The seventies was the last time Americans allowed for discussion and dissension in the ranks. Americans were for the first time really gaining an understanding of vital, fundamental truths about themselves and their country. What they saw, when only the top layers had been peeled back was, for the majority, just too awful to contemplate. So they voted in Reagan and the rest is what you have today.

Two clips from the movie Network written by Paddy Chayefsky (watch until the very end):

[ H/T for bringing this fine fillum back into my field of view ]

Sure, it’s only a movie, but when has this much naked truth ever been leaked in any form to an unsuspecting public? I saw it originally on broadcast teevee, being too poor to afford a movie ticket. I was bowled over by the fact that it could be shown on a television network (which it mercilessly parodied- & btw, we’re living it’s future now with the boob tube’s latest, greatest distraction sappy, cheesy, pathetic ‘reality’ shows). Just imagine: Moms and Dads throughout the land had the opportunity to see this movie broadcast right into their living rooms. They didn’t get it then, just like they aren’t getting it now.

George Carlin:

…

–
“Wall Street and .gov are risking the bankruptcy of entire nations rather than coming clean and thereby risking their careers. It truly is a spectacle worth observing.”‘ -Illargi

Is global deflation more than a rumor? (The relevant part begins at 1:15)

The Grand Wazoo planners of Ordos, China, putting cart before horse.

Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable
by Clay Shirky
A fascinating and observant piece examining and articulating, in a much larger context than you have read anywhere else before, many of the reasons newspapers are destined to become extinct.

…

The Global Oil Scam: 50 Times Bigger than Madoff
by Philip Davis
I have been discussing off-line how just about every system (you name it) in America is either corrupted, broken, or both. About how everything is being gamed, from cell phone contracts to overly complicated mortgage contracts designed to trip you up so they can fee you. Unregulated exchanges and securities (e.g. CDS) are not meant for your prying eyes, nor can you participate. But the exact same sort of churn employed in ICE is very much in evidence today (if you look closely) in the rapid rise of the stock market the last six months. How else can it be explained when the most active stocks traded during this period are zombie banks and fraught-with-fraud GSE’s? So, no surprise, oil prices are kept artificially high using the same method: the churn. What can one do? Do what I do: starve the beast.

…

Did Christianity Cause the Crash? by Hanna Rosin
Cause or affect?

“America’s mainstream religious denominations used to teach the faithful that they would be rewarded in the afterlife. But over the past generation, a different strain of Christian faith has proliferated—one that promises to make believers rich in the here and now. Known as the prosperity gospel, and claiming tens of millions of adherents, it fosters risk-taking and intense material optimism. It pumped air into the housing bubble. And one year into the worst downturn since the Depression, it’s still going strong.”

…

THE LLOYD’s Prayer

Our Chairman,
Who Art At Goldman,
Blankfein Be Thy Name.
The Rally’s Come. God’s Work Be Done
On Earth As There’s No Fear Of Correction.
Give Us This Day Our Daily Gains,
And Bankrupt Our Competitors
As You Taught Lehman and Bear Their Lessons.
And Bring Us Not Under Indictment.
For Thine Is The Treasury,
The House And The Senate
Forever and Ever.
Goldman.

[ The Big Picture ]

…

Amazing Pictures, Pollution in China

…

New Form of Indentured Servitude @ The Confluence

I have to ask what it is wrong with this country? It seems to pushing its poor to the brink of destruction during a time of when its also funding (through direct funds and also extremely low interest rates) arbitrage profits for the already rich at places like Goldman Sachs. We might as well just call them all Princes and call ourselves the new corporate serfs because we’re going to be paying for our indentured status for some time under what’s going on right now. We’re tithing for the benefit of huge financial institutions be they investment bankers, insurance, or mortgage brokers. They’ve become the residents of the neoGothic cathedrals of the 21st century dark ages of America.

 

…

–
I often ruminate about when it was that humankind first realized that sex created babies. The obvious extension of that is, how come nobody could be bothered to tell my parents?

Happens all the time, been going on forever. At every level of govt from municipal to federal.

Legislators not following the law? Well, Americans do have a poor reputation around the globe for misunderstanding irony.

Want more irony? Malik Nadal Hasan specialized in traumatic stress.

What a country!

Courtesy of Jesse at the Café Américain.

1. The Treasury and the Fed rewarded some aggressive risk takers and failing business models at the expense of those who followed sound business practices. Those who followed conservative practices have been penalized twice; first on the way up and again on the way down. Those companies that did fail appear to have been ‘targeted’ by insiders.

2. Much of the process was done in secret with minimal transparency, debate, or disclosure by people who have obvious conflicts of interest.

3. The stated objectives of freeing up credit for the real economy and stemming foreclosures have not been achieved.

4. Trillions in taxpayer money were provided with few strings attached and at minimal stipulated rates of return. Furthermore, several of these institutions are using their taxpayer money to lobby against reform and award themselves pre-crisis salaries and record bonuses.

5. Bailout actions were arbitrary, inconsistent, ad hoc, and without an apparent guiding principles of justice.

6. The banking, rating, “insurance”, and regulatory systems have not been reformed and the perpetrators of the collapse and their enablers are remain in charge, now overseeing the “recovery.”

7. Criminal investigations are minimal; few people are facing indictments or even serious regulatory scrutiny for actions that are highly questionable. Official finds are whitewashes.

8. Regulations, regulatory structures, and other safeguards were implemented, revised or swept aside in chaotic and reckless fashion. [discount window participation and collateral, short selling rules, bank holding companies, mark-to-market]

9. The insider advantages, speculative excess, and extreme leveraging of the perpetrators has been allowed to continue; in fact, allowed to expand. There is a taint of insider trading and corruption that permeates the process.

10. Wall Street is bailed out; Main Street is not. Efforts to subsidize the incomes and balance sheets of failing firms have been massive and were implemented with minimal debate, requirements, or oversight; efforts to shore up taxpayer incomes and balance sheets have been comparatively minimal, subject to extensive debate and tinkering, highly selective, and incomplete.

Thanks to Cafe patron Malcolm McMichael

…

–
“The States racked up some serious debt in keeping the world safe for democracy in the Second World War. On a percentage basis, it has recently spent a significant amount keeping its financial sector safe from productive effort and honest labour. They will raid the Treasury, take their fill, and then compel the government to confiscate the savings of a generation by defaulting on its obligations, its sovereign debt.” -Jesse at the Café Américain

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

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

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Benron et al gorge themselves at the taxpayers trough

Fortunately, the Federal Reserve never took a dime of TARP money. So when Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, who’s been worried about the federal deficit, went to speak Oct. 19 at the San Francisco Fed conference on Asia and the global financial mess, he was obliged to travel to the spectacular Bacara Resort and Spa near Santa Barbara, where suites in high season can run up to $2,000 a night. (We’re told the resort discounted the rooms — it’s off-season — to a mere $300 a night, though it’s unclear whether that included the primo suites.)

Where better for conferees to worry about saving more than at the uber-swanky Bacara?

[ WaPo ]

Those Federated guys live in a fantasyland. So might as well mark everything to fantasy:

Fed Raises Value of Its AIG Assets, Reversing Potential Loss

Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve increased its estimated value of investment portfolios acquired in the rescue of American International Group Inc., reversing potential losses to taxpayers.

The net holdings of three corporations set up by the Fed for the mortgages and securities it took on in bailing out AIG and Bear Stearns Cos. rose by $4.35 billion, or 7.1 percent, to $65.5 billion, the Fed said today in a quarterly revaluation of the assets. The Bear Stearns investments fell by $116 million to $26.3 billion, while the two AIG portfolios gained $4.46 billion to $39.2 billion, the central bank said.

–

Head, meet pike: The guilty

–

A Blast from the past

In 2005 the question is asked: should I buy a home?

The answer and subsequent commentary are for the most part a gallery of truth-tellers (excepting the trolls of course). Be emlightened.
[ Should I buy or wait? ]

–

Fact file-

Almost 50% of Option Arms +30 Days Late
[ acrossthecurve ] [ wsj ]

Almost 19 million homes sit empty
[ .gov ] [ cnbs ]

–

Do we henceforth refer to it as the collapse of the middle class, or the destruction of the middle class?

Are You Middle Class? Maybe Not For Long

“[Those in the] middle class suddenly discover that they are overqualified for the jobs they can find and have to settle for anything they can obtain, therefore unemployment sky rockets: too much to offer, too little demand. You see they prepare, study for a job they are not going to get. You kids, you are studying Architecture because you simply wish to do so. Only 3 or 4 percent of you will actually find a job related to architecture.

“When one considers how much work can be replaced now by accounting software, electronic sales presentations, flatter organizational structures, and ‘ news persons ‘ filing reports for free on the Internet via blogs, it is obvious that vast numbers of middle-class Americans teeter on the precipice of unemployability, not just unemployment.

“This time it really is different. The final stages of that blind denial included fiscal imprudence that bordered on insanity. The mirage economy can’t return until after the pendulum has swung its full travel to the other side of the arc. That path leads through the valley of a crushing economic depression, one that will radically and permanently alter the lives of middle-class Americans who are almost universally unaccustomed to hardship.

[ lewrockwell.com ]

Also,

Frontline: Close to Home

“ ‘ I’m a Columbia University graduate. I’m smart. I should be able to stand on my own two feet. ‘ Sitting in a hair salon, Emma looks at herself in the mirror. Her husband Andy sits behind her, nodding. They have a young child, and their personal training company, recently thriving, has fallen on hard times, with business dropped some 40 to 50%. Emma has gone back to school, she says, but in the meantime, her mother, Emma says, is ‘ still working because she’s helping us financially with our kids. Of course I feel guilty. She worked her whole life. ‘ Emma sighs, unable to phrase her thoughts exactly. ‘ Why am I even talking about my mother? I’m 40 years old. With this economy, I feel like a child. ‘ “

…

–
“Their strength is their weakness. The focus which permits some people to succeed also gives them a ‘tin-ear’ for the effects of their greed. In other words, they always go too far, and begin to blatantly start breaking the law, and acting in ways that are obvious wrong. And when there is a public revulsion to their deformity, they just do not get it.” -Jesse’s Café Américain