McCain Doesn't Matter (He's going to die soon anyway). Palin Fronts for Fascist Four.

The Progressive Curmudgeon®

Finally, the choice of Palin makes some sense; not much, but some. Yet it was clear right from the start that McCain was doing somebody’s bidding in choosing an unknown lightweight governor to be his running mater. It turns out that the esteemed doyens of the right wingnut fringe of the Republican Party – Norquist and his once all-powerful “Americans For Tax Reform,” James Dobson’s hate-mongering “Focus On The Family,” Roger Ayles and his Republican talking point network Fox News, and Karl “Bush’s Brain” Rove – did the choosing. Talk about king makers or, in this case, queen makers. McCain managed to go through the motions of “interviewing” Palin but, apparently, he had as much say in the process as I did.

The golden age for the rich should end

FT.com / Home UK / UK - This is the ‘1979 moment’ for casino capitalism

The golden age for the rich should end. Those who have led us into this mess must pay heavily towards the price of recovery. At the moment, to take one example, the bill for each UK taxpayer for bank rescues is around £5,500 and rising. The message to those taxpayers and those in other countries affected must be “never again”. Our system must be rebalanced towards financial institutions providing capital for productive investments in sustainable development and towards greater equality.

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"There are almost 10,000 foreclosures a day now...."

Crisis spreads as bailout focus on House | Reuters

"There are almost 10,000 foreclosures a day now, and between 1 and 2 million adjustable rate mortgages are due to adjust upward in the next year," said Timothy Canova, a monetary policy expert at Chapman University School of Law. "Without help for the bottom of the pyramid, Wall Street will be back next year asking for another trillion dollars.

AFTER THE UNCERTAINTY: MORE UNCERTAINTY

The bailout plan, equivalent to some $2,300 per American, is intended to reinvigorate credit markets that have frozen as financial institutions, staggered by failed mortgages, focused on preserving capital.

A group of House Republicans led opposition to the bill on Monday over criticism it put the government at the center of a problem that capital markets had created and could still fix.

Many Americans also opposed the $700 billion rescue plan because of objections across the political divide, including criticism that it would bail out powerful bankers without doing enough to help families struggling to hang on to their homes.

The Senate added tax cuts for families and businesses and an increase in bank deposit insurance in a bid to win broader support for the bill. Monday's House vote was 228-205, requiring a net gain of 12 votes for it to pass.

Rep. Steny Hoyer, the House Democratic leader, said calls from voters to representatives had been running 6-1 against the bill before Monday's failed vote but were now closer to 3-1 against.

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Insurers Next?

Investors jittery after Sen. Reid insurer comment | Reuters

US SWAPS-2Y spread hit record as stocks end sharply lower | Markets | Markets News | Reuters

Five-year credit default swaps on MetLife Inc (MET.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz)
rose to 11.5 percent upfront, or $1.15 million a year to protect $10
million of debt, plus $500,000 in annual premiums, according to data
from Markit Intraday. The swaps had closed at 514 basis points on
Wednesday.

Hartford Financial Services Group's (HIG.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) swaps rose to 10.5 percent upfront from 520 basis points.

Why DO they hate America SO MUCH?

In a comment in nakedcapitalism , Francois said:

What the current administration is doing to America international image and position is literally horrendous.

Quite. Note that in another recent post, an excellent analysis by FairEconomist make it clear that the Hanke-Panke plan will help Bank of Goldman City and so forth, and accelerate the destabilisation of the economy.

The whole situation is quite reminiscent of the run-up to the Iraq war. In that case, the debate was limited by the neocon strength in government and the media to a decision between invading Iraq immediately and waiting five minutes and then invading them; other options such as not invading Iraq at all were ignored or ridiculed: the wisdom received from the neocon overlords was that such an idea was not fit for polite society.

In this case, despite severe criticism and plausible proposed alternatives from Soros and so many others, the debate is limited to passing the Hanke-Panke scam or being responsible for the end of life as we know it. Other options are simply ignored. The Senate puts another hundred billion and another few hundred pages on the pig, but fish, chicken and beef are simply not on the menu: there is not enough time to consider doing anything other than completing the destruction of the economy of the United States, adding a nice coup de grace to policies that appear designed to have produced exactly the present crisis situation.

In both cases, a crisis is manufactured and used as an excuse to do great damage to America and of course others also, with normal democratic processes curtailed and precedents set for dictatorial executive power.

One must ask oneself:

"Why DO they hate America SO MUCH?

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"Why I DO Care about John McCain’s Gay Chief of Staff"

[Greta Christina] Why I DO Care about John McCain’s Gay Chief of Staff | Blowfish Blog

First, in case you haven’t seen the story yet: John McCain’s Chief of Staff, Mark Buse, is gay.

With a reported penchant for multiple partners, and a sling in his home to boot. (In, of all places, his closet. Sometimes the irony is just too obvious.) The story broke on the BlogActive site of the legendary Mike Rogers, who has given Buse the not so coveted Roy Cohn award “for working against the interests of the lesbian and gay community while living as a gay man.” And it’s corroborated by Michelangelo Signorile.

  Well. Another right-wingnut Bible-beater with a sling in his closet. Or fellow-traveler of same. Whatever. I'm sure he and Palin will get along just fine.

  Aside from showing that McCain is an old man in a hurry who will do anything to get elected and not a principled maverick, it also shows that he's a fool. Selling himself to the Zio-Cons and Christo-Fascists and forgetting to ditch his special friend along the way? Now that's just plain bone-dumb, proof that he's just not up to the job.

Socialism

From the desk of H-Ross Parrot Now, before I get started, I just want to clear one thing up: a lot of people keep talking about how this is Socialism. This is a major and serious misconception. See, with Socialism, you get things like, for example, Socialised Medicine (notice the "Socialised" in "Socialised Medicine", which is a clue in case y'all are wondering). OK now stay with me here, people. Here's the hard part, so take a deep breath first: with Socialism, you fork over a whole bunch of your money to Big Government, and in return, you get things like Health, Education and Welfare (which has a ring to it, don't it? Health, Education and Welfare). OK now, I know that was hard, but stay with me here: in America you give a whole bunch of money to Big Government, and you get basically nothing in return, or maybe ten cents on the dollar or something. You sure as heck don't get Health or Education, and the Corporations make out better on the Welfare angle than anyone else. So all these bailouts and such and letting Hank declare himself a God are not socialism, because all y'all will get in return is a whole extra big pile of debt (which will be defaulted on anyway so you don't really need to worry about that except for when all your money also becomes worthless afterwards and a single Freedom Fry in France will cost you one hundred million dollars or just a pound of any other recyclable paper. OK now, are y'all still with me? Any questions? Y'all get the Not Socialism part? The basic message remains the same: Obey! In other news: See here, now, it's just like I said: Alien Banksters! He talks about other stuff too, but trust me on this, Alien Banksters are behind it. .... What happened on September 18-19 took years of preparation, capped by a faux ideology crafted by public-relations think tanks to be broadcast under emergency conditions to panic Congress - and voters - right before the presidential election. This seems to be our September election surprise. Under staged crisis conditions, Pres. Bush and Treasury Secretary Paulson are now calling for the country to come together in a War on Defaulting Homeowners. This is said to be the only hope to "save the system." (What system is this? Not industrial capitalism, or even banking as we know it.) The largest transformation of America's financial system since the Great Depression has been compressed into just two weeks, starting with the doubling of America's national debt on September 7 with the nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.....

Mozilla: redesign or die!

OK, I've just had to kill my browser and email, destroying about 15 minutes of work-in-progress, because the piece-of-crap Flash plugin went into a forever() loop, which it does so very very often, and so I had to kill the whole mess off. This happens at least once a day on average. OK, now, Mozilla, meaning Firefox and Seamonkey and all that, I hate to be the one to break this to you but, basically, your code sucks, bless yer heart. I went into the Mozilla source years ago and it was the most godawful giant mess of C++ I'd ever seen. So many templates and overloaded crap and what have you that it was impossible to tell what would actually happen if you moved the mouse or anything, except that it would be a lot. Way too much. Maybe things have improved. I doubt it. OK, now, so along comes Google, and they say, "Why, this is really stupid. This mess should be compartmentalised into processes, so one bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch." That's Philosophy, by the way. Descartes or someone said that first. OK, now stay with me here, folks. I know this is complicated, but basically it comes down to this: Mozilla, trash your whole basic design if necessary, but firewall them stinkin' plugins into separate processes, or maybe threads if that will suffice (but I doubt it) or you're toast. History. You can go hang around with Mosaic and Netscape and the other Ghosts of Browsers Past, because all your bases are belong to Google Chrome, which I plan on switching to just the very first minute that a pre-alpha starts working on Linux, OK? I mean, Google already knows everything about me even before I do anyway, so why mess with middlemen? It's just that simple, folks.

Cassius Mundus on Industrial Civilisation

I would like to note one of the fundamental determinants of current social, political and financial structures, which may receive too little consideration: that they are fundamentally industrial and technical in nature, and could not exist without our present state of industry and techne. This was noted by John Keegan, I think in his book on War One, in which he referred to the industrialisation of warfare: how the machine gun was essentially industrial killing, mass destruction instead of mass production. I'm sure it has been much discussed elsewhere. I state no conclusions or proposals here other than to suggest that industrialisation and computerisation are profoundly fundamental to things ranging from this blog as a means of communication to current political systems, including but not limited to Marxism, Capitalism and Fascism. Any plan, platform or project for the future will instantiate within this context, which can be expected to continually alter towards greater technical capacity, with unpredictable effects.

Bulletin from the National Bureau of Standards

Bulletin from the National Bureau of Standards Negative numbers are banned in the United States with immediate effect. Or ye'll walk the plank. Positive integers are deprecated, an only a damn sea-lawyer would use'em anyway. Irrational and Imaginary numbers are now the Official Numbering Systems (ONS) of the United States. Capn's orders and no back-talk. An announcement from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing regarding changes to the currency of the United States will follow. Pieces of eight, me buccoes, pieces of eight! BULLETIN/USNBS/EOT/ARRRRRRRRR

Ban on Short-Selling Will Hurt Rather Than Help Broker-Dealers

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! Avast, ye scurvy short-sellin' dogs! Heave to an' strike yer colors, or ye'll be boarded and scuttled! An' there'll be no mutterin' about any of the financial pirate-ships which their capn's is friends with the Cap'n, or I'll run ye thru, so help me I will! Now shove off an buy financials or its tied to the cathead and 40 lashes for you, an yer grog stopped for a month, ye mangy pack of sea-lawyer scrubs! Today is officially Talk Like A Pirate Day 2008. In fact, September 19th falls on a Friday this year, so folks are making plans for an extended Talk Like A Pirate weekend. Let us know about yours! It's just that simple, folks! My brokerage house is acting weird on the Net today. Can't do this, can't retrieve that, something else timing out. Are they being boarded and scuttled? My SKF and SRS have been burnt to the waterline, so where's my bailout? Everyone else gets a bailout, so I want one too! WAAAAAHHH! WANT BAILOUT NOW!!!

Ban on Short-Selling Will Hurt Rather Than Help Broker-Dealers

Alien Giant Schistosome has a posse

Stocks Rally on Plan for Government Equity Infusions, Continued Pursuit of Evil Shorts OK, now, stay with me here, and I'll try to explain it, with the help of Earl over here. Fortunately, Earl is insured by Mutual of Ohama AIG the full faith and credit of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, or this could be dangerous. OK, now, Earl represents civilisation. Now, notice the alien schistosome that has leapt onto Earl's face and knocked him down, making him appear to be stone-dead. The giant schistosome is Too Big to Fail, and that's all you need to know about that. OK, now here comes Hank, and he says, we must cut this alien pod-thing from Earl's face, and he nicks it a bit (now, that represents Lehman) and it bleeds a weird molecular acid and generally via alien sign language makes it known that if anyone tries to cut it off, it will turn into a Black Hole, kill Earl, me, and Hank, and then drop straight thru the center of the Earth and kill a bunch of Chinese people and then come back here and so on. Not Good. OK, so Hank says, clearly we cannot remove this Alien Fruiting Body from Earl's face without killing everyone, and so we must Obey. Giant Schistosome 3 KG 700 cm has a posse OBEY!

Who's Next?

Ripples across the pond

Who’s next? Last time I checked, GS was spinning around 100 just like that little guy in the boat in the toilet-cleaner add (maybe that didn’t run over there in Blighty). Of course, MS wasn’t looking too healthy either. In fact, they were last seen nearing 17, right about where MER was before they were allegedly acquired (not that MER or BAC are looking so good today either).

Now, stay with me here: “Giant Suckin’ Sound.”

Me, I’ve got puts on all of them. Dawgies, lookat’em go! YEEEEEEEEE-Hawwwwwwww!

Cash to the Rescue

"Helicopter Ben Starts the Printing Press (Updated)"

BULLETIN FROM THE CASH MUNDY STRATEGIC FINANCIAL RESERVE

Free! It's all Free! And there's a whole bunch more where that came from, Earl! Ol' Cash may control $2.3 trillion, but he ain't about to forget Main Street, Bison Forks, Texas, nor Main Street, Santa Cruz, Cali-forn-I-A, neither! Yeeeeeeeeeeee-Hawwwwwww! [Minion's Missive: 4th refueling. We have been over the California coastline for some hours. Mr Mundy is hurling garbage bags full of paper from the loading ramp. They explode when they hit the slipstream: quite pretty, really. He has ordered ten thousand toner cartridges delivered with the next refueling.] BULLETIN/CMSFR/EOT

Earl Gets his American Spirit back

"Fed Ponders Provides $85 Billion Rescue for AIG (Update: Now Official)" Earl is a real inspiration to me. I'll have to go look him up in Santa Cruz someday. An American we can all be proud of.

Dear Hank: Thank you for your speedy reply. It restores my faith in my Federal Government, and politicians in general. And I do apologize for my weakness in the moment. I’ve been bent over grabbing my ankles since last Friday night, and the blood rushing to my head has caused me great confusion. But, as a good Lemming American, I’ve sucked it up once again and have come up with a plan. I’ve decided to knock over the local branch of the Shadow Banking System, (SBS), but I’m having a real problem finding the damned thing, and felt really bad about it until I realized that you, and Ben, haven’t found the World Head Quarters either. So we’re in this together Hank. And one more request: In the event that I do find my local SBS Branch I would like you and Ben to go ahead and do one more of your many recent regulation hand wavings and make derivatives as fungible at my local market as Food Stamps. It would be a great help. Very truly yours, Earl L. Crockett Santa Cruz “Green and Mean” CA.

Those Fed Rat-Bastards!

"Fed Ponders Provides $85 Billion Rescue for AIG (Update: Now Official)"

I had no idea Hank was so heartless!

Dear Earl, We would like to help out, we really would, but we're just not geared up to write a check for $000,000,005,000 Billion. We'd have to retool, and it would be an accounting nightmare. Also, America wasn't made the great nation it was by people thinking small. Face it, Earl, a few hundred people asking for a payout that none of us here can even count down to amount to nothing more than collateral damage. If you can arrange to overthrow an elected government somewhere, and kill at least a thousand or so bystanders in the process, get back to us. Otherwise, you need to quit whining and take one for the team like a good lemming American. And another thing: when was the last time Santa Cruz elected a Republican? Face it, Earl, there are probably more registered Greens there than Republicans. Maybe you should ask the Japanese instead. It's been a tough week, and I have an early tee time tomorrow, so I've gotta run. But we're here to help, so drop us a line any time and best of luck. Hank

Earl's Story

"Fed Ponders Provides $85 Billion Rescue for AIG (Update: Now Official)"

It just hurt my heart to read this, and I just had to share it with y'all.

Dear Henry and Ben: There is a tragic, almost systemic, breakdown about to occur at the end of the month in my home town of Santa Cruz, CA. If I can’t make my payments due shortly (no pun intended) it will devastate not only my children and wife, but the local mortgage company (20 employees), my auto repair shop where my car is presently being repaired (10 employees), my local market (50 employees), and their wine staff (5 employees), and the local car wash (also 20 employees). This is just a beginning example that will ripple through our town to hundreds and even maybe thousand of innocent person including those that used to make a decent living pan handling quarters on our Downtown Pacific Garden Mall. Think of the devastation! And all of this can be avoided. Please remit $000,000,005,000 Billion to me by Fed Ex over night on the same terms that you just extended to Lehman and AIG. You know I’m good for it. Very truly yours, Earl L. Crockett Santa Cruz, CA

Breaking the Buck

"Fed Ponders Provides $85 Billion Rescue for AIG (Update: Now Official)"

UPDATE FROM THE CASH MUNDY STRATEGIC TRADING COMMAND Reserve Primary Money Fund Falls Below $1 a Share...known as breaking the buck Slim Pickins! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-Dawgies! YEEEEEEEEE-Haw! [Underling's commentary: Mr Mundy loaded the double-wide in the Globemaster on Sunday, just finished third refueling. Mr Mundy last seen riding a bull off of loading ramp. For the second time tonight. Brighton seems very very far away.] UPDATE/CMSTC/EOT

Goldman Profit Falls 70%

"Goldman Profit Falls 70%"

Yee Haw! Look at my +GSMT Jan@100 puts go! Still $30 out-of-the-money and already trading well over $10! [Lackey's note: Mr Mundy is spending far too much time in his Trading Bunker, where he has "Ice Station Zebra" running on at least three of his monitors. At last report he was seen spinning in his chair cackling "I'm Rich, Byatch!" An American nouveau riche, and a Texan at that... the Horror... I'd retire to Brighton, but he pays too well and also has my passport.]