Who do you want to spend your money? A woman who needs $150,000 in make overs and travel expenses or a guy who makes a pair of shoes go the distance (and into the White House)?
In case you McCain people wondered, this is what it means to walk the walk.
In February of 2000 Hank Paulson, then CEO of Goldman Sachs, testified to the Senate Banking committee requesting that they reduce restrictions on the financial services industry, allowing investment banks like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merill Lynch, Bear Stearns, and Lehman Brothers, to leverage themselves upward of 20 to 1 — to risk more than 20 times what they could bare to lose.
The request went denied then in 2000 by a regulating body still containing many members appointed by Clinton but was approved only four years later by the regulating body installed with the Bush administration.
Now, Secretary of Treasury Hank Paulson, a Bush appointee himself, asks the American people to pay for the results of those misguided and destructive business decisions and the ineptitude of officials, who realized too late the danger approval posed.
America confused, bewildered and driven by fear, agrees begrudingly to a 700 billion dollar bailout plan for financial institutions — the death of Socrates all over again.
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If I told you these circumstances were all that were neccessary to undo the great promise of America, you would likely have doubts. You, stubborn and loving of America, would with all that you were say “No. America is greater than that.” But my friends, there can be no doubt now, that we have traded all we once were away — we have become all we had ever hoped to avoid: Rooted in corruption; heartless and descrimitive; deluded beyond perhaps all sense of hope for a future.
We have given the Doctor Frankenstein’s of this particular American monster absolution. Whats more we have placed them back in control of the laboratory to further ruin the great experiment that is the American dream.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety; Benjamin Franklin saw the soul of America and understood its fragility — our most recent actions will serve to prove him right. It is not what we have bought with these banks full of debt, but instead what we have had to sell of ourselves first in order to ever take ownership.
The S&P 500 fell below 1000 today. The DOW below 9500. Some call for a DOW in the 8000 range, others as low as the 7000 range over the next year. Jeff Mackey from CNBC put it rather well the other day from his chair on CNBC’s Fast Money, when he talked about his two best positions for this market. The positions were cash & fetal.
Its shaping up to be another memorable October for people working in, or who report on, the Financial sector. The last 12 months have shown that anything is possible in financial markets. Credit spreads have widened to never before seen levels. Any short-term lending mechanics, but especially Commercial Paper, are frozen stiff. “Easy Money” is anything but.
This time just last year — on October 5th, 2007, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a price of 14,066.01 on a volume of 29,190,300. To put things into perspective, today — October 3rd, 2008 — the Dow Jones Industrial Average opened at 10,483.96 on 264,270,000 average volume.
The next 12 months prove to be interesting for those who find themselves in the boundaries of what remains of Wall St. The coming earnings seasons will expose with certainty, the fact that we are (and have been) in a recession. Between dwindling credit, falling consumer confidence and spending, and growing unemployment statistics, there are few reasons to expect that companies will turn anything like the profits to which Wall St. is accustomed. In fact, it will be intriguing to see what innovation and consolidation take place in order that many major players are able to survive.
Today I had an argument with a scarecrow.
A scarecrow is the name I’ve given to the majority of today’s Republicans — those who even though they are not neo-conservative, follow as blindly as they do the church, the Republican party talking-points.
I call them scarecrows because they are empty-headed and rely largely on fear.
