Rolling US Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

Idiot,

The analogy should be

"when surveying the smouldering ruins of a building where they kept open petrol tanks, kindling, firelighters and fidgety arsonists you shouldn't be handing the soot blackened people matches"

i have a friend whos father is a longtime goldman mukimuk - they have pictures at their house of henry paulson at family gatherings - she has been emailed:

hey can you ask yr boy hank if i can get like $1m? ive got a juicer and some old 39 cent stamps maybe he'd take in exchange.

thx!
j

In exchange for bailout, I will offer these limited edition Wizard of Oz collectors plates.*

*Not all plates go up in value. Some may go down.

^ROFL

Washington Post coverage of Paulson and Bernanke vs. the Senate Banking Committee

More immediate posting at the NY Times

http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site36/2008/0923/20080923__82875236AW011_SENATE_HOLDS_fail~p1.jpg

"Dad, I know you have strong views on my spending habits, based on your own expertise. And we must have that critical debate, but I have to get through this difficult period first. No mon, no fun, your son"

I have a little hope on Dodd's behalf but we'll see

I'm not going to write this at the end of the day and watch a handful of chief executives walk away with multimillion-dollar contracts. You'll have people storming this building if we don't understand that people are fed up with that kind of behavior.

Maybe the first honest thing Paulson's said all day:

“You ask me about taxpayers being on the hook? Guess what, they are already on the hook.”

Paulson's response to the ceo/executive thing: we shouldn't be "punitive"

vomit

im buying futures in REVOLUTION, comrades

I'd be willing to forego the executive compensation provisions provided that taxpayers get a juicy equity stake.

Good piece by Roger Lowenstein (of When Genius Failed fame) on why we should be very skeptical of rushing into this plan:

"The Wrong Emergency"
http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=0a253ad4-7e1a-4d8e-b50a-ecb61ec70855

we shouldn't be "punitive"

I agree, let's just kill them all.

If this rescue goes ahead then it should surely be with fairly punitive conditions but what's more important is to find out where the money went to and get it back. The money hasn't vaporised, Institutions and individuals have profited massively from some very bad practice and dodgy accounting. There's a name for this and it is fraud.

what money are you talking about

So the tax-payer hand-out will “save” Wall Street from its own predations. Any reasonable man, of course, would wish the pig-fuckers to fry in their own feces. Let the free market carry out their corpses to the gutter. And mine too, perhaps, for as a magazine writer I depend on the thoughtlessness and blind-mole cupidity of credit-card consumerism – the credit system now imploding – to feed the ad-market that feeds the magazines that pay my bills. Without dumb blondes buying Manohlo Blahniks and metrosexuals fawning over prawns in overpriced restaurants, my paycheck turns to dust.

But the fact is that our economic system is a lunatic and suicidal system, and it deserves to go down.... Bring it on....

at least (Park Slope in the early '90s) was affordable. You didn’t have to work 60 hours a week to watch the cockroaches eat your dinner inside the fridge. You worked enough to pay the rent, and no more (I was a bike messenger, she worked as a secretary at a real estate office that I’m convinced was also trafficking narcotics)....

Today the same shit-house Carole-Anne and I lived in costs $1900 a month, and it probably still has a cockroach problem, but this is considered “character,” and the main avenues all around are swallowed in the caterwauling of commerce by which the newly-ripped-off resident is bombarded with the temptations of more junk than is affordable or desirable. Whereas on 5th Avenue in Park Slope in 1992 I used to be able to find a hooker and cocaine and run away from a fist-fight and learn Puerto Rican Spanish doing it, whereas I used to be able to find nothing at all on the street, no people, no rushing, nothing to buy or sell, just about every storefront today is taken over by the glad-handing smiley-face of the idiot consumer economy gone to its nth-degree madness...

http://www.counterpunch.org/ketcham09222008.html

i've never understood how people can live in NYC, either.

Well OK, a lot of this money was only money in the economic sense, just recirculated vapour, however, enough of it has leaked altogether solidly into people's pockets.

Xpost

yes i too miss the days of new york where i could brag about learning spanish from my neighbors

I lived in PkSlope then too, so perhaps I overcredited someone who also remembers when a variety of humans could exist there.

(max you're a peach but too young to miss anything worth missing)

if youre really interested in living somewhere where you can buy rock and treat your neighbors like language classes you might try the bronx

There is a passage from the draft proposal for the bailout plan (via The 700 Billion Dollar Question) which makes me wonder a lot:

"Section 8: Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency."

This sounds dubious to me. It seems to hand over a blank check to Paulson & co. That sentence somehow reminds me of of the legal war on terror which took away power from the courts and gave it to the military. What do you think?

Congress pushes back

Would there be a great big smoking crater in our financial system from the impact of one or more of these failures? Yes. Would there be collateral damage to apparently innocent bystanders in the markets and the broader economy? Of course. Would the smoking rubble of the institutional assets and liabilities of such firms require a huge clean-up effort by regulators, lawmakers, and other market participants over a period of many years? Very much so.

Would tens of thousands of lives be ruined, just like the tens of thousands of lives which have been ruined by the wholesale collapses and takeovers of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, and other market casualties? Absolutely.

You know what I say to that? So the fuck what.

War is hell, mister.

Goldman Sachs is not more important than the national interest.

http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2008/09/live-and-let-die.html

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/art/library/bombstrangelove.jpg
top to bottom: free marketeers, their principles

hand-out ... predations ... pig-fuckers ... fry ... feces ... corpses ... gutter ... blind-mole cupidity ... credit-card consumerism ... imploding ... dumb blondes ... fawning ... prawns in overpriced restaurants ... lunatic and suicidal ... deserves to go down.... Bring it on.... Park Slope in the early '90s ... 60 hours a week ... cockroaches ... bike messenger ... trafficking narcotics.... shit-house ... cockroach ... caterwauling of commerce ... ripped-off ... bombarded ... junk ... hooker ... cocaine ... fist-fight ... Puerto Rican Spanish ... no people, no rushing ... buy or sell ... glad-handing smiley-face ... idiot consumer ... nth-degree madness...

― Dr Morbius ... Suggest Ban

just stay off the Mets thread, Eusatace.

lol srsly that ketcham piece was shit

http://www.simpsoncrazy.com/gallery/screenshots/lists/news_198.jpg

http://i35.tinypic.com/erzepl.jpg

beautiful

cute

I need to kwit internets

oh come on!!!!!!

haha
mine was directed at ketcham fwiw

yes we live in a society of rampant consumerism, please make your point by whining that you can't find cocaine and get beat up in new york like back you could back in golden days of 92. waaaah waaah people have opened businesses in my neighborhood - burn down the system!

have you seen those Slope businesses tho? how many pet pedicurists does one nabe need?

This thread is a shitbin.

i feel confident i can help anyone find cocaine or get beat up - i live just a few short blocks from park slope

http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/7/2008/09/custom_1222184456199_20080923__82875236AW011_SENATE_HOLDS_fail_p1.jpg

in all honesty i would wager that i could get in more fistfights and buy more coke in the UES and other neighborhoods filled with wall-streeters

and i can do those things without fetishizing a mythological version of the lives of the poor & oppressed!!!

i hear financial types may have to cut back on their cocaine and fist fights - harsh times

maybe they can make some money teaching people puerto-rican spanish?

ayyyeee maaami!

http://rexhamilton.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/wallstreet4601.jpg
vamanos!

http://www.russiablog.org/StockBroker-MosNews.jpg
quiero un fistfight!

I know good Democrats don't click on Counterpunch, but that piece did contain the line "This is all romanticized drivel..."