yourgoldteeth

CNBC's Santelli Speaks for All of Us

How absurd. Santelli's contrived performance reflects the thinking of the plutocrat class that ran this country's economy into the ground. The philosophy that it represents is failed - and the evidence is reflected in the black hole sucking capital out of our economy at an accelerating rate, formerly known as the banking system.

Having cut the heart out of our economy and beat it to the ground with mountains of debt and financial "innovation", the Santelli's of the world now want to kick it's face in with their moronic self serving economic ideas, and kill it off for good.

Go ahead guys. Knock the recovery effort to it's knees with your recalcitrant refusal to acknowledge the need to make a sacrifice or two for the common good every once and while, if for no other reason than to preserve the republic.

But remember that before the recent campaign to smear Roosevelt and his programs, it was widely acknowledged that he saved capitalism. Your intransigence at this crucial juncture may well see it undone, and not pleasantly or peacefully.

The Next American Revolution: Main Street vs. Wall Street

How long do you think he would hold out when they fired the new microwave ray that creates the sensation that one's skin is "on fire" in his general direction? Reports are that military subjects several hundred yards away who were targeted generally responded by throwing themselves on the ground and rolling around and begging for it to stop.

And that was at non-lethal intensities.


On Feb 03 01:03 PM GeminiAtlas wrote:

> Anarchist,
> An effective snip...er, I mean "hunter" could pin down a whole platoon.
> And there are millions of deer rifles (with scopes) in the hands
> of average american citizens. Think Sarajevo. You don't think that
> might make the powers-that-be think twice?

The Next American Revolution: Main Street vs. Wall Street

The fact that the actors involved have been able to conceal all evidence of their machinations from the vast majority of the American population for the better part of the last century, doesn't augur well for any 'revolution', peaceful or otherwise, unless it's one they contrive to discredit their enemies and further solidify their control over the United States.

Mistakes like the bungled coup against Roosevelt won't occur again. The populace is already indoctrinated with the principles of the corporate state, all that remains is for the Republican right to scuttle the President's attempt to save the nation - once that's accomplished he'll be lucky to finish his term.

Then the real fun begins

On Feb 03 09:54 AM investfarm wrote:

> We need a peaceful political & social revolution. Why ? The
> same banking circles, including relatives of the former President,
> who financed Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, some of them continuing
> even after Pearl Harbor attack, are now turning their collective
> "influence" against a potential resurgence of the policies of Franklin
> Delano Roosevelt in the new administration. Since the beginning of
> the year, a steady drumbeat has been growing, to the effect of driving
> a wedge between the new Democratic administration of Barack Obama,
> and the policies of FDR. Obama, who is known to have been reading
> on FDR on the eve of his inauguration, clearly poses a threat to
> the financial elites' control of policy.
>
> After the November election, when both Time magazine and the New
> Yorker had featured pieces optimistically reflecting on the similarities
> between the victory of Barack Obama and the Franklin Delano Roosevelt
> mandate of 1932, the London Economist immediately moved to put the
> brakes on the euphoria. There were plenty of risks in "over-interpreting"
> the political mandate, they cautioned. After all, in their minds,
> the election was much more about getting rid of Bush, than ushering
> in "an era of activist government."
>
> A month later, the conservative Heritage Foundation held a seminar
> in Washington, "Learning From the New Deal: How FDR's Economic Legacy
> has Damaged America." The speaker, Burton Folsom Jr. had just penned
> a book, New Deal or Raw Deal?, and argued that the legacy of FDR
> was one of "price fixing, court packing and regressive taxation."
> Among apologist Fulsom's other books are, The Myth of the Robber
> Barons, Empire Builders, and Urban Capitalists.
>
> On December 30, Amity Shlaes, an "adjunct fellow" at the American
> Enterprise Institute, posted her first anti-FDR piece, "An Era of
> Uncertainty." There, she fretted about the "market uncertainty" which
> all of FDR's reforms caused, specifically when he pulled the dollar
> off the gold standard. Likewise, today, she said, all the questions
> about new regulation and taxes, "make it hard for the market to settle"
> on the price of paper assets. Clearly nervous about which way Obama
> would go, she urged him to "define" his programs early, and thus
> signal "Open for Business" to Wall Street.
>
> As the inauguration approached, others got into the act. On January
> 9th, the libertarian CATO Institute sponsored an ad in the New York
> Times and the Washington Post, signed by hundreds of financial "heavies,"
> telling Obama that "Keynsian" spending was the wrong way to go. That
> same day, Pat Buchanan penned a piece on MSNBC which received wide
> circulation, implying that the new President's choice would be between
> the spending of Franklin Roosevelt, and the tight money of Ronald
> Reagan. First of all, in Buchanan's imagination, things today aren't
> nearly as bad as they were in 1932; and then, FDR's programs didn't
> work. How does he know? Treasury Secretary (and Wall Street intimate)
> Henry Morganthau said so, in testimony (which he quotes) before Congress
> in 1939. Reagan's program of tax breaks and tight spending worked
> much better, adding that even JFK favored tax breaks over government
> spending.
>
> The day after the inauguration, the Heritage Foundation again chimed
> in, this time posting a frantic piece titled, "Get Over it, the New
> Deal Didn't Work," which offered expanded quotes from Morganthau
> in 1939, with additional wisdom from author Fulsom. Heritage was
> determined to rebut charges (in "liberal" press accounts) that their
> unemployment figures, which they had compiled into a convenient downloadable
> chart, were distorted. Their preferred solution: tax breaks (again),
> and the insight of Morganthau.
>
> .They know that Obama is a pro-Roosevelt man which has excited them
> no end. Cato, Heritage, AEI. These things are the fascist organizations
> of America. They have their various colors: green, pousse. Especially
> pousse.
>
> The guys who were pro-Hitler and pro-Mussolini in the 1920s and 1930s,
> in 1941 had to run for cover. What they did is they closed down
> their offices, or let the offices die, and opened up new offices
> by reassorting the organization. Then, when Roosevelt was dying,
> after the successful breakthrough at Normandy, then they came out
> of the woods. And they're back again, and that's what we call these
> right-wing think-tanks. So they're still the same old thing as the
> pro-Hitler, pro-Mussolini crowd of former times, and they have the
> same essential ideology. And the Bushes are part of it.
>

Bond ETFs: Time to Stock Up, As Munis Yield More Than Treasuries

Post busted CDOs I'm not sure I'd count on munis always being made good. I can't remember the exact circumstances, but the city of Birmingham almost went into default a few months ago. What was striking about it was not that they ran into trouble, it was that when the bondholders started making threatening noises, Birmingham told them, hey, back off. We're not going to cut staff just to make our bond payments.

There was actually a quote along those lines from some city official. Maybe he was just the only one running for re-election

I don't keep up with munis, but what's the plan for keeping credit ratings high now that two major insurers are gone? If their business had been viable seems like they'd still be around.

Without somebody to take over that role munis yields might not be coming down as far or as fast as people think.

In fact, if we get a few more Birminghams, and if they can't be bailed, they muni yields may be going up. If one of these cities actually defaults, maybe way up.

In the brave new world created by the bankers munis may not look quite as attractive side to side with treasuries. At least you know, so far, that you're going to get your money back with treasuries.

Did I miss something or did somebody come up with a plan on restoring bond insurance for munis? Without it risk premiums may start heading up if we start getting a few defaults.

And Birmingham may not be the last in line to try that out.

There's the matter of tax assessments. Anybody who walked away from his house isn't going to be paying taxes on it. And there are going to be plenty of people who had their assessments raised who won't be able to pay either - either because they lost, or will lose a job in the coming months, or because interest rates went up, or because it's time to make more than just interest only payments.

The cities and states are going to have a hard time just delivering essential services

We haven't seen the end of write offs from the banks, or any kind of real fallout from the end of the credit party. Just for the heck of it I'll accept the assumption that the U.S. isn't going to go into recession.

There's still going to be fallout from the steadily increasing total on all those bank write offs and the tightening that's set in.

Then there's inflation. The Fed seems to have figured out that there is inflation out there - and they're now making noises about no more cuts to stave it off. So there's no help for the hapless homeowner with his adjustable rate, or with stimulus to help him get reemployed if he loses his job. Hope he's got plenty socked away for house payments.

Just because the Fed has decided that it is not going to acknowledge the contribution of the price of oil to the inflation rate doesn't mean that it is going to change the dynamics of what oil at current levels will do to the economy.

If the price of oil doesn't come down and stay down soon the mood is going to get a little dark out in those subdivisions that take an hour to drive to work from.

Maybe they can help move the houses out there by giving away one of those SUVs nobody wants to buy with each one purchased, and keep defaults down, so the folks'll still pay their taxes and the cities can make those bond payments.

Maybe I've got this wrong, but I thought that the fundamental assumption behind mean reversion was that the world hasn't fundamentally changed. If the variables that affect price are essentially unchanged, then mean reversion should kick in.

Maybe things haven't changed permanently, but the financial factors that caused the cracks that were heard round the world in the CDO business haven't gone away. Just because the Saudis aren' shovelling money into the banks this week and no major brokerage houses have imploded so far this quarter, I'm not sure we're out of the woods yet.

I think we may end up wandering around in here for a while