To honor Goldman Sachs, who will be announcing its first losses ever this morning, as well the work of Ponzi scheme master Bernie Madoff, corrupt or cretinous Treasury Secretaries Paul O’Neil, John Snow, including the top chuckle head ex-Goldman CEO Hank Paulson, Commerce Secretaries Donald Evans and Carlos Gutierrez, the ever-crooked SEC Chairman Cox, also the host of incompetitants at Bear Stearns (Alan Schwatz), Citigroup (Vikram Pandit), Merill Lynch (John Thain), Bank of America (Ken Lewis), AIG (Ed Liddy), Goldman Sachs (Lloyd Blankenfein), Morgan Stanely (John Mack), American Express (Ken Chenault), GMAC (Al de Molina), GM (Rick Wagoner), Ford (Alan Mulally), Chrysler (Robert Nardelli), Freddie (David Moffet), Fannie (Herbert Allison), oh, and every bubble’s favorite Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, Housing and Urban Development Secretaries Mel Martinez and Alphonso Jackson, and at long last — the icing on any “cake o’ criminale” – Dick Cheney and George W. Bush — yes in honor of it all — this site will no longer use the term “US stock market.” It was getting old anyway, wasn’t it? And its not exactly catchy.
Besides my friend, using such terminology would not accurately capture the metamorphosis of our country beginning now with our financial markets. Done directly or indirectly, intentionally or by accident, these people have transformed our economy, not excluding our stock market. The stock market is gone, my friend. And so, let me welcome you… to Financial Thunderdome.
For this quarter’s Link Litter column, we’ll honor all those who have lost their mind on the road to information technology discovery. As Ozzy Osbourne put it so aptly, “Of all those things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most.” You too can lose your mind…
If I were running the show, I could make two changes to our governmental structure, and its mostly about backoffice accounting, that would immediately make our entire country better.
1) Make government officials sign agreements like contractors (like myself) before starting the job. NDAs and Non-compete agreements would make it impossible for lobbyists to promise post-office compensation
2) Officials must publish any non-government income as it is received on a read-for-all website
Being corrupt would have just got a whole lot harder…
Once upon a time, I lived at the peak of civilization, in the greatest nation to ever exist. But now, we have far too many holes for the Dutchboy to plug and an ocean drawing toward us.
This morning CNBC is reporting that, the United States Federal Reserve is considering and may begin to issue debt. To review, here is a well done breakdown of the purpose or mandate of the United States Federal Reserve taken from Wikipedia, here.
- To address the problem of banking panics
- To serve as the central bank for the United States
- To strike a balance between private interests of banks and the centralized responsibility of government
- To supervise and regulate banking institutions
- To protect the credit rights of consumers
- To manage the nation’s money supply through monetary policy to achieve the sometimes conflicting goals of
- maximum employment
- stable prices
- moderate long-term interest rates
- To maintain the stability of the financial system and contain systemic risk in financial markets
- To provide financial services to depository institutions, the U.S. government, and foreign official institutions, including playing a major role in operating the nation’s payments system
- To facilitate the exchange of payments among regions
- To respond to local liquidity needs
- To strengthen U.S. standing in the world economy
These mandates are complex and can within themselves conflict with one another. Its #7 that ought really worry you when you consider this development: the Fed issuing debt. Why?
The United States Treasury already issues debt — loads of it, in fact, almost unimaginable amounts of it. It does this because our country is currently running a defecit. In order to address the defecit while cotinuing to operate, Congress borrows and Treasury issues debt. Just one of many fingers plugging one of many economic holes. Despite the housing crisis, the entire US mortgage market has a book value of around $12 trillion. Thats an interesting target amount to consider because, so far, the Federal Reserve has had to grow its balance sheet roughly 30% of that — another finger plugging another economic hole.
If the Federal Reserve now begins to issue debt, it will truly be the end of the United States as an economic world power. It will mean that the United States has become already insolvent and is now dangerously close to bankrupt. Now even the Dutchboy’s hands are full.
40A Inc. is a company full of people who exploit the African-American people using the Internet. At least, that is what their latest software product suggests: Blackbird. “Blackbird is operated by 40A, Inc., a company founded by three African American entrepreneurs, Arnold Brown II, Frank Washington, and H. Edward Young, Jr.,” or so the 40A site suggests — but of all the things the Internet and the African-Americans need, THIS is not one. Go find somewhere to die, Blackbird.
The Internet is not about segregation, 40A, quite the opposite: collaboration.
African-Americans don’t need a special web browser (like Blackbird) and special Internet sites (like this company suggests) much like this same community did not need separate bathrooms nor water fountains. No, I’m not even going to pretend this does SOME good– Its a sad state of affairs…
The African-American community ought to be insulted that you, 40A, think you can pass off some substandard recompile of the same browser they already have: Firefox. And at the meer mention that they won’t prosper using exactly what everyone else uses.
You want to deliver something useful to African-Americans? Develop software that helps get rid of companies that produce the kind of products you release; release software to help stop bad people from trying to make money on social disparity still at work in America.
Sometimes, its just about writing– And, if ever asked to supply that single, horrifying but simple line which defends mankind’s finale, I would say, both tactlessly and truthfully, about our people, as if a father excusing a misbehaving child…
Arrogant and unpatient, mankind learned only to race against time. And, died ignoring all other life here, whose careful stewardship all surrounding lent time to learn and live at all.
When the boat’s below the water-line, you can’t bail out a sinking river…
From BoingBoing…
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• Marshall Plan: Cost: $12.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $115.3 billion
• Louisiana Purchase: Cost: $15 million, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $217 billion
• Race to the Moon: Cost: $36.4 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $237 billion
• S&L Crisis: Cost: $153 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $256 billion
• Korean War: Cost: $54 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $454 billion
• The New Deal: Cost: $32 billion (Est), Inflation Adjusted Cost: $500 billion (Est)
• Invasion of Iraq: Cost: $551b, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $597 billion
• Vietnam War: Cost: $111 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $698 billion
• NASA: Cost: $416.7 billion, Inflation Adjusted Cost: $851.2 billion
TOTAL: $3.92 trillion
