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

Found via CR’s blog - but the main part is in images so i’ll just quote a bit from those, but really this is pretty fucking amazing:

Madoff [stated] that his investment advisory board was a fraud. [He] stated that he was “finished,” that he had “absolutely nothing,” that “it’s all just one big lie,” and that it was “basically, a giant Ponzi scheme.” … [He] also stated that he estimated the losses from this fraud to be at least approximately $50 billion.

That’s only one hedge fund, hopefully the other were more scrupulous, but considering how much fallout there’s been in the hedge-fund industry…

China’s stimulus plan comes on top of more than $4 trillion in government pledges around the world for bank bailouts, credit guarantees and fiscal spending to contain the damage from the worst financial turmoil since the 1930s Great Depression.

It pains me to trot out that old warhorse again but ‘a few trillion here, a few trillion there, now you’re talking about real money.’

Trillions of dollars shouldn’t even come up in polite conversation, but now it wont go away. Oh well, win big, fail big. Swish! 25% of the world’s economy, 25% of it’s fail. Oh well, as long as money is a made up concept, we can just make up some more of it to FIX EVERYTHING.

EVERYTHING!

And here’s the $700 billion dollar answer: Infinite Mimosas!

And if you’ve been curious about the radio silence as of late, well, I’m freaking sick of the news right now. My next post will probably be tuesday night around midnight, either detailing plans for helping get this nation back on track, or starting a new one somewhere else.

The current predicament was not caused by insufficient government regulation and the risk of future disruptions will not be mitigated by increased government regulation. The mortgage market was already heavily regulated prior to the crisis, but had it been even more regulated and had the regulations severely crimped, rather than boosted, the abilities and desires of financial corporations to expand the supply of mortgage-related instruments, then the focal point of the boom would have shifted; however, bubbles would still have formed somewhere and these bubbles would subsequently have burst, leaving financial wreckage and major economic dislocations in their wake (the bust is always and everywhere a consequence of the preceding boom). The reason is that the boom was caused by the central bank fixing the price of short-term credit at an artificially low level for a prolonged period, thus encouraging trillions of dollars of investments and new business ventures that should never have seen the light of day. In effect, the central bank created an environment in which prudent lending practices were punished and reckless lending practices were rewarded.

And the Fed, through it’s control of the interest rate, is inherently socialist.

superpoop.com

Almost overnight, its population became the wealthiest on Earth. Tracy McVeigh in Reykjavik finds that the credit crunch is making the cash disappear.

Iceland is on the brink of collapse. Inflation and interest rates are raging upwards. The krona, Iceland’s currency, is in freefall and is rated just above those of Zimbabwe and Turkmenistan. One of the country’s three independent banks has been nationalised, another is asking customers for money, and the discredited government and officials from the central bank have been huddled behind closed doors for three days with still no sign of a plan. International banks won’t send any more money and supplies of foreign currency are running out.

People talk about whether a new emergency unity government is needed and if the EU would fast-track the country to membership. On Friday the queues at the banks were huge, as people moved savings into the most secure accounts. Yesterday people were buying up supplies of olive oil and pasta after a supermarket spokesman announced on Friday night that they had no means of paying the foreign currency advances needed to import more foodstuffs.

“no means of paying the foreign currency advances needed to import more foodstuffs.”

“One of the country’s three independent banks has been nationalised, another is asking customers for money, and the discredited government and officials from the central bank have been huddled behind closed doors for three days with still no sign of a plan.”

Also notice the first sentence, “its populace became the wealthiest on earth,” - we’re among them. Danger lurks for those who can’t see beyond the bread and circuses.

 WSJ: Paulson to Tap Adviser to Run Rescue Program 

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is expected to tap Neel Kashkari, a key adviser on whom he has come to rely heavily during the financial crisis, to oversee Treasury’s $700 billion program to buy distressed assets from financial institutions, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Kashkari, 35 years old, a Treasury assistant secretary for international affairs and a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker, is expected to be named interim head of Treasury’s new Office of Financial Stability as early as Monday.

Cronyism - Mr. Paulson was CEO of GS from 1999 to 2006 - from when the Dow hit 10,000 to when the subprime crisis started to make waves. Notice how Goldman Sachs has been conspicuously absent from the subprime woes that Paulson and Bernanke said weren’t any big deal. I don’t know if it really means anything, but why not tap Warren Buffet for this job. He could probably do it in a spare hour a day and get far better deals than these jokers that didn’t see a problem coming for the last year when respected economists have been predicting at least a trillion dollars in losses (who have since revised their opinions upwards to at least two trillion in losses).

Well, a ‘trillion dollars worth of wealth’ was wiped out in the stock market with a 5% drop last monday. It’s sitting at -4.7% (and that’s the smallest index drop, the Dow) with three and a half hours to go, and has been falling most of the day. I guess that’s another trillion dollars, “gone.” Where does that money go? I mean, someone is buying on the way down, and selling on the way up. Everyone is trying to, which of course is a butterfly effect. Some big players are booking profits from the selloff though, you can bet.

So if that was wiped out of US wealth, does that mean it’s gone to foreign interests?

I think what we’re seeing right now is one of those crazy, life-shattering events that will only make sense and line up proportionally after it’s done. The entire world body politic is fighting about how to fix this mess they all had a hand in creating (I’m not going to say “we all” because not all of us voted for those jokers in office - some of us got out and looked the fool to protest them) and no one seems to know what to do, except maybe Warren Buffet and a few others that saw this coming years and years ago. The only problem is that most of the people who do know what to do aren’t in a position to do much of anything, except for themselves.

Jesus Christ, M. Next President, please hire Warren Buffet and Google to organize things for us. The American government should embody the American people, so let us model ourselves after strong American people and strong American corporations. Don’t lead us into Depression 2.0 following the failed policies of the past.

(Reuters) - California may need an emergency loan of up to $7 billion from the federal government within weeks, the Los Angeles Times on Friday quoted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as saying in a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.   

In the letter dated October 2, Schwarzenegger called for the passage of the $700 billion financial industry bailout plan which the U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote on Friday, the Times said.

“Absent a clear resolution to this financial crisis, California and other states may be unable to obtain the necessary level of financing to maintain government operations and may be forced to turn to the federal treasury for short-term financing,” Schwarzenegger wrote in the letter, according to the paper.

States are now heading towards insolvent. We need a new business plan for our government. The current one in’t functioning too well. Our budget needs supercategories: “absolutely need” “earning assets” “can be cut/postponed.

“The “absolutely need” category will need to be streamlined to ensure as little waste as possible. The solution: an “open” “source”, web-enabled process. “Open” because the barrier for entry will be the requirement of proof of voter registration or california residence (or, you know, whatever is legally allowed), “source” because the web platform itself isn’t the open part, the california business plan (budget) will be the open part. This web platform should automatically organize and categorize items in the budget based on various user interactions, i.e. most favorite, least favorite, etc. The purpose of the system will be to highlight both waste and success, not to demonize the waste but to help turn it around. If this truly is a democracy, use the power of the connected people to find what’s good and bad and help legislature fix it.

The trick, of course, would be able to get people to use it. Even though the platform software may not necessarily be open source, it should at least allow for the inclusion of cell-net access, and possibly kiosks at government/public buildings, i.e. library, courthouse, civic center. There’s a potential for up to 60 million eyeballs helping keep tabs on how well our state is doing. If half that amount of people put in a half an hour a year checking out parts of the state business plan in a year, that would be the equivalent of 15 million eyeball-hours. I can’t imagine our state.gov has the ability to muster even a fraction of that keeping tabs on California’s financial health.

This system will pair up humans and computers, with each doing what they do best - the computers tracking all the information, the humans deciding whether or not it’s interesting. It would root out corruption at every level, and keep all the money honest to the people who are paying it. If the people of California make it strong, why not let us all make it smart, too. I know there is enough silicon in the state to handle a system, and you could easily get the Californian brain trust involved by tapping the network of universities and offering tax incentives to the highest tech companies in the world that work in this state of ours.

Please make the click for fun with truth! Ever notice how little our government officials refer to us as ‘the people’ or ‘citizens’ and instead refer to the ‘taxpayer’ or ‘consumer’ (which are one and the same anyway).