There are several causes that I endorse and advocate for, as long-term readers may be aware of. From time to time I like to take the opportunity to mention them and to try to raise funds for them. Today I will do so again.
This time this is a cause closer to home than say Darfur. For those in the central New York State area I invite you to come to, or donate for (even if you are not in New York State or the United States), the 1st Annual Memorial Pig Roast for Madden A. Cordero at Tom’s Tavern in Hagaman New York on October 18th – donation for admission are $10 but you can give more if you want – starting at noon until.
Madden Cordero sadly lived a short life, but was loved greatly in his time here. He had Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome which is a congenital disorder that can be found while the child is in the womb. Sadly, as in this case, it was not. Because this syndrome can be easily missed those born with the affliction often die within the first few days or months, but with quick treatment they can survive. Even with the required surgeries a child with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome will require life long medication and regular check-ups with heart doctors.
In honor of Madden this pig roast will raise money to be donated to the Ronald McDonald House located in Albany.
Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMHC) has been around for 35 years. The purpose of RMHC is to help children and their families around the world. The RMHC is more than just toys and games for children as many of us might assume. They provide services that families and children with serious conditions require and could never be expected to be prepared for.
RMHC provided the Cordero family a place to stay, which was 40 minutes away from their home, and close to the hospital in Albany where Madden was being treated. They had the ability to sleep, shower, research the internet on the condition afflicting their child, and a shuttle to and from the hospital – allowing them quick and easy access to the hospital and their child without the worry and cost of taxis, traffic jams, bad directions, fatigue driving, or any other potential delay and complication.
Like at all Ronald McDonald Houses, the only thing families are asked it to provide is a donation, maybe $7/day, if the family can afford it while they stay at the House. Like for the Cordero family this was a simple bit of help in a time of turmoil emotion and difficulty.
While I would hope that no family would ever have to endure any problems in their child’s life, Ronald McDonald House Charities helps those that do have to encounter these unexpected and extreme situations.
The 1st Annual Memorial Pig Roast for Madden A. Cordero will provide food and some drinks for all those that come and make a $10 donation. 100% of the donations, plus the cost of the event will be given to the Ronald McDonald House of Albany.
There will be a 50/50 raffle, and prizes donated by corporations in the area are planned to also be raffled. Again all monies raised will be given 100% directly to the RMHC.
If you would like to donate $10, or more to this cause please contact Mr. Gregg Cordero at 607–797–3783 for further details.
If you own a business and would like to donate a product or service to be raffled to raise funds for Ronald McDonald House of Albany you can also contact Mr. Cordero at the above number.
I know that my readers are compassionate people. As such I will donate all profits from the sale of any item found at my online store, for the month of October, to this Memorial and RMHC. In addition, all donations made to M V Consulting and/or all of its blogs and sites for the month of October will be donated as well. And finally I expect to be at this event, and will personally be making a donation as well.
I thank you for your attention in this matter, and your generosity as well.
Denver’s police union is facing criticism for printing a commemorative T-shirt that makes light of the use of violence by police, particularly in the wake of 154 arrests during the week of Democratic National Convention this past August.
“We get up early, to beat the crowds,” the shirt reads, followed by “2008 DNC.” The words flank a grinning police officer holding a baton and wearing a hat with a crossed-out number “68,” presumably making reference to activist organization Recreate 68, which staged several anti-war demonstrations during the convention.
The Law Enforcement Code of Ethics from the Denver Police Department Operations Manual reads :
‘As a Law Enforcement Officer, my fundamental duty is to serve mankind, to safeguard lives and property, to protect the innocent against deception, the weak against oppression or intimidation, and the peaceful against violence or disorder; and to respect the Constitutional rights of all men to liberty, equality and justice.’
They printed 2000 t-shirts, gave them away to police officers, are reporting “strong sales” and no complaints.
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You have to be impressed by the Congressional Democrats. They have balls. Not brains, just balls. Because that is the only way they can make the claims they do about the bailout deal.
In listening to the Democrats, Barney Frank in particular you would think that the Republicans are staging a massive political coup. That the Republicans are the only reason why the bailout deal that was voted on today failed was their votes. That this is all about politics and the upcoming election.
But if you stop listening to the polispeak in Congress and look at the vote numbers and you see another picture.
The vote was 228 – 205 against the deal. That includes 94 Democrats, which could have easily made the difference and passed the deal no matter what the Republicans did. But they chose to go against their Party and Treasury Secretary Paulson, and President Bush.
Why? Because the deal was horrible. Because there is no confidence in the deal. Because the rush to pass the deal makes you wonder what is in it. Like the fact that a previous version included a stipulation that if this bailout actually got any money repaid that money would not go to taxpayers but would fund a Democratic initiative called ACORN (which has federal problems currently).
Or how about the fact that I have yet heard how the public, that will be buying these assets (bad mortgage loans) could or will get the money back. We will spend $10,000 each, out of our pockets, and if this ever makes break-even or profit there has been no discussion how we get that $10,000 back in our pockets directly. And under the current plans you never will. That is not a political problem, that is just a bad deal.
If this were as political as Democrats would like it to be, then this bad deal would have passed, Senator Obama would have the credit for it (or at least Senator McCain would have the blame) and they would use this to win the election. That didn’t happen.
If this were political, Republicans could have voted for this deal claimed it was because of Senator McCain’s influence and used that to win the election. It’s just that simple.
But Senator McCain, the Republicans, and 94 Democrats are not being political. They are doing their jobs. They are trying to structure a deal that works for taxpayers like you and me. They want to answer (I hope) the question of how the money comes back to you and me, if it ever makes money.
If we want to really be political about this, we can ask why Barney Frank and Chris Dodd could not see the impending problem as late as July of this year yet they are the heads of the Banking and Finance Committees in Congress. They were informed by supposedly brilliant minds on the exact status of the problem, and they crafted laws and regulations to control what happened. They also made enormous amounts of money from the very people they were (supposedly) watching.
Look, here is the reality. Senator Obama and McCain are Senators. One of them will be the next President. They are effectively the leaders of their respective Parties. They need to get into this fray (well at least Obama does as McCian is) and do their jobs. They need to forge a deal, stand together and say they endorse the deal. At that point it will have to pass. And to forge the deal they need to answer the question that I feel is most important, how I get my money back.
Everything that is short of this is polispeak. Every moment that Obama avoids this problem, every moment that they don’t answer the key question, every moment we have no deal endangers America and makes our near-term future that more bleak. And no matter how many Democrats blame Republicans, or how many deny their failure to do their jobs, the outcome remains the same.
The cream of the Democrats and Republicans hold stock portfolios worth tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars. So it’s no surprise they’re very happy The Big Bailout is apparently going ahead. Their money is safe. How about yours?
They appear to be the ONLY people in America laughing their faces off about this today.
“PEOPLE ARE HORRENDOUSLY PISSED ALL OVER THE INTERNET
THERE IS DEFFINATE A SEVERE BACKLASH COMING…. QUESTION IS HOW BIG OF A BACKLASH
i have never seen the internet this pissed before and i have been online since 1992″
“People are extremely pissed off and alot of them. Personally, Im not sure what to believe anymore.”
“don’t underestimate the hillbillies when they get pissed off….. they own most of the guns in the country”
“people need to start canceling their insurance policy. then they need to stop paying their property taxes. then take more action if needed.”
Michael Rivero proposes a totally legal, but devastating, act of mass dissent against the state :
The instant this bailout passes I am taking all of my money out of the bank in protest.
THIS IS A PERFECTLY LEGAL FORM OF PROTEST. It is, after all, YOUR money. It is not a crime to take it back from the bankers who just now lobbied Congress into screwing you for $700 billion. The US Government cannot legally stop you from taking your money out of the bank, nor can they block you from recommending to your friends that they take their money out of the bank.
Yes, the banks just make money out of thin air for the loans that got then into trouble, but under the current laws, they need REAL deposits of REAL money on which to base their loans of created credit. For every $1000 withdrawn from an account, the bank has to call back in $10,000 in loans. It won’t take very many people deciding to empty their accounts to get the notice of the bankers and politicians, and of course, once it gets going, people will empty their accounts rather than risk being left empty-handed.
Some Republicans think the nationalisation of American banks and financial institutions signals the start of Martial Law In America :
And so for the first time in a century, the US Army will deploy armed combat teams permanently on American soil, starting October 1. It will be an “enduring mission”. They call it ‘Brigade Homeland’ :
The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.
Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.
Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.
They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.
Civil Unrest and Crowd Control will clearly be the mostly likely crisis they’ll respond to. Luckily, they will have a “non-lethal package” to “restore normalcy” :
They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”
What has been tested in Iraq, will be fully operational for use against Americans to “restore normalcy” :
The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.
“I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered,” said Cloutier, describing the experience as “your worst muscle cramp ever — times 10 throughout your whole body.
“I’m not a small guy, I weigh 230 pounds … it put me on my knees in seconds.”
Traffic stoppers, road blocks, and Tasers, too.
American soldiers tasering American civilians….
They will be welcomed at natural disasters and massive train wrecks or more inexplicable skyscraper collapses, but not so much at massive protests in the streets of Washington and New York.
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China, Japan are the nervous owners of more than $1.1 trillion of American debt. Festy debt.
If BushCo. doesn’t get the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street through, China now warns there will be panic selling of this US debt, with a global financial collapse to follow :
Japan, China and other holders of U.S. government debt must quickly reach an agreement to prevent panic sales leading to a global financial collapse, said Yu Yongding, a former adviser to the Chinese central bank.”If there’s no selling in a panicked way, then China willingly can continue to provide our financial support by continuing to hold U.S. assets.”
An agreement is needed so that no nation rushes to sell, “causing a collapse,” Yu said.
Asian countries together hold half of the $2.67 trillion total (US debt) held by foreign nations.
“Whether some kind of agreement between them to continue to hold Treasury bills is viable, I’m not sure,” said James McCormack, head of sovereign ratings at Fitch Ratings Ltd in Hong Kong.
“It would be unusual. If it became apparent that sovereigns in Asia were selling Treasuries the market would take that quite badly, it’s something to be avoided.”
“China is very worried about the safety of its assets,” he said. “If you want China to keep calm, you must ensure China that its assets are safe.”
No wonder President Bush look so terrified during his ‘Oh Shit, We’re Fucked’ speech the other day :
Or maybe he’s smirking?
But $700 billion to keep China and Japan happy will not be enough. There are, of course, other demands now that America is on the ropes :
Yu said China is helping the U.S. “in a very big way” and added that it should get something in return. The U.S. should avoid labeling it an unfair trader and a currency manipulator and not politicize other issues, he said.
“Why are we piling up these IOUs if they may default?”
“IOUs from the U.S.,” said Yu….”this is paper and it may default and it will not increase China’s national welfare.”
The message is clear. BushCo. will secure China’s holdings of American debt, by staking the financial future, and health and education, of American children as collateral. Or China will drop the hammer. In case BushCo. didn’t get the message, queen takes knight :
Chinese regulators have told domestic banks to stop interbank lending to U.S. financial institutions to prevent possible losses during the financial crisis…
“The decree appears to be Beijing’s first attempt to erect defences against the deepening U.S. financial meltdown after the mainland’s major lenders reported billions of U.S. dollars in exposure to the credit crisis….”
The Federal Reserve and the Treasury do not really need to ride to the rescue of its debt-savaged financial institutions if only they really believed in their own shattered mantras of “Free Market Forever” and “Let The Market Decide.” China, the Saudis, the Russians are all eager to snap up some huge chunks of America at bargain basement prices. In a truly globalised, free market world, all these financial institutions should be up for sale to the highest bidder (with a few restrictions).
But they won’t be doing that. So instead its a betrayal by BushCo. of almost everything principle claimed to stand for, and preached, and it’s America Fleeced :
The world has changed in the past decade. There’s been a steady transfer of wealth away from the United States in a shift most Americans have not yet grasped. But there has been no accompanying transfer of responsibility. New powers are free-riding as if it were still the American century.
It’s not. Imagine if Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, had declared last week: “China has a deep interest in the stability of the U.S. economy and the dollar. We stand ready to help in the essential return of confidence to financial markets. Talks with the U.S. Treasury are ongoing.”
Asians have been saving rather than spending. Their consumers are in better shape, as are their banks. The China Investment Corp. (C.I.C.), a sovereign wealth fund, is sitting on $200 billion (and a 9.9 percent stake in Morgan Stanley) while China’s central bank is managing another $1.8 trillion in reserves.Let’s be clear: this is an American mess forged by the American genius for new-fangled financial instruments in an era where the mantra has been that government is dumb and the markets are smart and risk is non-existent. The responsibility for undoing the debacle is chiefly American, too.
…the U.S. has essentially been on its own. Now foreign banks with U.S. affiliates will want a slice of the $700 billion bailout. That doesn’t make sense until the burden of this rescue starts reflecting a globalized world.
“I think it’s a perverse pride thing….We don’t ask for help. We’re the big, strong father figure. But let’s be realistic: we’re no longer the dominant world power.”
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke had been thwarted all week in their efforts to stabilize U.S. financial markets. Now, early in the evening of Sept. 18, they had a bigger fix in mind, and they went to sell it to Congress.
They sat in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, at a wooden conference table adorned with pink roses and white hydrangeas, surrounded by more than a dozen congressional leaders.
In the previous four days, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. had gone bankrupt. Merrill Lynch & Co. and Bank of America Corp. had rushed into a shotgun wedding. The regulators had pumped $85 billion into American International Group Inc., nationalizing the world’s biggest insurer, and were trying to thaw frozen credit markets and prevent economic catastrophe.
Bernake, a scholar of the Great Depression, let them have it. “The credit lines in the American financial system, the lifeblood of the economy, are completely frozen,” he said…Banks had stopped lending to each other overnight, Bernanke said.That threatened to halt all lending in the U.S., forcing businesses to close and idling workers, the Fed chief said. The Fed also was seeing money being moved out of the country.
“You could have massive failures within days,” he told the group, and it would go beyond the banking system to “large name- brand companies…”
President George W. Bush, Sept. 20.
“At first, I thought we could deal with the problem one issue at a time….The house of cards was much bigger and started to stretch beyond Wall Street. When one card started to go, we worried about the whole deck going down.”
Incredible. The President of the United States told the world that the American economy is a collapsing house of cards. Was he trying to save America or help destroy it?
As details of the Paulson-proposed package emerge, so do concerns that the $700 billion cure may prove worse than the disease, virulent as it has been. Reregulation of Wall Street is one thing, critics say, while redefining capitalism another.
Call it Bushitalism.
A round-up of historic headlines from the past few days. Fucking incredible :
I just can’t step away from the most pivotal issue in the election and the lives of Americans right now. The spin in the media is that Senator McCain is avoiding Senator Obama on a debate of foreign policy – something McCain has experience at for decades and Obama has a speech in Germany. And many are calling the deep desire of McCain to serve the nation, as was called for by Harry Reid yesterday, a political stunt. Though they ignore the school boy-esque scolding that Obama received when the President called him to the White House today.
But I am tired of hearing Democrats and some media pundits running around blaming every economic woe of the nation on Republicans. There is certainly more than enough blame for all the politicians in Congress, which is why it has the lowest approval rating ever. Republicans have screwed up and spent more than they should. But Democrats have been no better, in fact those that are critical to the finance of the nation have been particularly blind. Mr. Magoo could have foreseen more with their level of information and influence over the years.
But lest my words be seen as partisan, which to an extent I am sure they are as with any pundit or blogger, I present talking heads from across the spectrum of the cable news media and pundits, as well as politicians themselves. Listen to those that we have elected, and their votes and assurances. Then tell me this is only a Republican caused problem.
And please explain to me why we should believe that those that planted the seeds for this problem, and fostered it to the debacle we are required to deal with today, should be believed when they say they have a solution
History of mortgage crisis back to 2003
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac contributions – Sept 18 2008
Chris Dodd was watching closely but did nothing – August 2007
Treasury Secretary Paulson progress made – February 2008
Barney Frank – Improving regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac July 14 2008
So I also ask this, If Senator McCain did not go to Washington D.C., if the President did not call Senator Obama to the White House, are you sure there would be a resolution to the bailout crisis? Would that resolution be in the best interest of the nation?
Is a debate, that could be easily rescheduled, more important than the potential of 4 out of 5 Americans losing their homes and jobs?
And lastly, isn’t it a bit hypocritical that Democrats claim that the debate must happen because America wants this; yet they defended Senator Obama when he refused for 2 months every request that was made for Obama to join McCain in speaking directly with Americans at town hall meetings across the nation?
Republicans are mad as hell over the BushCo. Socialist Bailout For Greedheads Plan, or whatever some of them are calling it now, and they’re not gonna take it anymore!
There was a time when Dick Cheney could turn back a Republican revolt on Capitol Hill.
That time is gone.
The vice president traveled to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to silence a chorus of GOP complaints about Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s $700 billion plan. But House Republicans who walked into a closed-door meeting with Cheney steaming over the plan walked out just as angry, and they described what happened in between as both “a bloodbath” and “an unmitigated disaster.”
But still :
…lawmakers remained respectful enough to give the vice president two standing ovations.
John McCain could ride to victory over Barack Obama by persuading voters that the bailout is really the “Obama-Bush plan.”
How angry will Republicans be when they learn that Cheney has known about the bailout plan for a number of months - that is, BushCo. knew this meltdown was coming - and didn’t bother to tell them about it?
Even some of Cheney’s closest friends in Washington appear genuinely shocked that one of the final acts of the BushCo. presidency would be a blackmail-infested final, savage fleecing of the American people.
Many of these appalled Republican senators, already spattered with BushCo. war blood as they watch financial ruin cleave through their districts, obviously want to get re-elected, and they know they can’t effectively or passionately sell the Bailout to the storm of conservative Americans choking up their phone lines and flooding their websites and e-mails demanding to know why ‘We should give more billions to the shitbags who caused all this in the first place’.
This is the crystal clear reality of what the Bailout really means that has already taken deep, firm root in the minds of nearly all Americans, across most if not all mainstream media, the blogosphere, talk radio, liberal and conservative, in a powerful act of dissent, and it will be impossible to rebrand it. Everyone knows this stinks like three day old vomit, and is rotten to the core.
This is a turd that cannot be polished. Even if you freeze it.
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How angry are Americans about what has been done to their economy, their savings, their pensions, the value of their homes and the financial security of their children, by a pack of heartless rotten greedpigs?
Very, Very Angry. You scan the comments on major American news sites, along with blogs, and it’s getting scary out there. Talk radio is apparently oozing contempt and fury. People aren’t just pissed off, they’re fucking raw.
A friend in Manhattan called to say he had been down on Wall Street and had watched a non-nutter middle aged man roaring these lines from Taxi Driver, over and over, at people heading into the stock exchange (until a cop warned him to move on) :
Listen, you fuckers, you screwheads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the cunts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is a man who stood up. Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off this street.
There were camera phones on him at the time. Nothing on YouTube yet.
Dara & Sara, the Muslim alternative to Ken & Barbie, have been on sale in Islamic countries since 2002, but they seem to be getting a fresh marketing push, popping up on Yahoo news sites, the BBC and Drudge Report. Apparently kids in Iran still want blonde, absurdly breasted American dolls. Or maybe it’s simply a fashion thing?
The Muslim dolls have been developed by a government agency to promote traditional values, with their modest clothing and pro-family backgrounds.
They are widely seen as an effort to counter the American dolls and accessories that have flooded the Iranian market
Toy seller Masoumeh Rahimi welcomed the dolls, saying Barbie was “foreign to Iran’s culture” because some of the buxom, blonde dolls have revealing clothing. She said young girls who play with Barbie, a doll she sees as wanton, could grow into women who reject Iranian values.
“I think every Barbie doll is more harmful than an American missile,” Ms Rahimi said.
They’re certainly cheaper, and shred far less children to ribbons.
So what would happen if BushCo. decided to drop millions of Kens & Barbies on Muslim countries, instead of bombing the fuck out of them? These dolls, after all, need accessories. Expensive ones. They could wrap them in mail order catalogues before they dumped them out of the back of the plane.
Philip K. Dick wrote an extraordinary fantasy story about the Barbie phenomenon, in 1963, called The Days Of Perky Pat. Some of his notes on why he was motivated to write about the little queen of American consumerism :
The Days Of Perky Pat came to me in one lightning-swift flash when I saw my children playing with Barbie dolls. Obviously these anatomically super-developed dolls were not intended for the use of children, or more accurately, should not have been. Barbie and Ken consisted of two adults in miniature. The idea was that the purchase of countless new clothes for these dolls was necessary if Barbie and Ken were to live in the style in which they were accustomed. I had visions of Barbie coming into my bedroom at night and saying, “I need a mink coat.”
I had to deal with her and her expensive purchases constantly. It was as bad as keeping my TV set working; the TV set always needed something and so did Barbie. I always felt that Ken should buy his own clothes.
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Warren Buffett has made a significant symbolic action in our economy. He has invested $5 billion into Goldman Sachs, the bank. Not the investment bank but the commercial bank that it has now become. The difference may sound small but it’s huge.
In doing this he has signaled his long-term belief that the American economy will weather this storm. Which few doubted. But this one act is hardly enough to resolve all the issues between now and his normal 5 – 7 year investment window.
Now I realize confidence needed to enter the markets. And the doubt of the bailout plan did not help anything. This is a great stabilizing factor. But the bailout plan is not a smart bet, and will not benefit the nation near-term.
The reality is that the Government wants to give Ben Bernanke $700 billion dollars to accept the bad debt of the financial markets. This is the same individual that failed to identify or resolve the problems in the financial markets that I saw back in January at least. And he is planning to accept every problem every size bank can shovel into this deal.
Have no doubt that every bank is working out how they can get their debt passed onto the taxpayers. These are individuals that were smart enough to create the derivatives that regulators are not smart enough to see as a problem for over 5 years. And suddenly we think that more regulation will prevent bad decisions and prevent being unable to understand what is happening in the markets.
The Government should not be in the business of owning banks. The Government is not smart enough, efficient enough, nor reactive enough. The Government is not able to take on debt at a realistic valuation since it does not understand the value, and thus every dollar spent on the bailout will be a waste. And the Government has never been able to intervene in the financial markets to the benefit the nation or investors.
I would bet that Warren Buffett was asked by the Government to step into the market. He is too strong a figurehead to be ignored, and thus symbolically stabilizes the markets. And the fact that Goldman had to become a less powerful commercial bank, and thus seek out deposits to shore up its bad books and loan reserves, to get the investment by Buffett is telling indeed.
The fact is that nothing will prevent the markets from going lower in the short-term. They need to. And if there is to be any real confidence we need to see other investors step up and make similar styled investments. I want to see the Blackstone Group, and Apollo Investments to make similar steps. Bill Gates too. But that is not happening yet.
The Government has been given time, to sort out what it will do. My advice would be to let the markets sort out the problem created in the markets and bad decisions. Because all a bailout does is tell the markets that the Government will step in every time they make an overly greedy decision. And if you think I am wrong, go back and look at what the auto industry is asking Congress right now.
But perhaps one of the worst things a bailout will signal is opening the floodgates on mortgages. If we bailout bad bets by financials, why not bailout the home owners that made bad decisions? And if we can help those home owners, how the hell can we not say that people like myself that made a smart decision on their loans deserve help too. Why should my taxes go to help pay a mortgage that is not my own? Especially since all those home owners had to do is read their documents and do the math.
The Government is not responsible for correcting the bad decisions those it governs makes. But in making the bailout a fact that is exactly what it is doing. And that is more than a small step towards a socialist government and away from a Democracy.
In the Star Wars movies there is a scene where it is said that
“This is how Democracy dies. With thunderous applause.”
But I believe that that is not the only way we can lose it. It can die with a funnel of money draining from the people. Not as dramatic or poetic, but perhaps far more effective and deceptive.
A coup unfolds in the United States, as “financial fascists” seek to give themselves power beyond even that of the president, sweeping aside Congress and the Constitution. Sign the $700 billion ‘rescue bill’ to transfer a trillion-plus dollars of private debt onto the bent backs of the American public, warns the treasury secretary, or all Americans will suffer the consequences.
You are no longer Republicans, Democrats, or any shade of voter. You do not live in a swing state or a solid colored state. You are simply this: an American. That is the only side that matters. So call your members of Congress and demand, no, declare that unless they do their duty to the Constitution and to us, we will move to the streets - not because we want to, but because our founding fathers demanded this duty of each and every citizen in the face of such a domestic enemy. Demand - as is your right - that this bill be voted against and demand - as is your right - that the people plotting this treachery be held to account. We are either a nation of laws or we are no longer a democracy. Pick a side, because there won’t be another time, another moment, another chance to be a patriot.
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, now aiming to seize control of any or all America’s financial institutions, to do with as he pleases, without congressional oversight, was warned repeatedly, for years, that the sub-prime mortgage fiasco was a looming, brutal reality. He did nothing. In fact, he tried to play down the coming financial carnage, while letting it unfold, unhindered. Here’s Paulson, April 20, 2007 :
U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said on Friday the housing market correction appears to be at or near its bottom and that troubles in the subprime mortgage market will not likely spread throughout the economy.“I don’t see (subprime mortgage market troubles) imposing a serious problem. I think it’s going to be largely contained….”
Mike Whitney, who warned of this financial crisis, and the scumbags behind it, years ago :
One minute everything is hunky-dory; the subprime meltdown is “contained” and “the fundamentals of our economy are strong”.(Paulson) And, less than a week later, congress is forced to surrender their constitutionally-mandated right to oversee spending in order to forestall economic Armageddon. Which is it? Or is the real objective just to keep the country on an emotional teeter-totter long enough for all state-power to be subsumed by the Wall Street Politburo?
No one knows what will happen next. We are in uncharted waters. And no one knows what the political landscape will look like after the dust settles from this outrageous power grab. According to Paulson, things are so dire, the entire nation will be reduced to smoldering rubble and twisted iron. But can we trust him this time after his long litany of lies?
Don’t let the prospect of a national crisis trick you into giving up your freedom, America. The people behind this scam are the same landsharks and flim-flam men who polluted the global marketplace with their snake oil and toxic sludge. These are the fraudsters who manufactured the crisis to begin with. This is just the latest installment of the Shock Doctrine; engineer a crisis, and then, steal whatever is left behind. Same shit, different day.
Be resolute. Don’t budge.
Our economic foundations may be crumbling, but or determination is not. This is our country, not Goldman Sach’s. The people who destroyed America must be held to account. Their time is coming. Justice first.
The ‘rescue bill’ may well be stripped of its more shocking demands as it heads towards reality this week, but Americans must never forget how they were blackmailed, so blatantly, so shamelessly, in September, 2008. It should stand as a never-to-be-forgotten warning to future generations. They will slink away and count their bonuses. But they will be back. From the Paulson proposal :
…designating financial institutions as financial agents of the Government, and they shall perform all such reasonable duties related to this Act as financial agents of the Government as may be required of them.
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
Incredible. And it’s not over yet.
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In a briefing to lawmakers Friday, Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke painted a grave picture of an economy on the edge of a major recession and telling them that action was urgent and imperative.
Paulson said. “The financial security of all Americans … depends on our ability to restore our financial institutions to a sound footing.”
Cough Up The Money, in other words. Coming at the end of one of the most turbulent weeks on world markets, and when the American markets were close to total collapse, actually sounded like a threat from Bernanke, head of the most powerful private financial institution in the country. Hell, maybe it was.
“We’re going to work with Congress to get a bill done quickly.”
“This is a big package because it was a big problem.”
The plan is designed to let faltering financial institutions unload their distressed mortgage-related assets on the government, and in turn the taxpayer, in a bid to avoid dire economic consequences.
Bush said he worried the financial troubles “could ripple throughout” the economy and affect average citizens. “The risk of doing nothing far outweighs the risk of the package, and over time we’re going to get a lot of the money back.”
Key words : “a lot of the money”. Not all, or all and some more.
“People are beginning to doubt our system, people were losing confidence and I understand it’s important to have confidence in our financial system.”
The rest of the world said, “Look, you dumb fucks. Isolate and soak up all that toxic debt or we’re closing you down.”
Bush : “In my judgment, based upon the advice of a lot of people who know how markets work, this problem wasn’t going to be contained to just the financial community.”
That’s definitely a threat.
The Bush administration is asking Congress to let the government buy $700 billion in toxic mortgages in the largest financial bailout since the Great Depression…
The plan would give the government broad power to buy the bad debt of any U.S. financial institution for the next two years. It would raise the statutory limit on the national debt from $10.6 trillion to $11.3 trillion to make room for the massive rescue. The proposal does not specify what the government would get in return from financial companies for the federal assistance.
If passed by Congress, the plan would give the Treasury secretary broad power to buy and sell the mortgage-related investments without any additional involvement by lawmakers. The proposal, however, would require that the congressional committees with oversight on budget, tax and financial services issues be briefed within three months of the government’s first use of the rescue power, and every six months after that.
While the proposal contains no requirement that the government receive anything from banks in return for unloading their bad assets, it would allow the Treasury Department to designate financial institutions as “agents of the government,” and mandate that they perform any “reasonable duties” that might entail.
$700 Billion. Financial institutions as Agents Of Government, who will do the government’s bidding, on non-specific requests far in the the future. Bush was asked about Democrats planning to attach aid packages to the bill for the poor, the newly homeless, the soon to be jobless. Bush didn’t like this idea at all. He wanted something that was “the cleaner, the better.”
As if any of this blatant fleecing of the future prosperity of hundreds of millions of Americans was “clean.”
The greatest looting of a nation in all history.
You are witnesses.
It’s the Real Bush Legacy - Privatisation for The Profits, Socialisation for the risks and the debt.
With the nationalisation of Fannie and Freddie, comrades Bush, Paulson and Bernanke started transforming the US into the USSRA (United Socialist State Republic of America).Then there’s the use of the US Treasury to manipulate the mortgage market, the creation of a whole host of new bail-out facilities to prop and rescue banks and, for the first time since the Great Depression, to bail out non-bank financial institutions.
This is the biggest and most socialist government intervention in economic affairs since the formation of the Soviet Union and Communist China. So foreign investors are now welcome to the USSRA (the United Socialist State Republic of America) where they can earn fat spreads relative to Treasuries on agency debt and never face any credit risks (not even the subordinated debt-holders who made a fortune yesterday as those claims were also made whole).
Like scores of evangelists and hypocrites and moralists who spew and praise family values and pretend to be holier than thou and are then regularly caught cheating or found to be perverts, these Bush hypocrites who spewed for years the glory of unfettered Wild West laissez-faire jungle capitalism allowed the biggest debt bubble ever to fester without any control, and have caused the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression.
They are are now forced to perform the biggest government intervention and nationalisations in the recent history of humanity, all for the benefit of the rich and the well connected. So Comrades Bush and Paulson and Bernanke will rightly pass to the history books as a troika of Bolsheviks who turned the USA into the USSRA.
Shocking and novel as it may seem in the cradle of capitalism, the American federal authorities have actually had to rescue their private banks at least three time during the past century.
Most recently, the 1980s deregulation of the “S&Ls”, mutual savings and loan associations equivalent to the UK’s building societies, resulted in multiple frauds and colossal misjudgements in lending that left most of them bust. The Resolution Trust Corporation was formed in 1989 to restructure the 747 S&Ls, at a cost to the taxpayer of $125bn (£68bn).
It closely followed the US government’s adoption of the bad sovereign debt issued by many Latin American nations in the 1980s – so-called Brady Bonds.
Half a century before, Franklin Roosevelt used the Reconstruction FinanceCorporation to bail out and restructure banks ravaged by the Wall Street Crash.
Between 1933 and 1945, the RFC lent out $33bn ($1.2 trillion in today’s money) of loans to help save banks and get the economy moving.
Less costly, but no less significant, was the formation of the Federal Reserve System in 1913, a response to the Great Panic of 1907, when many banks failed for want of a central bank to provide liquidity and lender-of-last-resort facilities during runs by depositors.
Policy makers cannot say where it all ends. News reports are unrelentingly talking of “crisis.” After decades of deregulation and free-market fealty, antiregulation, small-government Republicans are putting the government in control of a big chunk of the financial sector.
…voters might well wonder why perhaps a half-trillion dollars — about the same amount spent so far in Iraq — is suddenly available to help Wall Street when promises to address issues like health care insurance have gone largely unkept for years.
Conservative Republicans always want the government to stay out of business and avoid regulation as long as they are making lots of money. When their greed, however, gets them into a fix, they are the first to cry out for rules and laws and taxpayer money to bail out their businesses. Obviously, Republicans are socialists. The Bush administration has decided to socialize the debt of the big Wall Street Firms. Taxpayers didn’t get to enjoy any of the big money profits on the phony financial instruments like derivatives or bundled sub-prime paper, but we get the privilege of paying for their debt and failures.
Let’s just consider the money. The public bailout of insurance giant (becoming a dwarf) AIG is estimated at $85 billion. According to one report, that’s more than the Bush administration spent on Aid to Families with Dependent Children during his entire time in office. That amount of money would also pay for health care for every man, woman, and child in America for at least six months.
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Overheated magnets have delayed the next stage of the £5bn experiment to recreate the Big Bang, scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva have said.
They had to shut down CERN. Too many time travelers were coming through. Which led to a lot of the problems on Wall Street in the past week, and the remarkable recovery yesterday. If you were on a group tour back from 2062 and you were let loose for just a day, wouldn’t you rush to a broker to buy up cheap shares in the blue chips? Particularly continent-corporations that you know, from iBraining in 2062, are going to worth a few trillion by then? Of course you would.
If you think about the events of the past week, particularly after reading too much Philip K Dick, it all makes perfect sense. Maybe.
I had an interesting time travel experience in New York City, May 2001. I didn’t time travel, but I met someone who claimed he had. I was sitting an outdoor cafe near the New York Public Library, reading Philip K Dick short stories about time travel weirdly enough, when a man approached me. There was nothing particularly strange about his appearance or clothes, he looked about 40, his hair was neat, clean nails, but while he was talking to me he kept looking around, at the small green, the people, the trees, the buildings, as though he was seeing it all for the first time.
He said, “You’re going to write a book about me,” he paused, considered what he had said, “Not just about me. It’s a book about you, inspired by me, with a bit of me entwined. It’s about what happens today…”
There’s no way in the world this guy knew I was a writer, or that I was writing a book while traveling. How could he? I’m nobody. I’ve never had my photograph published in a newspaper, or even online. He probably wandered up to people all day spinning such magnificent shit.
Awesome, I thought, I’ve met a genuine New York City crazy person. I’d been expecting to come across more, especially after a childhood of American cop shows, comedies, dramas, on TV and in the cinema, brimming with classic New York City Whackos & Nutjobs. Here was one of them, but his appearance was so normal. Plain even. He looked like he’d had a good night’s sleep in a warm bed, and had had a shave and a refreshing shower earlier that day. I, on the other hand, being a ultra-low-budget traveler, had slept in a mostly piss-free alcove out the front of the New York Public Library the night before. This presumed nutjob standing five or six feet back smelled better than I did. I knew he’d seen the cover of the PKD book, that he’d presumably read the book himself, that he knew there were time travel stories in there, and he was going to fuck with me for a while. Fine. Tourists should always take time to engage with the locals.
“What happens today?” I asked him.
“You meet me,” he said, and sighed. “You write a book about everything I’m telling you now, it becomes a huge hit.”
“Really?” I asked, already writing the first page of the new novel in my head. “How huge?”
“I mean it does okay. Some people still read it.” He looked around then, at the trees, the skyline, the blinding brightness of the morning, and then mumbled something to himself that sounded like, “It’s quite the much nicer than is said.”
A large businessman at the next table stared at the ‘tourist’, the open newspaper in his hand completely forgotten.
“You’re going to have other people, like me, from my time, turning up like this,” I was told, “A lot of T-tourists do that. They come back to mostly observe people who caught their interest in their time.”
I looked at the businessman with the paper. Was he one of them, too? The businessman gave me and the ‘tourist’ a quick look of disgust and went back to his newspaper.
“How’s the book end?” I asked. The ‘tourist’ was studying the skyline, apparently totally uninterested in me now. I wasn’t just humouring him. I really wanted to know what he was thinking. “How’s it end?”
“You haven’t written the first page yet and you want to know how it ends?”
I nodded. “Of course. I’m ready to take notes…”
He shook his head, almost sadly. “You really were an arsehole.” Then he turned and walked away.
I particularly liked the way he said “were an arsehole” instead of “are”. A nice detail in his (presumed) delirium.
Later that night, on a nearly empty subway carriage, heading off Manhattan for a rendevous with a bus to JFK, I did meet a real, stinking, freaky-eyed New York City Crazy Fucker. We didn’t chat. He just walked up to where I was sitting, screamed “Fuck You, Jesus!” and then kicked me in the chest, hard enough to fracture a rib and leave a huge, encrusted dirt detail of his shoe in the middle of my shirt, a memento of New York City that I didn’t notice until a desk clerk at the airport asked, “Did someone step on you today, sir?”
The ‘tourist’ didn’t tell me that was coming.
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