Yeah like this is going to happen

Organized crime

Sen. Feinstein’s Husband Cashes In on Crisis

California senator sought $25 billion for a government agency that had awarded her husband’s real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties.

On the day the new Congress convened this year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to route $25 billion in taxpayer money to a government agency that had just awarded her husband’s real estate firm a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms, the Washington Times reported on Tuesday.

Mrs. Feinstein’s intervention on behalf of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was unusual: the California Democrat isn’t a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs with jurisdiction over FDIC; and the agency is supposed to operate from money it raises from bank-paid insurance payments – not direct federal dollars.

Documents reviewed by The Washington Times show Mrs. Feinstein first offered Oct. 30 to help the FDIC secure money for its effort to stem the rise of home foreclosures. Her letter was sent just days before the agency determined that CB Richard Ellis Group (CBRE) – the commercial real estate firm that her husband Richard Blum heads as board chairman – had won the competitive bidding for a contract to sell foreclosed properties that FDIC had inherited from failed banks.

About the same time of the contract award, Mr. Blum’s private investment firm reported to the Securities and Exchange Commission that it and related affiliates had purchased more than 10 million new shares in CBRE. The shares were purchased for the going price of $3.77; CBRE’s stock closed Monday at $5.14.

Spokesmen for the FDIC, Mrs. Feinstein and Mr. Blum’s firm told The Times that there was no connection between the legislation and the contract signed Nov. 13, and that the couple didn’t even know about CBRE’s business with FDIC until after it was awarded.

Senate ethics rules state that members must avoid conflicts of interest as well as “even the appearance of a conflict of interest.” Some ethics analysts question whether Mrs. Feinstein ran afoul of the latter provision, creating the appearance that she was rewarding the agency that had just hired her husband’s firm.

We the People to Wall St.: Drop Dead

Special guest diatribe courtesy of Something Awful:

The following is a fucking letter sent right fucking now to the New York Goddamn Times, another dying newspaper that is spending its final years ignominiously lurching between the rotten crotch of Wall Street and the ghastly juice pit of its political patrons. The Fourth Fucking Estate lives on the Internet now, you simpering whores and charlatans!This is a response to an actual publicity stunt of a letter puked out by the biggest dickbag in recent history, Jake DeSantis, and then published by America’s paper of dumb fucking record. This ass polyp DeSantis worked for the patient zero of the ebola currently running rampant through the rupturing vessels and blown veins of our country’s financial circulatory system. This is a dude who helped us move a couple clicks closer to some Road Warrior 12 Monkeys shit and now he’s crying because he didn’t get his prostate massaged thoroughly enough by the taxpayers. When I address this shit to Wall Street, I mean specifically Jake DeSantis, formerly of A.I.G., but also all of the rest of these dumbfucks who just don’t fucking get it.

DEAR Wall Street,

What a bunch of whiny fucking babies. John Galt would be puking blood for 200-pages over this load of shit, you bunch of sobbing welfare queens. You fucked up. You ruined everything. You broke it, and we fucking bought it, because big baby was too big baby to fail.

We get it all ways from you motherfuckers. You’re robbing us of our present and future now, but first you stepped on our throats on your way to the top. You raked in the money with a bunch of made up fantasyland bullshit that wouldn’t fool a counting horse on America’s Funniest Home Videos, but somehow suckered in every major bank in the world.

Credit default swaps.

Those things are so fucking dumb that when you explain them to somebody and they laugh about how dumb they are you’ve got to act like ooooh they’re so magical and complicated. Far too complex for the plebes to get. No! Wrong! Go into OTB and put fifty dollars on Rambo’s Beautiful Blood. You just bought a credit default swap. Whoaaa you’re blowing my simple pea brain with your fancy Wall Street talkin’. You sadsack fuckers.

So everybody bought into your big scheme, even when they didn’t know they were playing, and now the whole thing has come crashing down because too many people won the fucking unbelievably obvious bet that a million illegal immigrants were going to default on million dollar home loans. Suddenly all your stupid fake money is gone, but if it’s gone the whole system of bullshit lies collapses and you look like dickheads. So whoopty-doo, now we gotta make the fake money turn real or else the house of shitty cunt cards comes crashing down, only there isn’t enough real money to cover all the fake money, so we’re making more real money.

Then there’s A.I.G., the bad seed, the carbuncle on our anus, the weeping wound in our tit, the sorry source of all our misery and woe. This is the monster garage full of miscreants that dreamed up the fire-breathing nitro-gulping predicament we’re in right fucking now. Their financial products division created the derivatives market from lies and their executives raked in billions in bonuses and easy money. While they were peddling bad bets, median wages in the US stagnated and poor working schmucks leaned increasingly on credit to get by. Prices on everything were going up, but credit was easy to come by what with all that bullshit money to throw around.

The top 10 recipients of cash contributions from AIG in 2008

1. Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., $103,100
2. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., $101,332
3. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., $59,499
4. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., $35,965
5. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., $24,750
6. Former Gov. Mitt Romney, (R) Pres $20,850
7. Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., $19,975
8. Rep. John Larson, D-Conn, $19,750
9. Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., $18,500
10. Former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani (R) Pres $13,200

So you can pretty much be assured that each and every name above is dirty. You can also be certain each and every one is all for bailing out the rich at the expense of everyone else.

Erin Burnett is a clueless cunt

Puh-lease

Is it cynical to think that the CEO’s of BofA and JPM bought a few token shares (doesn’t this just scream CONFIDENCE!?) of their stock while they are at all-time lows? BTW why is the share price at all-time lows? Should the money used be considered ill-gotten gains conisdering the industry-wide fraudulent activites of just over two years ago? Is this ironic? Moronic? Assinine? Absurd? Should not this money have a claim placed agasinst it for the people of the United States of America and confiscated under the RICO statute? Why so many questions?[The Big Picture]

Clearly there is not confidence

… in our Feckless leaders ability to handle the Solvency Crisis.

Hell, this crisis begat another crisis: the Leadership Crisis.

Hanky Panky, Clueless Bushtard, and Bendover Bukkake are clearly in over their heads.

Trying everything and anything to try and stop a panic while avoiding/ignoring the true causes is doomed to failure, son. Didn’t yo daddy learn you that?

By all reports two out of three of the aformentioned “leaders” are pretty bright guys (if “book smarts” counts). One was the progenitor of this very crisis back in his days of working in the tranches at Goldman Sux, and I’m sure he is reveling in his handiwork. One of them is merely parroting what his handlers tell him (“repeat the same phrase over and over and there’s a chance it might become true”) and is clearly detached from the pain being felt by the people he was (sort of) elected to govern, protect, and defend the Constitution for. One of them is a student of a prior meltdown (“GD 1.0″) but unfortunately his expertise on that particluar crisis is tragically misplaced since this country’s markets are facing a completely different set of criteria this time around (See the Panic of 1873 for a more apt comparison). Oopsy.

“[I]nvestors have totally lost faith in the ability of policy authorities to control this meltdown.” -Noureil Roubini

The Housing Crisis would not have occurred had we not had Excessive Leverage and an unregulated Credit Default Swap market be allowed to get out of control. Put all three together, though, and you have a mix as potent as a cocktail Molotov.

The underlying value of the former two will be greatly affected  by how the first performs. Are the underlying assets worthless? No. But establishing a value is indeed a problem, and FUD about homedebtors walking away in the MSM exacerbates the problem.

So we have a Crisis of Solvency, followed by a Crisis of Leadership.

Which is the greater concern?

Well, this IS being handled by … (wait for it)

The Three Stooges of Financial Armageddon.

What they gonna do? [Paul Krugman]

Hank Paulson is a MUCH bigger criminal than OJ Simpson

So to everyone celebrating his conviction, FUCK YOU, you’ve been paying attentionto this while the CRIME OF THE CENTURY was being committed right over there —> (you just had to look).

You’ve just been screwed outof TRILLIONS of dollars which will overseen by the very person most responsible for the creation of the financial crisis- the former CEO of Goldman Sucks.

You are gloating that some broken-down athlete finally got his comeuppance, as if THAT had some importance or bearing on YOUR life.

Well, congratulations, YOU are about to experience what PAYBACK IS A BITCH really means.

“Payback, but for what?” you might well ask. For taking your eye off the ball. For dereliction of duty.

For being distracted. For being stupid.

See, that’s the problem with bread and circuses.  Under the guise of a “bailout” (more like a down-payment) when it was in fact nothing more than a government-backed MONEY-LAUNDERING SCAM as well as an UNPRECEDENTED giveaway of national wealth (i.e., your taxes are about to increase by 100%), most of you were distracted by the irrelevance of OJ, American Idol, Sarah Palin, 99.9999% of television, bombast radio, Faux Nooze, et al.

Talk about fiddling while the empire is burning!

Are you prepared? Of course not, you’re an idiot who voted in crooks.

Here’s your reward for not paying attention:

–
“There is no constitutional authority for the government to bail out private enterprise at taxpayer expense.” -Mike Shedlock

WHO IS RLY DA BOSS?

DO NOT SEE CONGREFF

“It may well turn out to be the largest war profiteering in history.”

It’s a story not being reported here, so let’s turn to the BBC:

“A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations.

“The order applies to 70 court cases against some of the top US companies.

“While George Bush remains in the White House, it is unlikely the gagging orders will be lifted.

“To date, no major US contractor faces trial for fraud or mismanagement in Iraq.”

Your tax dollars magically transformed into McMansions and Bentley’s for the politcally connected. The next war should be on corruption in politics, doncha think?

Bubblicious and gamey

Finally someone hit the nail on the head about this bogus “oil crisis.”

“Record high prices without record low oil inventories, analysts saying that so much money flows into oil commodities that it gives the impression of shortages, when in fact no shortage exists. “

“There it is in plain sight for everyone to see, exactly what I’ve been reporting for the past few years: Many individuals who are investing in oil and natural gas futures are going out in the media and trying to convince the American public that either we are out of oil or there is a serious supply shortage of crude against worldwide demand. The question is: Does it surprise you to discover that the US Senate investigated the rigging of the oil market by speculators in the summer of 2006 – and concluded that there was no supply and demand problem with oil? Did you know that their conclusion was that speculators were responsible for a 70 percent overcharge in the price of oil in the months leading up to the summer of 2006?”

“in Texas, under deregulation of our public utilities, our electric rates can be set using the futures market for natural gas, so the manipulation of the natural gas market spelled trouble for us. Consider this, by 2006, according to www.powertochoose.org, electricity rates for us had climbed to 15 cents a kilowatt-hour due to the high cost of natural gas. But, that was the exact same time period that Amaranth was proven to be manipulating the market and sending natural gas futures through the roof. Two months later the hedge fund collapsed and natural gas prices fell. Therefore, most Texans paid higher electric bills for Amaranth’s manipulation of the natural gas market.”

-Ed Wallace [Part 1] [Part 2]

Not to mention that California electricity rates spiraled out of control through artificial shortages engineered by Enron (“Welcome to Hell, Ken”) in the “dregulated” electricity market.

It is a fact gasoline prices at your local station are set today using futures prices as a benchmark. If you think that the gas you’re pumping into your car today was refined from oil bought and paid for at today’s oil prices, you would be wrong, sir. It was refined from oil that was bought a long, long time ago at a much lower price. The actual profit they are making is a metaphorical slap in the face. Maybe we need that to wake us up to this Enron-style scamming that has become the US economy.

The prices at your local are quick to rise and slow to fall- so the oil companies get to skin you going both ways.

You may ask yourself, “Why doesn’t are gummint do something about it (instead of that numbskull OPEC lawsuit and ‘investigating’ unimportant but grandstand-worthy topics like steroids in professional sport)?”

Well, seeing as the state and federal governments are skimming a percentage, and today’s prices are at all-time record highs, it isn’t exactly in their best interest (as you’ve no doubt surmised, neither are we, the voting public).

If you ever harbored the illusion that when you fillerup you were getting what you paid for (cost of production) plus a reasonable profit, think again.

#I’m just a a paper tiger

I think it is best to close now with the following thought:

“We started as a society that worships hard labor and the basic business ethic of building value into the goods you create. How’d we get from there to worshiping Wall Street’s billion-dollar boys — who create nothing, build nothing, own nothing and deliver no goods, and yet can throw so much money into products made by others that they determine what we consumers will pay for those goods?”

[Hat tip]

–

“this has all of the ear marks of a speculative corner of the oil market by parties unknown.” -Jim of San Marcos

Waaah.

Homebuilders Lobbying Group Cuts Off Contributions to Federal Congressional Campaigns [Yahoo]

Oh it’s a howler:

The lobbying group representing homebuilders is cutting off contributions to federal congressional campaigns, saying lawmakers and the Bush administration have not done enough to stabilize the housing market.

Perhaps the got their skids greased all too well back when it all began.

Looking for someone else to blame here just look in the mirror. Keep moving.

To paraphrase Groucho

I wouldn’t want to belong to a club which wouldn’t have me as a member.

The running turmoil in the markets is stirring fears that more of these funds will fail, some, perhaps, spectacularly.

…

Sol Waksman, president of Barclay Group, an alternative investment database, said that three-quarters of the 1,241 hedge funds that have reported returns for January lost money.

…

“It’s that sad dawning when you realize the market is so much bigger than you are,” he said.

Plop plop, fizz fizz , take an Alka Seltzer, old boy.

Moral Hazard ‘R’ US

So, what’s it like to have a Milstein around your neck? Do you sink fast?

Milstein et al can drop dead.

I read this wankers modest “proposal” much like I would Swift’s.

Or closer still there is the legend or myth of the US general who said sometime during that earlier version if Iraq, Vietnam, that “we’re destroying the village in order to save it.”

At least the LAT allows some differing (or, if you will, dithering) opinions. This guy Viles seems pretty grounded:

Funny thing about government policy: Sometimes big changes happen with little public debate and no warning — for example, the decision by Congress to lift conforming loan limits by $300,000 to help high-cost housing markets like California, quite possibly at the expense of other markets. You would think a momentous decision like that — opposed by regulators, quite likely to mean higher interest rates for some borrowers — would generate an old-fashioned debate in Washington. You would be mistaken.

He’s basically commenting on Milstein’s shite- which is how I happened upon that hot steaming pile of. Viles sees right through him, and has a clearer view of the much bigger picture around what Milstein proposes, as well as how this STOOPID “stimulus package” (“I got your stimulus package right here, babe”) sets a bad precedent.

As this post on patrick.net puts it:

“Heck, if $600 is a stimulant, let’s go for the real gusto with $10,000 each to really jump start the economy.”

Why not, eh? Are the (elected) powers that be such pikers that they think I (what about you?) will sell out my country for 600 fucking ameros?

Indeed, why such a paltry limit? It’s all gonna be funny money pretty soon anyway, eh, why not shoot for the moon?

Whatevs.

Taxation without representation? My ass.

That $600 check is a bribe to look the other way while these wretched turdlingers steal the palace jewels.

Mortgage fraud! Say it ain’t so!

When the stock market was bubbling way back in the last half of the ’90’s there were lots of rumors being squleched (that’s how you know that they’re true) about the greedy fingers of organized crime busily pumping and dumping one stock after another. That would be in addition to the ‘legitimate’ criminals pumping out IPO’s for companies with pretty shiny business plans but no tangible business. I think the Sopranos even had an episode about that (when a tv show brings forth something that the mainstream sources of news fail to deliver on, it kind of dilutes the reality of it and everybody just sort of learns to accept it, which is good for the mainstream because then they don’t have to report on the reality of the country being sold out and risk being shot as the messenger).

After it all played out and the market farted out the bad gas that had been expanding the balloon, it was amazing to see how nobody went to jail, nothing significant really changed, and we grudgingly learned we had no choice but to accept this as the status quo. (The smarter kids tried to figure out how they could join in the next time and still keep out of jail.)

And I do recall some goomba calling in to Howard Stern’s radio show and, attempting to talk about it, got cut short while the conversation was steered away to a different kind of boob.

So it would be a stretch to presume that the black hand hasn’t gotten garlicky smears on more than a few “financially engineered for your convenience” mortgages, wouldn’t it?

Nobody’s coming right out and saying so though [NYT].

This article tells us enforcement for this type crime is difficult. And the reports all across the country are legion. So in some innocuous way the media is communicating to US we should not expect justice to prevail, and we should get used to the idea that the bad guys will generally get away with it.

I would add that since nearly everyone is doing it (i.e. committing fraud), many folks might start realize if there is little-to-no-risk of getting caught and/or incarceration why not me too?

Hellfire, why should anyone care anymore if it is even illegal if the law does not get enforced? Where is the downside exactly?

Rampant fraud- the subtext in this article is IMHO, how did mortgage fraud become so widespread and prevalent in nearly every real estate market across the nation (if not the globe- see Spain, Ireland, Bosnia)?

These crimes were apparently very well organized. What should we call that?

Well now that door of opportunity to this particular wave of crime is closing. But with the next ‘bubble crime wave‘ one might expect to have even more participants. And why not I ask you?  If the risk of getting caught is so low. I cannot imagine what the next bubble opportunity will be- but then I never realized this particlar ‘home-based-business‘ was going on in all of our neightborhoods, behind our collective backs. Very few of us had noses with such a highly honed sense of smell we could recognize the stench of fraud. Not that anyone was listening to those who did and proceeded to wave a red flag. Many of them were branded freaks, banished from the mainstream of society as being alarmist.

And of course enforcement, most commonly by the FBI, has been weak because of a lack of resources. Many agents have been re-assigned to chasing bin laden’s shadow- but this is vitally important for ‘national security,’ no? And of course getting stripped searched for carrying a bottle of shampoo in your luggage or for being a middle aged white male, has been proven by the government to be very effective way to deter terrorism.

–
Church is a place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there.   - H. L. Mencken

Inside with the sub-prime slime:

Thanks be to HP for the tip!

Betting on the economy, or a betting economy?

Good primer [Salon, requires a "day pass"] on the credit implosion and why our “betting economy” (cos that’s what it is, really) is losing. Big time.

And it’s just just getting started!

The ratings agencies (Moody’s, Fitch, S&P) do the bidding of Wall St. without the benefit of any oversight from our “SEC.” The “investors” do a fine job of kibbutzing, looking over the poor rating clerks shoulder (IOW, not at arm’s length, perzackely) and helping to guide his dominant hand.

Of course, this is instead of allowing the market to weigh the value of any particular asset or security.

This might be construed as collusion by an objective observer of the process since the rating, and therefore any particular derivative’s value, is a total fiction.

Is it criminal to collude? If it isn’t, it IS deliberately scamming honest citizens of this nation.

Then perhaps it’s also legalized theft.

Gambling with (mine, yours, ours) pensions and retirement, and getting corpulent off fees – regardless of whether the particular investments they “manage” for you win or lose.

BTW, I pulled all of my money out of the cd’s I had had at IndyMac over a month ago. If you have anything there, or”invested” with those fine Cunts at Cuntrywide(tm) bank, you might mant to consider doing the same.

I’d also suggest keeping a few grand (ahem) in greenbacks “around” just in case.

Wall St is truly to blame here, and if there is a bailout of any kind, it’ll be these “risk takers” who will benefit (remember it’ll be our tax dollars – and how’s that for a double whammy?).

Which, when you ponder it, is really annoying.

These putzes don’t ever lose- we, citiizens of this country called the UNited States of America, do. They’ve taken the risk out of the system allright- the risk to them! If investments go bad- or worse, belly up- that’s not their money- it’s yours and mine! They’ve already collected their “fees!”

When LTCM failed, did anyone go to jail? No! They just turned around and started another hedgie!

Let’s not forget these Wall St. turd lickers are the same assholes who cry foul about welfare, unions, transparency, and would be dead set against any bailing out of p*wned homeowners (who shouldn’t be, but that’s beside my point).

One blog compared our nations economy to the Enron “busines model” and DAMN if it wasn’t spot on!

The Salon column uses a sports-betting analogy that really goes a long way to explaining this mess to most of us laymen.

And the conclusion I draw from it is, there are not nearly enough referees, let alone honest ones brimming with integrity, to keep this shell game, this ginormous Ponzi scheme, this adult version of Monopoly, game under control.

Fuck These Fucking Fuckers

InfoUSA we’re calling you out, motherfuckers. Why?

InfoUSA advertised lists of “Elderly Opportunity Seekers,” 3.3 million older people “looking for ways to make money,” and “Suffering Seniors,” 4.7 million people with cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. “Oldies but Goodies” contained 500,000 gamblers over 55 years old, for 8.5 cents apiece. One list said: “These people are gullible. They want to believe that their luck can change.”

Sniff sniff. Sniff sniff. Nah, doesn’t pass the smell test with me. How about you?

InfoUSA, there is something seriously wrong with your business model.

This is yet another country that has taken out a contract on Americans.

Peak Oil Bullshit

After the jump (below) you will find a Youtube capture of a CNBC report from an episode of Kudlow and (yawn) Company. It is interestingTViewing for those of us who enjoy a good (or in this case, bad) spin.

The two “experts” presented here are Matt Simmons and John Kilduff.

First thing you notice is the pace. It’s at fever pitch, having an immediacy that places this topic as the most immediate threat facing “the American Way of Life(tm)”.

The second thing is, it’s very much like a new pitch for war.

“We are basically held hostage by countries that aren’t that friendly to us in terms of owning most of the oil that’s out there.” -John Kilduff

sniff sniff: smells like bullshit.

Sounds like bullshit.

Must be bullshit.

Simmons seems the more grounded of the two.

“I know most of the people pretty well now, I didn’t five years ago, that are at the fore front of the Peak Oil discussion… and I don’t think a single one of them has a political agenda. I know I certianly don’t.” -Matt Simmons

Well, at least he doesn’t call for out and out war.

The basic fact that gets glossed over here is the GAO report and how/who influenced it.

Why does it contradict the US Geological Survey, which sees no shortage of oil. (There isn’t.) What’s more, the USGS also says we’ve used about 18% of the world’s know reserves to date.

I think these fuckers just have an itch to start bombing somebody- now. Who? Whoever is eating into “their” profits, obviously.

America: if you are wondering why the rest of the world mistrusts us so much, look to your “leaders,” and who influences (corrupts) them.

Anyway, the full travesty (video) after the jump.

It is Like Tammany Hall all over again.

You remember Tammany Hall, right? (Click the link if you snored away during history class.) In the role of Boss Tweed, now called Boss Hogg, we have Dick Cheney, the one true president(tm).

This latest joke, if you haven’t following the political appointment of unqualified individuals this adminstration sees as fit, such as Brownie, Wolfy, Gonzo, Bolton, Miers, Rummy, goody-Goodling or any other graduate of ”Regent University” then go fuck yourself you’re a waste of space, makes this government (of the government, for the government, fuck the people) it is starting to look like deja vu all over again.

We’ll need 1000 Thomas Nasts to puncture this overbloated bag of puss.

Instead of grifters, con artsists, and associated feral ass lickers holding out their fingers-less gloved, shit-smeared hands, today we have people from the local discerning Republican xtian club holding out their fingers-less gloved, shit-smeared hands.

They might clooak themselves in some ideological bullshit, but don’t be fooled, it’s the same  difference. It all comes down to greed.

“I confess to being less than perfect when it comes to long-term personal record keeping.”

It’s like our their country has been taken over by organized crime and their goons, or worse, frat boy B students who watched Godfather and Scarface and got daddy involved in keeping them from fulfilling their duties.

UPDATE
These fucktards seem to have loyalty and royalty confused. Or maybe they don’t? (Requires a day pass at Salon.)

Starting to Sound Familiar?

New Century = Enron

The firm’s comments are difficult to square with accounts from rank-and-file workers. These employees worked at five different branches that handled subprime loans all over the country. All except Hardiman spoke on condition of anonymity, citing recent e-mails from the firm telling them not to comment publicly, although the company said that is standard corporate media policy. Hardiman said she was fired for refusing to approve weak loans. Others said they left because they were pressured to pump loans through the system. A few were interviewed while they were worked at New Century but then lost their jobs after the firm filed for bankruptcy.

The Goon Squad is Back

They are big and bad, clad in black, and these motherfuckers will club anyone who stands in their motherfucking way. Motherfucker!