SAR #12258

Where does the environment go for a bailout?

Murder Will Out: We are seeing yet another replay of the American as Citizen of Rome. While Obama – in our name – daily drops drones on unsuspecting innocents, we go about our business undisturbed. When Bush invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and killed hundreds of thousands, we kept watching pro football. But when a few Americans are killed in Benghazi (which most of us cannot find on a map) we immediately want revenge. Any murder is reprehensible, but one is not worse than another; if you want to protest, start in Washington.

Everything You Need to Know about QE3: Wall street is ecstatic. Asset prices will rise..

Here & Now: Various government programs – Social Security, Unemployment Insurance (well, until recently), SNAP (food stamps), and earned income tax credits – keep abut 33.3 million Americans out of poverty. There are, nonetheless, 46.2 million living in poverty. If the R's get their way, that figure will nearly double. Remind me about the glories of capitalism and the market economy.

Numbness: August CPI was up 0.6% m/m and 1.7% y/y. Retail Sales rose just 0.1% m/m (not counting gasoline). And Industrial Production dropped 1.2% m/m, which was blamed on the hurricane.

My Fanny: From FannieMae we get: "As the economy works off the imbalances of the housing bubble, we expect that it will likely take years before construction activity rebounds to a more 'normal' level consistent with sustained rates of household formation, housing demolition, and demand for second homes." Which is the same as saying, "Don't hold your breath."

The Shadow: Did Bernanke have his eye on the rapidly deteriorating Durable Goods Orders data, and not on unemployment figures? Was that what he saw under the bed?

Evaporation: An investigation into a billion dollar fuel program in Afghanistan has found that the US (military) had lax or no accountability, inadequate and missing records, and no way to tell how much fuel had been lost, stolen, or re-sold by or to the Taliban. Sounds just like Iraq, huh?

Familiar Refrain: The Banksters sold over $3.5 billion in commercial-mortgage backed bonds this week. The most since 2007. What could go wrong?

Protect & Defend: CCA has offered to spend $250 million around the country, buying up prisons if... wait for it... if the various governments guarantee to convict enough poor blacks people to keep the prisons 90% full at all times.

Pogoland: Republican blocked the legislation a majority of voters favored, and are now running around blaming the Democrats for not passing the very legislation the Republicans blocked. We have seen the future and it does not work.

Beginning of the End: HHS is shifting up to 2 million of the poorest and most vulnerable seniors out of Medicare and into the clutches of private health insurance companies, as a cost saving experiment. He said, with a straight face.

Can You Top This? Tim Huelskamp (R, KS) claimed Planned Parenthood is a “racist organization” that targeted unborn minority children to be murdered. Michelle Bachmann (R, Wannabe) says the attacks on American embassies in Libya and Egypt (and Tunisia, the latest victim) are part of a plan to bring Sharia law to the United States. She was a few quarts shy on explaining this, especially in light of the attacks on German and British embassies in the Sudan. And The Mitten, who thinks $250,000 a year makes one middle class, claimed that Obama “tends to say things that are not true.” And in Kansas, the GOP has given up trying to remove Obama from the November ballots.

The Parting Shot:

 

Down by the riverside…