Posted on November 29, 2010 by feralcatoffreedom
- HELP!
Matt Taibbi has a link to a priceless animated cartoon by ZeRO HEDGE. It is a must see. Two Bears explain what Ben Bernanke (They call him The Ben Bernank) is up to in doing this “quantitative easing” deal. The bears say QE is “printing a ton of money”. But Taibbi thinks the big deal is the continual funneling of money to Goldman Sachs. Watch the two bears and you will finally understand what is going on and it’s not pretty.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/matt-taibbi/blogs/TaibbiData_May2010/233953/83512
QE is designed to buy Treasuries and other assets, but the Fed does not simply go out and buy Treasuries itself; it does it through its primary dealers, who include of course banks like Goldman, Sachs. The Fed all but announces when it’s going to be doing this buying and in what quantity, which allows the banks to buy up this stuff at lower prices ahead of time and then sell it to the Fed at inflated cost.
Watch the bears explain why “blowing up the whole world” is not the change we can believe in. One bear asks, “Is this an episode of the “Twilight Zone”?”
Maybe, but for sure we are all on ‘Mr Toad’s Wild Ride” with the ride operator on a permanent break.
Filed under: Politics | Tagged: Ben Bernanke, economics, Matt Taibbi, Wall Street | Leave a comment »
Posted on November 28, 2010 by feralcatoffreedom
(Cross posted at correntewire.com)
Doug Henwood’s latest issue of “Left Business Observer” is out. (Subscription is $22 a year for 11 issues.) Henwood wrote the visionary book “Wall Street” in 1997 predicting this mess we are in now. Henwood reminds us that in “All the King’s Men”, Willie Stark is urged not to speak so wonkish and instead just say that “he’s gonna soak the fat boys.”
Why should we soak ’em? We’ve had the lowest growth in 80 years. And Henwood points out that the economy is arguably weaker than the Great Depression. The Depression “was preceded by a serious boom…and while the 1920s expansion was hardly short on froth, it also put the radio and the automobile into wide circulation. The 2001-2007 expansion gave us little more than some empty subdivisions outside Vegas and see-through condos in Miami.” Continue reading →
Filed under: Politics | Tagged: Doug Henwood, economics, ineauality, tax cuts, Wall Street | Leave a comment »
Posted on November 19, 2010 by feralcatoffreedom
Matt Taibbi has a priceless link to Zero Hedge’s cartoon using two bears to explain what Ben Bernanke is up to with this “quantitative easing” aka “printing a ton of money”. It really is worth watching to find out why the plumber is smarter than the Ben Bernank and why we are so screwed.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/matt-taibbi/blogs/TaibbiData_May2010/233953/83512
QE is designed to buy Treasuries and other assets, but the Fed does not simply go out and buy Treasuries itself; it does it through its primary dealers, who include of course banks like Goldman, Sachs. The Fed all but announces when it’s going to be doing this buying and in what quantity, which allows the banks to buy up this stuff at lower prices ahead of time and then sell it to the Fed at inflated cost.
Watch the bears. At one point one bear says, “Is this an episode of the Twilight Zone?”
HELP!
Maybe, but for sure we are on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride with the ride operator on a permanent lunch break.
Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Posted on November 18, 2010 by feralcatoffreedom
Dean Baker again points out that if we can get health care costs down and in line with the other wealthy countries, our deficit would be pretty much fixed. The Center for Economic and Policy Research has a nifty chart showing. http://www.cepr.net/calculators/hc/hc-calculator.html
This Deficit Commission is a joke. If we have to have these self serving silly commissions, it should have been a “Jobs Commission”.
Filed under: Politics | Tagged: Cat Food Commission, Dean Baker, deficit, Health Care | Leave a comment »
Posted on November 17, 2010 by feralcatoffreedom
The meme of “extremes” has been around for awhile, but it is become a constant refrain since the election. It is grating to my ears. “”The authoritarian left and the authoritarian right are running to ideological corners and not meeting in the middle,” said Steven Weisman, author of a biography on Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan on “Morning Joe”. (It is a very tried and true propaganda technique to trot out an author who has a book on a dead politician like Moynihan, Lincoln, John Adams, etc.) Joe Scarborough then repeated, “There is a need for all of us to isolate the extremes.” Continue reading →
Filed under: Media, Uncategorized | Tagged: conservativism, Democrats, liberalism, Media, REpublicans | Leave a comment »
Posted on November 16, 2010 by feralcatoffreedom
Maybe now that the Transit Authority is groping men’s crotches, people are going to wake up to the huge flim flam bamboozle that has been going down since fall of 2001. The Department of Homeland Security was put in place to take more money from the taxpayers for the cronies of the Fat Cats and their congress lackeys. Joe Lieberman came up with this idea although probably not on his own. And it was up and ready to go very soon after 9/11.
You see the crooks in Washington were kind of straining the Defense budget, so they thought a clever way of siphoning money from the middle class to their friend would be to make up a whole new department. So we get hundreds of new ventures in spying on the American people. We get wiretapping companies and now we get body scanners at the airport. Continue reading →
Filed under: Politics | Tagged: Cronism, Homeland Security, Terrorism, TSA | 1 Comment »
Posted on November 13, 2010 by feralcatoffreedom
In John Perkins’ latest book “Hoodwinked”, he compares recent CEOs of American companies to mercenaries. He says that in the good old days of post war America, CEOs were seen more like soldiers with loyalty to their company and community being number one. Now, CEOs are loyal to themselves and the guys who hire them. CEOs used to work for the good of country/company/community, but after 1980 they turned into hired guns who worked for the short term profit and their bonuses. It was a return to the Robber Baron age only much worse. Perkins had a professor of Business Management, Prof. Ashton, back in 1966 who taught that a businessperson was “obligated to serve his customers, as well as his stockholders. In fact he has a responsibility to the general populace to assure that his company operates according to the highest standards, in the public interest.” Continue reading →
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »
Posted on November 12, 2010 by feralcatoffreedom
Pink Succulent Buds by Judi Dickerson
Like flowers. But the closer you look at politicians of both parties, lobbyists, media drones, the more they look like this:
Horse Turds
Cow Pies and Autumn Leaves
Filed under: Uncategorized | Leave a comment »
Posted on November 12, 2010 by feralcatoffreedom
if he could. Ian Welsh has a great catch from the Financial Times.
http://www.ianwelsh.net/
Here's to Cowboys
Filed under: Politics | Tagged: Bush, neo-liberalism, Obama | 2 Comments »
Posted on November 11, 2010 by feralcatoffreedom
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