ch.annel2-i.s-n.ow-a.ngry

WASHINGTON (AP) — Global finance leaders are pledging cooperation between rich and poor nations to deal with a severe credit crisis after President Bush discussed the seriousness of the current situation.

I like how Bush discusses the seriousness of the situation. Not solutions, but just how bad things are. Showing just how out of touch he is, he has to get together with international leaders to figure out just how fucked we all are. My god man, have you surrounded yourself with no one who tells you the truth? 

Bush paid an unexpected visit to the group’s meeting. Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega said the president had stressed the seriousness of the situation and told the finance ministers he was doing all he could to involve other countries in efforts to resolve the crisis

I.e. “I’m trying to get help, ’cause I sure don’t know what to do to unfuck this mess.”

Hypocracy in action: U.S. Removes North Korea From Terror Blacklist versus Bush vows not to lift embargo on “dungeon” Cuba.

So I leave it up to you. Wiki North Korea vs Wiki Cuba

Also North Korea just said “fuck you” to the shutdown on their nuke gear, which was supposedly one of the ‘preconditions’ for our relations with them.

 MBAs of the world weep, and head back to school. 

Sec. 10. Increase in Statutory Limit on the Public Debt.

Subsection (b) of section 3101 of title 31, United States Code, is amended by striking out the dollar limitation contained in such subsection and inserting in lieu thereof $11,315,000,000,000. 

Reading more of the same post from last time. Bush just recently increased the national debt limit (didn’t hear about that? About 2″ of space was devoted to it in your local newspaper) by 800 billion dollars. Now he’s raising it again, by $500 billion.  The reason Bush is being so quiet is that he can no longer BS the press, they’re starting to ask him non-stop about his beliefs that ‘everything is just o-k,’ so he’s limiting himself to brief prepared statements and not speaking to reporters.  He doesn’t even have the cojones to lie to them and say that they’re working on nothing else, very worried but confident they can handle it. 

 (1) Mortgage-Related Assets.–The term “mortgage-related assets” means residential or commercial mortgages and any securities, obligations, or other instruments that are based on or related to such mortgages, that in each case was originated or issued on or before September 17, 2008. 

In other words, practically all debt except credit cards and vehicle loans, except those that were bundled (i.e. related) to any mortgages. We’re basically transferring America’s bad debt from the banks that would be imploding with it, and make the taxpayers pay - for the taxpayers fuckups. We’re socialing housing now, basically, but unwise housing choices, financed by the people who have made wise housing decisions. 

Remember how I said the fiscal stimulus was going to be absolute bullshit, not do a drop of good for our economy, and just put our nation further in debt, meaning that the 160 billion dollars will actually cost us around 200 billion in future taxes? From the Wall St. Journal:

Congress enacted the tax rebate program earlier this year because it perceived a growing risk of recession. In addition, it feared monetary policy alone would not be effective because of the dysfunctional credit markets. As American taxpayers know, most of the rebate checks have now been mailed and cashed.

Those of us who supported this fiscal package reasoned that the program would boost consumer confidence as well as available cash. We hoped the combination would cause households to spend a substantial fraction of the rebate dollars, leading to more production and employment.

The evidence is now in and that optimism was unwarranted. Recent government statistics show that only between 10% and 20% of the rebate dollars were spent. The rebates added nearly $80 billion to the permanent national debt but less than $20 billion to consumer spending. This experience confirms earlier studies showing that one-time tax rebates are not a cost-effective way to increase economic activity.

That’s right, our government is as fucking clueless as ever. And it wants to do more ‘good’ for us.

Well shit, even Iraq was invaded ‘with [stated] good intentions’  - and you see where that’s gotten us.

To paraphrase MC Hawking, “fuck, fuck, fuck the electorate.” And yes, I do mean electorate as in you and I the voters, because we’re the dumbasses that snoozed while electing C students (and that’s a gentleman’s C ) as the most powerful man in the modern world.

Suskind reports that in 2003 the White House ordered the CIA to forge and disseminate false intelligence documents linking al-Qaeda and Iraq. The CIA allegedly forged a letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein. It was backdated July 1, 2001 and stated 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta was trained for his mission in Iraq.

Ron Suskind interviewed Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, Britain’s secret intelligence service. Dearlove said Britain received intelligence in the beginning of 2003 about Iraq’s lack of WMDs, but the Bush administration buried the information. Dearlove told Suskind, “The problem was the Cheney crowd was in too much of a hurry, really. Bush never resisted them quite strongly enough.”

Lets all join hands and wish that the House Judiciary Committee investigation actually goes somewhere and isn’t stalled by Republicans claiming ‘partisan politics’ - notice how they always do this when there is criminal wrongdoing involving Republicans, but when John Edwards cheats on his wife, it’s front page news everywhere.

And the Church Committee itself, if people remember, actually went back to the days of Franklin Roosevelt. So it was started during ’70s under Nixon because of reports in the New York Times and other media by Seymour Hersh and reporters like him, who exposed the CIA’s domestic spying on Americans. And then the Church Committee got started in the Senate, chaired by Senator Frank Church. There was an accompanying House committee, as well. And they looked at all aspects of US intelligence, and in particular, they looked at this whole use of watch lists by various agencies like the FBI and the CIA, and they exposed, during the Church hearings—that’s how the whole NSA spying came out, because they got the whole story about how the NSA had been listening in on the phone calls of many prominent antiwar activists, African American organizations, civil rights leaders, and so on. And they exposed the various programs of the NSA.

And that’s how the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act emerged, was the Congress did not want to have the rights of Americans, the civil liberties, abused by their intelligence services anymore, and so they passed FISA as a way to require warrants, when there is any kind of monitoring of Americans in the United States by the NSA. And that was the guiding law until it was recently changed by Congress.

Interesting article. I wonder if the truth will ever come to light - during one congressional hearing on Ollie North, this database was brought up, and the head of the hearing cut off the senator and wouldn’t let any questions about this database be heard.

He asked people to turn off the TV cameras. Then made some off the cuff remarks, caught on cellphone - my guess is cellphones will be banned at the next Bush gathering. Gotta love the BBC, they have the story and the video.

Wall St. got drunk indeed. Where were the economic gurus under Bush’s aegis hiding during this time? Oh right, they were encouraging them, encouraging the use of ARMs and derivatives.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson sought to reassure an anxious public Sunday that the banking system is sound, while also bracing people for more troubled times ahead.

“I think it’s going to be months that we’re working our way through this period - clearly months,” he said.

Paulson said the number of troubled banks will increase as they struggle to cope with big losses on bad mortgages. The government this month took over IndyMac after a run led it to become the largest regulated thrift to fail.

This strikes me as exactly the line Bear Sterns was speaking right before they went completely and utterly into the shitter. More fuckwittery:

“We’re going through a challenging time with our economy. This is a tough time. The three big issues we’re facing right now are, first, the housing correction which is at the heart of the slowdown; secondly, turmoil of the capital markets; and thirdly, the high oil prices, which are going to prolong the slowdown,” he said.

Forgot: high price of food, dollar in the shitter, waging wars that will cost us trillions more dollars that we really don’t have and can’t get. Our defense budget is now like 2/3rds of our tax revenue, and we’re still in the hole by 400+ billion dollars every year? If there’s justice in history, Bush will be known as the ten trillion dollar man, but that wouldn’t be justice for the American populace (or would it, he did have the highest approval rating of any president, ever, for a while, by sheer fatal accident). If if the budget doesn’t top ten trillion before Bush scoots, his effect on the world will probably keep our debt snowballing until at least fifteen trillion - and even if he doesn’t beat ten trillion, he can still be known as the five trillion dollar man, since five trillion dollars in new debt was wrought under his term - pretty impressive when you consider our debt was going down by a quarter trillion dollars a year by the time Clinton left office, blowjob or not.

And consider that for a second - if we had stayed on the path Clinton (a Republocrat) had charted, we would, after eight years, only be two trillion dollars in debt. Even assuming the attacks on the Trade Centers had still happened, and our economy had been knocked back a step, with good, conservative fiscal policy, we could have at least broke even or charted a course back to the budget surplus and maybe even ended up with only three trillion in debt eight years on, anything less than the penultimate step to ten trillion. Now, we turn back to Paulson for a second for some more dreaming:

“But remember, our economy has got very strong long-term fundamentals, solid fundamentals. And you know, your policy-makers here, regulators, we’re being very vigilant.”

Long term fundamentals, the same 8 year long term fundamentals we’ve had, more than doubling our debt? Sure, our economy has “grown,” but more than our debt?

click for larger version

You be the judge.

Wonderful mashup of Bush’s statement on the economy that coincided with Ben Bernanke’s testimony in congress, where they make diametrically opposed statements about the economy. As Stewart said “one is a glass-half-full type of guy, the other is an economic expert.”