If they could do math, they would not be a reporter.

But really, isn’t a -1,000% or so return something like what we’ve gotten out of our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan?

At least there, we transformed the dollar bills to bunker buster bombs and then incinerated them. We bombed Afghanistan to the stone ages with those suckers. Of course, it was a fairly short trip.

My Stimulus Bill…
Send $1,000,000 to every frik’n person in the US that files taxes for 2008. Let the Banks, Mortgage Companies, Auto Companies, etc… fend for themselves. Total cost… maybe $130 trillion.

Meanwhile, I’ll stick my $1M in the bank, go buy a distressed property and maybe a new Chevy. I know this has many flaws but couldn’t be as bad as the compounding mess that’s happening now. I’m going fishing!

Well, see now, that’s just because they didn’t go BIG enough! (but they will)

love,
Captain Upside

Not condoning Putin or his policies but he has some good points.

“Excessive dependence on a single reserve currency is dangerous for the global economy”
“The time for enlightenment has come,” he went on. “We must calmly, and without gloating, assess the root causes of this situation and try to peek into the future.”

This article was written 2.5 yrs ago and since then we have seen all the financial malfeasance from Wall St, The Fed, The Treasury and the Bush admin.

The case for a global currency
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/03/opinion/edwade.php
FRIDAY, AUGUST 4, 2006

There is a rising tide of opposition around the world to America’s unilateral assertion of its national interests. But few realize that for the United States to become a more responsible country, the world economy needs to move from the current U.S. dollar standard to a global currency.

U.S. dominance rests not only on military superiority and on the size and productivity of its economy, but also on the fact that most international transactions are denominated in U.S. dollars and more than 60 percent of world foreign exchange reserves are held in U.S.-denominated assets, like U.S. Treasury bills.

The problem for the rest of the world is that the U.S. dollar standard encourages the United States to be careless in its monetary and fiscal policies.

And that’s probably where Obama’s going to go. The government will play all kinds of games with “mark to model” accounting in order to hide the true size of the deficit (and national debt).

If the government is going to play games with “mark to model”, we might as well let the banks do it (it’s cheaper that way).

Also, comparing the government’s preferred stake to the loss of the market capitalization is not a sound was to run a total return calculation.

Finally, Madoff didn’t lose 100%. He took money in and paid people out, minus whatever was raked off. If we run an IRR calculation on it(should we ever get good figures), he may have had a negative single digit IRR, but that will still be fatal in the long run as returns are over-reported and withdrawals come in.