Monkeyfister

Labels: My Life As It Is

Labels: teh intarnets, Wall Street

There are a million gardening books out there to tell you how to grow perfect tomatoes and lettuces. And that’s important - in my house, salsa is a food group. But the reality is that for those of us attempting to produce a large portion of our calories, tomatoes and lettuce are not sufficient - we need to get either the most calories or the best possible nutrition out of our kitchen gardens and landscaping. So I’ve compiled a list of plants that I think are an important addition to many home gardens - both annual and perennial.

1. Buckwheat. Buckwheat is the perfect multipurpose plant. Many of you have probably used it as a green manure, taking advantage of its remarkable capacity to shade out weeds and produce lots of green material. But it is also one of the easiest grains to grow in the garden - simply let it mature and harvest the seed, and it makes a delicious and highly nutritious salad and cooking green. Although it won’t be quite as good at soil building if you do it this way, buckwheat can be used as a triple-purpose crop - plant a few beds with it, harvest the greens steadily (but lightly) for salad (it is particularly good during the heat of summer since it has a lightly nutty taste not too far off lettuce and will grow in hot weather), cook some of the mature greens, harvest seed, cut the plants back to about an inch leaving the plant material on the ground. The buckwheat will then grow back up again, and you can harvest young salad greens and cut it back again for green manure.

2. Sweet potatoes. Think this is a southern crop? Not for me. I grow “Porto Rico” sweet potatoes in upstate New York. Garden writer Laura Simon grows them on cool, windy Nantucket. I’ve met people who grow them in Ontario and North Dakota. Sweet potatoes have quite a range if started indoors, and more northerners should grow them. They are enormously nutritious, store extremely well (some of my sweets last more than a year), and unutterably delicious. They do need light, sandy soil and good drainage, so I grow them mostly in raised beds with heavily amended soil - my own heavy wet clay won’t do.

3. Blueberries. If there was ever an ornamental edible, this is it. A prettier shrub than privet or most common privacy hedge plants, it produces berries and turns as flaming red as any burning bush in the autumn. I have no idea why more people don’t landscape with blueberries. Add to that the fact that blueberries constitute a “super food.” They have more antioxidants than any single food, and are nutritional powerhouses. They do need acidic soil, but there are blueberries for all climates. Definitely worth replacing your shrubs with.

4. Amaranth - I’ve grown amaranth before, but my first year growing “Golden Giant” and “Orange” was fascinating. In two 5′x4′ beds I harvested 11.2 and 13.9 lbs of amaranth seed respectively. The plants are stunningly beautiful - 9′ tall, bright honey gold or deep orange, with green variegated leaves. The leaves are also a good vegetable cooked with garlic and sauteed, or cooked southern style. Amaranth is an easy grain crop to harvest and make use of, is delicious, can be popped like popcorn, and makes wonderful cereal. Despite its adaptation to the Southwest (where it routinely yields extremely well with minimal water), it tolerated my wet, humid climate just fine. My chickens love it too.

Labels: Food Security, Gardening

Labels: Banksters, Congress, Wall Street Swindlers

After Johnny suffered his tenth bout of Salmonellic explosive diarrhea, his Parnell was raw and bloody.

Labels: Contaminated Food, Corporatists, e.Coli Republicans, Gay Old Poisoners Party

Most of the changes that came back from McGraw Hill were minor stylistic copy editing stuff. Very light, very simple. They took out the word “Fuck” which appears 2x (once each in two separate chapters) and I of course put it back in. How can any book about Wall Street not have that word in it?

When it came to chapter 14 — Who is to Blame?, there were issues about the style of what I wrote about the ratings agencies. I literally called the ratings agencies and investment bankers “Pimps and Whores;” I accused them of engaging in pay for play (buying ratings) payola, etc. Rather than describe it, I will simply post the original version here.

There was a lot of pushback on this. My editor at McGH convinced me this was a matter of style, not content. So being flexible (something I don’t usually do), I agreed to rewrite this. The newly edited version was far more factual, detailed — and in my opinion, more damning. You can read the revised version here.

Now, before you assume I am an idiot for doing a book that was critical of the ratings agencies with a publisher that owns S&P;, understand that I properly anticipated this. My contract gave me Final Edit. Not only that, I had previously discussed this issue months earlier with then publisher Herb Schaffner. (He was laid off in a big Q4 round of firings).

Sometime over the summer, Herb informed me that the ratings agencies discussions would have to be handled “delicately and diplomatically.”

I responded, “Sorry, Herb, but I don’t do diplomacy.” If they wanted someone who was subtle or diplomatic, boy did they have the wrong guy. I offered to return the advance check and we could all move on. He backed down, and I assumed — apparently quite wrongly — that this was the end of this issue. How can you write a book on this subject and not lambast the ratings agencies?

I am not sure if this was in August or September, but that is my best guess as to the approximate time frame.

Where was I? Oh, yes, the pushback on the changes

The stylistic changes were still objected to. The problems came not from Legal, but from the corporate division of McGH. Legal had not even finished reviewing the manuscript at this time.

I came to the inescapable conclusion that this was an attempt by the McGH corporation to water down my content. All of the conversation with various editors strongly implied as much, and the same was made clear by them to my agent Lloyd. I even found an email from me to him, subject matter: “McG Hill S&P; Freaking Out” dated Monday, January 05, 2009 11:14 AM.

Anyway, at this I drew my line in the sand at this point. My contract gave me FINAL EDIT.

I informed McGraw Hill that at this point, the manuscript was finished, and I was done. It was either “Fill or Kill.” In an email, I gave them until that Friday, to accept or reject the manuscript. That deadline came and went with no answer, and the following. Monday I went to lunch with my editor and told her I was ready to show the book to other publishers, as I assumed they had rejected it. She asked for another week (I agreed) and that Friday, they told me they as per my request, they would drop it.

They gave me two nonsense excuses — the first, they were concerned about my libeling Senator Phil Gramm (My answer to them: bullshit).

Labels: Barry Ritholtz, Corporate Disobedience, Publishing, Solidarity, The Blogohood, Wall Street Swindlers

Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner pledged government financing for as much as $2 trillion of efforts to spur new lending and address banks’ toxic assets, seeking to end the credit crunch hobbling the economy.

“Instead of catalyzing recovery, the financial system is working against recovery,” Geithner said in unveiling the Obama administration’s financial-bailout overhaul in Washington today. “At the same time, the recession is putting greater pressure on banks. This is a dangerous dynamic, and we need to arrest it.”

Stocks slumped, led by financial shares, as investors expressed concern about a lack of specifics on plans for addressing the distressed assets choking banks’ balance sheets. Geithner warned today that it will “take time” for the administration’s strategy to bear fruit.

The main components of the Treasury’s package today are a joint public- and private-sector fund to buy as much as $1 trillion of illiquid assets and a $1 trillion program to supply new credit to consumers and businesses. The administration also will inject additional taxpayer funds into banks, imposing tighter restrictions that will include limits on dividend payments, acquisitions and executive pay.

“I want to be candid: this strategy will cost money, involve risk, and take time,” Geithner said today.

Stocks Slide

The Standard & Poor’s 500 Stock Index slumped 4.9 percent to 827.16 at the close in New York. The S&P; 500 Bank index fell 14 percent, with Bank of America Corp. down 19 percent. Regional lender Huntington Bancshares Inc., based in Columbus, Ohio, slid 25 percent to $1.96.

“The lack of clarity” on the public-private investment fund “has the market upset,” said Joseph Keating, who helps oversee $3 billion as chief investment officer at RBC Private Asset Management in Birmingham, Alabama. “Nationalization could have been a better outcome for some banks.”

Today’s overhaul of the Treasury’s $700 billion financial- rescue fund is aimed at addressing the failures of the first phase of the program, which has yet to spur a wave of new lending to companies and consumers. The initial bailout effort, which Geithner helped administer as head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, was “essential” while “inadequate” to support the financial system and the secondary-lending market, he said.

More Money

Geithner reinforced President Barack Obama’s signal yesterday that the administration is open to seeking more money for the financial rescue.

“The administration will do everything we can to fix this, and we’re going to keep at it until we fix it,” Geithner said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Obama yesterday said “we don’t know yet whether we’re going to need additional money or how much additional money we’ll need until we’ve seen how successful we are at restoring a sense of confidence.”

Officials debated the financial-recovery plan for weeks, and encountered the same issues that former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson did in trying to deal with the toxic assets.

Paulson abandoned an effort to buy the securities after failing to find a quick mechanism for pricing them. He opted for buying stakes in banks as the centerpiece of the first $350 billion of the financial-bailout program.

Geithner today outlined the Public-Private Investment Fund, with an initial capacity of $500 billion that could grow to $1 trillion, to provide financing for private investors to buy distressed securities.

1. Ditch the re-named Paulson TARP.

2. Hire Nuriel Roubini and Joseph Stiglitz immediately as Co-Secretaries of Treasury, or Primary Treasury Advisers, or whatever works Constitutionally.

3. Follow their advice to the letter.

-- Every time he comes up with another idea similar to today's plan, they will broad-hand slap him across the face, and tell him to, "Shut The Fuck Up."
-- Every time he tries to help his rich, failed, golfing buddies, and keep them from being punished as they should be, they will punch him square in the cock, and tell him, "NO!"

Labels: Bank Failures, Big Bank Black Hole, Collapse, Greedheads, Tim Geithner

Labels: The Blogohood

EXT. CLEARING - DAY
Snow drifts across the bodies of the fallen dead. Eight
corpses lie frozen on the ground-- men, women, and children,
wearing heavy furs. The wind whips through their long hair.
At the edge of the clearing, WILL (20), a young ranger
dressed all in black, surveys the grim scene from the back of
his gelding. He gathers his reins and guides his horse south.
EXT. FOREST - DUSK
Will rides hard between the towering pines, his horse’s
hooves kicking up fresh-fallen snow.
He comes to a halt and dismounts beside two tethered horses.
His comrades, GARED (50) and SER WAYMAR ROYCE (18), crouch
beside a stream, filling their skins with cold water. They
rise and look to the newcomer expectantly.
Ser Waymar is gray-eyed and graceful, with an aristocrat’s
air of command despite his youth. He wears a supple coat of
gleaming black ringmail and a lush sable cloak.
Will and Gared also wear the black of the Night’s Watch, but
their clothes are far less regal, their leather and fur
battered from hard usage. Gared wears a hood for warmth.
WILL
We should start back. They’re all
dead.
Gared offers Will his water skin and Will takes a drink.
SER WAYMAR
Any blood?
WILL
Not that I saw.
SER WAYMAR
How close did you get?
WILL
Close enough to see they was dead.
SER WAYMAR
(skeptical)
Or sleeping?
GARED
If Will says they’re dead, they’re
dead. We should head back to the
Wall.
SER WAYMAR
(with the hint of a smile)
Do the dead frighten you?
GARED
Mormont said we should track ‘em.
We tracked ‘em. They won’t trouble
us no more.
SER WAYMAR
You don’t think Mormont will ask us
how they died?
He walks toward his horse. Gared and Will exchange a troubled
glance.
EXT. EMPTY CAMP - NIGHT
Moonlight shines down on the clearing, the ashes of the
firepit, the snow-covered lean-to. If there were corpses on
the ground before, they’re gone now.
The three riders enter the camp. Their horses seem spooked,
as if they smell a predator nearby.
SER WAYMAR
Your dead men seem to have moved
camp.
Will looks around, confused. He knows what he saw.
WILL
They were here...
Spotting something shimmering on the ground near the firepit,
he walks his horse closer, dismounts and looks down.
Lying at his feet is the hilt of a steel longsword. The blade
has been shattered into a thousand shards.
Will stares at the shattered sword. He knows what this means;
the dread on his face is unmistakable.
From his horse, Gared looks at the ground. The indentations
where the bodies once lay are still visible-- as are the
faint but unmistakable footprints leading away from them.
GARED
We have to move. Now.
He is interrupted by a neigh. Will’s horse, riderless and
panicked, bolts from the camp site.
2.
Ser Waymar’s horse rears back on its hind legs, throwing its
rider to the ground before galloping after the first horse.
Gared struggles to keep his own horse under control. Ser
Waymar stands unsteadily, brushing the snow from his cloak.
WILL
(terrified)
Gods...
He’s staring into the darkness at the edge of the clearing.
Ser Waymar turns to see what the young tracker sees: a shadow
emerging from the forest.
A figure steps into the moonlight, tall and gaunt, with flesh
pale as milk. It slides toward the rangers on silent feet.
Its armor appears to be carved from ice. Its sword is
translucent, a shard of crystal so thin it almost seems to
vanish when seen edge-on.
Ser Waymar’s voice cracks like a boy’s:
SER WAYMAR
Stay where you are!
The OTHER keeps coming. Ser Waymar draws his sword with
trembling hands. Will, standing near the fire pit, and Gared,
still on horseback, draw their own swords.
The Other halts. For the first time we see its eyes, bluer
than any human eyes, a blue that burns like ice.
They emerge silently from the shadows, on all sides of the
clearing. Five of them... six... seven... their strange
swords shimmering in the moonlight.
Gared can no longer control his panicked horse; it bolts from
the clearing, ignoring its rider’s commands.
The Others watch Gared flee. They turn back to Ser Waymar and
Will and begin to advance on the young men.
As the circle closes, the Others speak to each other in a
language we’ve never heard, with voices like cracking ice.
Waymar and Will stand together, class distinctions forgotten,
two boys about to die. They steady their sword hands and
mutter quick prayers as the Others descend upon them.
CREDIT SEQUENCE

CLOSE on a pair of ancient, gnarled hands writing a message
on a small parchment scroll. The old man (we never see his
face) tightly rolls the scroll, binds it with a black ribbon,
and ties it with a leather strip to the leg of a BLACK RAVEN.
The old man lifts the raven off his desk; it flaps its dark
wings and flies out of the open chamber window.
The raven flies away from Castle Black, a large and ancient
fortress dwarfed by what lies behind it: the Wall. Older than
history, this is the 800-foot-high barrier of ice and stone
that guards the northern edge of the Seven Kingdoms.
As the raven gains altitude, the landscape below it
TRANSFORMS into a map of Westeros. The Wall is revealed to
cross the entire continent, a boundary between the Haunted
Forest to the north and the civilized lands to the south.
The raven flies south over the map, on which the cities,
regions and features of the land are named: Winterfell, the
Kingsroad, Moat Cailin, the Riverlands, the Vale of Arryn.
Occasionally the bird dips down, and the map resolves back
into reality for just long enough to give us a view of some
points of interest: Winterfell’s old stone towers, full of
cold beauty. The foreboding Eyrie castle high atop the Vale
of Arryn, a feat of montane architecture that would have been
impossible for medieval engineers.
When the raven reaches King’s Landing, the map resolves back
into reality as the bird drops down into the dirty sprawl of
the capital.
The raven flies through the open gates of the Red Keep, a
massive compound with red walls the color of blood. The bird
flies through an open window into the throne room, to land on
the Iron Throne itself-- a throne built from the hammered
swords of a thousand defeated enemies.
The raven pecks at its wings, cleaning itself after the long
journey, alone in the empty throne room.
END CREDIT SEQUENCE

Labels: George R. R. Martin, HBO, SciFi Fantasy, Scripts

Feb. 9 (Bloomberg) -- The stimulus package the U.S. Congress is completing would raise the government’s commitment to solving the financial crisis to $9.7 trillion, enough to pay off more than 90 percent of the nation’s home mortgages.

The Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have lent or spent almost $3 trillion over the past two years and pledged up to $5.7 trillion more. The Senate is to vote this week on an economic-stimulus measure of at least $780 billion. It would need to be reconciled with an $819 billion plan the House approved last month.

Only the stimulus bill to be approved this week, the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program passed four months ago and $168 billion in tax cuts and rebates enacted in 2008 have been voted on by lawmakers. The remaining $8 trillion is in lending programs and guarantees, almost all under the Fed and FDIC. Recipients’ names have not been disclosed.

“We’ve seen money go out the back door of this government unlike any time in the history of our country,” Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, said on the Senate floor Feb. 3. “Nobody knows what went out of the Federal Reserve Board, to whom and for what purpose. How much from the FDIC? How much from TARP? When? Why?”

Financial Rescue

The pledges, amounting to almost two-thirds of the value of everything produced in the U.S. last year, are intended to rescue the financial system after the credit markets seized up about 18 months ago. The promises are composed of about $1 trillion in stimulus packages, around $3 trillion in lending and spending and $5.7 trillion in agreements to provide aid. The total already tapped has decreased about 1 percent since November, mostly because foreign central banks are using fewer dollars in currency-exchange agreements called swaps.

Federal Reserve lending to banks peaked at a record $2.3 trillion in December, dropping to $1.83 trillion by last week. The Fed balance sheet is still more than double the $880 billion it was in the week before Sept. 17 when it agreed to accept lower-quality collateral.

The worst financial crisis in two generations has erased $14.5 trillion, or 33 percent, of the value of the world’s companies since Sept. 15; brought down Bear Stearns Cos. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.; and led to the takeover of Merrill Lynch & Co. by Bank of America Corp.

The $9.7 trillion in pledges would be enough to send a $1,430 check to every man, woman and child alive in the world. It’s 13 times what the U.S. has spent so far on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Congressional Budget Office data, and is almost enough to pay off every home mortgage loan in the U.S., calculated at $10.5 trillion by the Federal Reserve.

Labels: Big Bank Black Hole, Big Bank Ponzi Scheme, Wall Street Swindle

Venturing out each day into this land of strip malls, freeways, office parks, and McHousing pods, one can't help but be impressed at how America looks the same as it did a few years ago, while seemingly overnight we have become another country. All the old mechanisms that enabled our way of life are broken, especially endless revolving credit, at every level, from household to business to the banks to the US Treasury.

Peak energy has combined with the diminishing returns of over-investments in complexity to pull the "kill switch" on our vaunted "way of life" -- the set of arrangements that we won't apologize for or negotiate. So, the big question before the nation is: do we try to re-start the whole smoking, creaking hopeless, futureless machine? Or do we start behaving differently?

The attempted re-start of revolving debt consumerism is an exercise in futility. We've reached the limit of being able to create additional debt at any level without causing further damage, additional distortions, and new perversities of economy (and of society, too). We can't raise credit card ceilings for people with no ability make monthly payments. We can't promote more mortgages for people with no income. We can't crank up a home-building industry with our massive inventory of unsold, and over-priced houses built in the wrong places. We can't ramp back up the blue light special shopping fiesta. We can't return to the heyday of Happy Motoring, no matter how many bridges we fix or how many additional ring highways we build around our already-overblown and over-sprawled metroplexes. Mostly, we can't return to the now-complete "growth" cycle of "economic expansion." We're done with all that. History is done with our doing that, for now.

So far -- after two weeks in office -- the Obama team seems bent on a campaign to sustain the unsustainable at all costs, to attempt to do all the impossible things listed above. Mr. Obama is not the only one, of course, who is invoking the quest for renewed "growth." This is a tragic error in collective thinking. What we really face is a comprehensive contraction in our activities, especially the scale of our activities, and the pressing need to readjust the systems of everyday life to a level of decreased complexity.

For instance, the myth that we can become "energy independent and yet remain car-dependent is absurd. In terms of liquid fuels, we're simply trapped. We import two-thirds of the oil we use and there is absolutely no chance that drill-drill-drilling (or any other scheme) will change that. The public and our leaders can not face the reality of this. The great wish for "alternative" liquid fuels (bio fuels, algae excreta) will never be anything more than a wish at the scales required, and the parallel wish to keep all our cars running by other means -- hydrogen fuel cells, electric motors -- is equally idle and foolish. We cannot face the mandate of reality, which is to do everything possible to make our living places walkable, and connect them with public transit. The stimulus bills in congress clearly illustrate our failure to understand the situation.

The attempt to restart "consumerism" will be equally disappointing. It was a manifestation of the short peak energy decades of history, and now that we're past peak energy, it's over. That seventy percent of the economy is over, especially the part that allowed people to buy stuff with no money. From now on people will have to buy stuff with money they earn and save, and they will be buying a lot less stuff. For a while, a lot of stuff will circulate through the yard sales and Craigslist, and some resourceful people will get busy fixing broken stuff that still has value. But the other infrastructure of shopping is toast, especially the malls, the strip malls, the real estate investment trusts that own it all, many of the banks that lent money to the REITs, the chain-stores and chain eateries, of course, and, alas, the non-chain mom-and-pop boutiques in these highway-oriented venues.

Washington is evidently seized by panic right now. I don't know anyone who works in the White House, but I must suppose that they have learned in two weeks that these systems are absolutely tanking, that the previous way of life that everybody was so set on not apologizing for has reached the end of the line. We seem to be learning a new and interesting lesson: that even a team that promises change is actually petrified of too much change, especially change that they can't really control.

The argument about "change" during the election was sufficiently vague that no one was really challenged to articulate a future that wasn't, materially, more-of-the-same. I suppose the Obama team may have thought they would only administer it differently than the Bush team -- but basically life in the USA would continue being about all those trips to the mall, and the cubicle jobs to support that, and the family safaris to visit Grandma in Lansing, and the vacations at Sea World, and Skipper's $20,000 college loan, and Dad's yearly junket to Las Vegas, and refinancing the house, and rolling over this loan and that loan... and that has all led to a very dead end in a dark place.

If this nation wants to survive without an intense political convulsion, there's a lot we can do, but none of it is being voiced in any corner of Washington at this time. We have to get off of petro-agriculture and grow our food locally, at a smaller scale, with more people working on it and fewer machines. This is an enormous project, which implies change in everything from property allocation to farming methods to new social relations. But if we don't focus on it right away, a lot of Americans will end up starving, and rather soon. We have to rebuild the railroad system in the US, and electrify it, and make it every bit as good as the system we once had that was the envy of the world. If we don't get started on this right away, we're screwed. We will have tremendous trouble moving people and goods around this continent-sized nation. We have to reactivate our small towns and cities because the metroplexes are going to fail at their current scale of operation. We have to prepare for manufacturing at a much smaller (and local) scale than the scale represented by General Motors.

Labels: James Kunstler

Labels: Electronic Bullshit, Investment In Complexity, The Onion News Network

Hundreds of people trying to save their homes from foreclosure flocked to Connecticut's wealthy Gold Coast this weekend to give financial kingpins a piece of their mind.

At-risk homeowners and volunteers rally outside the homes of CEOs in the mortgage industry to protest predatory lending.

Here are some of the financial CEOs who NACA says prey on homeowners. Victims who want their voices heard can find their contact info on the organization's...

Stamford sits in the midst of one of the nation's wealthiest areas, and among the regions particularly hard-hit by the housing market collapse. Nearby Greenwich and other suburbs are home to many of Wall Street's wealthiest executives and financial managers.

Homeowners are fed up – and many are frustrated that those who lead the companies that gave them their subprime mortgages live in luxury while they struggle so hard to meet their loan payments and not fall behind.

On Sunday, hundreds of angry homeowners and volunteers traveled in vans and minibuses and protested outside Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack’s multi-million-dollar mansion to tell the wealthy finance czar how they really feel.

The group, led by Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA), also went to Greenwich Finance CEO William Frey, among others, as part of what NACA calls the “Predator’s Tour.”

Sporting bright yellow shirts that read, “Stop Loan Sharks,'' protestors demanded more accountability from the CEOs of the financial institutions responsible for the millions of unaffordable mortgages in the state and across America.

"We can’t let them live quietly in a lap of luxury while they throw hard working Americans out on the street," NACA explains on its Web site. "This action is within our legal rights as Americans to peacefully protest and meet with those who control our family’s livelihood."

NACA coordinated the protest as part of its “Save the Dream” forum – a weekend of workshops to counsel stressed-out homeowners on ways to refinance their mortgages amid the nation's housing market meltdown.

Labels: Civil Unrest, Eat The Rich

Labels: Bank Failures, Bank Runs, Collapse, One Honest Politician

<br><br>... The Industry wouldn't be in the horrible state as it is right now. [/Repblicans]

Yeah...

Nissan Cuts 20,000 Jobs:
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5181MX20090209

Toyota Sees Losses Tripling. Blue Springs, Miss. plant opening delayed until 2010:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/07/business/worldbusiness/07toyota.html?hp

Eat shit, Republicans.

I believe in worldwide Ponzi schemes and universal gullibility. I believe that reckless lending can be cured by reckless borrowing and that fraudulent borrowing can be healed by fraudulent lending. I believe that a housing bubble fueled by loose credit can be corrected by easing credit. I believe that each trillion of hallucinated dollars that disappears in a puff of Wall Street smoke then always reappears magically from behind a Treasury Department mirror.

I believe in America's almighty financial geniuses and monetary officials, who destroy wealth indiscriminately and indefinitely, and whose kingdom shall have no end. It is divine justice that those who cause financial catastrophes are rewarded with public money, while innocent bystanders are punished in their stead. I believe that central banks can print all the money anyone will ever need. I believe that if one stimulus package does not work, the next one surely will.

I believe in the redeeming power of financial complexity. I believe that hedge funds and sovereign wealth funds are righteous to enter into incomprehensible contracts having convoluted ownership and no inherent value. And I believe that opaque, secretive companies which pretend to insure those investments are offering a valuable service, even if this requires the use of public money.

I believe that economic stability and confidence will return when every failing business is bailed out, with no failure too small to be left behind. I believe that all dying institutions shall be consolidated, merging the smaller basket cases with the larger ones. The lion and the lamb shall lie down together in a new spirit of national competitiveness.

I believe that the end of days shall come when there is only one institution left, comprehensively unified, far too big to fail, owning everything and controlling nothing. All shall come and supplicate before its holy ATM machines, for they are subtle and quick to anger. It is in this one true financial institution that I put my faith, truly gigantic, truly bankrupt, amen.

Labels: Gobbless The USA, Wall Street Fairy

Labels: Community, Sharing