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Quote of the day
"I'm afraid his reputation is about as good as a sup-prime mortgage"
-- Steve Forbes in response to the assertion that Alan Greenspan's legacy might suffer from this financial crisis.
OT: "Fundamentals are still strong"
"Curious about your thoughts on this"
It's a political campaign. Things aren't said for the truth of the matter, they're chosen based on how well they'll appeal to voters. Obama's going to say things suck because it bolsters the notion of a need for "change," while McCain is going after the "yeah, I know my wife's cooking sucks, but she's MY wife, so I'd rather hear you say 'delicious!' than be critical" reaction.
Beyond that, my thoughts are that Obama and McCain are equally and tragically clueless when it comes to business and economics. Each of them does nothing but betray this every time they open their mouths. I wouldn't trust either of them to balance a checkbook much less deal competently with any of this stuff. And the advisors they've chosen?
I think it really says something when the "change" candidate has called in Bob Rubin to advise him. The former chair of the insider's club at Goldman, the same Bob Rubin who resided over the demolition of Glass-Steagall, and who has resided over the single largest destruction of market wealth in the history of mankind as Executive Chair of Citigroup. Even while getting himself paid hundreds of millions for vaporizing fortunes worth of other people's money.
Your question about who's safe and who's not, all I'll say at this point is that if BoA isn't safe, then it's time to buy guns, stockpile food and build an underground shelter.
Agreed - which is why
... I think if there's any one of these things they really can't let fail, it's AIG. And we continue to get hints that's exactly what Treasury/Fed thinks, as now we've gotten the report they're asking Goldman and JP Morgan to put together a group to provide a $70 billion bridge loan to give AIG the breathing room to be able to sell off assets to get squared up.
But we'll see.
If AIG goes, the whole house of cards tumbles.
CHK from 74 to 39
Funny, where was all the outrage when CHK got goosed from 18 to 74? THAT was the bogus part of game, not the move from 70 to 40.
$39 for CHK is a more than generous price, and frankly it should go lower to be in line with NatGas where it's priced now, a price that should fall further given the massive amount of new discoveries and glut the huge new drilling investments will be bringing to market.
CHK from 18 to 39 isn't a "debacle". What was a debacle was all the IDIOTS out there buying CHK over 50 and 60 like they had never seen a bubble-driven parabolic chart before.
Ditto for DRYS. What was the joke were the complete morons who were buying that thing and didn't understand the first thing about cyclicality in bulk rates. Anyone buying DRYS at $130 is getting precisely what clueless people scrambling to "get rich quick" and buying stuff they don't know squat about deserve. You can't idiot-proof a market.
CNBC's Faber reporting Fed negotiating $20B bridge loan for AIG
That makes $40 billion accessed. It's all for naught, though, if Willumstad doesn't get it through his thick skull that he can't diddle on selling off assets. He'll need to provide the full list no later than pre-market a.m. tomorrow, and have at least one tentative deal to announce at that time, then get the $50 billion from the airline division sale within 24-48 hours.
It's stunning how these CEOs continue to grossly misunderstand the amount of time they've got before the hand grenade in their hands goes off. Will Willumstad be another Dick Fuld, or will he be a John Thane? We'll find out tomorrow and Wednesday.
One other thing on AIG ...
Week before last, Bill Gates' foundation reported a big AIG buy in its SEC filings. When it comes to money and investing, Gates and his people don't do anything big without conferring with his buddy Warren Buffet. I would imagine this is most especially true when it comes to buying a big chunk of share in an insurance company.
Will be very interesting to see the next set of SEC filings for Gates and Buffett/Berkshire to see whether they reversed course, or whether they stepped in as big buyers in the wake of this panic.
AIG shortie noose getting tighter
Bloomberg hasn't even begun to speak and it looks like they're starting to crowd for the exits. Having Patterson taking a shot at you is one thing, having Bloomie coming after you with the thought of the Fed, and all the rest of 'em coming in behind this evening and tomorrow a.m. has got to create some fear. There were 4 points potential gain for the shorts vs. at least a dozen the other direction an hour ago. And all the firepower signaling they're coming in. That was the time to book it out of dodge.
Can't wait to watch their hair catch on fire when the squeeze really gets going.
Next up: Mayor Bloomberg presser (eom)
Patterson - NY will relax insurance regs
... to allow AIG to shift $20 billion from insurance reserves to operating. They're halfway home. They need another $20 billion, then an SEC short restriction reinstatement overnight, plus revelation of their divestiture plan tomorrow pre-market, then a statement from the ratings agencies that they're satisfied, and that should do it. Time for shorties to get squared up and buy full protection.
And now, the ramp-o-rama short wedgie drama has already begun. Wheeeee.
My bad - there WILL be news on AIG
NY Governor Patterson has scheduled a news conference to talk AIG. Not sure what he'll say, but it might have to do with relaxing regulatory standards.
"Watching AIG news for option entry"
Be interested to know what specifically you're looking for. Given their track record, there's virtually no chance AIG will say anything further today when they've said nothing will be forthcoming before tomorrow a.m. If the SEC was going to act, it would have done so last night. If the Fed was going to act, it would have last night.
My sense is, any further news and developments on AIG will not happen before after the close, and probably not before tomorrow a.m.
The big question, though, IMO, is whether given AIG's $1 Trillion balance sheet, and given how far its tentacles stretch, and given that there is no "FDIC"-type protection for holders of insurance policies, will Treasury/Fed, etc. conclude AIG is "too big to fail" and come in with some action.
I'm leaning toward believing they will.
Incidentally, I see little chance BAC doesn't cut their dividend. Ken Lewis seemed to telegraph it in his current ongoing CNBC interview. He senses this as a tremendous, once in a lifetime opportunity for the strong to grab market share, and would clearly rather have the money for squaring up their ratios and potentially grabbing up a bunch of the smaller banks as they fail, rather than shipping the extra capital off to shareholders in the form of dividends. In fact, he was fairly straightforward in saying he thought it was in the shareholders' best interest for the money to be applied in those pursuits.
Maybe I'm wrong, but even when the smart money sees it coming, dividend cuts generally aren't greeted well.
Best Buy gobbles up Napster
In case things weren't already interesting enough for you today ...
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=10026
China surprise rate cut
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122147021553235889.html?mod=hpp_us_whats_news
Bank of England likely to cut too.
"I ain't talk'n protection"
In my original post to which you responded, I was. As to pointing out that the 25 calls with 5 days left and nearly 50% OTM to the upside were cheap, isn't that a bit like pointing out that the sun rises in the east? Tell me, what sane person would have bought those calls as a naked speculative play? If I had told you on Friday, that BAC was going to buy MER before expiration for $29/shr, you would have laughed so hard you might have broken a rib.
You're right, the ramifications and ripple-out effect is going to be enormous.
The MER 25 calls
wouldn't have sufficed as protection for the heavy shorting going on all day Friday. They would have had to offset at the 17.50s, 19s or 20s to meaningfully protect.
As I said in the previous post, I suspect some of the hedgies pushing the short side were getting cocky near the end there, and probably weren't fully offset. To the extent that is true, they are going to get their faces ripped off.
Can't say I'm gonna feel too badly for them either.
Expanded Fed window
What do you make of this?
Has the Fed fired its own bazooka too soon?
And what do you make of this AIG request for a direct loan?
I feel like I've stepped into the twilight zone. Hard to believe some of this stuff unfolding.
MER takeout rumored at $29/shr
If that is true and if the deal is consummated tonight, there are going to be some funds in trouble come tomorrow am, to the extent they got bold and went unhedged or lightly/partially hedged.
CNBC has a special 2-hr slot tonight
8-10 EST. Spaceholder for them to go live with all the latest on Lehman, AIG, Merrill, WaMu and the rest of it.
Should be ... interesting.
How stunning is this?
According to this FT article, there are still $2.5 billion in uninsured deposits at WaMu. WTF are those people thinking?!!
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fc552bf8-8282-11dd-a019-000077b07658.html
Oh swell.
I guess this could turn out one of two ways. Either the government has just blinked again and is screwing the taxpayer out of billions more, or ... it is theoretically possible that the government could be capitalizing and picking up the stuff that simply needs time to wash out and heal the fear and logjam premium, knowing it has the unlimited taxpayer capital that will enable it to hold the stuff until everything settles out, the fear premiums come out and ... heaven forbid, maybe they actually MAKE money for the taxpayer by trading on his/her behalf.
Wouldn't that be a kick?
"unless there's a sibling hate-on ..."
"unless there's a sibling hate-on that we don't anything about."
OK, what the hell. Yes, there is. Jeb is as bright as W is brain-dead. Jeb is driven by intellect and genuine ideology, a guy who favors "what you know", where W could care less about ideology, and gets by in the world on the good-ole-boy "who you know" approach. They are opposites. And uneasy rival siblings who don't care much for each others' life philosophies. And while I won't profess to know where Jeb's thoughts on religion stand, it's my impression from a lot closer than casual distance that Jeb doesn't take positions and pursue agendas b/c he thinks God is telling him what to do, and likely doesn't have a great deal of respect for W's theocratic instincts. W knows this and resents it. One thing you'll hear from anyone who knows Jeb or has worked near him -- he doesn't suffer fools gladly. 'Nuff said on that.
Then there are the family dynamics - all during the growing up years, they coddled Neil, let W screw off, and busted Jeb's chops. Not surprising given that they thought he was the serious one, with the functioning brain. Not hard to see where the resentment started. Where things really went off the rails was when W married the cookie cutter type that mummy Babs thought kept up the right family appearances, while Jeb followed his heart and married Columba - a Mexican (gasp!). He was blackballed from family gatherings for years, and his children referred to as "the little brown ones". Barbara Bush is one of the nastiest beyatches around and her scorn there was just ugly. Papa Bush is what held that family together, such as it was. I'm convinced the reason the press never blew the whistle on his longstanding affair with Jennifer Fitzgerald all through his years as VP and President, was because they felt so sorry for him having to deal with Barbara the beeeyatch.
There's lots more, but it ain't fit for public consumption. Let's just say, you hit the nail on the head. If the Bush family is attacked from the outside, then they'll close ranks. But beyond that, there is absolutely no love lost between the two. And while I don't think W would go out of his way to screw over Jeb, I can guarantee you he wouldn't lift a finger to help him, without daddy stepping in. And as we know, daddy's influence in W's life is more limited than ever.
Whoa, Brinker did that?!!
That is SERIOUS. That guy has a large audience out the PacNW. If he triggers a run on the bank, they are toast within 48 hours.
I'm actually not entirely surprised by BoA. If people thought US banks had become anti-competitive gouge machines after the repeal of Glass-Steagall and 15 years of consolidation and concentration, just wait 'til they get a whiff of a BoA dominated US finance system.
I think BoA figures they're going to be the one "too big to fail" institution, and therefore give themselves a free ticket to a longer time horizon to digest whatever they can get their hands on.
I guess I see BoA of grabbing for the big brass ring here, and, in the long-term, succeeding, what with Citi more likely to be forced to breakup, that leaves JP Morgan and foreign interests. In the near term, I think it's a dangerous mess even for them. It's preposterous to believe their claim that Countrywide will be accretive in 2009. Not a chance it winds up being anything but a complete dilutive disaster unless Treasury and the Fed let them dump huge amounts of Countrywide garbage onto Fannie and have the taxpayers perform a massive subsidization.
I think that leaves just one more piece ... IMO BoA will wind up the entire meltdown by buying out SunTrust (and possibly Regions Financial). But they'll wait for the next round of commercial and consumer credit disasters to cause another crater before they come in on that.
Who's big enough to take WaMu off the hands of the government if it goes? Citi's in no position to take it on. That leaves HSBC, UBS, Royal Bank of Scotland, JP Morgan or possibly Wells Fargo. Wow, wouldn't Wells Fargo love to grab up a monster market position and lock up the entire west coast!
Having called Paulson's bluff
... now Paulson has called theirs.
The special trading session trades are there in place now to wind down Lehman. If Lehman wants an orderly dissolution and minimal loss in bankruptcy, it must file no later than 11:59 pm. The trades executed in this afternoon's special session become null and void if Lehman fails to file by 11:59 pm.
Which means the suitors have until shortly before 11:59 pm to make an offer. With no government guarantees or backing. Otherwise what they hoped to buy goes away.
It's about damned time somebody in our godforsaken government finally stood up and refused to fork over our tax dollars for more corporate welfare. I guess it would be too much to hope that Congress would tell the slugs from Detroit to go home and take their $50 billion handout request and stuff it.
Wall Street sees Paulson's hand
And he says "Go Fish!"
No government guarantee, no deal. Lehman is gone.
Special 2 hour Sunday trading session has already taken place: 2pm-4pm for counterparties to extract themselves.
OT: on insurance and risk spreading
Something else that's whacked about the way we deal with disasters ...
We mandate insurance pools be spread around, without requiring equality in investment for loss prevention. This is blatant discrimination against the more responsible - the opposite of what good policy would encourage.
For example, why should one community that establishes high quality disaster prevention standards in their building codes -- and therein forces its residents to pay more up-front to avoid losses on the back-end -- be forced to pay the exact insurance pool rates, and the exact same tax rates in contributing to the cost of disaster relief efforts, while another does the opposite?
Not to pick on Houston, but for example, I drove I-10 to my residence in Houston in the immediate wake of Alicia (1983). Downtown Houston streets were closed for more than a week in the aftermath due to the amount of glass from high-rise office buildings. Houston is notorious for its complete laxity in building and zoning regulations. Here we are a quarter century later, and Houston is going to suck up resources and drive up insurance rates for everyone in the related pools, all because it didn't want to make developers and owners of those buildings absorb the cost of getting the roof gravel under control and didn't want them to absorb the cost of putting in higher-grade windows, and the higher costs of building to more stringent code.
That is a classic cost-shift. IMO, a most unfortunate one.
OT: Right on, tomm
The Federal Flood Insurance program is among the most moronic public policies on our books, not to mention a sickeningly regressive tax and boondoggle.
It is assinine to build on barrier islands, and on rapidly eroding beachfronts. I won't even get into the wetlands issues you mentioned - they're a disaster all their own.
Since 1980, the North Carolina coast has eroded by more than 600 feet in the Cape Hatteras locale. We have lighthouses that were built 100 yards inland of the coast during the brief history of our country, that are now more than a quarter mile out at sea.
Yet we permit people to build in areas that we know with 100% certainty WILL BE GONE in a relatively short period of time, historically speaking, and we tell the owners that we'll build them roads, provide them utilities, provide them emergency services, and we'll even pay them for property losses by heavily subsidizing insurance policies for them (which amounts to nothing more than paying for their houses to fall into the sea, but on an installment basis).
And the worst thing about it, is the regressivity of the burden. Poor and middle class people aren't the ones building million dollar beachfront homes.
OT: Tell me sinclap
... will you happily open your wallet and pay the costs of the helicopters flying out to Galveston at $1,200/hr to ferry out the people who (a) elected to build and live on a barrier island that everyone knows has been overtopped historically multiple times, and then (b) despite being warned that if they didn't get the hell off the island before this hurricane were in danger of losing not only their property, but their lives? Seriously, at what point do you believe it is immoral to reach into another man's pocket?
"affected ones"? There is a perfectly reasonable middle ground between the completely off-the-deep-end welfare state that makes cripples of everyone until the downward spiral destroys everything from individual self-worth and motivation, on out to the entire society of those who actually work hard to avoid placing burdens on others, and the folks on the other end of the spectrum who say "to hell with you, swim on your own or drown."
I live in the path of hurricanes. Members of my family have lived in the path of hurricanes for generations (including the Galveston storm of 1900, Andrew in 1989 and Katrina - the three worst storms in US history). Needless to say, all of them, self included, at one point or another, have suffered losses, sometimes extreme, including complete and total loss of homes and businesses. I can tell you, not once have any of them been interested in government handouts, or insurance fraud. Why? Because we happen to have the sort of ethics that cares very much about digging into other people's pockets. If you've ever been in a disaster zone, you find very quickly what people are made of and what their values are. Both individually, and as a culture and community.
You find there are people and communities that, no matter the level of loss and devastation, set immediately about trying to put the pieces back together. They don't sit around waiting for "government" to fix things. They don't spend their energy trying to figure out how to maximize what they can scam the insurance company for, or how to get someone else to pay for, or do the work of, picking up the pieces.
You also find that there are the kinds of people who, even when suffering greatly themselves, are concerned about trying to help their neighbors, who are concerned about trying to minimize how many of the scarce community resources - be it gas, ice, electricity, or government manpower and services - so as not to take for themselves from their neighbors unless absolutely necessary. There is nothing more inspiring than seeing that kind of selflessness, that kind of generosity, under those circumstances. Amidst the hardship and rubble of those kinds of disasters, those of us who have been through them will tell you, we were blessed with a renewal of faith in our neighbors. Some of them, at least!
On the flip side, regrettably you find the people with an entitleitis mindset who never once think about the fact that there is no "free lunch," that every bit of government services consumed is coming out of the back pockets of others, and more importantly, don't seem to give a rip that every bit of limited disaster relief manpower spent on them is taken away from someone else in need.
In fact, if you really care about disaster relief and seeing it applied to those who really need it, then you would abhor the mindset that everyone "affected" somehow ought to be draining those resources as some sort of "Constitutional right".
Yes, though there seem to be fewer people in this country that appreciate it, our resources as a nation and people are LIMITED, NOT INFINITE. Which means they ought to be applied with prudence, where they are most needed.
As a nation, we have made colossally stupid public policy decisions when it comes to natural disasters - hurricanes in particular. We actually, as a people, subsidize through the Federal Flood Insurance program, the act of building in places we should least build. Worse, it is an unbelievably regressive tax.
It's funny, how ultra-liberals look at the state of electoral politics in this country, and can't figure out how the Presidential race is even close. They think to themselves that the people who won't vote for Obama must either be some sort of backwoods, uneducated hicks, grossly uninformed, grossly misinformed, duped by some sort of distorted propaganda from "the Republicans". They don't realize that while it's true there are those kinds of folks out there, and while it's also true that there is all kinds of nonsense flying in the silly season of campaigning, that there is a large swath of Americans who are sensible moderates, with morals and ethics, reasonably well-educated, with plenty of common sense, who aren't fooled by the propaganda of either side, but who are increasingly disillusioned with the notion that the government should just bail everyone out of everything. Should somehow just print more money or wave a magic wand. As though no one will ever pay for it.
Yes, there are some of us who are horrified at the notion that an entire generation of aging Americans somehow believes themselves entitled to unlimited prescription drugs and unlimited consumption of medical care. The $32 TRILLION prescription drug bill and the potential burden it places on other people in other generations is not acceptable to some of us. Some of us would rather pull the plug on ourselves, rather than suck up enough health care services in the last few months of our lives to stick our children and grandchildren and the children and grandchildren of our neighbors and communities under the burden of paying of a bill far larger than we ever paid into the system.
</screed>
All your legislation are belong to us
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=alcVIaV9pLoc
Dear US Congress and future generations of Americans,
I write to inform you that you may not weasel out of the deal I made last weekend to use American taxpayer dollars to bail out debt-holders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, nor may you escape the noose I wrapped around your necks for eating any and all losses associated with any derivatives I've permitted other banks to dump on the Fannie/Freddie trashpile.
I'm taking the time to write this to you now, because I know what a raw deal I've made on your behalf, and I know you're likely to figure out exactly how badly I sold you up the river in coming months as more and more of the facts come to light. And I know the natural thing at that point would be the US Congress to legislate a different deal. Of course I won't be there to look out for the interests of the people I screwed the American taxpayers to protect, so let me just say now, my deal stands. Period. Forever. I rule. You submit.
Constitution? Jurisprudence? You thought no government could block the sovereign authority of future successive governments? Well, you thought wrong. Or didn't you miss that we've emasculated and shredded the Constitution bit by bit for the past several years? See here, now I'm just coming straight out and letting you know, get used to it. Congress, you have no Constitutional authority to legislate in any area where I've made deals. Forever and ever, amen.
As the kids might say ... All your legislation are belong to us.
Sincerely,
Hank
Wow, what a piece of work
Seriously, you could have provided the link in the time it took you to in essence say: "Go pound sand, and find it yourself". What an asshat response.
BTW, gee, thanks for the IHT tip. It must be tough being such a well-read guy among so many ignorant fools. There are several here who will be laughing so hard they've probably fallen out of their chairs at the notion of how backwards your perception is.
Go to IHT.com?
Seriously, you can't give me the headline or a URL? That's like me suggesting you go visit this really cool restaurant, you asking how to find it, and me saying "just drive to California".
Putin - source?
That's a fascinating quote. Can you steer me to the source?
BTW, you should see Putin's training camps for young people. They are frighteningly similar to the sort of brainwashing propagandizing that Hitler employed. Except far more sophisticated.
GE at $26.50 ...
Interested? Anyone who's an investor, not a trader, with investment time horizons, would have to be thinking about it. Yield now at 4.4%, and I don't think there's any realistic case that can be made that it doesn't have perpetual cash-flow to cover that. There is a dark hole in GE Finance, but a few years ago they spun off the junkiest of the book. Beyond that, these guys are well position for the long haul in a world where progressive energy policies are evolving. There is a pretty good case to be made that the sum of the parts is considerably more valuable than how they are being priced currently as part of the whole.
The one wild card is Jeff Immelt. He is a true visionary, and probably the most under-rated CEO in the world. If he were to be driven off, it would undoubtedly hurt the long term prospects. What a decent guy he is, never having once said anything about the pile of garbage he got handed by the shyster Jack Welch.
"How do they do it?"
With the massive short interest, obviously there are some others out there wondering exactly the same thing. Priced to perfection for hearty growth. These are the kinds that fall very hard when they slip up in any way.
A short interest that high is a big red flag. It's convenient to figure the guy on the other side of the trade is just blind and stupid to the obvious merits of the business. But anyone realistically knows that's not likely. That kind of short interest isn't a single hedge fund manager who came to the wrong conclusion. That's a whole lot of very smart guys, who almost certainly have superior trading tools, superior research, superior access to information. At least 8 times out of 10, they turn out to be right. I don't like being on the side of a trade that's on the 2 in 10 side of the odds. Worse, I don't ever want to be in a trade that doesn't offer me at least $2 of upside for every $1 of capped risk, and believe there's at least a 50/50 probability of the upside target being achieved rather than the downside alternative. I just don't see that sort of equation on BWLD.
Ford, GM, Chrysler - despicable
American Honda and the American operations of Toyota are the #2 and #4 largest manufacturers of cars sold in the US. They are employing American employees, at American factories, using equipment tooled in America, etc.
They are both doing just fine, thank you. Because they have competent management. American management! Yes, the senior-most managers are in Japan. But the managers of American manufacturing and operations, are American.
So how is it that Ford, GM and Chrysler think they are deserving of taxpayer handouts and these other American car manufacturers are not? And what is there justification?
These companies should be allow to fail. The sooner, the better. The total customer demand for autos isn't going to go away. Which means some company(s) will fill the void. Those companies will likely employ all the quality employees from the failed companies. And the deadwood and worthless slugs at those companies won't get re-hired. That's how capitalism is supposed to work.
Keeping perpetually inferior operators artificially alive, only serves to strangle progress, innovation, misallocates capital, and basically screws not only the taxpayer, but the auto-buying customers.
"best of breed in industry"
Everyone's got a favorite operator in that space. Who's "best of breed" is an open argument. What's not an open argument, is that the entire space is economically sensitive, and if the economy continues to deteriorate, they will all get hit.
BWLD is trading at a premium to the market, and a premium to its growth rate. It was trading nearly 50% lower just 6 months ago, and even in this environment is trading within spitting distance of its all-time high.
How would you define the risk:reward on capital invested in BWLD at $37? Seems to me if it traded at $20 as recently as 6 months ago, in a worsening economic climate, it could go right back there. That's $17 of risk against what kind of reward?
OT: Tex - good luck, stay safe
We're all pulling for you there on the Texas coastal regions.
And you too, not-so-coastal Bootz.
OT: mainehiker would you please
... at least mark your OT political posts "OT", or better still, at least take them to the political board during market hours?
There isn't anyone here who doesn't know your view on the universe by now. And frankly, anyone who does any independent thinking or is a moderate, is more likely to be repelled than compelled by your approach and attitude. BTW, the answer to your question is, there is more than enough blame at the foot of both political parties, and that most of the corrupting of Fannie/Freddie was done by your beloved Democrats, most of the regulatory relaxation was done at their behest. And yes, the largest corrupting of that thoroughly corrupt enterprise took place via the Clinton machine. If you're truly ignorant of the particulars, I would be happy to discuss or share them with you ... in the appropriate forum, on Zeev's political board.
OT: Senate Dems asking F&F to stop foreclosing
This is the beginning of the beginning of the end for the US. Stealing from the honest and hard-working to give to the cheats, the liars, those with a case of entitleitis. It is, I suppose, the ultimate extension of the welfare state. But a welfare state with no rational differentiation.
Nauseating. If they do it, I'm not sticking around to pay for it. I don't think there's any question, if they really do it - still hard for me to believe - but if they really do, we'll re-enter an age of confiscatory taxation like the Carter years, before the entire house of cards comes down. Maybe the nutters who're talking incessantly about buying gold and rationing food and stockpiling guns are going to have the last laugh.
I'm sorry, but there is no Constitutional entitlement to home ownership. More importantly, there is no "right" to live in a home you can't afford to make the payments on yourself. If you can't afford it, you move. And are grateful for having lived in better circumstances than you ever paid for to begin with, for however long that lasted.
OT: Fraudie, Phoney and manipulation (Pt 1)
First things first, yes, both Klobuchar and Ellison voted for the bill to grant complete open-ended authority to the Secretary of Treasury and Federal Reserve. That was a larger, more all-encompassing abdication of legislative authority than when Congress gave Bush a blank check and unlimited authority to take us to war in Iraq. Someday, you'll come to understand they screwed you even worse on that than Congress screwed you on the Iraq war authorization.
Did they pander for your vote with untruths and manipulation? No idea. Did they claim they were going to Washington to look out for you and other ordinary taxpayers, or did they tell you they'd sell you up a river and pick your pockets at every turn to help out the folks who run the company they work for (the Democratic party) -- without the support of which they wouldn't have their half-million dollar a year jobs (yes, when you add in franking privileges, housing allowances, travel, perks, etc., etc., that's what they make) -- and its funders (aka, the folks who write the real checks, and own the actual workings of the party)? If it was the former, did you believe them?
"So who should of been on Fannie and Fredie's Board than?"
Maybe, just maybe it would have been a good idea to have the Board and Executive office occupied by something other than a bunch of unqualified political cronies, whose aims and goals were, in this order (1) direct cash payback to the pols who appointed them via Fannie campaign contributions, (2) indirect payback to the pols who appointed them via Fannie "charitable" contributions to organizations that funneled money and fomented voters for the aforementioned pols, (3) enrich themselves personally to the maximum extent possible, regardless of whether that ran contrary to taxpayer or public interest, (4) use the power of the position to enlarge their own power network by utilizing it as a piggy bank of unlimited favors and handouts.
Then again, maybe not such a big deal. They were only fooling around with about $5 Trillion or so, strung out on 30:1 margin. Ask yourself, if a hack politician came to you and said "gee, sinclap, I've been thinking, I'd kind of like to do some derivatives trading in complex debt instruments. How about you give me $10k of your savings to work with. It's possible, since my motives are to enrich myself, even if it's at your expense, I might lose your 10k. In fact, since I plan on going on margin of 30:1 so I can be fooling around with $300,000k, if I screw up, you could potentially lose a lot more than your $10k. If I get it wrong to the tune of 10%, you could be out $30k+. So ... whatda think? Ready to write me a check?"
OT: "the party comes closest to my ideology"
You are being played. Ideology is just the tool used to play you, the convenient method for punching your emotional buttons to manipulate you to buy their product (i.e. give them your vote). It is the ACTION that matters.
There is very little difference between the duopolists when it comes to ACTIONS. For instruction on that, one need not look any farther than the entire Wall Street tumult, the Countrywide and Bear Stearns bailouts, and the Fraudie and Phoney mess. Do you see any difference in the way they responded? Why? I suggest you look at Fannie's Board of Directors and Executive management for the past couple decades, how and by whom they were appointed, look at Fannie's political contributions list, look at who personally got bought off by them, look at who their investors were who got bailed out with your tax dollars, then look at the bailees' relationships to both of the duopolist businesses and their "leaders".
For one poignant example, consider this ... have you seen how many liberals and Democrats have gotten completely outraged at the notion of Sarah Palin being "for" The Bridge to Nowhere, blah, blah, blah? And now we have a silly war over whether she was really for it before she was against it, etc. The condemnation from these types was instinctive and knee-jerk, and it was manipulated with the punch of a button. Outrage! Never bothering to engage a brain to see whether there was a whit's difference between her and Obama or Biden. Turns out, when Tom Coburn offered the amendment to shift the money from that Alaska boondoggle to Hurricane Katrina relief, both Obama and Biden voted against that, then voted again for the bridge approp.