IT'S STILL NOT SAFE!

Between Congressional banking industry stooges, arrogant, yet bungling party leaders, misinformed and very easily frightened Americans with 401k plans, and rapacious and desperate Wall Street shills like the Treasury Secretary, it is way too early to bask in the glow of the recent legislative smackdown of the No Banker Left Behind/Friends of Hank Paulson Bailout.

Now, if the Boston Globe can be believed, the Senate, a fat cats den if ever there was one, is set to lead the fight to defy the will of the people and turn over taxpayer funds in obscene amounts to the man who would be king, Henry Paulson. To all of you, (I hesitate to call you) people, out there, whoever and whatever you are, working hard to confiscate what is not yours for the purposes of bailing out Wall Street crooks, greed heads and imbeciles, prepare to reap the whirlwind. Prepare for a future where losing your office or your job will be the least of your concerns. No, I'm not kidding. Openly defying the will of the people on this one is going to cost all of you dearly. There's a little fear mongering for you. How do you like a taste of your own medicine?

GAME OVER!

Aren't they quite the collection, yucking it up as if someone just told a very funny joke. Well, the joke's on us. Barney Frank, front and center, is loving every minute of it, basking in all the attention, perhaps unaware of the overwhelmingly negative aspects of the occasion. Ditto for Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Treasury Secretary and erstwhile Wall Street shill, Henry Paulson, looks pleased as punch.

For a solid week, the halls of Congress have been bombarded with phone calls, faxes, and e-mails overwhelmingly and vehemently opposing the bailout as originally presented. Minor add ons and flimsy provisions that will not be adequately enforced, have been inserted in an effort to appear responsive to the public, but as the reports make clear, the core of the bailout as put forth by Paulson remains intact. Most knew the outcome of the week's wrangling was never in doubt, and the price for business as usual now will be much, much steeper. And even as it's clear that trust in the markets has been shattered over these last many months, a precipitous fall in trust in one's government is the next big shoe to drop. The will of the people has been defied on a life and death issue, and when the chickens come home to roost, and they will sooner rather than later, there will be hell to pay.

Amazingly, as reported on Bloomberg, foreign bond holders wanted this agreement so that they wouldn't feel compelled to dump U.S. debt instruments. If so, what a stupid lot they are. The economy is broken, and this deal will not put humpty dumpty back together again. Even if the highways and byways of the credit system are subsequently allowed to clear a bit, I maintain we are now firmly in the realm of pushing on a string. As such, the effect of this bailout will be the same as if there were no bailout, namely a massive slowdown in economic activity. This will cause tax receipts to plummet, which ultimately is exactly what foreign investors should be most fearful of. What's more, as a toxic add on, the currency will, by necessity, be debased as a result of the monetization of the financial instruments of mass destruction. So while the wrecking crew whooping it up in the photo may have bought themselves a brief respite, the coming epic shit storm will not be avoided.

Sara Palin Watch!

Ladies and Gentleman, Sarah Palin turns out to be an even bigger cad, a more horrendous rube than I thought was humanly possible. According to Mrs. Palin, Governor of the State of Alaska, and Republican Vice Presidential nominee, even though she has never actually visited Russia herself, the very fact that trade missions have occurred between the state of Alaska and the nation of Russia confers upon her legitimate foreign policy experience. Ladies and gentleman, it is one thing to be unqualified, it is yet another to not know one is unqualified, and it is yet another still to treat the voters as if they had no ability whatsoever to discern between a steaming pile of poo and a warm chocolate truffle.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080925/ap_on_el_pr/palin

Week of Nervousness.

This will be short and sweet. The Paulson putsch attempted by the Bush Cabal has, mercifully, become bogged down in Congress, perhaps fatally so. It is my view that perhaps enough of the citizenry have contacted their callow Legislatures and expressed their vehement opposition to the attempted fascist swindle, that maybe, just maybe, the blitzkrieg attempt at a Brobdingnagian swindle will fail.

As the week has progressed, my view has evolved such that I see no happy outcome with respect to Congress' deliberations. Even so, the worst of the worst outcomes would have involved a pusillanimous acquiescence to anything like Paulson's egregious terms. That seems to be by the boards presently, but as Congress is full of posturing weasels there is still time for the Congress and Senate to craft something deeply unsatisfactory if not downright treasonous. Stay tuned!

A FINANCIAL DICTATORSHIP!

Here are a few ideas for you to consider that I hope will persuade you to immediately contact your Federal legislative representatives to demand that they REJECT the passage of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's bailout plan.

The Plan, which is being hurried through Congress as I write, is, I believe, being propelled by fear similar to that which allowed the government to drastically subvert the nation's legal landscape after the destruction of the Twin Towers. Today the specter of an impending collapse is being used to extort and usurp absolute financial power. What is occurring right now is, for all intents and purposes, an old style fascist putsch. A putsch is defined as "a plotted revolt or attempt to overthrow a government, especially one that depends upon suddenness and speed." What could be more sudden than what is occurring now? And what could be worse than the likelihood that this is an inside job?

Be very mindful of who heaped the present desperate state of financial affairs upon the nation in the first place, namely the financial services and banking industry who were aided and abetted by elected officials from both parties. Now be equally if not more mindful of the fact that the same groups who engineered the original sub prime swindle are the very same ones who will most benefit from the plan now being foisted on a pliant Congress. No less a historian than John Steele Gordon has observed that..." Paulson is asking to be a financial dictator..." what with provisions in the bill that would bar courts from reviewing actions taken under its (Paulson's) authority. Think about that for a moment. Now think again.

THIS CAN NOT BE ALLOWED TO STAND. NO ONE CAN BE ALLOWED TO ACT WITH LEGAL IMPUNITY AS IT OPENS THE DOOR TO MASSIVE ABUSES, OR WORSE, AN ABSOLUTE USURPATION OF POWER. THIS IS THE VERY CORE OF FASCISM, THE RULE OF MEN OVER LAW. DO NOT BE PERSUADED BY ANY LANGUAGE IN "THE PLAN" REGARDING THE TEMPORARY NATURE OF THE GRANTING OF EXTRAORDINARY POWERS. A QUICK REVIEW OF HISTORY SHOWS THAT SUCH PLEDGES HAVE BEEN VIOLATED FAR TOO OFTEN TO GIVE ANYONE COMFORT THAT THIS TIME WILL BE DIFFERENT. I URGE YOU TO ACT IMMEDIATELY OR RISK SUFFERING APPALLING CONSEQUENCES!!!

WAKE THE &%$# UP!

ATTENTION, AMERICAN PEOPLE! YOUR GOVERNMENT, IN THRALL TO THE CORRUPT PLUTOCRATS OF WALL STREET, IS ABOUT TO BAIL OUT WHAT IS LEFT OF THE FINANCIAL SERVICES INDUSTRY AND, WHO KNOWS WHO ELSE. YOU ARE GOING TO PAY IN WAYS YOU NEVER DREAMT OF IN YOUR WILDEST NIGHTMARES.

IF YOU DON'T TAKE DRACONIAN ACTION NOW, HERE IS WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN:

THE U.S. BOND MARKET, THE PLACE WHERE THE GOVERNMENT RAISES ESSENTIAL FUNDS TO PAY FOR THE DAY TO DAY RUNNING OF GOVERNMENT WILL BE DECIMATED. WHY? HOW?

LET'S START WITH...

1.) YOU THE TAXPAYER, HAVING VERY LITTLE WHEREWITHAL, WILL, GOING FORWARD, PROVIDE SHRINKING TAX RECEIPTS TO THE GOVERNMENT.

2.) FOREIGNERS, SENSING THE PARLOUS CONDITION OF OUR NATIONAL COFFERS, OVERBURDENED AS THEY WILL BE WITH NEW, CRUSHING OBLIGATIONS, (AND DISLIKING US ANYWAY) WILL CEASE TO PONY UP AT THE BORROWING TABLE.

3.) THIS WILL NECESSITATE MASSIVE MONETIZING-PRINTING MONEY- BY THE GOVERNMENT IN ORDER TO PAY FOR ALL THAT THEY HAVE NO FUNDS TO PAY WITH. THIS WILL IN TURN LEAD TO HYPER-INFLATION. IN A HYPER-INFLATION, SUCH AS EXISTED IN WEIMAR GERMANY, BONDS CAN NOT BE PROPERLY PRICED. THAT SPELLS AN END TO OUR CREDIT MARKETS. WHEN THAT DAY ARIVES, WE WILL WELL AND TRULY BE A FINANCIAL AND ECONOMIC BACKWATER.

GAME OVER!

An Open Letter to Barney Frank!

Dear Congressman Frank,

Today you were reported to say,

"It will be the power — it may not be a new entity. It will be the power to buy up illiquid assets," Frank said. "There is this concern that if you had to wait to set up an entity, it could take too long."

The illiquid assets you refer to are illiquid for good reason. They are worthless. There is no market where there is no value What, pray tell, do you propose to pay for these worthless assets with since the funds do not exist to pay for them? In any case why would you pay money for something the rest of the world treats as worthless? From the start this initiative reeks of a catastrophic boondoggle for all but Wall Street and the financial industry in general. From what coffer do you propose to shower enormous sums of money on Wall Street in exchange for the worthless paper? The funds aren’t there, which means you will have to endorse monetization for the purchase of worthless paper. This will have the purpose of cheapening the value of the U.S. dollar which will adversely effect hundreds of millions of people who are blameless in Wall Street’s self inflicted debacle. Finally you run the very great risk of imperiling the U.S. Bond Market as your proposed action almost guarantees a downgrade of U.S. Sovereign debt. Please reconsider your present course of action. It is neither fair, efficacious, or sound.

Sarah Palin Watch!

"He can run, but he can't hide." That's what Joe Louis said about Billy Conn before Louis fought the much lighter Conn in a heavyweight title bout. Louis all but lost except for Conn's foolish attempt to try and knock Louis out when Conn was ahead on points late in the fight. Instead, Louis wound up knocking out Conn. C'est la vie. Sarah Palin is running much like Conn did at the moment, only her flight is from an investigation about whether Palin may have improperly used her office to try and get her brother-in-law fired. Based on everything I've read and seen of Palin, who seems to be, among other unsavory things, an absurdly over ambitious mediocrity, I have no difficulty at all believing that Palin exercised her powers improperly. And I am anything but convinced that her decision to not speak with an investigator tasked with looking into the case has anything to do with her claim that the investigation is tainted. No, I'm afraid it looks to me that if anyone is tainted, it's Alaska's grasping, grifting Governor, Sarah Palin.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/palin_troopergate

Two More Twin Towers Gone!

In a development eerily reminiscent of yet another New York City cataclysm, coming as it did almost seven years to the day after the attack and destruction of The World Trade Center Towers, two of Wall Street's most venerable investment banks, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers, met their demise. Both firms were, to a greater or lesser extent, victims of their own over vaulting ambition and greed, and while Merrill Lynch was merely bought out by Bank Of America in a desperation deal, Lehman Brothers was in such poor shape that no large financial institution could be persuaded to take it over. After over one hundred and fifty years as a fixture in New York City's investment banking scene, an insolvent Lehman Brothers ingloriously collapsed. Until its demise this weekend, Merrill had existed for ninety one years. Interestingly, this is almost as long a span as the still breathing Federal Reserve Bank, which came into being in 1913.

Not too many years ago, something of a Faustian bargain was struck by powerful American entities such that the U.S. exchanged its manufacturing prowess for the prospective glories of what became known as the FIRE economy. Fortunes were made to be sure, but that ill advised arrangement-ill advised for the nation as a whole- has now, for all intents and purposes, come a cropper. Insurance giant AIG is rumored to be in the financial equivalent of cardiac arrest, and so it is no exaggeration to suggest that New York City, once considered, along with London, to be the greatest financial center on the planet, is now in a state of terminal decline. Ponder, preferably with a double shot of your favorite alcoholic libation in hand, just what this all means, not just for the citizens of New York and The Empire State, but for the entire nation.

America: Out of Step With The Planet

It was once an article faith, stated early on by one of the founding fathers, and here I paraphrase, "that we seek to have the good opinion of our fellow nations." These days we have moved far away from espousing such a view, let alone practicing it, so much so that our government and its people are now, in large part, either oblivious to or contemptuous of the idea of maintaining the good opinion of the rest of the world. A poll taken by ABC shows that those who support McCain and Palin are vastly at odds with most of the rest of the planet. I would only add that, despite the obvious flaws of the Obama Biden ticket, they are also at odds with their own nation's welfare.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/09/09/2360240.htm?section=world

Sara Palin Watch!

LIAR LIAR!

Have you seen Sarah the Implaler's recent slow pitch softball interview with ABC's Charles Gibson? I don't watch network T.V. either. I rarely watch any television, but I did catch a portion of the horse shit she spewed to Gibson courtesy of Yahoo. In the interview, Alaska's finest claimed that her statement, "Our soldiers are on a task from God," was meant as some sort of echo of Abraham Lincoln's, "Pray not that God is on our side, but that we are on God's side." I defy anyone with an I.Q. above 90 to watch the tape of Sarah the Impaler in front of a bunch of high schoolers and make the case that her words were in any way informed by those of Abraham Lincoln. No, my friends, The Republican spin crew came up with this Lincoln cover story well after the fact. I imagine the conversation to put out the "she sure looks like a fundamentalist wing nut" fire involved something like this:

McCain spinmeister #1

"Have you come up with any ideas yet for the "from God" thing, Stan?

McCain spinmeister #2

I think so, Bill, take a look at this."

#1

Hey, that's pretty good. No, that's very good. Now she can just say that this quote from Lincoln's was..

#2

What she meant all along.

#1

Yeah. Do you think she can sell that?

#2.

She sold 'em The Bridge to Nowhere.

P.S. You can watch the entire chilling interview, and/or view key transcripts of it here. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/11/sarah-palins-charlie-gibs_n_125772.html

Sara Palin Watch!

The headline at yahoo is something of a howler:

Palin's Ethics Scrapes May Undercut Pledge to End Old Politics.

Ya think?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20080911/pl_bloomberg/alulrclkxig4

I'd like to make special mention today of Charles Hugh Smith's latest post at his website http://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html
I am especially with him regarding his views on the nation's two political parties.

Sarah Palin Watch.

Because Sarah "Barracuda" Palin is such an obvious grifter, I've decided to dedicate some portion of this blog to breaking news stories of The Governor of Alaska's corruption. Today, Mrs. "small town values" has been caught out by The Washington Post for defrauding Alaska taxpayers of approximately $45,000 dollars for bogus travel expenses.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080909/ap_on_el_pr/palin_travel_expenses

Thanks, Bob, for the addled confirmation.

I always knew President Shrub was an epic ignoramus with no knowledge of history, and that he was utterly incurious to boot. Some sized up Bush as merely lazy and/or suffering from some annoying but slight cognitive issue that caused the Commander in Chief, who otherwise was a model of intelligence, to mangle sentences and garble words. But now we have even more proof that all along he truly was an outsized cretin.

According to reporter Bob Woodward, with regard to the conduct of the war in Iraq, and its putative success, President Bush placed great importance on body counts. My immediate thought was this is exactly the sort of idiocy that the Mandarins of the Vietnam War were obsessed with. Body counts and kill ratios were crucial metrics that unmentionables like Robert McNamara obsessively peered over and touted to demonstrate that the war we were clearly losing badly, was, in fact, being won. It's a cliche, but none the less true for being so, that those who do not learn from, (in this case, recent) history, are doomed to repeat it. One wonders if anyone around Bush had the sense or guts to point out, ever so gingerly, to the Commander in Chief that he had his head way up his ass regarding the importance of body counts. I wouldn't have expected Cheney to do the deed, he was, after all, delighted we were there bouncing the rubble around and wouldn't want to run the risk of changing our hideous commitment in any way lest his pal's fat contracts be terminated before the full compliment of booty was squirreled away. Clearly fellow Republican, and war hero John McCain, let me say that again, war hero, John McCain wasn't consulted. Thank goodness he and that human treasure trove of public service, Sarah Palin will be in charge come January.

Attention National Media!

Are you all addled, or just on someone's payroll? If I've read one glowing account from you regarding the massively retrograde first term Governor of Alaska, I've read a dozen. "A star is born" was one of the more nauseating headlines I've seen of late that made me think that the writer had been drinking rot gut from a lead lined glass since the Reagan years. Has it occurred to any of you that an above average reading of a well rehearsed speech, made by a nicely dressed, physically arresting, female politician, in front of a crowd of rabid, kool-aid drinking, yahoos, isn't a litmus test worthy of the name?

Have you considered instead focusing your attention a bit more on the world view, the culture, and the legislative, ahem, achievements of the Governor of Alaska? Let me help you out on the world view part. Palin, as you know, is a Christian Fundamentalist, which means she is from the same line of people who persecuted Copernicus and Galileo for conclusively demonstrating that not only was the earth not the center of the universe, but that it wasn't even the center of our vastly smaller solar system. Consider the possibility, if not the likelihood, that, if, by some quirk of fate, Palin and her ilk outnumbered those of you who hold slightly more up to date views, she'd probably be springing stuff on you that would make the goings on at Guantanamo look like a hazing incident at your local college. You don't think so?

Well then, consider one of Governor Palin's most recent legislative victories, namely the defeat, with the help of $400,000 dollars of taxpayer dollars, of Measure 2, an initiative designed to prevent hunting wolves for sport from airplanes. You see, this is the kind of moronic pastime that Palin and her snow mobile racer husband think is cool. What does drilling in a wildlife refuge amount to... excuse me, what does wildlife amount to for someone with such a depraved view of nature? Me? I'd like to see a buck naked, terrified and freezing Sarah Palin running from an airplane stocked with hunters shooting at her non-stop with high powered rifles and see how she likes it.

Nationalize!

The government's answer to the insolvency of banks and GSEs is to nationalize them. The latest maneuver, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, is to take over the prostrate mortgage outfits Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This will cost us taxpayers in ways that are hard to put a number on and impossible to calculate.

One way though is that the long standing decline in the purchasing power of the dollar will resume and accelerate. I believe that the dollar has been artificially levitated precisely in anticipation of a whole raft of nationalizations to come. At the same time the dollar was goosed higher, a massive engineered attack was orchestrated on precious metals, the canary in the coal mine with respect to the dollar's prospective condition. As George Bush senior was fond of saying, "This will not stand."

With respect to the nationalization of Fannie and Freddie, there is every reason to believe that the Chinese, owners of large amounts of Fannie and Freddie debt, have pressured the U.S. government to step in. At the same time, we have corporate shysters like Pimco's Bill Gross, who knowingly bought distressed paper, clamoring for the government to nationalize. In the case of Gross, it is a certainty that he purchased the items in full anticipation of a bailout. The criminality that has occurred over the better part of this decade, and is now occurring in response to earlier malfeasance is unspeakable. One wonders if and when the American people will wake up to it and do something about it.

Thanks, but no thanks, Sarah!

I don't hold out much hope for the U.S. as there are too many imbeciles out there seemingly impressed by a

"...snarky, amateurish, almost Student Council-like speech, Palin proved today that she can attack like a candidate for vice-president. And she demonstrated that she can support the top of the ticket like a candidate for vice-president. But nowhere in her speech did she demonstrate that she can be vice-president."

The Daily Kos is on target, but they left out the fact, and it is a fact, that the Governor of Alaska lied like a dog in her speech, completely misrepresenting her support for The Bridge to Nowhere. Thanks, but no thanks, Sarah. I still want no part of your trailer park sensibilities. You are a hick who done good, and while that may be good enough for many of my thick headed fellow citizens who have offered up such howlers as "A Star is Born" in the aftermath of your vapid "Student Council- like" speech, your smiling brand of smarmy, two bit, homespun, rhetoric doesn't change the fact that you are a retrograde, fundamentalist wing nut from the state with the most number of wing nuts per capita in the union.

Of Course She Can.

The more we learn about McCain's Vice Presidential choice the more unsavory she becomes. From the (possibly fake) photo of Governor Palin in an American flag bikini gleefully toting a rifle, to credible reports that in her limited time as a public servant she has been on board for massive pork barrel spending, going so far as to hire a lobbyist for a town of 7,000, to allegations that Palin used her office to try and force the firing of a state trooper who was in a custody battle with her sister, the list is long, and getting longer. Of course the right wing spin machine is hard at work trying to give a warm glow to all the folderol, and let's face it, they have to be, because there's a lot of chicken shit to be packaged as chicken salad between now and next Tuesday.

Apparently, when John McCain said to Palin that nothing could prepare her for the harsh spotlight of a presidential campaign, she responded, "I can take it." Well, of course she can. Folks like her rarely harbor doubts much less shame about themselves. In the meantime, if I read one more post from another meat head prattling on about what a hottie Governor Palin is, I'm going to be sick. I don't care how she looks for a forty something, mother of three, she's pure trailer park, and whatever low opinion I have of the D.C. insider scene-which by the way is full of cretinous rednecks-the answer to America's problems isn't pistol packin' Palin.