We're all rich

Via Clusterstock comes this look at how the US Government is set to make around an $8 billion smackeroos profit off the "bailout" of Citigroup. In fact it's also conceivable that we'll break even on our "investment" in AIG.

So if the net profit off both AIG and Citigroups is $8 billion... divided by... carry the one... each American stand to make $26 off the bailouts. Excuse me, $26 dollars... and five cents. Oh yeah baby, we're rich. "Going to the movies with a date and getting a small popcorn" rich! Which, comparatively, is like "owning a sports team" rich was before the economy had its throat slit.

So sit by the mailbox, I'm sure that as soon as Geithner finalizes these sales you'll have your motherfuckin' movie check sent out to you, post haste.

The entire economy collapses and we all get $26? I told you this would all work out in the end.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 12.18

U.S. training plan: Read first, shoot later
From liberal rag Stars and Stripes, comes a look at how the US is using literacy training to get people into the Afghan army and police, while also using a desire to get into the Afghan military and police as a way to spread literacy. We still pay less than the Taliban does, but we are giving them job skills. Shame we can't do it for anything cheaper than an extra hundred billion.

The sports-entertainment crossover: it's sublimely funny. Just ask speedskating savior Stephen Colbert
Sports Illustrated takes a look at Stephen Colbert's successful quest to save the US speed skating team through sponsorship and what it might mean for the future of Olympic sponsorship. All part of the new issue of SI that features Colbert on the cover... in a speed skating spandex suit. This is going to be the best Olympic sponsorship by a comedy program since SCTV sponsored the Canadian men's two man luge team.

In 2010, The Civilian Space Industry Finally Takes Off
It's almost at that point in time where we're starting to get past that point all our favorite sci-fi TV, movies, and books described as "the future" and into that part they called "the distant future". What do we have to show for it? The ability to watch porn anywhere and HDTV. No moon bases and nothing that even remotely hovers in a car. But 2010 is the year which we can also pay billionaires for the right to rocket our asses up into low orbit, to feel a sensation that Buzz Aldrin and Alan Shepard got tired of describing three decades ago. The future is slowly creeping up, it's just a shame that it's more in the "carnival ride" aspects of the future and not the "to boldly go..." ones.

Collider Sets Record, and Europe Takes U.S.’s Lead
Well the Large Hadron Collider is up and running and while it isn't yet up to the task of killing God or crushing Europe into a singularity, it is up to the task of rubbing America's nose in shit. It has already set the record for accelerating protons (to 1.2 trillion volts), for number and speed of collisions, for the number of particle physicists in one room named Jens, for the slowest particle on record, the largest particle on record, most PhD's at a nude science kegger, and most appearances of the "particle physicists do it with momentum and position" bumper sticker. Here's congratulating them on their serious endeavors.

People finally realize Facebook intends to make money off of their data
Yeah, Facebook is starting to become mildly evil in regards to privacy, attempting to make money, and making everything on the site public. Turns out that you can't expect Facebook to exist forever without trying to make a buck of your info. Social media isn't private, especially free social media. Shocking, I know. However, this will help you stalk 15 year-olds and ex-girlfriends you are convinced still love you without a restraining order entering into it. So, that's a plus.

Obama's Big Sellout
Matt Taibbi's big Rolling Stone piece on the Obama Administration and that whole thing where we intended to bail out banks and financial institutions while providing increased scrutiny and oversight before turning our attention to the American people, before we promptly forgot the whole scrutiny, oversight, and American people parts. He's probably a little too focused on Obama and Bob Rubin and not the collection of money humpers in Congress, but it is another thorough indictment of the way this country works. Shame he used the title "Obama's Big Sellout", what's he going to use for his article detailing the health care debacle?

Showing us who's the boss

Yesterday we heard from Larry Summers, talking about how, in the end, Wall Street will do what's right for the American people because "we were there for them." Well, that statement also happened to coincide with a meeting the President was having with the major heads of financial corporations on things like executive compensation, new regulations, and lending. Thankfully, a few of our financial betters decided to show just how thankful they were.

President Obama didn’t exactly look thrilled as he stared at the Polycom speakerphone in front of him. “Well, I appreciate you guys calling in,” he began the meeting at the White House with Wall Street’s top brass on Monday.

He was, of course, referring to the three conspicuously absent attendees who were being piped in by telephone: Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs; John J. Mack, chairman of Morgan Stanley; and Richard D. Parsons, chairman of Citigroup.

Their excuse? “Inclement weather,” according to the White House. More precisely, fog delayed flights into Reagan National Airport.

Awww, fog. Shame there isn't a high speed rail system connecting the two cities, just as it's also a shame that the fog was only bad enough for those three not to make it out of New York.I guess there just wasn't a sense of urgency, seeing as they weren't going to be getting any more billions in return for showing up.

On the bright side, they are saying there has to be major financial reforms. Sure, the armies of lobbyists they pay and their Congressional toadies are saying something else, but the CEO's are pretending really hard. In the end, isn't that repayment enough? Isn't putting up a thin candy shell of humility, gratitude, and claims that you're ready to act like humans again "doing what's right'? It'll just makes the loophole riddled bill that Congress passes and Wall Street loves easier to swallow. Imagine how hard that bill would be to take if these CEO's acted likes assholes the entire way through the process?

Next time make more of an effort to catch a plane: it makes it easier for us to pretend you care. Our psyches are fragile enough as it is, what with lending dried up and no jobs. We need some phony showmanship, so we can at least pretend we got something out of the global financial apocalypse. Can't you at least give us that?

Big ass check

From the Too Big To Fail blog and book of Andrew Ross Sorkin, comes our look at perhaps the largest check ever written. The check, written by Mitsubishi UFJ to Morgan Stanley, only exists because Morgan Stanley needed the money bad, baby. Because they needed to score a fix on the weekend, electronic transfers weren't possible and a check had to be printed up and handed out.


Meh, for a $9 billion dollar check it's kind of boring. It should at least have been one of those giant checks, maybe had the phrase "You could be a winner too" on it, and should have been handed out by Ed McMahon's Japanese equivalent. Hopefully for the next financial collapse/free money hand out they'll have all the showmanship kinks worked out and we can at least get some entertainment for our billions.

Your window into the sense of entitlement of our financial betters

From a New York Times article on the TARP inspector general Neil Barofsky's scathing report on the decision to pay off AIG's creditors in full.

Just two days before the New York Fed paid A.I.G.’s partners 100 cents on the dollar to tear up their contracts with the insurance giant, one bank volunteered to take a modest haircut — but it never got the chance.

UBS, of Switzerland, alone offered to give a break to the New York Fed in the negotiations last November over how to keep A.I.G. from toppling and taking other banks down with it. It would have accepted 98 cents on the dollar.

But UBS’s good-faith gesture was quickly drowned out by Goldman Sachs and the top French bank regulator. They argued, with others, that it would be improper and perhaps even criminal to force A.I.G.’s trading partners to bear losses outside of bankruptcy court.

Those are some balls on display. First by UBS, agreeing to take 98 cents on the dollar instead of 100 cents and pretending it is some grand compromise when their assets were worth 40 cents on the dollar, and then by Goldman-Sachs, who claimed that it would be illegal if they didn't get all their money in full. Thankfully they all got every penny that was owed to them. Why? Because Tim Geithner knows how to treat his old bosses. Is there a position higher than Treasury Secretary we can put him in?

What's it that Taibbi said about Goldman-Sachs? "The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money"? He was being too kind.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 10.22

Held By The Taliban
If you're interested in reading a great story, the New York Times has a a massive 5 part account of journalist David Rohde's 7 month long imprisonment by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Beyond the simple interest in the personal story of Rohde it also gives great insight into the way Afghans view our war on terror and what fuels the anti-Americanism and extremism.

AT&T hits Internet vote
In case you were wondering where the next frontier of the government's never ending battle to stand with corporations over the interests of the American people, look to the intarwubs. AT&T is engaging a full court press on net neutrality and gaining a lot of support for its attempts to be allowed to place restrictions on access to content an services. On the side of freedom: the President, the Google, Skype, and Facebook. But I can see why they're having trouble opposing AT&T. I mean who isn't for restricting information on the internet?

Rage Against Torture: Top Musicians Demand Records On How Bush Admin Used Their Songs Against Detainees
Trent Reznor, R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Jackson Browne, Rage Against the Machine, Rosanne Cash, Billy Bragg and the Roots have all joined together in a group called Zero db to protest the use of music during torture in the future and the use of music in torture during the Bush Administration. That's all well and good, but I think that Rage and Trent, maybe Pearl Jam, are the only ones who have to worry about their music being used in torture. I doubt Dick Cheney authorized the use of "Running on Empty" and "So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry)" on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before telling them to put on Mermaid Avenue Volumes I and II and "just let it play all the way through."

Pay Czar to Slash Compensation at Seven Firms
Hey, turns out that after months and months and months of doing nothing of pay for firms that got bailed out (read: all of them), it seems that the pay czar, whose only job is doing things related to CEO salaries of bailed out companies, decided that he might as well put in a half day of work and push forward with a proposal that is popular with the American people. Of course the business community is outraged. I guess the people that set fire to the world's money will have to make due with half a million in salary with bonus compensation not to exceed $10 million. I hope they'll still be able to afford food with cuts that drastic.

Google's Android Allows Soldiers to Put Drones on Buddy List
Who here wanted a cell phone that could not only compete with the iPhone in terms of price, innovation, and technology, but could also sync up with a Predator drone on a bombing run in the mountains of Afghanistan and get streaming video of the attack. I know I have and those fuckers in the Apple apps store have not heeded my demands. Thankfully Raytheon is on the case and using Google's Android operating system to do so. So is this going to be in the Droid phone or am I going to have to join the military to get the app?

Coda

GQ put up more excerpts of Matt Latimer's book on the last days of the Bush Administration. Instead of merely being childish insults and tone deaf observations about his political enemies, this chunk takes a look at the performance of the Boy Wonder during the financial crisis and bailout phase of our economic meltdown. The picture it paints.....it...ugh...it really isn't pretty. It reads like the caricature of Bush we all had in our heads and liked to joke about. Trust me, read the whole thing to get the full horror, but otherwise these excerpts below really put that exclamation point on the failure pile in a sadness bowl that was the Bush Administration. It's a fitting coda.

“We can’t even defend our own proposal?” the president asked. “Why did we propose it, then?”
...
“Then why the hell did I support it if I didn’t believe it would pass?” he snapped.
...
Under his proposal, [Bush] said, the federal government would buy troubled mortgages on the cheap and then resell them at a higher price when the market for them stabilized.

“We’re buying low and selling high,” he kept saying.

The problem was that his proposal didn’t work like that. One of the president’s staff members anxiously pulled a few of us aside. “The president is misunderstanding this proposal,” he warned. “He has the wrong idea in his head.”
...
When it was explained to him that his concept of the bailout proposal wasn’t correct, the president was momentarily speechless. He threw up his hands in frustration.

“Why did I sign on to this proposal if I don’t understand what it does?” he asked.

I feel like that singing and dancing Warner Brothers frog should jump out from behind the article, wearing a top hat and tails, and singing "And he was the President for eight yeaaaaarrrrrsssss!" before launching back into "Hello My Baby, Hello My Honey" as a curtain drops. Wonderful questions, George. I get the feeling that you were asking ones like that quite a bit during those two terms. It shows, it really shows.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 07.03

The Great American Bubble Machine
Matt Taibbi decides to take a look at Goldman-Sachs and their manipulation of financial crisis' to their advantage, their culpability in creating bubbles, and their governmental influence and manages not to sound like a tinfoil hatted crank. He begins by calling them a "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money" and the piece has resulted in GS shrieking hysterically at him for daring to point out some obvious facts. Unfortunately Rolling Stone has only put up excerpts from the article, so to see the full body blow he delivers you'll have to buy the magazine. I think it's worth a purchase.

To Critics, New Policy on Terror Looks Old
Charlie Savage of the New York Times takes a look at some of the Obama Administration's embraces of Bush era....let's call them unethical dalliances. The picture painted is not too pretty as many of the policies have now become entrenched methods and have now been legitimized. Some would even go so far as to say all Obama has done is just enact the “liberal, centrist, Democratic version of the construction of these same governing practices.” I think he forgets one important factor: it's OK because a Democrat is doing it. At least I think that's the going rationale for some these days. If you're interested, Savage does an interview with Glenn Greenwald where they point out and discuss all this stuff.

In Tactical Shift, Troops Will Stay and Hold Ground in Afghanistan
Hey what present did you want to receive in celebration of the Nation's impending 233rd birthday? If it was a major increase of ground forces in Afghanistan and an escalation in combat in a concerted effort to knock the Taliban out of the country, then you're in luck. This is all part of President Obama's larger body of work entitled "Doing things that were supposed to have been done eight years ago". It's a work of art that will be on display around this country for at least until January of 2013.

This Post Brought to You by Poker
Wonkish statistics molester Nate Silver has decided to put his robot brain to work mathematically analyzing the game of poker and using it to slay the competition at the World Series of Poker. It's ostensibly "research" for a "book", but papa needs money and he's got a gambling itch to scratch. He also discusses the UIGEA law that helped the rise of online poker and efforts to legalize (and tax) online poker. But we'll have to wait for what we're all interested in: video of Silver dominating the competition as he tries to understand the human emotions surrounding "loss" and "anguish".

Lunar Probe Sends First High-Res Images
NASA has sent a probe up to the moon and unlike the Japanese has no plans to smash it into the Sea of Tranquility for shits and giggles. No, they're taking photos, mapping it, and gathering data for America's glorious "safe human return to the moon". That's right moon, we're making you our bitch again...or for the first time depending on various conspiracy theories. In any event this is all part of NASA's new mission to do awesome covers of its old material.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 06.30

How a Loophole Benefits GE in Bank Rescue
Want to know how GE is able to garner billions in business loans from the TARP program despite not being a bank? So would the government. Thanks to loopholes, namely that GE literally owns two banks in Utah, they get to borrow money at a low interest rate to fund the rest of their bullshit. And you were worried that our elected betters were going to write, enact, and oversee these programs in a shoddy manner.

Ahmadinejad Calls for Investigation Into 'Suspicious' Death of Neda Soltan
What are the odds that she was covertly murdered by either American or British forces seeking to destabilize the legitimately elected government of Iran? It's a shame OJ got framed or else he'd be able to help hunt for the real killers with Mahmoud on some Iranian golf course.

Cheney Worried That Iraq Withdrawal Will ‘Waste’ The Sacrifice By U.S. Troops
The Dick seems to think that anything less than staying in Iraq for eternity will mean that American soldiers lives were wasted or something. You know what I think might have helped contribute to the "wasting" of US soldier's "sacrifice"? All those years the Bush administration spent wasting US soldier's sacrifices. But then again, maybe someone will finally uncover those weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda in a way that completely validates Cheney and Rumsfeld's strategies for the first couple of years of this war.

Romney: Republicans ‘Believe In Allowing People To Have Choice In Their Health Care’ — Except A Public Option
Mitt Romney came out and outlined what the GOP wants the American citizen to get in any proposed health care program that none of them will ever vote for. They definitely want you to have choice and they definitely want things to be cheaper, they just don't see the need to do that in anyway that means you actually get a choice or cheaper health care. Glad that's all cleared up.

"The Commission Has Been Road-Blocked": Republicans' War On The FEC
Did you know that the FEC is a fucked over pile of burning shit that refuses to prosecute election violations because Bush packed it with people who are ideologically opposed to the existence of the FEC? Now you do. Give it a read, it involves criminal actions to suppress and intimidate voters and donations going unpunished and a comical appearance by a person described as "Tom Delay's ethics lawyer."

Michael Jackson's Last Video: One Of The Sets Was A Cemetery
Are you ready for the hundreds of pieces where news organizations take one small thing about Michael Jackson's work and then blow it up to intimate that he was presaging his own demise? Here's one of the first. Christ, I hope no one shows them the Thriller video.

Iran's Post-Election Uprising: Hopes & Fears Revealed
A little tale on Iranian voting, the coup, and the crackdowns all done in the style of Persepolis, of which you should read or watch.

MGM Digital Media
Want the ability to watch several of MGM's most terrible and cheaply made movies on YouTube? Great news then, you can either watch an Inspector Clouseau movie that has Alan Arkin in it instead of Peter Sellers, an Amityville sequel, the Casino Royale that doesn't have Daniel Craig in it, or one of Robert Townsend's lesser works. I don't know what we would have done if you didn't put these up MGM.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 06.10

Gingrich: Americans ‘surrounded by paganism.’
Newt, fresh off of declaring people racist and giving speech tips to Sarah Palin, decided he hadn't spent enough time pandering to the religious right. And really, he is going to need support from the religious type is we are going to have our 2012 Newt-volution. In a wide ranging speech he declared Christianity the foundation of everything, claimed the Prop 8 victory was a "miracle from God's hand", and warned that America is under constant threat from pagan influences. It was unclear if he meant just the Harry Potter books or was including all the Pagan traditions Christians swiped for their holidays. He would have expounded, but he had to leave early to go cheat on his 4th wife with his future 5th wife.

U.S. clears 10 big banks to repay bailout funds
What do you know, they actually paid the money back. $68 billion to be precise. Funnily enough this caused an initial rise in the stock market before it "later shed most of the gains on concern the money could be better used for lending to boost the economy rather than paying it back to Treasury." That's right, the market reacts poorly to taxpayers getting paid back. I hope you don't have any plans for that money, like health care or a couple more months in Iraq, we need that money for car companies. Thanks banks, let's hope this was actually a good idea and not just some shortsighted attempt to unburden yourselves from all those regulations. I know what I'm betting on.

Gore To North Korea? Obama May Send Ex-VP To Negotiate Journalists' Release
Turns out the Obama Administration might need Al Gore to get off his fat, global warming, Nobel winning ass and start doing something productive. Like hostage negotiations. Because....uh....Al Gore...uh...something something. Why is this a good idea? Has he ever done anything like this before? Maybe Obama is just hoping that because the two journalists worked for Gore's Current network, he'll be extra motivated to get them back on the job and earning him some scratch, instead of lounging it in a North Korean prison camp, building Kim Jong-Il a really big waterslide.

A Brief History of Erotic Asphyxiation
In honor of David Carradine, who's sexual self suffocation has given me the immense please of hearing Nancy O'Dell, Pat O'Brien, and Mary Hart talk about auto-erotic asphyxiation and other celebrities bizarre sexually/drug related deaths. From Frantisek Kotzwara to Michael hutchence to the Snake Charmer himself, learn the complete history of what happens when you don't have a spotter watching you while you wank it with a belt around your neck.

Remote Pacific nation to take Gitmo detainees
Finally the US Government has found something to do with the 17 innocent Chinese Uighur Muslims that it had been holding a Guantanamo for no good reason: they're shipping them off to another island. But this time it's in the Pacific! They're getting a one way ticket to Palau. Interesting facts about Palau. 1. There were actually more people being held at Gitmo than are citizens of Palau. 2. Chances are your house is bigger than Palau. 3. In order to get them to take these 17 innocent people, we're going to have to pay them close to $200 million in development assistance. 4. It will pretty much be swallowed by the sea if the ice caps melt any more.So good luck Uighurs, hope you enjoyed our hospitality. Hope Al Gore's hostage negotiations don't take too much time away from his trying to prevent the destruction of your new home.

New GM: Kind of like the old GM

Well the New GM is off to a roaring start. They've announced their new plans and , more importantly, are running weird ads featuring prosthetic legged runners, random stock footage of hockey players lying injured on the ice, Joe Lewis, a butterfly, random footage from sporting events relative to Pennsylvanians, lists all the general ways in which their actions over the past decade were stupid, and uses a slogan that is basically "yeah, we fucked up horrifically, so give us a second chance already." Also: New GM's New CEO is admitting he's ill prepared to run GM. That's the classic GM we all remember, glad they remembered to keep that.

The 6-foot-4-inch Texan nicknamed “Big Ed” said steering the nation’s largest automaker after bankruptcy is “a public service.” People who know him say he can meet GM’s need for the type of transformation he orchestrated at Dallas-based AT&T.

“I don’t know anything about cars,” Whitacre, 67, said yesterday in an interview after his appointment. “A business is a business, and I think I can learn about cars. I’m not that old, and I think the business principles are the same.”

I'm no business expert, but from the looks of things it seemed like GM's problem was that no one wanted to buy their cars. A large part of that seemed to be because nobody liked the cars GM was making, because no one at GM seemed to know enough about cars to actually know what a normal human being would want. But then again the people supposedly running Gm and other American car companies were "auto experts", so really how much worse can a guy who knows nothing do? On second thought, how hard is it to tell everyone to "do what Toyota does".

So there is the new GM: weirdly terrible "my bad" ads and a CEO who admits he is completely clueless when it comes to the failing industry he has been tasked to completely revamp and overhaul. Doesn't it make you wish we had put more taxpayer money into GM?

No take backsies

Geithner: No new bailout money needed

The U.S. Treasury still has about $134.6 billion available in its coffers from last fall’s bank bailout package and that should be enough for it to avoid asking Congress for more money, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Tuesday.

“We have the resources to move forward implementing all aspects of our Financial Stability Plan,” Geithner said in a letter to the panel overseeing the bailout.

Geithner will face a slew of questions Tuesday morning about his plans to shore up banks. He is scheduled to testify before the Congressional Oversight Panel for the government’s $700 billion financial rescue program, while a watchdog agency warns that Obama administration initiatives could increasingly expose taxpayers to losses.

Promise? We all heard him, right? No new money needed. He can't take that back, we have witnesses. I don't care if his fingers were crossed, the banks will just have to make due with the trillions they've already gotten.

It is nice to know that Timmy thinks we won't need to pass another multi-billion bailout package for people who seem to get physically ill at the thought of having the government looking over their shoulder as it makes them fiscally solvent. On the other hand, there is a report from a independent watchdog group that says the way the bailouts are structured leaves the taxpayer vulnerable to losses. That is surprising, who would have ever guessed that attempting to remove any shred of risk to investors and companies in an attempt to get worthless assets off the books would end up exposing taxpayers to more risk? Everyone or just everyone who heard the plan?

The report from TARP Inspector General Neil Barofsky, who just opened 20 criminal probes and six audits into how the money was spent, offered up a 250 page report on how things were going, ways things could be made better, and how he wishes the Treasury Department would listen. Among those suggestions: new "conflict of interest" rules, disclosure of private equity stakes in funds, "investor screening" programs to prevent money laundering, and exasperated cries for people to start listening to watchdogs and implementing their suggestions. In his defense, Mr. Barofsky only used three instances of the word "unfuckingbelievable", two exasperated cries of "Is anyone listening to me", and tried really hard to write the report in a tone that suggested that he thought Tim Geithner was actually going to read it and consider his smart ideas. Oh well Neil, maybe next bailout.

Underpants gnomes

Phase one: Collect a massive Government bailout
Phase two: ???????
Phase three: Never ending profit!!!

Bank of America Corp. posted strong first-quarter earnings Monday as higher revenue from the purchase of Merrill Lynch & Co. helped offset a surge in credit costs. Wall Street, concerned about banks' continuing loan problems, looked past Bank of America's profit and fell sharply.

Bank of America's results surpassed analysts' expectations. But like other banking companies, it is still stuggling with fallout from the recession, taking a hefty $13.4 billion provision for credit losses.

The bank's stock fell $1.32, or 12.5 percent, to $9.28 as the overall stock market slid. Although Wall Street was happy last week with better-than-expected results from JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc., banking companies generally benefited during the quarter from unusually strong bond trading, a trend not expected to continue while loan problems persist.

That's right, you can be a Wall Street financial genius as well. As long as you get enough government money to exceed your losses and combine it with methods that are unsustainable in the current economic climate, you too can pretend that you made a profit and are thus a CAPTAIN OF INDUSTRY~! Spend a couple of mil redecorating the office, pretend all that hate towards you and your kind is just envy of your massive capitalist penis, and start up the credit default swaps on mortgages because surely this will never happen again.

At least all this bailing out and ten billion dollar loans/writedowns/shakedowns are providing their intended purpose: helping out the citizens affected by the recession fake balance sheet profits. At least now, what with them being so flush with cash and profitable, the banks have decided to increase lending like they were supposed to. They haven't? Well, who could have foreseen?

This is all working out so well for everyone who isn't a banker or derivatives trader.

Cheap Blogging Crutch 4.17

Ex-McCain aide to call for gay marriage support
Seems former McCain aide Steve Schmidt thinks that Republicans being for gay marriage is a smart thing. He'll be denounced as a heretic, shunned, and possibly stoned by the rest of his party in 3...2...1. While it's good to see him make the argument, let's make sure he's not involved in selling it or getting it passed. I don't know how much McCain campaign type backbiting, mixed messages, infighting, confusion, incoherence, and mismanagement the issue can take.

Banks Rush to Repay U.S. Funds, but Cling To Other Lifelines
Well, well, well. Banks want to bitch about taking one set of government funds while lining up at the trough to take another. CEO's are complaining about the restrictions surrounding the use of TARP funds, using words like "scarlet letter", "asinine", and complain that they only took the money to show a united front. Now that some turned a 1st quarter profit, they want to yell about how they never needed the money in the first place, they're defaulting on checks to their butler, and the terms are "damaging the economy", neglecting to mention the fact that they'd be bankrupt if they didn't get the TARP money and are still hoovering up government billions from other areas. They really haven't learned anything, have they?

Injured War Zone Contractors Fight to Get Care From AIG and Other Insurers
Turns out those bastion of usefulness, AIG, were making quite a handsome profit off of the Iraq war. Not only did they insure civilian contractors, collecting premiums to the tune of $1.5 billion dollars, a sum an army audit called "unreasonably high", they went ahead and denied 44% of all claims for contractors suffering serious injuries and over half of all claims for psychological distress. They were able to net a cool $600 million profit, which given their track record, they probably used to fund the liquidation of orphans in sub-Saharan Africa. God, I'm so glad they were too big to fail. What would we ever do without them? I mean besides have a solvent economy and treat people wounded in war with a shred of dignity.

Sondhi Limthongkul Survives 84 Gunshots
Mr. Limthongkul, aka King of the Badasses, organized protests that ended up deposing Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra last year. The New Rasputin, who led the 'yellow shirts', has been under fire (figuratively at first, now literally) from the 'red shirts' who backed the previous government and are trying to protest the new government out of power. When asked for comment, Mr. Limthongkul responded that "there is no spoon" and then kung fu fought his way through a bunch of men in black suits.

Difference of opinion

The Congressional Oversight Panel, who you might recognize as the panel that, despite a legal requirement to do so, no one in the Treasury Department, FED, Wall Street has deemed worthy enough to update as to the goings on and payments made out in the various bailouts and free cash grabs, had a few choice words on the plans enacted so far.

A congressional panel overseeing the U.S. financial rescue suggested that getting rid of top executives and liquidating problem banks may be a better way to solve the economic crisis.

The Congressional Oversight Panel, in a report released yesterday, also said the Treasury may be relying on too rosy an economic scenario to guide its $700 billion bailout, and declared that the success of the program after six months is “mixed.” Three of the group’s members disagreed with at least some of the findings.

“All successful efforts to address bank crises have involved the combination of moving aside failed management and getting control of the process of valuing bank balance sheets,” the panel, headed by Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren, said in its report.

Tim Geithner responded by screaming and pointing at a bear that he not only swore was totally behind the press and about to eat them all unless they ran, but that the press had to hire the bear on as a consultant so the bear could advise them on how not to get eaten by a bear.

Hey isn't it funny how the one government organization that doesn't have Wall Street insiders, Goldmann Sachs money fuckers, or political hacks that greased the skids for this crisis and is staffed by economists and number crunchers is the one advocating a fire and liquidate approach? Sorry, I wrote 'funny' when I meant to write 'a blindingly obvious result'.

But the report did also mention that things were getting better, albeit too slowly and in a 'not effective enough' manner. Perhaps the fact that things are getting a little better, combined with positive public perceptions of the status of the economy mean that good things...wait, no, Paul Krugman just dropped in to defecate on that notion in a Nobel laureate kind of way and sup on the sweet tears of your ignorance.

Oh lovely, 'things are terrible, but the speed at which things are getting worse has slowed, which is sort of good' is the most positive thing he can say. Yeah.....I'm going to go drink.

Time to get tough

It had to happen sometime. Finally government gets mad at all these damned companies asking for bailouts and handing out bonuses. Finally Washington is asking hard questions, setting hard deadlines, and getting tough. With the financial companies? God no, what are you, high? We've decided to take a couple of beaters from Detroit, paint AIG & Citibank logos on them, add in a big picture of Joe Cassano on the hood and start beating them with baseball bats in a furious rage.

The White House on Sunday pushed out the chairman of General Motors and instructed Chrysler to form a partnership with the Italian automaker Fiat within 30 days as conditions for receiving another much-needed round of government aid.

The decision to ask G.M.’s chairman and chief executive, Rick Wagoner, to resign caught Detroit and Washington by surprise, and it underscored the Obama administration’s determination to keep a tight rein on the companies it is bailing out — a level of government involvement in business perhaps not seen since the Great Depression.
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If a deal is reached between Chrysler and Fiat, the administration says it would consider another loan of $6 billion to Chrysler.

G.M., on the other hand, has made considerable progress in developing new energy-efficient cars and could survive if it can cut costs sharply, the task force reported. The administration is giving G.M. 60 days to present a cost-cutting plan and will provide taxpayer assistance to keep it afloat during that time.

Why the different track with Detroit? Two reasons: 1. It's easier to sell steel, car building robot slaves, and surplus car doors in a bankruptcy than it is useless bullshit like credit default swaps. 2. The dumbass CEO's from Detroit didn't even threaten to pull down the entire economy with them or claim that they needed to be retained because only they knew how to fix the problems they created. This is the lack of innovation that has been crippling Detroit for years.

People from within the Administration also seem to be mad that Detroit hasn't fully lived up to its loan related promises. How is this different than the financial institutions? Well, no one from the Treasury Department or Obama Administration spent time working their way up the Detroit ranks, has any friends in the car industry, or is partially to blame for the mess in Detroit. So they can wail on Detroit without any future awkward social situations/uncomfortable cocktail parties or yet another reminder that they've spent their life working in an industry with no redeeming societal value.

So congrats Detroit, you get to feel the wrath of a government scorned. It's not your fault, you just look like AIG when we squint our eyes a bit. We'll put this in the "right idea, wrong reason" file.

Seems about right

The financial crisis. Who could have foreseen?

Byron Dorgan, that's who. From Rachael Maddow's show the other night comes an interview with Senator Byron Dorgan, replete with a thorough discussion of all his eerily accurate predictions as to the state of the economy and corporate bailouts if we were to deregulate and pass a whole host of other terrible laws. He was summarily ignored.

Here's the article he wrote for the Atlantic Monthly in 1994 that he mentions in the interview. Read it and try not to bang your head off the desk as he describes derivatives trading, banking, and financial markets in such accurately apocalyptic terms that you'd think he drives a time traveling DeLorean. I'm sure that the Senate, where the majority who was wrong is always quick to reward the minority who was right, will let 'ole Byron have a hand in drawing up new regulatory and oversight legislation.

Yeah, right. Well, at least he'll write a prescient article about the upcoming 2020 collapse. At least we'll have that.

New finance rules

Today the Obama Administration unveils their new financial plans. Not just content to attach strings after the fact to billions they've handed out freely, Tim Geithner and the other three people working at the Treasury Department have decided to come up with a plan to address new regulation of the financial markets to help better avoid a future financial Ragnarok. The sooner the better as the canvas bubble fueled by the tent cities springing up around the US will threaten the economy in 2011.

The plan, which would require Congressional approval, would give the government vast new powers over “systemically important” banks and other financial institutions that are so big that their collapse would jeopardize the economy as a whole.
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If regulators decided that a company had become “too big to fail,” as was the case with A.I.G. in September, they would subject it to much stricter capital requirements than smaller rivals and much closer scrutiny of its borrowing levels and its trading partners, or counterparties.

But the most striking new proposals, and the ones that may provoke the most heated opposition from the industry, would regulate so-called private pools of capital — hedge funds, private equity funds and venture capital funds — and the gigantic market in financial derivatives, including instruments like credit-default swaps, the insurancelike instruments that allow investors to hedge against bond defaults.

Of course this has to pass Congress, so there's a 50/50 chance that Harry Reid will have to water the bill down to the point where it actually deregulates the markets further just to get Arlen Specter to deign to consider voting for it. Not included in the article was a list of other regulatory measures the bill wishes to take:

• A company may only engage in enough shady dealings to tank 1/3 of the world economy
• The bonus system will be completely overhaul...just kidding
• All senior management must take at least one class on faking sincerity and gratitude
• ABC will commission the program Extreme Makeover: Corporate Office Edition so as to provide reasonable cover for those corporations still wishing to redecorate during their own collapse
• Failing companies will only be allowed to have one sports sponsorship at a time and will have to choose between jersey sponsorship and stadium sponsorship
• When choosing a minority underclass that tricked your company into your economic ruin, all official spokespeople will be allowed only to blame that one group for the duration of the crisis
• Only 2 handjobs per day for executives at their office spa
• Horse and dog track betting are now considered legal financial instruments for securities and credit default swaps
• Monocles, spats, top hats, and canes are mandatory attire for any CEO accepting government bailout funds
• Senior management must legally pinky swear to never break the economy again
  

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

The Wall Street crybabies are out in full force today. Seems they don't like that people don't like them. It's unfair, it's anti-corporate, it's the blame game, it's confusing one set of assholes for another set of assholes, it's boo-hoo waaa waaa weep weep. First up is the adults at the Future of Finance Initiative

Finance executives expressed anger and betrayal at Washington's latest anti-Wall Street rhetoric during Tuesday's sessions of the Future of Finance Initiative, a conference hosted by The Wall Street Journal.
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"To point the finger at one group means, No. 1, you're not understanding the problem, two, you're stretching our social fabric thinly, and you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater," Mr. Hutchins noted. "Trust goes both ways."
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"This is an issue of 'we' and 'they,'" Mr. Levitt said. "Compensation is a part of it, but a symbolic part of it. We are a centrist nation ... We're now shifting to the left pretty far in terms of business-bashing and it has reached extremes of incivility that are intolerable."

First off, the only future of finance is sea shells as money and credit default swaps on fire and animal pelts. Secondly, Mr. Hutchins is right, trust goes both ways. Here's the problem, you all sucked the world economy into an endless black hole that we have to dump golden barges full of treasure in every hour before it devours us all. We kind of don't trust you anymore, nor do we trust your new proclamations about what it'll take to fix your messes. In our defense, we've been wholly vindicated in our non-trust and scorn.

As for Mr. Levitt, what would you like our opinion of business to be? We aren't bashing all business, just the financial and banking industries which brought us to a once in a generation financial Ragnarok. We tend to not be civil towards the people who are setting our futures on fire and expect us to bend over and take it. You and your cohorts fucked us over, take the heat like a man.