Wednesday Reading
By Barry Ritholtz - January 20th, 2010, 4:30PM
A few items of note today:
• Fed’s Dudley: Banking System Remains Under Strain (Real Time Economics)
• Meet the Madoff Minions (MoJo)
• Time to cage inflation tiger, say experts (The China Daily)
• Bankers’ pay in America: Disconnected
• HuffPost Interviews Joseph Stiglitz
• WTF?: Apple has been in discussions with Microsoft for several weeks about making Bing the default search engine on the iPhone (BusinessWeek)
• NYTimes.com to launch ‘metered’ pay model in 2011 (Marketwatch)
• Cool Foldable Electric Bike (Yikebike)
• The Battle of the Brain (WSJ)
What are you reading?
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January 20th, 2010 at 5:03 pm
interesting idea/thought/theory/*report
“…Once the Fed and Treasury started shoveling money in every possible way they could think of to the elite banks, the word came down to Fed traders to “ease up” on the mark ups and down. Let the banks take a “healthy” mark up and mark down, they were told. I’m advised that the “healthy” mark ups and mark downs have resulted in the Fed overpaying on their trades with primary dealers to the tune of billions. These billions are looking like profitable skilled trades, when they are nothing of the kind. They are hidden gifts from the Federal Reserve that are generally unseen, unknown and will never be paid back…”
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2010/01/secret-bank-bailout.html
~~
“…The Internal Revenue Service, trying to recoup some of the estimated $14 billion that companies underpay in employer taxes each year, plans to wage a three-year campaign to audit 6,000 businesses.
The cash-strapped government, which separately said it wants to put a levy on large financial companies that received bailouts, will zero in on worker classification, fringe benefits, reimbursed expenses and executive compensation. The selection of the audited companies will be random, and both big and small businesses will be scrutinized…”
Every move You make, coutesy of the 168. Track n’ Trace ‘Economy’..
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/top-stocks/default.aspx?feat=1563557>1=33002
~~
January 20th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
This is a Canadian story but I think this is significant because of what the interested parties are saying about the roll of newspapers in the community. If this happens and it works then maybe the bleeding can finally be stemmed
CONSORTIUM TO BID FOR THREE CANWEST DAILIES
http://www.bourque.com/notes.html
January 20th, 2010 at 5:07 pm
and, check this..
http://cdn.physorg.com/newman/gfx/news/hires/AssetViewer.gif map
Satellites show the way to new oil finds
http://www.physorg.com/news154965701.html article
and,
“…Scientists Daniel and Ginette Mathurin indicate that under Haitian soil is rich in oil and fuel fossible which were collected by Haitian and foreign experts. “We have identified 20 sites Oil, launches Daniel Mathurin stating that 5 of them are considered very important by practitioners and policies.
The Central Plateau, including the region of Thomond, the plain of the cul-de-sac and the bay of Port-au-Prince are filled with oil, he said, adding that Haiti’s oil reserves are larger than those of Venezuela. An Olympic pool compared to a glass of water that is the comparison to show the importance of oil Haitian compared to those of Venezuela, “he explains…”
http://remixxworld.blogspot.com/2010/01/haiti-has-larger-oil-reserves-than.html# idea
January 20th, 2010 at 5:12 pm
MEH: If anyone doubts that the control of the worlds’ energy supply will equal control of the universe, your links to research on how to find oil, should settle the debate. Wars will be fought and entire governments will be overthrown. See: Iraq now, ????? next.
January 20th, 2010 at 5:22 pm
Don’t know if it’s has already been noted, but this article is sickening — not only for the alleged treatment of prisoners, but also the lack of interest the Obama administration shows in finding the truth. Barack W. Obama indeed. The lack of transparency continues….
The Guantanamo “Suicides”
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/01/hbc-90006368
January 20th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
ash–
it’s, a lot, like that. Satellites have been used to find Oil&Gas, and other Earth-bound Resources, since, at least, Landsat..
“The Landsat Program
The Landsat Program is a series of Earth-observing satellite missions jointly managed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey. Since 1972, Landsat satellites have collected information about Earth from space. This science, known as remote sensing, has matured with the Landsat Program…”
http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/
and, remember, simply, Landsat is Old..
http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&query=Landsat
~~
We’ve a Problem, We’re bound, yet, by our Ignorance..
January 20th, 2010 at 5:36 pm
MEH-
interesting- Haitian oil-
maybe France has it right- that we are using the earthquake to occupy Haiti- at first I was “why would we do that?”
but maybe there is a “why” after all
January 20th, 2010 at 5:49 pm
AAPL – MSFT a marriage made in Hell. Sounds like short AAPL to me.
January 20th, 2010 at 6:09 pm
something to consider- from Pravda no less- title should really read – “America’s Mad Search for Cash”- because it will be any and all President’s main objective for the foreseeable future-
Prepare Now to Escape Obama’s Retirement Trap
January 20th, 2010 at 6:16 pm
That brain article was nice.
@MEH
Something to watch over the next decade…
January 20th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
Failed Banker called local hero
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-0120-billionaire-banker-20100119,0,1631487.story
(may require free registration to view).
There’s TBTF, and then there’s rest of us.
January 20th, 2010 at 6:22 pm
62% of Morgan Stanley’s revenue going to banker pay. In what world does this make any sense whatsoever? Oh yeah, that’s right. This one.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a_6UG9x9ukAA&pos=5
January 20th, 2010 at 6:33 pm
Morgan Stanley ignores calls for restraint and doles out £8.8bn to bankers
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1244802/Morgan-Stanley-ignores-calls-restraint-doles-8-8bn-bankers.html
===============
Opera and Firefox downloads soar after IE alerts
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/20/opera_and_mozilla_download_uptick_post_ie_warnings/
January 20th, 2010 at 6:35 pm
Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2010
Haiti and the Dominican Republic: A Tale of Two Countries
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1953959,00.html
January 20th, 2010 at 6:36 pm
This Wall Street issue isn’t going away. The veil has been pulled back for all to see. It’s only going to get more and more dicey for them in the months ahead as more and more details are revealed about their practices.
January 20th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
dudley is a dud and dead wrong, the banks are awash in profits, the bonuses say so, factually and convincingly
jeeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzeeeeee, hindsight is so much better than forsight, we’ve all been saying this for several months, duhhhhhhhhhh
January 20th, 2010 at 6:45 pm
N.J. says state’s unemployment rose to 10.1% in December
http://philadelphia.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/stories/2010/01/18/daily33.html
January 20th, 2010 at 6:56 pm
Jojo: Having been to the Dominican Republic several times staying with families in very poor areas of the country, it’s beyond amazing that Pat Robertson could call them “prosperous”. It’s incredibly poor with electricity turned off randomly every day for hours at a time, the government remains corrupt.
Having spent so much time there and never having been to Haiti, I can’t even imagine how horrific that poverty is. In a relative sense, the DR is much better off. But when you’re comparing poverty at those levels the typical US citizen would hardly recognize the difference
January 20th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
Reading lots of post-mortems on the Massachusetts elections. Atlantic’s Megan McArdle talks about how Obama can recover momentum by playing what’s described as “small ball presidency” — avoid controversial issues and “do things that overwhelmingly popular that Republicans would be embarrassed not to vote for.”
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/obama-down-but-not-out-says-atlantic%27s-megan-mcardle-407304.html
That seems like a reasonable assessment. If the O-team backs away from the health care push, it would seem they have open-field running to stomp the banks. But do Geithner, Summers and Bernanke survive the assault ? If they are vilified, that doesn’t reflect well on Obama’s judgement in choosing / supporting them early on. If they stay, then the bank tax is just a temporary salve and nothing changes.
January 20th, 2010 at 7:38 pm
>> Fed’s Dudley: Banking System Remains Under Strain
They’re all on-script with their talking points here… hopeful signs of recovery but still far too early to consider weaning the banks off the $23.7 public teat.
January 20th, 2010 at 7:48 pm
The Apple/Bing deal makes some sense.
One of the strengths/weaknesses of MS has been that its divisions cutthroat each other, e.g. you can use MS Exchange with the iPhone even though it makes the iPhone a more legit business phone, which is the market Windows Mobile is after.
Apple/Google relations haven’t been great of late. Jobs has shown himself agnostic with respect to partnering. Bing is probably willing to give Apple a bigger cut than Google is.
Plus, Apple is trying to sell phones in China; it will probably be easier if they don’t all use the software of the company that told the Chinese governement to go F themselves.
I personally am using Bing a if I’m doing a pinpoint search. It returns a lot less dreck than Google. I only use Google if I’m looking for a needle in a haystack. For users of mobile phones, Bing might be better.
January 20th, 2010 at 7:50 pm
Ed Harrison of CreditWriteDowns has an INCREDIBLE READ…with LINKS to VERIFY his Thoughts:
———
[b]Obama: grading his first year’s economic performance[/b]
By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns
The Democratic defeat in yesterday’s Massachusetts Senate race puts a punctuation mark on the grinding erosion of support for the Obama Administration and its economic policy in a tough first year. Clearly voters were sending the Administration a message that America is on the wrong course with Obama’s poll numbers slipping below 50% by December and Democratic defeats in both of the major state elections in which Obama campaigned in November (Gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey).
But, I don’t think the President gets it. He is holed up in the echo chamber called the White House. If the catastrophic loss in Massachusetts’ Senate race and the likely defeat of his health care reform bill doesn’t wake Obama up to the realities that he is not in Roosevelt’s position but in Hoover’s, he will end as a failed one-term President.
With this in mind, I want to grade the President’s economic policy performance on his first year anniversary, putting Obama’s economic agenda and inheritance in historical terms. I will try to make this as comprehensive as a blog format allows. At the end, I will make some remarks about what to expect going forward.
b]Grade: Incomplete[/b]
If I were a university professor grading the Obama Administration’s economic policy, I would give it an incomplete – but with a warning that the final grade was unlikely to be good given what I have seen so far. Barack Obama has been in office for only one year; so, clearly he has a long way to go before we can make a definitive assessment of his economic policy.
[b]Similarities: Reagan and Clinton[/b]
When I look at the polling data, two recent Presidents come to mind, particularly because of the economy: Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Reagan entered office during a deep recession, at the tail end of what might be termed an inflationary depression due to secular issues involving fiat currencies, inflation, interest rates, equity market losses, currency depreciation, globalization of the money markets, and de-industrialization in the United States. And to top it off, Reagan suffered another deep recession right after he came to office. For the United States, the 1970s were a catastrophe economically.
The polling data for Obama and Reagan are very similar. The December chart below from Pollster.com demonstrates this.
So, clearly the economy has a lot to do with Obama’s falling poll numbers.
I also look at the early days of the Clinton Administration as a comparison. Clinton was a centrist, triangulating New Democrat who entered office during a period of lingering joblessness which engendered the term jobless recovery. Obama’s situation is similar given the rising unemployment rate today and the job losses despite a broad-based economic pickup (Goldman Sachs is estimating 5.8% GDP growth for Q4 2009). The centrality of healthcare reform in the President’s domestic agenda – and it’s potential failure and the resulting mid-term election losses for Democrats in Congress – makes this comparison even more apt.
However, there are critical differences which I will highlight after making another comparison.
[b]The Roosevelt comparison[/b]
Given some of his statements in the past, I suspect the President sees these similarities to Clinton and Reagan. But, it is the comparison to Roosevelt which Obama and his people played up the most during the election campaign and the period just after it.
The media parroted this theme endlessly. As Time put it in the story accompanying the Obama as Roosevelt photo to the right:
Even in the calmest of times, the transfer of presidential power is a tricky maneuver, especially when it involves one party ceding the office to another. But not since Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in the midst of the Depression has a new President faced a set of challenges quite as formidable as those that await Obama. That’s why Obama has been quicker off the blocks in setting up his government than any of his recent predecessors were, particularly Bill Clinton, who did not announce a single major appointment until mid-December. As the President-elect put it in his first radio address, “We don’t have a moment to lose.”
[b]Obama is not Roosevelt[/b]
But Barack Obama is not Franklin Roosevelt – far from it. He enters office at a point much nearer the beginning of a cyclical downturn as did Clinton and Reagan. His people fail to realize that Obama is more Herbert Hoover than he is Franklin Roosevelt.
What historical period should Obama be looking to then? Clearly, he should be looking to Hoover. And I believe this is very important with the G-20 right around the corner. Any number of pundits from Simon Johnson to Wolfgang Munchau will tell you the G-20 summit will be a big failure. While the Americans are trying to reflate the bubble and bring back the same unbalanced system which got us here, the Europeans are putting their heads in the sand, wishing all of this would go away.
And that’s not a good thing at all. If one thinks back to Hoover again, after a long period of globalization, an interconnected world meant problems in one country quickly became manifest elsewhere. The world’s major nations failed to come together and build a common solution. Some thought themselves immune. But, when the depths of Depression finally came, it was little Austria which ushered it in. And soon, depression was everywhere.
This was 1931. Herbert Hoover was president, not Franklin Roosevelt.
-Barack Obama as Herbert Hoover, Apr 2009
Obama’s failure to understand where we are in the economic cycle and the relationship to historical precedent has been catastrophic to the conduct of economic policy and critical in his missteps. There is more to Obama’s misfortune than a bad economy (see Nate Silver’s take on the Massachusetts special election).
[b]Reliving the Clinton days via Reagan’s silver tongue, Kennedy’s Camelot, and Roosevelt’s New Deal[/b]
I feel like the Obama Administration is stuck in the past. They talk about the transformative presidencies of Ronald Reagan or Franklin Roosevelt and the magic Camelot feel of JFK’s time in the White House. But, above all, stands the “Don’t Stop Believin’” retour of the Clinton era. These comparisons to past presidents is blinding the Obama Administration to the realities on the ground (see here and here).
The huge number of Clinton-era re-treads in the Obama Administration should tell you that. And the quote from Time Magazine shows you that lessons learned during the early Clinton days were very much on these policy makers’ minds. The policy agenda (think healthcare and deficit reduction in particular) makes them think that 2008 was a repeat 1992. It was not.
MORE..a LONG READ…but a GOOD ONE for folks looking for HISTORY of this FINANCIAL MELTDOWN…It kind of hits all sides of Political Spectrum…(I think…anyway)
It’s a long detailed read but he gives LINKS that VERIFY every aspect of his THOUGHT PROCESS as to where and WHY he’s at WHERE he is AT!
It’s COOL!
Whole THING at:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/01/obama-grading-his-first-years-economic-performance.html
January 20th, 2010 at 8:28 pm
“According to FDIC data, compensation as a share of revenue at commercial banks is the highest it’s been in nearly 60 years,”
‘There’s nothing to lose
cause it’s already lost
in a runaway world of confusion”–Kansas
January 20th, 2010 at 8:44 pm
The Apple-Microsoft Bing “alliance” makes a lot of sense:
1) Apple fear android for good reason it has a cool factor just like the Iphone
2) Microsoft fears Google for good reason: Cloud computing (client-less) is a huge risk for Microsoft client revenue
3) Apple and Microsoft while competitors are not really a threat to each other. Google on the other hand is a threat to both (the enemy of my enemy kind of thing)
January 20th, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Krugman publicly loses hope in Obama.
————————————————
He Wasn’t The One We’ve Been Waiting For
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/he-wasnt-the-one-weve-been-waiting-for/
“But I have to say, I’m pretty close to giving up on Mr. Obama, who seems determined to confirm every doubt I and others ever had about whether he was ready to fight for what his supporters believed in.”
January 20th, 2010 at 8:51 pm
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Obama: grading his first year’s economic performance
By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns
The Democratic defeat in yesterday’s Massachusetts Senate race puts a punctuation mark on the grinding erosion of support for the Obama Administration and its economic policy in a tough first year. Clearly voters were sending the Administration a message that America is on the wrong course with Obama’s poll numbers slipping below 50% by December and Democratic defeats in both of the major state elections in which Obama campaigned in November (Gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey).
But, I don’t think the President gets it. He is holed up in the echo chamber called the White House. If the catastrophic loss in Massachusetts’ Senate race and the likely defeat of his health care reform bill doesn’t wake Obama up to the realities that he is not in Roosevelt’s position but in Hoover’s, he will end as a failed one-term President.
With this in mind, I want to grade the President’s economic policy performance on his first year anniversary, putting Obama’s economic agenda and inheritance in historical terms. I will try to make this as comprehensive as a blog format allows. At the end, I will make some remarks about what to expect going forward.
Good Read for Finacial/Politico’s at…..
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/01/obama-grading-his-first-years-economic-performance.html
January 20th, 2010 at 8:58 pm
There are two kinds of … morals, one private and the other public. These two are so distinct, so
unrelated, that they are no more akin to each other than are archangels and politicians. During three hundred and sixty-three days in the year the American citizen is true to his … private morals, and keeps undefiled the nation’s character at its best and highest; then in the other two days of the year he leaves his … private morals at home and carries his … public morals to the tax office and the polls, and does the best he can to damage and undo his whole year’s faithful and righteous work.
Without a blush he will vote for an unclean boss if that boss is his party’s Moses, without compunction he will vote against the best man in the whole land if he is on the other ticket. Every year in a number of cities and States he helps put corrupt men in office, whereas if he would but throw away his … public morals, and carry his … private morals to the polls, he could promptly purify the public service and make the possession of office a high and honorable distinction.
Once a year he lays aside his … private morals and hires a ferry- boat and piles up his bonds in a
warehouse in New Jersey for three days, and gets out his … public morals and goes to the tax office
and holds up his hands and swears he wishes he may never–never if he’s got a cent in the world, so help him. The next day the list appears in the papers–a column and a quarter of names, in fine print, and every man in the list a billionaire and member of a couple of churches. I know all those people. I have friendly, social, and criminal relations with the whole lot of them. They never miss a sermon when they are so’s to be around, and they never miss swearing-off day, whether they are so’s to be around or not.
I used to be an honest man. I am crumbling. No–I have crumbled. When they assessed me at $75,000 a
fortnight ago I went out and tried to borrow the money, and couldn’t; then when I found they were letting a whole crop of millionaires live in New York at a third of the price they were charging me I was hurt, I was indignant, and said: “This is the last feather. I am not going to run this town all by myself.” In that moment–in that memorable moment–I began to crumble. In fifteen minutes the disintegration was complete. In fifteen minutes I had become just a mere moral sand-pile; and I lifted up my hand along with those seasoned and experienced deacons and swore off every rag of personal property I’ve got in the world, clear down to cork leg, glass eye, and what is left of my wig.
Those tax officers were moved; they were profoundly moved. They had long been accustomed to seeing
hardened old grafters act like that, and they could endure the spectacle; but they were expecting better things of me, a chartered, professional moralist, and they were saddened.
I fell visibly in their respect and esteem, and I should have fallen in my own, except that I had already struck bottom, and there wasn’t any place to fall to.
Mark Twain
Address Delivered in New York, January 22, 1906
http://manybooks.net/titles/twainmaretext02mtmts11.html
January 20th, 2010 at 10:03 pm
Robert Reich
What Scott Brown’s Victory Really Means
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Get ready for the bromides.
From the right: Just goes to show the country is against Democratic tax-and-spend. Obama’s agenda is in ruins, heath-care is over, the GOP has a good chance of taking back Congress next November. Now, even congessional Democrats will move to the right.
From the left: Just goes to show Obama should never have cozied up to Wall Street, Big Pharma, and Big Insurance. He compromised too much. The Democratic base lost faith in him. The only answer is for Obama and congressional Dems to turn left.
Don’t believe any of it. Here’s what’s really going on. In Massachusetts, in New Jersey, all over the nation, voters are petrified of losing their jobs, their homes, and what’s left of their savings. Nothing counts more than the economy. Rightly or wrongly, presidents and the party in power are blamed when the economy is lousy. Voters fired Jimmy Carter in 1980 because the economy went south. They fired George Bush the first in 1992 because the economy was awful. They fired congressional Democrats in 1994 because the economy was still awful. And they’re in the process of firing Obama and the Democrats — unless or until the economy turns around.
…
What really worries me is a basic fact, borne out by history. Deep and continuing economic stresses bring out demagogues, xenophobes, racists, and opportunists who channel people’s fears and anxieties into resentments against other people. If this awful economy goes on much longer, the extreme right could meet the extreme left in a place called “I’m mad as hell and am not gonna take it any more,” and form a third party that attracts everyone who feels disempowered and dumped on — and who want to blame someone else for what’s happened to them. Then, watch out.
http://robertreich.org/post/344459321/what-scott-browns-victory-really-means
January 20th, 2010 at 10:25 pm
That dollar, much to my joy, keeps rallying…and Asian stocks, which I said yesterday were going to trigger the next US leg down (and VERY soon) keep falling. The massively bullish stock market and massively bearish bond market are about to collide at warp speed.
That said, what will be the policy response? Can’t cut rates…QE could be extended, but what is it really accomplishing? Further stimulus is DOA. What happens if Wall Street needs more bailouts? I think the states will get bailed out first. This is really bad.
January 20th, 2010 at 11:30 pm
Ahab,
Give us a fucking break…
One guy in France says something and the US Media reports it as “France”.
I wish the Huff post and co would just grow the fuck up, Joyandet said he was pissed off planes could not land because the US were controlling the airport and they could not land and help…
It has nothing to do with anti-American-invading-oil bullshit.
January 20th, 2010 at 11:37 pm
That brain article and Apple/Microsoft deal are related. Apple is the right hemisphere, Google is the pinpointing left- side. I guess MSFT is the corpus callosum.
A third party in politics doesn’t sound bad to me at all, even if it siphons votes from a worthy candidate for a while.
January 20th, 2010 at 11:52 pm
If I were to give a summary of the tendency of our times, I would say, Quantity. The multitude, the mass spirit, dominates everywhere, destroying quality. Our entire life–production, politics, and education–rests on quantity, on numbers. The worker who once took pride in the thoroughness and quality of his work, has been replaced by brainless, incompetent automatons, who turn out enormous quantities of things, valueless to themselves, and generally injurious to the rest of mankind. Thus quantity, instead of adding to life’s comforts and peace, has merely increased man’s burden.
In politics, naught but quantity counts. In proportion to its increase, however, principles, ideals, justice, and uprightness are completely swamped by the array of numbers. In the struggle for supremacy the various political parties outdo each other in trickery, deceit, cunning, and shady machinations, confident that the one who succeeds is sure to be hailed by the majority as the victor. That is the only god,–Success. As to what expense, what terrible cost to character, is of no moment. We have not far to go in search of proof to verify this sad fact.
Never before did the corruption, the complete rottenness of our government stand so thoroughly exposed; never before were the American people brought face to face with the Judas nature of that political body, which has claimed for years to be absolutely beyond reproach, as the mainstay of our institutions, the true protector of the rights and liberties of the people.
Yet when the crimes of that party became so brazen that even the blind could see them, it needed but to
muster up its minions, and its supremacy was assured. Thus the very victims, duped, betrayed, outraged a hundred times, decided, not against, but in favor of the victor. Bewildered, the few asked how could the majority betray the traditions of American liberty? Where was its judgment, its reasoning capacity? That is just it, the majority cannot reason; it has no judgment. Lacking utterly in originality and moral courage, the majority has always placed its destiny in the hands of others. Incapable of standing responsibilities, it has followed its leaders even unto destruction.
Emma Goldman, from her essay “Minorities Versus Majorities” (1910)
http://manybooks.net/titles/goldmaneetext00nrcsm10.html
——————
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
January 20th, 2010 at 11:59 pm
Steve Barry, do you think things are finally coming to a head again?
January 21st, 2010 at 12:08 am
“But I have to say, I’m pretty close to giving up on Mr. Obama, who seems determined to confirm every doubt I and others ever had about whether he was ready to fight for what his supporters believed in.”
They never should have placed faith in him in the first place. Like I wrote on these boards when we were discussing what would happen to him. When you send 250 people into the white house to take on an army of 10,000 Washington lobbyists and power brokers you are naive to expect anything to happen. It’s an extreme long shot at best
It takes an especially shrewd politician to beat those guys at their own game and Obama didn’t have what it takes. I’m not sure anyone has what it takes since the power elite have shown they are not above putting a bullet in you if you don’t go along. This mess is a long time in the making and until the sleeping giant is awake and huffing and puffing (and maybe slamming the ground with a mighty big stick) all bets are off
I think maybe that is why I was musing (in horror) that the only thing that might save America at this point is a military coup
January 21st, 2010 at 1:04 am
How about this bombshell – Paul Volcker in ascendancy. Talk about fast adjustments …
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/21/business/21volcker.html?hp
January 21st, 2010 at 2:40 am
@hgordon
OK, so they weren’t being deaf or stupid. They were being arrogant.
Let’s hope they learned their lesson.
January 21st, 2010 at 3:20 am
wow .. same wavelength .. channel flippin a hour or 2 ago – couldn’t sleep recited an old nursery ryhme .. did some background work in that Google IE hack thing .. did what I could to understand .. deleted the cookies .. checked the certs .. and visit TBP …
Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall .. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall .. all the kings horses and all the kings men .. couldn’t put Humpty back together again.
It (the machine) just has to break .. and break big.
Then the sun will come up again and folks will be forced to trudge on.
And without the machine, co-operation will be required again.
Humpty Dumpty – animation (color) in song
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXyGqDJ9wn0
I’m not sure how to go about in a new world without $ divisions .. but the fear of disas cap’ism is real .. and big real …. post new world without $ divisions .. new fears – mostly sloth and gluttony.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins
“the list consists of wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.”
January 21st, 2010 at 3:28 am
“…The Internal Revenue Service, trying to recoup some of the estimated $14 billion that companies underpay in employer taxes each year, plans to wage a three-year campaign to audit 6,000 businesses.
As a 15 year, 100% tax-honest self-employed person, I wholehearted applaud this.
On another topic, Steve up-thread touched on something I’ve been pondering. If it’s clear as day that China’s RE bubble is about to burst, how best to bet on that? Shorting oil, shorting cement?
And apropos to another thread that I don’t even dare post on . . . I didn’t have a New Year’s resolution until now, but I think Not Pissing off BR is going to be mine for 2010.
January 21st, 2010 at 6:15 am
@wunsacon
Things are about to unravel…it has been delayed so much already…we have near all time bullish II bull/bear and 21 day put/call, all while insiders have been dumping like mad for a year. We have states about to go bankrupt…countries about to go bankrupt…Japan is a mess…option ARM massive resets. I could go on and on. Oh, what about 1929 levels of normalized P/E and dividend yields? The Fed is out of bullets. Obama may have to come down really hard on Wall Street to save his presidency. Stimulus will be very hard to pass though now.
January 21st, 2010 at 7:04 am
Darkness,
w/this: “As a 15 year, 100% tax-honest self-employed person, I wholehearted applaud this.”
I understand, though, you know, right?, that the GAO will not even certify the USGov’s ‘books’ ?
http://clusty.com/search?input-form=clusty-simple&v%3Asources=webplus&query=GAO+unable+to+certify+
ever hear any ‘old sayings’ involving a Goose, an a Gander?