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This
is simply pathetic.The Not-So-Great Depression moniker is a backhanded jab at the remnants of the now departed Bush administration. Its as if Barron’s is saying that the most fitting legacy for one of the nation’s least popular presidents was that even his greatest screw up was only mediocre at best.
"Regulation of derivatives transactions that are privately negotiated by professionals is unnecessary."
Alan Greenspan, July 30, 1998.
February 25th, 2009 | The Big Picture
Another Onion classic:
Drawn by a strange force they could neither resist nor describe, millions of Americans reportedly dropped what they were doing Tuesday and, acting as if by instinct alone, gathered into one massive nationwide breadline.
According to witnesses, citizens across the country exited their homes in near unison, leaving behind growing stacks of bills, empty kitchen cupboards, and what was once a life of comfort to form the spontaneous, 2,000-mile-long queue.
Source:
Nation Instinctively Forms Breadline
FEBRUARY 24, 2009 | ISSUE 45•09
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/93430
- "But Ben believes the trend from here has to be up, and seems unable to consider that rather than the risk appetite being irrationally low now, it may have been irrationally complacent earlier."
The only way for Ben to revive the insane optimism that supported the bubble would be for him to legalize cocaine and force feed it to people. Or wait 10 or 15 years, until people forget the idiocy of their ways.Tim Geithener's Mom said...
- Ben Bernanke and Fundamentals Feb 25 2009:
- "Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday recent sharp declines in stock prices mostly reflected investor attitudes about risk and had become detached from real U.S. economic fundamentals...The stock values reflect not so much the fundamentals..."
- Ben Bernanke and Fundamentals Oct 27 2005:
- "Ben S. Bernanke does not think the national housing boom is a bubble that is about to burst...U.S. house prices have risen by nearly 25 percent over the past two years, noted Bernanke...But these increases, he said, "largely reflect strong economic fundamentals," such as strong growth in jobs, incomes and the number of new households."
- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/26/AR2005102602255_pf.html
Ben B, "fundamentals"? I do not think that word means what you think it means...
- One leaked observation about US military planning during the Bush administration, in paraphrase, went as follows: In previous admins. everyone came prepared to debate at meetings and drank the Kool-aide afterward; in this one, you had to drink it before the meeting.
- Different admin., same mindset, but now w.r.t. the economy.
- February 26, 2009 4:34 AM
Comrade Byzantine_Ruins writes:
I have heard some ridiculous shit called "the truth" before. This is up there.Did he write that himself or does some poor bastard making 45 grand a year have to choke it out between sobs and gales of tittering hysterical laughter?
Comrade Byzantine_Ruins | Homepage | 02.24.09 - 10:34 am | #
Black Star Ranch writes:
".....are successful in restoring some measure of financial stability--and only "IF" that is the case, in my view--there is a reasonable prospect that the current recession will end in 2009 and that 2010 will be a year of recovery."
.....we don't live in the land of "should", "could", or "if".
Black Star Ranch | 02.24.09 - 10:34 am | #optimader writes:
"I believe that, overall, the downside risks probably outweigh those on the upside."
quote of the year so far
optimader | 02.24.09 - 10:35 am | #Gubbmint Cheese writes:
Isn't this the same guy that assured us sub-prime wouldn't affect the rest of the economy?
Just checking..
Gubbmint Cheese | 02.24.09 - 10:36 am | #serf alan greenspend writes:
Pravda!
serf alan greenspend | Homepage | 02.24.09 - 10:36 am | #blackhat writes:
Well, perhaps the recession ends in 2010, thus marking the beginning of the depression.
--bh
blackhat | 02.24.09 - 10:36 am | #
Like real porn, the economic variety gives you the illusion of control, and similarly it only leaves you hungry for more. But econo-porn also feeds a powerful sense of intellectual vanity. You walk the streets feeling superior to all these heedless knaves who have no clue what’s coming down the pike. By making yourself miserable about the frightful hell that awaits us, you feel better. Pessimism can be bliss too.
Comments
- In this type of porn, you are watching YOURSELF being f*cked.
By Shnaps on 02/08/2009 at 2:31pm
Hey, I never said I don't believe what I read on Calculated Risk, and i think that blog and many others were early in providing an essential antidote to the mainstream boosterism. But I also think in some of their feverish terms, like Calculated Risk's favorite "cliff diving:, there is a perverse pleasure in seeing everything come unglued, Now that the mainstream press is filled with evidence of economic decline (that's where Calculated RIsk picks a lot of hid grim data anyway), there's an opportunity to move the debate into constructive alternatives to the further damage the government is about to unleash on us, which, in my view, is madness. Also, in case you didn't notice, my piece was kind of a joke about my own personal obsessions. I don't know how to fix the financial system, do you?
It's pretty sad that John Stewart clearly has a better understanding of economics - much better - than a former senator who has been a member of the Committee on Finance and the Joint Economic Committee. No wonder the Republicans screwed the economy up so much - they can recite the ideological talking points that "tax cuts make it better, government makes it worse," but most of them don't seem to have a clue what makes the economy tick.
- Wall Street 1929 was symbolized by busted brokers leaping from office window ledges.
- Main Street 2009 might be symbolized by busted shoppers leaping from the 7th level of the atrium at the mall.
debtinator writes:
Don't just nationalize. Mexicanize!
Complete the transition to a O'bamanana republic today!
debtinator | 02.20.09 - 1:32 pm | #Angry Saver writes:
I guess Chuck Prince is still dancing.
Angry Saver | 02.20.09 - 1:14 pm | #
blackhat writes:
Fed to BofA:
"Where are your rebel friends now?"
--bh
blackhat | 02.20.09 - 1:16 pm | #Mini-quasi-pre-intermediate-nationalization?
Angry Saver writes:
I wonder if Cramer still wants to make me rich?
Or maybe I should attend Trump University!
Angry Saver | 02.20.09 - 1:17 pm | #Angry Saver writes:
Imagine how bad things would be at the banks if we didn't retain the talent by issuing 2008 year end bonuses.
Too scary to think about.
Angry Saver | 02.20.09 - 1:27 pm | #
Joanna writes:
Hello 1987...
Interesting Times | 02.20.09 - 1:22 pm | #
I remember Black Monday. The traders looked just like that painting The Scream
Joanna | Homepage | 02.20.09 - 1:35 pm | #Interesting Times writes:
If housing did, this would all be over by now.
Blackhalo | 02.20.09 - 1:35 pm | #
Screw a house! I want a recent 52 foot Yacht at '87 prices!
Interesting Times | 02.20.09 - 1:37 pm | #
Comrade Geithner writes:
So, printing trillions of dollars to bailout criminal banksters is not a good idea?
Comrade Geithner | 02.21.09 - 10:27 pm | #
The Daily Show offers some stimulus ideas ...
>
2/19/2009 | by CalculatedRisk
This is making the rounds. Enjoy... (hat tip Nick in Kyoto, original source unknown)
Edit: Yes, the last couple are obviously fake. More on the source from snopes. (ht Tim at Seattlebubble.com)
Comments
- tryflyfishing Says:
February 19th, 2009 at 1:01 pmMy father -a journalist- told me to start with “Why is this bastard lying to me?” It would help if journalists started this way today.
On both sides of the Atlantic, senior officials are issuing dire warnings about global political turmoil. In the US, Admiral Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, says instability produced by the economic crisis is now the biggest short-term threat to US national security. In Britain, Ed Balls, a cabinet minister, argues that the financial crisis is “more serious” than that of the 1930s, adding cheerfully: “And we all remember how the politics of that era were shaped by the economy.”
All this is alarming – but also rather vague. So how might world politics look in four years’ time? Something like this, perhaps . . .
It is November 7 2012. At three in the morning, an exhausted-looking President Barack Obama appears before weeping supporters in the ballroom of the Chicago Hilton and concedes defeat. The euphoria of his victory-night speech in Grant Park four years earlier is a distant memory. The Obama administration has been overwhelmed by America’s economic problems. Sarah Palin is the new president of the US.
Elected on a ticket of populism at home and nationalism overseas, President-elect Palin starts to take congratulatory phone calls from foreign leaders. First on the line is Avigdor Lieberman, the prime minister of Israel; then comes President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Five different leaders claiming to speak in the name of the European Union try to place calls – but they are all put on hold. As for the Chinese leadership, the new president is not speaking to them. How could she, after she has campaigned against the “communist currency manipulators of Beijing”?
The Chinese have resisted the temptation to call Mrs Palin a “capitalist running dog”. But Maoist language is creeping back into Chinese official discourse, as the country struggles to adjust to the collapse and closure of its export markets. Alarmed by the large number of unemployed in the cities, the Communist party has abandoned plans to privatise rural land and invested heavily in public works in the countryside and new collective farms. This policy is swiftly dubbed “the Great Leap backwards”.
The world event that had most damaged Mr Obama was Iran’s successful test of a nuclear weapon in 2011. The Republicans had hammered home their message that Mr Obama was “a second Jimmy Carter”, who had been duped by hopes of striking a grand bargain with Iran.
The Iranian nuclear test had also driven Israeli politics even further to the right and set the stage for the rise of Mr Lieberman. His campaign slogan in the 2011 election – “bomb them while they are on the toilet” – was borrowed from Mr Putin and chanted gleefully by Mr Lieberman’s Russian-speaking supporters.
Mr Obama had successfully delivered on his campaign promise to get America out of Iraq. But by 2012, the voters were taking that for granted. Nato’s messy withdrawal from Afghanistan had, however, damaged him. The US and its allies had left behind a country run by a patchwork of more or less co-operative warlords. The new anti-terror strategy was officially called “watch and strike”, and unofficially dubbed “whack a mole”. It involved monitoring potential terrorist camps from a distance and bombing them.
Mr Putin had said that he had no intention of gloating about Afghanistan, before adding: “But the age of American arrogance is over.”
By 2010, Mr Putin was safely installed back in the Kremlin. The gravity of Russia’s economic crisis had led the official media to clamour for a return to strong leadership. President Dmitry Medvedev had taken the hint in early 2010 and stepped aside. His arrest the following year came as an unpleasant surprise.
In 2011, the unstable democratic governments in Ukraine and Georgia had fallen, after weeks of popular unrest. The Russians were suspected of orchestrating events but nobody could prove anything. The Americans and Europeans had protested – but only feebly. Privately, many western diplomats argued that only Mr Putin stood between Russia and fascism.
After the fall of the Merkel government in 2009, Germany was governed by a succession of unstable coalitions and forgettable chancellors. The hope that had accompanied the election of David Cameron as Britain’s prime minister, under the slogan “let the sunshine in”, had swiftly disappeared. The hapless Mr Cameron was now the most unpopular prime minister in British history.
This left President Nicolas Sarkozy of France as the dominant figure in the EU. His divorce from Carla Bruni and marriage to Madonna had only briefly distracted him.
Mr Sarkozy had weathered the denunciations that followed his decision in 2010 formally to withdraw France from the EU’s regimes on competition and state aid. All main French banks and industrial conglomerates were instructed to make 90 per cent of their investments at home. Mr Sarkozy’s move was widely denounced across the EU – but then equally widely imitated.
At home, the French president was under pressure to go even further in a nationalist direction from his main political opponents – “the postman and the housewife”, otherwise known as Olivier Besancenot, a Trotskyite, and Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front. Ms Le Pen cited the rise of Sarah Palin as an inspiration.
As the morning of November 7 wore on, President Palin herself took to the stage in Anchorage, Alaska. Her supporters cheered and waved ice hockey sticks. “I’ve got a message for the mullahs and the commies,” she roared: “America is back.”
Unemployed says...Wall Street's monkeying around has caused me to lose my cucumber stipend, while they continue to receive grapes. Am I not justified in my rage?
I can't wait for Lou "wild thing" Dobbs to start a nightly feature about the jobs created overseas by US stimulus money.
February 14th, 2009
A classic cover indicator, now 9 years old, via Business Week.
Dated this February 14th 2000, it was a mere month from the ultimate top:
Time to celebrate. This month, the current economic expansion became the longest in U.S. history. The boom has done more than create millions of new jobholders and stock owners. It has also restored the public’s confidence and given more people than ever a shot at the American Dream. We tell the story
No wonder some of the coarse and crueller Cockneys, toiling in the basement dealing rooms of these once-proud City institutions, have dubbed their dim-witted directors "the scumbag millionaires".
Comments
- For now the "bankers feel safely smug when in their little gated world. However, when the reality of the total s*** this self- serving scum has put this country in becomes apparent to the mob , god help them.
Travis Jackson walks through his modest ranch house, admiring the kitchen's built-in spice rack and the red-oak floors. He draws back the curtains, and sunlight illuminates the pride on his face.
The young banker just bought Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's childhood home at a foreclosure sale.
"This is where it all happened," marvels Mr. Jackson, a 27-year-old loan officer at First Citizens Bancorp, which is down the street from the old Bernanke place. "Kind of a surreal feeling, isn't it?"
February 13, 2009 | The Big Picture
Sometime this year, taxpayers will receive an Economic Stimulus Payment. This is a very exciting new program that I will explain using the Q and A format:Q. What is an Economic Stimulus Payment?
A. It is money that the federal government will send to taxpayers.Q. Where will the government get this money?
A. From taxpayers.Q. So the government is giving me back my own money?
A. No, they are borrowing it from China. Your children are expected to repay the Chinese.Q. What is the purpose of this payment?
A. The plan is that you will use the money to purchase a high-definition TV set, thus stimulating the economy.Q. But isn’t that stimulating the economy of China ?
A. Shut up.Below is some helpful advice on how to best help the US economy by spending your stimulus check wisely:
If you spend that money at Wal-Mart, all the money will go to China.
If you spend it on gasoline it will go to Hugo Chavez, the Arabs and Al Queda
If you purchase a computer it will go to Taiwan.
If you purchase fruit and vegetables it will go to Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala (unless you buy organic).
If you buy a car it will go to Japan and Korea.
If you purchase prescription drugs it will go to India
If you purchase heroin it will go to the Taliban in Afghanistan
If you give it to a charitable cause, it will go to Nigeria.
- bg said...
- "make waves with their state's biggest employer (even in the communist state of New York, look what happened to Eliot Spitzer)"
I didn't realize that prostitution was New York's biggest employer.- Anonymous said...
- it pisses me off that THE TAXPAYERS are paying their bonuses.
JOKE + BONUS = JONUS
And the rhetorical response of conservatives to the stimulus plan — which will ... cost substantially less than either the Bush administration’s $2 trillion in tax cuts or the $1 trillion and counting spent in Iraq — has bordered on the deranged.
... ... ...
It’s “destroying my daughters’ future. It is like sitting there watching my house ransacked by a gang of thugs,” said Arnold Kling of the Cato Institute.
Calculated Risk
I've been hearing rumors of legal layoffs ...
The WSJ Law Blog: The Darkest Day Ever for Big Law Firms?
from Hoopajoops (Author unknown):
Black Thursday
On a windy Manhattan winter day
With the economy tanking under skies of gray
Associates and staff met an unkind end
As PPP's continued to descend
Dechert released nineteen by noon
And greater losses would be announced soon
Next came news from Bryan Cave
Where fifty-eight young careers went to the grave
Goodwin Proctor continued the act
Wheen seventy-four employees were promptly sacked
Then fell the ax at Holland & Knight
The steady paychecks of hundreds vanished from sight
An industry leader in expanding too fast
DLA Piper added scores more to the unemployed caste
Then a large cull from the North Star state
As twenty-nine associates met a cruel fate
Cadwalader sent sixteen Londoners to redundancy consultation
But a week without Cadwalader layoffs would be quite the aberration
The final cut of the day came at a mid-size shop
Where more than fifty felt the ax drop
Our sorrow is deep for our colleagues fired en masse
But do keep in mind that this too shall pass
We share in your pain, your shame, your dismay
On this darkest of dark, this Black Thursday
Comments
..true leadership (as in getting the public to do things that are difficult but in their best interest) went out of fashion in the US a long time ago."
I had been planning to blog today on US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s proposals for saving/reviving financial intermediation in the USA. However, picking through the entrails of this multi-faceted, surprisingly incomplete, seriously underfunded, occasionally well-designed but mostly inadequate, counterproductive and unnecessarily moral-hazard-creating set of proposals was just too depressing. I will wait till I am at my parents’ home this weekend, mollified and mellowed by my father’s good claret, before I review the Geithnerbharata
It is the markets’ job [eventually] to reallocate money from the ignorant to the intelligent, from the lazy to the hard working and studious; from the naive to the educated, and from the speculator to the investor.
Comments
- Unless the government gives money to failed financial companies - then the ignorant get rewarded while people who had nothing to do with their ignorance get bashed. But least we forget to give bonuses, we have to remember how important it is for us to all help failed leadership retain top talent. That way when they fail again they can do so with the best.
- Someone else once said that the job of a bear market is to return the money to its rightful owners. So far, the current bear market isn’t working out that way. A lot of *criminals* are doing just fine and a lot of innocent bystanders have been or will be creamed.
Justin Fox at Time Magazine plays the Financial Crisis Blame Game and, not surprisingly comes out with you-know-how at the top. Well, actually, "Good Times" came out on top, which is a curious selection, particularly when looking at the rest of the list which contains no other real surprises.
Here's the list (my comments are in parentheses):1.Good Times
2. Alan Greenspan (lost to a 1970s comedy series?)
3. Twisted Regulation
4. Wall Street
5. The Homeownership Obsession (not HGTV?)
6. Too Much Money (see #2)
7. The Myth of the Rational Market (damn economists)
8. You and Me (hey, speak for yourself)
9. George W. Bush
10. Commodity Futures Modernization Act
Feb 10, 2009 | Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal
comments
"animal spirits" when economists realize they don't know what's going on and kick the can over to social psychologists?
And Paul Krugman snarks:
The return of shrill: Via Angry Bear, Will Marshall says I deserve a “Pulitzer Prize in hyperbole” for saying that
the dastardly centrists would kill hundreds of thousands of jobs and cut vital health care and food programs, while offering a fat tax break to affluent homeowners
Pity poor Joe Biden. His "there's still a 30 percent chance we're going to get it wrong" quote is put straight to President Barack Obama during the White House press conference just now and his boss seemed to want to say: "Vice-President Who?"As reporters started giggling, Obama came close to conceding that Biden was indeed a joke. "You know, I don't remember exactly what Joe was referring to, not surprisingly."
The President went on to say that "I think what Joe may have been suggesting, although I wouldn't ascribe any numerical percentage to any of this, is that given the magnitude of the challenges that we have, any single thing that we do is going to be part of the solution, not all of the solution."
... ... ...
Biden's exact quote, read out by Fox's Major Garrett at the presser was: "If we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, if we stand up there and we really make the tough decisions, there's still a 30 percent chance we're going to get it wrong."
Comments
Biden is a worse fool than ever Dan Quayle was. Obama is gonna have to muzzle him, or spend half his time burying the turds he drops in the Rose Garden.
... ... ...
Joe "Gasbag" Biden is being summarily marginalized because he's a walking gaffe liability. His ability to grandstand on any given topic, tell whoppers with a straight face and get in lockstep with Obama are the reasons he was selected as VP.However his own sense of self importance has few equals in DC which is why he tends to wander off the reservation and start his boasting routine.God help everyone if that clown ever has to take over as POTUS.
Take a load off Fannie
Take a load for free
Take a load off Fannie
And you put the load right on me
An old joke from my younger days: What do you get when you cross a Godfather with a deconstructionist? Someone who makes you an offer you can’t understand.
Feb 6, 2009 | Boom2Bust.com
Valentine’s Day out in the Big Apple should be a lot more interesting this year. From John Byrne of the alterntrong>
Kristin Davis, the madam in question, went public to ABC News this week; ABC will be broadcasting her interview Friday at 10 pm. Davis says she has a list of 9,800 clients, many of whom she says New York prosecutors deliberately avoided when taking her case, even though she offered them her annotated client list.
In what’s sure to create a media firestorm parallel to that of when a Washington, DC madam announced that she was publishing her client list (which included at least one senator), Davis’ comments come at a time where incredible ire is already focused on Wall Street and banking executives. The pressure for her to release the list will certainly be immense…
Davis provided the network with a print-out of her computerized client list, the same one she says that she offered the district attorney.
Among the names the network says it confirmed
* a vice president of NBC Universal (owned by General Electric)
* the part owner of a Major League Baseball team who “loves Kelsey”
* the CEO of one of the country’s largest private equity firms who met “Cameron” at the Peninsula Hotel
* a major New York real estate developer who, according to the list, “will come to the door wearing women’s panties”
* a partner at the Wall Street law firm Cravath Swaine Moore “looking for a party girl to come fully equipped” and spent a total of $20,000
* an investment banker from Lehman Brothers who saw “Kelsey and Keely together” and later saw “Aria and Skyler at the same time”
* an investment banker at JP Morgan Securities who “loves Brooke” and spent $41,600
* an investment banker at Goldman Sachs who “only wanted all-American girls” and spent $27,000
* a managing director from Merrill Lynch who saw “Lana” using the name “Nataly”
* a managing director from Deutsche Bank “who called about seeing Nataly again”
Byrne talked about how the “services” were paid for. He wrote:
Davis told the network she disguised the charges in various ways so they would appear to be legitimate business expenses when accountants sifted through credit card statements.
One CEO, she said, ordered her to send him invoices for “roof repair on a warehouse” to disguise the charge for prostitutes from corporate funds.
Davis says she hasn’t yet decided whether to release the full 9,800-name list publicly.
Two grand an hour for a prostitute? No wonder they’re fighting tooth and nail for those large bonuses.
Might just have to turn on ABC tonight for a quick looksie…
... just because one is a cockroach–as an unspecialized advisory investment banker, I think I am the very model of the modern cockroach–does not mean per se that one will survive a generalized collapse of the system one inhabits.
Reader Gregg Somerville, a stockbroker, sent me a link to his "rapumentary" ripping Hank Paulson. It may be a few months behind the curve at this point, but it remains hilarious. The line about Richard Fuld being the only guy who ever lost calling Paulson's bluff is a classic.I mean, we have to laugh at this stuff, right? It's either that or launch into a 'roid rage and rip the hearts out of every jerk in our nation's capital.
Peace. Out.
econonoob writes:
With several million jobs costing about 200K each, I'd rather have a weekly lottery for 50K/year unemployment stipends. It might keep hope alive, considering no one's hiring.
econonoob | 02.09.09 - 12:51 pm | #
comrade swan writes:
... ...
Preliminary indications are that, despite the apoplexy of the arch conservatives, Soros isn't Barry's puppetmaster. The Soros plan would necessitate the doctor cutting off the patient's morphine and instead performing elective surgery. The Obama plan would appear to be nothing more than increasing the dosage.
What is called for here is a program I've called the Mendacity of Hope and the Urgency of Not.
comrade swan | Homepage | 02.09.09 - 11:55 am | #
Elvis writes:
I bet being a pirate sounds better and better everyday to the people living on the US coasts. Go long hand hooks, peg legs, and eye patches.
Elvis | 02.09.09 - 12:44 pm | #Elvis writes:
"the problem is that america still believes that its manifest destiny is exponential growth."
I always thought manifest destiny was a party for men put on at football stadiums by Promise Keepers where they wave signs like "Real Men Don't Use Porn."Elvis | 02.09.09 - 12:47 pm | #
Joanna writes:
Yes, and insurance against riots. DC is scared and Obama will be sent out often to sooth the growing discontent.
FFDIC | 02.09.09 - 12:52 pm | #Which is why I think the guy was hired...
Joanna | Homepage | 02.09.09 - 1:00 pm | #
- I would like to offer a competing bill - The Marie Antoinette, "Let Them Eat Cake" legislation.
- Politicians with overinflated egos and greasy palms have no constructive or meaningful answers.
- "Perhaps the new initiative should be referred to as the 'Bad Asset Resolution Fund' or BARF for short."
- Let's say two people each own a $150k condo, and the condos are nearly identical. All they have to do is sell each other's condo to each other for the same price and each makes $15k, tax free, courtesy the US Taxpayer.
- Since we can't afford it, why not close at least half the overseas bases, withdraw from Kosovo and Iraq and draw down in Afghanistan. ...No you cannot do it: Bonds crash. No US hegemony... aren't we heading towards that anyways ?
- Personally I see the boomers as useless well trained Tavistock monkies.
- US financial markets were "characterized less by sophistication than by sophistry": people who profited from the deal-making but not necessarily from the viability of the projects.
- Kady said...
- My favorite feature of the modern kleptocrat? They genuinely believe that they "earned" it.
Pissed Off In California writes:
I'm so proud to live in CA. We're so far ahead of any other state when it comes to the size of bank asset bases as well as the cost to the FDIC to shut it down.
Pissed Off In California | 02.06.09 - 10:43 pm |
The Wall Street Journal Economics Blog today featured an update of a chart prepared by Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America, comparing the compensation of French and American civil servants, with an update (click to enlarge):
naked capitalism
- You know they are real serious when the postings are in Zimbabwe.
john c. halasz said...
- Well, at least, a posting to the Czech Republic or Brazil for a number of years might be an interesting currency speculation play.
- This sounds like a bad Dilbert cartoon.
"Good news, for all your loyal service you have a job... however its in Honduras. Hope your kids speak Spanish"
Now that the neolibs have joined forces with their kissing cousins, the neocons, in expanding their sphere of influence to include the Dems, the Rethugs can no longer be solely blamed for selling America down the river to the ports of Banana-Republic-Land.
Posted by: Cynthia | Feb 5, 2009 10:16:31 AM | 1
YouTube
...If you love America, you throw money in its hole!!!"
"My father worked TWO JOBS so he'd have money to put in the money hole, and he never complained!"'
My favorite quote. So funny.
If the banks are insolvent,
NationalizePreprivatize them....Stocks fell as investors were concerned that unlimited amounts of money may not be flushed down the black hole of banks.
...The 500k think is pretty funny. You can almost picture an Onion headline: "Obama to limit CEOs to only three houses each."
...Fasten seat belts and prepare for impact.
...The SEC .. "is busy protecting the big financial predators from investors."
...Barack "Dubya" Obama?
...patriotic citizens should wear big "Buy now" red buttons
Feb 04 | FT Alphaville
Warren Buffett’s spending spree appears to be getting ever-more diverse.
Anonymous said...
Obama should team up with Siegel to write "CDOs for the long run"
- We've got ourselves a real whorehouse brawl here.
All three of the protagonists live in their own little world, the insular environment of the bordello. While they scrap over the dininishing spoils that befall their brothel, they are oblivious to the broader implications of their morally questionable libertairian creedo, the devastation it has wrecked, and the fact that the world outside the walls of their compound is crumbling.
I say a curse on all their houses.- “So Why is the Journal (Sort of) Defending Peter Schiff's Simply Wretched Investment Performance?”
To legitimize the scam.
The Wall Street Urinal is in reality defending the casinos rigged game (and by extension, the higher level gangsters that own and operate it) by defending/legitimizing a highly visible player/loser.
Financial, ‘experts, advisers and gurus’, are now held in as much contempt by the public as the crooked cops, judges, and politicians, that uphold the fast crumbling scam ‘rule of law’ that they ALL operate under.
Pimps, crack whores and used car dealers are now far more more trustworthy than financial experts ... and they have superior, more tangible, products ...
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
More skepticism please!
i on the ball patriot
FT.com
- In the US, the following are given:
1) We will spare no expense to save the bankers
2) We will spare no expense to avoid being seen as nationalizing
3) We will spare no expense to avoid being seen as unpatriotic
Please construct a plan with those points in mind. Oh, and one more thing:
4) We will spare no expense
Posted by: Don the libertarian Democrat | February 2nd, 2009 at 4:24 pm | Report this comment
At least the old robber barons made great products. When you make money out of money, unmoored from morality and regulators, it must unhinge you. How else to explain corporate welfare queens partridge hunting in England, buying French jets and shopping for Lamborghinis?
Bush said, "Wall Street got drunk and left us with the hangover." The Wall Street Journal, January 19, 2009, in an article titled the "Bush Economy" replied, "Who does Mr Bush think was serving the liquor?"
Some of the year's top off-beat tales included a Canada brewery that created a special tough times bitter and "Sarah's Smash Shack" in California, which charges patrons $10 for 15 minutes of pleasure pulverizing dinnerware against a wall. "It was the best $50 we've spent in the last two years," said insurance broker Adam DeWitt, who smashed plates in San Diego with his wife after his home mortgage loan was rejected.
Wish I'd written it. From Jesse:We believe that the stimulus is too backend loaded and unimaginative to affect anything sooner. Adding liquidity to the banks is as useful as filling the tank of a car wrapped around a telephone pole. Who are the banks going to lend to? And increased spending on health care, with the highest and least efficient per capita cost in the world, is like giving the driver of that car a bottle of vodka to ease their pain.
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Last modified: March 12, 2019
February 23rd, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Remember this from Hillary Clinton during the campaign?
“The sky will open. The lights will come down. Celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect!”
Doesn’t seem to be working out that way just yet.