Friday, August 1, 2008

SAR #8214

If you can justify profiting from other people's hunger,
how do you feel about others profiting from yours?

Small Print: Hidden in the housing legislation, down in the small print, is a provision that removes penalties on the Fed for loans it makes to FDIC dependent banks. In sum, it gives the Fed latitude to prop up the US banking system with its balance sheet. This would be scarier if the Fed's balance sheet hadn't already been riddled with toxic waste from Wall Street.

Keep Your Head Down: Bush's revision of US Intelligence is aimed at giving federal agencies more power to collect information on US citizens and share it with private companies with neither oversight nor court approval.

Pin The Tail: The Financial Accounting Standards Board has decided to let banks and financial institutions continue to play 'hide the losses' by keeping the bad news off the balance sheet in 'special vehicles' for another year. We wouldn't want the scare the women and children. Or investors.

Wagging the Dog: In a recent meeting in the VP's office, ways to provoke a war with Iran were discussed. A popular suggestion was to build some boats that resembled Iranian PT boats, load them with munitions and a bunch of sailors dressed like Iranian soldiers and have a shoot-up. Someone should have Googled 'Reichstag fire'.

Hat Dance: Quietly amid the hoopla over falling oil prices, Mexico has lowered its output to 2.8 mbd, down from last year's 3.1 mbd, a 10% decline. Cantarell - one of the world's largest oilfields - is declining faster than expected.

Headline, No Comment: US Treasury Confident It Will Keep AAA Rating.

Definition: Petty. As in the US DOJ is petty in denying wrongly incarcerated attorney Paul Minor's request to visit his dying wife. Minor, who became famous for taking on big tobacco in the 1990s, is now imprisoned on what many consider to be questionable charges. 'Vindictive' is a good synonym.

Leadership: The Congress, following the lead of an overwhelming majority of American citizens, has voted to hold Karl Rove in contempt.

Quickly: Using the 'faster hurts less' theory, California today cut 200,000 state employees' pay to minimum wage level and laid off 22,000 temporary workers. If and when the sun again shines, the workers will get their pay back.

Top Down: President Bush has ordered a complete overhaul of US intelligence. Let's hope they start in the Oval office.

Easy Button: US District Court Judge Facciola has ordered the Bush administration to locate "missing emails" and provide them to Congress. The White House claims they did not back-up emails for over a year, yet claimed "we have absolutely no reason to believe that any e-mails are missing." If they were destroyed, they are not missing - Bush knows exactly what happened to them. Congress should just take a bus up to Fort Meade and ask NSA for their copies.

Porn O'Graph: Things you already knew: housing .

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"President Bush has ordered a complete overhaul of US intelligence. Let's hope they start in the Oval office."

They won't find much.