As Aaron Sorkin deftly conveys the intimate exhilaration of wielding the primal power to bend one word around another until they catch fire and throw shadows on the moon chock-a-block with the terrifying feeling of being suddenly, randomly abandoned when our muses blow town for long spa weekends without leaving a forwarding address...you can absolutely tell that the writer didn't just jot this scene down on deadline.
No, this one was pulled straight out of someone's gut.
One minute the blank page is a stretch of warm beach on a spectacular day, scattered with libidinous liberal lasses and nuggets of gold the size of your fist.
The next minute it's ten thousand square miles of blighted, mirage-haunted wasteland where the only things that aren't uniformly gray are the whitened bones of a* long-dead conjunctions poking out of the sand.
In which Timmy Geithner goes with The Bard on “Meet the Press” to explain why financial crises suck:
The quality of meltdowns is not strained. It droppeth as the brutal rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice bonuses: It bonuses him that fucks up and him that unfucks the fuck up. Tis mightiest in the mightiest ...
And then laterals the ball over to the Book of Matthew to explain the same thing on “This Week…”
That ye may be the children of your Father which is in Wall Street: for he maketh his global financial collapse to smack down on the evil and on the good, and sendeth bail outs to the just and on the unjust.
As I have mentioned on many a previous occasion, one of the important reasons for keeping an eye on the mind-crushingly vile Sunday Mouse Circus is that it is (among other, awful, awful things) the launching pad for important trial balloons. It is the beachhead for the vocabulary and framing war for the week to come.
This being the case, one of the more entertaining side effects of having the same person banging away on Message Detail on multiple shows on the same day is that you can practically reverse engineer the briefing book that the White House locked them up in the basement and drilled them on for the previous 10 days.
And so, decompiling the appearance the verbiage deployed by the Treasury Secretary on both “Meet The Press” and “This Week…”, I give you:
Timmy Geithner -- By The Numbers.
The Problem
1. What are we in? A “crisis” (used on “This week…” 9 times)/ (used on “Meet The Press” 6 times)
2. What kind of crisis? A “credit” crisis (used on “This week…” 8 times)/ (used on “Meet The Press” 11 times)
3. Who is responsible? “Bank(s)” (used on “This week…” 20 times)/ (used on “Meet The Press” 21 times)
4. What did banks do? Took crazy-assed “risk” (used on “This week…” 20 times)/ (used on “Meet The Press” 24 times)
5. What is this risk causing? “Damage” (used on “This week…” 11 times)/ (used on “Meet The Press” 8 times)
6. What kind of damage?
a. “Brutal” (used on “This week…” 3 times)/ (used on “Meet The Press” 1 time)
b. “Catastrophic” (used on “This week…” 2 times) / (used on “Meet The Press” 1 time)
c. “Great” (used on “This week…” 6 times)/ (used on “Meet The Press” 9 times)
d. “Challenge(s)/(ing)" (used on “This week…” 4 times)/ (used on “Meet The Press” 2 times)
Hmmm. Well then, who very emphatically Isn’t Responsible for The Problem?
“Ed Liddy” because this all happened “before he became CEO of AIG” (used almost verbatim on both shows.)
So why can’t we just drag everyone except Ed Liddy into the streets and sell their organs for cash?
Because we “are a nation of laws” (used almost verbatim on both shows.)
And what Hallowed Institution is incapable of Fixing The Problem?
The fucking “market(s)” (used on “This week…” 9 times)/ (used on “Meet The Press” 21 times)
Shit, this sounds really bad.
There are “no good choices” (used almost verbatim on both shows.)
So if the Almighty banks and markets have failed us, and there no good choices…
1. Who can we turn to?
a. “Government(s)” (used on “This week…” 22 times)/ (used on “Meet The Press” 22 times)
and
b. “The Taxpayer” (used on “This week…” 9 times)/ (used on “Meet The Press” 10 times)
2. What will Government do? “Solve” stuff (used on “This week…” 4 times)/ (used on “Meet The Press” 2 times)
3. What words best describe how Government solves The Problem?
a. "Strong/strongly/strength" (used on “This week…” 29 times)/ (used on “Meet The Press” 11 times)
b. "Quick/quickly" (used on “This week…” 11 times)/ (used on “Meet The Press” 5 times)
c. "Aggressive" (used on “This week…” 4 times)/ (used on “Meet The Press” 2 times)
4. And what happens after Government quickly, strongly and aggressive solves The Problem? “Recover(y)” Yay! (used on “This week…” 7 times)/ (used on “Meet The Press” 7 times)
Sprinkle in impressive, tripartite phrases like "Terrifically talented professionals" and "smart, thoughtful, credible", bake under stuio lights at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, and presto; a giant shit sandwich becomes "Manwich Heart-Healthy Recovery Burgers".
President Barack Obama was clear, calm, competent.
And yet there was not a TelePrompter in sight.
Which can only mean....that the Secret Atheist Science Laboratories of the Liberal/Socialist/Marxist Occupation Government have obviously developed a practical telepathic technology capable of beaming powerful Communist key-words and phrases directly into Barack Obama's mind!
Who then smoothly repeats them back out-loud, just like Tony Rezko and Bill Ayers trained him to do!
Damn them!
Back on “Meet the Press”David Gregory continues his man-crush tickle-fight with his Surrogate Daddy Heroes of the Right by having a little game of softball with John McCain while McCain lies about the Republican Party's level of "cooperation" .
McCain: Neither side is playing nice. Everything is a party line vote. There haven’t been any negotiations. Never sat across the table. Never offered to include any of our goofy, discredited crap in their bills. We proposed an alternative to the spending package (tax cuts for rich people.) We had an alternative to the omnibus bill (more tax cuts for rich people.)
McCain stops and weeps manfully into his hanky.
Gregory: You said that “The fundamentals of the economy are strong” and were criticized for being out of it. Now the President has used the words “fundamentals” and “strong” in the same sentence. Doesn’t that mean he’s a lying stinky pants?
Not a single, meaningful follow-up. Not a single tough question. Not a single question outside of McSame’s comfort zone. Instead, Gregory followed his by-now-familiar style of handing McCain a stick, asking him where he would most like to beat on Democrats, and then rolling over on his back and making
little tribble sounds.
Shit, at least Russert would occasionally arch an eyebrow ominously when he handjobbed Republicans.
On “Fox News Sunday” Rupert Murdoch’s Flying Circus continues throwing everything against the wall in its increasingly frantic search to find a sustainable, renewable excuse to hate Liberals.
Chris Wallace: Doesn’t Barack Obama suck?
Robert Gates: No.
Chris Wallace: Then why won’t he commit enough troops to succeed in Afghanistan like George The Great did is Iraq so that The Surge could succeed so awesomely?
driftglass: Of course The Surge failed.
But at Fox, the work of shredding the past, rewriting history and rehabilitating the Glorious Accomplishments of the Dear Leader is never done.
Chris Wallace then got very concerned that North Korea will shoot a missile at Sarah Palin’s house, which would compromised our Early Putin Head Warning System.
Or something.
This concern stems mainly from a calculated attempt to pandering to the typical Fox viewer’s war-porn
level of comprehension of the threat North Korea poses.
Wallace: But they're giant, mankilling insects! That can shoot our space armada out of orbit with ballistic missiles fired out of their butts! With pinpoint accuracy! And you’re not going to do anything about that?
Gates: No.
Wallace: But…but…
Gates: But what, bitch?
Wallace: Well then, what about the other marauding hordes? What about Mexico?
Gates: Last time I checked it was still there.
Wallace: Well...well...then about Teh Gay in Teh Army? Didn’t Barack Obama say one of his top priorities was to further ruin the military by letting queers mess everything up?
Gates: We’ll get right on that after we clean up that Kilimanjaro of steaming failure President Stupid left behind.
Wallace: Barack Obama won’t use the Fox-approved phrase “Global War On Terrorism”. Instead he refers to the “Campaign against extremism”. Does this mean he’s filthy turncoat Socialist liar?
Gates: I know your father. He told me every night he cries himself to sleep from the shame of having whelped a bestial little turd like you.
And back on the “This Week”, George Will opines that discussion of the budget/bailout stuff proves that like Orwell said in “1984”; that "He who controls the past, controls the future." Which is why we’re still having this debate over the real meaning of the Great Depression.
After which Paul Krugman hit him in the face with a snow shovel.
March 25, 2009 Op-Ed Contributor Dear A.I.G., I Quit!
The following is a letter sent on Tuesday by Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president of the American International Group’s financial products unit, to Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G.
DEAR Mr. Liddy,
It is with deep regret that I submit my notice of resignation from A.I.G. Financial Products. I hope you take the time to read this entire letter. Before describing the details of my decision, I want to offer some context:
I am proud of everything I have done for the commodity and equity divisions of A.I.G.-F.P. I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G. Nor were more than a handful of the 400 current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. Most of those responsible have left the company and have conspicuously escaped the public outrage.
After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself.
I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to A.I.G. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.
You and I have never met or spoken to each other, so I’d like to tell you about myself. I was raised by schoolteachers working multiple jobs in a world of closing steel mills. My hard work earned me acceptance to M.I.T., and the institute’s generous financial aid enabled me to attend. I had fulfilled my American dream.
I started at this company in 1998 as an equity trader, became the head of equity and commodity trading and, a couple of years before A.I.G.’s meltdown last September, was named the head of business development for commodities. Over this period the equity and commodity units were consistently profitable — in most years generating net profits of well over $100 million. Most recently, during the dismantling of A.I.G.-F.P., I was an integral player in the pending sale of its well-regarded commodity index business to UBS. As you know, business unit sales like this are crucial to A.I.G.’s effort to repay the American taxpayer.
The profitability of the businesses with which I was associated clearly supported my compensation. I never received any pay resulting from the credit default swaps that are now losing so much money. I did, however, like many others here, lose a significant portion of my life savings in the form of deferred compensation invested in the capital of A.I.G.-F.P. because of those losses. In this way I have personally suffered from this controversial activity — directly as well as indirectly with the rest of the taxpayers.
I have the utmost respect for the civic duty that you are now performing at A.I.G. You are as blameless for these credit default swap losses as I am. You answered your country’s call and you are taking a tremendous beating for it.
But you also are aware that most of the employees of your financial products unit had nothing to do with the large losses. And I am disappointed and frustrated over your lack of support for us. ...
I genuinely feel for Mr. DeSantis, but I also have to wonder from what solar system he originally hails that he has come to this moment in history so deaf to the tone and tenor of our country and our times.
Or was he perhaps raised in captivity in the Context-Oblivious wing of some life-sized Habitrail cultural petting zoo, shielded from the unhappy knowledge that millions of people in this country are worked like rented mules by carnivorous employers every day for wages that wouldn't cover the interest on his bonus. Unaware that year in and year out, boom or bust, in every season since forever and through no fault of their own, tens of thousands of the working poor -- who toil at incredibly hard jobs for shitty pay -- are summarily kicked to the curb without a second thought because their employers made bad decisions, or got unlucky, or could get someone cheaper, or wanted someone prettier or younger or more sexually compliant, or just didn't like the way they parted their hair that day.
And now, thanks in no small measure to the incompetence, greed and predations of companies like AIG, every day they are joined in the unemployment line by their blue- and white-collar brother and sisters. 2.6 million in 2008 and growing; the worst anyone has seen since WWII.
Well whatever the reason, let me welcome you to Earth, Mr. DeSantis!
The charter of our little League of Unfairly Unemployed Gentlemen (and Gentlewomen) is apparently unknown to you, so as a part of your new-member orientation, we ask that you buy yourself a case of beer and spend a long weekend familiarizing yourself with some of our organization’s history and philosophy by listening to virtually every fucking song ever done by Bob Seeger,
Bob Dylan Pete Seeger Bruce Springsteen Johnny Cash Aretha Franklin Dire Straights Crosby, Stills & Nash Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young The Pretenders Eurythmics Pink Floyd Marvin Gaye John Lennon The Rolling Stones Ray Charles Elvis Costello Frank Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention Bruce Cockburn Jimmy Reed Queen Tom Waits CCR and several thousand others.
Or, in the words of Drew Carey:
“Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar.”
I'll give you a hint: it isn’t in Sullivan’s forensic analysis of the crimes of the Bush Regime, but elsewhere.
See if you can spot it.
The Brutal Truth
…
My sense is that it is a delayed reaction in some ways to Bush, and his betrayal of conservatism. For all sorts of reasons, most of the current tea-partiers backed the GOP under Bush and Cheney, although some, to be fair, did complain about some of it. The pent-up frustrations behind conservatism's collapse under Republicans were trumped, however, by the fruits of power, partisan hatred of "the left", defensiveness over the Iraq war and torture, and, above all religious devotion to the Leader. Now that Bush has been removed, the massive damage done, and a pragmatic liberal is trying to sort out the mess in a sane, orderly fashion, they've gone nuts.
Think of someone like Glenn Beck.
He sat back and watched Bush preside over the worst domestic attack in US history, explode the entitlement state, engage in unending projects of nation-building in two of the most dysfunctional countries on earth, rip up the Constitution, and bequeath as his legacy a trillion dollar deficit, unprecedented domestic discretionary spending, a banking collapse and the worst recession in many many years. The right will take some time to absorb this but Bush was Carter II - with two full terms. All that rage at what has actually happened - bottled up by rank partisanship for years - has come bounding out. Hence the bizarre spectacle of a president just two months on the job being treated on the right as if he's already Robert Mugabe. Throw in a little racial and cultural panic, add a world of genuine economic pain ... and you have the Malkin surge.
Did you find it?
You see, Andrew Sullivan -- like so many expat Conservatives -- lives in his own weird little hand-wrought doctrinal prison, which is made out of threads of clear-eyed honesty thatched loosely together with some horseshit about the nature of the Conservative Movement that is so jaw-droppingly dishonest it poisons everything else he writes.
So on the one hand, he is quite capable of writing about Bush and Cheney and their brain-dead acolytes with a righteous anger that borders on the Dirty Hippy. Hell yes, they’re a horde of zombie howler monkeys that can be twitched into and apoplectic, galvanic rage by the simple application of certain key words on AM radio! And fuck yeah, they’re ugly and their mama’s dress ‘em funny!
But on the other hand, in post after post after post, Sullivan also writes with a creepily fetishistic monomania about his hands-down favorite topic: the Glorious Conservatism That Never Was. His Imaginary Movement that was somehow pure and noble until it was murdered in an eight year Republican death march through the swamps of George Bush's bellicose halfwit frat-rat Oedipal Complex and Dick Cheney's depraved obsession with torture and tyranny.
Bush, for Sullivan, is always, always, always where the story begins and ends:
“Now that Bush has been removed, the massive damage done, and a pragmatic liberal is trying to sort out the mess in a sane, orderly fashion, they've gone nuts.”
Except, of course, in order to posit his self-serving piffle, Sullivan has to rather flagrantly ignore a period in time we here on the Left refer to as “The Fucking 1990s”.
Sullivan conveniently forgets that the slavering Limbaugh-led orcs on the Right who now treat Barack Obama "as if he's already Robert Mugabe" even though he has "just two months on the job"are the very same slavering, Limbaugh-led orcs who spent the eight years before Bush/Cheney treating another pragmatic, center-left Republican-lite President as History’s Greatest Monster.
The very same Limbaugh-led orcs who, long before George W. Bush ever took the oath of office, were tirelessly tearing around the United States in loud, hysterical circles ranting about the imaginary Liberals who were trying to destroy America, spending tens of millions of dollars hunting Bill Clinton like an animal and finally impeaching him over trivia.
In fact, the Right was arguably at their happiest and most politically fecund during that Inconvenient Decade that Andrew Sullivan’s Fantasy League Conservatism demands be disappeared into history’s cornfield.
In the 1990s, the Right had their goofball militia movements and “black helicopter” psychosis to get their little hearts started every morning. During the day they could lap up Rush Limbaugh’s every drooling, fascist lie and exhortation while it was still piping hot and fanatical, and not gone 15 years moldy and stale from rote, drug-addled repetition. At night they could mumble themselves to sleep with wingnut fairy tales about the “murder” of Vince Foster. And on the weekends, for some good, old-fashioned, anti-Gummint family entertainment, could blow up the occasional abortion clinic or federal building.
Good times!
But during Sullivan’s Omitted Decade, the real, toxic pathology of the Right’s absolute junkie-like addiction to hatred was never more vividly on display than when they were getting their amped-out-of-their-skulls ecstatic rage on about Bill Clinton.
Clinton, who went out of his way to sell out the ideals of the Left at every turn in order to give the people who loathed him more than anyone else on Earth virtually everything they wanted.
Clinton, who tried to appease the wingnuts with gifts like NAFTA, GATT, the Defense of Marriage Act, Welfare Reform, V-Chips, school uniforms, a balanced budget, surpluses, a booming economy...all wrapped up in a big, yellow bi-partisan bow.
Clinton, who actually caught and convicted the terrorists that attacked us, and actually won a war.
Clinton, who was rewarded for his pathetic willingness to trade away Liberal values for Conservative approval by seven years of relentless, ferocious and historically unprecedented partisan Conservative investigations, smears and attacks, which finally culminated in his impeachment. For fucking trivia.
Of course this all transpired between 1992 and 2000. Which means that, according to Andrew Sullivan’s ideological chronometer, none of it ever really happened.
"We cannot attract and retain the best and brightest talent to lead and staff the AIG businesses ... if employees believe that their compensation is subject to continued arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury."
"They [Native Americans] didn’t have any rights to the land, and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using . . . . What was it that they were fighting for, when they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their ‘right’ to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, but just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or a few caves above it. Any white person who brings the element of civilization has the right to take over this continent."
-- Wingnut Oligarch Bitch Goddess Ayd Rand, during the Q&A after her address to West Point, 1974
This being the case, I believe according to the Bush Doctrine only one course of action remains open to us.
Regime change, baby! *
For ten years, the regime in Wall Street has been using evasion and deception to stockpile some of the mankind’s deadliest financial instruments to use against the taxpayers of the United States and our economic allies around the world. Regime scientists and secret business units have worked around the clock to produce warehouses of toxic mortgages. Secret caches of Collateralized Debt Obligations.Credit default swaps so lethal one teaspoon-full can kill an entire lending institution.
During all of that time, our attempts at diplomacy have been used as a ploy to gain time and advantage.
My fellow citizens, events on Wall Street have now reached the final days of decision.
Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Wall Street regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal financial instruments ever devised. The regime has a history of reckless, destructive behavior in the region. It has a deep hatred of America and our friends and its B-schools and internship programs have aided, trained and harbored some of the most notorious economic terrorists in the world.
The danger is clear.
The United States and other nations did nothing to deserve or invite this threat, but we will do everything to defeat it. Instead of drifting along toward tragedy, we will set a course toward safety.
Before the day of horror can come, before it is too late to act, this danger will be removed.
Following the events of the last few weeks, no one can possibly claim that the financial system has reformed. And it will not reform so long as the Wall Street regime holds power.
Well, all the decades of destruction and cruelty have now reached an end. Wall Street powerbrokers, their vice presidents and directors must resign and leave the within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict commenced at a time of our choosing.
For their own safety, all foreign nationals, including journalists, tourists, and Russian mobsters should leave Wall Street immediately.
Many New Yorkers can hear me tonight in a translated radio broadcast, and I have a message for them: If we must begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the lawless men who rule your financial district and not against you.
As our coalition takes away their power, we will deliver the food and medicine you need. We will tear down the apparatus of terror and we will help you to build a new Wall Street that is prosperous and free.
In free Wall Street there will be no more wars of economic aggression against your neighbors, no more greasy little turds who made a billion fucking old ladies out of their pensions getting all the best seats at Sushi Yasuda. No more wildly overpaid momsers driving the price of top-shelf hookers into the stratosphere. No more shitty Hollywood vanity project movies bankrolled by Goldman Sachs douchebags.
The tyrants will soon be gone. The day of your liberation is near.
It is too late for the Wall Street regime to remain in power. It is not too late for the Wall Street assistants and cubicle farm drones to act with honor and protect your offices, by permitting the peaceful entry of coalition forces to eliminate toxic assets. Our forces will give you clear instructions on actions you can take to avoid being attack and destroyed.
I urge every member of the hourly-wage-class: If war comes, do not fight for a dying regime that is not worth your own life.
Should the Wall Street regime choose confrontation, the American people can know that every measure has been taken to avoid war and every measure will be taken to win it.
Americans understand the costs of conflict because we have paid them in the past. War has no certainty except the certainty of sacrifice.
Yet the only way to reduce the harm and duration of war is to apply the full force and might of our military, and we are prepared to do so.
If the Wall Street regime attempts to cling to power, they will remain a deadly foe until the end.
In desperation, they and their elite “Retention Bonus Guard” might try to fuck over the American people even further, and this very fact underscores the reason we cannot live under the threat of blackmail. The economic threat to America and the world will be diminished the moment that the Wall Street regime is smashed.
In this century, when evil men plot economic terror, a policy of appeasement could bring destruction of a kind never before seen on this earth. Such people do not reveal these threats with fair notice in formal declarations, and as such the security of the world requires decisively defeating Wall Street now.
As we enforce the just demands of the world, we will also honor the deepest commitments of our country. Unlike the Wall Street regime, we believe New Yorkers are deserving and capable of human liberty, and when the tyrants have departed, they can set an example to all the financial capitals of the world of a vital and peaceful and self-governing nation.
Free nations have a duty to defend our people by uniting against depraved oligarchs who clearly don’t give a shit about anyone or anything but their personal wealth and power and who have done such damage to our world economic system already, and, tonight, as we have done before, America and our allies accept that responsibility.
Good night, and may God continue to bless America.
*(This post made with 85% recycled material taken directly from the Dear Leader’s 2003 Reichstag Addresspre-Iraqi invasion speech.)
Because you need to be bribed with yummy, little snips from the article into reading the whole thing?
Well, OK, you big baby.
The latest bailout came as AIG admitted to having just posted the largest quarterly loss in American corporate history — some $61.7 billion. In the final three months of last year, the company lost more than $27 million every hour. That's $465,000 a minute, a yearly income for a median American household every six seconds, roughly $7,750 a second. And all this happened at the end of eight straight years that America devoted to frantically chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat to no avail, eight years spent stopping every citizen at every airport to search every purse, bag, crotch and briefcase for juice boxes and explosive tubes of toothpaste. Yet in the end, our government had no mechanism for searching the balance sheets of companies that held life-or-death power over our society and was unable to spot holes in the national economy the size of Libya (whose entire GDP last year was smaller than AIG's 2008 losses).
So it's time to admit it: We're fools, protagonists in a kind of gruesome comedy about the marriage of greed and stupidity. And the worst part about it is that we're still in denial — we still think this is some kind of unfortunate accident, not something that was created by the group of psychopaths on Wall Street whom we allowed to gang-rape the American Dream.
...
Liddy made AIG sound like an orphan begging in a soup line, hungry and sick from being left out in someone else's financial weather. He conveniently forgot to mention that AIG had spent more than a decade systematically scheming to evade U.S. and international regulators, or that one of the causes of its "pneumonia" was making colossal, world-sinking $500 billion bets with money it didn't have, in a toxic and completely unregulated derivatives market ...
The best way to understand the financial crisis is to understand the meltdown at AIG. AIG is what happens when short, bald managers of otherwise boring financial bureaucracies start seeing Brad Pitt in the mirror. This is a company that built a giant fortune across more than a century by betting on safety-conscious policyholders — people who wear seat belts and build houses on high ground — and then blew it all in a year or two by turning their entire balance sheet over to a guy who acted like making huge bets with other people's money would make his dick bigger. ...
Cassano's outrageous gamble wouldn't have been possible had he not had the good fortune to take over AIGFP just as Sen. Phil Gramm — a grinning, laissez-faire ideologue from Texas — had finished engineering the most dramatic deregulation of the financial industry since Emperor Hien Tsung invented paper money in 806 A.D. ...
By the fall of 2007, it was evident that AIGFP's portfolio had turned poisonous, but like every good Wall Street huckster, Cassano schemed to keep his insane, Earth-swallowing gamble hidden from public view. That August, balls bulging, he announced to investors on a conference call that "it is hard for us, without being flippant, to even see a scenario within any kind of realm of reason that would see us losing $1 in any of those transactions." ...
By making an already too-complex economy even more complex, Wall Street has used the crisis to effect a historic, revolutionary change in our political system — transforming a democracy into a two-tiered state, one with plugged-in financial bureaucrats above and clueless customers below. ...
Investigation is not enough. Discovery is not enough. Plopping the raw data on the table like a tangle of wet laundry in not enough.
Maybe it should be, but it isn't.
Because normal humans don't process or remember hexadecimal core dumps and are not moved to action by miles of spreadsheets full of tiny numbers. Because as imperative as the "finding out" part is, the wilder and more byzantine the bare facts of the disaster turn out to be, the more the "explaining it" part demands the skills of a master storyteller to shade, shape and contextualize.
We need our gonzo griots because the best of them are gifted enough to walk into the fire and retrieve both the flight data recorder that explains what wrecked of our American dream, and the charred baby shoes that show us why we should care.
Multibillion-dollar global behemoth whines that tiny basic-cable, joke-telling-guy “is picking on me!”
Vows to run home; tell mommy.
Since that golden day 52 years ago when Margaret Dumont and Gale Gordon got drunk and ran over six clowns with a seltzer truck, comedians have wondered: “Will such a happy collision of comic opportunity ever come again?"
NBC boss: Jon Stewart's criticism absurd, unfair By Paul Thomasch
NEW YORK (Reuters) – NBC Universal Chief Executive Jeff Zucker fired back at comedian Jon Stewart on Wednesday, saying it was "unfair" and "absurd" for the funnyman to criticize CNBC and question its coverage of financial news.
"Everybody wants to find a scapegoat. That's human nature," Zucker said during a keynote address at a media industry conference. "But to suggest that the business media or CNBC was responsible for what is going on now is absurd."
"Just because someone who mocks authority says something doesn't make it so," Zucker said, describing the comedian's comments as "completely out of line."
Zucker's comments are the latest salvo in a war of words with Stewart, who hosts the mock news program "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" on the Comedy Central cable television network owned by Viacom Inc.
Stewart has blasted CNBC's reporting of the financial market meltdown, saying the channel was too cozy with corporate chiefs and key government officials.
The comedian has lobbed particularly harsh criticism at CNBC commentator Jim Cramer, and last week invited him for an appearance on the comedy show, where he hammered the guest for his coverage of Wall Street. …
Because everyone knows nothing shuts down a whip-smart, knives-out comic faster and puts him in his place more terminally than a rich, corporate douchebag wagging a jewel-encrusted finger in his face and bleating about how unfaaaaair he’s being.
OK, Mr. Zucker, since you appear to be almost preternaturally unable to grasp what is happening right in front of you, let me explain.
When people like you, Mr. Zucker, chose to put on a freak show of CEO-handjobbing puffery and WWF rants instead genuine financial news because people like loud, shiny things...when you chose to slingshot Broderism-hind-teat-hustlebuck-runtlings like David Gregory into positions of extraordinary media prominence and influence instead of real reporters...you helped create a massive, suffocating vacuum where “journalism” used to be.
And the thinking public will not abide such a vacuum.
You, teevee giant Jeff Zucker, are the one who helped created a media so overtly bent, profit-obsessed and nakedly corrupt that, in the end, millions and millions of us no longer trust anything it tells us. It has been too horribly wrong too often. It has compromised with monsters and appeased destroyers too often. It has excused its own gluttony and cowardice and mind-numbing incompetence with self-serving, self-pitying twaddle about “balance” and “objectivity” too often. It has willingly sold us out to the rich and powerful far, far too often.
You, Mr. Zucker, are the one who abdicated his responsibilities and helped make a world where just about the only one we even halfway believe won't bullshit us along until he can knife us in the back is a joke writer from New Jersey.
You dropped the scepter, Mr. Zucker: all Stewart did was pick it up and use it to smack around a few of your more obnoxious, over-paid dancing bears.
TARP Corps. Owe More Than $220M in Back Taxes Rep. Lewis Calls Delinquent Taxes 'Shameful' By MATT JAFFE
March 19, 2009—
At least 13 companies who have received some of the $300 billion in TARP funds owe hundreds of millions of dollars in back taxes, it was revealed today.
Two of the companies owe more than $100 million in taxes, said Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight.
Altogether, the 13 companies owed the government more than $220 million in unpaid taxes, he said.
"This is shameful. It is a disgrace," Lewis said at the beginning of a hearing into how the TARP money is being spent.
Lewis' committee discovered the unpaid taxes in a review of tax records from 23 of the firms receiving the most money, Lewis said.
"If we looked at all 470 recipients, how much would they owe?" Lewis asked.
He didn't identify the companies or indicate how much TARP money they have received. But some of the corporations that have received the largest chunks of TARP cash include AIG, Bank of America, Citigroup, General Motors and Chrysler. ...
...to help foot a tiny fraction of the cost to rebuild the global economy their wizardry destroyed.
A Huffpo insider, speaking on condition of anonymity, today unveiled "Outragemond": the first of several new, proprietary, "breakthroughs in synergistic online font conveyance technologies" that the media giant promises will deliver both "total paradigm-shifting qualityness" and "the latest in robustly fourth-quadrant thinking".
How is such wonderfulness possible?
"Thanks to Arianna's pioneering, 'Don't Pay For Anything' business model, the trend leaders at HuffPo have finally amassed sufficient capital to fully fund fifth generation font and layout research into the previously purely-theoretical realm of the Fontal Quantum Unit, or the “FoQu-U” as it is known in the popular literature.
“This investment will allow The Huffington Post to maintain its leadership position in the hotly contested 'Ripping Off Other People's Stuff' Aggregator market."
Is the admittedly-awesome 'Outragemond' the only fruit of the Huffington Post’s socially-responsible labors?
“Oh my no; 'Outragemond' is only the first step, dahling" the spokesperson hinted wryly. "You can look forward to the day in the not-too-distant when...
...your hourly Octomom Update is presented in a scientifically precise shaming shade of FoQu-U Biondi Moral Scoldface.
A.I.G. Planning $100 Million in Bonuses After Huge Bailout By EDMUND L. ANDREWS and PETER BAKER
WASHINGTON — Despite being bailed out with more than $170 billion from the Treasury and Federal Reserve, the American International Group is preparing to pay about $100 million in bonuses to executives in the same business unit that brought the company to the brink of collapse last year.
An official in the Obama administration said Saturday that Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner had called A.I.G.’s government-appointed chairman, Edward M. Liddy, on Wednesday and asked that the company renegotiate the bonuses.
Administration officials said they had managed to reduce some of the bonuses but had allowed most of them to go forward after the company’s chief executive said A.I.G. was contractually obligated to pay them.
… “We cannot attract and retain the best and the brightest talent to lead and staff the A.I.G. businesses — which are now being operated principally on behalf of American taxpayers — if employees believe their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury,” [Liddy] wrote Mr. Geithner. The government owns nearly 80 percent of the company. ...
Let’s be clear; AIG made its money gambling. For all the finance doubletalk Nutella the boys in the $10,000 suits have schmeared over every surface of this shit sammich, anyone who got rich at AIG over the last 10 years made their dough covering other people’s bets that a bunch of Capitalism’s Biggest Crack Houses -- about whose internal health AIG apparently neither knew nor cared -- wouldn’t go “Boom!”
Then they all went “Boom!”
And now, like any other gambler, AIG has to pay up or go down hard.
Unlike any other gambler, our government says that AIG gets to pick our pockets to make good on its bad bets, because if we don’t go good for these reckless fucknozzles horrendous mistakes, the global economic hard drive will crash and dump us all into the middle of the 11th Century in our underpants.
Or something.
Which may be a mile-high pile of happy horseshit, or may be just hard fiscal truth; I don’t know enough to judge.
What I do know is that we have been lied too, used, fucked over, rolled over, rinsed and repeated over and over again by this same species of clowns enough already.
So on the one hand, maybe the people who flew the world financial system into a mountain really are holding some Special Genius Monetary Powers in reserve that will save us all, but that for some reason they have clearly not bothered to use so far.
Or maybe they’re just holding the last 100 lbs of Majyk Fiscal Pixie Dust hostage in the basement of AIG.
And either way, maybe there really is no way to persuade these Radical Reaganomic Jihadists -- the children with those Armani "Best and Brightest AIG Talent" explosive vests strapped to their chests -- to help extinguish the planetary economic conflagration they fucking well helped ignite other than to give into their demands and pay out millions and millions and millions of dollars in ransom.
That's on the one hand.
On the other hand, maybe there is another way.
Maybe we’re coming at this from exactly the wrong direction.
Maybe it's time for a little of that "shared sacrifice" we've been hearing so much about to be vigorously shared up the food chain instead of just down.
And maybe one of America’s oldest and most profitable temples of raw, unfettered capitalism already figured out long ago the most effective way of dealing with deadbeat gamblers
Yet another Capitalist Superman trifled with by petty, defective humans.
In these final, decadent moments of the Socialist States of American -- before its inevitable collapse and the Great Purge of moochers and collectivists that will follow -- it seems like every day the media reports another, outrageous story of some noble wealth-creator bedeviled into meek submission by the whining, loser welfare mobsters.
Wake up, Free Marketeers, before they come for you!
With Nine Mouths to Feed, Travis Henry Says He’s Broke By MIKE TIERNEY
ATLANTA — Travis Henry was rattling off his children’s ages, which range from 3 to 11. He paused and took a breath before finishing.
This was no simple task. Henry, 30, a former N.F.L. running back who played for three teams from 2001 to 2007, has nine children — each by a different mother, some born as closely as a few months apart.
Reports of Henry’s prolific procreating, generated by child-support disputes, have highlighted how futile the N.F.L.’s attempts can be at educating its players about making wise choices. The disputes have even eclipsed the attention he received after he was indicted on charges of cocaine trafficking.
“They’ve got my blood; I’ve got to deal with it,” Henry said of fiscal responsibilities to his children. He spoke by telephone from his Denver residence, where he was under house arrest until recently for the drug matter. ...
Three days after the telephone interview, he was jailed for falling $16,600 behind on support for a youngster in Frostproof, Fla., his hometown.
“I love all my kids,” he said in the interview, but asserted he could not afford the designated amounts, estimated at $170,000 a year by Randy Kessler, his Atlanta lawyer. Kessler said Henry was virtually broke.
“I’ve lost everything in this mess I’ve gotten myself into,” Henry said.
His eldest child was conceived while Henry was in high school, before he was named Mr. Florida Football and a Parade All-American. The child was unplanned as were all but one of his offspring, he said.
“I’m like, ‘Whoa, I’m going to be a dad,’ ” Henry recalled. ...
Two relationships while he attended the University of Tennessee produced two more children. Attending the annual N.F.L. rookie symposium as a 2001 draft pick of the Buffalo Bills, Henry watched a skit that dramatized the repercussions of imprudent sexual activity. It might as well have been geared toward him.
Henry laughed through the sketch. “I thought, ‘That ain’t ever going to happen to me,’ ” he said.
But it had, and it was just beginning. ...
“Knock on wood, or something, I’m blessed not to have AIDS. That never crossed my mind.”
Henry declined to discuss aspects of his drug case. He was arrested last fall in Colorado with another man and has pleaded not guilty to charges that could net him 10 years to life in prison if convicted. The arraignment is scheduled for next month. ...
The Denver Broncos gave Henry a five-year, $25 million contract in 2007. Cut last year by the team, which cited injuries and off-the-field commotion, he received only $6.7 million. ...
Henry argued that, within the context of richly paid athletes, he was not out of line. He contended that he owned no more than three vehicles at once and figured he had spent $250,000 on jewelry. “That ain’t a lot,” he said. Nevertheless, he was hoping to pawn some jewelry to pay off one of many debts and gain freedom. ...
Ignoring pestiferous blue laws?
Flouting human social conventions?
Inventing your own set of sexual mores and fuck what the narrow, Puritanical world thinks?
As Ayn Rand taught us, Capitalist Supermen are permitted -- nay, required! -- to both literally and figuratively fuck whoever, however and whenever they want (although upfucking into a Wealth Strata above your own is generally frowned upon unless some particularly lucrative IPO is involved, in which case it is Objectivism’s highest virtue. Provided, of course, that you both smoke afterward, and laugh at the foolish, scuttling masses and their tiny, irritating problems.)
And as most basic tenet of Randite Valuenomics dictates:
Whereas the five-year contract for Travis Henry -- this Richard-Halley-of-the-gridiron -- was $25,000,000.00, which comes to five million dollars a year.
Which means that that Mr. Henry is...123.75 times more morally superior than the Average America. Not quite “Merrill Lynch”-grade superior...
"The bonuses were secretly planned way ahead of time. In his memorandum, Cuomo claims that the September 2008 merger agreement between Merrill and BofA included an undisclosed provision allowing Merrill to disburse up to $5.8 billion in bonuses. That shows that Merrill honchos were already scheming up ways to pay out millions at the very moment the firm was on the verge of a fatal run, just like the one that drove Lehman Brothers into a chaotic bankruptcy. And doing so with the blessing of their future Bank of America bosses. ..."
...but respectable nonetheless.
Mr. Henry, don't be taken in by the moochers and vampires: as a Capitalist Supermen you owe these collectivizing insects who question your public and private behavior nothing; they should be thanking you for allowing them to bask in your wealth-producing glory.
In fact, if you really want to tech these destroyers a stern lesson, may I suggest you consider Going Galt (caution: links to middle of ignorant armies clashing by night) on their asses!
Well, Bill Keller never answered my email suggesting that I be hired on -- cheap -- to plug the big, dumb hole left by Bloody Bill's "rightsizing", but perhaps there is a place for me helping to make sure they don't continue to sully their trademark name with rookie errata.
For example, just look at how many errors crept into this single column by David Fucking Brooks:
Taking a Depression Seriously
The Democratic response to the economic crisis has its problems, but let’s face it, the current Republican response is totally misguided. The House minority leader, John Boehner, has called for a federal spending freeze for the rest of the year.
In other words, after a decade of profligacy, wethe Republicans have decided to demand a rigid fiscal straitjacket at the one moment in the past 70 years when it is completely inappropriate.
See what I mean? Sloppy.
The G.O.P. leaders have adopted a posture that allows the Democrats to make all the proposals while all wethe Republicans can say is “no.” …
We’ve They’ve apparently decided that it’s easier to repeat the familiar talking points than actually think through a response to the extraordinary crisis at hand. …
If wethe Republicans wanted to do the country some good, we wouldthey’d embrace an entirely different approach. …
First, we would they’d take the current economic crisis more seriously than the Democrats. … …
We Republicans could point out that this crisis is not just an opportunity to do other things. It’s a bloomin’ emergency …
We Republicans could argue that it’s Nero-esque for Democrats to be plotting extensive renovations when the house is on fire. We They could point out that history will judge this president harshly if he’s off chasing distant visions while the markets see a void where his banking policy should be. …
Second, we Republicans could admit that wethey don’t know what the future holds, and we'rethey’re not going to try to make long-range plans based on assumptions that will be obsolete by summer. ...
Third, we Republicans could offer the public a realistic appraisal of the health of capitalism. …
Fourth, we Republicans could get out in front of this crisis for once. That would mean being out front with ideas to support the wealth-creating parts of the economy rather than merely propping up the fading parts. …
Finally, we Republicans could make it clear that that the emergency has to be followed by an era of balance. …
If we Republicans were to treat this like a genuine emergency, with initiative-grabbing approaches, wethey may not get our their plans enacted, but voters would at least give us them another look. …
In columns like these, Republicans like David Fucking Brooks play the fantasy shoulda-woulda-coulda game like Conservative Desert Island castaways playing at The Best Sammich Evah!
As they starve and stare at an empty sky and a vast, rescue-less sea...
“Y'know what’d be awesome! Captain Nemo’s in Chicago has dis thing -- dis fucking ham reuben – an Merciful Gad strike down here an now if it ain’t da best effing sammich on Earth.”
“I dunno, man. Manny’s pastrami is pretty fucking amazing. I know guys wrecked dere marriage over a Manny’s pastrami.”
“With da potato paincake on da side?”
“’Course! It ain’t a Manny’s widdout da paincake. An da pickle. An da slaw. An a fucking Green River.”
“Well be dat as it may, dis ham reuben…you just gotta trust me on dis…da ham is ground up wit I-don’t-know-what but its like da best freak sex you ever had…den comes da kraut, da dressing. Da swiss, melted juss right.. Da bread right offa da truck. Oh man. An get it wit da soup; don’t forget dat.”
Except on the island, there is no ham. No pastrami. No sauerkraut. No cheese. No cows.
No soup.
No vegetables.
No bread. No wheat from which to make bread.
No fire.
And so after ritually recounting all of the yummy yummy sammiches the Republican Party could make if it weren’t full of Republicans, shipwrecked Republicans like David Fucking Brooks stagger away to forage for grubs and millipedes under a nearby rotting log, and then lick dew off the grass for dessert.
Of course this is where the analogy falls apart, because Republicans like David Fucking Brooks aren’t stranded on a desert island and never have been.
There's not a single, horrifying characteristic about today's Republican Party which wasn't blatantly, gaping-head-wound obvious twenty years ago to anyone who was not getting their world view filtered through Rush Limbaugh's colon, and during that entire length of time Republicans like David Fucking Brooks have been perfectly free to walk away from the bigots and the crazies whenever the wanted to.
Could have left a week ago. A month ago. A year ago. Five years ago. Ten. Twenty.
But they chose not to.
Instead, while the Conservative cotton was high and the Axis of Wingnuts bestrode the political world, they chose to stay inside the Big Crazy Tent and bray about the Terrible Liberals. To treat it all like a fucking game. To make handsome livings carry water for fascists and oligarchs.
Until it was too late.
Until it was way past too late.
When David Fucking Brooks writes a column that says "I'm sorry. I was wrong. I have been wrong for a long time and in that time have done a lot of harm." I'll believe he gets it.
And when he hangs it up at the NYT and walks away because it is the honorable thing to do, I'll believe he is sincere.
It’s getting lost in the buzz-worthy reversal on stem cells, but I think the bigger news of the day is Obama’s rejection of the Bush administration’s war on science:
I am also signing a Presidential Memorandum directing the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to develop a strategy for restoring scientific integrity to government decision making. To ensure that in this new Administration, we base our public policies on the soundest science; that we appoint scientific advisors based on their credentials and experience, not their politics or ideology; and that we are open and honest with the American people about the science behind our decisions. That is how we will harness the power of science to achieve our goals – to preserve our environment and protect our national security; to create the jobs of the future, and live longer, healthier lives.
...
Some years ago -- during the depths of the Dubya Administration and through absolutely no fault of my own -- I was asked pretty-please to attend the BIO International Convention which, for the first time, was being held in Chicago.
So I went, and although I have thoroughly suppressed everything I learned about bioinformatics, I still have a lovely tote to show for it.
The highlight was a keynote by Bill Clinton held in one of the McCormick Place's cavernous, sit-down-lunch-for-12,000 halls. For over an hour, Clinton banished the smirkingly anti-intellectual pall of the Dumbass Dauphin and spoke compellingly and without notes (in complete sentences yet!) about how being smarter makes us safer. How using technology to do good -- like bringing clean water to Africa -- also redounded to our geopolitical benefit. Because if people like and respect us, they're less likely to hate and kill us.
And other suchlike subversive, crazy notions.
The lowlight was undoubtedly Neal Cavuto's speech some time later, given, as I recall, the same hall. It was as vicious, petty and vengeful a verbal sniping as you could imagine. Two of the more remarkable moments that I remember vividly were his snarling out to the pharmaceutical reps gathered there that filthy Liberals wanted to "piss in their hair", and his urging them to "withhold medication" from Liberals to teach us a lesson.
Yes, it really was that bad (everything was taped by a bank of a dozen cameras, but thus far my attempts to score a video of his unhinged tirade has been unsuccessful.) Shit, even the hardcore, capitalist VC-types were creeped out by his gratuitous, over-the-top hate-mongering in the middle of a fucking trade show. But, hey, this is what happens when you give a True Wingnut Believer a microphone and a captive audience.
The other, more low-grade source of unpleasantness was completely understandable: the widespread-if-diplomatically-expressed astonishment by scientists, engineers, educators and investors from all over the planet that America had fallen so damned fast from a proud and profitable beacon of innovation and scientific advancement to a country governed by aggressively ignorant, toe-picking meat-sticks and big-haired, Bible-thumping inbreds.
More than almost any other question, "WTF happened to you people?" was the one I heard asked most often. Asked incredulously. Pityingly. Asked in myriad different ways, in many different forums and in different guises.
As much as America's reckless, neocon wars for oil and empire have driven away our traditional foreign policy allies, America's rapid collapse into a provincial Loutocracy of braying, boastful, paranoid yahoos has driven away our traditional philosophical and cultural allies.
They watched as the public dialogue in the United States sank into a sewer of xenophobia and Conservative-media-fueled rage where the worst thing a human being could possibly be was French, gay, muslim, Liberal and/or Darwin.
They asked for American help and leadership, and instead we offered them the Chimperor and his murderous Regent.
Now, at long last, we have a different answer for those friends and allies who watched in horror as the most powerful nation on Earth lost its mind; now we can tell them that it was only a temporary madness. That we will never, ever let anything like the Age of Dubya happen again.
Now we can credibly ask the world community for their good will and support in confronting several of the most serious problems to face human civilization in our lifetimes, without them fearing that The Worst President In History would piss it all away.
That's all to the good.
The downside is, of course, now that the science has been liberated from the intellectual Gitmo into which the Bush Administration had banished it, Conservatives are as free as anyone else to go back into the lab,
To perhaps finally realize their dream of a perfect Palin/Jindal hybrid.
With big Reagan titties that lactate tax cuts and freedom.
