ashizashiz

Are Big Banks Too Big to Fail?

Beware

A Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware the Dark Side. Anger, fear, and aggression; the Dark Side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight.

Mr Bernanke said today: “With the economy likely to be weak for several quarters and with some risk of a protracted slowdown, consideration of a fiscal package by Congress at this juncture seems appropriate.” He added: "If the Congress proceeds with a fiscal package, it should consider including measures to help improve access to credit by consumers, home buyers, businesses and other borrowers. Such actions might be particularly effective at promoting economic growth and job creation...”

"Access to Credit!!!" Unba-fucking-real. These guys have absolutely no shame, not a moral or ethical cell in their malignant souls.


Give the stupid, ignorant mass of poor slobs money so that they'll feel OK about getting into MORE debt; give 'em that false sense of wealth---like the one "W" gave 'em with the $600 'stimulus' checks---so that they feel OK about getting 3 new credit cards and running up $7500 in debt and paying the minimum payment each month of $50 while NEVER, EVER getting close to getting out of debt. Debt servitude, for all of your days. Pay the man and make him rich.

Look folks, this has gotta stop. We cannot exist forever as the meat for the financial industries sausage grinder. There are many ways to get out from under this pile of shit, but one very straightforward method comes to mind first: stop playing.

Stop borrowing money from corrupt banks and stop paying money to a corrupt government. Don't pay your taxes, don't take out new mortgages, don't patronize the institutions that prop up this system. Live smaller---live in and for your community. Grow vegetables, trade with neighbors, share resources. Don't buy cool things anymore---you don't need them. One small TV is just fine...in fact, my wife and kids and I have chosen not to have TV in our home. We listen to the radio and occasionally watch M*A*S*H on an old DVD player. Don't buy into the need to buy into happiness. Ride a bike to work.

The Empire cannot make us go to THE DARK SIDE. We have a choice. The Dark Side exists on greed and excess and hubris. If we can learn how to live small, the forces of Evil will fall. They can only exist if we subsidize their existence. I say, no more!
Here is a great video about THIS VERY TOPIC:

video.google.com/video...

Morgan Stanley: Not Out of the Woods

Does anyone watch Star Trek?

There is a great Star Trek episode from the late 1960s entitled “Specter of the Gun”. Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Scotty and Chekhov are compelled to fight Wyatt Earp and his gang in a showdown at the O.K. Corral. Curious aliens have, of course, orchestrated the battle: some kind of a moral psychodrama. Anyway, in this episode Mr. Spock develops a “knock-out” gas from ingredients found in Doc Holiday’s office. The protagonists logically figure that if they can render the Earp Gang unconscious, then they won’t have to fight them at the O.K. Corral. (And as we know, the Earp’s defeat the Clanton’s at the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. And as Mr. Spock so aptly points out, “history cannot be changed.”)

All are certain that the gas will work; but just to be sure, Scotty volunteers to be the test subject for the agent. Spock, for one, is spellbound, when the potion fails to work. “Fascinating” he quips. Spock goes on to explain the enormity of this paradox. “The potion” he explains, “must work. By all laws we know, it simply cannot fail. And yet it has failed”. Spock goes on to theorize that a massive manipulation of the crew’s brain patterns must be occurring. He also explains that this knowledge, if used correctly, can save the crew from certain demise at the O.K Corral.

Back to 2008. At some point, the massive manipulation of our brains, orchestrated by Spanky Paulson and all of his uber-wealthy cronies, will end. Reality will intrude. The global economy MUST crash because there are simply too many dollars "worth" of worthless assets gathering dust in the safes and hard drives and account ledgers of the world's financial instutions. Tens of Trillions of dollars worth! And no amount of mass hypnosis (in the form of 'pundits optimism'), or empty words (in the form of government guarantees on EVERYTHING), or spin can change reality. Get that? Reality cannot be changed.

The Weakness of the Treasury's New Bailout Plan

I sit here at my desk at work---for now---and gawk wide-eyed in utter amazement at the depths to which human beings will go in order to satiate their lust for power and their Midasian greed. Paulson, Bush, Bernanke: soucndrels, one and all. Scumbags of the highest order. Liars who would sell their souls to the devil, who would swear on the lives of their families, that they are telling the truth. But no amount of dissembling or obfuscation can change the laws of nature: reality, in the end, always wins out.

Toxic “assets” in the tens of TRILLIONS of dollars fill the casks and vaults and safes and basements of the world’s major financial institutions. Worthless pieces of paper that, when exposed to the light of day, will bring the global economy as we know it to its knees. There is no escaping this reality. None. The laws of nature will eventually pull the curtain back on the Oz-like charade that is being played out in Washington and Paris and London and Berlin, and the global economy will shatter.

And so in the intervening days/weeks/months, Paulson and Bush and all of their minions pump trillions of dollars of “money” into these so-called “healthy” institutions in order to loosen the credit market so that, at least for the time being, things regain the appearance of a recovery. And an election takes place next month, and the DOW “rebounds” to about 10,400 give or take, and a few of the largest banks begin easing credit restrictions and reluctance to take on risk, and all seems to be moving in the direction of eventual better times. And yes, recession exists, and the economy is tight, and jobs are lost, but the new President goes on TV and tells the people that, while times are tough, we are a strong people, and we will recover. (Meanwhile Bush and Paulson and their minions have moved to a small island off of the coats of Costa Rica and hired Blackwater to protect them from the rest of the world.)

But soon thereafter, at some unknown moment in time, all of the fake money, the supposed assets and capital that the Bushies have pumped into the system---all of the trillions of dollars in guarantees promised by the countries of the EU to their financial institutions---all of these monies become exposed for what they really are---MORE DEBT. More lies, falsehoods, specters. Trillions of dollars THAT DO NOT IN FACT EXIST, loaned to banks and insurance companies and auto makers in “hopes” that they, somehow, will be able to make some money and build capital that, at this point, is simply a wraith in the night. But of course this plan fails. It must fail. It is just another layer of the grand ponzy scheme of the millennium, perpetrated on the people of the Earth by a handful of greed-mongering bastards and sons-of-bitches.

By way of metaphor, this situation is akin to building a tower on unsteady ground, and instead of deconstructing the tower and starting again, you simply make the tower taller and claim to the people that this truly is the most wonderous tower in the world, a monument to the strength and resolve of the people. But it must fall. The laws of physics demand it. And the same is true of our current economic joke.

And so I sit here and watch economist after economist, legislator after legislator, president after prime minister after finance minister, claim that the plan “will” work. And they are all lying.