Post #192
Subject: We Got Fooled Again, Pt II
Hey, I know less about the economy than John McCain does, but I do know the solutions coming from Washington smell -- throwing money at Wall Street because they asked and inflicting another layer of bureaucracy -- “car czar” -- on those who actually work for a living.
It seems to me that Barack Obama’s first step to help the economy should be something easy, inexpensive and effective -- EIE. He should sign an executive order -- easy -- mandating that all new cars and trucks bought by the feds -- inexpensive; the feds need replacements every year -- be powered by something other than gas -- effective; creating a new market for Detroit. This will “grease the wheels” of lending, as loans to Detroit would now seem like a good idea; thus, lowering our bailout overhead.
By the way, the author of the last article I quoted -- my Post #191 -- William Greider has been a political journalist for more than thirty-five years and has been a editor at Rolling Stone and Washington Post.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Post #191
Subject: We Got Fooled Again
My responses and additions – in [brackets]….
Paulson Bailout Plan a Historic Swindle By William Greider
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081006/greider
[It is, as Jim Cramer of CNBC’s “Mad Money” puts it, a betrayal by the Bush administration. George W. Bush took care of his pals -- even forcing banks that did not want or need help to accept taxpayer funds. Of course, we now know that banks cannot or will not account for that money.]
[I thought the whole idea was to ’grease the wheels’ of lending so that other bailouts would not be necessary.]
[Please, Mr. Obama, not another dime to reward incompetence -- cut our losses at $350 billion.]
[Note the date of this article.]
September 19, 2008
Obama's too smart to allow the ideas of the past to define his presidency. Yet Timothy Geithner is an architect and enabler of the unfolding crisis.
If Wall Street gets away with this, it will represent an historic swindle of the American public--all sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims. My advice to Washington politicians: Stop, take a deep breath and examine what you are being told to do by so-called "responsible opinion." If this deal succeeds, I predict it will become a transforming event in American politics--exposing the deep deformities in our democracy and launching a tidal wave of righteous anger and popular rebellion. As I have been saying for several months, this crisis has the potential to bring down one or both political parties, take your choice.
Christopher Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics, a brave conservative critic, put it plainly: "The joyous reception from Congressional Democrats to Paulson's latest massive bailout proposal smells an awful lot like yet another corporatist lovefest between Washington's one-party government and the Sell Side investment banks."
A kindred critic, Josh Rosner of Graham Fisher in New York, defined the sponsors of this stampede to action: "Let us be clear, it is not citizen groups, private investors, equity investors or institutional investors broadly who are calling for this government purchase fund. It is almost exclusively being lobbied for by precisely those institutions that believed they were 'smarter than the rest of us,' institutions who need to get those assets off their balance sheet at an inflated value lest they be at risk of large losses or worse."
Let me be clear. The scandal is not that government is acting. The scandal is that government is not acting forcefully enough--using its ultimate emergency powers to take full control of the financial system and impose order on banks, firms and markets. Stop the music, so to speak, instead of allowing individual financiers and traders to take opportunistic moves to save themselves at the expense of the system. The step-by-step rescues that the Federal Reserve and Treasury have executed to date have failed utterly to reverse the flight of investors and banks worldwide from lending or buying in doubtful times. There is no obvious reason to assume this bailout proposal will change their minds, though it will certainly feel good to the financial houses that get to dump their bad paper on the government.
A serious intervention in which Washington takes charge would, first, require a new central authority to supervise the financial institutions and compel them to support the government's actions to stabilize the system. Government can apply killer leverage to the financial players: accept our objectives and follow our instructions or you are left on your own--cut off from government lending spigots and ineligible for any direct assistance. If they decline to cooperate, the money guys are stuck with their own mess. If they resist the government's orders to keep lending to the real economy of producers and consumers, banks and brokers will be effectively isolated, therefore doomed.
Only with these conditions, and some others, should the federal government be willing to take ownership--temporarily--of the rotten financial assets that are dragging down funds, banks and brokerages. Paulson and the Federal Reserve are trying to replay the bailout approach used in the 1980s for the savings and loan crisis, but this situation is utterly different. The failed S&Ls held real assets--property, houses, shopping centers--that could be readily resold by the Resolution Trust Corporation at bargain prices. This crisis involves ethereal financial instruments of unknowable value--not just the notorious mortgage securities but various derivative contracts and other esoteric deals that may be virtually worthless.
Despite what the pols in Washington think, the RTC bailout was also a Wall Street scandal. Many of the financial firms that had financed the S&L industry's reckless lending got to buy back the same properties for pennies from the RTC--profiting on the upside, then again on the downside. Guess who picked up the tab? I suspect Wall Street is envisioning a similar bonanza--the chance to harvest new profit from their own fraud and criminal irresponsibility.
If government acts responsibly, it will impose some other conditions on any broad rescue for the bankers. First, take due bills from any financial firms that get to hand off their spoiled assets, that is, a hard contract that repays government from any future profits once the crisis is over. Second, when the politicians get around to reforming financial regulations and dismantling the gimmicks and "too big to fail" institutions, Wall Street firms must be prohibited from exercising their usual manipulations of the political system. Call off their lobbyists, bar them from the bribery disguised as campaign contributions. Any contact or conversations between the assisted bankers and financial houses with government agencies or elected politicians must be promptly reported to the public, just as regulated industries are required to do when they call on government regulars.
More important, if the taxpayers are compelled to refinance the villains in this drama, then Americans at large are entitled to equivalent treatment in their crisis. That means the suspension of home foreclosures and personal bankruptcies for debt-soaked families during the duration of this crisis. The debtors will not escape injury and loss--their situation is too dire--but they deserve equal protection from government, the chance to work out things gradually over some years on reasonable terms.
The government, meanwhile, may have to create another emergency agency, something like the New Deal, that lends directly to the real economy--businesses, solvent banks, buyers and sellers in consumer markets. We don't know how much damage has been done to economic growth or how long the cold spell will last, but I don't trust the bankers in the meantime to provide investment capital and credit. If necessary, Washington has to fill that role, too.
Finally, the crisis is global, obviously, and requires concerted global action. Robert A. Johnson, a veteran of global finance now working with the Campaign for America's Future, suggests that our global trading partners may recognize the need for self-interested cooperation and can negotiate temporary--maybe permanent--reforms to balance the trading system and keep it functioning, while leading nations work to put the global financial system back in business.
The agenda is staggering. The United States is ill equipped to deal with it smartly, not to mention wisely. We have a brain-dead lame duck in the White House. The two presidential candidates are trapped by events, trying to say something relevant without getting blamed for the disaster. The people should make themselves heard in Washington, even if only to share their outrage.
Subject: We Got Fooled Again
My responses and additions – in [brackets]….
Paulson Bailout Plan a Historic Swindle By William Greider
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081006/greider
[It is, as Jim Cramer of CNBC’s “Mad Money” puts it, a betrayal by the Bush administration. George W. Bush took care of his pals -- even forcing banks that did not want or need help to accept taxpayer funds. Of course, we now know that banks cannot or will not account for that money.]
[I thought the whole idea was to ’grease the wheels’ of lending so that other bailouts would not be necessary.]
[Please, Mr. Obama, not another dime to reward incompetence -- cut our losses at $350 billion.]
[Note the date of this article.]
September 19, 2008
Obama's too smart to allow the ideas of the past to define his presidency. Yet Timothy Geithner is an architect and enabler of the unfolding crisis.
If Wall Street gets away with this, it will represent an historic swindle of the American public--all sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims. My advice to Washington politicians: Stop, take a deep breath and examine what you are being told to do by so-called "responsible opinion." If this deal succeeds, I predict it will become a transforming event in American politics--exposing the deep deformities in our democracy and launching a tidal wave of righteous anger and popular rebellion. As I have been saying for several months, this crisis has the potential to bring down one or both political parties, take your choice.
Christopher Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics, a brave conservative critic, put it plainly: "The joyous reception from Congressional Democrats to Paulson's latest massive bailout proposal smells an awful lot like yet another corporatist lovefest between Washington's one-party government and the Sell Side investment banks."
A kindred critic, Josh Rosner of Graham Fisher in New York, defined the sponsors of this stampede to action: "Let us be clear, it is not citizen groups, private investors, equity investors or institutional investors broadly who are calling for this government purchase fund. It is almost exclusively being lobbied for by precisely those institutions that believed they were 'smarter than the rest of us,' institutions who need to get those assets off their balance sheet at an inflated value lest they be at risk of large losses or worse."
Let me be clear. The scandal is not that government is acting. The scandal is that government is not acting forcefully enough--using its ultimate emergency powers to take full control of the financial system and impose order on banks, firms and markets. Stop the music, so to speak, instead of allowing individual financiers and traders to take opportunistic moves to save themselves at the expense of the system. The step-by-step rescues that the Federal Reserve and Treasury have executed to date have failed utterly to reverse the flight of investors and banks worldwide from lending or buying in doubtful times. There is no obvious reason to assume this bailout proposal will change their minds, though it will certainly feel good to the financial houses that get to dump their bad paper on the government.
A serious intervention in which Washington takes charge would, first, require a new central authority to supervise the financial institutions and compel them to support the government's actions to stabilize the system. Government can apply killer leverage to the financial players: accept our objectives and follow our instructions or you are left on your own--cut off from government lending spigots and ineligible for any direct assistance. If they decline to cooperate, the money guys are stuck with their own mess. If they resist the government's orders to keep lending to the real economy of producers and consumers, banks and brokers will be effectively isolated, therefore doomed.
Only with these conditions, and some others, should the federal government be willing to take ownership--temporarily--of the rotten financial assets that are dragging down funds, banks and brokerages. Paulson and the Federal Reserve are trying to replay the bailout approach used in the 1980s for the savings and loan crisis, but this situation is utterly different. The failed S&Ls held real assets--property, houses, shopping centers--that could be readily resold by the Resolution Trust Corporation at bargain prices. This crisis involves ethereal financial instruments of unknowable value--not just the notorious mortgage securities but various derivative contracts and other esoteric deals that may be virtually worthless.
Despite what the pols in Washington think, the RTC bailout was also a Wall Street scandal. Many of the financial firms that had financed the S&L industry's reckless lending got to buy back the same properties for pennies from the RTC--profiting on the upside, then again on the downside. Guess who picked up the tab? I suspect Wall Street is envisioning a similar bonanza--the chance to harvest new profit from their own fraud and criminal irresponsibility.
If government acts responsibly, it will impose some other conditions on any broad rescue for the bankers. First, take due bills from any financial firms that get to hand off their spoiled assets, that is, a hard contract that repays government from any future profits once the crisis is over. Second, when the politicians get around to reforming financial regulations and dismantling the gimmicks and "too big to fail" institutions, Wall Street firms must be prohibited from exercising their usual manipulations of the political system. Call off their lobbyists, bar them from the bribery disguised as campaign contributions. Any contact or conversations between the assisted bankers and financial houses with government agencies or elected politicians must be promptly reported to the public, just as regulated industries are required to do when they call on government regulars.
More important, if the taxpayers are compelled to refinance the villains in this drama, then Americans at large are entitled to equivalent treatment in their crisis. That means the suspension of home foreclosures and personal bankruptcies for debt-soaked families during the duration of this crisis. The debtors will not escape injury and loss--their situation is too dire--but they deserve equal protection from government, the chance to work out things gradually over some years on reasonable terms.
The government, meanwhile, may have to create another emergency agency, something like the New Deal, that lends directly to the real economy--businesses, solvent banks, buyers and sellers in consumer markets. We don't know how much damage has been done to economic growth or how long the cold spell will last, but I don't trust the bankers in the meantime to provide investment capital and credit. If necessary, Washington has to fill that role, too.
Finally, the crisis is global, obviously, and requires concerted global action. Robert A. Johnson, a veteran of global finance now working with the Campaign for America's Future, suggests that our global trading partners may recognize the need for self-interested cooperation and can negotiate temporary--maybe permanent--reforms to balance the trading system and keep it functioning, while leading nations work to put the global financial system back in business.
The agenda is staggering. The United States is ill equipped to deal with it smartly, not to mention wisely. We have a brain-dead lame duck in the White House. The two presidential candidates are trapped by events, trying to say something relevant without getting blamed for the disaster. The people should make themselves heard in Washington, even if only to share their outrage.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Post #190
Subject: War Crimes
“What sets us apart from our enemies in this fight… is how we behave. In everything we do, we must observe the standards and values that dictate that we treat noncombatants and detainees with dignity and respect. While we are warriors, we are also all human beings”
-- General David Petraeus, May 10, 2007
On Thursday, December 11, 2008 -- eight days ago, the Senate Armed Services Committee released a report which laid out the case that George W. Bush and his entire National Security Council are war criminals. It is important that the Senate committee voted for the report unanimously -- every Republican, including John McCain, and every Democrat voted for this report. The report is titled "Senate Armed Services Committee Inquiry Into The Treatment Of Detainees In U.S. Custody."
To quote:
“Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists are taught to expect Americans to abuse them. They are recruited based on false propaganda that says the United States is out to destroy Islam. Treating detainees harshly only reinforces that distorted view, increases resistance to cooperation, and creates new enemies. In fact, the April 2006 National Intelligence Estimate "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States" cited "pervasive anti U.S. sentiment among most Muslims" as an underlying factor fueling the spread of the global jihadist movement. Former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2008 that "there are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq -- as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat -- are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo."
There ya go, Mr. Hawk -- and ya know who ya is: Keep Guantanamo open and create more enemies.
“The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of "a few bad apples" acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees. Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.”
The Senate Armed Services Committee has publicly released a summary of this report -- the full report is still classified, although Committee Chairman Carl Levin has called for it to be declassified. The report details war crimes by the highest government officials, the top of the chain of command.
“Conclusion 1: On February 7, 2002, President George W. Bush made a written determination that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment, did not apply to al Qaeda or Taliban detainees. Following the President's determination, techniques such as waterboarding, nudity, and stress positions, used in SERE [Survival Evasion Resistance Escape] training to simulate tactics used by enemies that refuse to follow the Geneva Conventions, were authorized for use in interrogations of detainees in U.S. custody.
“Conclusion 2: Members of the President's Cabinet and other senior officials participated in meetings inside the White House in 2002 and 2003 where specific interrogation techniques were discussed. National Security Council Principals reviewed the CIA's interrogation program during that period.”
These were the meetings at which John Ashcroft famously said, “History will not judge this kindly.”
“Conclusion 3: The use of techniques similar to those used in SERE resistance training -- such as stripping students of their clothing, placing them in stress positions, putting hoods over their heads, and treating them like animals -- was at odds with the commitment to humane treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. Using those techniques for interrogating detainees was also inconsistent with the goal of collecting accurate intelligence information, as the purpose of SERE resistance training is to increase the ability of U.S. personnel to resist abusive interrogations and the techniques used were based, in part, on Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to elicit false confessions.”
Doesn’t anybody care what is going on in your name? I pray that we are on God’s side.
Subject: War Crimes
“What sets us apart from our enemies in this fight… is how we behave. In everything we do, we must observe the standards and values that dictate that we treat noncombatants and detainees with dignity and respect. While we are warriors, we are also all human beings”
-- General David Petraeus, May 10, 2007
On Thursday, December 11, 2008 -- eight days ago, the Senate Armed Services Committee released a report which laid out the case that George W. Bush and his entire National Security Council are war criminals. It is important that the Senate committee voted for the report unanimously -- every Republican, including John McCain, and every Democrat voted for this report. The report is titled "Senate Armed Services Committee Inquiry Into The Treatment Of Detainees In U.S. Custody."
To quote:
“Al Qaeda and Taliban terrorists are taught to expect Americans to abuse them. They are recruited based on false propaganda that says the United States is out to destroy Islam. Treating detainees harshly only reinforces that distorted view, increases resistance to cooperation, and creates new enemies. In fact, the April 2006 National Intelligence Estimate "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States" cited "pervasive anti U.S. sentiment among most Muslims" as an underlying factor fueling the spread of the global jihadist movement. Former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2008 that "there are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq -- as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat -- are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo."
There ya go, Mr. Hawk -- and ya know who ya is: Keep Guantanamo open and create more enemies.
“The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of "a few bad apples" acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees. Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.”
The Senate Armed Services Committee has publicly released a summary of this report -- the full report is still classified, although Committee Chairman Carl Levin has called for it to be declassified. The report details war crimes by the highest government officials, the top of the chain of command.
“Conclusion 1: On February 7, 2002, President George W. Bush made a written determination that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment, did not apply to al Qaeda or Taliban detainees. Following the President's determination, techniques such as waterboarding, nudity, and stress positions, used in SERE [Survival Evasion Resistance Escape] training to simulate tactics used by enemies that refuse to follow the Geneva Conventions, were authorized for use in interrogations of detainees in U.S. custody.
“Conclusion 2: Members of the President's Cabinet and other senior officials participated in meetings inside the White House in 2002 and 2003 where specific interrogation techniques were discussed. National Security Council Principals reviewed the CIA's interrogation program during that period.”
These were the meetings at which John Ashcroft famously said, “History will not judge this kindly.”
“Conclusion 3: The use of techniques similar to those used in SERE resistance training -- such as stripping students of their clothing, placing them in stress positions, putting hoods over their heads, and treating them like animals -- was at odds with the commitment to humane treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. Using those techniques for interrogating detainees was also inconsistent with the goal of collecting accurate intelligence information, as the purpose of SERE resistance training is to increase the ability of U.S. personnel to resist abusive interrogations and the techniques used were based, in part, on Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to elicit false confessions.”
Doesn’t anybody care what is going on in your name? I pray that we are on God’s side.
Friday, December 05, 2008
Post #189
Subject: George W. Bush: Ya is Fired! Pt. IV
OK, I just like the title -- “George W. Bush: Ya is Fired!” The below is from another blog. My responses and additions – in [brackets]….
http://blog.catholic-convert.com/?p=2495
“A friend wrote:
“Dear Fellow Business Executives:
“As the CFO of this business that employees 140 people, I have resigned myself to the fact that Barrack Obama will be our next President, and that our taxes and government fees will increase in a BIG way.
“To compensate for these increases, I figure that the Clients will have to see an increase in our fees to them of about 8% but since we cannot increase our fees right now due to the dismal state of our economy, we will have to lay off six of our employees instead. This has really been eating at me for a while, as we believe we are family here and I didn‘t know how to choose who will have to go.
“So, this is what I did. I strolled through our parking lot and found 6 Obama bumper stickers on our employees‘ cars and have decided these folks will be the first to be laid off. I can’t think of a more fair way to approach this problem. These folks wanted change; I gave it to them.
“If you have a better idea, let me know.”
Some folks took this way to seriously, as a few emails have demonstrated. This is a “joke,” a political satire, a social commentary, a sarcastic “cartoon” in words. This did not really happen (for those who don’t read between the lines). It was meant to react to those who treated Obama like a Messiah-figure who will now have to pay for their choices in the real world -- even as
Obama begins seriously backpeddling from much of what he promised and can never deliver.
[Satire -- I get it. Or at least thought I did. I thought this was aimed at those who rush to judgment, those who over-react out of FEAR -- kind of like you-know-who….:p]
[Why doesn’t Mr. Business wait until his taxes are raised BEFORE he fires ‘family members?’]
Subject: George W. Bush: Ya is Fired! Pt. IV
OK, I just like the title -- “George W. Bush: Ya is Fired!” The below is from another blog. My responses and additions – in [brackets]….
http://blog.catholic-convert.com/?p=2495
“A friend wrote:
“Dear Fellow Business Executives:
“As the CFO of this business that employees 140 people, I have resigned myself to the fact that Barrack Obama will be our next President, and that our taxes and government fees will increase in a BIG way.
“To compensate for these increases, I figure that the Clients will have to see an increase in our fees to them of about 8% but since we cannot increase our fees right now due to the dismal state of our economy, we will have to lay off six of our employees instead. This has really been eating at me for a while, as we believe we are family here and I didn‘t know how to choose who will have to go.
“So, this is what I did. I strolled through our parking lot and found 6 Obama bumper stickers on our employees‘ cars and have decided these folks will be the first to be laid off. I can’t think of a more fair way to approach this problem. These folks wanted change; I gave it to them.
“If you have a better idea, let me know.”
Some folks took this way to seriously, as a few emails have demonstrated. This is a “joke,” a political satire, a social commentary, a sarcastic “cartoon” in words. This did not really happen (for those who don’t read between the lines). It was meant to react to those who treated Obama like a Messiah-figure who will now have to pay for their choices in the real world -- even as
Obama begins seriously backpeddling from much of what he promised and can never deliver.
[Satire -- I get it. Or at least thought I did. I thought this was aimed at those who rush to judgment, those who over-react out of FEAR -- kind of like you-know-who….:p]
[Why doesn’t Mr. Business wait until his taxes are raised BEFORE he fires ‘family members?’]
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