Monkeyfister

Labels: Hot-Ass Music

Labels: Hallowe'en

Labels: Hallowe'en

Labels: Hallowe'en

Labels: Hallowe'en

Labels: Hallowe'en

Labels: Hallowe'en

Labels: Hallowe'en

Labels: Hallowe'en

Labels: Hallowe'en

Labels: Hallowe'en

Labels: Hallowe'en

Labels: Hallowe'en

Labels: Hallowe'en

Labels: Hallowe'en

Labels: 2008 Election, Barack Obama, Hallowe'en

Labels: Hallowe'en

Labels: Hallowe'en

Labels: Hallowe'en

Labels: Hallowe'en

f bad mortgages got the financial system sick, credit default swaps helped spread the illness worldwide.

Like many parts of the financial system these days, credit default swaps are so complicated, simple bankers couldn't have created them. They were invented by people like Gregg Berman.

"My formal training is in physics," he says. "I studied experimental physics and nuclear physics before joining finance in 1993."

Now just to be clear, Berman didn't invent these things, but he works for Risk Metrics Group, which helps people manage risk, and so he thinks about them a lot and he's good at explaining what they are.

Imagine, he says, you buy a bond from Ford for $100.

"You're holding your bond and you are worried about Ford's credit. So you enter into an agreement with another party where you say to other party, 'I will pay you some money — 2 percent a year, 3 percent, 4 percent — and what you need to do is give me protection.'

"If Ford should go bankrupt, then I'm going to give you this perhaps worthless bond and you're going to give me my $100 back. In the big context, it looks like insurance."

So is insurance what we are talking about? People with bonds, which are already considered safe, trying to make them safer? Well, it didn't stay that way.

Labels: Collapse, Wall Street Scam

Clean Design: I wanted to make the site less busy, less colorful, and more content focused. A bit more professional. I think we accomplished that, with lots of white space, wider columns for bigger charts, and cleaner fonts.

Word Press: That's right, I made the big leap to Word Press. All the geeks insisted it had to be WP. There are all sorts of cool things you can do with plug ins, and we are going to make the site hum. I am open to any and all suggestions as to how to customize the many things WP can do.

Guest authors: I know all of these brilliant fund managers, great journalists, unique traders, and clever analysts -- none of whom have an outlet for their less formal work. They cannot be bothered running their own blogs. Hence, the Big Picture Cafe -- an instant platform for these voices. I already have a killer line up of guests, too. Lots of things I am not getting to -- more coverage of the financial media itself, various money management firms, people and personalities. And if this stuff doesn't interest you, well then, don't click that tab.

Book and Video Tabs: Some people don't want to bother with the video or book reviews. Well, now they are all in one locations. All of the videos, and all of the book discussions, each get their own area. Its fluid, but I may even set up a book discussion forum via some software (I hear Beast is pretty good).

Job Listings: I get quite a few resumes per week, none of which I can use. We went to JobThread to set up a financial/market/economics job board for us. Looking to hire someone? Looking for a job? You've come to the right place.

Labels: The Blogohood

Labels: Collapse, Wall Street Casino

laska Governor and Republican Vice President hopeful Sarah Palin may be facing another round of scrutiny, this time for charging the state for her children to travel with her while conducing official state business.

CBS News has obtained a copy of the complaint that Frank Gwartney, a retired lineman in Anchorage filed last Friday, with Alaska’s Attorney General, Talis Colber in Juneau. “Palin ran on the platform of ethics, transparency and anti-corruption. I’m tired of the hypocrisy that exists in Government and people need to know the truth,” said Gwartney.

The complaint against Governor Palin, alleges Misuse of Official Position: “Gov. Palin attempted to and in fact did use her official position for personal gain by securing unwarranted benefits for her daughters...” All the allegations contained in the complaint are related to state reimbursed travel.

In Alaska, ethics complaints filed against the Governor are confidential. “We can neither confirm nor refute that a complaint has been filed against Governor Sarah Palin. Any complaint remains confidential unless the person being charged waives confidentiality or if the complaint progresses to the state of probable cause,” Assistant District Attorney, Dave Jones told CBS News.

Bristol, Piper and Willow, Palin’s daughters, accrued $32,629 in travel expenses while Palin’s husband Todd raked up $22,174 - all billed to the state for a total of $54,803.00.

“The Governor’s office has expended $54,803.00 in Alaska state dollars for family travel since December 2006,” according to the Governor’s Administrative Services Director, Linda Perez. “The documentation related to family travel has changed and you have to keep in mind that the governor and her family are very popular,” added Perez.

Sharon Leighow, Deputy Communications Director, said “Governor Palin followed state policy allowing governors to charge for their children’s travel and there’s also the expectation that the first family participate in community activities across the state.”

This new ethics complaint comes on the heels of the Federal Elections Campaign complaint filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington for spending $150,000 on pricey designer threads.

CBS News previously reported on Palin’s fashion expenditures and FEC officials said purchases for such purposes are prohibited. Campaigns are not allowed to spend donated funds on expenses a person would have had regardless if they were running as a candidate or in office. That includes items like clothing, mortgage payments, country club fees, rent, groceries, etc.

The Attorney General will refer the complaint to the personnel board which is appointed by the Governor and currently includes: Debra English, Al Tamagni, and Laura Plenert. (No state employees sit on the board.) The board then determines whether the alleged conduct would violate the ethics act. If so, an independent investigator is appointed, evidence is gathered, and people are interviewed with the intent to establish probable cause. Eventually the board makes a decision and recommendations are made that may impose penalties, or disciplinary action, up to and including termination. The process can take anywhere from a few weeks to several months.

Labels: Sarah Palin

Labels: 2008 Election, Barack Obama

Labels: Electronic Voting, Vote Fraud

2008-10-27 | A declaration published mid-September outlines a plan to relieve Iraq of foreign occupation and leave a stable, peaceful nation. It has drawn wide support and endorsement, including from Nobel Prize winners and nominees as well as other well-known figures working for peace from many parts of the world.

The declaration points to the principles existent in international law by which the US-led war that has already cost over a million Iraqi lives and displaced up to six million more can end � indeed, the only way it could end. The declaration has been made available in 10 languages and has been published on hundreds of websites. Its authors seek mainstream dissemination.

Among the 100 initial signatories are former United Nations assistant secretary generals Hans von Sponeck and Denis Halliday, both who resigned rather than administer sanctions they deemed deadly against the Iraqi people, former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, former Indian chief of naval staff, current US Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, writer and historian Eduardo Galeano, Nobel laureate Harold Pinter, and chairperson of the World Peace Council Socorro Gomes. Prominent Iraqi signatories include Dr Saeed H Hasan, former Iraqi permanent representative to the United Nations, Issam Chalabi, former Iraqi oil minister, Dr Omar Al Kubaisy, senior Iraqi cardiologist, anti-occupation politician and activist on the Iraqi health and medical situation, and other key Iraqi civil society figures.

Abdul Ilah Albayaty, one of the declaration's authors and host to the gathering from which the declaration issued, commented on the reasoning behind the declaration:

"Since the first months following the US occupation of Iraq in 2003, the Iraqi resistance has frustrated US plans to set up a stable puppet regime and create a base to expand US influence in the region. From that point of view, the occupation has failed despite its enormous firepower. The Iraqi resistance has accomplished this despite its lack of support from surrounding countries and lack of a stable, secure base outside Iraq. This is a major and heroic accomplishment of the Iraqi people.

"By dividing a formerly united Iraq on sectarian grounds," Albayaty continued, "the US has inflicted much misery on the people of Iraq. In addition, the occupying force has itself created a situation where it then tries to justify the occupation by saying, 'Without us there will be chaos and civil war.'

"The declaration combines the demands raised by the different resistance organizations that are the true representatives of the Iraqi people. It answers the argument of the occupiers. It shows the whole world a road to peace for Iraq."

Labels: Iraq, Iraq Refugees, Iraq War, Life Without Republicans

In the typhoon of commentary that's blown around the world a step behind the financial tsunami that's wrecking everything, two little words have been curiously absent: "fraud" and "swindle." But aren't they really at the core of what has happened? Wall Street took the whole world "for a ride" and now a handful of Wall Street's erstwhile princelings have shifted ceremoniously into US Government service to "fix" the problem with a "toolbox" containing a notional two trillion dollars. This strange exercise in financial kabuki theater will shut down sometime between the election and inauguration day, when the inaugurate finds himself president of the Economic Smoking Wreckage of the United States. What will happen?
I have thought for some time that things could get dangerously out of hand in America, despite our exceptionalist notion that we are immune to the common plot-lines of history. For starters, inauguration night will seem more like Halloween, as those two little words fly in to haunt the new president. So, a large and looming question is: who will be appointed the next attorney general of the US (to replace the human sash-weight currently occupying the office), and how soon will the federal marshals be scouring the wainscoted hallways of Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, not to mention a thousand Greenwich, Connecticut, hedge fund boiler rooms, with man-sized nets?
A story-line is already emerging to the effect that these birds really didn't quite know what they were doing in grinding out that multi-trillion dollar basket of alphabet securities sausage (a theme on Sunday's "60-Minutes" broadcast). Nobody will buy that line of bullshit, though -- and certainly not in the courtroom where, for instance, Mr. Hank Paulson will have to answer why his own firm of Goldman Sachs set up a special unit to short its own issues. It will be edifying to see how they answer.
In the meantime, however, millions of Joe-the-Plumber types will have gotten their pink slips, slipped helplessly into foreclosure, watched the repo men hot-wire their Ford pickups, and eaten down the kitchen cupboard to a single box of Kellogg's All-Bran (which had been sitting there for eleven years infested with weevils). They will be watching the official proceedings in the federal courtrooms with jaundiced eyes as they hunch in their tent cities, in the rain, sipping amateur-brand raisin wine bartered for a few snared rock doves. How long before the hardier ones among them venture out to Easthampton with long knives and matches?
It will bring little satisfaction though, and the disappointment could lead to a more inchoate outbreak of civil disorder that would be more like a free-for-all of vengeance and grievance. There will be a great outcry for the new government to "do something!" Perhaps that will finally bring the troops home from Iraq -- only for them to find that the Homeland has become Iraq....
If the financial system completes its self-destruction -- and that's looking more and more like a real possibility -- there will be several pretty awful consequences. One is that the United States will be forced to declare bankruptcy by repudiating its own debt. All those who took refuge in US Treasury bonds and bills will be like folks who sought shelter from a tornado in their out-house. That would go hand-in-hand with a massive currency inflation that is likely to follow the current phase of compressive liquidating deflation -- in which every possible asset is being sold off for less than its face value. That process is self-limiting due to the finite supply of real salable assets. The trillions of dollars injected into system while this is happening must eventually snap-back as people shed the last fungible article and compete for necessary commodities like food and fuel with dollars that are suddenly plentiful but worthless. At some point, the government may have to summon up a new currency. I don't think it will be anything like the "Amero" which the paranoid fringe incessantly mutters about as part of their fantasy in which the US, Mexico, and Canada all join up to become one country. But any "new dollar" would probably have to be backed by gold.
As we discover ourselves to be a much poorer nation, one of my correspondents put it: "the bogus risk-swapping economy must be replaced by a net value-added economy." That means actually making things, growing things, and rebuilding things, and that can only begin to happen if we do not stupidly sucker ourselves into a war with other nations who are liable to be extremely ticked off at us for destroying the global economy, but also competing with us for a dwindling supply of resources that are not equitably distributed around the world.
This means especially oil. I hope you're enjoying the temporarily cheap prices at the gas pumps, because this is purely a function of the compressive deleveraging that is going on right now, as contracts and positions held in energy markets are being dumped by everybody and his uncle to raise cash to meet margin calls. My guess is that oil and its byproducts will become much more difficult to get in the months ahead -- not just more expensive, but literally not available. The current falling price of oil has little to do with the real supply and demand fundamentals. It's simply a function of the markets being in near-total disarray. We're running on current inventory, and running it down. In the background, all kinds of peculiar and terrible things are happening. The entire apparatus of allocation and distribution is being thrown out of whack. The smaller tanker operations are going bankrupt. The "less-developed" nations are heading back to the 17th-century level of daily life without electricity. The oil exploration and development projects that were planned for hard-to-get oil netting $100-a-barrel minimum -- in places like the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, Siberia, and Central Asia -- are being shelved, which means the world has less of a chance to offset coming depletions in old fields.

Labels: Collapse, James Kunstler

Labels: Garden Harvest, Gardening