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That aerial shot of the DC4 flying over midtown Manhattan looks amazingly beautiful and surreal. Especially from our post-9-11 perspective.
The way things are going, I’m half expecting Matthew Lesko to be appointed as the next treasury secretary…
So, what stops the Bush Administration from classifying the email tapes as TS/SCI so that they can’t be accessed by most courts and most members of Congress?
$5 Trillion. Pile that on top of the $150 Billion a year or so for Iraq and Afghanistan (I know the real cost of the war is more than this) along with Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and this is beyond criminal. This is a fiscal atrocity of biblical proportions. There has to be a newly constructed eighth level of hell reserved for the people who helped to get us here.
Where is the best place to get educated on the bailout? I still can’t figure out what it is, how it happened, how long it took to get here, the difference in a CDS or a CDO. It seems like it started out as 700B and is now up to 5T.
And I am talking about an explanation you can give a guy that has the intelligence of Sarah Palin.
But I want to learn.
I feel like P. J. O’Rourke when he said “Joe Jerk down the street who has his car up on blocks misses a couple of house payments and the economy of Iceland collapses. There are a few pieces of this puzzle that I am missing”
Any links will be appreciated.
Speedfit- I think Denis Leary said it best when he said:
I’m not a workout guy, but I understood Nautilus. It made sense. There were arm machines and leg machines. But have you seen these people who are using the stair-master? Huh? Have we turned into gerbils ladies and gentlemen? People are paying money to go into a health club and walk up invisible steps over and over again for an hour and a half. “Where are you going?” “I’m going up! And I paid for it too! I can stay here as long as I want!” Folks, you wanna go up and down stairs, move into a fifth floor walk up on the lower east side. Ok? What’s next? A fucking chair master!? “I sit down. I get up. I sit down. I get up. I sit down. I get up.” The door master. “I open the door. I close…” What the fuck?
$5000000000000 and zero cents?
I’m gonna’ have to buy a wheelbarrow to carry around my wallet.
Criminal was $700 billion. This is Dr. Evil making up numbers.
The judge could rule that that was obstruction of justice, since they didn’t have a prior classification nor did they probably fit the definition of material that is qualified for being classified TS/SCI. Generally speaking, anything at TS or TS/SCI has to present a very serious threat to the United States or its allies if revealed. On the order of people getting killed in the field at the very least for it to be at that level.
The PATRIOT act. They didn’t read it, rushed it through, made bad laws and decisions. They had no oversight and we, the people, paid for that.
The TARP bail-out act. They didn’t read it, rushed it through, made bad laws and decisions. They had no oversight and we, the people, will be paying for that.
Cowards and traitors, all.
By the time we’re done with this bullshit, $700B won’t buy a loaf of bread.
What baffles me is the supposed IT difficulties from switching between email systems. I could perhaps buy that it loses you a day’s worth of email but 400 days spread over 2 years? Just how long did it take to install Outlook.
Personally I have almost 10 years of emails archived at my workplace available on demand. Email is relatively small and disk space is cheap.
Not impossible….. “Zimbabwe’s Inflation Hits 11.2 Million Percent: Loaf of Bread Now Costs Z$1.6 Trillion”
Buck, try starting with Arnold Kling’s fantasy testimony to Congress on the causes of the financial mess. (“Fantasy,” because no congressman would ever invite him to testify in the real world.) That post also explains some of the thinking behind the original bailout plan, where Treasury would have bought mortgage-backed securities instead of banks. Here is Arnold attempting to explain credit default swaps, although admittedly he is not an expert on them.
We are a nation of laws. That they are badly written and randomly enforced doesn’t negate the premise.
Buck,
Go to the Market-Ticker website. Karl Denninger has been writing about this stuff for several years now. (This economic crisis did not SUDDENLY happen). He tends to be a bit over the top at times, but he gives lucid explanations. You’ll have to read through the archives. Grab a pot of coffee and settle in for a long read.
No real “Economic Crisis for Dummies” available. Some of this crap is not understood by the people that engineered it.
No wonder that dog just lays on the couch all day, he’s too depressed over the economy to get up.
My standard has always been just to triple government budget estimates (see MA “Big Dig”). I guess I should up that to multiplying by 7-10.
At some point, this scheme (US Gov) crashes. My guess is we’re at that point. This is real “head for the hills with a truckload of MREs”-type bad. Who could’ve guessed that almost a century of expanding the New Deal to include pretty much anything/one that could deliver a Congressman a vote would lead us to this point? Hmmm? Oh…every single libertarian you say? OK. Do we let the Democrats and Republicans jump aboard and claim they never supported all this swill? I vote no.
No way America squirms out of this and learns a lesson without major tragedy/disaster/crisis. The pain for the sins of the past horrible government waste must be paid and there’s just no way politicians will vote to experience pain. Instead, they’ll try to “help”–only deepening just how much has to be paid. Think about it, in the last 6 months Washington has put us on a path to spend about $8-10 trillion over the next few years. ADD TO THAT all the new spending that will happen over the next few years (since government only gets bigger and bigger). Bailouts, foreign aid, war, more war, health services, etc.
I’ve had enough! Next time, I promise to vote…that’ll show ‘em.
This is bad, bad, bad, bad.
MRE=meals, ready-to-eat
Karl Denninger is good: “Without “silly credit”, which cannot be restarted or maintained, we sell 11 million automobiles in the US a year, instead of 17.5 million. We sell one million fewer homes a year. Leisure travel dollars spent will fall by 20% and perhaps more. We sell a lot less “bling” of various sorts, whether it be $300 cell phones (the $50 one makes calls you know, and doesn’t require a $100/month service plan either!), $5 lattes or $10 martinis. This is reality my friends, and there is no escaping it.”
No one is getting re-elected delivering this news. So, BAILOUTS for all industries!!
These bailouts are only extending the pain we will suffer over the next three years. Companies have to be allowed to fail. My sympathies go to the future unemployed, but, that’s life! I may be in the same boat. The company I work for is on it’s deathbed, held together by a life support packaged based on hope and prayer. I have retrained myself into other IT sectors, but also into totally different skill sets. The old adage about eggs in one basket rings true at times like these.
I am not a doomer. After Katrina, I saw that I could not depend on anyone else. I have provisions stocked away and protected. The difference between me and doomers is that I can see (and actually want) the eventual recovery. The country may not hold it’s previous place of power in the world, but is that a bad thing?
#15 I believe that dog is a greyhound, most likely a rescue from the racetrack. Greyhounds are noted couch potatoes, only have one good run in them a day.
#16 “Who could’ve guessed that almost a century of expanding the New Deal to include pretty much anything/one that could deliver a Congressman a vote would lead us to this point?”
Anyone who has ever opened a history book. Bread and Circuses has been the downfall of republics before. The great experiment is over, we’re watching the death throes and fighting over the carrion.
Now if we could only create a new system where congressmen who steal from the public like this can be legally shot down dead.
Frank, it isn’t just the congresscritters. The administrations and Congresses from Clinton to Shrub are directly responsible for this mess. Paulson and Bernanke are traitors to the US and should suffer the appropriate consequences.
Actually, assigning blame just to the above is ridiculous. Go back to FDR. Hell go back to whoever started manipulating markets in the first place. Well. I’ll settle for Paulson’s head on a pike.
It’s called “let’s say something that makes us look like a bunch of bumbling idiots, but we all really know it’s a lie so we can claim ignorance when lots of data is missing.” Kinda like a claim of lost time from alien kidnapping … why are there no emails from June-August 2005?
It’s all too little, too late, all for show. If Congress, the courts, etc. were serious about their actions, they would have resolved this record retention issue years ago, considering how important it is and how easily things can be made to disappear. It’s so easy to erase your tracks, so who’s to say that the government doesn’t do the same? I think anyone would be foolish to believe they get 100% of the data when info is turned over by the government.
Thanks rjbrash. It is in my favorites now. I’ll read it everyday and see if I can’t get caught up a little bit.
$ 5 trillion and how many companies wanting a piece of it? Let’s trot out that Lincoln quote again – “There are too many piglets for the tits!”
chsw
love the treadmill. That is the most American thing I have seen in a long time!