This crash wasn’t just something that happened, just like Abu Ghraib and wiretapping didn’t just happen. It was the direct outcome of a series of decisions made by financial elites, just like torture and illegal spying were the direct result of decisions of political elites. But none of the people who caused these disasters are being prosecuted, …

This has to be repeated, repeated, repeated.
And be repeated again.

You don’t have $350 billion in bailouts with ZERO oversight, when so many people are either personally affected or know families who have had to move out of their homes — while the rest of us pick up the tab for rampant criminal fraud. Even if the economy picks up, there’s a need for people to see some justice and consequences for greed and fraud.

It’s weird, but I suspect that we’re finally at a place where most people want Obama to implement fundamental changes, but if he’s not able to do it, then we’ll have an another electoral bloodbath in 2010, but the ‘winners’ will be Libertarian and third party groups.

If that occurs, it will be because the Dems — not us — acted like ‘boobs’. The GOP is nuts, and increasingly irrelevant.

You’re no doubt right and I, for one, hope that more third party people get into the equation. During the election, a few of the scariest words that I heard coming from more than one big name democrat were *super majority*.

If all the dems and repubs care about is that elusive *super majority* then the sooner they’re all voted into oblivion, the better for the rest of us I say.

well, i woudn’t say the crash was the result of some grand conspiracy. my explanation would be that a number of well connected and financed interests worked around the edges of a system that can be modified by the dark side. money and power is what makes dc run. dems are the pawns of big money too but third parties are not the answer. just clean house.

I’m not saying there was a grand conspiracy to crash the financial system. I’m saying that there were people who made specific decisions that caused the disaster. Look at this article in the NYT for an example.

Thanks masaccio

digg

Are there lawsuits in their future, mayhap by citizens who were misled by the rosy view presented by the financial monsters right up until it all came crashing down?

IANFL(financially literate), in case you can’t tell.

I don’t know about lawsuits. There has been a real reduction in private rights of action over the last years.

Oh look, here’s another group of people who are going to benefit:

A tight-knit group of former senior government officials who were central players in the savings and loan bailout of the 1990s are seeking to capitalize on the latest economic meltdown, enjoying a surge in new business in their work now as private lawyers, investors and lobbyists.

Here’s someone ready to rub your face in it:

“It is a good time to be me,” said John L. Douglas, a partner in Atlanta at the law firm Paul Hastings and a former lawyer for bank regulators who helped create the agency that administered the last federal bailout, the Resolution Trust Corporation.

This passage off of “Infidels” has always and succinctly explained it for me,

Steal a little
and they throw you in jail

Steal alot
and they make you king.

there was a very interesting James Fallow interview in this month’s The Atlantic, of Gao Xiqing, who manages China’s forex reserves and investments in US debt — one of their most senior money men.

Gao on derivatives: “If you look at every one of the derivative products, they make sense. But in aggregate, they are bullshit. THy are crap. They serve to cheat people.”

and i hope that you die

Meanwhile the Obamas moving this weekend…to a Holiday Inn Express? ’cause there’s no room in the Blair House Inn until January 15. Wasn’t that “traditional January 15″ business debunked? Yet the NYT blog’s still repeating it.

SS media still repeating the Bush party line….

So who’s got the Blair House Watch project keeping track of who’s eventing there between Jan 1 and 15? Taxpayers want to know.

Looks like someone else knows this song.

A bit late to your par-tay, masaccio …

But it’s another great one.

DW

Less than three weeks left of the GW Clusterfuck Victory Lap..What’s he gonna brag about THIS week?

Whadda great President eh?

Hope we have advance notice and lots of cameras of GW Clusterfuck flyin back to Texas—I’ve been planning a gallon of margaritas for the spectacle.

Brave, Brave, Sir Clusterfuck- when the terrorists came and blew us up,

Our president sat and filled his pants

Brave, Brave Sir Clusterfuck

I’ll add the next (and last) stanza

And I hope that you die
And your death’ll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I’ll watch while you’re lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I’ll stand o’er your grave
‘Til I’m sure that you’re dead

Thanks. Of all the things about this financial crisis that make me crazy, and there are lots, the top of the list is that the elites are going to get away with all the money, and somehow it’s all the fault of the average American.

well. as of this wee he can add a successful middle east/Israeli piece process to his long list of achievements…

I got the same “crazy”, masaccio, precisely.

We’ll never be able to say that these thugs weren’t the best opportunists of the time.

well, you know the craziest part of all this story?

it is how so many have voted for the gangsters. for so many years.

especially the middle class and lower[aka the serfs]. starting in 1968…from lbj, rmn, jec, rwr, ghwb, wjc, gwb. and now bo.

have continued to vote to destroy themselves and their families.

apparently dementia is a communicable disease. or, the serfs enjoy being preserved in serfdom.

do the bread and circuses seduce so many?

in jakarta, there is a statue. it is of a massive javenese throwing of the chains of dutch slavery[in the post ww2 insurgency for indonesian independence-there is more to that sty, however].

will the citizens of the usa ever decide to throw off their chains? to stop their government from perpetrating genocide throughout the planet?

i don’t think so. the citizens of the united states love killing…

Best protest song evah.

Get no argument from me.

I hate to say it (or even think it) but these jackals and hyenas might be the ‘best’ of all times. Gotta be the biggest heist evah, SD, and to quote Pelosi, we prolly “don’t know the half of it … yet.

What truly astounds me is the vast disparities in the pursuit and/or justice meted out between blue collar crimes and white collar crimes… Along that same line which has cost society the most… I’m sure Madoff’s Billions alone has surpassed the entire costs attributed to this year’s Blue Collar statistics…!

Yes, another, very “crazy” maker, CTut.

It doesn’t matter and there is no answer that anyone will ever be willing to listen to. The elites will steal billions and cheer on their thugs when they gun down proles for pilfering a loaf of bread. I don’t dislike Republicans and the rich — I hate them with a nearly uncontrollable rage. No dehumanizing atrocity visited upon the lot of them would satisfy my hunger to see them suffer.

I really love this version with Eddie Vedder on vocals, Mike McCready, also from Pearl Jam on guitar, and G.E. Smith on what looks like a mandolin. Vedder’s voice is perfect for the hostility of Dylan’s words.

Great music – ty masaccio

Then we’ll all come by and empty our chamberpots on their graves, because we can. If the grass won’t grow there any more, well, too bad – they didn’t ahve to do what they did.

The following was posted over at Americablog today. The Obama camp is talking about reducing middleclass taxes. The decrease would amount to about $20 extra in your check every two weeks. For some warped reason I keep thinking, thanks Obama, but maybe you should keep your tax break Barrack, because to most of us it won’t mean much. Not when you consider that states are raising their property and school taxes, medical costs keep rising, tuition costs keep rising and just about every fee and license for anything you can think of is going up as well. On second thought Barrack, maybe you need our tax break more than we do. I’ve lived long enough to know that what the Federal government giveth, my state and local government taketh away……
http://www.americablog.com

The incoming administration is considering tax cuts of $1,000 for couples and $500 for individuals that will be delivered by reducing the tax withheld from paychecks. That plan has been estimated to cost about $140 billion over 2009-2010.

The lump-sum rebates issued earlier this year were used by many people to pay down debt, rather than spending the money and boosting the economy as the administration had hoped.

“People need money in their pockets to spend,” Axelrod said. “That’ll get our economy going again.”
The first handout didn’t do much because it was too much money in one fell swoop, leading people to use it to pay off debts, rather than buying goods and services, which is what we want them to do in order to help the economy (reportedly, only a third of the earlier $300/person handout was actually spent). This time, the money will be spread out throughout the year in the form of a reduction in your withholding taxes (actually this would be a permanent tax cut). So I did the math. Say you get a paycheck every two weeks, so over a twelve month period that makes 26 paychecks. If you spread the $500 per person tax cut over 26 paychecks, that puts $19 more in your pocket per paycheck.

I’m not an economist, but I’ve studied economics, and have worked at the World Bank with the big brainy (and arrogant) economists, and something here doesn’t quite add up. People didn’t spend $300 on goods and services, but they’re going to find $19 a sufficient incentive to increase their spending on goods and services beyond what it already is? What’s more likely to happen is that someone who earns $750 a paycheck now, who will then earn $769 under the new handout, isn’t going to notice the difference, and thus won’t adjust their spending habits. And if they do notice the increase, why assume that this time they’re going to spend that $19 windfall on goods and services, rather than sock it away in the bank, or, as they did last time we handed out free money, simply use it to pay off their mounting debt?

Absolutely!!

After cheering the Israelis on during their recent little killing spree, GW Clusterfuck says now that he favors peace.

Whadda fuckhead.

That is a great version. I hadn’t seen it before. Thanks for the hit.

Pelosi and crew did a great job ignoring the obvious until it became a national crisis. Then blindly fell in line with the thugs whose policies, or lack thereof, caused it. If Paulson told her to jump she’d ask, “How high?” Dipshits.

There is something about Goldman Sachs.

KOS has a report on the Goldman Sachs/Hank Paulson looting of America. A Wall Street thief, Peter Kraus has just bought a New York apartment for $37 million. Kraus had work at Merrill Lynch for three months, which entitled him to a $25 million dollar bonus. This was paid to him from Henry Paulson and the TARP welfare for the rich fund. That is, he got it from us taxpayers, for no obvious reason.

But Paulson has been rewarding all the Goldman crooks and Kraus worked there for 22 years. John Thain, the CEO of Merrill Lynch got $83 million last year and he is another former Goldman Sachs crony. This list of crooks can go on and on. But we should include a few more disturbing facts.

Wells Fargo of San Francisco, which took $25 billion in taxpayer bailout money, gave its top executives up to $20,000 each to pay personal financial planners.

At Bank of New York Mellon Corp., chief executive Robert P. Kelly’s stipend for financial planning services came to $66,748, on top of his $975,000 salary and $7.5 million bonus. His car and driver cost $178,879. Kelly also received $846,000 in relocation expenses, including help selling his home in Pittsburgh and purchasing one in Manhattan, the company said.

Goldman Sachs’ tab for leased cars and drivers ran as high as $233,000 per executive. The firm told its shareholders this year that financial counseling and chauffeurs are important in giving executives more time to focus on their jobs.

JPMorgan Chase chairman James Dimon ran up a $211,182 private jet travel tab last year when his family lived in Chicago and he was commuting to New York.

Goldman, Merrill, Bank of America, and the rest have each received tens of billions from you and me. Someone has to pay for all the bad investments these Friends of Hank have secretly made.

I guess they think we’re such boobs we won’t notice.

Here’s another Jan 15 date. Isn’t this the place shooter lives? Which has 1/3 of the worlds atomic clocks.

NOTICE TO USERS
Under direction of the Chief of Naval Operations, the nature of the Naval Observatory’s web sites are changing from their traditional appearance to a portal which combines all of the Navy Oceanography Community’s products and services.
As of 15 January 2009, the U.S. Naval Observatory’s products and services will continue to be available at http://www.usno.navy.mil but will be part of a larger portal.

http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/

I wonder if that larger portal includes the gop’s pc’s?

This crash wasn’t just something that happened, just like Abu Ghraib and wiretapping didn’t just happen. It was the direct outcome of a series of decisions made by financial elites,

Maybe it was supposed to happen. That would seem extremely evil but so has allthe other things this adm has done. Below is from wiki.

Bernanke is particularly interested in the economic and political causes of the Great Depression, on which he has written extensively. On Milton Friedman’s ninetieth birthday, November 8, 2002, he stated: “Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve System. I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You’re right, we did it. We’re very sorry. But thanks to you, we won’t do it again.”[17][18][19]

Bernanke noted that “people know that inflation erodes the real value of the government’s debt and, therefore, that it is in the interest of the government to create some inflation.”[20]

Great tune.

“Even Jesus would never forgive what you do”

“you ain’t worth the blood that runs in your vein”