Inaction Jackson

The President will announce next Tuesday that he’ll send -probably- between 30,000 to 40,000 extra troops to Afghanistan, at $1 million per soldier. What he should also elaborate on, and what was told the media in preparation for the speech, is that the White House has now pushed the decision to be out of Afghanistan to 2017. In other words, beyond “Obama time”, even if he were to seek and get a second term.

Maybe that’s the line of thinking on the economy as well, to leave the hard decisions for the next guy. It would fit the pattern Obama has set until now. He hasn’t stood up to anyone really so far. He’s watched from the sidelines on his own watch as the rich got richer and the poor got more destitute. He’s chosen the easy way out. When it comes to Wall Street and the economy, I find it hard to name even one single thing that Obama has done that Bush 43 wouldn’t have done exactly the same. And that is a disconcerting realization, even after a whole year of same old same old.

Moreover, if that’s the idea, to avoid the hard decisions, it wouldn’t work anyway. The US will be called to -financial- order even long before Obama’s first term is done. But then there’s of course always the possibility lingering in the background that it’s not a matter of not making the hard decisions now. Maybe those decisions were made long ago, by the people who paid to get Obama where he is today. I have no doubt we’ll know by Thanksgiving next year.

FDR recognized how much certain special interests hated him, and famously proclaimed he welcomed their antagonism. Obama is no FDR.

[ Ilargi ]

Four in forty-eight

Rockefeller & Co’s CEO committed suicide: report
(Reuters) – James McDonald, chief executive officer of investment management firm Rockefeller & Co, committed suicide on Sunday in Massachusetts, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Newport Beach financier Danny Pang dies at 42
(LATimes) – Newport Beach financier Danny Pang died early Saturday at a local hospital, according to the Orange County coroner’s office. The cause of death has not been determined and an autopsy is planned for Sunday, said Larry Esslinger, supervising deputy coroner.

Financier Finn Casperson dead in apparent suicide
(Inquisitr) – Ex-CEO of Beneficial Corp. Finn H.W. Casperson was found dead in an apparent suicide behind an office building in Westerly, Rhode Island.

Dying Blagojevich fundraiser said he overdosed, mayor says
(CNN) – Police are investigating the death of the former chief fundraiser for ex-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich as a “death-suicide,” an Illinois mayor said Sunday.

I know, I know, people die all the time. But these fall under ‘suspicious.’

None died of defenestration, AFAIK.

…

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Only believe half of what you see, and none of what you hear.

AIG Threatens World Meltdown If Denied More Money

AIG Threatens World Meltdown If Denied More Money

March 9 (Bloomberg) — American International Group Inc. appealed for its fourth U.S. rescue by telling regulators the company’s collapse could cripple money-market funds, force European banks to raise capital, cause competing life insurers to fail and wipe out the taxpayers’ stake in the firm.

AIG needed immediate help from the Federal Reserve and Treasury to prevent a “catastrophic” collapse that would be worse for markets than the demise last year of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., according to a 21-page draft AIG presentation dated Feb. 26, labeled as “strictly confidential” and circulated among federal and state regulators.

“What happens to AIG has the potential to trigger a cascading set of further failures which cannot be stopped except by extraordinary means,’’ said the presentation by New York- based AIG. “Insurance is the oxygen of the free enterprise system. Without the promise of protection against life’s adversities, the fundamentals of capitalism are undermined.’’

[BB]

Talk about throwing good money after bad!

The Black Hole of Wall St.

SPIES LIKE US GS has covertly and successfully planted agents in US government bureacracy to guarantee their lord and master gets taken care of… damn the country. (“It was a quaint idea” – Lloyd Blankfein on the Declaration of Independence. Not really, that’s just just an exaggeration. But how much of  a stretch?)

After all, it was GS operatives which were behind the execution “with exterme prejudice” of Lehman Bros. just as much as it is behind the bailout. Especially in the case of AIG- counterparty to many GS Credit Default Swaps. Heads I win, tails you lose.

Perhaps GS will come to be known as ‘the black hole Wall St.’

Obama’s many public speeches (I think in one month he’s already surpassed Clueless Bush) plays to his strength. But the new President is quickly attaining the reputation as all talk, no effective action. Will he become known as the jawbone president?

Perhaps Barry Hussein is more comfortable campaigning than he is in the actual job.

Last night BHO said “We are not quitters.” He is right- his people are going to keep making the same mistakes over and over until the nation has been bankrupted, and the pigs have disgorged the middle class from its modest wealth and no longer exists.

All with the help, and strategic planning from, GS.

Hey, Mr. Obama, you got the job- now do something constructive!

Instead of focusing on bailing out the very institutions that have wiped out half the value of the NY stock market- in an effort to ‘restore confidence’ (it hassn’t, has it?)- how about arresting and prosecuting some of these ‘Masters of the Universe’ (Mozilo, Stanford, Madoff et al)? Where are the clawbacks?(Blankfein, Fuld, Mozilo, Pandit, O’Neal et al) instead? That would restore confidence that the system is healthy, and the guilty are being punished- not running the show. [Why Is Geithner Continuing Paulson's Policy of Violating the Law?]

Prosecute the guilty. Clawback bogus bonuses and options. YKIMS!

Nobody has any idea just how big that black hole is. But trillions of taxpayer dollars later, it it still appears as if nothing can satisfy the thirst of this beastly thing.

And purge your administration of conflicts of interest. Send any GS and Shittygroup ‘ex-employees’ from the bureacracy. Start with those in positions of influence where they have direct oversight of anything finance related.

Once and for all, get rid of that damnable revolving door!

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Bank stress tests are designed with the outcome already in mind. This will be nothing more than a propoganda tool. When the market needs propping up, they’ll conveniently release “positive” info that this or that bank is well-capitalized… Yeah. Right. Then on the Q.T. and very hush-hush quietly funnel them money in the dead of night…

[Hat tip]

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Fallout form Madoff: motion picture nursing home forced to close [BB]

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Also:

Boomus Interruptus Down and out in Maricopa, AZ

There will be blood Niall Ferguson interview [WARNING: CONTAINS FRANKNESS]

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Capitalism is to the USA what communism was to the USSR. Any resemblance to the ‘actual thing’ is pure hyperbole. -Paco Bell

Ecology of starvation

Now we come to the ecology of starvation. In any ecosystem, any fast-reproducing creature can, once freed of predators and disease, eat its way through the entire available food supply. It then starves to death in great numbers, reducing the load on the ecological system to the point the “carrying capacity” of the environment rises from near-zero to a restored balance.

Every creature will exceed its environment’s carrying capacity if given the opportunity, and we as a nation have long exceeded our financial resources. Rather than re-scale our promised benefits and government to our true surplus, we have borrowed money from our children and grandchildrens’ future surpluses to fund our own risk-abatement/benefits. Now like rats proliferating on an island, our promises to ourselves far exceed the carrying capacity of our real economy; we must now tighten our belts for a generation or two, or starve as we consume the last morsels of future productivity.

In a financial sense, we are eating the seeds needed for the next generation and stripping the fiscal ecology of assets, reducing its future carrying capacity.

[of two minds]

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” Only a nation convinced of its invulnerability could be so deluded as to spend its waning days of wealth arguing about how the borrowed trillions should be divided, as if they were the spoils of conquest rather than the outright theft of our children’s future.” -Charles Hugh Smith

Five knuckle salute: Bettie Page

R.I.P.

Dropping like flies

Antonioni down.

Bergman down.

Bill Walsh down.

Tom Snyder down.

Why the hurry?

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New Addition
Yahoo’s finance unit’s reporting has become the sorta defacto free standard, but its been kinda static for a long period of time.

That’s why it is so interesting that without any fanfare, they’ve added a link on the left sidebar for Financial Blogs.

Check it out in action on American Home Mortgage- to see if trading is still suspended.

Right now the contributions appear to be MSM (WSJ, CNN, Money etc. – the usual suspects) but there is link to a Seeking Alpha post, so that’s a promising start.

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Schadenfreude Overdrive

There were 900,000 defaults in 2006 and 800,000 in 2005, making the total number of American families to lose their homes during President George W. Bush’s second term in office somewhere between 4.3 million and 5million.

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Assignation Assassination
Who killed Pat Tillman with three (3) bullets to the forehead at close range, and why?

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I Got Your MBA Right Here
This is hi-larious. The school this fucker attends isn’t exactly a diploma mill (USF, Johnny!), but as a representative of this august institution, it might as well be. Mazel tov!

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Holy Moly
$1.04!?! That was blindingly fast. The market can be a punisher. I wished I’d shorted AHM.

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Gotta Love That Name! 
Clusterfuck Nation blog makes too much sense:

This long episode of market mania, running for seven years, was based on the idea that non-performing loans could be turned into money by removing them from their point of origin and dressing them up in respectable clothes — like taking all the winos in downtown Los Angeles, putting them in Prada suits, and passing them off as the faculty of the Harvard Business School. It was a transparently ludicrous racket and the wonder is that America proved to be so utterly bereft of regulating authority — not to mention plain decency and self-restraint –at every stage.

Who were they been trying to kid?

At least out of the ashes we have the basic tenets of any future public policy:

turn a blind eye, listen with a deaf ear.

Is D-Day Set for April 6?

I know it’s not like there is any reson to sound off alarm bells or anything, just because there are persistent reports from outside our news-embargoed nation that beginning at 4am on April 6 (one week from today) the Chuy-loving US will unleash their preciously priced ordnance Alah loving Iran:

The attack is slated to last for twelve hours, according to Uglanov, lasting from 4 AM until 4 PM local time. Friday is a holiday in Iran. In the course of the attack, code named Operation Bite, about 20 targets are marked for bombing; the list includes uranium enrichment facilities, research centers, and laboratories.

The first reactor at the Bushehr nuclear plant, where Russian engineers are working, is supposed to be spared from destruction. The US attack plan reportedly calls for the Iranian air defense system to be degraded, for numerous Iranian warships to be sunk in the Persian Gulf, and the for the most important headquarters of the Iranian armed forces to be wiped out.

After all, when the internets are all-abuzzing it can usually only mean you should not adjust your monitor, it is only your mind that sense a distortion of reality.So if in a weeks time this comes true, then it only makes sense that our crazed elected criminals are making good on their promise to a chosen few and unleashing their own personal holy war. It would only make sense then that they would next turn on their constituents, us citizens, in order to keep order, would it not?

Where will it start?

Let’s just call it (for now) more conspiracy nutty-flavored hoo-ha, and for some it’s wishful thinking, for others it’s all been for a big laugh.

One of My Heroes Bites the Dust

I’ve been media geek my whole life, and of film especially.

The 70’s was the decade I came of age. Two of the directors that mattered the most to me were Peckinpah and Altman.

Now that Altman has left us, I’m sad, but so thankful (it’s that time of year) he left such a great body of work to enjoy- until the time is right that I too kick the bucket.

The clip below is of the eight-minute long tracking shot from his big comeback film The Player.

Enjoy.

Ooh Yes, This Should End Well

Holy Crap.

“In a controversial study, researchers have resurrected a retrovirus that infected our ancestors millions of years ago and now sits frozen in the human genome.”

This was a good idea. I really liked the movie Andromeda Strain, and fortunately, I am not blind to the color red.

Whew!