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.