There is no law except for street justice and vigilante law

max keiser rants away on hank paulson...



the above is the full 26-minute clip from today's keiser report... there's a lot in there but the point i want to emphasize starts at 2:12... what keiser is saying - and with which i totally agree - is that, for people like paulson and the other criminal bankers, at this point in time, there IS no law... they are free to operate without consequences, laying waste to the global economy as they see fit and turning the 99.5% into serfs in perpetual bondage...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 1 comments

Three big banks now hold $3 of every $10 on deposit in the U.S. while the little fish continue to die off

the "too big to fail" banks are, gosh and golly sports fans, now even BIGGER thanks to the strategy pursued by those who supposedly have the common good of the citizenry at heart... HA...!

check the stats in the last paragraph...

When the credit crisis struck last year, federal regulators pumped tens of billions of dollars into the nation's leading financial institutions because the banks were so big that officials feared their failure would ruin the entire financial system.

The crisis may be turning out very well for many of the behemoths that dominate U.S. finance. A series of federally arranged mergers safely landed troubled banks on the decks of more stable firms. And it allowed the survivors to emerge from the turmoil with strengthened market positions, giving them even greater control over consumer lending and more potential to profit.

J.P. Morgan Chase, an amalgam of some of Wall Street's most storied institutions, now holds more than $1 of every $10 on deposit in this country. So does Bank of America, scarred by its acquisition of Merrill Lynch and partly government-owned as a result of the crisis, as does Wells Fargo, the biggest West Coast bank. Those three banks, plus government-rescued and -owned Citigroup, now issue one of every two mortgages and about two of every three credit cards, federal data show.

leapin' lizards, batman...! that essentially means that you and i are now officially wholly-owned subsidiaries of the banksters...

meanwhile, the smaller fish continue to die off...

Regulators seized 45 firms during the first half of the year. In the past two months they have closed 36 more, including regional powerhouses Colonial Bank of Alabama and Guaranty Bank of Texas. The FDIC said Thursday that it counted 416 banks at risk of failing as of the end of June, a 36 percent increase from the first quarter. As with the cost of failures, the number was the highest since the early 1990s, when regulators were dealing with the aftermath of the savings and loan crisis and excessive lending for commercial development.

In recent quarters, the failures have forced the FDIC to spend more money than it collects. Banks use money from depositors to make loans. As a result, when a bank fails, much of the depositors' money is no longer in the vaults, and some of it is tied up in loans that will never be repaid. The FDIC was created by Congress to replace the missing money -- up to $250,000 in each account, under current rules.

The insurance fund held $45.2 billion at the end of June 2008. It held $13 billion at the end of March. The agency has warned that the balance could reach zero by the end of the year.

oh, but never fear... between you and i and our deep pockets, the treasury can always print more money to hand out...

Should the FDIC need even more money, the agency can borrow from the Treasury Department, then repay the government with fees collected from banks in years to come.

and what about the economic recovery that all the punditocracy is crowing about...? not so much...

[I]n an indication that the industry has not turned the corner, the share of troubled loans increased even more quickly. A trend that began with distressed mortgage lending has long since spread to other categories including credit card lending, loans to small businesses, and -- now deteriorating most rapidly -- loans for commercial real estate development.

kinda warms your heart, doesn't it...? in the mad dash of our controllers and handlers to preserve the status quo - the status quo of the super-rich and powerful elites, that is - we've ended up not only preserving the status quo, we've significantly bolstered it... heckuva job, tim... heckuva job, ben... heckuva job, larry... heckuva job, hank...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Goldman's Blankfein and Treasury's Paulson - one hand washes the other

ya can't tell one player from another without a program...

from the nyt via raw story...

Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson wasn’t on Goldman Sachs’ payroll when the US government bailed out his former employer, but he may as well have been.

That’s the implication in a New York Times article, published Saturday, that shows President George W. Bush’s last treasury secretary, a former CEO of investment bank Goldman Sachs, had frequent conversations with the current CEO of Goldman during the week of Sept. 16, when the US government handed over $85 billion to rescue the troubled insurance giant AIG.

AIG’s outstanding debts to Goldman Sachs meant that $13 billion of the money handed over to AIG went directly to Goldman Sachs.

“During the week of the AIG bailout alone, Mr. Paulson and [Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd] Blankfein spoke two dozen times … far more frequently than Mr. Paulson did with other Wall Street executives,” the Times reports.

The revelation is sure to fuel further claims that the $700-billion Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, passed by Congress last fall with the support of both major presidential candidates, Barack Obama and John McCain, was “gamed” by Paulson in order to help out his colleagues at Goldman — and preserve his own reputation, which he made as the bank’s CEO.

Paulson spoke with Goldman’s CEO in an official capacity a total of 26 times before the treasury secretary was granted an “ethics waiver” that allowed him to be in far closer contact with his former employer than would have otherwise allowed, Reuters notes.

i'm shocked, SHOCKED, i tell you...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Summers, Paulson, Rubin, Geithner, Bernanke, Liddy, and Blankfein are schizoid

chris hedges, writing on truthdig via alternet...

Our elites are imploding. Their fraud and corruption are slowly being exposed as the disparity between their words and our reality becomes wider and more apparent. The rage that is bubbling up across the country will have to be countered by the elite with less subtle forms of control. But unless we grasp the "societal play of forces that operates beneath the surface of political forms" we will be cursed with a more ruthless form of corporate power, one that does away with artifice and the seduction of a consumer society and instead wields power through naked repression.

[...]

"The idea that virility consists in the maximum degree of endurance long ago became a screen-image for masochism that, as psychology has demonstrated, aligns itself all too easily with sadism." [Theodor Adorno, "Education After Auschwitz"]

Sadism is as much a part of popular culture as it is of corporate culture. It dominates pornography, runs like an electric current through reality television and trash-talk programs and is at the core of the compliant, corporate collective. Corporatism is about crushing the capacity for moral choice. And it has its logical fruition in Abu Ghraib, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and our lack of compassion for the homeless, our poor, the mentally ill, the unemployed and the sick.

[...]

The corporate state holds up as our ideal what Adorno called "the manipulative character." The manipulative character has superb organizational skills and the inability to have authentic human experiences. He or she is an emotional cripple and driven by an overvalued realism. The manipulative character is a systems manager. He or she exclusively trained to sustain the corporate structure, which is why our elites are wasting mind-blowing amounts of our money on corporations like Goldman Sachs and AIG. "He makes a cult of action, activity, of so-called efficiency as such which reappears in the advertising image of the active person," Adorno wrote of this personality type. These manipulative characters, people like Lawrence Summers, Henry Paulson, Robert Rubin, Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, AIG's Edward Liddy and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, along with most of our ruling class, have used corporate money and power to determine the narrow parameters of the debate in our classrooms, on the airwaves and in the halls of Congress while they looted the country.

"It is especially difficult to fight against it," warned Adorno, "because those manipulative people, who actually are incapable of true experience, for that very reason manifest an unresponsiveness that associates them with certain mentally ill or psychotic characters, namely schizoids."

interesting... i've had a lifelong aversion to corporate types of the sort that adorno describes, for most of the same reasons he outlines... i've found most of them to be the sort of people that i simply wouldn't consider having as friends...

in addition, i've noticed that there's an entire sub-category of such individuals i would characterize as " 'manipulative character' wannabes"... these are the people who set out to be the summers, paulson, rubin, geithner types but couldn't quite cut it... you can seem them walking the corridors of organizations everywhere, semi-brain dead, but still pledging fealty to the system that rejected them...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

The $7.76 TRILLION DOLLAR BAILOUT - enough to gag a maggot and could pay off HALF the country's mortgages!

bloomberg is keeping score...

The U.S. government is prepared to provide more than $7.76 trillion on behalf of American taxpayers after guaranteeing $306 billion of Citigroup Inc. debt yesterday. The pledges, amounting to half the value of everything produced in the nation last year, are intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up 15 months ago.

The unprecedented pledge of funds includes $3.18 trillion already tapped by financial institutions in the biggest response to an economic emergency since the New Deal of the 1930s, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The commitment dwarfs the plan approved by lawmakers, the Treasury Department’s $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. Federal Reserve lending last week was 1,900 times the weekly average for the three years before the crisis.

When Congress approved the TARP on Oct. 3, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson acknowledged the need for transparency and oversight. Now, as regulators commit far more money while refusing to disclose loan recipients or reveal the collateral they are taking in return, some Congress members are calling for the Fed to be reined in.

“Whether it’s lending or spending, it’s tax dollars that are going out the window and we end up holding collateral we don’t know anything about,” said Congressman Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican who serves on the House Financial Services Committee. “The time has come that we consider what sort of limitations we should be placing on the Fed so that authority returns to elected officials as opposed to appointed ones.”

so, how does this all trickle down to you and me...?

The money that’s been pledged is equivalent to $24,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. It’s nine times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional Budget Office figures. It could pay off more than half the country’s mortgages.

and, ferchrissake, they won't even tell us WHO'S GETTING THE GODDAM MONEY...!

“Some have asked us to reveal the names of the banks that are borrowing, how much they are borrowing, what collateral they are posting,” Bernanke said Nov. 18 to the House Financial Services Committee. “We think that’s counterproductive.”

The Fed should account for the collateral it takes in exchange for loans to banks, said Paul Kasriel, chief economist at Chicago-based Northern Trust Corp. and a former research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

“There is a lack of transparency here and, given that the Fed is taking on a huge amount of credit risk now, it would seem to me as a taxpayer there should be more transparency,” Kasriel said.

if it feels suspiciously like we're getting screwed big-time, i would have to say, a la sarah palin, "YOU BETCHA...!"

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

'Scuse me, but I have a VERY strong suspicion about WHY there's opposition to an automaker bailout

yes, i'm cynical, but you already knew that...

i was watching cnn last evening where paulson and bernanke were testifying before congress on the bailout... this was interspersed with stories about the big three automakers also scheduled to appear with hat in hand... now, i don't know about you, but i've been watching our - taxpayers' - money being handed out by the billions to banks, insurance companies, investment brokers and damn near everybody else that passes by, and i was sitting there trying to make sense out of why, fercryinoutloud, our super-rich elites, personified by paulson and bernanke, people who've been so free with our money up to now, were suddenly so hard over against helping detroit... then it dawned on me...

what sets detroit's situation apart from the banks, insurance companies, etc...? hmmmmmm...?? think about it... yep, that's right... unions AND a very large, blue-collar labor force... what is it that our elite, corporatist, super-rich overlords hate beyond almost everything else...? hmmmmmmm...? that's right... unions... who works for banks, insurance companies and investment brokers...? hmmmmmm...?? the super-rich power brokers, that's who... why would these people who are so busy feeding at the taxpayer trough pass up the chance to completely destroy the unions AND take out a large swath of the u.s. middle class in one fell swoop...? what a golden opportunity...!

don't get me wrong... i'm not favoring a detroit bailout... i'm just trying to understand an apparent contradiction... why is aig "too big to fail," but detroit, with almost three million jobs at stake, can be flushed down the toilet without a backward glance...?

just sayin'...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Bite me, Henry...!

you suck...

Fighting the Financial Crisis, One Challenge at a Time
By HENRY M. PAULSON Jr.
If we have learned anything throughout this year, we have learned that this financial crisis is unpredictable and difficult to counteract.

unpredictable, my ass... when an entire economy is built on nothing but expanding debt, it's most definitely possible to predict that, at some point, it's bound to collapse... get a clue, you fool... you may THINK we all just fell off the turnip truck, but, guess what...? ain't so...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Expanding TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program

good god almighty...

mish's view...

In late breaking news, Treasury Secretary Paulson has announced a new plan to expand TARP coverage.

Congress was behind the push as Pelosi, Reid Press for TARP Aid for Auto Industry.

and be sure to check this little amazing revelation...

Competition to get under TARP coverage is so high that Auto Makers Would Accept Strings on Aid.

oh, N-O-O-O-O-OOOOOO...!! they'd accept STRINGS...!! what is the world coming to...?

mish, no stranger to snark, offers this in conclusion...

Details of the exact nature of the new treasury plan were kept under wraps, but photographer Keith Taylor managed to sneak into the "Situation Room" and capture this stunning image of exactly who would be covered under the new TARP initiative.

News is sometimes so bizarre now that it is hard to tell fact from fiction.

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

What's this crap about "taking an ownership stake"...? It's nationalization, fercryinoutloud...

no matter how much you polish a turd (see previous post)...

The Treasury Department is dramatically expanding the scope of its bailout of the financial system with a plan to take ownership stakes in the nation's insurance companies, signaling new concerns about a sector of the economy whose troubles until now have been overshadowed by the banking industry, government and industry sources said.

Insurers, including The Hartford, Prudential and MetLife, have pushed the Bush administration to include them in the plan. Many firms have taken losses from mortgage-related securities and other investments and are struggling to replenish their coffers.

Government officials worry that the collapse of a major insurer could further destabilize the financial system because of the crucial role the companies play in backstopping a wide range of financial transactions, although the direct impact on holders of car, life and other insurance policies would be modest, industry officials said.

The new initiative underscores the growing range of problems that Treasury is scrambling to address with the $700 billion allocated by Congress this month. The shape of the plan has changed repeatedly since Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. introduced it last month as an effort to rescue banks by buying their troubled mortgage-related assets. That original mandate has now been pushed aside by a plan to take equity stakes in banks and insurance companies, and other businesses are lobbying to be included.

The government has been forced to expand the plan partly because the federal guarantees previously given some institutions, such as banks, have put other companies and financial sectors at a disadvantage, making them less attractive to uneasy investors.

The government's power to choose winners and losers in the crisis was illustrated yesterday when the Cleveland-based bank National City was forced to sell itself when regulators turned down its request for a Treasury investment after deciding the firm was too weak to save, according to people familiar with the matter. Instead, the Treasury gave $7.7 billion to PNC Financial Services Group to help buy National City. It did not require that the money be used for new lending, the stated purpose of the government plan. PNC, which has a major presence in the Washington region, would become the fifth-largest bank in the country by deposits.

the size of the bailout seems to grow exponentially minute-by-minute... pretty soon, pharmacy chains are going to be included because people are cutting down on refilling their prescriptions...

With the economy in crisis, people are cutting back on their prescriptions because they can't afford them.

A recent study says the number of prescriptions filled through August of this year is down compared to the same time period last year.

and then we'll bail out the restaurants because people can't afford to eat out as much...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Dear Senator: "If you vote for this bill, you will not get my vote in the next election"

it's not very often i urge people to phone, email, write or fax anybody, but, after sending off three sets of emails and two sets of faxes to my senators, reid and ensign, wherein i threatened to withdraw my support for them in perpetuity if they supported and voted for the bailout bill, i read this on mish's global economic trend analysis and was moved to put up a post...

Sample Fax

Dear Senator/Congressional Leader

The Paulson plan is not workable. It is a sellout to corporate America at taxpayer expense.

Nouriel Roubini: "Paulson Plan is a Disgrace"

On Friday, Nouriel Roubini, the most widely respected economist in the country stated...

"The Treasury plan is a disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed households and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown."

Former FDIC Chairman Weighs In

"Bailout Plan Will Not 'Work' in Current Form"

Mad Rush To Financial Judgment

On Friday we heard president Bush and Paulson, preach the same set of lies they have preached before.

• There can be no delay.
• Sweeping new Powers for the Fed are needed.
• The Treasury needs $700 billion dollars.
• There is no time to study alternatives.
  

In your heart you know all of the above are lies. It was the very same mad rush to judgment that started the Iraq War. We do not need and cannot afford a financial mad rush to judgment.

Thee odds of failure on the Paulson plan are 100%. The Paulson plan will not create any jobs or help homeowners pay their bills. Instead it diverts $700 billion of taxpayer funds to failed banks that took excessive risks. The sheer size of the bailout will cause interest rates to rise, further adding to taxpayer woes.

Long term interest rates are already up a half point on news of this bill. They will rise more if it passes. How is that supposed to help homeowners?

Robbing taxpayers to pay failed banks cannot possibly work!

Printing money and giving it away cannot work either. If it did work, Zimbabwe would be the most prosperous nation in the world.

190+ Economists Slam Bailout

Over 190 top economists in the country have slammed this bailout on grounds of fairness, ambiguity, and long term effects.

http://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/john.cochrane/research/Papers/mortgage_protest.htm

Paul O'Neil Is Against The Plan

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said today that our nation's leaders -- especially President Bush -- are "in a panic" and haven't thought through the $700 billion bailout plan in a rush to pass it by the end of the week.

"I don't think he understands or knows much about any of this and it shows. It is possible to re-liquefy the credit system without 'We the People' owning $700 billion worth of homes," he said.

BB&T Corp. Chief Executive Officer John Allison critiques the plan

Treasury "is totally dominated by Wall Street investment bankers" and "cannot be relied on to objectively assess" the impact of government policy on the financial industry, Allison wrote in a Sept. 23 letter to Congress.

The letter was verified by Bob Denham, a spokesman for BB&T, North Carolina's third-largest bank.

• What is it that Paulson knows that 190+ economists don't?
  
  
• What is it that Paulson knows that William Isaac, former chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. does not know?
  
  
• What is it that Paulson knows that former Treasury Secretary O'Neil does not know?
  
  
• What is it that Paulson knows that small bank CEOs who avoided this mess do not know?
  
  
• What is it that Paulson knows that Roubini does not know?
  

Remember it was Paulson who was telling us all how safe the US Banking system was just a few weeks ago.

Roubini: "It is a disgrace that no professional economist was consulted by Congress or invited to present his/her views at the Congressional hearings on the Treasury rescue plan."

Block This Bill

Our prayers are with you that you have the courage to stand up do what you know you must do: Block This Bill.

I cannot and will not vote for any member of Congress who votes for this bill in its current form or anything remotely close to the current form.

This insane rush to push something through, is wrong. If you vote for this bill, you will not get my vote in the next election. It is as simple as that.

It is time to scrap the Paulson Plan and start all over. Doing nothing is far better than wasting $700 billion in a Wall Street Bailout Boondoggle that puts an already stressed taxpayer in further jeopardy.

Your Name
Your Phone Number

Please fax everyone on this list.

Sen. Richard Shelby (R) 202-224-3416 or 202-224-5137 (try both not sure which is correct)
Sen. Harry Reid (D) 202-224-7327
Sen. Jim DeMint (R) 202-228-5143
Sen. John Ensign (R) 202-228-2193
Sen. Jim Bunning (R) 202-228-1373
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) 202-224-6020
Sen John McCain (R) 202-228-2862

Sen. Barack Obama 202-228-4260
Sen. John D. Rockefeller 202-224-7665
Sen. Dianne Feinstein 202-228-3954
Sen. Ron Wyden 202-228-2717
Sen. Evan Bayh 202-228-1377
Sen. Barbara Mikulski 202-224-8858
Sen. Bill Nelson 202-228-2183
Sen. John Kerry 202-224-8525
Sen. Daniel Inouye 202-224-6747
Sen. Hillary Clinton 202-228-0282

Those inclined should also fax their own senators as well.

they're meeting as we speak, so get to faxin', people...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Just say "NO" to a $700B blank check with no administrative oversight and no legal or legislative review

total obscenity... my indignation knows no bounds...

Unveiling its plan to rescue the nation's financial system from near-paralysis, the Bush administration is asking Congress for the authority to spend $700 billion and for powers to intervene in the economy so sweeping that they have virtually no precedent in U.S. history.

[...]

The dollar figure alone is remarkable, amounting to 5% of the nation's gross domestic product. But the most distinctive -- and potentially most controversial -- element of the plan is the extent to which it would allow Treasury to act unilaterally: Its decisions could not be reviewed by any court or administrative body and, once the emergency legislation was approved, the administration could raise the $700 billion through government borrowing and would not be subject to Congress' traditional power of the purse.

"Nothing quite of this scale has happened since the early years of the country when Alexander Hamilton wrote the Treasury act to give him the power to borrow and intervene in markets," said New York University financial historian Richard Sylla. And in Hamilton's case, Congress quickly clipped his wings, and no successor -- not even under President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the height of the Depression -- exercised quite such unfettered power again.

"It essentially creates an economic czar with no administrative oversight, no legal review, no legislative review. And it gives one man $700 billion to disperse as he needs fit," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), referring to Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson.

"He will have complete, unbridled authority subject to no law," she said.

like i've said so many times i've lost count, it's all about money and power and insuring that the average united states citizen has neither...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Press Or Say.............

Fair use be damned........this is too good not too share in it's entirety.

From today's WaPo.

For a Bailout, Press 'One' . . .

By Alan Neff
Thursday, September 18, 2008; Page A21

"Hello! You've reached the United States Treasury's automated bailout hotline. Please listen carefully, because our options have recently changed. If you're too big to fail, press or say 'one.' If not, hang up and dial 1-800-FOR-FEMA.' "

"One."

"Great! You've selected Option One. If you're a bank, press or say 'one.' If you're a brokerage firm, press or say 'two.' If you're an insurance company, press or say 'three.' "

"Three."

"You've selected Option Three, which means you're an insurance firm. Did I get that right?"

"Yes."

"Okay, let's drill down a little further. If you're calling because you're besieged by class-action lawsuits brought by take-no-prisoners plaintiffs' attorneys because your large corporate policyholders committed innumerable mass toxic torts, press or say 'one.' If you're calling because you insured billions of dollars' worth of undocumented, nonperforming mortgages, press or say 'two.' "

"Two. No, wait, one. I mean, uh, both."

"I'm sorry. I didn't understand. Let's try something else. If you're the CEO of an insurance company with a servile compensation committee that gave you an irrevocable golden parachute, press or say 'one.' If you've served on corporate boards with Henry Paulson, press or say 'two.' If you believe in strict market Darwinism for every company but yours, press or say 'three.' "

"Three."

"If you want your check automatically deposited into your company's bank account, press or say 'one.' If you want cash in small, unmarked, used, nonsequential bills delivered to a branch office in Zurich or the Cayman Islands, press or say 'two.' "

[Silence. Thinking. Surge of fiduciary energy.]

"One."

"Okay. Please enter the amount you want using the number keys. Use the star sign for a decimal point and press pound when you've finished."

[Lengthy series of numbers entered, followed by the pound sign.]

"Wow! You are in trouble! Your funds should clear in three business days. When you have another claim, call back. Thank you for calling, and have a great day!"

Alan Neff is a lawyer and novelist. He lives in Chicago.

The convergence of fact and fiction.

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

C'mon, dammit, let's let the friggin' house of cards FALL already...!

geeeez, louise...! get 'er done, will ya...?

The churn of a rapidly changing financial landscape left Wall Street cold on Monday, as a late afternoon sell-off sent the stock market to its worst daily loss in seven years.

The Dow Jones industrial average plummeted more than 500 points — its worst session since the days after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The blue-chip index spent the entire day in negative territory, but the losses did not begin approaching dramatic levels until late in the afternoon. In the last 30 minutes of trading, investors seemed to give in to their fears about the health of the financial system, sparking a wave of selling that sent the Dow, already about 300 points lower, to a 504.48 point decline for the day.

The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fared even worse, losing 4.7 percent, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index fell 3.2 percent. In Europe, benchmark stock indexes were off nearly 4 percent in London and Paris and almost 3 percent in Frankfurt.

meanwhile, hank paulson, the flaming bush mouthpiece that he is, tries to pour oil on the troubled waters...

In a briefing in Washington, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said the financial markets were going through a tough time “as we work off some of the past excesses,” but that Americans could “remain confident in the soundness and the resilience of our financial system.”

“Let me step back a bit and provide a little perspective,” Mr. Paulson said. “As I’ve long said, the housing correction is at the root of the challenges facing our markets and our financial institutions. I believe that we’ve taken very important steps with respect to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and they’re amongst the most important actions we can take to work through this turmoil.”

if hankie-poo is expecting us to swallow that enormous load of fresh, steaming shit, when every time we've watched yet another financial bridge burn in the past nine months, he's said the very same goddam thing, and, each time, the next bridge that catches fire is a bigger bridge and the span of water that it crosses is increadingly unnavigable, i ain't buyin' a single goddam syllable that passes his lying lips...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Who is this guy Paulson, anyway...? Doesn't he work for Bush...?

doesn't that automatically mean his credibility is less than zero...?

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. said yesterday that financial markets have stabilized since March, when the collapse of investment house Bear Stearns roiled Wall Street, and said he expects economic growth to rebound by the end of the year.

A severe housing slump remains "the biggest risk to our economy," Paulson said, adding that he was "very encouraged" to see "bipartisan progress" in Congress on a comprehensive plan to address the downturn.

"The markets are considerably calmer now than they were in March," Paulson said to business leaders gathered at a downtown hotel for a forum sponsored by The Washington Post. "In my judgment, we are closer to the end of the market turmoil than the beginning."

why does our esteemed news media insist on continuing to publish the statements of proven liars and criminals as though they were some kind of believable information that we should all pay attention to...? i'm confoozed...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Paulson: "The worst is just beginning"

you preach it to us, brother paulson...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Yesterday's financial picture

from the uk independent...



(again, thanks to co-blogger, stu...)

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

NOW, they're talking recession

how very interesting...

"The economy is still staring recession in the face, but at least the Fed now gets it," [said Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist with the High Frequency Economics consulting firm].

anybody with half a brain could see this one coming... look how long it's taken for them to use the "R" word... given these folks' aversion to saying "SHIT" even when they're up to their eyeballs in it, anybody want to place any bets on how long it takes 'em to start using the "C"* word...?

* "C" = collapse

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

The BBC offers a bit more realistic view

after all, why would be think our domestic news outlets would give us anything CLOSE to an accurate perspective...

One analyst said the Fed was "obviously panicked" by the threat of recession.

"Unfortunately they have no power to reverse what in my opinion is the worst post-war recession," said Michael Metz, chief investment strategist at Oppenheimer in New York.

'This is huge'

The Fed's interest move came as a complete surprise, as it was taken outside its timetabled rate-setting Open Market Committee meetings.


The last two such surprise cuts were on 17 September 2001, shortly after the attacks of 11 September, and on 3 January 2001, in the wake of the dotcom bust.

The last time the Fed cut rates as much as three-quarters of a percentage point was in August 1982, almost 26 years ago.

(thanks to co-blogger, stu...)

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Surprise...!! The Fed jumps in first thing Tuesday morning with a .75% rate cut...

the headline SHOULD be focused in on the fact that the fed thinks things are so goddam serious that it jumped in right after the opening bell on wall street with NOT a half a percentage point rate cut but a THREE-QUARTERS of a point rate cut, not even waiting until their regularly scheduled meeting next week...

U.S. stock futures seesawed Tuesday after the Federal Reserve, responding to a growing financial market crisis, slashed interest rates 0.75 percentage point.

Dow Jones industrial futures, down more than 500 points, or more than 5 percent, before the Fed move, were fluctuating violently an hour before the start of trading, but improved to a level where they were down 206, or 1.70 percent, to 11,900.

The Fed move was unsurprising, given that world stock markets were falling precipitously the past two days, and that U.S. stocks had tumbled last week amid growing fears of a recession in the United States. Still, the markets are still quite anxious, not sure that even interest rate cuts will lift an economy slammed by an ongoing housing and credit crisis.

The Fed's move came a week before the central bank's regularly scheduled meeting, a sign that the Fed recognized the seriousness of the world financial situation.

the other inconvenient little item that should be in screaming headlines is that the dow was down FIVE HUNDRED POINTS on top of last week's THREE HUNDRED POINTS, and that was before the fed stepped in... anybody who thinks we aren't teetering on the edge of a cliff had better crank their eyelids open right quick...

there's no need to read between the lines of this paragraph...

The Fed's decision to slash the federal funds rate — the interest that banks charge each other on overnight loans — apparently was the biggest one-day move by the central bank in recent memory. The Fed cut the rate to 3.5 percent from 4.25 percent — a move that represented the most dramatic signal it could can send of its concern about a recession.

the same article goes on to quote paulson talking to the u.s. chamber of commerce this morning...

"Time is of the essence and the president stands ready to work on a bipartisan basis to enact economic growth legislation as soon as possible," Paulson said in remarks to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

[...]

The rush of developments came on the same day that Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress were to meet with President Bush at the White House for talks on economic stimulus legislation. Such a measure presumably would involve tax rebates, business tax cuts and funding for a Democratic-led call for additional food stamp and employment aid.

Paulson said he was optimistic the administration and Congress could find common ground and "get this done long before winter turns to spring." Bush and the congressional leaders are looking for quick agreement on how to pump as much as $150 billion into the ailing economy to stave off a recession. The president last Friday put forward the broad outlines of a stimulus plan that would include tax cuts for individuals and businesses.

The administration's initial efforts failed to reassure global stock markets, which plunged Monday on rising fears that trouble in the U.S. economy could translate into weaker economic activity worldwide.

in something completely in character for the bush administration, paulson leaves out a mere trifling detail...

In his prepared remarks, Paulson did not specifically mention the steep plunge in global markets on Monday, which included declines in many markets that were the largest since the September 2001 terrorist attacks.

i was just telling my son (he, his wife, and the grandsons are getting ready to head out for work and school) about the goings-on and the depth of the shit we're in... he asked if anybody in the administration has actually come out and SAID we're in deep shit, and i said, "of course not..." his comment to that was, "unless they come out and SAY it, nobody's going to pay any attention..." my son isn't anywhere near the news junkie that i am, but he does understand a FEW things...!



the above photo of paulson is from a video clip of january 6 where paulson sat there and listened to bush and didn't say a goddam thing... just look at his face... my theory is paulson is actually a re-animated corpse...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Goldman Sachs and its alumni - the people who own us

despite the on-going train wreck in the world credit markets, goldman sachs continues to scoop up massive amounts of cash... just look at this...

[F]or Goldman’s chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, this is turning out to be a very good year. He will surely earn more than the $54.3 million he made last year. If he gets a 20 percent raise — in line with the growth of Goldman’s compensation pool — he will take home at least $65 million. Some expect his pay, which is directly tied to the firm’s performance, to climb as high as $75 million.

[...]

Goldman’s stock has significantly outperformed its peers. At the end of last week it was up about 13 percent for the year, compared with a drop of almost 14 percent for the XBD, the broker-dealer index that includes the leading Wall Street banks. Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns and Citigroup are down almost 40 percent this year.

besides blankfein, somebody whose name is unfamiliar to me, but who could still earn a possible SEVENTY FIVE MILLION FRIGGIN' GODDAM DOLLARS THIS YEAR, who the hell ARE the people this world-class money vacuum cleaner has spawned...? well, just look at THIS list...

Last week, John A. Thain, a former Goldman co-president, accepted the top position at Merrill Lynch, while a fellow Goldman alumnus, Duncan L. Niederauer, took Mr. Thain’s job running the New York Stock Exchange. Another fellow veteran trader, Daniel Och, took his $30 billion hedge fund public.

still unfamiliar names to me... but, wait... there's MORE...

Robert E. Rubin, a former Goldman head, is the new chairman of Citigroup. In Washington, another former chief, Henry M. Paulson Jr., is the Treasury secretary, having been recruited by Joshua B. Bolten, the White House chief of staff and yet another former Goldman executive.

The heads of the Canadian and Italian central banks are Goldman alumni. The World Bank president, Robert B. Zoellick, is another. Jon S. Corzine, once a co-chairman, is the governor of New Jersey. And in academia, Robert S. Kaplan, a former vice chairman, has just been picked as the interim head of Harvard University’s $35 billion endowment.

ah... NOW, we're gettin' down to it... are ya gettin' the picture here...? THESE, my friends, are the folks who OWN us, lock, stock, and barrel... they are also the ones who are calling the shots, these and their buddies at the council on foreign relations, the center for strategic and international studies, the center for a new american security, and, of course, let we forget, those at the carnegie endowment, the ford and guggenheim foundations that mettle helped us learn more about earlier today... keep 'em in mind, cuz what they say and do ends up being the way things will eventually come down...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments