You're Kidding

Credit Cards: Do the Banks Own the Senate?

Its not the banks that are the problem, nor government, nor special interests, nor lobbyists, nor any group or anything else.

The actions of the above people and institutions are a SYMPTOM and not the cause of our biggest problem.

Our real problem, which is wholly insurmountable for the time being, is DNAIG:

DNA INFESTED GREED which infects all of us at the molecular level.

NANO technology may, if we are lucky, lead to a procedure which will cure us; but, there is no guarantee.

Otherwise, we are finished as a species. This poison, without an antidote, will be our end.

How Will Payday Lenders Be Affected by New Bill in Congress?

This article, through its ridiculous logic, tries to justify the behavior of one group of human beings with motive and ability, in their attempts to take advantage of another group of less intelligent and needy people, in order to suck as much money as possible out of the pockets of the borrowers, and into their own.

The author and his supporters are not in touch with their own humanity, and obviously worship the god of greed above all else. But they are hypocrites, because they would never recommend to family members or loved ones what they proclaim to be right for others exercising what must be their "free will."

These are the kind of people and the kind of thinking that brought us the current meltdown.

I wonder how much longer the rest of us will allow their thinking and behavior to run things?

Citigroup's Derivatives Reduce Bailout to a Non-Event

There isn't much I can add here except that after reading all the posts, its obvious that Citi is either going down big time, or going up big time.

That's as far as I've gotten so far.

Pay Bankers Much Less

Big Jack58 said:

As long as we have a capitalistic economy, top talent will follow top pay. So not paying will almost always lead to underperformance.
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Congratulations. You have been successfully brainwashed into the kind of illogical thinking that supports exactly what is contrary to your own best interests (assuming you are not what you call "top talent" yourself.)

The people at the top are the ones who decide what pay they and their friends receive. It isn't the ordinary worker in the factory who votes to give the CEO hundreds of times his own pay. This pathetic system we call "capitalism" isn't real capitalism at all. And in no way does anyone at the top believe that it is. Those who run corporations buy out or merge with their competition whenever they can, because the last thing they want to do is compete. Competition is expensive and unproductive because it is inefficient when considering what the true goal is: to maximize profits and thereby rewards for the decision makers. This is the system that we have evolved to, and the one that our schools, media, and politicians teach us is best. But it isn't best for all of us, just those at the top.

There are plenty of people that could be CEOs, just like there are plenty of people that could do most any job. But most of us really aren't that competitive and willing to pay the price to rise to the top echelons of power. There aren't that many of those positions anyway. So we do something else and are happy without needing to be multimillionaires or billionaires. But the vultures who run things aren't necessarily any smarter than a lower manager or programmer. But they do love power more. Unfortunately, those who have the gold make the rules, so they inflate their own value to whatever they can get away with, think short term far more than long term, and then watch helplessly when things go bad because of their own shortsighted and self interested ways, and thereby completely miss the overall picture and the macro direction. But of course, they still deserve their big bonus; we owe it to them because they are so smart and they're the only ones who could possibly do their high power jobs.

Keep telling yourself that.

And now, after decades of this: Welcome to the Meltdown.

But the rest of us are waking up. We even got one of ourselves elected President. So some of the power elite capitalists are going to lose a little of that power and we are going to gain some (which is the only way a performance based pay system is ever going to be established.)

Its about time.

Last Thursday Was the Bottom - It's Time to Get Back in

I think you are dreaming. The worldwide macro economic situation is absolutely horrible and getting worse all the time. Have housing prices stabilized? Hardly. Has the derivatives market leverage unwound yet? Its hardly gotten started. Are the unemployment, bankruptcy, and bank failure rates going down now? They've just started going up. Do the people in charge of fixing things know what they are doing? Ya think?

And you are saying that all these things are probably going to turn around in the next 6 mo?

Just because the world's governments are throwing money around and the market bounces up a little, doesn't mean anything except that there are a lot of impatient investors who really, really, really want to make some money right now. So what else is new?

This isn't a normal recession we're heading into, and it cannot be realistically compared to any of the recent recessions. This one is very different and the bottom is nowhere in sight.