Dear George,
Now is the time for decisive action! Men go to Wall Street; real men go to Geneva and open a Swiss bank account after converting whatever’s left of their assets into gold. Today is the day I thank God for the gold caps that conceal my rotting teeth.
Speaking of God, we’ve got a little problem here. You tell us God wanted you to be president, to which I must ask, “What in the hell did we do to piss off God?” We emblazon our currency with, “In God We Trust”. Don’t you think God could return the favor instead of letting it tank?
It doesn’t make sense. We join the Church of St. Milton of Friedman expecting heaven and we end up in hell. Okay, maybe St. Milton wasn’t one-hundred percent correct in everything he said, but there has to be reason for our economic meltdown other than the purity of his theology. Maybe he made a wrong call when he said economic freedom leads to political freedom. It’s a nice theory but in practice the results are the exact opposite. Economic leads to political oppression because the ultimate act of economic freedom is theft, and those that got won’t hesitate to use the power of the state to keep what they have.
I’ll give you credit for giving it your all to get the bailout passed. You haven’t lost your touch when it comes to mongering fear. The only problem is that to monger fear successfully, you’ve got to have credibility, and yours in is the crapper.
In truth, I’m not sure the bailout would have made any difference had it passed. The meltdown was inevitable, because capitalism is a monster unlike any the world has ever seen. It is a monster impeccably dressed and coiffured; its skin moisturized and flushed with the blossom of Botoxed youth. Periodically, its lips, augmented with multiple injections of hyaluronic acid, move sluggishly as they whisper a single word, “More!”
And the monster’s minions, driven by an instinct that goes deeper then sex, pile the monster’s plastic altar higher and higher with worthless paper with in a frenzied ritual reminiscent of a scene from Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych, “The Garden of Earthly Delights,” until the altar collapses beneath the weight. There follows a loud gnashing of teeth and rending of garments as the minions engage in a circle jerk of blame, blaming each other for the collapse. And in all the chaos and confusion, none of them hear the quiet voice suggesting that maybe the collapse was the monsters fault.
So, they glue the altar back together and, once again, start pillaging the land for more worthless paper to pile on the altar, as the dance begins anew. And the further they move away from the collapse, the further memory of the crash recedes, lost in the fog of the eternal now that sees only the altar and hears only the monster’s whispered, “More!”
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
Pastafarianism and the Banker Bailout Bill
Dear George,
We’ve got too many economists mouthing off about the economy. This has got to stop. Paulson did the right thing in refusing to consult any economists when he put a $700 billion price tag on his Crony Bailout. That’s because his plan has nothing to do with economic reality and everything to do with bailing out his buddies. This could be why 190 economists think his plan sucks.
That troublemaking economist, Nouriel Roubini went even further when he said:
The Treasury plan is a disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed householders and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown.
This is no time for realists to be running their mouths. Illusion and fantasy drives the American economy; it is a system so fragile and complex and even a whiff of reality would be enough to bring it crashing down. Its prosperity demands a blind faith that the Flying Spaghetti Monster will set things right. All America needs is a rock-solid faith in Pastafarianism. At this juncture in our history we can’t afford anything that resembles critical thinking.
I got quite a chuckle out of another article in which Paulson reassured the public that the bailout would unclog jammed financial markets.
Of course it will since Bernanke deliberately clogged them to force Congress to go along with the bailout. Writer Mark Whitney tells us that:
Market Ticker has provided charts from the Federal Reserve that prove that Bernanke has withdrawn $125 billion from the banking system in the last four days alone to create a crisis situation that will incite credit market mayhem and increase the likelihood of passing the bill. This is coercion of the worst kind.
Of course it is; no price is too high to save our bankers.
And it may be stratospherically high before all is said and done. The same article quotes a highly-respected Swiss investor who estimates that the bailout could cost $5 trillion, and, incidentally, Chinese regulators have asked domestic banks to stop lending to US banks in interbank money markets.
It looks like we’ll have to hold a bake sale to raise the cash.
That’s the beauty of a well-executed scam: it leaves the mark broke before he even knows he’s been scammed.
Come January, you and your cronies will be enjoying the warm sunlight in the south of France while the suckers back home burn their worthless pension plans to keep warm because they can no longer afford heating oil.
But, that’s what feral capitalism is all about.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
We’ve got too many economists mouthing off about the economy. This has got to stop. Paulson did the right thing in refusing to consult any economists when he put a $700 billion price tag on his Crony Bailout. That’s because his plan has nothing to do with economic reality and everything to do with bailing out his buddies. This could be why 190 economists think his plan sucks.
That troublemaking economist, Nouriel Roubini went even further when he said:
The Treasury plan is a disgrace: a bailout of reckless bankers, lenders and investors that provides little direct debt relief to borrowers and financially stressed householders and that will come at a very high cost to the US taxpayer. And the plan does nothing to resolve the severe stress in money markets and interbank markets that are now close to a systemic meltdown.
This is no time for realists to be running their mouths. Illusion and fantasy drives the American economy; it is a system so fragile and complex and even a whiff of reality would be enough to bring it crashing down. Its prosperity demands a blind faith that the Flying Spaghetti Monster will set things right. All America needs is a rock-solid faith in Pastafarianism. At this juncture in our history we can’t afford anything that resembles critical thinking.
I got quite a chuckle out of another article in which Paulson reassured the public that the bailout would unclog jammed financial markets.
Of course it will since Bernanke deliberately clogged them to force Congress to go along with the bailout. Writer Mark Whitney tells us that:
Market Ticker has provided charts from the Federal Reserve that prove that Bernanke has withdrawn $125 billion from the banking system in the last four days alone to create a crisis situation that will incite credit market mayhem and increase the likelihood of passing the bill. This is coercion of the worst kind.
Of course it is; no price is too high to save our bankers.
And it may be stratospherically high before all is said and done. The same article quotes a highly-respected Swiss investor who estimates that the bailout could cost $5 trillion, and, incidentally, Chinese regulators have asked domestic banks to stop lending to US banks in interbank money markets.
It looks like we’ll have to hold a bake sale to raise the cash.
That’s the beauty of a well-executed scam: it leaves the mark broke before he even knows he’s been scammed.
Come January, you and your cronies will be enjoying the warm sunlight in the south of France while the suckers back home burn their worthless pension plans to keep warm because they can no longer afford heating oil.
But, that’s what feral capitalism is all about.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Finally, the Treasury is privatized!
Dear George,
You did it! The Era of Privatization has achieved its finest hour—the privatization of the United States Treasury. An agreement has finally been hammered out that legitimizes the $700 billion bank robbery that will line the pockets of the village idiots who run Wall Street.
Hank “Dillinger” Paulson has been handed sole oversight of how taxpayer money will be distributed to his cronies. You made it look good by only giving him $350 billion as seed money, with the understanding that he must ask Congress for more. On the surface, this looks like oversight, except that if Congress refuses the money, you can veto their decision.
In effect, a supine Congress has handed you the nation’s purse strings. An implicit Congressional power has always been their ability to cut off funding. For the first time, the executive can veto a decision to withhold funds, thus requiring a two-thirds majority to override the veto to exercise a power that, in the past, could not be vetoed.
I loved the bread crumb you threw to Main Street in that “the plan would require the government to try to renegotiate the bad mortgages it acquires with the aim of lowering borrowers’ monthly payments so they can keep their homes (emphasis mine).”
Right!
The Treasury isn’t purchasing individual mortgages, it’s purchasing Mortgage Backed Securities, which are bundles of undifferentiated mortgages, so there’s no way in hell they could identify individual homeowners. And even if they could, Paulson would undoubtedly claim that renegotiating lower payments would be irresponsible because it would reduce the amount of money the Treasury could recoup.
A decision to rewrite toxic mortgages should never be given to an irresponsible bankruptcy judge who would be swayed by emotional appeals from troubled homeowners. Far better to let a professional like Paulson handle it. Only he has the objective expertise to make decisions that will benefit Wall Street.
The plan does allow the use of stock warrants that would, in theory, give taxpayers a share in a company’s future profits. This is the same as taking out a lien on a corpse’s future earnings.
Companies will be allowed to opt for government-backed insurance, which they would have to be brain dead to select when they can exchange their toilet paper for the capital they so desperately need.
All-in-all, you have pulled off another coup. Once again, you have proven that all a powerful president needs to thrive, no matter how stupid he is, is a cowardly Congress.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
You did it! The Era of Privatization has achieved its finest hour—the privatization of the United States Treasury. An agreement has finally been hammered out that legitimizes the $700 billion bank robbery that will line the pockets of the village idiots who run Wall Street.
Hank “Dillinger” Paulson has been handed sole oversight of how taxpayer money will be distributed to his cronies. You made it look good by only giving him $350 billion as seed money, with the understanding that he must ask Congress for more. On the surface, this looks like oversight, except that if Congress refuses the money, you can veto their decision.
In effect, a supine Congress has handed you the nation’s purse strings. An implicit Congressional power has always been their ability to cut off funding. For the first time, the executive can veto a decision to withhold funds, thus requiring a two-thirds majority to override the veto to exercise a power that, in the past, could not be vetoed.
I loved the bread crumb you threw to Main Street in that “the plan would require the government to try to renegotiate the bad mortgages it acquires with the aim of lowering borrowers’ monthly payments so they can keep their homes (emphasis mine).”
Right!
The Treasury isn’t purchasing individual mortgages, it’s purchasing Mortgage Backed Securities, which are bundles of undifferentiated mortgages, so there’s no way in hell they could identify individual homeowners. And even if they could, Paulson would undoubtedly claim that renegotiating lower payments would be irresponsible because it would reduce the amount of money the Treasury could recoup.
A decision to rewrite toxic mortgages should never be given to an irresponsible bankruptcy judge who would be swayed by emotional appeals from troubled homeowners. Far better to let a professional like Paulson handle it. Only he has the objective expertise to make decisions that will benefit Wall Street.
The plan does allow the use of stock warrants that would, in theory, give taxpayers a share in a company’s future profits. This is the same as taking out a lien on a corpse’s future earnings.
Companies will be allowed to opt for government-backed insurance, which they would have to be brain dead to select when they can exchange their toilet paper for the capital they so desperately need.
All-in-all, you have pulled off another coup. Once again, you have proven that all a powerful president needs to thrive, no matter how stupid he is, is a cowardly Congress.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Saturday, September 27, 2008
To the hubric, death is for the living.
Dear George,
With events breaking faster than boils on a syphilitic whore, I find the only way to wrap my mind around them is to be completely stoned. It is only when my brain detaches itself from my body and jets around the cosmos that I am able to put things into perspective and tap into the broken psyche of the teenage bully that drives our foreign and domestic policy.
The Wall Street bailout plan is limping ever closer to fruition, and once again a craven democratic congress has wimped out and dropped their demand for revisions in the bankruptcy laws that would aid troubled homeowners.
You are a miracle, George. Even though your administration is a corpse, it can still cow the democrats (And Jesus thought he was something coming back from the dead in three days. Hell, you’re dead and you’re still getting your way).
And let us understand one thing, it is all about death. Its stench wafts across the land as the Big Dick’s nonnegotiable American Way continues to decay. The United Nations General Assembly even held a wake last week when world leaders gathered to open the session.
Brazilian President Lula da Silva delivered the first eulogy when he “passionately expounded the new political, economic and commercial geography of the multipolar world…He blasted supranational institutions that now have no authority—and no policies—to prevent ‘speculative anarchy’.”
The same article points out that Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez didn’t bother attending the session because he was busy cutting “mega-deals” with the Chinese, while the Russians have sent their nuclear-powered cruiser, Peter the Great to conduct joint naval exercises in the Caribbean with the Venezuelan navy.
Another writer points out “that drastic measures taken by the U.S. Treasury marked the effective end of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ model of free markets and unfettered capitalism that Washington has been avidly exporting for several decades, often through the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.”
The writer points out that while your GWOT has kept us bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, “China in recent years has already become a much bigger player in terms of aid and investment in Africa and Latin America, and, what with the ‘U.S. banking sector in a shambles, it’s much less likely that countries will go to New York to get finance and do business’ than before according to Dean Baker, do-director of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research CEPR).”
That is your legacy, George: You did what the Soviets were never able to do—you buried capitalism. Granted you had a lot of help, going all the way back to the Truman administration. But, you were the tipping point, the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Your neocons and neoliberals were so blinded by their hubris that they never saw the canyon’s edge until they had plunged over it.
But, that’s the beauty of hubris: you think the wind rushing past your ears as you fall is a sign of your sharp climb into the heavens.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
With events breaking faster than boils on a syphilitic whore, I find the only way to wrap my mind around them is to be completely stoned. It is only when my brain detaches itself from my body and jets around the cosmos that I am able to put things into perspective and tap into the broken psyche of the teenage bully that drives our foreign and domestic policy.
The Wall Street bailout plan is limping ever closer to fruition, and once again a craven democratic congress has wimped out and dropped their demand for revisions in the bankruptcy laws that would aid troubled homeowners.
You are a miracle, George. Even though your administration is a corpse, it can still cow the democrats (And Jesus thought he was something coming back from the dead in three days. Hell, you’re dead and you’re still getting your way).
And let us understand one thing, it is all about death. Its stench wafts across the land as the Big Dick’s nonnegotiable American Way continues to decay. The United Nations General Assembly even held a wake last week when world leaders gathered to open the session.
Brazilian President Lula da Silva delivered the first eulogy when he “passionately expounded the new political, economic and commercial geography of the multipolar world…He blasted supranational institutions that now have no authority—and no policies—to prevent ‘speculative anarchy’.”
The same article points out that Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez didn’t bother attending the session because he was busy cutting “mega-deals” with the Chinese, while the Russians have sent their nuclear-powered cruiser, Peter the Great to conduct joint naval exercises in the Caribbean with the Venezuelan navy.
Another writer points out “that drastic measures taken by the U.S. Treasury marked the effective end of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ model of free markets and unfettered capitalism that Washington has been avidly exporting for several decades, often through the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.”
The writer points out that while your GWOT has kept us bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, “China in recent years has already become a much bigger player in terms of aid and investment in Africa and Latin America, and, what with the ‘U.S. banking sector in a shambles, it’s much less likely that countries will go to New York to get finance and do business’ than before according to Dean Baker, do-director of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research CEPR).”
That is your legacy, George: You did what the Soviets were never able to do—you buried capitalism. Granted you had a lot of help, going all the way back to the Truman administration. But, you were the tipping point, the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Your neocons and neoliberals were so blinded by their hubris that they never saw the canyon’s edge until they had plunged over it.
But, that’s the beauty of hubris: you think the wind rushing past your ears as you fall is a sign of your sharp climb into the heavens.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Friday, September 26, 2008
Scams, Cubicles and Golden Parchutes
Dear George,
What’s happening, Big Guy? It looks as if your scam is unraveling. In your speech Wednesday night you called for a showcase bipartisan meeting of congressional leaders and the two presidential candidates to hammer out the final details of your bailout. The next thing you know, you’ve got a shouting match on your hands and your conservative Republican brethren have put forth an alternative plan to simply insure the toxic assets as opposed to buying them.
This could be a classic case of trying to go one scam too far.
Rep. Barney Frank put an unusual spin on it when he said, “I can’t believe that House Republicans are going to continue to defy George Bush or that John McCain isn’t going to try to help. There is optimism.”
It’s a strange day, indeed, when a liberal badmouths our Constitutional separation of powers. How dare Congress disobey you! That’s what the unitary power of the nation’s commander-in-chief is all about, which raises an interesting possibility…
An economic meltdown could easily threaten your Eternal War of the Empty Policy, thus undermining our national security and flooding the streets of our cities with rabid Islamofacists throwing bombs as fast as they could produce them.
Naturally as our unitarily powerful commander-in-chief, you couldn’t allow this to happen. So, it might be time to trot out NSPD-51, which allows you to declare martial law and dissolve Congress (not it would have much of an impact given that body’s dismal record.) This would allow Wall Street to move in and loot the Treasury with impunity until the foreign capital stopped flowing into the country.
Don’t forget that the bailout scheme had nothing to do with saving the economy and everything to do with saving your base It is imperative that Wall Street fat cats be provided with golden parachutes before the whole system goes into total collapse.
Now, George, let me pause , take another pull on the pipe and meditate on how far we have progressed as a nation.
How wonderful it all is! How beautifully we have streamlined oppression and made of it a work of minimalist abstraction. Eighty years ago, Franz Kafka would have looked up from his desk and have been appalled by the sea of desks spread out before him and the clattering racket of typewriters out of sync, with desks and shelves groaning beneath stacks of paper, yellowed and brittle; stacked, banded, tied and foldered, a chaotic mass, static and unmovable, filling the air with the stale mustiness of its decay
Now, what is there to appall? The drone looks up from his desk and sees only the blank wall of his cubicle and hears only the deathly silence of words and figures flickering across screens and sees only the barren straight lines of monitors and fluorescent lights that cast no shadow. There is nothing that can shock or disturb. There is only the sterile vacuum that neither soothes nor upsets.
Evil once needed the sword and the torch to flourish. Now, it needs only blandness.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
What’s happening, Big Guy? It looks as if your scam is unraveling. In your speech Wednesday night you called for a showcase bipartisan meeting of congressional leaders and the two presidential candidates to hammer out the final details of your bailout. The next thing you know, you’ve got a shouting match on your hands and your conservative Republican brethren have put forth an alternative plan to simply insure the toxic assets as opposed to buying them.
This could be a classic case of trying to go one scam too far.
Rep. Barney Frank put an unusual spin on it when he said, “I can’t believe that House Republicans are going to continue to defy George Bush or that John McCain isn’t going to try to help. There is optimism.”
It’s a strange day, indeed, when a liberal badmouths our Constitutional separation of powers. How dare Congress disobey you! That’s what the unitary power of the nation’s commander-in-chief is all about, which raises an interesting possibility…
An economic meltdown could easily threaten your Eternal War of the Empty Policy, thus undermining our national security and flooding the streets of our cities with rabid Islamofacists throwing bombs as fast as they could produce them.
Naturally as our unitarily powerful commander-in-chief, you couldn’t allow this to happen. So, it might be time to trot out NSPD-51, which allows you to declare martial law and dissolve Congress (not it would have much of an impact given that body’s dismal record.) This would allow Wall Street to move in and loot the Treasury with impunity until the foreign capital stopped flowing into the country.
Don’t forget that the bailout scheme had nothing to do with saving the economy and everything to do with saving your base It is imperative that Wall Street fat cats be provided with golden parachutes before the whole system goes into total collapse.
Now, George, let me pause , take another pull on the pipe and meditate on how far we have progressed as a nation.
How wonderful it all is! How beautifully we have streamlined oppression and made of it a work of minimalist abstraction. Eighty years ago, Franz Kafka would have looked up from his desk and have been appalled by the sea of desks spread out before him and the clattering racket of typewriters out of sync, with desks and shelves groaning beneath stacks of paper, yellowed and brittle; stacked, banded, tied and foldered, a chaotic mass, static and unmovable, filling the air with the stale mustiness of its decay
Now, what is there to appall? The drone looks up from his desk and sees only the blank wall of his cubicle and hears only the deathly silence of words and figures flickering across screens and sees only the barren straight lines of monitors and fluorescent lights that cast no shadow. There is nothing that can shock or disturb. There is only the sterile vacuum that neither soothes nor upsets.
Evil once needed the sword and the torch to flourish. Now, it needs only blandness.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Speeches, Stupor and Red Herrings
Dear George,
Sorry I missed your speech, last night. Damned if I didn’t pass out the second you opened your mouth. You’d think by now I would have learned that I can’t take hits on the pipe and listen to you at the same time. The second I hear your drawl, I go into a stupor.
Apparently you induced a stupor in the Brits, as well. A Reuter’s story on the economy didn’t mention your talk until the tenth paragraph.
The Associated Press managed to insert your speech into lead of their bailout wrap up. From the story I see you can still monger fear along with the best of them. However, you’d better monger fast cause you’re drowning in your own bullshit. As the AP story put it:
Compounding the administration’s challenge, Republicans and Democrats both say Bush has lost credibility, particularly in cases where he argues there will be dire consequences if Congress doesn’t act. “They sold the war, they sold the stimulus package and some other things. It’s the ‘wolf at the door’” argument, Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va. said.
Being a loyal soldier of the Mainstream Media, the AP tacked his comment onto the tail end of the story.
The bailout is brilliant on several levels. Never has there been such a bold assault by Wall Street on the United States Treasury. The fact that this treasury is empty does nothing to distract from its brilliance.
Waving the Red Herring of executive compensation goes far towards assuring its passage. That’s the button that will sway the public because it deflects anger away from a system that is in its advance stages of decay and towards the fat cats who have profited from this decay.
And it is working! No one is suggesting a return to the Glass-Stiegel Act. It’s all about golden parachutes. Our economy may be in danger, but the corruption that caused it is safe.
What makes this flap over executive pay so amusing is that, even if Congress inserts it into the bailout package, it will never survive the first court challenge. All some pissed-off executive has to do is wave a copy of the Fourth Amendment, with its prohibition against “unreasonable search and seizure,” and his golden parachute is his to keep.
There is a secondary gain to the bailout package that is seldom mentioned. With the advent of the Cold War, Congress agreed to a bipartisan approach to our foreign policy. This, in effect, removed foreign policy from the arena of democratic debate and discussion.
Now the same thing is happening with domestic policy. It, also, is being removed from the democratic arena as politicians fall all over themselves calling for a “bipartisan” approach to the problem.
The guarantees that there will be no meaningful debate over the systemic defects that created the crisis in the first place.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Sorry I missed your speech, last night. Damned if I didn’t pass out the second you opened your mouth. You’d think by now I would have learned that I can’t take hits on the pipe and listen to you at the same time. The second I hear your drawl, I go into a stupor.
Apparently you induced a stupor in the Brits, as well. A Reuter’s story on the economy didn’t mention your talk until the tenth paragraph.
The Associated Press managed to insert your speech into lead of their bailout wrap up. From the story I see you can still monger fear along with the best of them. However, you’d better monger fast cause you’re drowning in your own bullshit. As the AP story put it:
Compounding the administration’s challenge, Republicans and Democrats both say Bush has lost credibility, particularly in cases where he argues there will be dire consequences if Congress doesn’t act. “They sold the war, they sold the stimulus package and some other things. It’s the ‘wolf at the door’” argument, Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va. said.
Being a loyal soldier of the Mainstream Media, the AP tacked his comment onto the tail end of the story.
The bailout is brilliant on several levels. Never has there been such a bold assault by Wall Street on the United States Treasury. The fact that this treasury is empty does nothing to distract from its brilliance.
Waving the Red Herring of executive compensation goes far towards assuring its passage. That’s the button that will sway the public because it deflects anger away from a system that is in its advance stages of decay and towards the fat cats who have profited from this decay.
And it is working! No one is suggesting a return to the Glass-Stiegel Act. It’s all about golden parachutes. Our economy may be in danger, but the corruption that caused it is safe.
What makes this flap over executive pay so amusing is that, even if Congress inserts it into the bailout package, it will never survive the first court challenge. All some pissed-off executive has to do is wave a copy of the Fourth Amendment, with its prohibition against “unreasonable search and seizure,” and his golden parachute is his to keep.
There is a secondary gain to the bailout package that is seldom mentioned. With the advent of the Cold War, Congress agreed to a bipartisan approach to our foreign policy. This, in effect, removed foreign policy from the arena of democratic debate and discussion.
Now the same thing is happening with domestic policy. It, also, is being removed from the democratic arena as politicians fall all over themselves calling for a “bipartisan” approach to the problem.
The guarantees that there will be no meaningful debate over the systemic defects that created the crisis in the first place.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Dirty Diapers and Sinking Economies
Dear George,
Talk about burnishing your legacy, Paulson’s Wall Street bailout is going to make it look like a Simonized® turd.
For an administration that has hustled one scam after another, this is the mother of all scams. It’s daring and enormity awe. Wall Street shits and the public gets to change its diaper. It doesn’t get much better than that.
As one writer puts it:
America will give between US$700-$800 billion to the Treasury to buy any bank assets it wants on any terms, with no possible legal recourse. It is an invitation to abuse of power unparalleled in American history, in which ill-paid civil servants will set prices on the portfolios of the banking system with no oversight and no threat of legal penalty.
He goes on to ask why should American households struggling to get by on $50,000 a year be asked to bailout Goldman Sachs partners who make $5 million a year.
The short answer is that the struggling householder will bail the Goldman partners out because Paulson used to head up Goldman Sachs. In crony capitalism, capitalists take care of their cronies.
This same writer goes on to sketch out what a brilliant scam the bailout plan is:
Contrary to what the Bush administration says, it is not the case that the banks’ troubled mortgage assets cannot be sold in the private market. Those are the so-called “Level III” assets that the banks say they cannot value. But that is only a dodge that banks use to postpone taking losses. There is a ready bid for these assets from hedge funds in multi-hundred-billion-dollar size. The trouble is that the market bid is 25% to 30% below the prices that banks carry these assets on their books.
He explains that the funds are offering 55 to 60 cents on the dollar for the Level III assets, but the banks are holding out for 75 to 80 cents on the dollar.
So-o-o, why not have the taxpayers cough up the 75 to 80 cents?
A former International Monetary Fund (IMF) official tells us, “They presented this as a comprehensive, decisive solution, but it’s clearly not comprehensive and probably not decisive.”
Who cares? What the official doesn’t understand is that the bailout has nothing to do with resolving the financial crisis. It will probably make it worse as foreign investors decide that there are better deals besides our treasury bonds. Once our economy sinks beneath the surface, the only lifeboat still afloat will be the one carrying Wall Street executives, all of whom will be rowing madly towards the nearest foreign shore.
So get out the Simonize® and start polishing. The world is certain to remember you for all eternity.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
Talk about burnishing your legacy, Paulson’s Wall Street bailout is going to make it look like a Simonized® turd.
For an administration that has hustled one scam after another, this is the mother of all scams. It’s daring and enormity awe. Wall Street shits and the public gets to change its diaper. It doesn’t get much better than that.
As one writer puts it:
America will give between US$700-$800 billion to the Treasury to buy any bank assets it wants on any terms, with no possible legal recourse. It is an invitation to abuse of power unparalleled in American history, in which ill-paid civil servants will set prices on the portfolios of the banking system with no oversight and no threat of legal penalty.
He goes on to ask why should American households struggling to get by on $50,000 a year be asked to bailout Goldman Sachs partners who make $5 million a year.
The short answer is that the struggling householder will bail the Goldman partners out because Paulson used to head up Goldman Sachs. In crony capitalism, capitalists take care of their cronies.
This same writer goes on to sketch out what a brilliant scam the bailout plan is:
Contrary to what the Bush administration says, it is not the case that the banks’ troubled mortgage assets cannot be sold in the private market. Those are the so-called “Level III” assets that the banks say they cannot value. But that is only a dodge that banks use to postpone taking losses. There is a ready bid for these assets from hedge funds in multi-hundred-billion-dollar size. The trouble is that the market bid is 25% to 30% below the prices that banks carry these assets on their books.
He explains that the funds are offering 55 to 60 cents on the dollar for the Level III assets, but the banks are holding out for 75 to 80 cents on the dollar.
So-o-o, why not have the taxpayers cough up the 75 to 80 cents?
A former International Monetary Fund (IMF) official tells us, “They presented this as a comprehensive, decisive solution, but it’s clearly not comprehensive and probably not decisive.”
Who cares? What the official doesn’t understand is that the bailout has nothing to do with resolving the financial crisis. It will probably make it worse as foreign investors decide that there are better deals besides our treasury bonds. Once our economy sinks beneath the surface, the only lifeboat still afloat will be the one carrying Wall Street executives, all of whom will be rowing madly towards the nearest foreign shore.
So get out the Simonize® and start polishing. The world is certain to remember you for all eternity.
Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones
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