SAR #9062

Wait until things get bad.

It's Our Money! Citi has a new program that temporarily lowers mortgage payments to $500 a month for 3 months if you lose your job. Cit will not impose penalties nor interest during this time.

High Financiers: It turns out all the slicing and dicing and deregulation and the rest of modern finance only worked for those who made them up. The general economy got suckered. Silly commentators think that rigid regulation is going to be re-imposed. Reform is not going to happen. Revolution maybe, but not reform.

Armageddon West: Beginning today, the federal Central Valley Project has shut off the water to farmers in California's Central Valley. It is estimated that 80,000 agriculture related jobs will be lost.

Shadow Boxing: AIG is transferring some assets it cannot sell to the government. It is valuing them at their "intrinsic value" and claiming this pays back a large part of the money they stole got from TARP. Intrinsic value. Like what they might be worth some day when the sun comes out and the birds sing and the flowers dance...

Tomorrow and Tomorrow: Treasuries are a bubble that rampant inflation and a declining dollar will pop. Don't take my word for it, ask Warren 'The One-Time Oracle' Buffet.

It's Not Just US: Japanese auto sales fell over 30% in February. That makes 7 months in a row. Feel better?

Microcosm: Citing the state's economic problems, Florida politicians are rushing to gut environmental laws and growth-management regulations in favor of re-inflating the economy. This simply proves that politicians are human after all.

Counseling: My guidance counselor observes that I keep repeating behaviors that only get me further in trouble. Ben and Tim have the same problem.

Littering: As the planet's energy, food and water resources dwindle, an effort to control human population becomes essential. The subject will be avoided with ever more sanctimonious blindness. Better that hundreds of millions slowly starve to death than birth control be rationally discussed in public places.

Shoe Fits: The rich have the money. They use it to buy clever sycophants to bleat that taxing the rich is not nice. What part of this process is hard to follow?

Walk, Don't Run... What comes next should feel pretty familiar - it is what the kooks have predicted all along, except they underestimated the pain. Expect an increase in corporate and personal bankruptcies, accelerating job loss, even more foreclosures, a crash in consumption, very negative GDP, followed by really bad things.

Robbery: Boeing needs $8.4 billion to meet its contractual obligations to its pension scheme. Abbott, Caterpillar, Exelon and others are in the same dire straits. No problem. Congress will kiss it and make it better. Retirees will be taxed to pay their own retirements. This will protect the stockholders.

Apple Pie: Banking has collapsed. And the credit markets. And housing. Now manufacturing and commerce in general. What's left? Transportaion, Farming/Food, and Energy; not necessarily in that order. Then Governments.