On Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Obama stands firm:

"Sorry, buddy, you've still got the job."

And on Cheney:

"How many terrorists have actually been brought to justice under the philosophy that is being promoted by Vice President Cheney?" Obama asks. "It hasn't made us safer. What it has been is a great advertisement for anti-American sentiment."

The show airs tomorrow.

At least according to Reuters.

A U.N. panel will next week recommend
that the world ditch the dollar as its
reserve currency in favor of a shared
basket of currencies, a member of the
panel said on Wednesday, adding to
pressure on the dollar.

Currency specialist Avinash Persaud, a
member of the panel of experts, told a
Reuters Funds Summit in Luxembourg that
the proposal was to create something like
the old Ecu, or European currency unit,
that was a hard-traded, weighted basket.

Persaud, chairman of consultants
Intelligence Capital and a former
currency chief at JPMorgan, said the
recommendation would be one of a number
delivered to the United Nations on March
25 by the U.N. Commission of Experts on
International Financial Reform.

"It is a good moment to move to a shared
reserve currency," he said.

If things weren't bad enough. This should help the economy
a whole lot.

C

As I compose this entry, President Obama has an approval rating of 64% in the Gallup tracking poll, in contrast to the 55% he receives in the Rasmussen daily tracking poll.

http://www.eliewieselfoundation.org/

    I sat down at my computer this morning pondering what I would use for this week's column. Back when I first revived Inspection on the net in the late 90s; after a few years post the last hard copy, I thought I'd start writing like mad in case I ran out of ideas.

    Silly me. Now I keep stumbling over the never animated corpses of unused Inspection columns everywhere: in my bookkeeping books for my business, my creative journals where I work on concepts, on napkins, back of book covers and deep within my computer guarded by gremlins. They seem to delight in messing up; or losing, what I know I had nailed to some great rhetorical wall when I last pressed "save."

    It's magic.

    Magic relates to politics, religion, philosophy and anything we do as humans: especially how we relate to each other.
Read on -- There is more

    For instance; we all know that the magician uses trap doors, secret compartments, sleight of hand, intentional distraction... anything to make his audience go, "Wow!" He, or she, is also a storyteller: and that is far more important than whatever device or method used.

    Yet we too often focus in on "how" rather than "why."

    Jesus performed "miracles." Does it really matter if he knew where the rocks were, or if he had many fish and loaves in some unseen trap door? Many theists would say, "Yes." That makes me cringe because they are like some of the more childish members of my audience I have had to slip, slide and leap over with on the spot alterations of my own script. And it makes me sad because on a rare occasion the "child" is an adult who should know not behave in that manner.

    I often say to my clients that I rarely have a problem with children. It's adults who can be a big pain in their too tightly tied babushkas. Some days I wonder how their brains don't squeeze out of their ears.

    Let's stray away from magic for a moment to make my point. On a rare occasion; when I bring out one of my puppet friends, there's some boy; rarely a girl, who before the puppet says anything starts yelling out, "That's just a puppet, that's just a puppet..."

    In my magic segment the same kind of character will yell out how they think I did it. 99.9% of the time they are wrong. And teachers will usually talk to them. The times they don't make me wonder why those kinds of teachers don't just quit and go make chocolate covered ants for a living, because they don't seem to care for, or want to pay attention to, what they're supposed to be doing.

    I wonder. Would these same children when they watch TV yell out, "That's not an image, it's just a bunch of dots!" They must be real fun at a movie. But I suspect they suspend disbelief in both cases.

    So why does a live performance incur this behavior?

    Easy. Just like adults who don't get it, they think that all this is about is simply an intent to deceive others. They're missing the point: entertainment... and the lesson being taught; the story being told.

    If we passed this attitude on to life we would be deceived less. For instance when I moved South in the late 70s my wife and I stayed in a motel room in Kentucky: just south of Cinci. I woke up early; as I often do, and turned on the tube. There was one of these healing preachers working a deaf person over on stage. Facing her he said...

"I will heeeeeeaaaaallll you. Repeat after me: 'praise the Lord.'"

(She looked puzzled.")

"Praise the Lord."

(Still puzzled... so he spoke slowly: accentuating each lip movement with care.)

"Praise... the... Lord."

With a glimmer of understanding she asked, "Praise the Lord?"

He turned away from her so she couldn't see his lips and said to his flock...

"Praise the Lord, she's hhheeeaaallleed!!!"

She was rushed off stage by stagehands.

    Now an idiot could see what happened here, but as a performer I was angered by just how bad he was.

    Back away.

    Reconsider.

    If we all admitted that what we are watching is a performance and stopped screaming out, "That's just_____," maybe we wouldn't be fooled as much, and fleeced less? Just enjoy. This guy was really, really bad: an unintended comedian. They can be more funny than a barrel of Robin Williams'. And, oh, how his message suffered. But remember; if the performance is good that doesn't necessarily mean the message is. Here's why we should view such things mostly on a performance level...

    Adolph Hitler was a great performance artist, for those who like that over the top: pure histrionics, style. I don't. But the actual content of his message was pure horror. Appreciating talent doesn't mean we totally dismantle our critical faculties. We just don't let them spoil the show either.

    And if we remembered "it's a performance," maybe there would be less comet followers...

   ...less Kool Aid drinkers...

   ...less foam at the mouth, goosestepping, potential pilots for planes headed towards buildings...

    What is the difference between magic and miracles? Believers assume magic is a trick, and miracles are real: from God. Of course, as my faith healer example proves, the difference may not be much of a difference at all.

    If Jesus knew where the rocks were, would that make the parables less important; the lessons he taught null and void? If he knew that Lazarus was simply sleeping but he had been treated as if he had died, would using that knowledge to save him from inevitable death from starvation make raising Lazarus less of a good deed?

    Content should never be treated as a third or fourth thought to method or means. It certainly shouldn't be treated as if it doesn't exist.

    But why am I not surprised in these days of deus ex machina-based entertainment where bigger and more bangs are too often treated as content, that actual content is tossed in the corporate wood-word chipper like an unwanted child? That even our children are yelling out...

"That's just a puppet! That's just a puppet! That's just a puppet! That's just..."

And why aren't these children also yelling at the latest Bruce Willis-like bigger bang movie...

"That's just a model! That's been faked! That's just a blue screen!"

From my perspective, none of this is any more real than...

"You're hheeeaaaaallled!"

Why are our children acting like this?

    Probably because we're not providing enough good examples for them to follow.

It's Magic

by Dave Allen, Tim Bays (as performed by PP&M)

He cut her in half
With a shiny steel saw
He put her all back together
And I was in awe

As rabbits and doves and bandanas appeared
And he pulled a quarter right out of my ear
I turned to my dad, I said, 'How'd he do it?'
And dad, he just smiled, he said, 'There's nothing to it."

It's magic and you don't want to know
Just how it's done, it would ruin the show
You've just got to believe
'Cause believing is what makes it happen
Oh it's nothing but magic

Now I fell in love the first time in 8th grade
And I started shaving the very next day
Just walking her home made me light on my feet
And I promised her things you just wouldn't believe
And when I asked my dad why girls had that effect
He said, 'Go ask your mom, I ain't figured it yet'

It's magic and you don't want to know
Just how it's done, it would ruin the show
You've just got to believe
'Cause believing is what makes it happen
Oh it's nothing but magic

Well the years have been hard, the years have been kind
These last years have taken both parents of mine
Some things you can't change with a wave of your hand
So many things I still don't understand
But, in a hospital gown, standing next to my wife
I'm watching this miracle come into life

It's magic and you don't want to know
Just how it's done, it would ruin the show
You've just got to believe
'Cause believing is what makes it happen
Oh it's nothing but magic and you don't want to know
Just how it's done, it would ruin the show
You've just got to believe
'Cause believing is what makes it happen

                                                               -30-

   Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 30 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.

© Copyright 2009
Ken Carman and Cartenual Productions
All Rights Reserved

When I was reading about the AIG bonuses I was as outraged as anyone else. The first thing that came to my mind was "How could Geithner let them get away with this?" Then I stopped and thought about the days when I managed a half-billion dollar portfolio. Number in the thousands didn't seem very significant. The problem arises from the fact that large numbers contain a lot of digits. Most people working with large numbers drop several digits due to what accountants call immateriality. For example: Most company financial statements have (000) written under the title of the individual financial statement and all of the numbers are in thousands of dollars. So, $1,985 is really $1,985,000. We're talking millions of dollars, not thousands and hundreds of dollars get lost in the shuffle.

So, how did Mr. Geithner miss $250 million? It is easy to do when the bailout is in the billions. Simply, most of the numbers crossing Mr. Geithner's desk were probably written in billions. The bailout package to AIG was probably written as $185 instead of $185,000,000,000. This means that the bonuses would have been written as $0.165. This is a number that looks insignificant in the overall scheme of things and could easily be missed. Especially by a person who is dealing with a national debt number in the trillions. Let's face it, if all day long you're seeing number like $9,654.4 which is the national debt, $0.165 looks like peanuts. That fact that the true numbers are $9,654,400,000,000 and $165,000,000 gets become obscured.

What is needed is to have people working with the Treasury Secretary and the Fed Chairman who understand that apparent small percentage numbers have a high impact when read as whole numbers. People in the rarified air of Washington and New York do not realize that the AIG bonuses could eliminate the debt of many smaller cities and pay for the complete budgets of many school districts. I do not blame Mr. Geithner for missing the impact news of the Bonuses would have on the public. I do blame the loud mouthed critics who would have claimed that the Obama administration was destroying the capitalist system if the bonuses had been blocked. Once the bonus contracts were written, it became a loose-loose situation for the Obama team.

As George Lakoff has taught many of us, framing matters.

On Obama, Lakoff earlier in the week significantly pronounced:

"The president is the best political communicator of our age."

Fast forward to Thursday, via video message, President Obama wished the Iranian and Persian world a Happy New Year (Nowruz), stating specifically:

Within these celebrations lies the promise of a new day, the promise of opportunity for our children, security for our families, progress for our communities, and peace between nations.  Those are shared hopes, those are common dreams.

He went on to say:

My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the international community.  This process will not be advanced by threats.  We seek instead engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect.

Now today, Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamene, in his verbal retort to Obama's New Year message, brusquely proclaimed:

"He (Obama) insulted the Islamic Republic of Iran from the first day. If you are right that change has come, where is that change? What is the sign of that change? Make it clear for us what has changed."

Yet, Obama's message Thursday fully outlines that change has indeed come to US-Iran relations. When Obama says: "This process will not be advanced by threats.  We seek instead engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect," he is clearly articulating a sharp departure from his predecessor's "Wanted Dead or Alive" policy and posture.

If Ali Khamene wants to wins the hearts and minds of his people, he'll need to do better. When Obama sent his message the other night, he convincingly spoke to the soul of the Iranian people, through well thought out words, proving that a new day has indeed come to US foreign policy. While time will tell just how things change, Ali Khamene does himself and the nations' relationship a diservice by not giving Obama at least the benefit of the doubt and toning down his rhetoric. A day with Lakoff might do him some good.

For now, though, if you're keeping score, make it Obama 1 Ali Khamene 0.

I know a lot of you are disappointed that Obama and Geithner are pursuing the 'zombie bank' plan.  Well, none of you should be surprised,  How can we expect the Administration to pursue nationalization- an efficient but brutal government takeover- when conservatives are eager to pounce?  Whether its good for the nation or not, conservatives would use nationalization to stir up primal, instinctive fear, and their sophistry would, as they always are, be challeged so impotently by the media.  

We are part of an ailing society, where reasoned policy debate is drowned out by politics.  The ratings-driven media is happy to plug into the substance-less frenzy.  They galvanize jingoism and incomplete arguments instead of challenging them.

And what is the result of all this?  A president who makes the wrong choice, a choice that devastates his country, to avoid ruining his rapport with the public and losing even more opportunities.   

Poor bankers. 

Well I'm at it again. I tried to keep on good subjects but I thought this needed said'

  When pres. Obama won the election I thought it might have ended racism  a little but the first thing they show is a young african american saying that everybody would be keeping a close eye on him becouse he's african american. Well I agree I'm keeping a close eye on him not becouse of his race but becouse he's inexperienced(which is probably a good thing for a politition)

   But back to racism it will never go away. There are to many idiots in the world. I would truly love to thing it would but people on both sides always do things that other people use to provoke it.

      If a bunch of white kids start a riot it is only local news. If an african american says even the word riot its all over the paper. Its wrong but it sells papers.

  Why is it that a couple of years ago when we had that rash of school shootings all the kids they showed were white, But yet they say the african americans are the violent ones

 Now by my name here you should be able to tell that I'm white. I'm not racist but get really mad when all they do is show the bad people of a race and not the good. I mean do they really want everybody to think only african americans are in ganges and sell drugs and all the other bad stuff. Well I'm here to tell you its all races doing it.

    I hope I don't make anybody mad with this I just thought that after the attorney general called us all cowards it needed said.

   

This video is guaranteed to challenge assumptions about the differences between humans and our companions on the planet. This video is taken from http://fun.mivzakon.co.il/flash/video/2344/2344.html. I have no information about this video. A friend sent it to me. It is remarkable in a number of ways.

Addendum: Upon further searching, the elephant is apparently in Thailand, and more pictures are viewable at Exotic World Gifts

The New York Times is reporting that; triggered by the public fury over bonuses the White House is expected unveil this week a plan for increased oversight of executive pay at all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly other companies. 

The proposal is part of a sweeping plan to overhaul all financial regulations.  What should be most concerning to top executives, (and their lobbyists) is the possibility that the administration might put many of the changes into effect through regulations rather than through legislation.

One of the proposals could impose greater requirements on the boards of companies to tie executive compensation more closely to performance and to take other steps that big bonuses aren't paid before meeting financial goals.

The new rules will include all financial institutions, even those not receiving federal bailout money:

It will propose that many kinds of derivatives and other exotic financial instruments that contributed to the crisis be traded on exchanges or through clearinghouses so they are more transparent and can be more tightly regulated. And to protect consumers, it will call for federal standards for mortgage lenders beyond what the Federal Reserve adopted last year, as well as more aggressive enforcement of the mortgage rules.

The plan is broad reaching

An important part of the plan still under debate is how to regulate the shadow banking system that Wall Street firms use to package and trade mortgage-backed securities, the so-called toxic assets held by many banks and blamed for the credit crisis.

Administration officials are also debating how tightly to supervise hedge funds. A broad consensus has emerged among regulators and administration officials that hedge funds must be registered and more closely monitored, probably by the Securities and Exchange Commission. But officials have not decided how much the funds will have to disclose about their investments and trading practices.

There are hints that complete takeovers of troubled companies could very well happen.

A central aspect of the plan, which has already been announced by the administration, would give the government greater authority to take over and resolve problems at large, troubled companies that are not now regulated by Washington, like insurance companies and hedge funds.

That proposal would, for instance, make it easier for the government to cancel bonus contracts like those given to executives at the American International Group, which have stoked a political furor. Under the proposal, the Treasury secretary would have the authority to seize and wind down a struggling institution after consulting with the president and upon the recommendation of two-thirds of the Federal Reserve board.

The release of the plan is timed to President Obama's first foreign summit meeting in early April and would signal Europe that he intended to crack down on the risk-taking and other free-wheeling practices by the worldwide financial industry.

There is a very strong message here in general, if you want to make a lot of money be a private company, you want to be owned by the public, play by the rules, our rules.

And, to the money changers, what you have done to the world's economy can not, and will not happen again.

Obama Seeks to Increase Oversight of Executive Pay

I wrote two long comments in Dean Baker's blog thread about Say "Housing Bubble".  It's not really a reply to Baker, it was inspired by another poster's comment.   One reader said s/he wished a comment could be "recommended".   I don't quite know what was recommendable, but it spurred me to copy the comment for a wider audience and to keep track of it.   So here's your chance..   :-)

I won't paste the first comment, except for the closing question,

The question is, is this about saving banking or is it about repaying the investor class?

Here is the second comment --- 

I am not an expert, but my hunch is that a key part of the problem was that people tried to treat economic rents as assets, and created imaginary "future assets". The stock market does this normally a bit. It tends to price shares partly based on future earnings, the expected earnings 6, 12, or more months out. But if you try to lock that in NOW, you have made a future profit into a current asset. If the stock underperforms, it creates a loss for you (and a gain for someone else, which is what makes it gambling).

One thing which drove the tech bubble was the idea that future profits could be huge, so P/E ratios now were totally irrelevant. Similarly "buying a mortgage" amounts to capitalizing the expected cash flow as if it were a real asset. People thought future profits could be huge, and some "smart" folks realized they could "assetize" cash flows and sell that.

This is what selling cash flows amounts to, locking in a gambling category error.

As long as things go as planned, you're fine. The transformation is transparent. But if you were counting on a given slope of prices or a given acceleration of profits, and you try to lock in a projection of that, your contract is extremely sensitive to shortfalls. What would have been a mere decrease in profits (but the asset it still producing positive rent or cash flow) turns into a capital loss for you, for instance.

And now the government is feeding hard money into this mess in part to make up for the loss of rents which were structured as assets and thus show up as capital losses instead of dried up cash flows. To make things worse the Fed is running an insane "quantitative easing" %brilliant% rescue plan, and the Feds are about to do a massive giveaway to the investor class who took those gambles.

Really, folks, we are feeding gamblers and crooks here and I'm getting tired of saying this!!

Get off the "bonus" distraction. Get onto uncovering more details about small fish like Stanford (circa $10B), Thain's bonuses (circa $3B), and Madoff (circa $15B net, I guess), if you won't tackle the big problems ($180B to AIG, and $100Bs more to others) and those who are, we hope, being smarter than they look at solving them.

I was a geek.  I totally loved school as a kid.  I loved organizing my spiral ring notebook, covering my school books with brown garbage bags (a trick my mom taught me) and writing each subject in magic marker on the virgin cover (later, of course, boys' names in hearts and little doodles would be added).  I was a bit shy in class but was almost always teacher's pet and I was very smart.  A total A student.  Well, except for gym class.  I always sucked at P.E.

In Junior High I hit puberty and it was not pretty.  I was one of the tallest girls in my class, I wore glasses, and got both acne and my braces all at the same time.  My self esteem, already pretty low, went completely down the toilet.  But one thing I could take pride in, other than my singing voice, was my intelligence.  I was a geek and proud of it.

In my Freshman year of high school, I took my geekiness to the highest level and received straight A's, making the High Honor Roll.  I will never forget the look on my mother's face when she got my report card that first semester.  She was so proud of me, and everyone in my family thought I showed a lot of promise.  Then, something happened in my second semester.  I stopped being a geek.  My new friends were from the "bad" crowd, the stoners, the smokers, the class-skippers.  In answer to a situation going on at home, I became a rebel and started smoking and skipping P.E.  My grades suffered.  Instead of finishing my Freshman year on the High Honor Roll, I slipped down to Honor Roll.  Over the summer, I vowed I would get back up to all A plusses in my Sophomore year.  Sure enough, my Soph year started well, but once again I started skipping classes.  By the beginning of my second semester my report card was mostly I's, for "incomplete".  In my second semester, I was a regular in the guidance counselor's office, and my mother was a regular visitor in the school's office.  They had her work number on speed dial.  It was determined that, because no one could force me to go to school, and I was too young to drop out, I should try something unconventional.  They put me in night school.  I went readily enough, my best friend was already there, and this really cute guy named Gregg....but I really didn't learn anything.  I read Deliverence and then started The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, but I don't remember finishing either the book, or night school.  My school simply called my Sophomore year a failure and told me I'd have to be held back a year.

Over the summer, I moved to Florida with my mother and new step-father, and sure enough, I was held back in the fall and had to start my second attempt as a Sophomore.  I hated my new school, made only one friend (a fellow smoker and stoner and class-skipper, of course), and shortly after my 16th birthday, I announced to my mother that I was dropping out.

My mother was disappointed, of course, but she was also realistic.  She said that I could only drop out under two conditions:  I must get my GED (a General Equivalency Diploma) and I had to get a job and pay her rent.  She said that if I wanted to live like an adult in the real world, I had to act like one.

I took a 3-month crash course with a tutor and passed my GED test on the first try, three months after dropping out.  I then got a job at a nearby Publix Supermarket as a cashier, and have worked steadily ever since, except for the year that I attended a secretarial school on Long Island, where I graduated third in my class, Dean's List.  Since graduating, I have worked non-stop as an administrative assistant and a customer support representative for such companies as Entenmann's Bakery, Fenwick Fishing Rods, and Sony.  

I guess you could say I've done well with my life, for a high school drop-out, but looking back with 20/20 hindsight I can honestly say that I could have been and done so much more.  In my early teens I seriously considered becoming an attorney.  Now I toy with the idea of becoming a writer.  Most likely, however, I will remain an admin who only dreams of being a writer.  

If I could do it all over again, I would've stayed on the High Honor Roll and gone to college.  But, hey, my life could be worse.  Whatever you decide, kiddo, be proud of yourself now and do what will make you even more proud of yourself later.  I love you,

"Aunty Lis"

It seems that the Republicans are suffering from a nervous breakdown.

It's cause is deep insecurity, which manifests itself in denial, as exhibited for example, by the attempt to obstruct the American Rescue and Recovery Act, and congratulating themselves for being irrelevant regarding it's passage.

A symptom is confusion, loss of self identity. What direction do they go in? Who is the leader? Do they go in a direction that puts them more in touch with the majority of people? Or do they retreat inward and hold on for dear life to the one core constituency they have left, and risk consigning themselves to a doctrinaire niche? Do they follow the lead of a chairman who wants to reorganize the party, and show some backbone, or do they turn into little lemmings and follow a pompous overinflated blowhard "with talent on loan from God," over the narrow cliff of their doctrines?

Well, the Republicans chose the  latter of each set of choices.

Read more »

Well, can't say we didn't try. Back to the War Room!

My God, our media don't do nuance very well, do they? Thank God Obama will read the actual translation of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's speech. Because it had lines like "If you change your behavior, we will change our behavior" -- a near-exact parallel to Obama's offer "If you unclench your fist ..." with the added notion of "After you, Alphonse."

Has anyone noticed it took Khamenei just one day to respond to Obama's appeal? Yeah, that's treating it with contempt and derision, isn't it? While sticking with the media's groupthink assessment that Khamenei has dismissed Obama's overture, the L.A. Times reported that Khamenei read carefully from his speech, as if his words had been carefully weighed. You can bet they were. Example:

"Have you released Iranian assets? Have you lifted oppressive sanctions? Have you given up mudslinging and making accusations against the great Iranian nation and its officials? Have you given up your unconditional support for the Zionist regime? Even the language remains unchanged," Khamenei said.

Here Khamenei has set out four concrete things he thinks Obama could do to signal his overture is more than window-dressing. Notice that Israel comes in only at No. 4, almost an afterthought. Notice also what he's asking for: "give up your unconditional support" for Israel. With a Netanyahu-Lieberman government looming, that one's a gimme. Check. Done and done.

Obama's already changed the tone with his televised appeal, so No. 3 appears to be no problem. Nos. 1 and 2? Hey, let's sit down and talk about those. So rather than dismissing Obama's offer, as the media have almost universally concluded, Khamenei has started negotiating.

When the national media spotlight last shone on our beloved Guv'nah Bobby Jindal, he was making some noise about how government could do no right and the private sector could do no wrong in response to President Obama's near-State of the Union Address.

Cynics among us noted that the Louisiana economy about which Jindal boasted was floating on a sea of federal disaster relief funds that had flooded our state as the waters of hurricanes Katrina and Rita ebbed. Jindal's speech proved once and for all that he is a card-carrying member of the immune to faction of the Republican Party.

But, fate being what it is, Jindal has recently had an opportunity to revisit the role of government in the marketplace right here in his own state and -- gasp! -- has come down firmly in the government intervention side of the argument.

Read more »

To whom is Tim Geithner analagous in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings"?

Frodo? Wormtoungue? Golem? In the picture on TPM frontpage right now, he looks like Elrond! Note the pointy ears. :)


(Thanks to MiddleClassBill for the idea)

I'm becoming increasingly skeptical of the notion that any single Wall Street bank or insurance company can really bring down the whole system by failing.

If we were to simply stop supporting AIG, what's the worst that would happen?  Some hedge funds would go out of business because the counter-party risk they took by purchasing credit default swap contracts issued by AIG would cause some catastrophic losses.  But who cares?  The hedge fund managers took the risk and it didn't pay off.  That happens all the time.  Goldman Sachs and some other banks would lose money.  Some banks might lose a lot and some might fail.  But again, so what?

Only two things need to be preserved: customer access to insured deposits and the continued payment of consumder insurance obligations.  The CDS market was never regulated and there was never any promise that the public would step in to make good on the promises of a failed CDS issuer. 

The concept of "systemic risk" is really just the finance world's way of tricking the taxpayer into meeting obligations that were never ours. Yes, the credit markets did seize up after Lehman failed.  But it wasn't actually the end of the world. Barclays bought whatever of Lehman was worthwhile and the only collateral damage was felt by money market fund managers who never should have owned Lehman debt in the first place.

I was as angry as anyone about the AIG bonuses but I'm more angry that we taxpayers are have been called on to save supposedly sophisticated banks like Goldman Sachs for risks that its bankers knew they were taking and understood fully.

We've been told that we have to keep on capitalizing AIG until all of its obligations to its swap customers are met or unwound.  I don't believe it anymore.  AIG is insolvent and needs to go to bankruptcy court.  Its swap customers can get in line behind more senior creditors and they can try to recover whatever they can.  Yes, some banks and hedge funds will blow up but finance will survive.   It's not the financial system that's at stake here -- it's the futures of some politically well connected institutions. Enough.

Bill Moyers interviews Mike Davis, a socialist historian from "The People's Republic of California" on the financial crisis:

This is Moyers' introduction:

BILL MOYERS: Many film scholars believe the movie is a paranoid parable, warning of a Communist takeover of America. But today, the body snatchers are you ready for this? Socialists! That's right. Socialists, reportedly swarming over the city and making off with the means of production, namely the Federal budget.

I'm not making this up. Newsweek was the first to spot the aliens a month ago and it was us. Here's the headline of a recent article on Salon.com. Newt Gingrich, reincarnated once again as himself, sounds as if Obama ate his Contract with America for lunch and coughed it up as "European Socialism."

NEWT GINGRICH: I think it is the boldest effort to create a European Socialism model that we have seen.

BILL MOYERS: But the ghosts being conjured in the corridors of power aren't those great American radicals Eugene V. Debs or Norman Thomas. No, Stalin, Marx and Lenin have risen from the grave, stalking our highest officials. Just listen to CNBC's Jim Cramer:

JIM CRAMER: We're in real trouble. We're in real trouble between what is happening in the world economy and our president, who seems to be taking his cues from. Guess who he is taking his cues from? No, not Mao! Not Pancho Villa, although I had lunch with him today. No he's taking cues from Lenin! And I don't mean the all we need is love Lenin. I talking about we will take every last dime you have Cramericans Lenin!

BILL MOYERS: And others followed suit:

RUSH LIMBAUGH: Liberal democrats and the drive-by media are speeding down the highway, implementing Socialism as fast as they can.

FOX & FRIENDS: Some economists say the stimulus plan that President Obama just put into law moves us closer to Socialism.

FOX COMMENTATOR: One small step for fixing the economy or one giant leap towards Socialism in the United States?

PAT BUCHANAN: That is Socialism pure and simple.

Here's the interview with Mike Davis.

 

In his most direct assessment of Obama and prospects for better ties, Khamenei said there will be no change between the two countries unless the American president puts an end to U.S. hostility toward Iran and brings "real changes" in foreign policy. -- AP news at TPM

Khamenei is talking tough, questioning the reality of the overture and not welcoming it.  Is that his "tough guy" impersonation equivalent to opening a hardball dialog?  Is he who talks toughest actually the weakest?

It seems to me that K. calling for unilateral "real changes" is impolitic, unreasonable.  Diplomacy can lead reality.  Obama's very speech is itself a striking diplomatic gesture towards a decrease of hostility between Iran and the U.S.A. 

Obama has created a change between the two countries by his speech act in total contrast to Bush's prior tough talk.  That puts Khamenei on the spot for his otherwise legitimate stubborn conservative stance when he says "there will be no change..." -- the opening for change is clearly there.

Who will blink next?  I call for tough talk from Obama in return.

Chapter Two could be interesting!

Barack Obama has gotten a lot of stick for his remarks about his bowling skills and the Special Olympics.

But here is blogger Boondoggle on the Obama White House's Sudan strategy:

I've been struck by how many news reports announcing the appointment of Scott Gration as Envoy to Sudan have prominently noted that the former Air Force general also speaks Swahili. This is great and all, as is the fact that he grew up in DR Congo, but Swahili is not a major language in Sudan.  But, hey, it's an African language, and Sudan is in Africa, so he's basically already won over the confidence of the entire country continent.

No, I am not referring to bankers. I'm speaking of the International Criminal Court's indictment of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on war crimes charges. Bashir is a force of evil in the world. His leadership has directly contributed to the suffering, murder, and genocide of millions. He deserves the most severe penalties we can in good conscience apply.

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Let's face it...this country is in a mess. No, not "a" mess, a bunch of messes. In fact, it IS a mess. There are so many things that are screwed up it would keep you up at night every night if you allowed yourself to think about it too much.

There are the obvious problems with the economy and the unstable financial institutions. It is so bad that even the best and brightest economists in the world can't agree on how to get us out of it. There is the mother of all insurance companies that sold insurance policies without having the financial means of paying off on even a small fraction of them. And now they are using OUR money to pay "retention bonuses" to keep the very people that created the nightmare. We are at risk of losing our entire auto industry, along with millions of jobs and pensions. Our states are at risk of going bankrupt.

We are reeling from the effects of a decades old ponzi scheme that has left many financially ruined. House prices are continuing to decline. The number of people losing their jobs continues to grow at a frightening pace. There are more and more empty storefronts even in places that are holding up fairly well during the housing crash. Affordable health care is unavailable for many.

We are still embroiled in two wars that we aren't sure how to end without turning the Middle East on its head.

Peak Oil, which should be one of the most important issues of the day is so far down on the list of on-going crisis, you rarely hear about it anymore. Our memories are so flippin' short that the energy-efficient cars you had to stand in line for a few months ago are piling up at the dealerships because gas prices have returned to a reasonable level, even though most people agree they will skyrocket once demand picks up again.

We can argue about whether the President knows what he's doing or not. Whether he has accomplished enough in his first 60 days. Complain about rookie mistakes. We can make a big fuss about whether it is smart for him to go on Leno or not, and fret about an inadvertant slight he made. Maybe it is healthy somehow to focus on the small stuff, since the big stuff could easily make us all suicidal. 

But seriously, doesn't it just scare the livin' crap out of you to think about how close we came to having McCain/Palin at the helm through this?

Seriously. 

 

One day I was sitting in an airport terminal, waiting for a flight, while another passenger stood at the window with her daughter, trying to show her the airplane we were about to board. But the little girl couldn't see it. See could see the fueling trucks on the tarmac, she could see the baggage carts and the airport staff on the ground. But she couldn't see the airplane itself.

"Where's the plane?" the little girl kept asking. "Where's the plane?"

The problem was scale. The child couldn't recognize the shape of the aircraft standing there in plain view, because she was looking for a much smaller shape. She simply didn't have any precedent, or any cognitive model, for an object of the size she was looking at, so she couldn't connect the sight of metal or paint or tire rubber into the larger outline of the plane. She didn't link the bits she was seeing into a picture of the whole because she didn't expect and couldn't imagine that such a whole might exist.

Lately I've been thinking about that little girl every day. She's a good illustration of how we process information, as human beings, and of how difficult the big and unexpected can be to process. When confronted with something too large and too strange, we can fail to apprehend it at all.

Most of our handling of the financial crisis boils down to one real question: who has seen the plane yet, and who has not? There have been furious daily stories in the news about this or that detail of the large, terrible shape overshadowing us. But it becomes increasingly clear in each day's news that most of the players, and certainly most of the journalists, haven't managed to perceive that shape, or even its shadow.

A CEO of a major bailed-out institution who can not only defend exorbitant employee compensation but get self-righteous about those employee's deserts has not seen the plane yet. CNBC pundits trying to defend their own performance and scapegoat others have not seen the plane. Congressmen who obsess about spending cuts or even spending freezes during a massive economic contraction really have not seen the plane. It's not simply denial, although there is a measure of that. It's a basic and all-too-normal failure to apprehend the largest and most important part of the landscape, precisely because it is so incredibly large.

Most people, with the normal human mix of benign and selfish intentions, are trying to keep doing the things that worked for them, and even seemed virtuous to them, before the situation changed, because they haven't yet grasped that this is a new, and very different situation. There need not always be a Goldman Sachs; entitlement spending is not the biggest fiscal challenge the nation faces at the moment; CNBC's business model is not necessarily viable any more. It takes a certain amount of time to grasp fundamental change, perhaps especially for the experts who are trained to deal with intricate details of a large and commonly-understood model. It takes longer to see the plane if you're trained at analyzing tire treads, and you're looking for a car. And once you've seen the plane, you have to begin the long, difficult process of thinking about what it means.

It's very clear from his banking plan that Tim Geithner, for all his expertise, has yet to see the plane. Barack Obama has not seen it clearly either. That's not good at all. Obama planned his campaign, and his administration, for a different set of problems. And like most of the other key players, what Obama tends to say is what Obama tended to say before the crisis. The economic plan that he recommends is the plan he stumped on in the primaries. That's not dishonesty or stupidity: it's simply a sign of not yet having taken on board the basic facts of the new environment.

Obama, to be fair, could not have been elected already seeing the plane; the plane only came into view a few months before the election, and anyone who had been predicting a crisis such as this earlier would not have been able to achieve the nomination. (You can't win a broad-based election based on priorities that the vast majority of the country does not share.) His success or failure will not be linked to his foresight, but to his adaptability. The question isn't whether Obama has a plan. Any plan he might have would be based on assumptions that aren't viable any more. The question is how quickly he realizes he needs to throw the plan away, and think of something new.

The child never did spot the airplane that day. She wasn't ready yet. But she had to ride in its belly, just the same. And so do we.

 



Back at Camelot, the School for Squires had reconvened, the little monsters who would take the reins from the best of all knighthood were throwing things at each other and saying the most nasty things...

WHAT IS ALL THIS THEN? Master Rumpole had entered the room. Everyone quieted down and were now the good cherubs; smiling and ready to receive the knowledge of their fathers.

We spoke earlier this week of honor as an integration of the heart, mind and very soul of the knighthood. And the first rule that is the foundation for the integration is pride. Pride above all the rules. In catechism, you are told that pride is the greatest of sins; it is sometimes called hubris. The Greeks had a story about hubris.

Daedalus was stuck in prison with his son Icarus. They were in the highest of turrets. So Daedalus who would one day move to Ireland and write Portrait of the Artist as a young man, fashioned wings with wax and the feathers of many birds. The birds in those days were pretty stupid and kept flying into the turrets but Daedalus had made his cell into a bird feeder to aid in the birds demise. He had learned how to lure the little buggers from Burt Lancaster but that is another story.

After the wings were fashioned Daedalus and Icarus flew away toward their home on another island. Daedalus had one rule. DO NOT FLY TOO HIGH or the sun will melt the wax upon your wings. Master Rumpole pulled out his lyre and began to sing:
                
Well we started out
From Minos' place
We fled our cells
To avoid disgrace

We flew above
The threatening waves
We looked for doves
To find our way

I am learning to fly
And I got my wings
Coming down
Is the hardest thing

I soared and soared
Above the sea
I felt the wind
My dad and me

My head did swell
In the stratosphere
I felt like god
Lighter than air

The higher I rose
The better I felt
I did not see
The wax all melt

I am learning to fly
And I got my wings
Coming down
Is the hardest thing

As they proceeded into the stratosphere, Icarus became too carried away with himself and he flew higher and higher until the wax melted on his wings and he crashed into the sea like a Japanese fighter pilot at Midway.   
   
So with that one caveat, we will work on the prides as a rules of life and chivalry.

We must have pride of self. We must bathe regularly. To see the importance of cleanliness one only has to travel across the channel and view some of the French. But that is another story.

We must have pride in our dress. We have discussed previously how the horseman must keep his clothing, how he must keep all his apparel clean and smelling of the flowers in the field. You must keep your armor clean and shiny. Your hair must be of a modest length but well fashioned and so must your beards be well fashioned.

We must have pride of our bodies. We must rigorously exercise;  which is why you all participate in the gymnasium on a daily basis. We must have a proper diet. We must not let ourselves go and become fat and lazy. And go on welfare and stay drunk all day and get women pregnant and not pay child support...and...well enough about my brother in law.

We must have pride in our posture. Booger Mort, sit up straight and get those god blessed hands out of your leggings. Watch Tristan as he strides onto the stage with his lyre. Or watch Lancelot as he greets a lady in waiting. There is a pace to all of this. A rhythm that is palpable. You see it but you cannot explain it. It is a dance. Like this new Moor Obama as he approaches the podium.

There is such a thing as talent. But that is all in the blood. Even those of the blood, must practice every day until they become proficient.

The next pride is pride of horsemanship. And that means tending to one's horse. What are the horse's needs. Has the steed been properly cleaned and tended? Has the mare been properly fed and watered? Have you checked the hooves and the tendons?  You must love and care for your horse like your brother and your sister and your lover. Without the steed you are no longer a knight. There can be no chivalry.   

Pride in our weaponry is next. Your sword and your lance must always be on the ready. Clean and tested. Your first battle will chip and harm your sword and your spear or you have not been doing your best in warfare. And pride in our shields and in our family chrests is of so much importance.

WHO AM I? The shield should answer that question.

We must have pride in our company. If we are riding with a few friends across the fields, we must have pride in our company. If anyone of our company is challenged, that challenge is against the company. Just as in war, your fellow soldiers are part of you for that time and that place. No matter what differences you might have with your temporary companions at arms, they are your brothers at that time and place.

RED BOTTOMS GET UP HERE.  Get your finger out of your nose. Now go stand in the corner and put that hat on.

And as that great sage Al Franken once said,

I am good enough
I am smart enough
And, Gosh darnit, people like me.

At our next session we shall discuss the second great set of rules for chivalry; charity.

Meanwhile, somewhere north of Camelot:

Shiteface Quinn McDougal proceeded to THE WALL. I am a road man not a wall man, he thought as he proceeded north with Sir Tristan. I wonder if I am of the quality necessary for this knighthood stuff. Although, I learned how to lead men. An entire decade working on the best Roman roads in the kingdom.The best materials in the world and I always refused to take the word no. No we cannot finish this. No the sinkhole cannot be handled. No we are running out of cakes and ale.

You care not for conversation, Sir Quinn. Tristan noted.

I wonder sometimes if I am worthy of conversation Sir Tristan. But I guess we could talk about ladies. You know Sir Tristan, I have my troubles with the fairer sex as they say. There is something about ladies and I think it's all down to females and their biological cycles.

I can't tell you how many times I've gone into a restaurant or a tavern, seen a table full of nice women that I'd like to talk to, and so - being friendly and all - I walk up, sit down with them, start talking, I'm having a grand old time, and suddenly... ALL of 'em have to go to the washroom! Hell, sometimes even the waitress goes with 'em.

After an hour or two, I usually start to get a bit fidgety. Sometimes the women stay in there all night, and then the owner comes over to tell me to leave because the place is closed. That happened at 3:00 in the afternoon once. Weird. Other times, the cops show up, and start giving ME a hard time. WTF? Once, the women all came out & started beating on me with pool cues. I donno what the hell they put in the soap in those places.

I guess what I'm saying is, it's really not our fault that women are built that way. It's just biology. Or maybe God.

Sir Tristan responded: That is why I am a one woman man. Except for when I am with Lancelot of course.


 

I love irony, it totally fascinates me and this morning I ran across an exceptional ironic article in the New York Times.

States Look at Tobacco to Balance the Budget

By SHAILA DEWAN

Published: March 20, 2009

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/us/21tobacco.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

I am a smoker, one of those really bad, selfish creatures who pollute the atmosphere (as well as my lungs) with nicotine and second hand smoke.

Many can chime in to tell me how horrific smoking is and let me be clear, very little (if anything) you can say, I will disagree with.

However now it seems, the smokers of this country may be your salvation in some small way because many States are considering or in the case of my State, has already increased tax on cigarettes.

So smokers stand tall, be proud, you're giving the ultimate sacrifice (your life) to your State and subsequently your country. Non smokers hold your nose and hug a smoker today. The State budget they may help to balance, could be yours.

 

I keep seeing this face on TPM, the NYT front page, and the muted TV in the library that is always set to CNN.  The hair varies, the skin color, even the bone structure, but one thing is always the same: both lips are tucked behind the front teeth.

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It isn’t easy to represent even a minimal estimate of the amount of money which has already been committed to melting banks, even leaving aside the latest addition of $1 trillion in “quantitative easing,” and the graphic below is just another try.

A dollar bill is about 6” by 2.5”. A stack of 100 dollar bills is about 1” high. So $100 is about 15 cubic inches. $1 trillion is accordingly about 10 billion times 15 cubic inches, or 150,000,000,000 cubic inches. One cubic foot is 12 x 12 x 12 inches, or 1728 cubic inches. 150,000,000,000 divided by 1728 is about 86,500,000 cubic feet. This is about the same volume as an 82 storey building, 440 feet wide, and 220 feet deep. Michelle Obama is about 6 feet tall.

Krugman, who shined so much light in the dark days of the Bush administration, and who is still doing more than anyone outside of This American Life to help non-economists understand the banking crisis, is fundamentally wrong in his assessment of Obama's plan to rescue the financial system.

The Obama administration is now completely wedded to the idea that there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the financial system -- that what we're facing is the equivalent of a run on an essentially sound bank. As Tim Duy put it, there are no bad assets, only misunderstood assets. And if we get investors to understand that toxic waste is really, truly worth much more than anyone is willing to pay for it, all our problems will be solved.

This is a straw man and suggests why Rahm Emanuel correctly dismissed Krugman as blind to the complexities of governing.  Obama has not said that the financial system is fundamentally ok, nor has he said that the banks are "essentially sound."  On Thursday, for instance, Obama diagnosed the ultimate cause of the AIG debacle as "a bubble-and-bust economy that valued reckless speculation over responsibility and hard work."  Not exactly an endorsement of the status quo on Wall Street, and not a new position either.

There are only two real difference between Obama and Krugman.  The first is Krugman's rejection of the argument, made first by Paulson and now Geithner and Obama, that the so-called troubled assets are worth more than anyone is currently willing to pay for them.  To Krugman (at least in this debate), the real value of anything is what the market willing to pay right now.  This is the principle of mark-to-market accounting, which in other circumstances allowed Enron to steal vast sums by claiming inflated boom-time asset values.  Now, Krugman asserts that because a busted bubble has crushed asset values, banks like Citi should be regarded as fundamentally and hopelessly insolvent.  He makes this case in the abstract, without having analyzed at all the cash flows that underlie the mortgage-backed securities.

As Krugman suggests, it is possible that Geithner's plan will benefit the bankers at huge expense to the taxpayers.  It is also possible that Geithner's plan will work:  that by financing and subsidizing investment in the bad assets, the government will buy time for those assets to rise in value.  The outcome depends on the economy.  If the economy gets much worse, the taxpayers will lose.  If it stabilizes, the odds seem good that the cost to the taxpayer will be modest.

Fundamentally, it's a gamble.  The thing is, any option is a gamble, and Geithner's gamble is far less risky than Krugman's favored option:  a temporary federal takeover of the world's largest banks.

This is the second, and more important, difference between Krugman and Obama: their assessment of risk.  Krugman and his allies on the financial blogs make a very strong case that a federal takeover is the fairest, most socially just way to avoid the outright collapse of the mega-banks.  They also make mince meat of the conservative arguments typically put forward against "nationalization."  What they do not do, however, is make a compelling case that a temporary federal takeover will actually work.  

Nor do they even address an even scarier question:  would the announcement of a temporary federal takeover trigger a disastrous panic?   Is it possible even to imagine a political or public relations strategy that could achieve such a takeover in a way that does not risk a much greater disaster than the one in which we currently find ourselves?

I have great confidence in government.  I think Medicaid is more effective than Kaiser Permanente.  I think the Marines are more reliable than Blackwater.  The Food Stamp program helps more people than the United Way.  

But could the Treasury Department run Citibank and Bank of America for the two to three years it would take to reprivatize them?   With maybe a few weeks to prepare? The very thought of it makes me want to trade what's left of my 401K for a few gold coins and a shotgun.

That's my reaction, and I'm as liberal as anyone you're likely to find in my Blue State zip code.  Now, imagine the reaction of the Republicans and their media abettors.  And the  foreign governments and financial markets.  Shit flinging and raw fear, that seems to me the most likely outcome.  Perhaps the takeover option would work in the end.  But I'd rather bet on the Geithner plan.

A closing observation:  much of the skepticism towards Geithner among progressives follows from a sense that he doesn't "get it" about what went wrong.   His instincts and sensibilities align with the investment bankers, not the middle class.  So it's natural to suspect that Geithner's plan will benefit those who should be punished, and that, left to his own devices, he would be happy to go back to the status quo that let the finance industry run completely amok for a generation.

Maybe so.  But Obama is the President.  His budget proposals are taking on the oil industry, the health insurance industry, and the arrayed interests of people in the highest tax bracket.   There's no reason to doubt that he will take on the finance industry when the time is right.  In the meantime, by choosing the least risky path to avoiding cataclysmic bank failures, Obama once again demonstrates the judicious leadership we need in times like these.

It's always the same thing. A cascade of bad news includes one item which seems to allow for howls of outrage or other displays of heightened morality which a) blots out all the other bad news, b) diverts attention to how all the bad news, even the item subject to the obsession, came about and c) allows the worst among us to cause more trouble while nobody is paying attention to what they are doing.

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I'm glad to see that, when it really matters, Americans are able to take action and force their legislators to OBEY! From the BBC:

The US state of New Jersey has scrapped plans to ban bikini waxes after an outcry from beauty salon owners.

The Cosmetology and Hairstyling Board proposed the move after two women were hospitalised for infections following the procedure; one filed a lawsuit. But officials reversed course after salon owners complained about losing business ahead of the swimsuit season.

*****

David Szuchman, New Jersey's consumer affairs director, said in a letter to the board on Friday that he would not support the ban."Many commenters have noted that the procedure can be safely performed. I, therefore, believe that there are alternate means to address any public health issues identified by the board," Mr Szuchman wrote.

*****

Spa owner Linda Orsuto told the Associated Press news agency: "It was an unnecessary issue. "In New Jersey especially, where the government has been picking our pockets for so long, it was like: 'Just stay out of our pants, will you?'" 

Oh...if only the raging anger to keep the government out of our pants could extend itself to keeping the government out of our pockets, purses and wallets. 

We continually hear about the "librul media." And we hear this expressed as a complaint against our mainstream media which is regularly made by conservatives appearing on mainstream media outlets in higher proportions than their more liberal counterparts.

The blogger Brilliant at Breakfast has an interesting speculation on the possible return of Wall Street scourge Eliot Spitzer to public life. Why David Vitter still has a Senate seat and this guy's career went in the toilet has always puzzled me.

For a variety of reasons, I've been thinking quite a bit lately about one of the guiding principles of good parenthood: the hope that our kids have a better life than we do. We all share this hope, don't we? It's only natural. But do we all feel it equally? More precisely, do we all make the same effort?

I don't think so.

Lately, I've had occasion to be around a few working-class foreigners here in Japan. Immigrating from the Philippines, China and elsewhere, they, like immigrants around the world, endure profound hardships. They don't speak the language; they following a strange religion; they look different; they have no family or close friends nearby, and they are often quite poor. Society looks down on them: they are the suspects of crime, depredation, and immorality. They suffer discrimination and ridicule at every turn.

But they endure these profound hardships because they know their kids will benefit by growing up in a country infinitely safer and more prosperous then their own.

Lately, I've begun looking at working-class immigrant families with a sense of awe. I wonder honestly if I have the same mettle. They endure so much and sacrifice so greatly to ensure their kids have a better future. What do I do? I read to my kids before they go to bed. I try to tell them creative stories and listen when they have something to say. I stash away a few dollars for their education. That's about it and it's nothing compared to the Herculean efforts of so many immigrants here in Japan, the US and around the world.

I wonder how different the world would be if we all made the same sacrifices; if we all put the same effort into our kids' futures as do so many working-class immigrants.

What do you think?

(As a side note, there's a new movie coming out about the plight of upper class parents in New York unable to get their kids into elite nursery schools due to crowding and high costs. There's a scene in the trailer where a woman who is all choked up says something like "they're my kids and I'd do anything for them..." Really? Would you do anything? How about quitting your job and taking care of your kids yourself?)

The utter collapse of this Profoundly criminal Bush conspiracy will come none too soon for people like me... The massive plundering of the U.S. Treasury and all its resources has been almost on a scale that is criminally insane, and has literally destroyed the lives of millions of American people and American families. Exactly. You and me, sport -- we are the ones who are going to suffer, and suffer massively. This is going to be just like the Book of Revelation said it was going to be -- the end of the world as we knew it.

Hunter S. Thompson
"The Nation's Capital"
29 July 2003 

 

 

Fear And Loafing At The Republican National Convention

by

Justice Putnam

 

XI

 

Kristen was four minutes and twenty-six seconds late. I only kept count because I was afraid she wouldn't show at all.

We walked along the river until sunset. Kristen told me about the sailor and then the artist who offered her a trip around the world. She told me he lived on a forty-eight foot schooner at the marina.

"There is a problem," she said, "I dropped in on him last night, uninvited, and I found him in bed with an older man who looked a little familiar. Like someone I've seen at the café."

Kristen went on telling me about her life. She was originally from Florida and had moved to town with her mother only seven months earlier. They lived in a big house with a basement full of survival goods.

"Survival goods?" I asked.

"Yes, you know," she said, "canned food, bottled water, chemical and radiation detectors, bio-suits and flashlights. My mother thinks it's the end of the world, she's stocking up! What are you doing in town?" she asked.

"Business," I answered.

"What kind?"

"Consumer protection," I said, "you could say, I work for the People."

"Oh, good! You're not a sailor or an artist!" she continued, "How'd you get into that line of work?"

I knew Kristen was just being polite, making conversation. But I had a Heroic Tale to tell, and she asked the perfect question,

"Well, it begins like this," I said, "about fourteen years ago, I was teaching high school history in Orange County, California, and I fell in love with one of my students. I was twenty-five and she had just turned eighteen. She fell in love with me also, the whole thing was secret of course!"

"Of course!" Kristen said.

"Anyway," I went on, "Marie had moved with her family from France the previous year. She was an exceptional woman. One night she was leaving my house very late. Driving home, alone, she suddenly turned off the road and drove into the wall of our local bowling alley. She was killed!"

"That's horrible!" Kristen exclaimed.

"I went into shock over Marie's death. I thought it was my fault, until the Coroner's Report came in."

"What did it say?" Kristen asked.

"The Coroner found traces of a rare hallucinogenic drug on Marie's tongue and teeth," I continued, "and I knew Marie never used any kind of drugs!"

"And?" Kristen asked, she was truly interested in my story!

"And I began to poke around," I continued, "to make a long story short, I discovered that the drug was used as an emulsifier in a finger-nail polish that Marie wore. Marie chewed her nails!"

"That's awful!" Kristen declared, looking at her hands.

"So I wrote a report and filed it with the Federal Consumer Protection Agency, they offered me a job!"

"What cosmetic company is it?" Kristen asked, continuing to stare at her nails.

"You mean, 'was it,' you see Kristen, after my report, the company was sued out of existence. Though with all the appeals, it took almost twelve years."

"What company was it, then? I might have some of the stuff around the house." Kristen said.

"DIGIT PALLÉ," I answered, "a little company in San Ramon, California. It was owned by three Iraqi brothers."

"Three Iraqi brothers from San Ramon!?" she shouted, her face turning white.

"Yes, why?" I asked, "are you Iraqi?

"No," she responded, beginning to cry.

"Have you been to San Ramon?"

"No," she sobbed.

"What is it then?" I asked tenderly, seeing how my story had so deeply affected her.

"I think they're here!" she blurted out, "and I think they're looking for you!"

"What!?" I said in a surprised voice.

"There were three men today, dressed all in black and wearing finger-nail polish," she mumbled between sobs, "they came into the café and walked around slowly looking at people as they ate. When I asked if I could help them, one said, 'no thanks,' and another said, 'stay out of our way lady, we're looking for somebody!'"

"Kristen," I said, "that doesn't mean they're looking for me."

"There's more!" she interrupted, "when they left, the got into a new Lexus with California plates, a little Iraqi flag on the back window and a bumper sticker that read, I LOVE SAN RAMON!"

It didn't look good, yet it didn't matter. There I was, on the moonlit shore of the river with beautiful Kristen, her arms around me, looking into my eyes and saying,

"You poor man, you poor man."

No, even though my history was catching up with me, even though it was intending to deliver a mortal message, I still felt lucky! I felt like I was winning! In that moment, I felt like I could never lose again!

But, moments pass.

 

XII

 

The next morning, Kristen and I awoke leisurely in my motel room. Since my life was in danger, we decided it was best for me to lay low for a couple of days. Kristen decided to lay low with me.

By three p.m., we had called out for a large order of Oyaku Donburi and Zaru Soba. We watched dozens of overweight people come and go from the clinic across the street. We turned the television on twice, only to find special news reports about the Dalai Lama not among most recent arrested protesters; and many news specials about the crisis. On one of those specials, Lou Dobbs described the room in which a meeting had taken place between the Russian Ambassador and the preceding President. The current President had appointed him as a Peace Negotiator,

"These are the chairs they sat in," Dobbs intoned, "they are made of mahogany and leather and are very comfortable!" Dobbs moved to a small table next to one of the chairs, "And here is where the note tablet sat as the Former President took down the pertinent information."

It was later revealed that the former President hadn't taken any notes at all, but he had doodled extensively. Primarily, simplistic pictures of nude women, made up of circles, hourglasses and little V's.

As it was growing dark, a loud knock sounded on the door.

"The Iraqi's?" Kristen whispered with wide eyes.

"Mr. Fontaine? It's Nikki! Cole Stanyan sent me," a woman's voice said from beyond the door.

"Oh shit!" I said.

"I recognize that voice!" Kristen said as she climbed for the bed and ran to the door. She opened the door and squealed in a high, shrill voice, "Nikki! It's really you!"

"Kristen, what the hell?" Nikki responded, looking Kristen up and down, "I never thought I'd see you again!"

"Oh, baby!" Kristen said as the two hugged each other, "I can't believe it! Are you still a...?"

"Sure am, darlin'," Nikki replied, "it's just a job! Who's the john?"

"Oh!" Kristen said, "This is Jacques. We're falling in lo..., well, like! Anyway, he may only have a few days to live. Some guys are looking for him!"

"That's too bad!" Nikki said.

"We're friends from Florida," Kristen said as she closed the door, "we haven't seen each other for almost four years! Jacques, I don't want to shock you, but Nikki and I used to be lovers!"

Nikki began to undress. She unbuttoned her blouse and unsnapped the short skirt she wore. It dropped to the floor and revealed some very fancy undergarments.

"Very nice!" Kristen said.

"Very, very nice!" I agreed.

Nikki was a tall woman with long red hair that roamed down her shoulders and her firm, yet ample breasts. Her hands were long with deep red fingernails.

"That's not DIGIT PALLÉ nail polish, is it?" Kristen asked.

Nikki and Kristen sat on the bed and began to kiss passionately. Soon they were lying side by side with their arms and legs entwined, their red and blond hair mixing together.

That night I lived in moonlight. I lived in the land of tongues touching and red lips laughing. There were no victories or defeats. There were night winds blowing, plane trees bowing and roomful of whispers. There were seashell ears and dark rivers of hair. There was the salty taste of warm hips.

By four a.m. we lay quietly in bed. We did not speak at all. We listened to the wind blow leaves on the street. We slept and did not dream.

 

XIII

 

In the morning we were awakened by someone pounding on the door.

"Maybe the Iraqi's?" Kristen whispered.

"You're so vigilant!" I smiled.

Nikki climbed from the bed and peeked out the window,

"It's only Cole!" she exclaimed, and opened the door.

"Nikki, you're supposed to be with Officer McCourt!" Cole said in a scolding tone.

"I know, but I ran into a friend!" Nikki said.

"Pleased to meet..." Cole stopped at mid-sentence as he stared in at Kristen.

"That's the man who was with Sean the Artist on his boat!" Kristen said, pointing at Cole Stanyan.

Cole turned slightly pale and got that same look he had when I suggested he gave people false hope. Bad news could strip Cole of his appearance; it could show his weakness. It could pull off his mask, and the worst thing that could happen to Cole, was that people saw him as he really was. Cole stepped into the room and closed the door,

"Perhaps we could make a deal," Cole pleaded, "Listen, I've got a wife and two kids in high school. This can't get around!"

"Don't worry, it's ok," Kristen said with great sincerity, "you must learn to live with yourself."

"Cole, it's ok, these are my friends." Nikki said.

"Your private, intimate life is not part of my investigation," I assured him, "Consumer Protection operates within the Rules of Privacy!"

Cole began to leave, ill at ease. He was not accustomed to trusting people or losing face. He was naked in our eyes and no amount of fast-talking could clothe him again. He backed out the door apologizing and saying,

"Nikki, take the day off. I'll handle Officer McCourt!"

We all smiled at that remark.

"That's not what I meant!" Cole Stanyan objected.

 

XIV

 

Kristen and Nikki left in the afternoon together.

"See you tomorrow," Kristen said as Nikki kissed me goodbye, "Nikki and I will keep an eye out for those cosmetic creeps!"

 

XV

 

Another day had passed. The day had come and gone like a delegate in a hurry.

I did push-ups that day. I did sit-ups. I sat at the window and watched people come and go from the weight loss clinic. I read the article about the two-headed baby and called out for an order of Soba Noodles. I read about the Dalai Lama and I watched Cole Stanyan's T.V. commercials,

"Nobody loses, everybody wins!" he said, as he leaned towards the camera.

I wondered if Kristen was a lesbian or a bisexual and if the three men in black would find me.

I prayed a peculiar prayer that night. I prayed it aloud in my darkened motel room,

"Dear God, or whatever you're called," I began, "please forgive me for my gluttony, and please ease the pain in the world. Please help the President, the Iranians and Putin to relax, and, if it's your will, please let Kristen be bisexual! Thank you, Amen!"

 

(con't tomorrow)

 

© 2008 by Justice Putnam
and Mechanisches-Strophe Verlagswesen

So let me see what I see at whitehouse.gov...

1) She goes to Fort Bragg
2) Seven pictures are posted of her at Fort Bragg
3) One picture is posted of her at The Arts Center in Fayetteville

And yet, people wonder why asshats like me (even in peacetime) carp and complain about how America is a militarized culture and warlike society; about how America is not a culture dominated by the Arts and Sciences;  and about how citizens must supplement their incomes by becoming soldiers...rather than, say, pursuing happiness and the general welfare of their community by becoming musicians or  just having jobs that are sufficient to a peaceful and virile life.

And gosh, why can't I and everyone like me not do that sort of complaining now?

After all, America is at war.

That's politics. You're welcome.

This is really just a response to http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/03/frankenstein.php

Josh makes two points about why taxing the bonuses is "ill advised"

One, he says they'll just make the bonuses salary.  But why is that a problem?  What I mean is, all that does is leave us exactly where we are if they do nothing.  So it hardly seems like a viable reason to do nothing.  More importantly, the excuse being given for the bonuses in general is that they are contractual.  So the contracts would actually have to be renegotiated to change them from bonus to salary & perhaps that would lead to better, more reasonable contracts.  Perhaps not, but again at worst things just remain the same.

Two, he can't undersand why a couple who "happen to work in the financial services sector" & make 250k + should be affected the same as a nefarious CEO or other evildoer.  Let me explain it to you Josh.  Because they're lucky to still have a job.  Because that is the alternative.   The government could not be bailing out their industry & their firm could be bankrup & instead of being taxed on a bonus above their 250k, they could be unemployed.

Or to look at it another way. For the same reason teachers & autoworkers & nurses & janitors & countless people across the US are taking pay cuts.  Because the economy is in freefall & they want to keep their jobs even at reduced pay.  Regardless of former promises or even negotiated contracts.

& I know it's now been said by many, but I must repeat it as it was my first thought when people started defending these contracts, where was all this respect for contracts when it came to Detroit & the autoworkers?  For that matter when it came to airline employees throughout the 90s especially, or Air Traffic Controllers in the 80s.  It seems to only apply to those at the top.

 

 

The mortgage crisis in the U.S., first, the irradiation of the crisis in global financial markets, then the crisis and recession with unemployment then completed a set of financial recession now threatens to end a life model, sold as the "American Dream." The model of export boom "is falling: China and the powers" emerging "in Asia (the largest buyer of raw materials) are in recession and therefore lower prices for raw materials and oil. At the same time, lower consumption and unemployment, will act as a trigger short-term central union of revolts and social upheavals that are going to multiply and expand like a virus throughout the region ending with the "peace" social and trade union and by questioning the "governance" of the system, mainly in the countries most vulnerable to contagion from the crisis, such as Argentina, Brazil and Mexico's three largest economies in the region.

 
Treasure and the Federal Reservation, there become detached all the lines of decision and execution of the financial macro-business of the banks and financial entities with debt expressed by the North American State. A business that increased in notable grades with the " state rescues " to banks and broken companies for the financial - recessive crisis.

 

The Latin Americans and I am afraid, that the big majority of those who live in the United States, they keep on waiting for an act of magic, for a species of "Criss Obama" that should solve a financial crisis as the current one, in a surprising way. The President Obama has said and repeated that has not gone out magically or easily and the public opinion still accompanies it. Nevertheless, a luck of count has begun. The people are ready to wait and the President Obama cannot play as any Presidents were doing it earlier to the essay and the error. The people wants neither improvisations nor experiments. The expectation has been too much. It cannot continue demanding him  those that less they have.

 

 The place where the Kings are starting to die, that moment is where the citizen is aware that there is authenticity and that the election is not what I thought. That was all appearance and in substance, only the "rich and powerful" are finding relief for their ailments. President Obama is bound to comply with all those who believed in him and should only be guided by the truth rather than opinion and marketing formulas. 100 days are not sufficient to evaluate a management that is true. But if so, to begin to show interest in the poor and less advantaged by the system is real, true. Obama has to live up to its slogan and demonstrate their willingness to change. There is little time but that is your enemy. Time and needs are the north and south of the President.

Obama can not afford to allow that we discover that he is not Kennedy or Martin Luther because they end up believing that there is another Bush, the kingdom will fall to 8 years in raising achievement. The crisis experts say is the best time to find the best in each. President Obama, you must be not only the first African American to reach the presidency of the most powerful nation on earth, but the first in fact, that brings the living conditions of the "needy", regardless of their face, to levels respect and opportunities for achieving the common good. I know that you rule for everyone, not just for financial sectors. Time is the sword of Damocles.  Even you and I believe.

 

visit my page in Spanish www.angelmonagas.com.ve and he can see me across www.videoperiodico.net from Monday until Friday at 2 a.m. pm Hour Venezuela, with repetition at 5 a.m. am.

 

 

Regarding Natasha Richardson,
From the AP:

"It's impossible for me to comment specifically about her case, but what I could say is ... driving to Mont Tremblant from the city (Montreal) is a 2 1/2-hour trip, and the closest trauma center is in the city. Our system isn't set up for traumas and doesn't match what's available in other Canadian cities, let alone in the States," said Tarek Razek, director of trauma services for the McGill University Health Centre, which represents six of Montreal's hospitals.

There you have it. Another famous victim of government run health care. There are thousands of not so famous victims every year. Many die while waiting for treatment (6 months for angioplasty is not uncommon), or at best face a sub standard level of care, dictated not by their doctor but by a government official, who's decisions can't be appealed.

There are certainly problems in our system, most related to cost and availability of insurance. Government reforms are needed, but the government does not need to take over the system. Require insurance portability, mandate that coverage be available for pre-existing conditions provided the patient had insurance from a previous carrier, and at rates identical to all members of that age group. That prevents people who lose their jobs from being locked out, or prevents people from being able to change jobs. That's a simple fix that would benefit many. But we do not need to follow the socialist model, and shouldn't think that there are no problems in that system also.

"While the American International Group [AIG] comes under fire from Congress over executive bonuses, it is quietly fighting the federal government for the return of $306 million in tax payments, some related to deals that were conducted through offshore tax havens."

Lynnley Browning, NYT 3/19/09
______________________________
Can you believe this? I couldn't either, but there it is. I'm going to assume this wasn't just a figment of Lynnley Browning's imagination, because it did appear in the New York Times, but where else was it yesterday? Today? Nowhere to be found.  I wasn't exactly glued to my television set, but I watched it enough to see plenty about President Obama's appearance on the Leno Show last night. Now there's some news.

AIG, that insurance company that turned out not to really insure anything; that company that is now almost wholly owned by the government (that's us--or so they tell us when they want us to pay for something); that same company that still wants to pay out $165,000,000 in bonuses because they're so good; yes that company--they now want--you ready for this? They want us to give back $306,000,000 because they think they overpaid their taxes!!

And (sputter, spit, stammer, scream. . .) they're not only suing us, they're expecting us--the taxpayers--to foot the bill for their. . .aarghh. . .lawsuit!! Against us!!!

Really. Here it is:

"A.I.G. sued the government last month in a bid to force it to return the payments, which stemmed in large part from its use of aggressive tax deals, some involving entities controlled by the company's financial products unit in the Cayman Islands, Ireland, the Dutch Antilles and other offshore havens.

A.I.G. is effectively suing its majority owner, the government, which has an 80 percent stake and has poured nearly $200 billion into the insurer in a bid to avert its collapse and avoid troubling the global financial markets. The company is in effect asking for even more money, in the form of tax refunds. The suit also suggests that A.I.G. is spending taxpayer money to pursue its case, something it is legally entitled to do. Its initial claim was denied by the Internal Revenue Service last year."

Browning goes on: "United States tax law allows American companies to claim a credit for any taxes paid to a foreign government. But the I.R.S. denied A.I.G.'s refund claims in 2008, saying that it had improperly calculated the credits. The I.R.S. has identified so-called foreign tax-credit generators as an area of abuse that it is increasingly monitoring.

The remainder of A.I.G.'s claim, for $244 million, concerns net operating loss carry-backs, capital loss carry-backs, a general refund claim and claims for refunds of other tax-related payments that A.I.G. says it made to the I.R.S. but are now owed back. The claim also covers $119 million in penalties and interest that A.I.G. says it is due back from the government.

In part, A.I.G. says it overpaid its federal income taxes after a 2004 accounting scandal that caused it to restate its financial records. A.I.G. says in part that it is entitled to a refund of $33 million that SICO paid in 1997 as compensation to employees, which it now says should be characterized as a deductible expense."

(Hang on a second, I feel another scream coming on. . .)

"Asked about the lawsuit, Mark Herr, an A.I.G. spokesman, said Thursday that 'A.I.G. is taking this action to ensure that it is not required to pay more than its fair share of taxes.'"

Fair. Let's think about that word "fair". And that word "share". Then let's think about AIG. Do you see the connection? Neither do I.

So that's it. Nothing we can do. But before we say goodbye, let me just leave you with this:

Citigroup Plans Big Bonuses Despite Rules Against Them

This is what happens when you treat corporations like royalty. They actually begin to think they're entitled. And why not? The leaders of the land are their humble servants, and the rest of us are out there in the latrines with slop buckets.

I'm going to ask this, but I really don't expect an answer:
Where is the America that never would have allowed this to happen?

Ramona

(cross-posted at Ramona's Voices)

No-Drama Obama has been cool to the idea of either "truth commission" or prominent Congressional investigations into Bush Administration torture, manufactured intelligence, and political marionette-ism that subverted the Justice Department.   These anti-rule-of-law intrigues were Cheney's, and the Oval Office has wished that Patrick Leahy's Judicial Committee would allow them to fade into history as the President's busy enough trying to save the world economy.  Nothing doing, says Leahy; if we don't examine our recent history how will we safeguard against repeating it?   You could argue it's the last thing Obama needs.  But perversely, Leahy may have gained a new strategic ally in the trash-talking Cheney himself.

 

Barack Obama is a nice guy, but he also survived politics in one of the wiliest environments, bare-knuckles Chicago.  He raised eyebrows recently by saying he was no chump, and he may not appreciate Cheney's un-statesmanlike early emergence from retirement and foray into anti-Obama fear-mongering.  Read over a couple of times again that line from Gibbs: "I guess Rush Limbaugh was busy, so they trotted out the next most popular member of the Republican cabal."

 

Cabal?!

 

Ouch!  Is that brushback, or is Obama about to step aside and let Leahy have his inquiries?  One must imagine, they'd be riveting!   Time's Bobby Ghosh has been all over this, http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1883383,00.html, with good stuff and good links. Especially if no commission is even created and it's merely (televised?) Congressional hearings, theoretically Obama isn't even involved, of course.  It's the Hill, legislative branch and not executive, so he can deny everything (plus, Leahy's so mad, Obama might not be able to stop him anyway).    Cheney is used to dramatically Overreaching, not only with policies but even on his version of reality, as we know.   (Many say his strident claims of successes through waterboarding are embellished or wholly ficititious.)  But the Democratic majority is already making Cheney's drive-by regime of bald deceit a much tougher exercise.  Homeland Security Committee Chairwoman Jane Harman placidly states, "He's wrong on the facts" and she's not the only pretty face now burying into the scheming curmudgeon's ugly world.   http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1883383,00.html  They're in no rush, either, and they're only getting started.

 

 

 

You Are Grounded Until You Prove to Me You Can Be Trusted.  There's going to be some new rules in this household people and they 'will' be obeyed -- or you will face the consequences.

That is what the American people and their representatives and President should be telling these large companies and banks that have abused their consumers and customers over the past few years.

That's what we'd all do if we had a teenager that disobeyed or abused the laws of the household -- why should these runaway companies and their leaders be treated any less harshly?

It's time to lay down the laws. 

We common everyday citizens face laws and rules everyday of our lives, rules for this, rules for that.  Why shouldn't these CEO's and their companies have to face stricter rules at a time where they so blatantly ignored common sense and the possible damages they could and did cause -- because of their greed?

You Are Grounded until you prove to the American people that you can run a company and handle the people's money like adults.

I'm just wondering where the giant pool of people who understand the complexities of the financial system but don't have ties to said same system are?

With all due respect to Mr. Krugman, for years the entire financial industry has been schooling itself on how to tilt the table so the ball always rolls into their pocket, and what we are fighting here is not an entitlement mentality but institutionalized corruption. Before the crash is was private industry corruption (the liar loans, the ratings game, the reductions in capital gains taxes and hedge fund fee system) and now it's been nationalized. Did you think the corruption would disappear because the government owns 80%?

For years the financial industry was the drug dealer and the government was the bodega owner who laundered the profits. Now it's both, and it has 80 years of systemization to undo and it won't happen overnight. This scandal will follow others until the system re-writes itself into an earnest business rather than a corrupt one.

I, for one, agree with Taleb that banks should only be allowed to operate as banks, and should not be permitted to play with other people's money, and there are any number of smaller banks around the country who can say that that model works fine, since there are many banks that operated using traditional guidelines that are still healthy. The problems always seem to arise when banks start trying to make ever-higher profits rather than making ever-better performing loans.

Never mind 165 million in bonuses, wait till the public finds out how much wall street tarp recipients have spent on lobbying congress NOT to change the rules so they can keep their defunct and debunked business model the way it is....

by Dan Aiello
Bay Area Reporter
Reprinted with permission

Chino’s Preface: Fred Karger, of Californians Against Hate fame, recently marked the launch of his new Mormongate.com site with the publication of several never-before-seen internal LDS documents regarding a 1990’s contest in Hawaii over the issue of marriage equality.

In the course of reading through Fred’s docs, one name in particular caught my attention: Debi Hartmann. Could this be the same Mormon mom whom I’d recently seen speaking in support of her Local 5 union and its affirmative stance re marriage rights for all? Indeed it was, and here’s Debi making her case around the 4:25 mark:

Read more »

I must say that I was more than taken aback when I saw the headline "Turning toxic coal ash into bridges, buildings." The "best" ways to dispose of the heavy metal containing coal ash are apparently mixing it in concrete, highway construction, using it in wall board, sandblasting, and landfill. Somebody tell me it's not true.

Read more »

One of my favorite guys, Zach Karabell, has an excellent column in the WSJ offering some historical perspective on our boom-and-bust cycle past.  Zach is a very smart guy. The fact that he's a regular contributor on CNBC shouldn't be held against him. He's no wingnut like most of those loons.

I want to tell you about a man who came from modest, even humble beginnings, a man who chased the American dream and caught it and wanted everyone to have an equal chance to catch it, too. A man who bore an unjust social stigma because of his minority and immigrant parentage. A man who experienced the sting of bigotry, but channeled those hurts into a personal quest for justice for other victims of injustice. A man of intelligence who excelled as an academic and professor. A man who got his start in politics as a community organizer, helping the underprivileged and disenfranchised find a voice, and rose through the ranks of government to achieve a seat in the U.S. Senate. Though many pundits and advisers told him he had little chance of winning, he contemplated a run for the White House as his ultimate opportunity to bring about progressive change and fundamental fairness to government and public policy. I'm referring, of course, to the late Senator Paul Wellstone.

Sen. Wellstone never made the run for the Oval Office he once considered, but he did share other similarities with President Obama. The most unsettling of them, sadly, has been a propensity to make rookie mistakes. For Wellstone, the first rookie mistake was breaching the protocol of George Herbert Walker Bush by having the audacity, as a newly minted freshman Senator, to expose his liberal agenda in a White House reception line. That was the famous encounter that led President George H.W. Bush, then the titular leader of the free world, to inquire of his neighbor in the reception line, "Who was that chickenshit?"

Never one to hide his liberal activist light under a basket, Wellstone next drew the ire of veterans early in his first term by holding an anti-Persian Gulf War press conference in front of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Republicans (and many conservative Democrats) were outraged and attacked Wellstone as if he were a stray dog that had lifted his leg on motherhood, apple pie, the flag and Lady Liberty. It was a dumb move, another rookie mistake, but one he took to heart and used as a learning experience. The backlash from his ill advised choice of press conference location ignited his interest in veterans' affairs, and Wellstone went on to become one of the most passionate and respected veterans' advocates in Congress, even earning the praise of Senator John McCain.

Fast forward nearly two decades and President Obama, now the leading voice for progressive change in Washington, finds himself embroiled in a series of controversies (some real, some manufactured) that in perspective are little more than rookie mistakes, the kind to be expected of any person in a new, unfamiliar position. But in today's highly charged partisan environment (and ironically right when quick action would be really helpful in overcoming an international economic crisis) very little is kept in perspective, and every step the president and his administration take becomes a tedious, agonizing walk through a political minefield, where every misstep is magnified and repeated ad infinitum through the media echo chamber.

Today the GOP faithful, eager deniers of health care to disabled and disadvantaged children, are hurling invective over President Obama's appearance on The Tonight Show in general and his unfortunate Special Olympics gaffe in particular. For good measure, they are throwing in that he should be dealing with the economy to the exclusion of everything else, especially college basketball prognostication. They have apparently forgotten what it is like to have a president who can walk and chew gum simultaneously. But all of today's bluster is almost a welcome relief after a full week of the hyped up drama that is the AIG bonus snafu. While President Obama's administration has accomplished much in the infancy of its first two months, it has also racked up its share of rookie mistakes.

When Paul Wellstone first arrived in Washington following his 1990 Senate win, he made a key rookie mistake that seriously handicapped his initial effectiveness in the Senate - he eschewed hiring Beltway insiders for his staff in favor of those campaign workers who helped win his Senate seat. But his loyalty to those campaigners, who were brilliant grassroots organizers, had unfortunate and unforeseen consequences. It seems grassroots organizing is a skill of meager utility inside the Washington bubble, and his staff's lack of insider connections essentially isolated Wellstone from the Washington web of influence. Wellstone eventually replaced many of his campaigners with more seasoned and better connected Congressional staffers, at no small political cost in his home state of Minnesota, where the move was criticized as disloyal and cynical. We Minnesotans are funny that way, though.

Fortunately, President Obama does not appear to be repeating this particular mistake. While he has pulled key people from his campaign into his administration, he's also incorporating a sizable share of veterans, people who know Washington and how it works and how to get things done - including former political rivals - and he's assembled an economic advisory team of financial wizards both macro and micro. In a relatively short time they have managed to begin laying the policy groundwork for President Obama's broader agenda for education, energy, health care, and diplomacy, what I like to think of as the American Restoration.

The good beginning is now in jeopardy of being irreparably overshadowed by the rookie mistakes, and the considerable political capital he now holds may begin slipping away unless President Obama is able to make the right adjustments. As dire as the economic situation remains, and as hell-bent on opposition and obstruction as the GOP is, and as adamant about business as usual as Wall Street is, President Obama's staff and Cabinet, indeed the collective resources of the executive branch, may not be enough to overcome the challenges we now face. For that President Obama needs more help than he can find in Chicago or Washington, D.C. For that he needs the people, from sea to shining sea. For that he needs a movement of involved, concerned citizens, the kind that got him into the White House in the first place, and the kind Senator Wellstone praised with these words at Iowa State University more than a decade ago, words that could have come as easily from an Obama stump speech:

" I do not believe the future will belong to those who are content with the present, I do not believe the future will belong to the cynics, or to those who stand on the sideline. The future will belong to those who have passion, and to those grassroots heroes who are willing to make the personal commitment to make our country better.  The future will belong to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. And if together we believe, we can create a movement like that which seized for women the right to vote, like the one that launched the New Deal, like the one that fought the War on Poverty."

 

 

It seems that increasingly, on TPM, we get posts that contain the thoughts of unnamed TPM readers introduced by a brief sentence such as "From TPM Reader **, a well-informed person about such-and-such."

This practice is pernicious. It resembles far too closely what progressives have been complaining about with respect to the Main Stream Media, a tendency to pass on views and putative information without attempting to evaluate their truth.

The opinions are presented to us as coming from unnamed sources. Who are these people? Why should we be interested in what they have to say? Are they credible? Are they coming from a particular angle? And so on. The use of unnamed sources should be kept to an absolute minimum. And when it does occur, some explanation should be given of why the source cannot be identified.

We also now get dueling unnamed opinions in which TPM Reader XYZ tells us how what TPM Reader ABC said is all wrong. How does one weigh up two opinions when one knows the credibility of neither author?

The occasional use of the opinions of initialed readers also makes it all but impossible to build up any sense of the authors' track-records over time.

I understand that the expression of opinion might be thought to be immune from these criticisms, but the expression of opinion is always intermixed with statements of fact and assumptions about how things work and for these, it does make a big difference as to whether the author is credible or not.

I also understand that there may be times at which this practice is warranted. But these times are surely rare exceptions and not the rule that this practice is becoming.

Please, TPM, if readers write in with interesting information, opinions, etc., then don't just pass them on. See if they hold water, and if they do, publish them in your own person (with appropriate acknowledgment, of course). Otherwise, don't distract us with them.

Terence Samuel has a good article in The American Prospect on the recent AIG stink. Everybody needs to take a deep breath.

TPM Reader MH makes the case that Lehman's collapse was really that bad and we can't let it happen again ... -- TPM front page

 

Does he?  He makes confusions from the very beginning:  "it's not always clear where the counterparty risk lies" is not relevant to the following "so it[']s often not clear how bankruptcy rules will apply to them".  That's extraneous to Lehman prior to collapse.  The simple point he does make is that people ignored the possibility of counterparty default.  They assumed that all bets would be paid off one way or another.  That's crazy, it's like saying "there's no risk but there's profit" in a system where profit (and loss) comes from risk taking.    

 

He makes a muddle of it.That is one-sided fear-mongering at work.  It encourages moral hazard without end.  Letting Lehman go under shook out a lot of irrationality from the markets.  That's a good thing, except to those invested in [long on] irrationality.  

The fear people have now--and justifiably so, I think--is that the only thing keeping the financial system functioning at all right now is the assumption that the major governments of the world will not allow any other major counterparties to default.  If even one of them is allowed to fail, that assumption immediately goes out the window and suddenly everyone will have to assume that any major counterparty could fail at any moment.  If that happens, everything will grind to a hault again.

 

It wasn't, and isn't, that bad, unless we rush to make it that bad.  Yes, it is complicated and yes it was unknown to many (though some gamblers clearly profited off it and people like Soros knew better than to get caught up in it).  Now there is no excuse since everyone has had their individual noses rubbed in it.  AIG has been spending government money unwinding its worst positions (probably carelessly thus costing more than necessary).  Who else is at risk now?

We should always assume that a major counterparty, at any level, could fail at any moment.  That's like, duh, in prudent economics.   While it is true that we would do well to establish SOME systemic limits (people talk about putting CDS on a formalized exchange for instance), the phrasing of the comment has it all wrong unless it's intended as fear-mongering rhetoric. 

 

Don't shy away from the important questions.  Who else is at risk now, and to what extent?  Who benefits from scare talk?   Why funnel money to crooks and gamblers now?

The Fed is engaged in insane monetary inflation, printing money like there was no risk involved.

This week, Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico signed legislation repealing the death penalty, replacing it with life in prison without the possibility of parole. Governor Richardson based his decision on a lack of "confidence in the criminal justice system as it currently operates" and the very real possibility of wrongfully convicting and executing an innocent person. By repealing the death penalty, Governor Richardson's action this week eliminates the risk of New Mexico ever executing an innocent person. Governor Richardson should be commended for taking this action.

The question now is whether Governor Richardson will take the necessary steps to eliminate the causes that lead to wrongful convictions. While I agree that life without parole gives New Mexico the opportunity to correct mistakes when wrongful convictions occur, I am concerned about the very real risk that innocent people will be wrongfully convicted and now sentenced to life without parole in New Mexico.

I commend Governor Richardson for his recognition that New Mexico's criminal justice system is "inherently defective." The Governor recognizes the systemic problems that have led to wrongful convictions in New Mexico stating, "[e]vidence, including DNA evidence, can be manipulated. Prosecutors can still abuse their powers. We cannot ensure competent defense counsel for all defendants." Repealing the death penalty can prevent these systemic problems from leading to the execution of an innocent person. The next step is to prevent these errors from happening and sending an innocent person to prison.

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by Erin Ferns and Donald Wine II

For the past few years, there has been a push by voting rights advocates to expand and balance the electorate in the United States.  Finally, measures to help enfranchise some of the nation's least represented Americans are moving forward in several states. This past week, five states advanced bills to restore the voting rights of citizens convicted of felonies, while four states moved bills designed to facilitate voter participation among young citizens. This trend in election reform is a step in the right direction, which more states should take notice of and consider in the near future.

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I have been a volunteer with Special Olympics for nine years and I voted for Barack Obama.  My sister has competed in Special Olympics for 17 years, and she was the first Special Olympics athlete to win the gold medal in the women's 1500 meter freestyle race.  In addition to being a fantastic athlete, she is an avid reader of a variety of daily newspapers.  She keeps up with current events, especially American politics.  She voted for Barack Obama because he stood up for gay rights.  She voted for Obama because he stood up for immigrants.  She voted for Obama because, as the daughter of a retired military officer, she thought he would take better care of men and women in uniform than George Bush did.  She voted for Obama, and I voted for Obama, because we thought he would give voice to so many who are marginalized in the American political process.  Today, when she reads the newspaper as she takes public transportation on her way to work, she will surely read about what Obama said on Jay Leno's show.  For her sake, and for the sake of Special Olympics athletes everywhere, I am angry and ashamed. 

 

Obama, who ran on championing the cause of the oppressed, has callously made fun of people with disabilities, one of the most marginalized and vulnerable groups in America.  On top of that, he has made fun of Special Olympics athletes, people who work harder than most people can imagine to improve their lot in life.  He has disparaged people whose only crime is wanting a social network, a set of goals they can to accomplish, a place where - for once - they are recognized for their achievements and not their shortfalls.  They are fundamentally seeking, really, what most people take for granted.

 

The casual cruelty of Obama's comment was bad enough.  What is worse is that many liberal media outlets, including The Huffington Post, are not condemning or even negating the legitimacy of Obama's comment.  Today, The Huffington Post conducted a poll that - in all seriousness - asks its readers if Obama's comment was "a little funny."  Another optional answer is that Obama's question was "light-hearted."  Amazingly, only one of the four possible answers to the poll gives readers the option of calling Obama's comment "tasteless."  The Huffington Post is essentially giving its readers three options indicating that it's okay to, you know, make fun of the handicapped.  Would we have these same poll options if Obama had disparaged any other minority?  Through its poll, The Huffington Post is essentially legitimizing one of America's last acceptable prejudices.

 

In an age where people with disabilities still struggle for social recognition and equal rights, it is disgusting for our nation's leader to dismiss them and some of their greatest accomplishments so casually.  Our President, and those who choose to ignore his insult, are doing a disservice not only to a community of citizens and voters with disabilities, but also to a nation that should be moving forward, not backward, in embracing social justice for all, including our most vulnerable citizens. 

THE PRESIDENT:  Today I want to extend my very best wishes to all who are celebrating Nowruz around the world.

This holiday is both an ancient ritual and a moment of renewal, and I hope that you enjoy this special time of year with friends and family.

In particular, I would like to speak directly to the people and leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran.  Nowruz is just one part of your great and celebrated culture.  Over many centuries your art, your music, literature and innovation have made the world a better and more beautiful place.

Here in the United States our own communities have been enhanced by the contributions of Iranian Americans.  We know that you are a great civilization, and your accomplishments have earned the respect of the United States and the world.

For nearly three decades relations between our nations have been strained.  But at this holiday we are reminded of the common humanity that binds us together.  Indeed, you will be celebrating your New Year in much the same way that we Americans mark our holidays -- by gathering with friends and family, exchanging gifts and stories, and looking to the future with a renewed sense of hope.

Within these celebrations lies the promise of a new day, the promise of opportunity for our children, security for our families, progress for our communities, and peace between nations.  Those are shared hopes, those are common dreams.

So in this season of new beginnings I would like to speak clearly to Iran's leaders.  We have serious differences that have grown over time.  My administration is now committed to diplomacy that addresses the full range of issues before us, and to pursuing constructive ties among the United States, Iran and the international community.  This process will not be advanced by threats.  We seek instead engagement that is honest and grounded in mutual respect.

You, too, have a choice.  The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations.  You have that right -- but it comes with real responsibilities, and that place cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization.  And the measure of that greatness is not the capacity to destroy, it is your demonstrated ability to build and create.

So on the occasion of your New Year, I want you, the people and leaders of Iran, to understand the future that we seek.  It's a future with renewed exchanges among our people, and greater opportunities for partnership and commerce.  It's a future where the old divisions are overcome, where you and all of your neighbors and the wider world can live in greater security and greater peace.

I know that this won't be reached easily.  There are those who insist that we be defined by our differences.  But let us remember the words that were written by the poet Saadi, so many years ago:  "The children of Adam are limbs to each other, having been created of one essence."

With the coming of a new season, we're reminded of this precious humanity that we all share.  And we can once again call upon this spirit as we seek the promise of a new beginning.

Thank you, and Eid-eh Shoma Mobarak.

Do you love this guy or what? 

Josh gets to the key question we should be asking these days regarding AIG in today's article of the day - is AIG really too big to fail?

However, to illustrate the scope of the potential problem, he unknowingly perpetrates a misunderstanding.

Josh states that "AIGFP's potential derivative exposure stands at $1.6 trillion", as if this number is a ready equivalent of the size of the problem still to be tackled at AIGFP.  This figure apparently derives from Lucian Bebchuk's article in the Wall Street Journal.  Bebchuk, in turn, is getting it from AIG's own statements that $1.6 trillion represents its "notional derivative exposure".

I will assume,  because Josh does, that here AIG's exposure is simply AIGFP's exposure, so that we are talking about the current risks of AIGFP's business and not the shenanigans of any other division. 

$1.6 trillion is a scary number - but is it even timely?  Moreover, we need to make sure we are parsing "notional derivative exposure" accurately. What does this verbiage actually mean? Is "notional derivative exposure" simply the sum of the worst-case outcome of all the firm's current derivative positions, including the value of all collateral that might need to be provided to support those positions?  It could be.  But it would only be scary if one, it's accurate and timely, and two, it takes into account the extent to which AIGFP's current risk businesses are hedged.

Gerry Pasciucco, the current chief operating officer of AIGFP, doesn't seem to think he's presiding over a $1.6 trillion potential nightmare.  Actually, he's talking like there's not much to worry about any more.  Since he worked at Morgan Stanley for 24 years in capital markets and risk assessment before coming in to close AIG-FP down, I suspect he may know what he's talking about.

 As I've already blogged - but it bears repeating -Pasciucco stated to the  Washington Post  that the mortgage CDS's have been almost completely expunged:

In actuality, he said, nearly all the troublesome sectors of the business -- namely, the risky credit derivatives written on mortgage-backed securities -- are now out of the equation, as are the people who worked on them. That leaves a small number of employees to untangle the remaining trades in four main areas: commodities, interest rates, currency and equities -- most of which were fully hedged and have caused little problem.

Here is the guy currently running AIGFP saying that the worst is behind us, that the most toxic waste is gone, and that whatever risks remain are properly covered (something AIG was actually good at before CDS's got out of control).

So my question to Josh and Bebchuk is - why go on using AIG's $1.6 trillion scare-math as a benchmark to quantify the scope of the problem?

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Reposted from a comment on Dean Baker’s most recent article onTPMCafe, where Dean Baker may be answering it right now!)

Wouldn’t it be useful if there was something, anything, in the realm of economic jargon that meant the same thing as the everyday meaning of the same words, insofar as those words even have an everyday meaning?

According to Dean Baker, unemployment is either 8.1% or 9.5%, and this means the current recession is almost tied with 1982 for “worst since the Great Depression.” Unemployment has an everyday meaning, recession doesn’t, and neither word is likely to convey to the average reader what it conveys to Dean Baker, one of the few economists who has actually been right about anything lately.

Even the most excellent economists are constantly having problems with the jargon, and Paul Krugman, another lonely member of the Dean Baker “right about something” school of economics, says “I think quantitative easing (it’s really qualitative easing, but I give up on trying to fix the terminology) is the right way to go.”

Enough with this jeremiad, and now… a question for Dean Baker, whom I imagine hovering over his keyboard just waiting to answer a query from some economic illiterate on TPMCafe:

Interest rates are so close to zero that the usual neo-Wicksellian games with money supply don’t work, for the banks, but…

What about the rest of us?

If you increase my money supply, and lower my interest rates to zero on my mortgage, it would for damn sure have a noticeable effect on me.

So why is Team Obama still trying to get a pulse out of stone-dead banks, and inventing ever more exotic ways to resuscitate those corpses, when the rest of us who are actually still alive continue to pay interest that’s way higher than the bank premium, and we could actually use an increase in our money supply and some relief on the interest we still pay the banks?

Forget the dead middlemen! Stimulate us, instead of an economy that nobody can even describe without incomprehensible jargon

Andrea Mitchell and the folks at MSNBC and elsewhere in the media are beating this so-called "Special Olympics Gaffe" into submission.

But I note, as they fall all over themselves to create "teachable moments" about the sensitivity of words and jokes and stereotyping certain groups or classes, and the power of words, that when certain other folks complain about certain words or images or political cartoons that evoke racial stereotypes these very same people are quick to defend these "gaffes" as "unintended, not racist, not meant in any harm, he/she was just joking, we misunderstood them, I didn't know that was racist..." and they do not go out of their way to create "teachable moments" about racism.

Oh, we'll spend hours talking about a NY Post cartoon or the cover of the New Yorker or comments made by candidates and their surrogates on the campaign trail, or a radio host riffing on a women's basketball team, but the debate stops at" is it or isn't it?," and never moves beyond that.

Maybe this is the teachable moment that teaches us we need a hell of lot more teachable moments.

By Norah Mallaney for the Global Integrity Commons

On TPM's front page,  in a post headlined "Just What is a Bonus?" reader TR points out that a big part of the outrage on the part of the public is that people commonly see a "bonus" as a reward for a job well done.  Thus, in the case of a bankrupt company being rescued by Uncle Sam the common understanding of the typical American is nobody at that place deserves a bonus and certainly nothing in the millions.  This is unquestionably true.  He also points out that in the world of high financial thievery that many people are paid most of their salary as "bonuses" at year's end for tax purposes highlighting that the word "bonus" is simply being  manipulated so that people who make too much to begin with can dodge as many taxes as possible.  Of course, this also pisses off the public, most of whom don't get any "bonus" of any kind and who are just barely making it economically if they've been amongst the lucky who haven't lost their jobs, etc...

 

This whole matter highlights the obscene disconnection between the world of the executive business class and the rest of our society.  We have all known for many years now that the people on Wall Street and those who are in the executive ranks in corporations make astronomical sums of money.  Now that government involvement is giving the public a much closer look at what goes on in the business world the revulsion and disapproval of how business is done in this country grows on a daily basis.  I think this is extraordinarily healthy and long overdue. 

 

For decades accolades and honors have been heaped upon business people for essentially reaching new heights in greed, dishonesty and a "profit at all costs" mentality without regard for the negative human costs and consequences these practices often cause.  More than anything else they have been rewarded financially in ways that most people can only dream of.  Nowadays, everyone who makes less than $100,000 annually is pretty much considered a chump and a loser in the business world.  A huge majority of Americans would be included in that category of course.  According to a census bureau report from August of last year, median household income in the US is $50,233.00 http://www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p60-235.pdf.  That means half of the households in the US are making due on less than that, many on much, much less than that, many more on not a whole lot more than that.  During the period 2005-2007, only  3.7% of all American households had income in excess of $200,000.00 annually.  That number is only 4.7% of "families" according to the census http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/STTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-qr_name=ACS_2007_3YR_G00_S1901&-ds_name=ACS_2007_3YR_G00_

 

I mention these figures to remind others that the average American has virtually nothing in common with the people who are the immediate beneficiaries of this massive government rescue of the financial sector.  The life of the average American is a completely different world from that in which executives are paid vast sums even when their actions have literally contributed to world economic collapse.  I repeat: the average American has virtually nothing in common with the people who are being rescued by them in this massive bailout of the banks and financial industry. 

 

The average American has far more in common with the people who were victims of the great Christmas Tsunami in the Indian Ocean than they do with the American execs who sank the world financial system.  How grotesque is it to ask the average American who has been struggling literally for decades, just to make ends meet, to save the jobs and businesses of the people who live lavish lifestyles and who are the recipients of incomes and perquisites that cannot be justified on any logical or sensible scale?  I think that the number one thing going through most American's minds when they hear about these absurdly self-serving situations the "masters of the universe" have setup for themselves is "how dare they!" 

 

How different is the world of the average American worker from that of the thieves, conmen and crooks on Wall Street?  The average American is literally economically punished if they don't punch in on time every day.  The typical American worker's wages are meted out by the minutes they put in on the job.  Most modern time clocks measure in units of less than a minute and if you aren't there on time or take too long at your break you get docked.  No questions asked.  In the typical American workplace if you are late more than a handful of times in a year you are liable to get fired.  No questions asked.  The average American is subject to termination at any time, protected ostensibly by state and federal employment protections but in reality has none that an employer is, to coin a phrase, "bound to respect."  Absolute, iron clad authoritarianism characterizes the workplace regime of the typical American worker.  Anyone who works in the real world or remembers what it is like but who has escaped it, understands that employers rule the roost in absolute fashion and in the typical American workplace workers are routinely treated poorly, improperly disciplined and terminated, subject to all manner or restrictive rules that are often harsh and that do not allow them to attend to family responsibilities or anything else outside of the workplace during hours where attendance at work is expected and required without negative economic consequences.  A century ago this state of affairs was often reffered to, and quite accurately, as "wage slavery".  If a typical, nonunion worker is fired in America they are basically shit out of luck except in the most egregious circumstances and the burden of finding any sort of justice is on them personally which means they have to pay a lawyer themselves if they want to seek it.  But since they're unemployed at that point and have little or no savings as is the case with most workers,  relatively few pursue any sort of justice.  Most workers just take whatever is handed to them.  This has been going on for as long as I can remember and I've been working for well over 30 years now.

 

Contrast that with the world of rapacious financial wizards who receive hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars whether it's called salary, a bonus or whatever!  And the average American is being told he/she must bear the weight of bailing these people out in return for what?  What do "we" get out of this what most Americans think and they know the answer which is little or nothing and probably nothing.  The average American knows the best they can probably hope for is that the economy will restabilize and most of them will be able to get back to work.   They understand that the people at the top see the real "crisis" as being the one impacting Wall Street and the major crisis for the little people of low wages, lack of health care, employment instability and/or joblessness is secondary.

 

As stated above, most Americans can only dream of what it would be like to make money at the rate executives are paid even for one year let alone year after year throughout a career.  For my entire life there has been a concerted campaign by that top income group, who rule the business world, to keep wages and benefits for the rest of us down as low as possible and to emasculate unions and/or destroy even the possibility of workers joining unions to protect themselves and their interests in the same way executives have lawyers negotiatiate sweetheart employment contracts for themselves.  And they have done this while the productivity of the American worker has consistently risen.  The executives themselves and other wealthy people have reaped nearly the entire reward for the increased productivity of the average worker over the past thirty years.  They have met with incredible success at keeping wages and benefits down and in significant part that success has fueled the runaway growth of income inequality in this country.  When you consider the income numbers overall, the shocking breadth of the transfer of wealth over time from the average American to the very, very few at the top becomes clearer and it is truly obscene.  There's nothing those bastards don't have and they have essentially been robbing the workers of the nation of the benefit of their own productivity for decades.  This is absolutely wrong and unacceptable.

 

The obscenity of American income inequality is highlighted by things like the absurd AIG "bonus" issue.  So while not at all disagreeing with TR's point that Americans typically consider bonuses a reward for a job well done I would add something.  I think the financial sector bailout has provided a rare opportunity for the American public to voice it's strong disapproval of the sickening inequality that has been allowed to grow in this country over the past generation.  The especially galling nature of this inequality is maximized when you have this tiny class of incredibly powerful and wealthy people sucking, like the parasites they are, off the average American to save their greedy asses without so much as a thank you!  Yes, the Republicans led the charge for this, but few Democrats went out of their way to stop it or do much else about it.  This is an appropriate time for a reckoning.  So as bad as it all is, one positive aspect of the whole financial debacle is that it presents us with the opportunity to completely realign the distribution of wealth and power in this country and level the playing field back to an acceptable point where the idea of prosperity is more than a fleeting hope for the average American.  Now that the Democrats are back in charge let's see if they will really do much to correct this outrageous situation.  And if and when they do you know the Republicans rallying cry will be "Class War!" to which I hope and pray the Democrats and the American people respond, for once,  with a resounding: "Bring it on baby!"  The growth of income inequality over the past 30 years has been a byproduct of the one-sided class war waged on the average American by the bullies in the executive suites and the other wealthy people whose greed and selfishness knows no bounds.  But the time has come for the average American to show those class warrior bullies the contempt and scorn they have deserved all along and to stand up to them once and for all.  The bullies in the executive suites and their allies in American politics (mostly Republicans) are no different than any other and what they hate most is when somebody stands up to them.  Why?  Because as everyone knows, bullies are really cowards.  They make a great show and hope to get their way by initimidation, as they often do, but as anyone who has ever done it knows: all you have to do to get rid of the bully is stand up to him.  It's time the citizens of this country assert themselves by putting the economic and political bullies in their place.

 

The income numbers alone justify a new New Deal in this country that includes single payer health care, dismantling of the obscene, unproductive and grotesquely wasteful permanent war economy and massive reductions in the annual war budget that now approaches three quarters of a trillion dollars annually even in these hard times, improved educational opportunities for every American, a genuinely progressive tax system that has the wealthy paying their fair share, real and drastic action on climate change that preserves this country and our world for the enjoyment and use of generations to come and serious reduction of poverty in this country among many other things that have been sorely neglected for decades while the ruling class has pursued riches and world domination at the expense of the average American family.

 

The only way we will see a new New Deal is if we, the people, demand it.  Do not expect even the Obama adminstration to do this unless forced.  Despite all Obama's unique qualities, the people at the helm of his adminstrative ship are still all creatures of the environment that brought us the past thrity years of income inequality, jobs disappearing, growing poverty, idiotic imperialistic wars and the totally irresponsible and unethical thievery we've seen throughout the business world.  

 

Don't shy away from making the wishes and desires of the common people heard in the halls of government!  Don't listen to the voices that counsel docility masquerading as restraint or "giving them a chance."  The more time we give without demanding our voice be heard the more time we hand to the special interests to cut us out of the deal entirely.  If you don't think that's true look at the debate over health care or even the banking bailout where the lobbyists representing predatory wealth swarm daily like vultures.  The clear lesson of history and in modern politics is that if you don't make demands you will not only not be heard, you will get screwed.  The common people won't be heard at all if we are not shouting at the top of our lungs, making those who say they represent us uncomfortable (as they are now while trying to squirm away from responsibility for the AIG bonuses, etc...), and demanding we get for the common people of this country the things they have deserved for so long but have been denied.  Now is the time for people power.  It's unlikely to come again in our lifetimes, so let's act on behalf of our children, grandchildren and posterity before it is too late.

By Kate Eyler-Werve for Chicago Green Jobs

Let the backlash begin! After a spate of reports full of glowing predictions that investing in green and renewable energy will produce a bonanza of jobs, we're starting to get the "Hold Your Horses" studies. My personal favorite is the memorably titled "Seven Myths About Green Jobs" by a team of researchers headed up by Andrew Moriss, a University of Illinois professor. The study's central premise is that the methodology used in green jobs reports published by a range of organizations, including the United Nations Environmental Program and the Center for American Progress, is suspect and based on "dubious assumptions." But how do the arguments and assertions in this report hold up to scrutiny? Not so well.

First things first - who paid for this study? According to this News Gazette piece, a noble org called the Institute for Energy Research put up a sizable chunk of change. Their board of directors is a potpourri of oil execs and right wing policy wonks, and their issues include drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, expanding offshore drilling, and promoting a "free market," or "non-existent," approach to climate change. I think we can expect the IER to have bias towards the oil and coal based status quo.

It appears that this bias has carried over into the report, because there are some pretty outstanding leaps of logic scattered in the seven "myths." My favorite "dubious assumptions" in this report are after the jump.

Let's have some fun with strawmen! First up, we have Myth #4: "Green jobs promote employment growth." Here's the report's retort:

"By promoting more jobs instead of more productivity, the green jobs described in the literature encourage low-paying jobs in less desirable conditions. Economic growth cannot be ordered by Congress or by the United Nations. Government interference - such as restricting successful technologies in favor of speculative technologies favored by special interests - will generate stagnation."

Nothing about this answer makes the slightest shred of sense. The writers are setting up a false dichotomy between promoting jobs and promoting productivity.  Keep in mind, Obama's primary goal is to grow a smarter, more sustainable energy system, and growing a new industry with new jobs is a welcome bonus.  And of course, governments absolutely CAN create economic growth. In fact, most economists agree that governments are one of the last remaining institutions that can drive economic growth in a downturn of this magnitude.

How about Myth #6: "Government mandates are a substitute for free markets." Here is the report's retort:

"Reality: Companies react more swiftly and efficiently to the demands of their customers and markets, than to cumbersome government mandates."

Ah yes - oil, gas and coal companies have certainly flourished like green bay trees in this much-vaunted free market. Of course, the tens of billions of dollars in subsidies from the federal government help. It's hard to nail down an exact dollar number of the benefits our pals in the oil and coal biz get each year, but the Government Accountability Office estimated direct benefits in 2005 at $3.6 billion per year - and once you add in research and other incentives it may total closer to $39 billion each year. And corporations sure are doing a great job responding to customer concerns about the economy these days too!

In all fairness, one of the seven myths is correct. Myth #1: Everyone understands what a green job is. The report retort is "No standard definition of a green job exists." This is absolutely correct, and it's a problem that must be fixed. However, the rest of the report is essentially just a bunch of tired old ideological positions that so-called free market conservatives have been peddling for years. The backers of this report are smart enough to see that this time around the push for renewable energy has been linked to the prospect of creating new jobs.  Their best bet for maintaining a favorable status quo is to try to sever that link. Expect to see more studies like this one making the rounds.

First posted at http://chicagogreenjobs.wordpress.com/

Congratulations to the august members of the House of Representatives. You just saved America $148.5M. Of course, after countless hours of wrangling with the Senate, that will surely be reduced by half. And then, there will be the lawsuits challenging the bill-of-attainder tax on a particular company--a really, really, really bad company which deserves to be disemboweled and which we would definitely do if that pesky economic depression weren't in the way. But as I was saying, after the lawsuits and the bureaucratic overhead costs for collecting the cash, the DBO (Dagblog Budget Office) estimates the net savings for the American taxpayers to be somewhere between 0 and -$148.5M. But that doesn't matter because the point is JUSTICE! We demand that all the rich assholes deserve to pay the ultimate penalty for their greedy, greedy awfulness: TAXES! That will show the bastards.

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From The American Prospect today.  Make of the hard news what you will, and the commentary if that grabs you one way or the other.

March 20, 2009

THE COSTS OF TEMPORARY NATIONALIZATION.*

There is a lot of hand wringing about Pres. Obama taking control and Summers and Geithner being "too close to Wall Street".  Most of this commentary is coming from the premise that because "Obama is not in control", the wrong decision regarding the AIG "rentenation bonus payments" were a mistake.  As a strong Obama support, taxpayer, and business person, I say the premise is the thing that is wrong.  These payments were necessary and the right thing to do.  By the Fed putting the first trench of money into AIG, they basically "acquired" AIG, which happens in business all the time.  The Fed put in  new management (Liddy) and has a seat on the board.  They also decided that the best way to protect their (our) investment was to remove the people responsible for creating the problem, and keeping some people to get them (us) out of the mess and recoup the money.  The terms of these selected people to stay are, they successfully "unwind" their book of business.  When that happens, they will leave the company and get paid X dollars.  The payment of X dollars is by definition a retention  payment. We should remove the word bonus from the conversation because it is loaded.  Once the Financial Products division of AIG is taken apart, which is the process that happening now and is about 50% complete, the remaining parts of AIG, which are very healthly and profitable, can be sold and the Fed/taxpayer will recoup all the money with interest that was invested in the first place.

The current problem isn't the bonuses being paid or even the amount of $ of the bonuses.  The current problem is people who have no idea how to solve the problem are trying to influence the outcome of the process for political gain and putting taxpayer and Fed $ at greater risk.  Leave the people who understand monetary policy and business to handle this stuff and let's have Congress get back to solving problems like energy, healthcare and education.  That is more than enough for them to do.  They should try calming the public instead of pouring gas on the fire.

I love the analogy he makes about the toaster. It shows his remarkable skill to cut to the heart of the complex problems and yet is able to convey this information in a way that is accessible to Jay's broad audience.

UPDATE

Here is the transcript for the interview courtesy of the NYT:

President Barack Obama on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno

We should be grateful for what we have. Coveting is strictly prohibited in Exodus and Deuteronomy. You should not covet thy neighbor's goods or his wife.  I do not know whether or not you can covet someone else's husband.  I am not of that ilk, so to speak.  You would think that it is not a good idea to covet someone else's husband. Although it appears that was never really written in stone.  But I digress as Belle likes to say.

Thous shalt not covet thy neighbor's blog or blog site, even though that was never written in stone either.  As that great sage once wrote:

Well, they'll stone ya when you're trying to be so good,
They'll stone ya just a-like they said they would.
They'll stone ya when you're tryin' to go home.
Then they'll stone ya when you're there all alone.
But I would not feel so all alone,
Everybody must get stoned.
(B. Dylan)

The moral seems to be that people who live in grass houses should not throw stones. But I seem to digress once again.  

We should not just throw stones at people when we can get stoned with them.  But always ask your friend if he or she is a narc first.  It seems to help in case you find yourself drawn into something that might lead to incarceration. At least that is what my lawyer says, and he should know because he is stoned pretty much all the time.

This leads us, believe it or not, to the next:

                       ETHICS OF THE NETWEBBLOGOSPHERE:
                                          CANON #9

                        TROLLING IN THE SHALLOW WATERS

 9. Do not feed the trolls. As in life, there are always those who somehow enjoy surfing the internet to inject pointless vindictiveness. Many are classic passive aggressives who deliberately provoke others into a counterattack followed by acts of martyrdom. Don't let the terrorists win. Do NOT acknowledge these people with refutations, disagreements or even a mention of their screen name -- even when you are directly attacked by name. Responding in kind on their level is exactly what they want you to do. Be assured that your host will take action against chat bullies as soon as possible.

Now let us look at an example, I am providing sort of a compendium of some bloggers inanities and pretending it represented one blog:

WHY I HATE PEOPLE

Our country is in a lot of trouble because our President is a negro and I really do not like jews that much either.

Our own Seashell in her own inimitable manner responded thus:

Basic Yeast Dog Treats

Mix together
3 1/2 cup unbleached flour,
2 cup whole wheat flour,
1 cup cornmeal
1/2 cup skim milk powder
1 tablespoon (or 1 package) dry yeast
3 1/2 cups lukewarm chicken or meat broth

Dissolve the yeast in the lukewarm chicken or meat broth. The richer this broth is, the better your dog will like the biscuits. Let yeast broth mixture set 10 min. Then stir in flour mixture. Roll resulting dough out 1/4" thick. Cut dog biscuit shapes from dough. Brush biscuits with egg wash. Bake on greased cookie sheets at 300* for 45 min. Then turn off oven and leave in overnight to finish hardening. Makes 60 medium-sized biscuits.
    
My first response to this was that if you threw in some eggs and sugar and skipped the broth, it might be pretty good. But I think Seashell was being a little tongue in cheek. Because I found her wonderful recipe did not contribute to the discussion at hand.

And speaking of passive/aggressive, what the hell does that mean anyway.  It is like the term manic/depressive, or bad liquor. I mean, for me at my time in life and in my station in life, there is no such a thing as bad liquor.

Al Franken, in his book The Truth, recounts the beginning of karl rove's splendid career.  There was a man named Kennedy who was a judge in Alabama. Kennedy really enjoyed volunteering and one of his favorite charities involved working with poor children.  Rove simply spread a rumor that this Kennedy might be a child predator.

Of course, as rove moved up the ladder of success he saw a problem with a Vietnam vet by the name of Kerry who was a real life hero while his candidate pretended to be in the National Guard so that he would not have to serve in that war.  Solution?  Get some liars to spread rumors and even write a book of lies concerning Kerry's heroism.*

My primary point here is that trolls walk the earth. Everywhere and at all times. Not just on the net. I see them on cable, I read them in newspapers and magazines. They even write books.

Trolls do not wish to discuss issues. They wish to discredit the speaker/writer. They might just come and call you a poopy pants. They might wish to call your candidate/pundit/writer a poopy pants.

I believe that we need universal/one payer health insurance.  But as Grouch notes, 48 million of us have no coverage at all.  If some plan comes along and it is not totally one payer, if these 48 million are afforded coverage and those with less than perfect plans receive more coverage, let us take it and work on a one payer system later on. Hell the next day after passage.

Others say this is the time and the place to get what we want right now. Let us act like bulls in china shops( ever wonder about that? Why would bulls be in shops owned by Asians as opposed to Irish people or Eskimos?)

To come to a blog and respond to a comment saying:

You are nothing but a goddamn lackey for the rich and a hypocrite and your feet smell. Well that does not add anything to the discussion.

Now we all get fired up. We get angry and we make ad hominem attacks. Later we may regret this behavior. 

Trolls just seem to show up and attempt to get people off of the subject.

Craig Crawford at trail mix is attempting to advise us that it is better if we ignore these people. And when I say these people, sometimes even people like me.  When I get out of line.

TheraP might say: Go in peace.

Once she said it in one of my blogs.  But I think she really meant, go in peace. Hahahahahahaha.

Here are some of my favorite responses to trolls:

Grouch:

Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.

--Mark Twain or

Opinions founded on prejudice are always sustained with the greatest of violence.

--Francis Jeffrey

Justice Putnam:

What am I doing? Plenty, Bub! ... and Hey! Get off my lawn!!

Astral66

But XXX, we are all getting PAID to yell at you on this blog. It's part of the vast left-wing conspiracy. Don't your overlords pay you to be here doing the same? You think we do this for free?

Bwakfat:

wot is the deal with boiling, baking, and frying chicken?

Larry H.

And he often intimates that he is of a certain age, perhaps this one:

The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound.


And finally Quinn the Eskimo
       

Well, Dick's already told us he is:

A) A commie symp.
B) Wears pajamas all the time.
c) Had to leave places in a hurry.

I don't want to jump the gun here, but the pieces are falling into place pretty fast.

Che? Back at last?

Either that... or Jim Morrison.

Was it something I said?       

In conclusion I can come to no conclusion. Do I respond or do I ignore. Do I lambast or hold fast.

Or as that great sage once said:

SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO?



*THE TRUTH, by Al Franken, Penguin Group, NY, NY, 2005 (pp81-84)

 

Much of the economic policy discussion over the next few months will be about how to stop the bleeding in the financial sector, and then, how to prevent it from happening again.  Understandably so.

Paul Krugman is not alone, however, among respected economists who believe the size of the stimulus bill was, while helpful, not large enough.  Depending on what the situation looks like a few months down the road, we may be looking at a need for more stimulus.

The Washington Post's lead story following passage of the stimulus bill last month contained a serious factual error on its size relative to that of the New Deal.  I sent their Corrections department the following email on February 14:

The Post's February 14 lead story, "Congress Passes Stimulus Package" appears to contain a factual error about the relative size of the current stimulus package compared to federal spending during the New Deal. On page A10 it states: "The New Deal of the 1930s equaled no more than 2 percent of the nation's gross domestic product.  The new legislation represents over 5 percent..." 

(my name and contact information)

I received no acknowledgement from the Post indicating they had received this email.  Of course there has been no correction issued.

I have followed up with the Post's new ombudsman, Andy Alexander, to try to get the Post to respond.  He has no direct authority to make them do anything.  He can "only" make suggestions, in his Sunday column and more privately.  I have now spoken a few times with Andy, who has been in the newspaper business for some 40 years, and have found him to be smart and committed.  I also know he completely "gets" the bigger picture concerning the perilous fate of the newspaper industry.  Hopefully his efforts to bring about marked and rapid improvements in the Post's corrections process will meet with some success.  

However, the prospects for any somewhat longer-term process improvements aside, the chances of the Post either issuing a correction on the substantive matter I raised with them in the letter, or printing the letter as a Letter to the Editor, are at this point nil.  Thus this post, which is what comes to mind as perhaps the best option this Joe Citizen has at this point to try to counter, albeit in a small way, the inaccurate information in the Post's article.   

March 20 (Bloomberg) -- The Senate plans to vote next week on steep levies on employee bonuses after the House overwhelmingly approved a 90 percent tax on bonuses at American International Group Inc. and other companies receiving bailout funds.

The Senate's proposal on companies that got the federal money would place a 70 percent tax on the bonuses. Half that amount would be paid by employees, half by the companies.

This sounds like the nonsense Sen. Wyden has been spewing.  Half paid by AIG means nothing other than the taxpayers paying the tax since we are about to give them another $30 billion in a few weeks.  The 35% Tax is already the tax rate for income above $250,000.  So what does that accomplish--NOTHING.  Senate Democrats are as full of it and as corrupt as the Republicans.

Should the position ever become open, I'm not applying.  Lucifer might be a wanna be god, not aMike.  I've known that for a long time, but it came home to me yesterday when I had to play god for a while.  My nineteen year old cat, Mindy, was fading away.  A bit over a week ago, she stopped eating, save to take a few kitty treats by hand.  When her appetite did not return, I brought her to good old Dr. Burt, my veterinarian.  He did the appropriate tests, all of which returned negative, and said it was old age-she might rally but if not, I would have to "make a decision".  I made the decision yesterday.  In my god-like moment, I said goodbye to Mindy and had her put to sleep.  Euthanized.  Oh, drop the euphemisms.  I decided to have her killed.

Prescience might have made the decision easier.  If I knew of a certainty that she would be her old self the next day, I would have made a different decision.  If I knew of a certainty that she was suffering intolerably I would have made the decision with an easier mind.  But she met her end purring.

This made me meditate on the difference between humans who rather enjoy playing god, whether they admit it or not-"deciders" like George Bush and his cabal, and those who don't.  I'd put Abraham Lincoln in the second category...willing to make life and death decisions, but not enjoying it one iota.  Consider the Second Inaugural peroration:

    With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

What a peroration to an address which is a trope on the ambiguity of life.

I believe that Barack Obama doesn't like playing god, either, and that he has, so far, chosen many of his cabinet and inner advisors from men and women of somewhat similar temperament.  In the long run, this must be for the good.  But we've been ruled by god-players for eight years, and this has come to make us impatient.  We see caution and evolution of plans and programs as flailing around and wishy-washyness.  Maybe it is.  I don't know-I'm not in god-playing mode right now.  But is may be because decent men and women are faced with the kind of decision with which I was faced yesterday-and see no decision which will not cause some pain.  We hear the phrase "uncharted territory" used over and over.  I was in uncharted territory myself.  I'd never had to put down an animal before.

Obama comes to us again and again-to ask us what we're thinking, and to think with us.  So does Joe Biden.  So do the task forces he sets up.  We're not used to that, either.  He modifies his plans trying to thread the needle; producing programs which maximize the public good and minimize collateral damage.  Personally, I prefer that form of governance.  I've seen too much of its opposite in the last eight years.  I hope that public cuts him some slack-I get the feeling it will.  I also hope that the chattering classes, including the blogosphere, does the same thing.  I have less optimism on that point.


R.I.P., Mindy Cat.  I hope I did the right thing.   

Will the media's love affair with McCain ever end ??

Listen to this story yesterday from NPR's (and of Fox News) Mara Liasson here.

She spoon feeds some love to McCain using quotes from the administration's Romer who this past weekend said part of the economy's fundamentals are sound and budget dir Orzag's comments to Congress that taxing health benefits are on the table.

She then played clips from Obama during the campaign slamming McCain for those positions. And then her question to McCain is this: "DO YOU FEEL VINDICATED?"

You can contact the NPR Ombudsman here.

Are you kidding me?? What was McCain actually RIGHT about?

The economic fundamentals being sound quote from McCain was from the Fall last year when McCain would not admit that the economy was actually in a recession. Plus this new quote was not even from Obama, it was Romer.

Second, the Orzag quote was just from an admin person who did not wish to show a definitive position only to be slammed later for saying it was a definite no. So there was no committment TO tax benefits.

Then, after playing those, she asked McCain if he felt vindicated.

Vindicated for what? The economy WAS in a recession; he was wrong. And Obama has NOT agreed to tax health insurance benefits.

Perhaps Mara should spend less time on Fox News before she is removed from regular NPR segments just like Juan Williams ...

One of the wonders of the modern world is the separation of ownership from the operation and control of a company:  management controls the company but the shareholders (and in a sense, creditors)  own it.  When our government decided to buy  rights in AIG rather than nationalize it, the control of the company was left to the management.  Under most nationalization schemes the government takes over management of the company as well.  The shareholders can ultimately change the management of a company and thus its policies but the process is indirect, convoluted and lengthy.  If the government had nationalized AIG the bonuses could have been dealt with directly.

Having essentially bought AIG  the government was bound by AIG's prior contracts.  It is not surprising that when Chris Dodd attempted to limit the bonuses the staff from Geithner et al informed Dodd's staff that it was not legally tenable to limit the bonuses because of hte pre-existing contracts and the provision was dropped.This is probably correct: the best the government could have done using this method would be to make accepting the ban on bonuses a condition of receiving the bailout and leave AIG management to see if they could find a way to break the contracts.Further, providing a substantial portion of expected remuneration through bonuses was business as usual in that part of the financial world and unremarkable.

Part of the political problem is that the public thinks of bonuses as rewards for producing good results and the AIG masters of the universe had done anything but.  But actually these particular payments were ostensibly negotiated so that these employees would commit to remain with a sinking ship.

There was also a lot of gaming of the system going on: how do I set my take so the government can't change it?   How do I get a piece of the government pie?  The separation of managment from control had grown so extreme and the incentives in place -- bonuses for 'production' -- regardless of the risk to the welfare of the coporation (not to mention the world economy)  that essentially managment had upped its share of the take to rip off levels which inchoate power of the shareholders had been totally ineffective in reining in.

The use of the tax system to retrieve the bonus money is totally appropriate: the windfall bonus tax is akin to the windfall profits taxes of war time.  A segment of the population which is held to have been unjustly enriched is denied that outcome.

That said, what AIG really needed to do, based on past results, was to find some way to pay really high dollar to the Financial Products division to go work for the competition.

Yes, just moments ago Brad Blakeman told Alex Witt on MSNBC that the President should not be acting like a Vegas Sports Bookie and he should get to work. It does suck when this is all you have to criticize the President... now they are down to the "he shouldn't be like a vegas bookie and picking teams..." blah, blah, blah, blah, blah..
I am going to translate for everyone what Blakeman is really saying, "Please, please forget that the Republican's had anything to do with this financial crisis, please focus on something else entirely."
Nice try Blakeman,  but I for one am not about to forget or let other people forget.
The video will be up in a few minutes at YouTube. I will post the link soon as it is live.

If you have been following the internal political turmoil in Pakistan, here's the latest. From the Pakistan ambassador in the US:

"Hussain Haqqani has said that US as an ally might have concerns over Pakistan's emanating internal situation, but it has no role in the internal politics of Pakistan. In interview, he said that Pakistan's internal politics were exclusively a matter of the people of Pakistan."

The rest of the article is on Geo, but that is the gist of the statement. It begs the question of how involved with Pakistan's internal politics that the US has been, or whether we are getting more involved (and through which agencies) now?

The utter collapse of this Profoundly criminal Bush conspiracy will come none too soon for people like me... The massive plundering of the U.S. Treasury and all its resources has been almost on a scale that is criminally insane, and has literally destroyed the lives of millions of American people and American families. Exactly. You and me, sport -- we are the ones who are going to suffer, and suffer massively. This is going to be just like the Book of Revelation said it was going to be -- the end of the world as we knew it.

Hunter S. Thompson
"The Nation's Capital"
29 July 2003

 

Fear And Loafing At The Republican National Convention

by

Justice Putnam

 

 

VII

 

That night I dreamed again. Some beds are made of feathers or cotton, that bed was stuffed with dreams.

I dreamed I was in Ethiopia, walking across the plains with a multitude of starving people. Their bellies were round and bloated huge from hunger. Their eyes seemed just as round and protruding from their faces. The children were so small and shrunken; their bodies seemed to be merely vessels on which those huge sets of eyes moved about. Those eyes stared at me, but they stared through me too. They were looking at Death. Death was coming across the plains, getting closer with each passing moment.

Then I heard a familiar voice. Turning, I saw Cole Stanyan walking toward us, followed by a small group of well-dressed Americans. They were wearing neatly ironed clothes, smoking cigarettes and carrying cameras. Cole was speaking to them as they stepped over starving people,

"Think positive!" he cried out, "Nothing is impossible!" Cole was selling a weight loss program. Pointing to starving people, he suggested to his followers, "You too can enjoy a thin and active life by joining my, COLE STANYAN EVERYBODY LOSES WEIGHT LOSS CLINIC!"

Lou Dobbs made his way to the front of the crowd and asked,

"Cole, do you think I can lose too?"

Suddenly, everything rushed away. The starving Ethiopians, Cole Stanyan and his followers all became tiny figures on the dusty, orange horizon.

I found myself standing barefoot beside a kneeling man,

"What's wrong?" I asked, reaching down to touch his shoulder. I felt a warmth move up my arm and into my heart, as the man looked up at me.

I saw that he was Jesus. I knew he was Jesus from all the paintings I had seen. He was holding a tiny, dead lamb against his chest. The lamb appeared to have been shot. The man stood and faced me. Blood trickled onto his bare stomach,

"I feel it all!" he said, "All of it! Nothing passes that does not pass through me!"  

The man continued to cry for a very long time. I felt water rise up to my ankles and over my knees. When the water had gotten to our waists the man looked about himself and let out a painful groan,  

"I must go now!" he said, "I must go! I cannot stay in one place for very long or my tears will drown the Earth! Bless you," he said, as he turned and walked away.

 

VIII

 

That morning in the Sunrise Café, I could not help but be reminded of the starving children and the dead lamb; the dream kept coming back to me.

While sitting at the counter and watching reflections in the malt machine, I saw the same young woman who had served me the day before. Her nametag read,

"Kristen, At Your Service!"

She stood talking to a young man in a military uniform,

"You don't have to," she said in a soft voice, "until next week."

"What would you have me do?" he retorted, "My Country calls, I must go!" He leaned forward, kissed her on the cheek and walked out.

"What a jerk." She whispered as a tear slipped from her eye. Kristen walked toward me with a pot of coffee in her hand. Raising it she asked,

"More?"

"I don't drink coffee, remember?"

"Oh, health reasons, right?"

"Right, uh, yes." Was my only response. When I said, 'yes,' I meant something like, 'Kristen, you're beautiful, could we have dinner together?' All Kristen heard was, 'yes, health reasons.' I had to try again.

I stared at her for a moment as she stood with her back to me. Her orange and white waitress dress fit tightly on her trim hips. Nothing like a woman in uniform, I thought to myself. Then I suddenly called out her name,

"Kristen?"

She walked toward me,

"Yes sir?"

"Do you think coffee is bad for you?"

"I don't know, but why ask me?"

"You look so healthy, you look radiant!" I answered with a smile. I had regained my confidence. I went on, "I mean, you look so beautiful, and if you drink coffee, someone as beautiful as you, well, it's got to be good for people!"

"I don't drink coffee, though," she said.

"You mean, your beauty is natural?!" I stood as I spoke, my arms outstretched and my hands open. I must have looked like an Evangelist. I certainly had learned something from Cole Stanyan.

"Yes, yes I guess." She answered in embarrassment.

"I've got to get to the bottom of this! Such beauty!" I exclaimed a little too loudly. Kristen was frozen in self-consciousness. Her cheeks turned red as she smiled slightly at me. I leaned toward her and spoke softly, "I'm sorry if I embarrassed you, but you're lovely." I looked her in the eyes as I spoke, "Will you meet me at the river when you're off work?"

"Sure," she said, "what's your name?"

"Jacques," I answered, "Jacques Fontaine."

I felt very lucky!

 

IX

 

As I was leaving the Sunrise Café, I bumped into Officer McCourt. He was coming through the door with Cole Stanyan,

"Look here Cole, this is that Federal Investigator I was telling you about."

Cole shook my hand for a very long time. A big smile frozen on his face revealed a set of slightly yellowed teeth.

"Pleased to meet you," Cole said. He was wearing a wrinkled, brown suit, "This is our lucky day!"

"It's my lucky day, that's for sure." I responded, thinking of Kristen.

"Well, thank you!" Cole exclaimed, assuming I had complimented him. Cole had that uncanny ability to think that everything and everyone was always complimenting him. Cole was winning, no doubt. Maybe Officer McCourt was right; maybe Cole was a Saint, "You must join us! Have some of the pie!" he continued with great sincerity, "you can't lose with the Apple. Anyway, the price is right, it's on me!"

His smile stretched across his face. I was unable to say no to Cole Stanyan.

During my pie, Cole ate eggs and bacon. He managed to smoke three cigarettes and explain how to refinance the house I didn't even own. Cole was winning and insisting the whole time that Officer McCourt and I were winning also.

"Isn't Cole something!?" Officer McCourt would gush.

"Yes, something." I would respond.

Cole wanted to know what 'my game was.' He wanted to know if I thought he was a 'fraud.' But he never let me answer. He would butt in and say something like, 'I know you're just doing your job!' or 'I'm glad you're here, because I know there are those who would mislead the public.'

There I sat, a former high school history teacher, turned a decreasingly idealistic bureaucrat, at a table with a man who never lost at anything. A man, who kept calling me a real 'winner,' and every time he said that, I felt like I was losing. I finally had enough,

"Cole," I said forcefully, "I think you give people false hope!"

Cole's mouth dropped open, he furrowed his eyebrows,

"False hope," he said sadly, "false hope!" he said angrily, "false hope!!" he shouted.

I was afraid he was going to ask me to spell it.

"False hope." I repeated.

Officer McCourt was stunned. He couldn't believe I had challenged the credibility of Saint Stanyan; the Patron Saint of Real Estate Deals. Cole leaned very close to me,

"You call it, 'false hope,'" he said, regaining his composure, "I have changed people's lives." He reached across the table and put his hand on my shoulder. He looked me dead in the eye and said, "I give them the hope, the faith to become what they long to be!"

Cole sat back as Officer McCourt said, "That's it! That's what he does!"

"Mr. Fontaine," Cole said, "I know you understand me, because you're an ordinary man, a hard-working and honest man. And you want more, don't you?"

As Cole was posing the question, I was watching Kristen,

"Yes, I do want more." I said, and I did too. I wanted more pie, more time, more money and all of Kristen!

"You see, Mr. Fontaine," Cole said intensely, "I want to help you get more! I want you to be a winner!"

Officer McCourt was nodding frantically. Finally, he could restrain himself no longer,

"You'll be a winner," he pointed a finger in my face, "whether you like it or not!"

How reassuring some Police are.

"I saw you looking at that waitress," Cole said with a wink, "I think we understand each other. I'm going to send you a little gift, one that walks and talks." Cole winked again, "If you get my meaning!"

"No, no thanks." I responded, still watching Kristen.

"Come on!" Cole said, " Nobody gets hurt, everybody wins!" Cole paused for a moment, then continued, "I'm talking about tanned, young, town girls, what's wrong with that?"

I did think about it. It didn't sound too bad. But, I still only replied,

"No thanks, Mr. Stanyan."

 

X

 

I had almost four hours to kill before my date at the river with Kristen. I began to wander the town's streets. I walked sidewalks lined with plane trees and through old neighborhoods of white wooden houses with big wooden porches. I heard the sounds of televisions waft from the cool shadowy darkness behind screen doors.

On one porch, I saw a woman with her hair in rollers. She was talking with a Mailman,

"It's getting scary now!" she exclaimed, "Bill O'Reilly's been on all day. I worry about my grandkids!"

"Damn those Iranians!" the Mailman said as he handed her a large stack of mail.

"Oh, look!" the Woman said, "Coupons!"

I came upon a great trailer park, a seemingly endless labyrinth of one-way roads weaving around tiny trailers with neat, little yards. Most of the yards were covered with colored stones and pots of dusty, plastic flowers along the borders and on the porch. Low maintenance, I suppose.

Then I was out of the neighborhoods and into the business district; street after street of shops, parking lots, cafes and bookstores. I came upon a newsstand and read the headlines,

"IRANIANS WON'T BACK DOWN!"

"NAVY ON RED ALERT!"

"MISSILES POINTED AT U.S.?"

"PUTIN DARES PRESIDENT!"

"U.S. WON'T BE PUSHED!"

"PREZ TO PUTIN: 'BRING IT ON!'"

There was only one paper that didn't seem interested in the crisis. It's headline read,

"TWO-HEADED BABY BORN TO LOUISIANA COUPLE!"

By noon the sun was very hot. It hung overhead; white and glaring like a 220-watt light bulb in a small empty room. The oily, black pavement steamed in the heat as the delegates and tourists continued their trudging from shop to shop.

As I walked about, thinking of Cole Stanyan, Ethiopia, the Iranians, the Russian missiles and Kristen, I came upon a large convalescent hospital,

"The Shalom Rest Home For The Elders."

A nice name for a place where people got rid of their grandmothers and grandfathers.

Through the windows, I saw the small rooms the old people lived in; bland white rooms with power beds and televisions mounted on the walls. Each room had a small dresser table covered with a lace doily. Upon that sat a trinket or two, and many photographs. They were the Altars of the Old.

Outside on the well-trimmed lawns, dozens of seniors sat in lawn chairs. There was one very old man in a wheel chair, his legs covered with a blanket and his baldhead shinning in the hot sun. He was unshaven with gray and white whiskers sticking out of his wrinkled face. His eyes were milky white as he stared into the distance.

As I walked by, the old man raised a spotted and shaky hand; he was pointing at me and began to groan,

"Wooo...woo....woooooooo!"

"What is it Mr. Goldman?!" a skinny white-haired woman called out from a nearby lawn chair.

"I saw Him!" Mr. Goldman said, "I saw Him!"

"Who?" the old woman asked.

"Death maybe. Or, or maybe God!"

The seniors gazed at Mr. Goldman with wide eyes. Among these old folks, such visions were taken very seriously.

"Was He close?" a man asked.

"Yes, very close!" Mr. Goldman replied.

"What did He look like?" another man questioned.

"He, He was tall and shiny," Mr. Goldman stuttered, "He looked like, He looked like Abraham Lincoln from, from off the copper penny!"

I reached into my pocket and pulled out some change. I located a penny and stared at it for a moment. When I looked up, I saw Mr. Goldman's head had fallen forward, his chin rested against his chest. A young nurse leaned very close to him, her hand holding his wrist, checking for a pulse. After a moment, she looked up and exclaimed,

"He's dead!"

There were a couple of slight gasps from the seniors, and the old woman said,

"Bless you. Bless you Mr. Goldman!"

As I walked away, I heard another senior say,

"I'll be damned! Abraham Lincoln!"

 

(con't tomorrow)

 

© 2008 by Justice Putnam
and Mechanisches-Strophe Verlagswesen

He's got a tough job! 

He doesn't have the managerial experience of, say, a Cheney or a Rumsfeld!   But you (except our cherished trolls/concern trolls) voted for him, warts, inexperience, and all!   Goodness, he was a flipping community organizer until 2005! 

He handled something imperfectly?  Did you every do that as well?

Stick with your decision!  We need him to be there for us; that means someone's got to be there for him?  If not you, WHO?

(And yes, Dr. Watson, dumping Geithner to salve one's feelings *will* have negative consequences for the President, and maybe not just fo him!)   That's my rant, and I'm serious about it, and everybody have a good day! :)

P.S.  Here's some context from our ever-elegant leader, video from Leno. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20265.html   

Extensive must-read critique of Republicans' accusations against Chris Dodd regarding AIG bonuses, where it is noted that "He would have outlawed AIG-type bonuses, but Treasury and the White House got his ban removed." Must read: 

If you follow along with what has been presented in the scheme of compensation on Wall Street it becomes apparent that the idea of a guaranteed bonus is a scam to avert paying taxes on what is technically income.

There is a clear differentiation between normal income and a bonus. What has occurred is Wall Street has taken these two and made them mean what they want them to mean just to change the category of taxation which they fall under.

This is a straightforward misrepresentation of an income category.

What this really means is the IRS should go after all those persons who were paid a guaranteed contractual 'bonus' and make them pay the 'normal' tax on it. And make it retroactive.

Regular people can't game the system in this way and to allow this to stand is a gross injustice and clearly is intended to avoid paying taxes.

Send a note or call your representatives in congress and complain about this gross misrepresentation and make the IRS recover the lost taxes.

Greed is central to capitalism, much like Oxygen is central to breathing.  But put too much Oxygen in your scuba tank and you will get sick fast.  

Of course an entrepreneur should profit from their breakthrough more than any other person.  They should probably be the richest members of our society.  But that profit much be checked by the needs of society.  After all, society produced the entrepreneur before the entrepreneur produced the breakthrough.  

Agreeing on the number is the problem:  "how much pay is too much?"

Reasonable people will disagree.  But a good starting point is asking how much luxury is acceptable in light of all the suffering in the world?  If we can pool together "experts" to reach consensus on something as abstract as bio-ethics (cloning, stem-cells, euthanasia, etc.) then I see no reason why similar experts can not reach a consensus on salary ethics.  Obama can and should assemble this panel.  He's the only one with the political capital to do so.  

Also, how about limiting all inheritances at $1 million?  In the vast majority of cases, silver spoon kids do nothing to deserve this money and they should be happy that society allows even that much.   

It's true that greed is a strong motivator.  But lets not forget about vanity.  Even after reaching the maximum salary set by society, talent will still be motivated by vanity.  People love to show off what they've got.  Federer would still want to show the world that he could beat Nadal, even if he did not earn a penny for it.  Bono would still write pretty lyrics and sing to adoring fans even if 90% of his income past a certain amount was taxed.  Sergey and Larry would still want to share their stroke of Search brilliance with the rest of the world, even if it only made them $50 million (or whatever) instead of multi-billionaires.

Then there's another problem:  "if you tax them too much, they will go elsewhere" a la John Galt in Atlas Shrugged.

Well, everybody's talking about how the global financial system needs to be overhauled.  That's the central thing that needs to be overhauled.  Make it global.  With zero tolerance for nations that do not comply.  Treat violators as seriously as you would evil dictators with (actual) weapons-of-mass destruction (who really intend to use them on you).  Because the alternative is letting unchecked greed produce financial weapons of mass destruction.

All pie in the sky, I know... but hey, it's change we can believe in.  And isn't that what we signed up for last November?
     

That's according to the latest comparable figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, as reported in The Economist.

The US  accounts "... for 45% of the world's military spending--$1.2 trillion in 2007--more than the next 14 biggest countries combined."

 

As the AIG fiasco continues to fuel conversations about greed, wealth, and the intersection of public good and private business, this NYT piece today is worth noting, on the push from some New York state lawmakers to address the economic crisis in part by raising taxes on the wealthy:

It is perhaps the most potent argument offered by those who oppose increasing the income tax on wealthy New Yorkers: If you raise it, they will flee.

That case has been made repeatedly by Gov. David A. Paterson, who says that higher taxes should be a last resort. It has been featured in a campaign by Taxpayers for an Affordable New York, a coalition of real estate and business interests. And it has been on the mind of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg , New York City's richest person, who said in a radio interview, "You can't tax too much those that can move."

Yet there is surprisingly little evidence to support the proposition that rich New Yorkers would bolt if forced to pay higher income taxes. Though tracking the movement of wealthy taxpayers from state to state is difficult, experts on public finance and migration say they have yet to document a substantial "rich drain" in states that have raised income taxes in recent years.

"Surprisingly little evidence"? I, for one, am not surprised. I've thought this argument was bull from the start. In fact, I find it a surprisingly weird, warped perception on the part of some of our state and city leaders of why people like to live in New York and New York City. It ain't because it's cheap.

In fact, it's already cheaper to live just about anywhere else in the country, if not the world. You want cheap, you move to Buffalo and get the house you've always wanted. You want one of the most extensive mass transit systems in the world (so you never have to own a car); the greatest and densest concentration of art, music, film, museums, and great and exotic food in the world; the inspiring architecture (some of it); the truly impressive public park system; a cab whenever you want one (though admittedly never when you need one); 311; the brooklyn bridge, the statue of liberty; the diversity, the energy, the crush of humanity outside your door...you want all that? Yeah, you gotta pay for it.

New York Republican leaders have complained that any tax increase would force New Yorkers to pay the highest income tax rates in the country. That may be true (though there are many many poor New Yorkers who pay no income tax at all), and my reply is, "Why wouldn't we?" I live in the greatest city in the world - I would expect each of us to pay for it according to our means.

Of course I want to have as much of my money as possible - but then again, it's not all really my money. I earn money at work, but in order to get to work, I utilize mass transit. Or sometimes I ride my bike, which is made much easier by roads that are kept up and bike lanes that allow me passage. If my bike gets stolen, I have recourse to our city's police force and court system. If I get run down on my bike, there are many publicly-funded hospitals nearby that will treat me. And though I'm fortunate to have employer-provided health insurance, I would gladly instead pay more in taxes to be covered by national health insurance of some kind. The city housing department recently inspected my building and got my landlord to make it safer, and my neighborhood is kept vibrant and diverse by lots of subsidized housing, and dotted with small city-supported community gardens that make the area greener and more social. Meanwhile, the Brooklyn Bridge doesn't fall down, the tap water and restaurant food don't kill me, my neighborhood is safe, and this summer I look forward to public art projects and music and cultural events filling the city's innumerable parks. I suppose I could pay for each of those things individually somehow, but it seems easier to have it taken out of my paycheck every couple weeks, doesn't it?

Of course, I'm nowhere near the tax brackets that would be seeing these proposed tax increases. But like any American, I harbor dreams of being there someday. And if I do get there, it will be partly because of the employment and advancement opportunities available to me in New York, and I will gladly plow some more of my money back into the city I love.

I agree with Joe Biden - if you love your city, your state, your country, then love the public services they provide and which rely on your support via taxes. Absolutely fight for your money to be better spent, via the ballot box and via activism. But all I can say is, if you make hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, but New York City isn't worth a little more tax money to you...you don't deserve this city.

Why AIG Paid the "Bonuses"

He's not interested in confiscating these payments (and unless fraud etc. is evident, I'm with him on this).

Rather, I'm interested in compensation and incentivization structures in general. ... The compensation paid to AIG's employees, however, is less a moral failure than a market failure. We don't like to admit to market failures because they indict our collective judgment; instead we scapegoat and move on. But there are some ways to address these market failures; the more time we spend focusing on those, and the less on AIG, the more money we the taxpayers will save ourselves in the end.

One point I'm not sure about:

AIG struck a deal with these employees. It guaranteed them, for 2008 and 2009, the same level of incentive-based compensation that they received in 2007 (except for senior executives, who took a 25 percent haircut), regardless of how the division actually performed. The only requirements were that the employees couldn't quit and couldn't be fired for cause (a much stricter standard than the usual conditions of at-will employment.)

This turned out to be an other-than-good deal for AIG. But at the time, AIG must have believed that its hand was forced.

Where is the evidence that this was an "other-than-good" deal?  (that construction comes from some language he notes in the AIG official info, but in this context it means "bad").

How do we know that the deal AIG struck, other than perhaps with Cassano himself, didn't in fact save a lot of money, reduce the losses?

A recent article in the New Yorker presents some very disturbing insights into the sense and sensibilities of the most junior (still) Senator from Illinois, Roland Burris.

In "The Replacement," Jeffrey Toobin relates several stories about Burris, one of which was about an appeal of a death penalty case while Burris was serving as the Attorney General for Illinois.  Briefly, the appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court in 1991 came from a rape/murder of a ten-year-old girl in 1983.  Two defendants had been tried and convicted, but their convictions had been overturned on appeal in 1988, and they were retried separately.  One was retried and eventually convicted and sentenced to 80 years in prison, while the other was retried, convicted, and sentenced to death.  As Attorney General, Burris was responsible for the appeal of the death sentence, and the preparation of the appellate brief was assigned to a young lawyer named Mary Brigid Kenney (now Mary Brigid Hayes).

Hayes read the briefs of the defendant, went through the record, and reached two conclusions.  One conclusion was that the man on death row was innocent.  Before the defendant had been retried, another man (not the other original co-defendant) had confessed to the rape/murder, and DNA testing showed that it was the other man's semen on the victim, and not the defendant's.  The other conclusion was that the defendant had not received a fair trial, because the DNA evidence was excluded and the jury was not allowed to hear about it.

Hayes reported her conclusions to Burris, the Attorney General continued to oppose the appeal and push for execution, and Hayes resigned.

That is all background, because what is significant is not that Burris and Hayes reached different conclusions about the facts and the law, but Burris's explanation of why he acted as he did, and his assessment of what Hayes did.

Hayes's resignation became public knowledge and, in a press conference held to explain his actions, Burris said that "A jury has found this individual guilty and given him the death penalty.  It is my role to see that it is upheld. That's my job."  In his more recent interviews with Burris, Toobin reports that Burris "faulted Mary Brigid Hayes for her behavior."  Burris understood that Hayes concluded that the defendant was innocent but said, "Well, that's not for a lawyer to decide."

Burris was wrong (and is wrong) about "my job" and wrong about what is "for a lawyer to decide."  Rule 3.8(a) of the Illinois Rules of Professional Conduct states that "The duty of a public prosecutor or other government lawyer is to seek justice, not merely to convict."

The Model Rules of Professional Conduct of the American Bar Association are more convoluted, but would reach the same result.  Rule 3.8(h) states that "When a prosecutor knows of clear and convincing evidence establishing that a defendant in the prosecutor's jurisdiction was convicted of an offense that the defendant did not commit, the prosecutor shall seek to remedy the conviction."

As a lawyer serving as Attorney General, it was not the job of Roland Burris to uphold the conviction of an innocent man, but it was his duty to seek justice.

And if Hayes believed that the defendant was innocent, then the rules of professional ethics required her to make that innocence known.  Whether she should have complied with the decision to proceed to oppose the appeal, or should have resigned, is something on which reasonable minds might differ.  (She might have been absolved if she had decided to defer to the judgment of her superiors.)  But any lawyer with any understanding of legal ethics would agree that Hayes should be commended for her decision to sacrifice her job for her commitment to justice, and should not be criticized for that decision.

So Burris, who served as the Attorney General of Illinois (and so the top prosecutor), did not understand his job and did not understand the ethical obligations of the lawyers who worked for him, and would flunk Legal Ethics 101.

What is more disturbing is the future.  If the John Yoo "torture memos" become an issue before the Senate (and if Burris continues to serve in the Senate), then Burris might have an opportunity to opine on the "job" of John Yoo.  Was the job of John Yoo to uphold the decision of the Bush adminstration to obtain information from detainees by whatever means necessary?  Or did Yoo have a legal, professional, or human obligation to "seek justice"?  Can Yoo be absolved of any responsibility for his opinions if he was "following orders"?

Whenever a Republican steals, he and his friends always go to great pains to demonstrate that it's only 1/247 of the national budget.

Bernard L. Madoff International Securities LLC (BMIS) filed complete audited financial statements annually with the SEC. The BMIS income and cash flow statements are not available online but the the statements of financial condition for the fiscal years ended October 31, 2002, 2003, 2004 , 2005, 2006 and 2007 are posted here. (The statement of financial condition is an abbreviated balance sheet.)

The notes to the 2005 statement of financial condition are missing or were not filed with the SEC. The 2005 statement would have been the most recent one available during the SEC's 2006 investigation which makes the case of the missing notes a bit more significant.

On every transmittal sheet, Enrica Cotellessa Pitz, BMIS controller, is listed as the contact person and Friehling & Horowitz is listed as the certified public accounting firm. David Friehling, of course, is the CPA who was charged yesterday on numerous counts of fraud in connection with the Madoff scandal.

Ms. Pitz is not a certified public accountant nor was she an officer of BMIS. She has not been charged with any crimes to date.

The BMIS 13F-HR statements are available online here. These are quarterly statements listing equities held by the a firm at the end of a quarter.  

I believe BMIS was required to provide annual financial statements to the investors but to date, no one has made any of the statements available online as far as I know.   

Time to change the subject.

AIG got $165M in bonuses shoveled to its top executives. This is apparently unpalatable for the majority of Americans, but I happen to agree with President Obama on this point: It is a distraction. From the $170 billion from which the stinky bonuses came. One one-thousandth of the money, more or less.

And I can understand perfectly how bad this looks. It really DOES look bad. But here's one explanation.

When you give bailout money to save a company, it's up to that company to decide how best to spend it. If the government wants to tell AIG how to spend the money, they might as well take it over. And the rest of the failed and teetering banks, too. And about as many people favor that option as are outraged about the bonuses.

If Congress had put in restrictions, AIG would have ignored them anyway. So Dodd and the Treasury Department and even Obama know this to be true: If they'd made the bailout $165 million lighter, or put in some sort of safeguard preventing them from handing out the bonuses, that much less money would have gone to addressing the actual problems.

Those bonuses were going to be the first thing paid--no doubt about it. And if the greedy AIG executives left the rest of the money--99.9% of it, literally--to address their company's problems, then there really isn't a problem here.

Plenty of heat. Not much light.

There are so many angry people on this blog who are pissed at a lot of things.  They spend a lot of time "blogging" but are they actually spending time DOING anything?  Maybe volunteering at a food bank? Or writing letters to congress?

Just thought I would ask.  I hope people aren't wasting all their energy just typing and yelling at me.

Last night's post, updates below -

As most of you are aware, Obama will appear on Jay Jeno tonight. Of course, the show was already taped, and Keith Olbermann on MSNBC Countdown just let it be known that part of Obama and Leno's chat turned to the topic of bowling. As Olbermann reported, Leno asked Obama if he had taken the bowling alley out of the White House, to which Obama replied that it was still there and he had been practising. "I scored a 129...I know, it sounds like the Special Olympics." (for the record, this was my recollection of what Keith said on his show, around 8:30pm, having seen the original taping that had yet to be aired at midnight)

The exact transcript, according to economides:

For the record the exact words were:
Leno: Are they gonna put a basketball...I imagine the bowling alley has been just burned and closed down.
Obama: No no, I have been practicing already...
Leno: Really... really?
Obama: I bowled a 129 [applause]. Yes, I have...
Leno: Oh no that's very good, yeah, no that's very good, Mr. President. {holding his hand to his mouth to exaggerate the fact that he mocking}
Obama: (muffled) I was sorta just like...{putting his hand on jay's arm} This is like Special Olympics or something.
Leno: Oh that that's very good .
Obama: No, no, listen, I..I.. I am making progress on the bowling

 

So there you have it. Be prepared for self-righteous indignation that Obama made a joke about handicapped kids. The horror......

I'm ready to give him a pass, I'm sure we'll get a heartfelt apology pretty soon, but the wingnuts, who have been busy cutting back the very programs that help the physically and mentally challenged, will, of course, have a field day with this.

Update -

Per ABC News, the White House has issued the following apology:

"The president made an off-hand remark making fun of his own bowling that was in no way intended to disparage the Special Olympics," White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton said. "He thinks the Special Olympics is a wonderful program that gives an opportunity for people with disabilities from around the world."

Update Part II - Friday Morning Punditry -

From the New York Times:

He had one impolitic moment when trying to make a self-deprecating joke about his bowling score of 129, saying, "That was like the Special Olympics or something." But mostly he stayed benign and folksy even while discussing the need to undo bonuses, fix banks and regulate credit card rates.

From Reuters:

President Barack Obama has apologized for a gaffe in which he described his bowling skills as akin to participants in the Special Olympics, a sports program for people with intellectual disabilities...

"It's like -- it was like Special Olympics or something," Obama said.

The Special Olympics is a global nonprofit organization serving some 200 million people with intellectual disabilities, with a presence in nearly 200 countries worldwide. They compete in sporting events like the real Olympics.

Soon after the Jay Leno interview, Obama telephoned Special Olympics chairman Tim Shriver to apologize.

Shriver told ABC's "Good Morning America" television show that Obama had apologized "in a way that I think was very moving" and that he said "he did not intend to humiliate the population, didn't want to embarrass or give anybody any more reason for pain or kind of suffering."

Shriver said people should gain a lesson from the incident.

"I think it's important to see that words hurt. Words do matter. And these words in some respect, can be seen as humiliating or a put-down to people with special needs, do cause pain. And they do result in stereotypes," Shriver said.

From The Washington Post:

Obama Likens His Bowling Game to Special Olympics: President Obama seemed relaxed and in good cheer tonight during his appearance on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno." But there was one misstep that surely made his advisers wince.

Leno asked the president whether the White House bowling alley had been "burned and closed down" in light of Obama's gutter ball embarrassment on the campaign trail last year.

Obama replied, "No, no. I have been practicing . . . I bowled a 129."

The audience roared with laughter, and the late-night talk show host assured Obama "that's very good, Mr. President." To which Obama interjected, "It's like -- it was like Special Olympics, or something."

The audience laughed. But the White House didn't let the comment linger without clarification.

Huffington Post has it headlined "Obama 'Special Olympics' Crack on Tonight Show" and includes a poll, currently showing evenly split public opinion:

Quick Poll

Obama's joke about the Special Olympics was...

Just a light-hearted, self-deprecating comment. Get over it people. 28.05%

Maybe a dumb thing to say, but he didn't mean it in a mean-spirited way, and it is pretty funny. 26.73%

A tasteless comment that he should not have said, period. 22%

Why are we even talking about this? 23.22%

Breaking- PrezObama on Leno jokes about being a bad bowler- says it's "like the Special Olympics or something"

Am trying to imagine the reaction if President Bush joked that his bowling skills recalled the Special Olympics.

3 am- we just landed in dc
Preparing for day of hypocrisy: conservs who would normally defend the SpecOlymp joke acting offended, liberals saying lighten up. Sigh about.

From Politico.com's coverage:

Aside from the regrettable appearance of a president even implicitly poking fun at the disabled, Obama's comments came on the same day that he had appeared with California First Lady Maria Shriver, an early supporter and the sister of Tim Shriver.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver founded the athletic competition for the disabled in 1968.

Even before the Special Olympics remark, the idea of a light-hearted late-night turn was something of a risk for a president in the midst of a recession. And Obama had taken some criticism for it already.

But he shrugged it just a few hours before he taped the show.

First Read by Chuck Todd, et al, at MSNBC.com had this to report:

A stellar performance? Outside of his crack about the Special Olympics (more on that below), President Obama's appearance on Leno last night was a big success for the White House, considering the criticism he was receiving going into the interview.  

 *****

But a "Special" gaffe? Yet one of the dangers of a president or political candidate embarking on a non-traditional media blitz -- especially in this 24/7 news environment where opponents are looking to pounce at every opportunity -- is making a gaffe. And Obama made one when joking to Leno about his bowling prowess, or lack thereof. "It was like Special Olympics, or something," Obama said. Uh-oh. But even before the interview aired on the East Coast, the White House apologized for the comment.

I haven't seen any of the morning television talking heads weighing in on this, but from the MSM response, it appears that Team Obama did an excellent job of getting on top of this story, and getting the official White House apology out even before the taped segment aired appears to have quelled any negative responses. In watching Leno last night, it appeared that Obama was responding more to Leno's patronizing response of "that's very good", and it was such a brief, off-hand comment that it hard to see anyone genuinely taking offense at it.

 

This has been an interesting incident to chronicle. Obama does make the occasional gaffe, but he acknowledges them quickly, issues and apology and moves on. He successfully difuses the incident and denies the opposition the chance to attack him on it, going so far as to turn the event into a positive, as in this incident where he has now planned to invite participants in the Special Olympics to the White House for bowling and basketball, if I've read the above response correctly.

 

Today the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC) and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) announed an accord to work together to bring union representation to all non-union RNs and other healthcare employees in the US.

As Registered Nurses, we know all too well that working in a hospital these days means engaging in a daily struggle to provide care in an industry more concerned about it's bottom-line than about providing patient care.

 READ THE PRESS RELEASE HERE

Registered Nurses struggle day in and day out to provide care without adequate staffing and resources. Non-RN hospital staff are struggling to fulfill essential hospital functions with ever decreasing numbers of staff, while worrying that they'll be the next to be laid off.

Our patients, left to wonder if a nurse will be available to help if they ring their call-lights and whether their hospital bills will bankrupt their families are likely the most affected.

Under the pact, SEIU and CNA/NNOC, the largest unions in the nation representing healthcare workers and registered nurses, respectively, will work together to bring union representation to all non-union RNs and other healthcare employees and step up efforts to enact Employee Free Choice Act.

The resulting massive increase in unionization will improve the experience of providing and receiving care in US hospitals--and the resulting movement will change the whole nature of how health care is provided in the US.

In the words of Rose Ann DeMoro, the Executive Director of CNA/NNOC, the nation's largest organization of direct care RNs with 85,000 members in all 50 states:

"This is an exciting new day for nurses and patients across the nation. This agreement provides a huge spark for the emergence of a more powerful, unified national movement that is needed to more effectively challenge healthcare industry layoffs and attacks on RN economic and professional standards and patient care conditions. It will also strengthen the ability of all direct-care RNs to fight for real healthcare reform and advocate for improved patient care conditions and stronger patient safety legislation from coast to coast."

In the words of Andy Stern, President of SEIU, the nation's largest healthcare union:

"This marks the beginning of a new future for nurses and other healthcare workers and their patients throughout this nation. We are lining up to make sweeping changes to this country's broken healthcare system, and as we wait for the starting gun it is imperative that we put the past behind us and move forward by putting all healthcare workers in the strongest possible position to define reform, move legislation, and make the new healthcare system operational. Is this accord surprising? Perhaps, but those who recognize our shared value of making sure registered nurses and other healthcare workers have not only a say but a critical role in helping reshape a failed system into something that actually helps people know that this is the right step to help us meet the challenge and the call of this moment."

Among key elements of the pact:

• The two unions will work together to organize non-union hospital workers throughout the country, with CNA/NNOC as the leading voice for RNs, and SEIU as the leading voice for all other hospital workers.

• The unions will launch an intensive national organizing campaign with an initial focus on the nation's largest hospital systems.

• In addition to organizing, SEIU and CNA/NNOC will coordinate on a broad range of other issues from bargaining with common employers to the campaign to enact the Employee Free Choice Act.

• SEIU and CNA/NNOC publicly endorse measures that allow states to adopt single-payer health care systems.

• Both parties will refrain from "raiding," seeking to displace the existing members of the other's organization, or from interference in the other's internal affairs.

• The two unions will create a new joint RN organization in Florida to represent current and future RNs of both unions. In all other states, SEIU will continue to represent their current RN members in collective bargaining.

 

After a deeply disturbing episode of color prejudice on TPMCafe, Rutabaga Ridgepole got the blues, and his normally glowing skin-tone spontaneously inverted!

Sorry, Rutabaga, make that two who say Ewwghe! at the sight of neon orange. There are turnips — nice ivory/pale gray green soothing veg, yummy flavor, underrated in every respect… but neon orange? Other than Clementines, sorry, Noooo. Just so you know — I’ve been writing a little something about the Rorschach symbolism of various TPM avatars. Please understand that it’s not personal, but there is still time to avoid mention…. Posted by wwstaebler

Shun the perpetrator! Shun her! And her evil accomplices!

Forget not, dear ww, that with the dashboard and the following feature, your words have been read. Perhaps by many. I stand right beside you. Kudos! Posted by TheraP

Hey, guy — I love turnips, beets (golden and the regular kind) as well as rutabagas. I can even handle pumpkins and the fruit (orange), but this avatar is of such a color that I honestly feel ill looking at it. Nothing personal. Posted by CVille Dem

Shun them all!

Remember when Virg Bernero -- the Mayor of Lansing, MI -- gave FoxNews an ear-beating back in February?  His comments about working people ripping up their contracts while bonuses get dolled out like candy on Wall Street are even more relevant today.  Well, his office just sent around a Thank You e-mail for all the people that sent him a kudos when he ripped FauxNews in half.  We need more people to get fired up in public, so we'll all stop taking this colossal theft by the ruling class lying down.

Thought you'd all enjoy this:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mayor <vbernero@lansingmi.gov>
Date: Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 3:27 PM
Subject: Thank You for Your Support

Dear Friend,

Thank you for your encouraging note of support for my efforts to speak out on behalf of the U.S. auto industry and working people across this country.

We are certainly on the same page with regard to the contributions and importance of the American automotive industry and the vital role they have played in creating our nation's middle class.  I cannot sit idly by and watch as America's industrial might collapses under the weight of grossly unfair trade agreements.  I must speak out.

I know there is plenty of blame being directed at unions and at corporate management, some of it perhaps deserved, but the greatest assault on the American standard of living has come from the exporting of American jobs through so-called Free Trade Agreements that create an unfair playing field between American companies and their foreign competitors.

Over the last several decades, industry after industry in this country has been decimated as the unholy alliance of Washington and Wall Street has conspired to sell the American worker down the river with bad trade agreements that are badly enforced.

The Chinese government cannot be blamed for putting the Chinese people first.  The Korean government cannot be blamed for putting Korean people first.  Likewise with our friends in Japan.  But my question is: who is looking out for the American people, the AMERICAN WORKER?

It's obvious to me that we, the American people, are in need of a Second American Revolution, a peaceful but powerful revolution to reclaim The American Dream.  We will have to fight for the American way of life that our parents and grandparents worked so hard to provide for us.

I will be in touch soon with more specifics and a call to action, if you are interested.  I also invite you to learn more about fair trade by visiting my Facebook page and reading my CNN.com commentary at the links below:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Virg-Bernero/23362628189

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/09/am.bernero.trade.reform/

Thanks so much.  Keep the faith.

Virg Bernero
Mayor of Lansing

Office of Mayor Virg Bernero
City of Lansing
City Hall - 9th Floor
124 W. Michigan Avenue
Lansing, MI  48933-1694
517:  483-4141/Phone
517:  483-6066/Fax
517:  483-4479/TDD
mayor@lanisngmi.gov
www.lansingmi.gov
"Believe in Lansing"

 

Give 'em hell Mayor!  Other Mayors should follow your example!

Attorney General Eric Holder is indicating that he is reluctant to examine detainee treatment under the Bush administration. This followed the publication of information about a 2007 International Red Cross report containing detainee interviews that claimed torture. Holder did say that he would be bound by "wherever the law and the facts take" the DOJ, noting once again that they do not want to criminalize policy differences. The DOJ has recently had discussions with European officials about taking some of the detainees. The AG reported that they are looking who and what method might be used to try other detainees, suspected of crimes. This comes from CQ Politics of 3/18.

The Obama administration's new definition of terrorists looks a lot like the old one, says Christopher Weaver, writing for ProPublica on 3/17. The administration is no longer using the phrase "war on terror" and now, "enemy combatant." In a detainee habeas corpus case, the DOJ did not substantially change the claim to hold suspected terrorists, as it is tied to the 2001 Congressional resolution known as the AUMF. New rules will still have to be adopted. To quote the article's conclusion:

The filing is littered with ambiguous phrases like "private armed groups" and a "novel type of armed conflict" instead of "enemy combatants" and the "war on terror." The scrapping of martial lingo backs away from the Bush-era argument that asserts the commander in chief's right to lead the military independently from Congress. However, in a press release the Justice Department explained that the latest definition still relies on the international laws of war as they apply to a 2001 congressional resolution that authorized the president to use military force.

"They're recognizing a right to detain," Madeline Morris, a Duke law professor who helped prepare a major brief to the Supreme Court on behalf of several detainees. "They're recognizing that that right is not governed by existing [laws of war]," in these cases, and that new rules will need to be articulated.

What they're not doing, so far, is showing their hand, our experts agree. "In every way, it's better than the old definition," said Mariner, the Human Rights Watch expert. "It's just not substantially different."

Several Republican senators are attempting to derail the nomination of Christopher Hill as the new Ambassador to Iraq, according to CQ Politics (3/17/09). Led by Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), five senators sent a letter to President Obama urging the withdrawal of Hill's name from consideration. Brownback has also threatened to but a hold on the nomination. The others are Jon Kyle, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, James Inhofe and Christopher Bond.

Just exactly how to engage with Iran was the subject of a very interesting analysis by Adam Graham-Silverman of CQ Politics on 3/16. The headline points to a "just right approach." Dennis Ross is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's special adviser on the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia. In addition to Ross, Richard Haas, Senator Kerry, who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, and Zbignew Brzezinski also weighed in with opinions. It is a good read. To quote further:

The administration's review of U.S. policy toward Iran could be completed this week and will have to provide answers to some pressing questions, from what concessions and pressure the United States can bring to the table to what kind of Iranian nuclear program it can accept

In conclusion, here are a couple of excerpted paragraphs regarding the Middle East from my most recent CQ Behind the Lines newsletter by David C. Morrison:

Courts and rights: . . . another Post piece has the ACLU calling for an independent prosecutor to investigate CIA torture allegations. . . Old terror case files are being dusted off as the Obama administration considers prosecuting high-profile Guantanamo Bay detainees in civilian courts, focusing on pre-9/11 crimes, AP reports. . .

Over there: . . . "What failed in Iraq, fails in Afghanistan," The Strategy Page flatly concludes -- as The Long War Journal sees two Taliban leaders denying recent reports that their leader is in peace negotiations with the Afghan government. The White House is considering expanding strikes inside Pakistan against Taliban power centers beyond the tribal areas currently targeted, The New York Times reveals.

See also Behind the Links, for further info on this subject.

Carol Gee - Online Universe is the all-in-one home page for all my websites.

Technorati tags: news middle-east iran iraq guantanamo DOJ>

For Preventing the Very Rich from Being a Burden to Their Country and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public

The Dow is still dour and the stimulus is anything but stimulating. Government bailouts are now on a scale that would appall the staunchest fans of FDR and LBJ -- and still we're told it's not enough. Soup kitchens and bread lines are looking less like yesterday's newsreels and more like tomorrow's news. Even China doesn't think our money is worth the paper it's printed on.

Meanwhile, conservatives decry the growth of socialism whilestuffing as much federal booty into their pockets as they can. I say, for once, the conservatives are right. Bailouts and stimulus packages are the wrong approach. We can neither buy nor spend our way out of this economic apocalypse.

There is a solution, however - an obvious one, when you start to think about it.

Forget socialism. Think cannibalism.

It is time, finally, to eat the rich.

Imagine it. In one move we could quell the bubbling rage Americans feel at Wall Street's insatiable greed while feeding thousands of deserving souls. Eating the rich would make Jon Stewart's treatment of Jim Cramer look like a happy ending at Madame Wong's House of Oriental Massage. It would feel good and taste good at the same time.

Remember the French Revolution? It too was preceded by financial crisis. Two draining wars had left the country bankrupt, and the nobility had rigged the rules to avoid paying taxes. After centuries of abuse, the peasants took matters - and many of their blue-blooded patrons - into their own hands.

Substitute Bernie Madoff for Louis the 16th, AIG's Edward Liddyfor Marie Antoinette, a set of Ginsu steak knives for the guillotine, and voila! An all-you-can-eat buffet of the finest Americans America has to offer.

True, the French did not cook and eat their former overlords. But then, consider their bathing habits. Bad now, worse then. I'm talking freshly showered, highly pampered American flesh unsullied by the rigors of hard labor, with a sprinkling of coriander and a hint of fresh basil.

It's the perfect recipe for our troubled times.

Consider these numbers. An average 180-pound adult male provides roughly 70 to 80 pounds of meat, or about 300 McDonalds Quarter Pounders. Given the corpulence of the rich, one would expect even greater returns - for Rush Limbaugh, say, triple that amount.

Sweetbreads like the brain, pancreas, and kidneys would stretch the rich's food value even further. (However, I'd recommend avoiding the liver. No matter how much you love paté, the volume of toxins you're likely to encounter in the livers of the obscenely rich are almost certainly fatal.)

Once we've disposed of their carcasses, what remains are their assets. The Forbes 400 - or, as I like to think of them, the Quarter Pounder 120,000 -- controls over $1.5 trillion in assets alone. That would pay for 47.2 million new teachers, based on the average starting salary of $31,753. It would buy health care for 190 million Americans, based on average annual costs of $7900 per person. It would buy a hell of a lot of fries and still have money left over for millions of McSlurries.

We could feed the hungry, employ millions, shore up our nation's crippled educational system, care for those who can't afford to care for themselves, and all it would cost us is 400 lousy billionaires and a handful of Weber grills. A bargain at twice the price.

Expand this progam to the top 1 percent of Americans - who control over a third of our nation's wealth - and the benefits increase exponentially. Those 3 million Americans could feed the other 297 million for months; spreading their assets evenly over the general population would effectively give everyone a massive bump in salary, expanding discretionary spending by an order of magnitude. Recession? Stagnant GDP? Dwindling dollar? Gone in a heartbeat. It's boom times all over again.

And when these people pay their taxes (because the poor and middle class largely do pay their taxes), there will be money to repair our crumbling infrastructure and ensure the security of our financial system. It's a win win all around.

Naturally, some will object to this proposal on moral grounds. The taboo against consuming human flesh is strong. But gross immorality is what got us here in the first place. The bankers and brokers who brought our economy to the brink of collapse had no qualms about cannibalizing our future and no limits to their gluttony. They've been face down in the trough while millions lost their jobs, their homes, and their hope.

I don't think we'd need to eat all of the rich. A few well orchestrated meals would likely convince the rest to stop acting like swine. They could start by giving the money back.

History doesn't lie. When the people have finally had enough, they rise. When they get angry enough, taboos slip away. Whether they march on the Bastille with torches and pitchforks or on Bear Stearns with knives and salad forks, the result is the same. Blood flows just as easily as money.

It's food for thought.

-- The WitList (with apologies to the ghost of Jonathan Swift.)

Okay today I'm really to tired to look for something good to blog about (I thought only Steven King could keep me up til after 10pm reading, you guys are great by the way my day starts at 2am thats why I'm tired today).

  Anyway, this has been on my mind for awhile now so I blog about it today.

  You always hear people say that life was easier "back in the old days" I really think they were but not for the reasons they do.

    Back in lets say the 50's people had a different personality than they do today. I mean I've lived in this house for over 3 yrs and don't even know my neighbors name let alone anything else about them. That would have been unheard of in the fifties in a small town.People cared about each other and everybody tried to get along.

    Now don't get me wrong there were problems then  just to a lesser degree. And no I don't want the racism back

   But nowadays nobody cares about anybody but there own and to many people think the world owes them something

 These were just my thoughts so maybe I just live in the wrong small town.

 But remember no matter how bad things get we still live in the best country in the world!!

     I hope everybody has a nice day.

First posted at RACblog.

Late last night, Governor Bill Richardson signed legislation abolishing the death penalty in the state of New Mexico! This makes New Mexico the second state (New Jersey being the first) to abolish the death penalty since 1965. Today, we released statements from Reform Rabbis in New Mexico, celebrating the repeal. They have all fought hard for this crucial step forward and their congregations are also organizational members of the New Mexico Coalition to Repeal the Death Penalty. So, how did the Colosseum make the headline of this post? To celebrate "every time a death sentence is commuted somewhere in the world or a government abolishes capital punishment," the Roman Colosseum is "bathed in light."

Read more »

 What's the real story? __

And these are the folks that have brought you that video:

~OGD~

I hate to see Josh joining the rest of the impatient and skin-deep digging media is whining for President Obama to "show'em who's boss!". While I don't know whether or not I am a fan of Larry Summers, I do know that I agree with him that we are a nation of laws (remember how upset we were that this fact was conveniently forgotten for 8 years?) and that the government forces abrogation of contracts at great peril to order in this nation.

David Shuster, et al, may not know it but there is a difference between abrogation and re-negotiation. President Obama knows that and has demonstrated numrous times that he is prone to taking the long view.

Chill out!

Wes Cain
Overland Park KS

Well, not really. Just amused and not buying it one bit. The House did what it had to do, legal niceties be damned. And the Senate and the White House, tone-deaf or not, will fall in line.

Is this just catering to populist anger? Absolutely. Is Congress hypocritical in parroting that anger? Yep. Is the amount to be recovered negligible weighed against past, current and future bailout totals? Obviously.

But is the clawback a first step toward arbitrary meddling with the tax code? No, it's a one-off -- or it will be, if Congress, the White House and above all Wall Street internalize the warning: No more business as usual. Or to quote Jon Stewart, "It's not a fucking game." As a bonus (no pun intended), once a Republican has voted for a 90% tax rate, it's hard for him to argue a 35% marginal rate is unconscionable and socialistic.

Is the clawback a distraction from the all-important task of creating a regulatory system that works? Not at all; it's actually put more focus on that need, probably speeding its passage. The AIG bonus issue had to be defused before that larger debate can begin.

Americans, I know, are reluctant to hit the streets. But we're at a potential Kerensky moment here. If an arguably unenforceable tax law is the alternative to Dr. Guillotine dragging out his new invention and demonstrating it in public, maybe that's a reasonable price.

Based on this document, here's why the government didn't have much choice:

First, the legal ramifications.  The contracts that comprise the 'retention plan' are governed by Connecticut state law.  Under the law, if AIG does not pay out the bonuses, the employees can sue.  If they sue and win, AIG would be liable for up to twice the bonus amount plus legal fees.  These contracts were entered in to before AIG took any bailout money.  What if the employees win?  Now $165 million in bonuses becomes $330 million, plus what would end up being probably millions in legal fees.  I'll agree that there certainly should be some investigation regarding fraud, which could nullify the contracts. A legal decision against the employees, or worse action from the Federal government to nullify them 'just because it's morally reprehensible' is a very bad road to start down, though.  You want socialism?  Government power to nullify any contract on a whim, especially out of 'fairness' is a HUGE step in that direction.

That's not even the real problem, though.  Right now AIG is a ticking time bomb.  The incredibly complex web that AIGFP has woven must be carefully unraveled.  The best people to do that may be the same people that wove it in the first place.  Not only that, but those people have so much information about AIGFP's holdings that if they left, they could actually use it against the company to start trading against its positions, making money for themselves and doing even more harm to the company as a result.  It's unfortunate, but we probably actually need a lot of these people to sort everything out.

But even THAT isn't the real problem!  The REAL problem comes back to contracts:

AIGFP's derivatives portfolio stands at about $1.6 trillion and remains a significant risk. Failure to pay the required retention payments [bonuses] therefore could have very significant business ramifications.

For example, AIGFP is a party to derivative and structured transactions, guaranteed by AIG, that allow counterparties to terminate in the event of a "cross default" by AIGFP or AIG. A cross default in many of these transactions is defined as a failure by AIGFP to make one or more payments in an amount that exceeds a threshold of $25 million.

In the event a counterparty elects to terminate a transaction early, such transaction will be terminated at its replacement value, less any previously posted collateral. Due to current market conditions, it is not possible to reliably estimate the replacement cost of these transactions.

However, the size of the portfolio with these types of provisions is in the several hundreds of billions of dollars and a cross-default in this portfolio could trigger other cross-defaults over the entire portfolio of AIGFP.

The above is from the document I linked, and the emphasis is mine.  This is why these silly, comparably tiny 'bonus' payments are the potential detonator for this very unstable situation.  In plain english, the above passage means that if AIGFP fails to make a payment that exceeds $25 million, AIGFP may have to pay out on their contracts.  The bonuses could constitute such a failure to pay, at which time AIGFP would be liable to pay up.

It would be as if your car loan had a stipulation that if you failed to pay your electric bill, you would be required to immediately pay off the entire balance of the loan, or at least the current cost of the car.  Oh, and you have no idea what the car is worth, because nobody is buying a 74 El Camino with a disco ball and an 8-track, so you couldn't even try to sell the car to meet the obligation.

In short, AIGFP is screwed.  By extension, the US Government and the taxpayers are screwed.  If AIG refused to pay the bonuses,  they risked not only paying out more than double after protracted legal battles, but risked AIGFP's customers calling in their liabilities too - all at once.  So, $165 million, or $1.65 trillion?  Sounds like an easy choice to me.

(I had more to say about this issue...you can read it here if you'd like)

President Barack Obama will be appearing on the Jay Leno "Tonight Show" tonight at 10:30 central daylight time.

There are some republicans (shock) complaining about Obama taking time away from Washington to go on a talk show.  There are also political pundits accusing Obama of "slipping pass" NBC's "Meet the Press" with David Gregory, as though it wasn't 'famous' enough for Obama to appear on.

They are all wrong. 

President Obama promised to "stay in touch" with the American people.  That means going on shows like the Tonight show and having prime time press conferences.

Going on the "Meet the Press" show or any other Sunday talk show gets the attention of political pundits and political nut cases like myself; but if you want to talk to 'normal' people, you go to the root base.  Talking on Sunday talk shows is like having a "club" meeting.  The members/workers of that club never really get 'all the facts' from any such meeting.

So Obama, have at it!  Let the 'people' know how you are doing and what you are thinking about doing.  Ignore the Washington and political pundit groups.

                                                 WHAT, ME WORRY


A well-placed source in the publishing industry says George W. Bush's book deal is valued at about $7 million. The former president has already written 30,000 words of the book, to be published by Crown and tentatively called Decision Points, which will focus on his most important life lessons. "I want people to understand the environment in which I was making decisions. I want people to get a sense of how decisions were made and I want people to understand the options that were placed before me," he told AP. Although Bush's $7 million deal is $8 million less than Bill Clinton's deal for My Life, the new book will not be a memoir: Instead of recounting his life story, he'll write about a dozen personal and professional choices, including giving up drinking and picking Dick Cheney as his vice president.
Read it at The Daily Beast


        
I was lucky enough to receive some excerpts from this upcoming biography of the greatest man to ever

It all began in a mansion somewhere in Connecticut more than half a century ago. Heh heh heh.

I was not the best of the studententiary growing up in affluency. But I had a heck of a good humorousness and it led to other things. Hehehehheheh (How do you spell that in a correctness manner anyway?)

I ended up becoming an Eli kind of guy anyway and was admissioned to the Skull & Bones frat house due to my heritageness as well as well as my personabilityness. Not every enroller was entranced into this finely honed club.

I then proceeded to be graduationed receiving gentlemanly C's which was not easy to attain when you are the party animal I was. I proceeded to Harvard. Now maybe they did not desire my presence at their Law School, but they immediately required my presence at their business administration center. I figerred that if I could skate through there the way I skidded through Eli's school, I could skid anywhere.

I embarked-I like that word, learned it at Yale-upon a series of business ventures.  So far all of these activations that I found myself in, had been my decisions and my decisions alone. Although I always thank my father for his contributions, meaning my allowances.  The more I did what he told me, the more allowances I received. 

However, there was a great battle against communistic peoples during this time and I felt it repugnant upon me to join the fray as they say and so I signed up with the guard. That's what we called it back then. Besides supplementations of my allowances, I was able to keep my white ass out of that hole called Nam. I had the best of all possible worlds. They called me 'lieutenant' and I had no real worry about receiving those nasty battle scars-I received enough of those at that skull and bones thing, I tell you I would awaken and not know where I was-and I received recommendationaries. I have a box full of them. Honest.

So as I reached this time in my life, my decisions had a lot to do with my inheritances as well as my allowances and supplementations and it was time to move on to other decisions. And as always, I went to Dads and I said Dads, what should my decisiveness be now?  And he said to go see some of his friends because if nothing else, I had friendliness with Dads' friends.

Now I had some set backs in those long days with friendliness and businessness but that is the way the ball slams into the wall, so to speak. (One thing I did learn with all that schoolin was that I had a way with wordiness and oftimes friends of mine would point out the fact that few people could duplicate my way with words.)

We must skip over those tremendous and awesome business exploits of mine over the following years. At any rate, the money ran out and Dads said I could get back my old allowance and more if I headed his campaign for reelection. For sure it was a set back when we lost, but with all losses that which does not destroy you now, will fool you twice. So I decided, and this is where decisiveness comes in which is the title of my book, to always have people around me who would make my decisions for me. Always have a back up plan. And mine was to have people make decisions for me and when they screw up you can blame them and walk away free as a bird.

At this time I met turd blossem. And he made decisions for me. He made decisions so goodly that I was elected to the governorableness of the the great State of Texas. Now before that I had to make some preparednesses. So I learned this here accent. Turd blossom would have me watch old cowboy movies for hours at a time, when he was not reading to me, and I picked up that accent just like that and I never lost it.

Then we decided, why not be president. I mean, I never cheated like that Clinton guy-mainly because little g, that is what poopsy calls it, never quite worked right anyway-and besides Dads said, hell we can get a mess of money from peoples that owe him and I could be on tv all the time and stuff. And turd blossom would get others to write down what I should say and everything would be hunky dory.

And then I got elected to the Presidentness of these United States. Now what would I do? How would I make those decisions? Turd blossom was not enough. I needed more. So I got dicky c and now I had the guy who could tell me what to do all the time. And then he got rummy to help out in those decisions.

Now everybody likes to say that dicky c ran everything. That is not true. I was in that ovary office, not dicky c.  But dicky c showed up everyday with my briefings and we were on our way.

So, when it comes to decisiveness, find somebody who is decisive. And things will go much easier.