After just 64 days in office attempting to orchestrate some way out of the unholy mess those nutty Neocons left in their disastrous 8-year wake, President Barack Obama (oooh, I love saying that!) held his second hour long in-depth press conference on Tuesday night. Imagine a POTUS who actually makes himself available on occasion to the press to answer real questions! A POTUS who can speak proper English without inventing nonsense words out of whole cloth and lapsing into feigned ‘folksiness’ or juvenile frat-boy antics! This is all quite foreign to a populace that votes not for intelligence and ability, but on who they’d most like to get drunk with down at the bowling alley. Wow. It’s beginning to like like America just might have decided to join the 21st century at long last, doesn’t it?

In this second presser Obama chose not to call on ‘the usual suspects’ among the WH Press Corps’ denizens (who got their chance at the spotlight last month). He didn’t call upon reporters from the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune or even USA Today. Instead, he gave the backup bench a bit of a workout. This predictably led the stars to whine loudly that they weren’t getting their due amount of attention from their host.

But the true highlight of the evening was when Obama went ahead and DID call on one of those usual suspects – Ed Henry of CNN, who tried really hard for a “gotcha” question Obama would trip and fall over. Henry had already asked the question, but didn’t like the answer. So thought he’d have another go at wasting valuable air time with his oversized ego.

Henry wanted to know – and know right now – why it took Obama two days to come out publicly with outrage about the AIG bonuses. Especially since other people were expressing outrage right away. Visibly annoyed, Obama delivered a bitch-slap right to Henry’s cheek…

“It took us a couple of days because I like to know what I’m talking about before I speak.”

Oh, OUCH!!!!! That’s gotta hurt.

Janis Joplin once sang someone else’s song very poignantly – “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose…” – and that’s semi-true in my experience. We all make choices about what’s important in our lives, and usually become enslaved to that which we choose. At the low end of the scale there’s never enough, just paying the bills is a constant struggle. At the high end of the scale there is also never enough. The thirst for more and more and more rules lives and ruins them too.

As Wall Street melts down we’re suddenly informed we must Spend, Spend, Spend!!! They can never make up their minds. Either we’re not saving enough or we’re not spending enough, it’s always our fault. I call bullshit. Slave wages have not even kept up with the cost of living, they can’t have it both ways.

I read about a 50-something day care worker yesterday who a coworker noticed sitting in the corner crying. When asked what’s wrong, she finally said she couldn’t feel her face. The coworker was alarmed, saw one side of her face drooping as they were talking, speech slurring. She drove her friend to the hospital, but the woman just cried harder and wouldn’t get out of the car. Said yes, she must be having a stroke, but if she walked in the door she’d lose everything – house, car, meager income (job)… she was terrified. Her friend finally talked her into going, she is still in the hospital and her coworkers are trying very hard to raise the tens of thousands she’ll need to pay for the care. There is no insurance at that end of the scale.

Some people on that discussion board from Europe and Australia were horrified. Simply trying to imagine what it must be like to face utter ruin just because you need to see a doctor – when you might be dying. Where dying is the “reasonable” choice, just so your children aren’t left bankrupt. Every other civilized country in the world provides basic health care for their citizens. Only in America…

This is wrong. We all work, much harder than the greed-head capitalists who skim the wealth we create for themselves. There are only so many hours in a day, and humans need sleep. If two full-time minimum wage jobs or three part-time minimum wage jobs – 16 hours a day, the kids are home alone – can’t provide a decent income, it’s NOT because these people are “lazy” or “shiftless” or anything. That’s wrong too. Now that Wall Street has cashed-out, millions who are very much willing to work won’t have jobs – there won’t be any. Great Depression v2.0. This is what unfettered ‘free market capitalism’ has wrought. It’s not pretty, and I sincerely doubt Jesus would approve.

So the haters are busy whipping up more hate. Buzzwords like “socialism,” taxing the rich, scary black people, gays and terrorists around every corner… “God’s Voter Guide.” That’s f***ing obscene! Dogs and cats living together, total chaos!!! Booga Booga, blah, blah, blah, Osama bin Laden, blah, blah, blah, Barack HUSSEIN Obama, blah, blah, blah. Disgusting.

We need change, not hate. Hate’s not going to help anyone, it’s just going to cause more pain. Maybe if the so-called Christians spewing hate 24-7 and worshipping golden bulls on Wall Street were exposed as the liars, posers and hypocrites they truly are, we could finally all work together to improve our nation and everyone’s lives. As if this were the United States of America, sans secessionists and domestic terrorists in the White House.

There’s a difference between “socialism” that has the government working for the people, and “socialism” that has government working for the corporate greed-heads. One is how the rest of the free world functions these days. The other is fascism. Things can’t go on like this, so when the dust clears which choice will we make? Valueless money is just mammon. Belongs to Caesar, not to God (who is pennyless). Our nation is drowning in it. If We the People ever come to our senses, we’d realize there are way more of “us” than “them.” So I hope. Right now that’s pretty much all there is, and a great many others are hoping too…

Happy Halloween – Booga Booga!!!

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.

George Bush lifted bans on offshore drilling, explaining that this will not only increase our domestic supplies, but will also remedy recent drastic increases in the price of imported oil. Now, oil companies already have more than 2,000 leases on offshore oil that they haven’t even begun to drill, and then there’s all the producing oil wells in Texas and Oklahoma that Ronald Reagan’s administration ordered capped (and labeled ‘reserve’) after taking office in 1981 (and which caused a rather drastic immediate recession in those states as well as contributing to the infamous S&L collapse. The very first bank to collapse – Penn Square Bank in 1982, was heavily invested in those producing wells when they were ordered shut down. That cost We the People $150 million. The current and ongoing bank failures will cost us a lot more.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports a Possible Industry Role in Energy Shortage, as Big Oil companies sought as long as five years ago to cut refinery output to increase profits. And cut back on new refineries is just what they’ve done.

But fear not! Bloomberg reports that Kuwait may build a refinery in Louisiana to help the US boost its capacity for refined petroleum products. As we fall further and further into deep recession/depression due to $5 a gallon diesel, $4 a gallon gasoline, and the fast-rising price of food, shelter and clothing based on that.

I probably don’t need to say it, but this is really bullshit. Bush/Cheney aren’t done robbing us blind yet? We’ve something MORE for them to steal before escaping to Paraguay? We’ve been set up for a fall, and now that we’re actually falling (with no sign of bottom yet), they expect us to clean up their mess with wealth we simply don’t have anymore? They looted our retirement funds. They screwed us on our mortgages. They blew everybody big time on WMDs in Iraq. And now… NOW we’re told…

…that the US oil industry is exporting a record 1.6 billion barrels a day of refined petroleum products, up a full 1/3 over last year.

Now, I realize that I’m not that smart about this sort of capitalistic crap-shoot, but it occurs to me that if the US had those 1.6 billion barrels a day of gasoline and diesel fuel we might not be falling off the economic cliff at an accelerating pace. And it occurs to me that we’re being told that the BushCo oil wars (now threatening to ignite the entire ME) are all about ’securing our supply’ – even though the truth is that our biggest foreign supplier is Canada, NOT Iraq, Iran, or even Saudi Arabia.

And with all this bruhaha about domestic supply – selling offshore and protected wilderness areas for drilling, capping producing wells, exporting a third of our domestic production – I’m wondering if the price of the oil they’re importing and charging us an arm and a leg for is LESS than what they receive on the world market for what they’re exporting.

I get the very strong feeling that they’ve screwed We the People yet again (that feeling just never goes away), seriously planning to turn us into just another Third World “Resource Region” for their total expoitation.

It’s their End Game. We have no choice but to play it.

Treas. Sec. Henry Paulson

It seems the recent recognition by Wall street’s overzealous speculators that the nation is in deep recession (something they’ve ignored for years despite it being a regular big deal out amongst the real people who do real work when they can find it) has led to yet another opportunity for the Bush Administration to make an unprecedented power-grab. And predictably, they’ve leapt at the chance.

From the New York Times:

The Bush administration on Monday rolled out the broadest overhaul of Wall Street regulation since the Great Depression, presenting a series of proposals that would, for the first time, create a set of federal regulators with authority over all players in the financial system.

But the proposal will do almost nothing to regulate the alphabet soup of sophisticated financial products that have fueled the current financial crisis. And it will not rein in practices that have been linked to the mortgage crisis, like packaging risky loans into securities carrying the highest ratings.

[Emphasis mine] Well. There you have it. The overwhelming greed of the financial sector has led to serious financial troubles, so the Bushies want to claim more power while at the same time doing nothing at all about the greed that will by summer (if projections are correct) have millions of hard working Americans homeless in the streets.

Don’t be fooled. The administration was seriously at work on this power grab last year, well before the current crisis. They have just seized upon the current crisis – that had the Federal Reserve (NOT a government agency) bailing out a bankrupt Wall Street investment bank in an unprecedented action just weeks ago – as a good excuse to put the plan into action.

What the plan does is make legal actions such as what the Fed did for Bear Stearns, offering to back 30 billion dollars’ worth of bad debt in their portfolio in order to enable JP Morgan to purchase the bank for pennies on the dollar. Additionally, the plan aims to ‘merge’ the Securities and Exchange Commission with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the already existing ineffectual and lazy federal regulators of Wall Street) and de-regulating both. In other words, turning over regulation and oversight of the financial markets to the financial markets!

This should work as well as the FDA allowing drug companies to regulate themselves, genetic engineers to decide what is safe for the world to eat, letting the Chinese decide to poison pet food and use lead paint in cheap toys, and allowing nuclear power plants to determine their own safety regulations. Doesn’t that make us all feel much better about how much government cares for the citizenry that always gets screwed by Big Business?

The overhaul will simply put American taxpayer’s money at risk for the financial markets to use and abuse as they see fit. If they make money, it goes into private pockets. If they lose money, We the People bail them out.

The administration expects a long fight in Congress in getting their plot approved into law, but fully expects the next administration – whether Republican or Democrat – to go along because it’s such a great idea. It might actually be approved, given how many regular citizens’ retirement savings have been decimated by the recent ‘liquidation’. The players get bailed out, citizens will have to live on much less than they saved.

Paul Krugman of the NYT had this to say -

…there was a 2003 photo-op in which officials from multiple agencies used pruning shears and chainsaws to chop up stacks of banking regulations. The occasion symbolized the shared determination of Bush appointees to suspend adult supervision just as the financial industry was starting to run wild.

Oh, and the Bush administration actively blocked state governments when they tried to protect families against predatory lending.

In fact, attempts to investigate, indict and otherwise act against predatory lenders – and predatory health insurers – is part of what got New York governor Elliott Spitzer targeted for ruin. Helped in no small part by his bizarre taste for expensive hookers, of course. As usual, the old adage applies in the modern world… power corrupts. Absolute power (such as what the Bushies are grasping for) corrupts absolutely.

Keep a close eye on this one, as it could send the entire system into default and eradicate the dollar as a benchmark for world markets. The welfare of the American people has no role to play in this farce. Hyperinflation is a real danger (on top of massive homelessness), and not just for the price of gasoline to fuel the cars families will be living in. The food we need in order to live at all is quickly becoming unaffordable due to commodity speculation – there are already food riots in Asia over the price of rice, which isn’t rising as fast as the price of wheat or corn.

It’s time for Victory Gardens and a return to doing for ourselves. In the end – if we come out the other side at all and this isn’t just more right-wing attempts to bring Armageddon – it may have taught the current generations valuable lessons.

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