Okay, I have to make a couple of observations about this whole economic meltdown thing. Before they vote to bail out the system – and they will – just not on Paulson’s terms.

First, despite the desperation that brought Paulson to beg for money right now or the sky will fall tomorrow, the sky didn’t fall tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the next week. Sure the markets are “adjusting” with big swings up and down (obviously someone still has money), banks are continuing to fail, and now the credit market is frozen. But the world is still turning, the billionaires are buying up bargains on their own (infusing ready cash here and there), and the dollar still remains stronger than it will be after we print another trillion of them.

Second, it’s beginning to look like it really was an end game scam, one last big robbery before their power runs out. Paulson isn’t going to get the absolute power he tried to grab, nor is he going to get any waivers on oversight or blanket immunity from judicial review. Which means he can’t just pass out billions to his cronies and benefactors. The robbery didn’t go off as planned.

The “assets” we have already bought – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – are riddled with evidence of felonious behavior and the FBI is hot on the case. AIG’s books don’t look to be any less felonious, they’re being investigated as well. People will likely go to jail.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There will be a bailout because the economy must keep going. The rich will get way more than they deserve, the rest of us get stiffed as usual. So don’t believe any of them when they claim to care about We the People. They don’t. One of these days wwe might decide to inform them in no uncertain terms that we don’t care about them either. Until then, best of luck to us!

Secretary of the Treasury and ex-CEO of Goldman-Sachs Henry Paulson called Congressional leadership for a get-together. He tells them something – no doubt using charts and graphs – so horrifying, so absolutely terrifying that they all come out looking like Moses (er… Charlton Heston) after meeting the burning bush. Hair’s grown a foot and is stark white, their beards fall to their bellies, they’ve all got that far-away look in their red-rimmed eyes, and their hands are shaking. None dare breathe the edict: Set My People Free!

So. What was it, exactly, that Paulson told them? Gee, we dunno. Nor are we allowed to know. Just as if this were top secret intelligence pinpointing WMDs that don’t exist right in Saddam’s palace, we don’t get to find out. Even though it’s supposedly OUR trillion or three or four they MUST have right now to bail themselves out. With a laughable “emergency” plan that, Deputy Admin press secretary Tony Fratto said just today, was drawn up over the course of months.

Months. Not days or even weeks. They sure as shit knew it was coming, and simply waited for just the right moment of panic to spring it on us as if the end of the world is mere hours away. Ah, the lively tune reverberates in my mind…

“It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine!”

If that’s not a scam just waiting on the Greek chorus to sing the dirge I sure don’t know what is. They don’t care what I have to say about it, but I say “No.” If it turns out that nobody’s bothered to keep track of where all the paper went, then nobody really owns the lien on my house. It’s mine, free and clear (if they can’t produce the lien, they’ve got no claim). Except for the annual taxes I pay to my LOCAL government. Which I don’t mind paying at all since it supports the fire department, rescue squad, county hospital, roads, bridges, schools and libraries.

Looks to me like they’re trying to salvage the prime and just slightly sub-prime mortgage market by putting in a claim to the Treasury because if we were ever to figure out that our actual loans have been so fragmented and bundled and bought and sold that nobody bothered to keep the dead trees anywhere, we ALL own our properties free and clear and nobody who thinks they own the paper gets paid!

Which, btw, is just fine with me. Wall Street can crash, I don’t mind. I’m sure there are capable players just waiting in the wings to kick-start things when the wind dies down. Real estate’s still a good income investment and can be had cheap right now. Hold the liens yourself on just two or three houses and you’re guaranteed steady income for the entire life of the loans – even at straight interest of 8-10% non-compounded, you’re still earning the premium. And if they default, the property goes back to you and you just sell it all over again. Wall Street may fall, but Main Street will survive. For the most part, anyway…

Financial news of Wall Street meltdowns, Fed takeovers of big insurers and mortgage giants, and some serious death and destruction on the Texas coast from Hurricane Ike (which we’re finding out about piecemeal after 6 days of “Heckuva Job, Skeletor”), it has become more and more obvious that the country is in such terrible trouble that this will be one of the most important Presidential elections of our lifetimes.

So perhaps it’s not so surprising that both friends and enemies of Republican candidate John McCain are beginning to become alarmed at what appears to be some sort of serious mental decline that has taken hold and accelerating rapidly. What’s going on?

Since McCain – a 72-year old man who has survived four bouts with malignant melanoma – has refused to release the results of his most recent medical check-ups and testing, we aren’t likely to find out what’s actually wrong during this election cycle unless (God forbid) he suddenly becomes gravely ill. In which case it’ll still be All About Palin, since the ballots are already printed. John Ashcroft, it must be remembered, lost an election to a man who died during the campaign. So yes, that CAN happen in this country, on this level of politics.

Now, I don’t want to have to live through either a McCain or a Palin presidency. I think they’re both more dangerous than Junior Moron, and Palin’s definitely in line as heir to the Cheney “Imperial Vice-Presidency.” But I also don’t relish the thought of anything awful happening to any of the candidates, or having to watch as McCain painfully slides into some kind of overt dementia. This is a guy who really has had a long and storied career of public service, and who really has had a strong grasp of various foreign policy issues on a much higher level than merely being able to see Russia from the kitchen window. He’s looking sick, exhausted and is scarily losing his mental acumen – why have his handlers not checked him in for a few days of serious rest and medical attention?

It’s more than just not remembering how many houses and condos he and his heiress wife own. That can be understandable if you’re that rich and she’s got her own games going. It’s more than stupidly echoing failed Republican economic pablum on a day when the whole world suffered massive economic meltdown. Now McCain has lost touch so seriously he can’t remember who is running Spain – a NATO member and strong ally of the US – and even confuses things so badly that he thinks Spain is a South American dictatorship!

That’s just not right. And it’s not John McCain, who (in his younger days and in his right mind) knows all about Spain as a European country and NATO ally.

If it’s just jet lag and the stresses of hard campaigning, then he needs a few day’s R&R and nobody in his corner needs to apologize for it. If it’s more than that, they’re risking his very life forcing him to keep going in his obvious state of ill health and mental confusion.

Somebody please do the right thing. Help this man – whatever he loses by being out of the loop for a few days isn’t something that wouldn’t have been lost anyway if he keeps on demonstrating that he’s too old, sick and mentally unfit to be President. He deserves more just for having served so long. From his wife, his erstwhile “soul mate” in the Veep slot, his campaign lobbyists and his party.

Give him a rest. He obviously needs it.

The Associated Press reported on Easter Sunday that the American Death Toll in Iraq Reaches 4,000 after a roadside bomb killed four soldiers in Baghdad.

At least 61 other people died across Iraq on Sunday, but the U.S. is not keeping any official records of how many Iraqis pay the ultimate price for the ‘freedom’ we have brought them. …and bought them, at a price so far to American taxpayers of ~$600 billion.

Meanwhile, back in Manhattan, J.P. Morgan upped its bid for the bankrupt Bear-Stearns investment bank to $10 a share, 5 times the negotiated price agreed upon last weekend just in time for the Tokyo stock market opening on St. Patrick’s Day. The unprecedented bailout of an investment bank that is not a member of the Federal Reserve system was seen as necessary to prevent a worldwide financial market meltdown. The Fed is guaranteeing Bear-Stearns’ worthless investments up to $30 billion (of American taxpayers’ money).

Speaking of American taxpayers’ money, the Bush administration assures us that the $200 – $600 in tax rebates set aside earlier this year in hopes of stimulating the economy (perhaps we’ll all go out and purchase shares of J.P. Morgan?) will be mailed in May. Perhaps this will come just in time for millions of soon-to-be homeless Americans to buy a nice three-room tent to live in during the warm summer months. If they’re very careful with their budget, some of those families might save enough to buy kerosene space heaters for their tents before winter!

Hat Tip to The Bonddad Blog

This video consists of clips of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson lying his ass off on George Stephanopolis’ Sunday talk-fest (you can tell he’s lying because his lips are moving, but pay attention to his “tell” – how he blinks, stutters and shakes his head when he tells lies, negating what he’s saying. The man just cannot defend bailing out a speculative investment bank – the fifth largest in the country – while doing precisely zip to help the citizens who are losing their homes to this mess.

Which, unfortunately, is only going to get worse as more greedy billionaires who haven’t paid any taxes since Bush exempted them get the people they’ve screwed (US citizens) to bail them out of their bad decisions. If the US taxpayers have to bail out the billionaires, shouldn’t we also make them pay some taxes? How about refinancing their homes at a flat 4% for 30 years, as if they’d gotten those loans from a fed-guaranteed lender (since that’s now who owns the paper)? How about wiping out THEIR debts?

I like this “Hillbilly Report,” thought readers would find it refreshingly truthful too. Enjoy!

Bread line, New York City

Associated Press article

They called it “Trickle-Down” economics. It was a magical time of new capitalistic ideas and new collaboration between legislators, executive agencies and the Federal Reserve, a new way of managing the flow of money and the creation of wealth in a new and expanding ‘world order’.

It was brave, it was foresighted, it was designed to take America into uncharted territories as undisputed leader of an increasingly designed and aligned world… and it was doomed to fail.

It did enjoy an exciting 25-year run of “Greed Is Good” philosophy, the suspension of usury limitations (sans debate on the moral issue itself), the abrogation of market regulations and the rolling back of taxes on profit taken. Accompanied by basically unlimited, unsecured credit not just for citizens, businesses and corporations driving the national economy after the great recession of the early 1980s, but also for the government itself.

The new economic scheme did have dramatic effects in the broader world, producing results almost immediately that could be counted as a plus for large swaths of humanity at large. Even though it entailed massive debt, primarily held by wealthy Japan on behalf of the western alliance. The U.S. national debt soared under the dozen-year Reagan-Bush regime, much of it used to finance expansions of huge military-industrial saber-rattling programs – the “renovation” of antiquated nuclear weapons systems, the cavalier dismissal of long-negotiated treaties, a militarized space race called SDI.

The balance of power maintained artificially for decades shifted dramatically in favor of the U.S. and its alliance, driving the Soviet Union to bankruptcy and finally ending the Cold War. By 1985 the member states were beginning to separate themselves politically from the increasingly cash-strapped collective, and rebellion proceeded apace from there. By 1991 the Soviet system finally fell apart after a failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev and the ascendency of Boris Yeltsin.

Thus it can be said that Trickle-Down economics worked very well to accomplish certain international goals for the New World Order crowd. Deal is, the later need to mitigate accumulated national debt with moves toward the globalization of markets could not be maintained forever in the face of new multinational policies and regulations designed to level the playing field for new players in the second and third world. New wealth was certainly being shared internationally, but it wasn’t trickling down to the people.

Instead, the wealthy grew richer and the poor grew poorer, while the middle class – so vital to the long-term economic stability of the U.S. – was being steadily impoverished by easy credit policies at usurious rates and decreasing influence of organized labor in the face of international competition. Jobs were being outsourced at an alarming rate, personal bankruptcies hit record numbers, and the long sustained housing market “bubble” built on easy credit at sub-prime rates finally burst.

The blogosphere has amassed a host of excellent analyses of the situation, some with predictions of what will have to happen now for the U.S. to salvage its economic hegemony as the world markets realign. All of these listed are excellent sources of information for those who wonder how the ‘08 elections may change things for the better. It’s good to keep in mind that U.S. foreign policies and economic foolhardiness encompass more than just recent attempts to seize Middle Eastern petroleum assets by military means (at staggering cost), and that the next administration’s vision on such matters will affect all of us, workers and investors alike.

The Politics of the Market Crash

The Bonddad Blog
(An excellent source of professional analysis going back years!)

The Federal Reserve, Moral Hazard, Corporate Welfare and Double Standards

McClatchy: Huge Fed Doleouts Followed Pro-GOP Agency Briefings