael Hudson is a former Wall Street economist. A Distinguished Research Professor at University of Missouri, Kansas City (UMKC), he is the author of many books, including Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (new ed., Pluto Press, 2002) He can be reached at [e-mail]

[Tansy_Gold]

84. Oh, and it just gets better and better and better and better ---

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x8298454

AIG director named to Obama tax task force



WASHINGTON (CNN) -- One of the people named this week to President Obama's new Task Force on Tax Reform is a member of the AIG board of directors.

Martin Feldstein, a professor of economics at Harvard University, has been on the board of American International Group since 1988. He also was a prominent economic adviser to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

Asked about the AIG connection, a senior administration official said Friday that the White House declined to comment on the story.

Like the others named to the tax reform task force, Feldstein also serves on Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, which is headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/27/aig.taskforce/in...

[antigop]

86. "prominent economic adviser to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush"

Excuse me while I throw up. :puke:

[Dr.Phool]

134. But, where is your hope?

Rah, rah, :party:

Party like it's 1929!

[Demeter]

91. That Calls for a Lamentation--Musical Interlude

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC7Kt1pXGTk


On the willows, there
We hung up our lyres
For our captors there
Required
Of us songs
And our tormentors mirth
On the willows, there
We hung up our lyres
For our captors there
Required
Of us songs
And our tormentor's mirth
Saying
Sing us one
Of the songs of Zion
Sing us one
Of the songs of Zion
But how can we sing?
Sing the Lord's songs?
In a foreign land?

[tclambert]

101. Somebody on another thread was lamenting and reminiscing about the late, great George Carlin.

"The real owners are the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. Forget the politicians, they're an irrelevancy. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They've long since bought and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the statehouses, the city halls. They've got the judges in their back pockets. And they own all the big media companies, so that they control just about all of the news and information you hear. They've got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying ­ lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want; they want more for themselves and less for everybody else."

"But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. That's against their interests. They don't want people who are smart enough to sit around the kitchen table and figure out how badly they're getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago.

"You know what they want? Obedient workers ­ people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork but just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it. And, now, they're coming for your Social Security. They want your fucking retirement money. They want it back, so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street. And you know something? They'll get it. They'll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club."

----

This led to me telling my son that today's financial executives have invented a brilliant new business model in which they can lose hundreds of billions of dollars for their company and magically transfer that loss onto the taxpayer, thereby canceling out the loss and making their company break even. This model, I predicted, will now be studied in B schools to see if they can't figure out how to do it on purpose.

My son one-upped me by pointing out that most of these executives don't really care about making money for their companies, only for themselves. They have lost hundreds of billions for their company, but come away with hundreds of millions for themselves. That's the genius of their success.

I had to admit he was right. Back in college, these future investment bankers didn't choose their major in order to help other people (or they'd have studied nursing) or even to help other people while making a lot of money (or they'd have gone to Med school to become doctors). They chose a career path that would make them personally a lot of money. They didn't go into finance to make money for their company's shareholders, either. That's a mistaken thought common amongst free marketeers. Nobody in college chooses to go into investment banking for any other reason than to make themselves personally a ton of money.

Edit to add: It was Orwellian_Ghost who posted the Carlin quote that began this train of thought.

[Tansy_Gold]

103. Lest you ever think pop culture has no influence. . . . . .

Just think of Alex P. Keaton.




TG

[Demeter]

105. Must I?

I couldn't stand Reagan, I sure couldn't stand his clone.

[Tansy_Gold]

110. The point being that the "subtle" influences of pop culture

have an impact on the "real" world. That whole period was a time when wealth was glorified. think of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." "90210" all that crap. And it's just thrown out there with no context. The Jeffersons were "movin' on up." But the working class Sanford and Son were laughable. Would Will Smith have become the star he is if he hadn't been the fresh "Prince" of Bel-Air? Then throw in all the night-time "soaps" of Dallas, Dynasty, etc., the "glitz" novels made into tv movies of Jackie Collins, Danielle Steel and others. (The explosion of romance novels during the same time period also contained enormous emphasis on wealth and power. "Happily ever after" meant the heroine -- who may have started out poor -- married a wealthy men. But I could go on for HOURS on that topic.)

I have to admit I've never been much of a tv watcher, so if there were other programs of similar success/longevity, I simply don't know of them. But as much blame as some of us may lay at the feet of the business schools, they operate in the context of the wider culture, and when that culture glorifies wealth per se, it's asking for trouble.


Well, just the MHO, you understand, of





Tansy Gold

[DemReadingDU]

115. not a TV watcher either

Well, except for Cold Case on Sunday evenings.
:)

Anyway the younger crowd seems to gravitate to survivor, reality shows, American Idol, etc. They know who all the contestants are, but hardly any of them would know who Biden is.
:(

[Joe Chi Minh]

127. Had to laugh, however bitterly, at these words of the greatest politician by far

of the 20th century, David Lloyd George, quoted by English historian, A J P Taylor (much hated by the right, with his standing increasingly marginalised, after the post WWII decade or so), in his English History between 1914 and 1945:

"Lloyd George wished to grasp the supreme direction himself. His immediate target was Robertson, though he would have been glad to get rid of Haig as well. The king supported his generals. The Unionist (Tory) backbenchers had unquestioning faith in them. Asquith was ready to take up their cause for want of anything better. Lloyd George made out, and perhaps believed, that there was a cabal "to enthrone a Government which would be practically the nominee and menial of the military party".

Well, the range of the beneficiary-kleptocrats is more diverse and extensive these days in both our countries, the UK and the US, isn't it?

[Demeter]

92. How to Conjure Up $500 Billion By FELIX SALMON

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/opinion/27salmon.html?_r=1

AS recently as October, all it took to get a bailout bill through Congress was a few pieces of strategically placed pork. Back then, the Bush administration could insert into its stimulus bill a tax exemption for a wooden arrow factory in Oregon, and the votes would magically appear.

The Obama administration must wish it were still so easy. Congress is in no mood to pass anything now, pork nuggets or no. The executive branch has to make do with what it’s got. In the case of the bank bailout plan, that means a combination of some leftover funds from last year’s Troubled Asset Relief Program bill along with a rather ingenious use of guarantees by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

The F.D.I.C. was created to do what its name implies: insure deposits. Deposits are loans of a kind: when you make a deposit at the bank, you’re lending the bank your money, normally at a very low rate of interest. The F.D.I.C. exists to make sure that whatever happens to the bank, you’ll always get your money back — up to a limit of $250,000.

Now, however, instead of insuring garden-variety bank deposits, the F.D.I.C. is going to insure extremely risky loans to curious new entities called public-private investment funds. And while banks can always borrow money somewhere, these funds wouldn’t be able to borrow at all were it not for that F.D.I.C. guarantee.

Imagine going to your local bank and asking for $10 billion to gamble at the Toxic Asset Casino. The bank would say no — until you showed it a letter from your Uncle Sam saying he’d guarantee the loan. Then, the bank would lend you as much as you’d like. The F.D.I.C. has never taken on this kind of risk before.

It’s not the first time that Treasury has magicked billions of dollars from some hidden back pocket, just to avoid having to ask Congress for the money. In 1995, with Robert Rubin recently installed as Treasury secretary, Lawrence Summers, the deputy secretary, along with Tim Geithner, a deputy assistant secretary, wanted to bail out Mexico in the face of Congressional opposition. They found something called the Exchange Stabilization Fund, originally intended to stabilize the value of the dollar on world currency markets, and managed to repurpose it for another use entirely.

It’s possible to step back and admire the statecraft in the present case — there’s a certain elegance with which Treasury managed to transform $100 billion in TARP funds into more than $500 billion in cash to inject into the banking system, all the while avoiding any fight on Capitol Hill. It makes the $20 billion found for Mexico all those years ago look like pocket change.

Yes, it’s easy to find serious economic weakness in a plan that puts enormous amounts of government money at risk even as it promises billions of dollars in profits for private investors. But the economics don’t exist in a vacuum, and Tim Geithner doesn’t live in a world where he can simply do whatever makes the most economic sense.

Mr. Geithner needed the cooperation of the F.D.I.C., but few federal agencies ever object to an idea that involves expanding their budget and making them more important. In this case, the F.D.I.C., and its chairwoman, Sheila Bair, had particular reason to want to grab as much power as possible: the Obama administration is about to embark on the largest overhaul of the American regulatory infrastructure since the Great Depression.

America’s patchwork quilt of financial regulators is looking decidedly frayed around the edges, as financial firms dance around what regulations do exist. American International Group, for example, managed to get itself regulated by the toothless Office of Thrift Supervision after buying a Delaware thrift for just that purpose.

Chances are that the Federal Reserve, rather than the Securities and Exchange Commission or any other agency, will end up regulating the entire financial system, including banks, brokers, hedge funds and insurers. Then, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the National Credit Union Administration, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and any number of other obscure regulatory animals risk being killed off.

The bank bailout plan makes the F.D.I.C. well positioned to survive. Not only will it be an integral part of the new bank bailout, but it is also likely to be put in charge of taking over any failing financial firms that pose a systemic risk — be they banks, hedge funds, private-equity shops, insurers or even large corporations like General Electric.

This could be the most far-reaching unintended consequence of Congress’s stubborn opposition to any bailout plan. Treasury ended up being forced to find its own way — and that meant a suboptimal bank bailout scheme, and a vast swath of new powers for the F.D.I.C.

Felix Salmon is the finance blogger at Portfolio.com.

[Demeter]

95. Big Banks Pull off the Ultimate Bait & Switch by Rolfe Winkler, CFA, publisher of OptionARMageddon

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/03/guest-post-big-banks-pull-off-ultimate.html

We're not quite as healthy as we thought we were. Oops. (WSJ)

J.P. Morgan Chase Chief Executive James Dimon said...that March was a little tougher than the first two months of the year....Bank of America...CEO Kenneth Lewis also said that March had been a tougher month for his bank. .

Readers may recall that a few weeks ago, Dimon and Lewis---along with Citi's Vikram Pandit---said the first two months of the year had been very good:

Pandit, March 10th: “We are profitable through the first two months of 2009 and are having our best quarter-to-date performance since the third quarter of 2007.”

Dimon, March 11th: "Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, said Wednesday that the bank was profitable in January and February..."

Lewis, March 12th: "We have been profitable for the first two months of the year,” Lewis told reporters after a speech in Boston today.

This was possibly the most nakedly self-serving bullshit the big bank CEOs have offered to date. ("bullshit" being a technical term of course, see Harry Frankfurt)

By February, it was understood that the big banks are all insolvent, certainly Citi and BofA. To deal with them, consensus among the cognoscenti was finally tending to a proper recapitalization: wiping out shareholders and forcing losses onto creditors via debt-for-equity swaps. Call it nationalization, call it preprivatization, call it FDIC receivership, it was clear that losses had to be recognized and by those to whom they properly belong: investors across the capital structure.

But no one really wanted to do this, not in Congress and certainly not in the Obama administration, where Timmy Geithner has made clear that his priority isn't a cleansed banking sector, it's a privately-owned one. For obvious reasons the banks don't like this solution either. So they offered up their self-serving b.s. regarding January and February, buying just enough time for Congress/Bernanke to badger FASB into changing mark-to-market rules and for Geithner to roll out his private-public partnership plan.

Now whatever losses the banks can't hide with revised accounting treatments, they can simply fob off on taxpayers via the partnerships. They got what they always wanted: A bad bank. An entity that will actually absorb losses from the asset side of the balance sheet. Shareholders and creditors don't have to worry about further writedowns, not the ones that can't be hidden anyway. Taxpayers will pick up the check!

Even better, the Geithner plan is so ridiculously complex---and public disclosure is likely to be so minimal---that toxic asset transfers are likely to happen largely out of view. Maybe Treasury will have to increase its borrowing substantially in order to fund the losses, but by that point everyone will be celebrating that banks have started lending again. Hooray!

By the way, are there ANY substantial protections to prevent banks from gaming this plan? What's to stop them from acting as the equity investors in the partnerships, ponying up a sliver of equity to effect a transfer of toxic assets from their own balance sheets to the public's? The FDIC's FAQ for the legacy loans program doesn't even address this particular Q. Is it not being frequently asked?

This is all of a piece. The longer CEO/policy-maker collusion can delay loss recognition, the more time they have to invent ridiculous leverage schemes (more money printing! more government borrowing to fund "stimulus"! more FDIC "guarantees"!) to inflate those losses away....and to continue looting the public's wealth.

But losses aren't going away. Trading smaller private liabilities for larger public liabilities in order to artificially inflate asset prices does nothing to repair the economy's aggregate balance sheet. At the end of the day, we're still just lending more and more against a dwindling pool of real equity. The unwind is coming. Adding more leverage to delay it will only increase the pain.

[Demeter]

97. Treasury to Seek Power to Seize Non Banks (Trojan Horse Alert)

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/03/treasury-to-seek-power-to-seize-non.html


The Washington Post reports that Treasury will seek the power to take over insurers, hedge funds, and investment firms. Given the Treasury's reluctance to assume control over clearly insolvent banks (Citi assuredly, probably Bank of America), it seems curious indeed that it is asking to extend authority that it is patently reluctant to exercise.

Moreover, elements of this appear, to put it mildly, misguided. Insurers are regulated by states. Does the Treasury, in supplanting state authority, intend to put in place the needed supervisory apparatus? Does anyone at Treasury have the foggiest grasp of insurance accounting (which separately, is a bit of a mess)?

And AIG, poster child of insufficient regulation, was overseen at the parent level (which is where the black hole creating Financial Products unit sat) by the Office of Thrift Supervision (no joke), which is an agency of the Treasury! So the Treasury is acting like it needs more authority to prevent future AIG's when its own agency was responsible for the doomsday machine part of AIG.

And the hedge fund supervision bit probably means less than meets the eye. Even if a lot of them have operations in Fairfield County or Manhattan, a lot are domiciled in the Caymans or Luxembourg. You do need to observe certain forms to make sure the designation sticks (have local counsel, have annual meeting there, etc.) but after the Bear Stearns hedge funds screwed up on that front (setting up funds there but not taking other steps consistent with having them domiciled offshore), other funds may have cleaned up their act.

From the Washington Post:

The Obama administration is considering asking Congress to give the Treasury secretary unprecedented powers to initiate the seizure of non-bank financial companies, such as large insurers, investment firms and hedge funds, whose collapse would damage the broader economy, according to an administration document....

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner is set to argue for the new powers at a hearing today on Capitol Hill about the furor over bonuses paid to executives at American International Group, which the government has propped up with about $180 billion in federal aid. Administration officials have said that the proposed authority would have allowed them to seize AIG last fall and wind down its operations at less cost to taxpayers.


Yves here. Readers can correct me, but that looks to be utter rubbish. The OTS could have yanked AIG's license and sued it. The problem is not regulatory authority, the problem is the lack of a special resolution regime of the sort the UK has for putting big complex financial firms into receivership. Merely giving Treasury authority is insufficient without putting in place needed bankruptcy type provisions. That takes thought, and I guarantee that given how behind the eight ball and short staffed Geithner has been, the needed thinking hat not taken place. Back to the piece:

The administration's proposal contains two pieces. First, it would empower a government agency to take on the new role of systemic risk regulator with broad oversight of any and all financial firms whose failure could disrupt the broader economy. The Federal Reserve is widely considered to be the leading candidate for this assignment. But some critics warn that this could conflict with the Fed's other responsibilities, particularly its control over monetary policy.

The government also would assume the authority to seize such firms if they totter toward failure.

Besides seizing a company outright, the document states, the Treasury Secretary could use a range of tools to prevent its collapse, such as guaranteeing losses, buying assets or taking a partial ownership stake. Such authority also would allow the government to break contracts, such as the agreements to pay $165 million in bonuses to employees of AIG's most troubled unit.

The Treasury secretary could act only after consulting with the president and getting a recommendation from two-thirds of the Federal Reserve Board, according to the plan.


Yves again. Given the lack of any mention of a special resolution regime, or intent to develop one, the point of this bill is NOT, appearances to the contrary, to be able to put more firms into receivership. It is to get broader authority to bail them out.

[Dr.Phool]

102. Jesus Christ!......The Office of Theft Supervision. Forgive me. I am a worm.

There, I took care of my repentance and buybull quote in one line.

[Demeter]

104. Good Evening, Doctor!

Glad you could drop in. It's depressing, for sure. All we can hope is that the world economy bites them all so hard they have to retire for their health.

[Demeter]

98. After Those Reports on Bankers' Ploys, It's Time for Righteous Rage!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnDvQ_6qXFI&feature=player_embedded



Alas, alas for you,
Lawyers and pharisees
Hypocrites that you be
Searching for souls and fools to forsake them
You travel the land you scour the sea
After you've got your converts you make them
Twice as fit for hell!
As you are yourselves!

Alas, alas, for you
Lawyers and pharisees
Hypocrites that you are
Sure that the kingdom of Heaven awaits you
You will not venture half so far
Other men that might enter the gates you
Keep from passing through!
Drag them down with you!
You snakes, you viper's brood
You cannot escape being Devil's food!
I send you prophets, and I send you preachers
Sages in rages and ages of teachers
Nothing can mar your mood

Alas, alas for you
Lawyers and pharisees
Hypocrites to a man
Sons of the dogs who murdered the prophets
Finishing off what your fathers began
You don't have time to scorn or to scoff
It's getting very late!
Vengeance doesn't wait!
You snakes, you viper's brood
You cannot escape being Devil's food!
I send you prophets, and I send you preachers
Sages in rages and ages of teachers
Nothing can mar your mood

Blind guides, blind fools
The blood you've spilt
On you will fall!
This nation, this generation
Shall bear the guilt of it all!

Alas, alas alas for you!
Blind fools!!

[skoalyman]

112. a thousand hail marys to you all ,to bad we can't reboot

Washington like you do a PC to get all the viruses out of office;-)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87yq372R4Ts
oops here we go
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbv8LRVRTaA

[DemReadingDU]

117. I think when enough people

become jobless, homeless, penniless, hungry, there will be a revolution.

[Tansy_Gold]

119. And it won't be a pretty one, either

Desperate people tend to do desperate things.

[Demeter]

124. Recruiting Song for Sans-coulottes

You are the light of the world!
You are the light of the world!
But if that light is under a bushel,
It's lost something kind of crucial
You've got to stay bright to be the light of the world

You are the salt of the earth
You are the salt of the earth
But if that salt has lost it's flavor
It ain't got much in its favor
You can't have that fault and be the salt of the earth!

(chorus)
So let your light so shine before men
Let your light so shine
So that they might know some kindness again
We all need help to feel fine (let's have some wine!)

You are the city of God
You are the city of God
But if that city's on a hill
It's kinda hard to hide it well
You've got to stay pretty in the city of God

(chorus)
So let your light so shine before men
Let your light so shine
So that they might know some kindness again
We all need help to feel fine (let's have some wine!)

You are the light of the world
You are the light of the world
But the tallest candlestick
Ain't much good without a wick
You've got to live right to be the light of the world

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyippDLQXyY&feature=related

[Tansy_Gold]

128. Un autre choix

(the English version "Can you hear the people sing?" is imho far tamer than the original)


À LA VOLONTÉ DU PEUPLE
From the Musical "Les Misérables"
(Alain Boublil / Jean-Marc Natel / Claude-Michel Schönberg)


Michel Sardou (France)


A la volonté du peuple
Et à la santé du progrès,
Remplis ton cœur d'un vin rebelle
Et à demain, ami fidèle.
Nous voulons faire la lumière
Malgré le masque de la nuit
Pour illuminer notre terre
Et changer la vie.

Il faut gagner à la guerre
Notre sillon à labourer,
Déblayer la misère
Pour les blonds épis de la paix
Qui danseront de joie
Au grand vent de la liberté.

A la volonté du peuple
Et à la santé du progrès,
Remplis ton cœur d'un vin rebelle
Et à demain, ami fidèle.
Nous voulons faire la lumière
Malgré le masque de la nuit
Pour illuminer notre terre
Et changer la vie.

A la volonté du peuple,
Je fais don de ma volonté.
S'il faut mourir pour elle,
Moi je veux être le premier,
Le premier nom gravé
Au marbre du monument d'espoir.

A la volonté du peuple
Et à la santé du progrès,
Remplis ton cœur d'un vin rebelle
Et à demain, ami fidèle.
Nous voulons faire la lumière
Malgré le masque de la nuit
Pour illuminer notre terre
Et changer la vie.

[Dr.Phool]

135. Viruses.

I see one house with 433 viruses, and another with 99.

I'll give Kucinich, Tammy Baldwin, and Russ Feingold a pass.

Crucify the rest. You wouldn't have to look very far to find a thief to post on either side of them. Maybe the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

[Ghost Dog]

170. Time for a Tea Party! Yes indeed.

And please understand that other societies, other countries, just look at South America, will be organising tea parties of their own.

[DemReadingDU]

138. The New Yorker - Woody Allen: Madoff vs the Lobsters

3/30/09 Tails of Manhattan by Woody Allen

Two weeks ago, Abe Moscowitz dropped dead of a heart attack and was reincarnated as a lobster. Trapped off the coast of Maine, he was shipped to Manhattan and dumped into a tank at a posh Upper East Side seafood restaurant. In the tank there were several other lobsters, one of whom recognized him. “Abe, is that you?” the creature asked, his antennae perking up.

“Who’s that? Who’s talking to me?” Moscowitz said, still dazed by the mystical slam-bang postmortem that had transmogrified him into a crustacean.

“It’s me, Moe Silverman,” the other lobster said.

“O.M.G.!” Moscowitz piped, recognizing the voice of an old gin-rummy colleague. “What’s going on?”

“We’re reborn,” Moe explained. “As a couple of two-pounders.”

“Lobsters? This is how I wind up after leading a just life? In a tank on Third Avenue?”

“The Lord works in strange ways,” Moe Silverman explained. “Take Phil Pinchuck. The man keeled over with an aneurysm, he’s now a hamster. All day, running at the stupid wheel. For years he was a Yale professor. My point is he’s gotten to like the wheel. He pedals and pedals, running nowhere, but he smiles.”

Moscowitz did not like his new condition at all. Why should a decent citizen like himself, a dentist, a mensch who deserved to relive life as a soaring eagle or ensconced in the lap of some sexy socialite getting his fur stroked, come back ignominiously as an entrée on a menu? It was his cruel fate to be delicious, to turn up as Today’s Special, along with a baked potato and dessert. This led to a discussion by the two lobsters of the mysteries of existence, of religion, and how capricious the universe was, when someone like Sol Drazin, a schlemiel they knew from the catering business, came back after a fatal stroke as a stud horse impregnating cute little thoroughbred fillies for high fees. Feeling sorry for himself and angry, Moscowitz swam about, unable to buy into Silverman’s Buddha-like resignation over the prospect of being served thermidor.

At that moment, who walked into the restaurant and sits down at a nearby table but Bernie Madoff. If Moscowitz had been bitter and agitated before, now he gasped as his tail started churning the water like an Evinrude.

“I don’t believe this,” he said, pressing his little black peepers to the glass walls. “That goniff who should be doing time, chopping rocks, making license plates, somehow slipped out of his apartment confinement and he’s treating himself to a shore dinner.”

“Clock the ice on his immortal beloved,” Moe observed, scanning Mrs. M.’s rings and bracelets.

Moscowitz fought back his acid reflux, a condition that had followed him from his former life. “He’s the reason I’m here,” he said, riled to a fever pitch.

“Tell me about it,” Moe Silverman said. “I played golf with the man in Florida, which incidentally he’ll move the ball with his foot if you’re not watching.”

“Each month I got a statement from him,” Moscowitz ranted. “I knew such numbers looked too good to be kosher, and when I joked to him how it sounded like a Ponzi scheme he choked on his kugel. I had to do the Heimlich maneuver. Finally, after all that high living, it comes out he was a fraud and my net worth was bupkes. P.S., I had a myocardial infarction that registered at the oceanography lab in Tokyo.”

“With me he played it coy,” Silverman said, instinctively frisking his carapace for a Xanax. “He told me at first he had no room for another investor. The more he put me off, the more I wanted in. I had him to dinner, and because he liked Rosalee’s blintzes he promised me the next opening would be mine. The day I found out he could handle my account I was so thrilled I cut my wife’s head out of our wedding photo and put his in. When I learned I was broke, I committed suicide by jumping off the roof of our golf club in Palm Beach. I had to wait half an hour to jump, I was twelfth in line.”

At this moment, the captain escorted Madoff to the lobster tank, where the unctuous sharpie analyzed the assorted saltwater candidates for potential succulence and pointed to Moscowitz and Silverman. An obliging smile played on the captain’s face as he summoned a waiter to extract the pair from the tank.

“This is the last straw!” Moscowitz cried, bracing himself for the consummate outrage. “To swindle me out of my life’s savings and then to nosh me in butter sauce! What kind of universe is this?”

Moscowitz and Silverman, their ire reaching cosmic dimensions, rocked the tank to and fro until it toppled off its table, smashing its glass walls and flooding the hexagonal-tile floor. Heads turned as the alarmed captain looked on in stunned disbelief. Bent on vengeance, the two lobsters scuttled swiftly after Madoff. They reached his table in an instant, and Silverman went for his ankle. Moscowitz, summoning the strength of a madman, leaped from the floor and with one giant pincer took firm hold of Madoff’s nose. Screaming with pain, the gray-haired con artist hopped from the chair as Silverman strangled his instep with both claws. Patrons could not believe their eyes as they recognized Madoff, and began to cheer the lobsters.

“This is for the widows and charities!” yelled Moscowitz. “Thanks to you, Hatikvah Hospital is now a skating rink!”

Madoff, unable to free himself from the two Atlantic denizens, bolted from the restaurant and fled yelping into traffic. When Moscowitz tightened his viselike grip on his septum and Silverman tore through his shoe, they persuaded the oily scammer to plead guilty and apologize for his monumental hustle.

By the end of the day, Madoff was in Lenox Hill Hospital, awash in welts and abrasions. The two renegade main courses, their rage slaked, had just enough strength left to flop away into the cold, deep waters of Sheepshead Bay, where, if I’m not mistaken, Moscowitz lives to this day with Yetta Belkin, whom he recognized from shopping at Fairway. In life she had always resembled a flounder, and after her fatal plane crash she came back as one.

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2009/03/30/090330sh_shouts_allen?currentPage=all

[Demeter]

144. Oi Veh!

thank you so much for posting that!


I'm thinking it will do for Communion! Or Sabbath, I'm not picky. Unitarians will celebrate any body's holiday!

[DemReadingDU]

146. I'll repost in Ozy's SMW in the morning, n/t

[DemReadingDU]

139. the Tory who told Brown to his face that he's a disaster.

3/27/09
A Tory who criticised Gordon Brown to his face in a brutal personal attack has won an army of fans worldwide.

A video of MEP Daniel Hannan delivering a withering assessment of the Prime Minister's handling of the economic crisis has become a surprise hit on the internet.

More than 730,000 users have viewed it on YouTube, making it the most popular clip on the site two days in a row.

Mr Hannan's assault came after the Premier had given a keynote speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday.

As Mr Brown looked on through gritted teeth, shaking his head, the Tory lambasted him as a 'Brezhnev era apparatchik' who was ' pathologically incapable' of taking responsibility for his role in the financial crisis.

The 37-year-old, who was the youngest British member elected to the European Parliament in 1999, yesterday received plaudits for his tongue-lashing.

Broadcasters - including the BBC - failed to report Mr Hannan's onslaught despite giving full coverage to Mr Brown's most pro-European speech to date.

But it was quickly posted on YouTube and news outlets from Australia to America seized on his comments.

The clip features Mr Brown looking on with a frozen smile, while Mr Hannan warned how Britain was entering the recession in a 'dilapidated condition' with an 'almost unbelievable' deficit.

more...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1165027/An-internet-sensation-Tory-told-Brown-face-hes-disaster.html


direct link to video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94lW6Y4tBXs

[Karenina]

160. Smackdown!

[DemReadingDU]

140. James Kunstler offers a decidedly darker view at Aspen forum

3/28/09 James Kunstler offers a decidedly darker view at Aspen forum

Social critic and author James Howard Kunstler single-handedly offset all the rosy predictions about the clean energy future dominating the Aspen Environment Forum with his incredibly bleak outlook in a presentation Friday.

The economic pains the United States has experienced in the last 18 months are nothing compared to what is coming, he claimed. Kunstler expects economic Armageddon to start in about four months. People are fooling themselves that the economy is showing true signs of recovery, he said.

“The American public has no idea what it’s moving into and how disturbingly different it’s going to be,” Kunstler said.

Here is a sample of what he sees: the multitude of companies that are struggling to prop themselves up now will “roll over and die”; the stock market’s “final rope-a-dope sucker rally” will fail and send it tumbling to the 4,000 level by the end of the year; other nations will no longer invest in U.S. treasury bonds, stripping the stimulus effort of fuel; and, in a prediction that hit the clean energy advocates at the conference hardest, the capital for investment in giant solar and wind farms won’t materialize.

Kunstler has a running feud with the environmental movement, “especially at elite places like Aspen,” as he says on his website, and he took a shot at the presenters and conferees at the environment forum.

He claimed they live in an “energy fantasy world” for thinking that used french fry oil can power the world’s vehicles and that we can resume our consumptive lifestyles after a short period of adjustment.

Kunstler argued in his book, “The Long Emergency,” that every aspect of our lives will be overturned because of “peak oil” — the declining production of oil that looms on the not-so-distant horizon. The network of interstate highways and roads that carried the country’s economic growth after World War II and sparked flight to the suburbs and exurbs will be virtually useless. The recent volatility in oil and natural gas prices will become the norm.

Solar power, wind power and other renewable resources will be employed, but not at a level to offset the inevitable changes, he said. The events that are occurring now are a way of telling us that the American standard of living must “drop between 20 and 50 percent,” he claimed. He sees the industrial society evolving to be agrarian or semi-agrarian.

The recession, which he called a depression, has destroyed so much capital “that no amount of phony-baloney capital that the federal reserve creates can overcome the amount that’s disappeared.”

In his view, President Obama doesn’t realize the severity of the economic revolution or doesn’t want to acknowledge it.

“We literally cannot restart the growth thing,” Kunstler said. “We really can’t restart the consumer credit thing. Even if the bank wanted to lend, we’re not going to lend more people money to buy more flat-screen TVs.

“It’s basically over,” he said.

http://www.aspentimes.com/article/20090328/NEWS/903279920/1077&ParentProfile=1058&title=Social%20critic%20James%20Kunstler%20offers%20a%20decidedly%20darker%20view


Well, that was doomy
:(

[tama]

143. Even though

Kunstler's timing of his predictions may be somewhat impatient - or not, we'll see - he's got the big picture right.

[DemReadingDU]

141. Fuzzy Numbers: Extent of the Deception Revealed in Barron’s

3/29/09 Chris Martenson: Fuzzy Numbers: Extent of the Deception Revealed in Barron’s

Alan Abelson has a tremendous article in the recent issue of Barron’s where he recounts some of the massive statistical revisionism that accompanied a broad swath of government data released this past week.

In this two part dance, the government first employs some highly dubious statistical tricks, in this case “seasonal adjustments” and then the press runs off with the information often slathering a layer of spin and hype on top of the obviously dodgy data. I wrote about this in my 3 posts last week on existing and new home sales and durables.

Here’s the relevant part from that article (all emphasis mine) - I especially love the opening paragraph:

In Dante's Footsteps

IT'S A COMFORT IN THIS wildly spinning world to find some things remain the same. We had feared that with the change in administrations, we'd have to revise our long-standing mistrust of government statistics. But, though it is still early days, the initial evidence gives us reason for hope.

The numbers flowing out of Washington seem as dubious as ever, and so are the inferences being extracted from them by more than a smattering of investment strategists, money managers and, it pains us to say, even journalists.

The misleading figures cut across a wide swath of the economy, encompassing housing, manufacturing, employment -- you name it. The leading agent of deception, unintentional or otherwise, has been that old sly villain, seasonal adjustment. As it turns out, the seasons don't need adjustment as much as the adjustors need seasoning.

As Merrill Lynch's David Rosenberg (who, incidentally, is planning to do a bit of adjusting himself and moving back to his native Canada; our loss, Canada's gain) points out in a recent commentary, the official keepers of the books have been unusually aggressive in constructing seasonal adjustments for February's economic data.

To illustrate, the seasonal adjustment for new-home sales was the strongest since 1982; for durable-goods orders, the strongest since they were first released in 1992; the retail-sales figures for February were flat (or, as David says, flattering) after such adjustment, but unadjusted fell 3%, the biggest drop on record.

He also notes dryly that the 40,000 raw non-seasonally adjusted housing-start total for February "all of a sudden becomes a headline-adjusted annual rate figure of 583,000."

Which makes David think that come the inevitably sharp downward revisions of such distorted data, first-quarter real GDP is likely to suffer a 7.2% drop. Which, together with the 6.3% skid in the fourth quarter of 2008, would be the worst back-to-back contraction in the economy in 50 years.
-------


continue from Martenson...
So how exactly does it come to pass, that in the grips of the worst recession in recent history that numerous government statistics are suddenly the recipients of some of, if not the, strongest “seasonal adjustments” on record? Upwards revisions too, it goes without saying.

This simplest conclusion is that the same bureaucratic tendencies towards producing pleasing news that we’ve consistently seen in prior administrations are still in place.
more...
http://www.chrismartenson.com/blog/fuzzy-numbers-extent-deception-revealed-barron%E2%80%99s/15801

direct link to Barron's article, In Dante's Footsteps
http://online.barrons.com/article/SB123819645529561507.html?

[Demeter]

147. Bank of America Accused in Ponzi Lawsuit

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/business/28ponzi.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

Bank of America effectively set up a branch in a Long Island office that helped Nicholas Cosmo carry out a $380 million Ponzi scheme, according to a class-action lawsuit filed in federal court.

The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn late Thursday, contends that Bank of America “established, equipped and staffed” a branch office in the headquarters of Mr. Cosmo’s firm, Agape Merchant Advance. As a result, the lawsuit contends that the bank knowingly “assisted, facilitated and furthered” Mr. Cosmo’s fraudulent scheme.

“Bank of America was at the epicenter of this scheme,” said the lawsuit, which seeks $400 million in damages from the bank and other defendants. “Without Bank of America’s participation, the scheme would not have succeeded and grown to such an enormous size.”

Mr. Cosmo surrendered to authorities at a Long Island train station in January in connection with a suspected Ponzi scheme involving what Mr. Cosmo called “private bridge loans” that promised investors returns of 48 percent to 80 percent a year. Many of his 1,500 investors were blue-collar workers and civil servants.

Bank of America declined to comment, saying that it had not yet seen the suit...

[Demeter]

148. I Need Some Guidance/Feedback/Opinon From You All

I see no chance of any useful, let alone cheerful news, for the future. Should I continue to bring the doom and gloom, or should I give it up? Would you rather live in ignorant bliss, or get the weather report, even if we are entering an Ice Age?

It doesn't help my outlook that it's snowing, blowing and generally reverting back to weather we've had too much of since October. It doesn't help that Congress is holding up appointments at Justice, thus blocking any prosecution of war crimes or white collar crimes, and Harry Reid is letting the GOP wreak this havoc, while Obama is getting way in over his head on both the economy and the wars.

So, which is it? Collect and relay the news, regardless, or take a vacation indefinitely?

let me know here or by email.

[Hugin]

149. Hold on just one second, Demeter. If I can't leave neither can you!

I missed the last lifeboat!

There I was life vest, floaties, and zinc sun-screened nose and YOU said I needed to stick around... (or maybe it was women and children first, I don't recall exactly... But, it was you who said it.)

We're in this together!

May I suggest Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" as a theme for next weekend? I've been dying to compare the genius of CDSs and derivatives to Ice-9!
:bounce:

Edit to add obligatory link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat's_Cradle

2nd Edit: Teh DU insists on adding a backslash in front of the single apostrophe on the URL for Cat's_Cradle... If you would like to look at the wiki link... Please cut-paste the address into a new browser window. :eyes:

[Demeter]

150. I Did?

Be that as it may...Cat's Cradle....it's been an eternity since I read Vonnegut and Ice Nine was a paralyzing, chilling concept. It doesn't lend itself to performance art, either....

How about a general SciFi theme? Although Star Trek would dominate, unless it were specifically confined to a separate weekend....

Darn it! Now you've got me hooked again. I can't think of any scifi musicals, and I refuse to touch Rocky Horror Picture Show. Of course, Earth Girls Are Easy was a kind of MTV musical....Jim Carrey did a lot of those in his youth.

I think if we went for a Vonnegut Weekend theme, it would be too esoteric.

Any further discussion?

Perhaps Bug Eyed Monster movies and 50's kitsch would be more in tune with today's economic disaster.

[Tansy_Gold]

156. Would Plan Nine from Outer Space be any more disastrous than

any of the current plans being floated around here?



TG

[Demeter]

158. At This Point, Any Change Would Be an Improvement

(Can you hear me now, O Man?)

[antigop]

159. Hey, I got it. We all chant, "Klaatu barada nikto" and avoid disaster! n/t

[Ghost Dog]

171. Blade Runner.

People do realise that the likes of Orwell's 1984 and Huxley's Brave New World and, sure, Atlas Shrugged as much as The Left Hand of Darkness or Star Wars are sci-fi, don't they?

[burf]

152. Good evening!

Just to let you know, you will probably in the next few days be getting what we are forecast to get tomorrow thru Wednesday. Four to six inches and unseasonably cold. I don't think this winter will ever be over. We finally are at bare ground but that won't be lasting long.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news..........which brings me to the response to your post.

I also become weary of the seeming endless string of bad news. Then there is the ineptitude, or downright criminality of our elected leaders to deal with the unlawful actions of those who are at fault for this collapse occurring. Sometimes you just what to say "What the hell's the difference?". When I try and get people informed and involved, I swear that I get more intelligent looks from the cows than I do from people. But we cannot help that. Ignorance is treatable, stupidity is not. If folks wanna learn, I am more than happy to do my part. If not, then I can't help and there us no sense in trying. As a Colonel I once worked for said: " A man who will not read is much worse off than one who can not".

The economic depression we are now experiencing is unlike anything that has occurred in history. There has never been a super power of the size of this country go down. This is akin to watching the locomotives speeding toward each other and I cannot understand how anyone cannot watch.

Demeter, and all the others who make Weekend Economist and the Stock Market Watch so informing and interesting, a heartfelt Thank You. It is important work that you do and many do not realize how time consuming it is and how frustrating it must be to have those who disagree with your opinions attack you for speaking the truth. I truly hope that you will continue the Weekend Economist. It appears to me that more folks are looking into the economic issues as things continue to deteriorate. I often lurk but seldom post at either of the threads. Some old saying about better to be silent and thought a fool than opening your mouth and removing all doubt!

Anyway, just thought I throw my 2cents worth. Thanks again for all the hard work. Talk to ya later!

[Tansy_Gold]

162. Rome survived. Britain survived. Changed, perhaps, but not

obliterated.

Will the world emerge changed on the other side of this "event"? Undoubtedly. Some of us may be around to see it.

:popcorn:

[Demeter]

164. Is there Another Side?

I can envision a spiral of doom, leading to world-wide extinction. I cannot envision a return to any kind of stability this side of feudalism or revolution, and that frightens me. It doesn't have to be this way.

That is the engineer speaking, of course.

[Tansy_Gold]

167. There is always another side.

Don't you think it felt like the end of the world for those oh so sophisticated Romans who watched the Vandals and Visigoths and Huns overrun their empire? Don't you think there were those who lost hope as the other Great Depression deepened?

Short of a nuclear holocaust, I really don't think the world is coming to an end in the next few months. And if we live our lives expecting disaster, it will find us.

Keep the thread going, Demeter. And we'll keep each other's spirits up.



Tansy Gold, who has her down days, too.

[Ghost Dog]

172. That is what the Planetary Ecology requires also.

Revolution in the sense of a profound reformation of the economic system and its relationships to both environmental and social systems.

[antigop]

153. Demeter, here's my take

I don't know about anyone else on these threads, but in my circle of friends, relatives, and acquaintances, people are worried about the economy but have absolutely NO idea of what is really going on. I have one or two people that really get it. The rest I have given up on. They are clueless and seem to want to stay that way. (They are probably getting a lot more sleep than I am, so maybe that's a good thing. They don't lose sleep over what's going on.)

Anyway, for me, it is nice to know that a whole group of people are out there who DO get it and contribute to these threads. The whole thing depresses the hell out of me, but maybe it's a sort of 'misery loves company' thing.

[Demeter]

155. We COULD Do a Godfather Weekend!

I only have passing acquaintance with the series, but it was gross enough to make the economy look better by comparison....

You are all correct...putting my head in the sand would not be more productive. Okay. The battle against ignorance and misinformation goes on....

[kickysnana]

161. Peanut gallery here

In my drain bamaged condition (I have the MRI to prove it) I struggle to keep up, but I do. Last night my brother explained to my sister who is planning on relocating from the east coast and buy a house that they plan to live in at least 20 years that despite the drop in prices and the stimulus incentive the value of the house will probably continue to drop for at least 2 years and I could knowingly agree with him because of all of you.

We have all done what we could do and will all have to live together with what has been done and I need this to be able to listen to the no-nothings around me and not go into total despair.

So thank you, you are keeping at least me sane and able to advise people who are realizing that something is very, very wrong and panicking as to what "it" is and what they can or should do.

If you wonder if you are making a difference you are, even if you are the bearer of bad news.

[Demeter]

165. Thanks. We Are a Community in a World Sorely Lacking Community

it's kind of like living in Soviet Union. Making the best of bad luck.

[Dr.Phool]

166. We need you to stick around.

WE and SMW are the only respite on DU anymore. And your hard work is greatly appreciated.

I've only had a few minutes to pop in and out this week-end. I've been busy taing my father around to look at places that he's already decided he's not moving into. And he'll be heading back to SC on Thursday. I'll be up most of tonight reading this week-ends thread.

I like the idea of a Godfather Week-end. I actually knew a lot of the real ones in my wilder and crazier (much crazier) days.

[antigop]

151. Obama demanded GM CEO resign

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Obama_demanded_GM_CEO_resign_0329.html

GM CEO Rick Wagoner will be resigning at President Barack Obama's behest, US media reported Sunday just hours before Obama was to unveil an auto industry rescue package.

"The Obama administration asked Rick Wagoner, the chairman and CEO of General Motors, to step down and he agreed," Politico.com reported citing an unnamed White House official said. No reason was immediately given.

Meanwhile "Obama and other administration officials have said they would demand deeper restructuring from General Motors and Chrysler before they would get any more government loans," The Wall Street Journal reported.

But the banking CEOs get to keep their jobs. Nice, real nice.

[Demeter]

154. Yeah, the Hypocrisy Is Stunning

As the Mogambo Guru always says:"We're freaking doomed!"

Stolen from chill_wind


Why Not Bank CEOs? (David Sirota)

The Associated Press reports that "General Motors Corp. Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner will step down immediately at the request of the White House, U.S. administration officials said Sunday." I'm not sure that's a good or bad thing, but I am curious about why the White House would make such a bold demand of a car company the federal government is lending to, but not a similar demand of the banks the federal government partially owns?

What I mean is - how is it that the White House is requesting the resignation of GM's CEO while not doing the same of, say, Bank of America's CEO? In fact, not only is the president not demanding the resignation of bank CEOs, he's actually hosting them for photo ops at the White House. Sure, I know some bank CEOs resigned a few months ago under shareholder pressure, but the Obama administration has never publicly demanded such resignations of the current management that is making the problems worse, nor the resignation of management at the biggest firms (Goldman Sachs, BofA, etc.) that are still in place.



the rest: http://www.openleft.com /

[Demeter]

157. Stolen from BlooInBloo: 2/3 Of St. Louis' Mass Transit System Just Disappeared!

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2009/03/really-awesome-publ...

"Starting Monday, St. Louis' mass transit system will reduce service radically. The service area for this multibillion-dollar regional asset will shrink by two thirds, literally overnight.

The Metro transit agency faces an operating deficit of $45 million this year, which is expected to reach $50 million next year. Nearly one in every four of its 2,300 employees will be laid off in the coming weeks. Many highly skilled and productive employees already are being poached by transit systems in other regions.

Service will end at 2,300 of the 9,000 bus stops and shelters on Missouri's side of the system; service in Illinois, which is fully funded, won't be affected. A bus fleet of 320 will shrink to about 140. MetroLink light rail riders will see one-third fewer trains during rush hour. Call-A-Ride service for the disabled will be slashed."


so much for the stimulus money. going the way of the newspaper industry.

[Demeter]

163. You May Recall That I Serve on the Board of Directors of My Co-op

Well, we did convert to condos last October, and as a result, I now serve on two boards, the co-op and the condo. The conversion will be completed in October of 2010, at which point one of them goes away.

Anyhow, the woman pushing the conversion, the driving force, was Treasurer, until 3 months after conversion, when she sold her townhouse and split. She was the first to do so (there were some sales contingent upon conversion, but hers was the first following).

The membership failed to meet the challenge of volunteering to fill our board, which grew from 5 in the co-op to 7 in the condo association. Currently, we have only 5 board members, and 2 are brand new, one has one term experience, and none of them were willing to take on Treasurer duties.

Now, I'm the first to admit that I'm not a good candidate for Treasurer. I have no accounting experience (at least, no GOOD experiences and less training), the wrong personality and skillset, etc.
But I do have a CPA neighbor who will oversee it all so long as she doesn't have to be a board member and sit through meetings.

So, I bought a copy of "Accounting for Dummies". If nothing else, it should cure insomnia. Wish us all a lot of luck. And I get to consult with the previous two Treasurers---the next to the last is trying to sell her townhouse, too.

It's a really nice place to live. I sure hope it isn't me.

[Demeter]

168. Closing Hymn (from Godspell) By My Side

Where are you going?
Where are you going?
Can you take me with you?
For my hand is cold
And needs warmth
Where are you going?

Far beyond where the horizon lies
Where the horizon lies
And the land sinks into mellow blueness
Oh please, take me with you

Let me skip the road with you
I can dare myself
I can dare myself
I'll put a pebble in my shoe
And watch me walk (watch me walk)
I can walk and walk!
(I can walk!)

I shall call the pebble Dare
I shall call the pebble Dare
We will talk, we will talk together
We will talk (chorus) about walking
Dare shall be carried
And when we both have had enough
I will take him from my shoe, singing:
"Meet your new road!"
Then I'll take your hand
Finally glad
Finally glad
That you are here
By my side

By my side
By my side
By my side

(Spoken- Judas)
Then the man they called Judas Iscariot
Went to the chief priests, and said
"What will you give me to betray Him to you?"
They paid him thirty pieces of silver.
And from that moment, he began to look out for an opportunity
To betray Him.

By my side
By my side
By my side
By my side

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqM-853MLc4&feature=player_embedded

[Demeter]

169. another good performance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh2ri3hOxYw&feature=related