Tuesday, August 18, 2009

SAR #9230

The game is over and you are not a winner.

Cautionary Tale: Andrew Cuomo, in taking on Schwab over ordinary financial chicanery, doesn't seem to have learned from watching Elliot Spitzer sit on the hot stove.

Yes We Can: Turns out the citizenry is quite capable of sopping up a lot of the Treasury offerings needed to finance the trillion plus Uncle Sam needs to borrow. Fine, cuts down our dependency on foreigners (read China and Japan). But every buck that goes into bonds does not go into the stock market and the government is far more likely to stiff you than the Chinese central bank.

Housing Prices: The cheerleaders are getting tired, the game is nowhere near either won or over, Ginnie Mae is suiting up, and the fans can't afford the ticket prices.

Sad, But True: Too little, too late – even the MSM acknowledges we've missed the boat and that it is too late to avoid 'harmful' anthropogenic climate change. Don't complain, we chose the clowns that have decided to let it happen. We have reached, and passed, as a society and as a civilization, tipping points that will essentially end our familiar world. Not them, we. Pogo was right.

Quoted: “This court has never held,” Justice Scalia wrote, “that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.” Seems innocence is a matter of law, not fact.

Tab A, Slot B: Forget your fears of inflation/hyperinflation. The CPI has not been this negative in 60 years, import prices are down about 20%, export prices are down about 10%. There's not enough demand and lots of idle capacity to supply. Here's the worry: Is this the early innings of a serious deflationary spiral?

Breathe on the Mirror: Fannie will refi 125% of your loan on your underwater house. Freddie too, as of October. Sort of like pre-qualifying for default.

Pretty Please: The next time you want to make a reservation, dig out the birth certificate. Airlines will require you submit DOB and gender info, along with a valid credit card. It's all to help the TSA folks – if you fly on your birthday, they'll make you a cake. Or something.

Too Late, Too Little, Too Bad: China now plans to curb its CO2 emissions so they will only increase another 57% above today's level and then start falling by 2050. Not the use of 'only' and 'start'. The IPCC might as well base their 'most likely' forecast on the simple assumption that every last hydrocarbon we can get our hands on is going to be burnt – oil, coal,and tar sands - and all the trees, too.

Quoted: “For all its pretense and manufactured consent, our government is just a corporate racket now, and probably will remain so from here on out.”

More Misleading Stuff: The headline reads “Social Security Tax Increase” which will scare the horses and children. But the article is about increasing the income cap to which the tax applies. Increasing the amount of your income that is taxed (and limiting how much you can receive – means testing) is fine with me. I've never earned enough to have income that wasn't FICA taxed.

Two Questions: Can the Amazon rain forest be saved? Yes. Will the Amazon rain forest be saved? Probably not.

Splendor in the Grass: Stimulus spending may, or may not, eventually prove to have been a Good Idea. Germany and France, without resort to big stimuli, are doing as well or better than the US and UK. But the stimulus has done some good – witness the Dow of late. So we got something for the trillions and trillions; but housing and employment data suggests that we're going to be paying the bill long after the thrill is gone.

Not Necessarily News: The richest 10% of Americans are richer than ever, and the top 1% is indescribably rich. The American class system is now: Poor, Newly Poor, Soon to be Poor, Rich (aka the ten percenters), Richer (the one percenters), and that top 0.01%, Richest.

Porn O'Graph: The In's and Out's.

6 comments:

Unknown said...

"Here's the worry: Is this the early innings of a serious deflationary spiral?"

I think you know the likely answer to that...

Anonymous said...

Sad, But True:

Since it's all over but the crying, we don't have to whine about it anymore, right?

RBM

Anonymous said...

"overpriced suburban fuckboxes"

And now there is a word to describe
residential real estate. Most apt.

Charles Kingsley Michaelson, III said...

Playing Catch-up:
fajensen commented (to the Weekender) that the US was becoming growing (or shrinking) to resemble the USSR or the DDR pre-collapse. Certainly Detroit and some others. Then (to 9229/Monday) fajensen invokes Peak Insanity to explain the desperate effort to make a profit out of global climate change. I like the term and have now appropriated it.

Rumor is correct – at least I think I know the answer. But I always wanted to be Socrates and ask the questions.

And RBM wants us to quit sniveling, which is all that's left. Well, that and sabotage.
ckm

K Ackermann said...

Peak insanity is great.

Since you brought it up (sort of), does anyone feel there has been a distinct and palpable swell of stupidity in the US?

I used to be of the opinion that intelligence and stupidity were like hot and cold. Just as you can't add cold to anything, you can't add stupidity - you can't make somebody dumber (bar a head injury).

I now think that wrong. I think people can drink up stupidity, and I think many in the country have been tossing it back like they have been on an alcoholiday.

When I first noticed it was when Colin Powell held up that small vial at the UN. I remember screaming that it only had air in it, and nobody believed me.

I don't even know where to begin with the Birthers.

And let's see... what have prominent media personalities, and even vice presidential candidates said about Obama?

He's a Muslim
He pals around with terrorists
He's not an American
He's a Nazi
He's a socialist
He's a communist
He's like Hitler
He's a racist who hates White people

There is a pattern there. The word for the day is pseudospeciation.

Well, I have to go strap up my AK. There is a town hall meeting about supplimenting the nutritional program before school starts. I am sick and tired of my government helping people. I want my country back.

mistah charley, ph.d. said...

With regard to K Ackermann's comment, may I draw your attention to Rick Perlstein's historical perspective on the issue, published Aug. 16 in the Washington Post, with the apt title "In America, Crazy is a Preexisting Condition." We've had a paranoid style in American politics for a LONG time; what is more recent is the corporate media part of the MICFiC regarding their job as being "typists", in Colbert's characterization, and just repeating the crazy lies [which are used to manipulate the rubes] rather than ignoring the preposterous claims, or pointing out that they are preposterous.