Pretty vacant

What a country!

TurboTax Timmeh Shitener: Sec’y of Fraud

Making banks into GSE’s

TBTF will be the law of the land for the chosen few:

Too small to be bailed-out? Prepare to be absorbed.

Why do we even need banks if 95 percent of the mortgage market is directly subsidized by the government?

A good question, asked and expounded upon by Dr. Housing Bubble:

“95 percent of the mortgage market is now backed by the government. As we know, a large part of this growth also occurred with highly risky FHA insured loans that are now imploding at record levels. Last month in Southern California 36 percent of mortgages were FHA insured loans. Now applying the Stockholm syndrome, it would appear that many instead of being angry and calling out the banking fraud for what it is, are starting to believe in what the abductors are pushing. They say things like, ‘ see, the banks are now holding off on the shadow inventory to help the market. Prices are now going up! ‘ As if the banks are concerned about the average American with some banks charging 79.9 percent on credit cards before dealing with the tougher legislation coming in 2010. As you can see from the above chart, the mortgage market is the government which raises the question, why do we even need banks if 95 percent of the mortgage market is directly subsidized by the government?.“

His very graphic graphic (not for the squeamish):

“In fact, there have been a few articles talking about the ‘ brain drain’ because of compensation limitations on Wall Street! You have got to be out of your damn mind! People mistake ‘ intelligence ‘ in kleptocracy, cronyism, and financial engineering with actual smarts. They are smart at screwing over our economy so this brain drain argument is absolute insanity. It would be one thing if they were creating life saving drugs or consumer goods but instead, they are an albatross on the rest of the economy sucking taxpayer dollars into their balance sheets. Yes, let us feel sorry for our financial kidnappers. How can they live on a few million dollars (note: read DeanBaker’s rant) a year after all the good they have done? Let us allow them to have the same system that gave them the key to drive our economy off the financial edge.”

That last paragraph was directed at the so-called “brain-drain” by Hank Greenberg’s new firm from the pool of ready able and willing AIG co-conspiratorshorts, which as you know like GMAC is having trouble paying back the taxpayer bailout that saved their nasty-asses (the perpetual bailout that is never gonna take, they’ll keep coming back for more and more throwing good money after bad, until we realize the only solution is to take ‘em out back and shoot the poor old mangy critters).

Ever get the feeling that you’re being gamed?

“Oh no! Our top commanders are leaving the ship. As it turns out, they were on their laptops all day ignoring the financial iceberg ahead. When it came time to jump ship however, they were the only people with lifesavers.”

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“Children need encouragement. If a kid gets an answer right, tell him it was a lucky guess. That way he develops a good, lucky feeling. ” -Jack Handy

The Warning

I watched The Warning on PBS the other night.

By focusing on Brooksley Born and framing her as a truth-teller being scapegoated, the filmmakers portrayed her stand on derivatives in a Quixotic light. It’s as if, perhaps in the interest of fairness and accuracy in reporting, that the makers felt they may have a responsibility to portray that these specious ’side bets’ known as derivatives could have some viability.

Let us be clear: these ‘instruments’ absolutely don’t. They can’t- except perhaps in the short-term, as in a you haven’t realized that apologetic man who bumped into you just a few seconds earlier has your wallet kind of way. The filmmakers in my humble opinion didn’t make this clear. Wall Street financial geniuses patted themselves on the back after they figured out yet again how to fleece investors by conjuring something out of nothing. And then, as is their wont, lever it up.

Yet the fact that it is merely a handful of billionaire bankers with flagrant and obvious conflicts-of-interest who constituted the Presidential Working Group on Financial Markets (“PWG”) doesn’t even get its due mention.

1999

That was the real story. Right there. Look at that picture with Summers, Rubin, and Greenspan. The palace coup that captured the American government is on display for all to see, right out in the open.  How could this be missed? Maybe that sounds a bit dramatic but this is government-sponsored PBS we are talking about here, so c’mon.

And now they’re baaaaaaaack.

Perhaps the filmmakers could have taken a safer route by fleshing this with 30 seconds to describe how and why having the same people regulate themselves is just plain stupid and wrong. Most people know that, and get that. The obvious is glossed over and the playas bowed to because they’re made men.

It was a prime opportunity to show the American people what isn’t obvious to them- blinded as they are by mis-placed faith in their leaders. It’s troubling enough that most Americans want to complacently believe in their system (Yes. Still. I know.). Let it be known that this was a missed opportunity for some plain speaking. Still, this is consistent with media having long ago abrogated their constitutionally protected responsibility (use it or lose it).

Ah well. Maybe Americans get it and are just too fucking exasperated to want to do anything about it.

One additional point that I was surprised the makers missed- or maybe they just ran out of time. But it would have been a fit ending to their story, as well as added bolstering of Ms. Born’s argument, and another count in the indictment against the PWG- who wear suits of teflon, apparently (did I mention, they’re baaaaaaaaaack?).  So since the filmmakers didn’t address the following tidbit, I suggest this would make a fine epilogue:

2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act [ CFMA ]

Which basically made into law that which Ms. Born was trying to prevent (yes, Virginia, the unaccountable members of the PWG decided that in the banksters vs. what was right and good for the people of the USA, they would choose the banksters):

“if a court had ruled that a swap was in fact an illegal, off-exchange futures contract, trillions of dollars in outstanding swaps could have been invalidated. This might have caused chaos in financial markets, as swaps users would suddenly be exposed to the risks they had used derivatives to avoid.”

[ Wikipedia ]

… was recommended by those stand-up dudes of the PWG and enacted one year after Brooksley Born left CFTC.

The documentary  briefly covered how the collapse of Long Term Capital Management followed within weeks Ms Born’s testimony in Congress showed her concerns to be absolutely spot-on. Yet the asshats in Congress let the PWG off the hook with the spin that it as an ‘isolated’ incident.

But dig this.

Very soon after the CFMA was enacted, Enron blew up.

Yes, I know! Deja vu all over again!

Another isolated incident?

… and IT IS NINE YEARS LATER AND they’ve yet to close the Enron loophole. How can they, when every Wall St. firm now uses it?

In conclusion, Illargi says it better than I can:

“Our economic, financial, capital, and credit system is done and gone. What you’re looking  at today is a corpse propped-up by the promise of future tax revenues from millions upon rapidly increasing millions of homeless and jobless Americans.

Unfortunately, that’s just the beginning. Because the financial system has been allowed to infiltrate the political system to the degree in which it has  (a full-scale take-over), America’s political system is as bankrupt as its financial system is. It will take a long and hard time to replace.”

[ The Automatic Earth ]

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“Obama’s economic team of free market billionaires and financial hotwires includes most of those who helped Bill Clinton sell the theory that Americans didn’t need jobs. Actual labor, if you will remember, was for Asian sweatshops and Latin maquiladoras.” -Joe Bageant

Currency collpase inevitable?

Bush 44

Pardon my neglect. I often make reference to Bush 44, but I have not explained what I mean. My bad.

Bush 44

Goldman Sachs, friends of Bush 44, and the ROW fight over the carcass of the American taxpayer

Such pussies.

Another Gin Mill

As the MIC overlords try and gin up a case to attack Iran, it’s worth remembering these salient facts:

• The CIA as recently as 2007 “assessed with fair confidence that Iran has no nuclear weapons research program.”
• Hillary Clinton admitted on Sunday (Oct. 3, 2009) that Iran could not produce nuclear weapons at Natanz.
• Iran’s military budget is a little over $6 billion annually. Yes, Virginia, that’s ~3% of the AIG bailout.
• Demonizing people by calling them unbalanced is an old propaganda trick. Iran has not started any wars.
• Israel, Pakistan and India are all much worse citizens of the globe than Iran, since they refused to sign the NPT and then went for broke to get a bomb; and nothing at all has been done to any of them by the UNSC.

The U.S. invaded Afghanistan and Iraq because- well, I’m not sure I remember why but then who does (oh wait, that’s right, it was a pretext, a ruse). I do recall the case was made with official lies, photo-shopped evidence, and artifacts of prurient neo-con fantasy (mobile chem/bio weapon labs? C’mon, 50% of them don’t even have indoor plumbing).

There was no threat to us from either country at that time, as any clear-headed person with half a brain could sort out facts from bullshit. However… never, ever count out the pure pussified panic antics of terror-fied Merkins and their dear leaders desire to exploit this for personal, private gain. If it wasn’t for Merkin’s traditionally misplaced trust in their dark overlords oligarchy elected leaders then perhaps the neo-con pincer movement to be deployed by the Clueless One ™ and Darth Cheney et al (MIC) would have been seen for the schoolboy taunt that it was.

Merkins have to be the most gullible electorate on the planet.

Ladies and germs, we all should know this by now (folks, C’mon). When the MIC sees an opening to secure a low-cost source of oil (which they will then bilk you over even after all your help securing strategic targets, thank you Gomer Pyle), then it’s simply time for our host to throw the cards over, and announce ‘ladies and sperm donors, we have a loser.’

So people ask me why I say Merkins are on the whole are such relentlessly stupid mother-fuckers. I simply point out they re-elected the Clueless One after his totally inept response to 9-11, and if they have even an ounce of shame they hang their heads and cry.

The top ten things you didn’t know about Iran Juan Cole, Salon

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“The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidates who reminded them most of themselves. I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn’t understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go.” —Charles Bukowski, Ham on Rye, 1982

Small business owners and the federal minefield

This nation’s legislators have passed laws upon laws upon laws going on a couple of centuries now. Can we reasonbly expect this tremendous volume of statutes can be enforced? Don’t be silly. So, one has to wonder about selective enforcement. Who should be pursued? Who decides such actions? And why?

Of course human nature being what it is, and gummint employees being who they are, they always decide to go after the low-hanging fruit. The naive, the poor, and the tax-paying and law-abiding small-business owner who relunctantly trips over a federal land mine (law).

Certainly not well-connected bankers or Wall Street “investors” who are capable of  committing fraud with out even getting out of bed in the morning.

By March 2004, federal prosecutors were well on their way to turning 66-year-old retiree George Norris into an inmate in a federal penitentiary – based on his home-based business of cultivating, importing and selling orchids.Mr. Norris ended up spending almost two years in prison because he didn’t have the proper paperwork for some of the many orchids he imported. The orchids were all legal – but Mr. Norris and the overseas shippers who had packaged the flowers had failed to properly navigate the many, often irrational, paperwork requirements the U.S. imposed when it implemented an arcane international treaty’s new restrictions on trade in flowers and other flora.

The judge who sentenced Mr. Norris had some advice for him and his wife: “Life sometimes presents us with lemons.” Their job was, yes, to “turn lemons into lemonade.”

The judge apparently failed to appreciate how difficult it is to run a successful lemonade stand when you’re an elderly diabetic with coronary complications, arthritis and Parkinson’s disease serving time in a federal penitentiary. If only Mr. Norris had been a Libyan terrorist, maybe some European official at least would have weighed in on his behalf to secure a health-based mercy release.

Criminalizing everyone [ Wash Times ]

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Michael Milken: 60,000 Deaths, and the Story of Dendreon