Marcy tries to save the day and nobody listens
GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!

I turned on the TV, caught a glimpse of Kaptur giving a news conference along with Lloyd Doggett and a few other working-class Democrats. Kaptur was outlining a new way to solve the "crisis", and her diagnosis and prescriptions sounded exactly right ... but just as she was getting to the good part, the MSNBC anchor, looking bored, cut in and said "We're listening to Marcy Kaptur and several Democrats." ... then cut away to something else. I clicked to other news channels, but not even C-Span was carrying it. Obviously we're NOT listening to Kaptur, and we're not allowed to listen to Kaptur.

The division between the media and America has never been more clear. The media, and many Republicans including the girlyboys at National Bathhouse Online,

*D*O* *N*O*T* *W*A*N*T* *A* S*O*L*U*T*I*O*N.

They want Goldman Sachs to destroy the country and make off with the loot, and they won't be satisfied with anything less.

Why? I cannot even begin to imagine what strange alien synaptic zaps and "thought" "processes" might be occurring inside those cranial cavities. What's more, I don't want to try. Let filth be filth.

= = = = =

Later: C-Span did finally broadcast the entire conference, and it was worth it. Lord, how that woman can think, explain, and decide!

Tired question, but always valid: Why in the hell can't we have a politician of the Kaptur caliber as President? We are stuck with tenth-rate mental defectives and lunatics.
  ¶ 12:22 PM

  The broken circle
The current economic "crisis" and the current climate "crisis" are essentially identical in form.

In both cases the crisis-mongers completely misunderstand the basic idea that things go up and then down. They've apparently never noticed a circle, a wheel or a wave. They pin their entire soul and life on the perpetual increase of one kind of number.

Temperature must increase forever because it was increasing at one point. Share prices and house prices must increase forever because they were increasing at one point.

In both cases the crisis-mongers have fallen in love with computer models based on their blind pigheaded stupid linear assumption. Instead of looking at history to see what has actually happened before; instead of using common sense and logic; they put numbers into their models and trust the result.

And in both cases the crisis-mongers insist that we must destroy Western Civilization, steal its goodies, and put them into the hands of a few Jews who are already rich beyond the dreams of Midas.


An article in the latest New Superstitionist is especially instructive because the NS people are blind and pigheaded on global warming but fully logical and conscious of history on the stock market.

The crisis did not come without warning. Ten years ago a giant hedge fund called Long Term Capital Management collapsed when it suffered a liquidity crisis. Yet banks and regulators seem not to have heeded the lessons from this wake-up call by improving their predictive models.

Well, how about noticing the actual relationship between CO2 and temperature from earlier years? Nope, can't do that, have to stay blind.

How could so many smart people have got it so wrong? One reason is that their faith in their models' predictive powers led them to ignore what was happening in the real world. Finance offers enormous scope for dissembling: almost any failure can be explained .... When investors don't behave like the self-interested 'economic unit' that economists suppose them to be, they are described as 'irrationally exuberant'.

Look in the mirror, folks. Climate also offers enormous scope for lying. Any failure can be explained as a temporary aberration from the inevitable warming trend. Even when all rational observers can see that the warming trend stopped ten years ago, the crisis-mongers still insist that their models are correct, the warming still continues in some strange spiritual way, and an accidental event like a volcano or El Niño is momentarily counteracting the "real" warming.

That may be true, but it is dangerous to assume that the approximations are sound. Even small modeling deficiencies can have huge consequences.

Yes, like the 'hockey stick'.

Until we are clearer about this, it would be wise to proceed with caution. Banks should be careful not to assume that they have it right and the rest of the world has it wrong.

Et tu, Brute.

= = = = =

Later thought: There's another parallel between these two gigantic scams. Both of them seek completely false optimal values for their basic variables.

With global warming, the Gaia-worshipers insist that the optimal temperature is colder than the current global average, though they never answer the question "Which temperature is best?" They just want us to get colder. Trouble is, this runs against history. During the last two milennia, humans have been better off at the warmer times and worse off in the colder periods. When it's warmer, crops grow on a wider range of land, and grow better; and we need less fuel to keep us from freezing.

With the economic "crisis", the Goldman-worshipers insist that the optimal value of stocks is high, the optimal value for house prices is high, and the optimal value of interest is below zero. Trouble is, this runs against history, at least in America. When we had lower house prices, lower stock prices and higher interest, we were better off. More people could honestly afford houses, saving was encouraged, borrowing was discouraged, and stocks were bought mainly for dividends, which turned the eyes of businessmen toward serving the customer and making a real profit.

Labels: the broken circle

  ¶ 7:49 AM

  Well?
Some experts are saying the real problem is that banks are refusing to lend money to each other.

Well, if Shotgun Paulson really wanted to solve the problem, he could order banks to lend to each other. As Treas Sec, he does have authority over banks.

He does not have authority to stick up the whole damn country at gunpoint and hand the loot to his good buddies at Goldman Sachs.

If this explanation of the problem is correct, we know everything we need to know about this "crisis".

It's not a "crisis" at all, but only an opportunity for Shotgun Paulson to further enrich his already filthy rich criminal cohorts while destroying this unfortunate land.

= = = = =

Interesting verification of the total divorce between Wall Street and the American economy in a local TV news website. KREM opened up a comments section on the bailout vote. The votes were 118 against Shotgun Paulson, 13 with him. There were about 30 comments, of which only two wanted Shotgun Paulson's plan. Those two were clearly in the stock business, as shown by their use of technical terms like "waiting for the mkts to clear". One of them candidly admitted "This plan should be implemented so I can keep my job." Fair enough if you admit it!
  ¶ 8:22 PM

  Marcy for President
Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, who has been a reliable tribune of the working people for a long time, is absolutely volcanic today.

Marcy a week ago

Marcy today

Brava, brava, bravissima!

The 'Mama' line is similar to Polistra's comments about Pouty Panglosses.
  ¶ 2:38 PM

  Guts, by God!
Amazing. Astonishing. Unheard of.

The people win, the crybaby billionaires lose.

The House of Representatives, for the first time since 1996, has done its job and rejected the Great Nation Robbery!

Maybe there's hope for us after all.

= = = = =

Referring to my previous post, I think the comparison to the 1930's is meaningful now. This is the first time since the Depression that the government has acted FOR the people of the United States and AGAINST the criminals on Wall Street!
  ¶ 10:51 AM

  "Largest intervention since Depression"
All the news reports are describing the Great Nation Robbery as "the largest intervention since the Great Depression."

Most likely pure ignorance, but if not, it's an attempt to paint Bush in the same light as FDR, for reasons that I can't quite figure out! (The Left wouldn't want to sully FDR's name by associating with Bush, and the Right wouldn't want to sully Bush's name vice versa.)

Unfortunately it's just plain wrong. FDR didn't engage in large bailouts. He did use lots of Federal money to build dams, roads, buildings, and power plants, but that's not the same thing at all, and it's not an "intervention" by any normal definition.

The only bailouts I can find, using this PBS timeline:

May 1933: The Emergency Farm Mortgage Act allots $200 million for refinancing mortgages to help farmers facing foreclosure.

Jan 1935: The federal government forms a Drought Relief Service to coordinate relief activities. The DRS bought cattle in counties that were designated emergency areas, for $14 to $20 a head.

From another source, this totalled $108 million.

April 1935: FDR approves the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, which provides $525 million for drought relief

So FDR used $833 million for bailouts or buyouts, most of which went directly to poor people. Multiplying by 15 for inflation gives about $14 billion in today's dollars. Every bailout in the last few decades [Chrysler, Lockheed, S&L] has been larger, and the current Grand Theft Nation is 50 times as large.
  ¶ 8:59 PM

  Appropriate name
It appears that the Great Nation Robbery, now that it has been worked out in the form of legislation, has acquired the acronym EESA.

Uniquely appropriate, since this bit of suicidal idiocy follows the exact same philosophy as the plain ESA. In other words, it tries to break the laws of nature.

The regular Endangered Species Act tries to break the laws of nature by preventing a species from dying off. It never works and always creates great harm. Evolution is nothing more than the dying of species and the increase of other species, in each specific location. One species is fading out in this location because it's no longer making the best use of the available resources. When you try to keep this fading species alive, you're not doing it any favors; you're only preventing other species from taking its place and making better use of the resources. And at the same time you're stealing property from humans, which is the real reason for the ESA.

Same with this new Extreme Endangered Species Act. The giant reptile called Bankerosaurus Fraudulenti is dying off because he has eaten up all the available resources. If we were obeying the laws of economic nature, we would let B. Fraudulenti fade and die to leave more room for other critters, some of which may be more honest and less wildly all-consuming.

No, no, no, we can't do that. Must keep B. Fraudulenti alive, and must preserve every aspect of its weird habitat: dishonestly high house prices, forced low interest rates, impossibly high stock prices. And at the same time we must also steal property from honest people via the tax of inflation, since we'll never pay this monstrous amount in direct taxes.

We will reap what we sow. History will remember this pack of thieves and gangsters, and history will spit on their graves.

Soon, I pray.
  ¶ 7:21 PM

  Nobody's asking......
Cui bono?

The real economy has been gradually deteriorating for several years; you could trace it back to 1970, but it's been obvious for the last 15 or so. Our Communist masters have been sending our factories overseas and importing semi-slaves to replace Americans since 1990. False inflation numbers, price-controlled interest, and dependence on bubbles in place of production, all have been in place since the Clinton years.

Why, then, is it suddenly critical to steal the whole country RIGHT NOW? Why are the super-rich and their agents in DC pulling history's largest blackmail-theft combo RIGHT NOW?

Our Communist media are treating this as a natural event, predestined from the start of time. Even among the more paranoid (i.e. realistic) branches of the paleo-con blogworld, I don't see any curiosity about the timing.

I don't even hear the term "October Surprise" from the left-wing talking point heads. This was planned by a Republican administration, so we'd normally hear the brand-D parrots squawking "October Surprise" over and over. Instead, they are sharing the sense of urgency, the "emergency" need to make a few rich people even richer.

In metaphorical terms, our economic and cultural fabric has been unraveling for 30 years, but somebody decided to yank the string right now. Who will gain when the string is pulled?

I think it's Vladimir Putin, President Hiss's dear soulmate.

But that still doesn't answer the timing question.

Hypothesis: If you're going to force a complete divorce between normal Americans and both "parties", a complete and fully visible failure of the entire government, a total demoralizing of the nation, you'd want to do it just before an election, so there's no opportunity for a real third party to represent the people.
  ¶ 8:05 AM

  Ownership society
A commenter at Taki's blog has expressed in complete form a thought I'd been trying (without success) to pull together.

He's commenting on a Pat Buchanan piece which is accurate but not especially fresh. The third commenter, "Alphysicist", points out that the constant push toward home ownership for everyone, billed as a growth of liberty, has in fact led to a form of slavery. Alphysicist considers this imprisonment an intentional goal of recent US govts. I'm not sure it was all that purposeful, but it has unquestionably happened.

I also think that this whole thing had a political motivation, albeit different from what many libertarians think: the main motivation was to drive people into insecurity. The loans caused house prices to surge by many orders of magnitude, artificially inflated, so in the end nobody actually owns their houses, it’s the banks who own them (it is incorrect to claim that home-ownership increased). The subprime case is similar. The actual tenants could not have bought those houses, but perhaps middle class individuals (or small businesses) could have as an investment.

Aside from the economic centralization, the idea that no one really owns their own houses carries a feeling of insecurity with it. Not to mention that if everyone is worried about paying their mortgages, they are in a sense prisoners already. The US is not like the Soviet Union, they do not build Gulags (let’s hope), but the political elite has a lot of undue free space in which to manouver in the situation in which everyone is indebted.

This parallels my earlier comments about tenure: that it offers a pretense of freedom while actually pinning you down into inescapable loyalty.

With rental, or with piecework pay, you have no false sense of freedom, and you have a different sort of security. You know exactly what you're supposed to do, and you are part of a closed circle in which both sides have privileges and obligations. If you start to go wrong, the landlord or employer will try to pull you back into line until it's clearly impossible. If an employer or landlord goes wrong, he will have trouble gaining new tenants or workers. As long as both sides remain human and claim no special legal privileges, the contract works.

With these fraudulent new mortgages, the bank has all the fun. You're never going to finish purchasing the house, so you're not really gaining ownership; but the bank has no obligation to fix the roof or the plumbing, so you don't have the advantages of renting.
  ¶ 2:43 PM

  The old game?
Nordlinger at NRO commenting on last night's debate:

What’s depressing, to a person like me, is that Obama has mastered the trick of coming off as perfectly moderate — even when your career and thought have been very different. Listening to Obama last night, you would have taken him to be a Sam Nunn, David Boren type. No ACORN, no Ayers, no Wright, no community-organizin’ radicalism, no nothing. He certainly knows what it takes to appeal to people in a general election. Then, once he’s in — if he gets in — he will govern as far to the left as possible. ... That's the old game.

Must admit the mention of Boren is what caught my old Okie eyes. But there's a basic problem with the "old game". Nordlinger has it backwards, and in recent years there isn't a game at all.

Traditionally a brand-D candidate will campaign hard left and rule closer to the center, which is the opposite of Nordlinger's assumption. But look at the most recent D presidents, Carter and Clinton. Carter campaigned midline and tried to rule midline, though he was so totally incompetent that his intentions didn't matter much. Clinton campaigned like Boren and ruled like ... well, actually he ruled to the right of Reagan in domestic terms. No Republican president has ever turned back the welfare-state tide; in fact all R presidents allowed welfare to increase wildly. Clinton phased out welfare to the urban poor and also phased out subsidies to farmers. In other words, he did EXACTLY what he promised to do, and his promise was "conservative" by all normal definitions.

Nordlinger's rule, "Campaign to the center, rule to the left" does apply to recent Republican presidents, and it applies most dramatically to Sultan Bush, who began by imposing the largest new entitlement program since LBJ and following Commissar Teddy's lead on education. He then proceeded to outdo LBJ at every step, finishing off with this week's attempt to collapse the entire economy at once.

Bush's rule might be expressed as "Campaign like Pat Robertson, rule like Alger Hiss."
  ¶ 8:44 AM

  Odd.
Just noting this for reference.

The media on both sides have unquestionably decided that the Grand Theft Nation is the ONLY POSSIBLE PLAN, and unquestionably decided that we have a Total Crisis of All Money, regardless of facts to the contrary. The CNN article I mentioned below, while detailing the normal operation of most honest banks, was headlined "The credit crunch: Loans out of reach".

All of the Great Experts start from the assumption that Paulson's Grand Theft Nation is Holy Writ, the Gospel of Economics Handed Down By Moses; any slight departure from the Holy Theft, any alteration of the tiniest comma or semicolon, is UNTHINKABLE, HERETICAL, SATANIC, IT'S A WITCH! HELP, IT'S A WITCH! BURN IT! BURN IT! BURN IT!

Well, what's odd about this? Paulson's Grand Theft Nation is also Bush's plan.

In other words, the Great Experts, who automatically reject anything remotely connected to the word Republican, are automatically clinging to this Bush plan.

Whenever I see an apparent inconsistency, I search for consistency at a deeper level. Earlier I assumed the experts are paid accomplices, but maybe it's simpler and more personal. If the Great Experts are all living beyond their means, living on pure false credit based on layer upon layer upon layer of false numbers and false logic, the Paulson plan may well be their personal life-preserver.

= = = = =

Update 9/30: Dave Ramsey just verified the latter hypothesis. He mentioned on his radio program that he has been appearing on TV to oppose the Bush-Paulson plan. (He's certainly doing the Lord's work in those encounters!) He says tonight that the media types are in fact running scared on a personal level. They're living so far beyond their means that a return to honest business will destroy them.

Speaking of Ramsey, I really need to credit his philosophy for my own ability to look at this mess without fear. I was in serious debt ten years ago, and following the Ramsey principles helped me to reach my current "independently poor" position.
  ¶ 9:51 AM

  Comments on Bush's speech
And now we'll consult our panel of experts, who all seem to have a positive opinion of Sultan Bush's little speech.




= = = = = = = = =

But another expert has a refreshingly different opinion. Mike Huckabee, who should have been the brand-R candidate, writes a highly emotional and highly accurate letter to his supporters.

Frankly, I’m disappointed and disgusted with my own Republican party as I watch them attempt to strong-arm a bailout of some of America’s biggest corporations by asking the taxpayers to suck up the staggering results of the hubris, greed, and arrogance of those who sought to make a quick buck by throwing the dice. They lost, but want the rest of us to cover their bets so they won’t be effected in their lavish lifestyles as they figure out how to spend their tens of millions and in some cases, hundreds of millions in bonuses and compensation which was their reward for not only sinking their companies, but basically doing the same to the entire American economy.

It’s especially disconcerting to see the very people who pilloried me during the Presidential campaign for being a “populist” and not “understanding Wall Street” to now line up like thirsty dogs at the Washington, D. C. water dish, otherwise known as Congress, and plead for help. I thought these guys were the smartest people in America! I thought that taxpayers like you and I were similar to the people at the U. N. who have no translator speaking into their headset - that we just needed to trust those that I called the power bunch in the “Wall Street to Washington axis of power.”

Precisely.

Huck goes on to propose, instead of the bailout, a sort of "community service program" for the executives who begged to be bailed.

Demand that the executives who steered their ships into the ground be forced to pay back the losses of their companies. Of course, they can’t, so let them work and give back to the government and they can live like the people they put on the streets or kept there.

  ¶ 7:24 PM

  The Great Nation Robbery
Listening to CNN..... Allegedly the reason why we "urgently need" this 700 billion dollar theft is to "keep lending liquid", to "prevent a freeze on all borrowing". CNN (to its credit) mentions at the same time that even without the largest theft in history, lending is in fact NOT frozen, companies appear to be running.

Here are the facts, which the alleged "experts" can't or won't say:

WE ARE IN THIS MESS BECAUSE OF WILD UNCONTROLLED LENDING.

IF LENDING COOLS DOWN DRASTICALLY, THAT IS A GOOD THING.

Same with house prices. The biggest thieves in history, Shotgun Paulson and Bugsy Bernanke, are telling us that we need to keep house prices high.

WE ARE IN THIS MESS BECAUSE HOUSE PRICES WERE ARTIFICIALLY INFLATED.

IF HOUSE PRICES DROP TO MORE REALISTIC NUMBERS, THAT IS A GOOD THING.

And yet again, at the deepest level, with interest rates. The experts tell us that we need more liquidity in order to keep interest rates down.

WE ARE IN THIS MESS, ABOVE ALL, BECAUSE THE FED HAS PLACED PRICE CONTROLS ON INTEREST. WE ARE SEEING PRECISELY THE WELL-KNOWN AND CLASSIC RESULTS OF PRICE CONTROL: PANIC, SHORTAGE, MISALLOCATION.

IF INTEREST RATES RISE TO MORE REALISTIC NUMBERS, THERE WILL BE MORE CAPITAL AVAILABLE FOR NECESSARY BORROWING, AND THERE WILL BE MUCH LESS FRIVOLOUS BORROWING.

None of the great experts have managed to reach these grotesquely obvious conclusions, therefore either (1) the great experts are retarded dimwits or (2) the great experts are paid participants in the Great Nation Robbery. Since the great experts have shown considerable intelligence in other areas, the only valid conclusion is (2).

= = = = =

Update Friday morning: Interesting article on CNNmoney.com, verifying that we really don't have a crisis at all.

While the credit crisis has shaken Wall Street to its core, the thousands of community banks that make up the lion's share of the nation's banking system remain, to a large extent, quite secure. ...

Karla Wilbur, a senior vice-president at Passumpsic Savings Bank in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, said that an existing customer with a good credit standing and steady income who applies for a home equity loan could very well qualify for it.

She said the 11-branch bank, which serves towns along the Vermont-New Hampshire border, has ratcheted back on some of its non-core loan business -- such as buying loans from car dealerships or doing joint commercial loan deals with other banks.

But she added that the bank's consumer lending business hasn't been affected all that much following the panic that spread through the credit markets last week.

"It pretty much looks like it did a month ago or two months ago," said Wilbur. "Things haven't changed a lot."

In other words:

HONEST BANKS ARE STILL OPERATING HONESTLY.
HONEST PEOPLE CAN STILL GET LOANS BY HONEST STANDARDS.
CRIMINAL BANKS ARE FROZEN.

Isn't that EXACTLY how this situation should be resolved? Honest people are OK, criminals are in trouble. AND WE'RE ALREADY THERE, GODDAMNIT.

But that's obviously not what Sultan Bush, may he rot in hell SOON, wants. Nor is it what the Senators, may they rot in hell SOON, want. They want to steal the country and hand it over to their fellow gangsters. Or perhaps it's even more specific. They want to steal the country and hand it over to Goldman Sachs.

Labels: the broken circle

  ¶ 10:04 AM

  Total deregulators? Not hardly.
Leftist talking point heads like Maddow and Rhodes are calling Republicans the supreme deregulators. This is true but only half the story.

The real pattern: if a law hurts ordinary Americans, or hurts real American business, brand-R will impose the law and strengthen enforcement.

If a law harms foreigners or gets in the way of the super-rich "borderless" class of Americans, brand-R will revoke the law or refuse to enforce it.

Comrade Nixon began environmental regulations and affirmative action, and brand-R have carried on and strengthened both ever since. Both place burdens on small business and farmers, and give a comparative advantage to big corporations which already have armies of lawyers. Enviro-tyranny and diverso-tyranny also drive companies to outsource manufacturing in countries with less severe laws.

Comrade Bobdole wrote the ADA, which has imposed burdens on business and led to less employment of disabled folks.

MC McCain wrote regulations on political speech which made it harder for ordinary people to run for office and sway their representatives, and easier for the super-rich and foreign agents.

Tariffs and other trade restrictions are known to help real American business, so brand-R has removed them and given us NAFTA, CAFTA, etc. Immigration quotas help lower-skilled American workers, so R has refused to enforce them, giving a benefit to rich Americans and poor Mexicans.

Copyright law provides a nice all-in-one example. For most of the 20th century, American copyright law was well balanced, giving a limited period of protection to anyone who registered a copyright, and allowing the protection to lapse later on, so others could publish an interesting piece or use some elements from it.

Working through a corrupt filthy Republican puppet named Mary Bono, Walt Disney changed the law in 1998 to give perpetual protection to everything Walt Disney has ever produced. This also helped other major studios with armies of attorneys, but it was basically about Steamboat Willie.

The result for smaller artists and authors was disastrous. Anything done by the big boys was protected forever, and you had no way to determine in advance whether you were infringing on Walt. Worst of all, you had no way to determine whether you were infringing on some obscure long-dead composer or author who could not possibly send an army of lawyers after you. Result: If you were strictly honest and moral, you wouldn't create anything at all, because nearly every work of text or art uses some elements from older work.

It was a classic example of the NRA slogan: honest people were suppressed, and outlaws (largely based in China and Russia) went wild, copying and selling all sorts of digital media, making it extremely difficult for small artists to earn a living. You can try to send the outlaws a cease-and-desist letter, but they know you're not Walt, so they laugh in your face.

As usual with Republicans, the big boys and the foreigners get freedom and fortunes, and smaller American operators get Kafka.

Just a few months ago the new brand-D Congress passed a modified law, basically using Larry Lessig's thinking. The new "Orphan Works" law says that you must register a piece in a digitally accessible registry if you want protection. This eliminates the perpetual protection for pieces that are no longer truly "property", and gives honest people a sense of security.

= = = = =

9/25: A fresh example. The brand-D Congress has just now eliminated a welfare payment to cities and states here in the Northwest. Tracing the history: in 1907, Teddy Roosevelt nationalized much of the forest land, and he did it the right way. He insured that logging could still proceed in the national forests, and that the loggers would pay royalties to the Feds, which were then passed on to cities and states. Basically a capitalist arrangement.

As the GODDAMN EARTH GODDESS GAIA became our established religion, the Feds (under both parties) prohibited logging, thus guaranteeing huge deadly fires, losing jobs, and dropping the rental payments to localities. Four years ago the brand-R congress decided to do something about this. Did they deregulate? No, of course not. Mustn't sin against GODDAMN EARTH GODDESS GAIA. No, instead of deregulating they simply paid welfare to the localities. And now the brand-D congress has eliminated the welfare, still without restoring Teddy's balanced and effective system.
  ¶ 7:15 AM

  Pen

If you'll gather 'round me, children,
A story I will tell
'Bout Pretty Boy Floyd, an outlaw,
Oklahoma knew him well.

It was in the town of Shawnee,
A Saturday afternoon,
His wife beside him in his wagon
As into town they rode.

There a deputy sheriff approached him
In a manner rather rude,
Vulgar words of anger,
An' his wife she overheard.

Pretty Boy grabbed a log chain,
And the deputy grabbed his gun;
In the fight that followed
He laid that deputy down.

Then he took to the trees and timber
To live a life of shame;
Every crime in Oklahoma
Was added to his name.

But a many a starving farmer
The same old story told
How the outlaw paid their mortgage
And saved their little homes.

Others tell you 'bout a stranger
That come to beg a meal,
Underneath his napkin
Left a thousand dollar bill.

It was in Oklahoma City,
It was on a Christmas Day,
There was a whole car load of groceries
Come with a note to say:

Well, you say that I'm an outlaw,
You say that I'm a thief.
Here's a Christmas dinner
For the families on relief.

Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.

And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won't never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.

Old Woody had it right. He was, of course, romanticizing Pretty Boy, but the last two verses are precisely accurate.
  ¶ 2:14 PM

  What is Walker's game?
David Walker, former Comptroller, resigned in protest last year and has been crusading for ?????

He is a valid Cassandra for sure. He has been appearing on various shows, telling us about the dire situation of unfunded liabilities, and explaining the problem in a fairly comprehensible way.

But he doesn't seem to want anything done about these problems. When Beck asks him "What can we do?" his answer is always "Become informed. Ask tough questions. Hold your elected leaders accountable."

Those statements are as empty as a Credit Default Swap.

Ask tough questions? To whom? Even if you can get through the switchboard, it won't make any difference.

Hold them accountable? How? By electing the other "party", which will do exactly the same things as the first "party"?

He is not really asking Americans to do anything; he's only ginning up frustration.

I think Walker is really talking past our heads, serving someone else's agenda. I don't know who that someone might be, or what the real agenda might be, but it's certainly not action by Americans.
  ¶ 6:51 PM

  Taxes, etc
Couple of random observations.

1. I'd been wondering why so many of the potential third-party candidates, even those with considerable popular support (eg Ron Paul and Newt) decided not to run this time. It's clear now... the insiders undoubtedly knew this crash was coming, and didn't want to be anywhere near it politically.

2. The remaining two idiots can't think of anything to argue about except taxes. MC McCain continues to follow the standard Zero Zip Nada Taxes line, and Imam Obama also focuses on decreasing taxes.

This is ridiculous in many ways.

First, polls show that the federal income tax is not a top item on most people's list of problems. Property taxes and the SS tax are bigger burdens for all but the millionaires.

Second, if you want to talk about gov't burden on real business, you should be talking mainly about litigation, inflation and health care costs.

[The Dems have been talking about health care, but they're not making the best argument for it.]

Third, the Laffer Curve rests on a basic assumption which didn't need to be examined until now. Laffer assumes that economic growth can be increased. This assumption is simply untrue now, so Laffer is not a valid rule at this point. Everyone can see that growth is unavailable now. And most people can see that the numbers we've been calling "growth" were pure fantasy. These strange derivative transactions accounted for more than all of our apparent growth. More than all? Yes. The real parts of the economy have been shrinking for a while.
  ¶ 1:02 PM

  Clarity from Roach
Christopher Roach doesn't write every day, and doesn't always hit a bulls-eye, but when he does it's better and sharper than anyone else. In today's column on the economic collapse, he says:

Unfortunately, central banking and deficit spending have made our government to some extent hostage to a handful of private investment banks that trade in government debt. The “liquidity crisis” is also a crisis of the government’s ability to deficit spend. Conservatives should not necessarily renounce some repudiation of that debt, if such a repudiation punished the enablers of mass government spending. Bad credit for the government would be a good thing for the public, making expensive endeavors like the Iraq War, farm subsidies, and prescription drug benefits a thing of the past. Regulation should aim above all at stability, transparency, and buffering of the economy as a whole from the actions of a small circle of risk-preferring speculators.

  ¶ 12:08 PM

  Who's the socialist?
The brand-R talking point heads continually define FDR as a socialist who tried to nationalize everything and blew up the Constitution. The same brand-R talking point heads also describe Sultan Bush as a "conservative".

How did FDR handle the banking crisis in 1933? He closed all banks to stop the run, sent out inspectors to check solvency, and immediately re-opened the good banks with a federal guarantee behind them. The guarantee turned into FDIC.

Was this constitutional? Yes. The Federal gov't is given power "To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof..." Since the banking crisis was destroying the Value of Money, the gov't clearly had the authority to intervene.

How does Sultan Bush handle this banking crisis? He nationalizes the insolvent companies.

Now tell me again, who's the socialist?

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A side thought: We can't really have a "run on the banks" in the same way now. In 1932 and 1933 people quite rationally distrusted banks, and took out their money in physical form, preferring to keep it at home. But the available greenbacks weren't enough to sustain the amount of value in circulation, so various companies, banks, cities and states issued private currencies.

Nowadays very little money is in physical form, and very few people expect to carry around lots of green rectangles. If you withdraw your account from your bank, you get a check which isn't any good until you deposit it in another bank. So we may have a run on certain banks, but the result will be more money in other banks.

If large numbers of people demand physical money, the whole system would be in a different kind of trouble..... not just individual banks but the entire Treasury would run out. Nobody would have the imagination or the authority to issue private currencies; you can be sure the Secret Service would bring in the Delta Force if anyone tried it.
  ¶ 6:25 AM

  Yes, MC McCain, that's just what we need.
The Manchurian Candidate says this morning that we need a Blue Ribbon Commission to investigate the Wall Street mess, much like the Commission that "investigated" the intelligence failures around 9/11.

Yes indeed, MC my friend, that's exactly what we need. A Commission to insure that all genuine problems are forever hidden from sight, all genuine criminals are protected and promoted, a Commission to find a few suitable innocent dummies to fall on their swords. Another commission to insure that criminals and incompetents shall reign forever and ever and ever, driving us off the cliff even faster. I didn't think that was possible, but you're the expert in subversion, the master of collapse. I bow before your superior knowledge, Comrade McCain. Amen.

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Dropping the snide and turning deadly serious, here's what we really need. We need to abolish the stock exchanges, abolish the entire system of shareholding, prohibit fancy derivatives, and let companies be bought and sold only in one piece. It has been blazingly obvious since 1929 that the stock exchange serves only as an "occasion of sin", a place where fraud and con games are entirely too easy to perform, a place where primitive mob emotions can destroy a nation.

In the last few years, many big investors like state pension funds have already made this change. They have abandoned shares and brokers, instead buying companies outright and running them for a profit. This works better, as I noted here. When the motive of a company is directed solely toward making a profit, the company behaves well. When the goal is raising share prices, dishonesty abounds.

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In simple terms: Pleasing the customer is healthy. Pleasing the shareholder is unhealthy.
  ¶ 7:54 AM