Inside Job

I have been covering the financial sector for quite some time now, as the sole correspondent for Tell It Like It Is News, so the facts, figures, and villains on display in Charles Ferguson's Inside Job were hardly new to me. I know what happened, I know who did it, and I know exactly why--greed.

With that in mind, there were a few moments I felt the movie dragged (1h45m felt like 2h30m), but overall it was a surprisingly slick production chock-full of beautiful visuals and some highly-entertaining gotcha moments that make it well-worth watching.

And, as an added bonus for the ladies out there, Matt Damon's voice is also on display for at least twenty minutes in total. Although I am so manly I shave the bottoms of my feet, I got chills everywhere whenever he spoke. Money well-spent, Sony Pictures Ltd Intl Inc Megacorporation Nation-State.

Much like the villains in this tragedy have always claimed, there will be plenty of people out there who will hem and haw and tell you everything isn't black and white and it's really complicated but actually rich people getting richer helps poor people somehow.

If you believe these people you are dumb and you know it, which strikes at an important point of similarity that people in the media never seem to point out:

Just as the financial market demolition expert (aka 'Investment Banker') gets his conscience to swallow enormous lies in a series of more easily digestible incremental white lies, truth-bending, and questionable justifications, the Average American engages in a similar series of incremental lies regarding their limited exposure to ruin, the volatile nature of the "free-market" economy, the trustworthiness of those in power, the priorities of the rich, and the extent to which pure evil has permeated our society.

In other words, just as the banker knowingly swallows the lie that he is not evil, his victim also swallows the lie that the banker is not evil.

And so, whether he realizes it or not, the victim is kicked down another rung on that great big ladder from serfdom to Lord, forced to scramble to make ends meet, cut back on spending, get another job, get deeper in debt, etc, until the house of cards ultimately crumbles--at which point he is hopefully old enough to die.

I am a firm believer that the root of most of the problems facing America today is the fact that people don't want to know what is happening in the annals of power. They intentionally ignore the news, ignore the altruistic activists, ignore the canaries in the coal mines, because deep down they know the Warshington/Wall Street elite is so evil they would rather not know the details. Ignorance is bliss, none of my business, everything seems fine, that's just the way things go, the market is cyclical, the Matrix is actually pretty cool, yadda yadda yadda.

Well, to all of you out there who think ignoring a problem of this magnitude is okay because you have yet to be turned out on the street yourself, remember this:

The ostrich with his head in the sand eventually gets bitten in the ass.

_

Wow--I Never Would Have Guessed...

...that so many old white men (and four old white women, to get those affirmative action cunts off their backs) would be such self-serving greedy little pricks and refuse to even discuss reforming the rapists on Wall Street.

I bet there was a run on Viagra and prostitutes in DC this afternoon--and they're pretty well-stocked out there--as all the Wall Street lobbyists' assistants furiously stocked the C Street House for tonight's celebratory jag-off party.

By the way, can anyone score me a ticket to that?

I would love to keep a tally of how many times I overhear the $5000/night escorts ask "Is it in me yet?" as I pace the upstairs (fraternity) hallway pretending to be on the phone with my broker in Tokyo. It may be immature and pointless, but hey--if they are going to eagerly continue the ruination of my country, the least they can do is provide me with a few dozen chuckles tonight.

_

All You Need to Know About Detroit

Detroit: Choose your plot--$1 each, no more than 14/person, please.

As promised:

Besides the tax incentives, Michigan has several traits that make it attractive to the film industry. Unlike Louisiana or New Mexico, which are also film hot spots, Michigan has four marked seasons. It has more than 3,000 miles of coastline along the Great Lakes, bodies of water so big their horizons are as empty as an ocean's. There are lots of charming old towns with charming old buildings, several universities and plenty of out-of-work autoworkers itching to do something with their hands, such as build sets, operate lighting systems or learn makeup artistry.

Even Michigan's economic malaise has an upside for Hollywood: Those empty, abandoned streets in Detroit are perfect for moviemakers, who can close off entire blocks for weeks without worrying about disrupting the city's flow. The Irishman, a movie due next year starring Val Kilmer and Christopher Walken, was shot in several neighborhoods of Detroit and barely interrupted city life, even when explosives were set off.

"Detroit is a fantastic resource," says Larry August, director and managing partner of Avalon Films, which has done mostly auto commercials in the past. "You have a city that was built for 1.8 million or 2 million people, and it has a lot fewer people than that (912,000 now, the Census Bureau estimates). That's the definition of a back lot. It's gritty, it's urban, and it's a very film-friendly city."

There's even a barely used high school west of Detroit in Howell, Mich., which has stood empty since 2003 because the town can't afford to operate two high schools. It's been the backdrop for at least one movie and is the location now for a pilot being shot for a sitcom for tweens.

(courtesy USA Today)

You had me at "tweens."

You also had me at "Val Kilmer" and "definition of a back-lot."

Whoo! HAGS! lol...

_

A Little of the Old In-Out, In-Out

It pleases me to report some good news on the economic front, friends, for Great Britain has struck a mighty blow for the little bloke!

Alistair Darling, the U.K.'s Chancellor of the Exchequer -- sort of like a Treasury Secretary, but with more pluck -- announced today that he will impose an immediate, one-time 50-percent tax on bonuses of more than 25,000 pounds (about $40,800). That's on top of regular income taxes.

The New York Times calls it"the most direct attack on bonuses anywhere in the world."

(courtesy Huffington Post)

Indeed! And rightly so, all things considered.

Meanwhile, as Goldman Sachs tries to hustle through their $16.7 billion bonus pool and Lehman Brothers...oh, yeah--they died without our support...nevermind, President Obama and the fine fellows in Congress have responded with...silence.

Nobody is even half-heartedly saying something, testing the waters, or making hollow promises to look into it. Nothing.

Huh? Is this not the perfect situation for a bandwagon ride? Like dominoes, these bonuses should fall, but our government is too afraid of their pinstripe-suited master, and so, once again, a grand opportunity for change will pass.

Hey, Obama--remember this?


It should be more than just a sexy graphic, you know...

_

Maybe Michael Jackson DID Inspire the World...

...and we have him to blame for all our problems. Check these lyrics from Man In the Mirror (to be sung to the tune of Man in the Mirror, written and composed by Siedah Garrett, not MJ himself):

As I, Turn Up The Collar On My
Favorite Winter Coat
This Wind Is Blowin' My Mind
I See The Kids In The Street,
With Not Enough To Eat
Who Am I, To Be Blind?
Pretending Not To See
Their Needs
A Summer's Disregard,
A Broken Bottle Top
And A One Man's Soul
They Follow Each Other On
The Wind Ya' Know
'Cause They Got Nowhere
To Go
That's Why I Want You To
Know

I'm Starting With The Man In
The Mirror
I'm Asking Him To Change
His Ways
And No Message Could Have
Been Any Clearer
If You Wanna Make The World
A Better Place
(If You Wanna Make The
World A Better Place)
Take A Look At Yourself, And
Then Make A Change
(Take A Look At Yourself, And
Then Make A Change)
(Na Na Na, Na Na Na, Na Na,
Na Nah)

I've Been A Victim Of A Selfish
Kind Of Love
It's Time That I Realize
That There Are Some With No
Home, Not A Nickel To Loan
Could It Be Really Me,
Pretending That They're Not
Alone?

He saw the world for what it was--a bad place. He tried to change it, tried to inspire other people to change it ("We Are the World," for example), and...they listened to him. They believed in him. They followed him. The Kool-Aid was guzzled. It worked.

Well, congratulations to Michael then, for successfully leading us unto this shitty promised land racked by unemployment, bankruptcy, landfill mountains of bric-a-brac, and the Gosselins.

The case:


Defendant: Michael Jackson
- quick to blame somebody else for all his problems
- over-medicated on legal drugs pimped by the pharmaceutical industry
- had a penchant for justifying whatever he did, no matter how ill-advised
- sexually dysfunctional
- firmly religious, despite his thoughts and deeds
- spent more money than he made, mostly buying useless shit to decorate his house/body
- lost his house to a bank
- died in order to provide for his family



Plaintiff: The People of the World
- quick to blame somebody else for all their problems
- over-medicated on legal drugs pimped by the pharmaceutical industry
- have a penchant for justifying whatever they do, no matter how ill-advised
- sexually dysfunctional
- firmly religious, despite their thoughts and deeds
- spend more money than they make, mostly buying useless shit to decorate their houses/bodies
- lost their houses to several banks
- died in order to provide for their families, but forgot they had AIG insurance that was void upon death, as explicitly stated, in Aramaic, on the inside of an anonymous envelope they were sent once
- HUGE Michael Jackson fans

The Charge:
That Michael Jackson did, willfully and with malice of forethought, mislead The People of the World and plunge them into utter financial ruin and a life chock-full of sexual deviance and drug abuse.

The Verdict:
Well, I suppose that, considering it is possible Michael was instead a martyr who not only frittered away $500 million on total shit in order to have more in common with the average American but also became an overly-vain, sexually-perverse freakshow for the same reason, the least I can do is give his corpse the benefit of abstaining from this useless verdict. Case dismissed.

Uh-oh...wait a minute...I hope no crackpot religion starts out of that off-hand courtroom comment, like it did around 30 AD when my ancestor said that thing about that Jesus lad...or is it already too late?

My opinion, as strange as it seems, is that if it becomes clear that he did not abuse those children, he was very close to being a saint. And even if he was not, this is the first time in my life when I feel the presence of God's hand in what had happened. I am not religious person at all. But the whole story is so amazing, it contains some message, which I do not quite understand yet. I keep thinking about it since he's gone. It is also strange that the person like him could have such a big impact. You never know who will be chosen to convey some message from above. There are people who are not as rich as he was, not that confused, not keeping pornographic journals at home, doing much more for the humanity than he did. But he is the only one who looked like he had that divine spark. Isn't it strange?

(posted by Stranger on this fascinating blog entry. Seriously, just read through those comments at the end and a whole lot of questions about our why our world is in the shitter will slowly come into focus as you hear from some of its inhabitants...)

Shit. It's too late--the idiots have already had time to mull it over and make irrational decisions (also known as faith). I wonder if this new religion will be some sort of cocktail of Jackson's own diverse religious beliefs--maybe its cult members will have to wear a veil, knock on each other's doors to preach the word, and have weekly sleepovers with little boys. Or will they be more literal and pull their doctrine from his song lyrics...hmm...

Or perhaps this is all a bunch of lubbock and, like Mr. Hyde or The Emperor, Michael Jackson was simply an evil man who grew more physically detestable as his dastardly deeds grew more numerous and revolting, as he embraced the Dark Side, and neither he nor his adoring fans want to believe it.

Anything's possible I guess, I mean, we're in America, right? Go us!

_

How Do You Know When Things Are Better?

When corporations spend millions of dollars to tell you they are.

Who cares that you're 45 years old, living in the basement of your demented parents' foreclosed home in an abandoned subdivision threatened by a hurricane? Who cares that you eat oatmeal and stale crackers three times a day? Everybody still employed by GE had a smile on their face in that commercial where they told you everything is better now!!!! Lighten up!!!!! Get out there and buy something fun--like medicine for your bronchitis--with that unemployment check that never came! LOL!!!

Wipe that bloody drool off your chin, shattered human! Bank of America paid a lot of money to BBDO and the television networks so that they could tell you everything is okay. Who cares that they don't loan out money anymore, continue to speculate against you on the stock market, and now buy and sell securitized life insurance policies, gambling against their golf buddies in the health care industry.

Wait, what was that? Say that part again?

Wall Street investment banks are planning to buy and securitize life insurance policies of older Americans. A $1 million policy might be sold for $400,000, then bundled with other policies and sold to investors, the New York Times reports.

Duke law professor James Cox calls the development “bittersweet.”

“The sweet part is there are investors interested in exotic products created by underwriters who make large fees and rating agencies who then get paid to confer ratings," he told the Times. "The bitter part is it’s a return to the good old days."

The story says the plan could be good for Wall Street but bad for insurers, which set rates based on the assumption that policyholders will let their life insurance lapse before they die. If the policies are bought and securitized, insurers may lose money and pass on the loss in the form of increased premiums.

(courtesy ABA Journal)

Wait--what does that mean, exactly?

Well, [Wall Street's] new plan is to buy life insurance plans from elderly and sick people for cash. The example that the New York Times gives is someone selling a million dollar policy for a $400,000 payout, but the payout amount would all depend on the seller's life expectancy. These "life settlements" would then be bundled together to form bonds that can be sold to investors. The investors would start paying for the person's policy from then on. When the person dies, the investors collect on the policy.

Apparently, the faster the person dies, the more money the investors make. However, regardless of whether you die sooner or later, Wall Street firms will profit off of fees collected from creating the bonds and facilitating transactions. You could say that Wall Street is planning to "securitize" people's lives (or deaths, as it may be) into a kind of CDO (Collateralized Debt Obligation). And we all know how great that whole CDO adventure played out for Wall Street, right? What could be dangerous about creating a similar class of financial products with sick people's life expectancy as the focus?

(courtesy CBFE Economics)

Wow--things really are better! Now Wall Street is betting everything on the health care industry stealing so much of your parents' money that they have to sell their life insurance benefits right before they die.

It's like these guys are just begging to be called out on this, daring somebody to say something, to do something--like a serial killer leaving clues at the scene of the crime.


But the funniest part of all this hubbub (aside from all the other hilarious stuff I've thus far mentioned) is that these companies didn't think they could rely on you knowing that things are better because your life was actually better. I mean, are they going to start hanging out around my dinner table so I know when my food tastes good?

Just try to wipe this fucking beatific smile off my face, reality! I'm a paid actor in a television commercial and I am damn good at my job!

"CUT!"

And now, back to frowning reality...

_

The Unspoken Evil In the Housing Market, Country

(photo courtesy Sally Ryan/New York Times)

The New York Times printed an article today about the house next door to that of the Obamas (pictured above) being put on the market recently. It was an interesting article for many reasons, but hidden amidst the facts and figures is a phenomenon that is sadly not getting enough attention:

Very few people I know--college educated, with jobs--can afford to buy a house, regardless of record-low mortgage rates and falling home prices. Some of them have settled for overpriced condos, some have moved into farm country and face ridiculous commutes, most are prepared to stay in rental apartments far longer than previous generations ever did.

This is not healthy for our country, as we are now firmly on the path to becoming a two-class nation--working-poor renters and fabulously-wealthy landlords, the modern-day equivalent of ever-toiling serfs and their wealthy land-owning lords.


For Your Consideration:

The year is 1973. The house next to the Obamas, a beautiful 17-room mansion on the south side of Chicago, sells to a young couple for $35,000. The median household income for that year was $12,051; assuming they were average, the house cost 3 times their annual salary.

The year is now 2009. In 36 years, their house is now worth in the neighborhood of $1-3 million--an increase of between 28 and 85 times the original purchase price and a fabulously lucrative investment. In 2006 (the last year figures are available), the median household income was $58,407; the same house would now cost the new owner 17-51 times their annual salary.

[Also, keep in mind that the inflated 2006 figure reflects double-breadwinning households, which was not common in 1974, so the difference is even greater than it appears.]

And you wonder why so many people took out bad loans? They felt they deserved to live in a house, as hard-working, gainfully-employed couples--and they were right--but the market was such that there was actually no way they could afford to pay for one. Between greedy real estate developers, corrupt politicians, predatory bankers, insatiable real estate trusts, real estate speculation, and bidding wars, prices became artificially, unsustainably high. Wannabe homeowners forced their hand and they lost. Big time.

The Man: 9,941,994, Men: 0.


Meanwhile, the bleeding doesn't stop there, of course.

Real wages (adjusted for inflation) have remained stagnant since 1974, despite enormous increases in productivity and work hours. In other words, while costs have risen dramatically, you are making the same amount--or, in most cases, less--than your father did in 1974, when gas was $0.55 a gallon and a beer at a ballpark cost ten cents. A beer at a recent LA Dodger game set me back $12, or 1/12 of my daily take-home pay.

In the last 36 years, health care costs have skyrocketed, retirement benefits have dwindled or disappeared, and the cost of a private university education has gone from $10,000 a year to $32,000 a year (for public universities, costs have increased 37% in the last 10 years alone).


How are we supposed to live like this? How are intelligent people who have a soul--and, therefore, did not become shady bankers, selfish corporate executives, or lawyers--supposed to afford to buy a house somewhere that could be classified as 'non-bumblefuck?'

Homeowners’ equity fell to 41.4 percent of the total value of household real estate at the end of the first quarter of 2009. This percentage has decreased sharply since the end of 2005. It first fell below 50 in the fourth quarter of 2007 – marking the first time that homeowners’ mortgage debts exceeded their equity in their homes since 1945, when the Fed’s data begins.

(source: American Institute for Economic Research)

There you have it, folks--sixty-four years of 'progress' has resulted in a net-loss of equity. Thank you, corporate America, for shipping all the wealth not in your own pockets overseas.

Are we reaching a point where intelligent, rational people are going to start moving off the grid in droves and repopulate depressed rural areas in their quest for an affordable house? Will we all have to live in factories abandoned by 'patriotic' corporations who moved all their non-executive jobs to China? Where will all these newly-rural people work? How far will they have to drive to shop somewhere that isn't evil-incarnate WalMart? How are they supposed to afford to send their children to school?

Or, since everyone has a college degree these days (thanks, University of Phoenix!) and a diploma doesn't even guarantee a job at Starbucks, will people eventually stop sending their children to college?

I know that sounds crazy, or at least illogical, but if we look at the matter honestly, and perform a simple cost/benefit analysis, at some point the costs will outweigh the benefits. Who wants to graduate college $100,000 in debt, with an ever-dwindling prospect of gainful employment and the looming fear that they will need to locate another $750,000 just to buy a house in the city they grew up in?


It wasn't even 100 years ago that most intelligent, productive people got their education in the real world, unable to afford a college education. They got menial or entry-level jobs and worked their way up from there.

However, what with unemployed PhDs fighting each other over janitorial jobs these days, another, more exotic option is becoming increasingly enticing, and probably as useful:

Formerly an option only for wealthy members of the aristocracy, these days a high-school graduate could choose--instead of going to college--to live, frugally, in a string of major European cities over a four year period, immersing him/herself in language, culture, and the arts. This would not only provide a well-rounded liberal arts education and--shockingly, but truthfully--be cheaper than attending a 4-year American college, but it also comes with free, top-o-the-line health care! Invent a time machine and sign me up!

Time to dust off your Grand Tour brochures, travel agents!
(If the Internet didn't kill you all slowly...)


You may think this is all a joke. You may think these ideas are radical, ridiculous, and ill-informed. You may be right, you may be wrong, but the way I see it, this is the very real, human side of the matter, one that is rarely discussed in the media, or over the dinner table.

The exorbitant cost of a comfortable, quality life in the United States these days--now more unattainable than ever--is the dubious result of three main factors:

1. Decades of unnecessary, harmful real estate speculation by wealthy American freelance speculators, deep-pocketed real estate trusts, investment organizations, and corporations.
2. The insatiable hunger for profit that defines the modern corporation.
3. The fact that our government has failed to act on behalf of its less-moneyed-yet-vastly-more-numerous constituents, failed to step in with laws/oversight/restrictions, and is therefore complicit in allowing the situation to spiral out of control.

For all their blustery talk about America being the richest and most powerful nation on Earth, the rich and greedy oligopoly has created a country its own hard-working citizens can barely afford to live in.

What, may I ask, is the benefit of that, aside from the pieces of silver lining their pockets?

_

A turd by any other name would smell as shitty

Bernie Madoff does Lebanon!

Sort of:

The money disappeared, judicial authorities say, in a billion-dollar pyramid scheme that has riveted [Lebanon]. Its mastermind, a businessman named Salah Ezzedine, was charged with fraud on Saturday and is being called the “Lebanese Bernie Madoff" in local newspapers. Bankers say it is the biggest fraud of its kind this country has ever seen.

But the dollar figures have drawn less attention here than Mr. Ezzedine’s close links with Hezbollah, the militant Shiite movement. Many of the investors — mostly Shiites living in Beirut and southern villages like this one — say those party links were the reason they chose to risk their hard-earned savings with a man who offered 40 and 50 percent profits but never showed any paperwork.

(courtesy NYTimes.com)

The important thing to note here is that the bold and embarrassing financial crimes of Bernie Madoff and Salah Ezzedine share at least two fundamental similarities:

1. Victims risked money they couldn't afford to lose, greedy for the suspiciously high rates of return they were promised (40-50%? Come on, Lebanon...). This violates the first rule of gambling--never bet what you can't afford to lose. I feel no remorse for these victims who lost everything. They were stupid and greedy and paid the price. Lesson learned. Maybe instead of going on vacation this year, or eating, they can instead read through their religious text of choice and fill their stomachs with the fruit of divine wisdom.

2. Victims took it on faith--literally--that everything was kosher, that their money was safe because they invested it with an affable man who shared their religious beliefs.

I hope at least a few of the victims of both schemers take this as a sign that maybe faith isn't all it's cracked up to be. Religion offers no shelter from evil--indeed, religions shelter far more evil than they repel.


With that in mind, it is a sad truth that religion and politics are inescapably entwined. Religion is the opiate of the people, as Karl Marx wisely wrote. It is one of the major sources of power for the ruling class and enables it to dominate the political playing field despite being woefully outnumbered by the downtrodden. I would argue religion is the most powerful political weapon there is, the more-realistic equivalent of mass hypnosis.

If the people are cowed into obeying their ministers, be it out of fear or respect, and the ministers are in the pocket of the ruling party, then the rulers control the people. Those minorities whose beliefs stray from the party line are generally ignored until they are perceived as a threat, as an organization that might one day decide to put their own king in power, burn down parliament and instigate riots, or even just take control of the purse strings.

Pagans are burned at the stake, Christians are fed to lions, Jews are loaded into ovens, Muslims are wrongfully imprisoned, tortured, and killed in unnecessary wars...why?

Control. If you do not belong to the ruling religion and you are numerous, you are a dangerous faction operating outside of their control and you must be eliminated.

These days, fear among the ruling class is so pervasive that even irreligious intellectuals are being persecuted in the fashion of dangerously-popular religious minorities. These intellectuals, as always, are not drinking the Kool Aid--they are aware of all the bullshit that goes on in our government, all the bullshit corporations are able to get away with, and how deliberately misleading political leaders and corporate media are. They spread politically dangerous information, organize themselves into collectives and prepare to inform ignorant people of the truth by peacefully protesting corrupt political agendas, only to be either preemptively detained or immediately swarmed by riot police on-site and wrongfully imprisoned for days on end, with no charges brought, freed only when the G8/IMF/RNC gathering is over.

Yes, ruling fatcats, 'tis best to keep the people ignorant, fat, and gullible--but we know it is that double-edged sword of gullibility that is your Achilles heel, hence your too-strict control of information and free speech, hence our frequent attempts to inform.


Bringing it back to religion for a minute, it is important to note that Karl Marx was not the first to compare religion to opium, though he was certainly the most direct. Check out the following passage from the Marquis de Sade's 1797 novel, L'Histoire de Juliette:

Though nature lavishes much upon your people, their circumstances are strait. But this is not the effect of their laziness; this general paralysis has its source in your policy which, from maintaining the people in dependence, shuts them out from wealth; their ills are thus rendered beyond remedy, and the political state is in a situation no less grave than the civil government, since it must seek its strength in its very weakness. Your apprehension, Ferdinand, lest someone discover the things I have been telling you leads you to exile arts and talents from your realm. You fear the powerful eye of genius, that is why you encourage ignorance. This opium you feed your people, so that, drugged, they do not feel their hurts, inflicted by you. And that is why where you reign no establishments are to be found giving great men to the homeland; the rewards due knowledge are unknown here, and as there is neither honor nor profit in being wise, nobody seeks after wisdom.

I have studied your civil laws, they are good, but poorly enforced, and as a result they sink into ever further decay. And the consequences thereof? A man prefers to live amidst their corruption rather than plead for their reform, because he fears, and with reason, that this reform will engender infinitely more abuses than it will do away with; things are left as they are.

Left as they are, indeed. Sound eerily familiar to the situation we see today?

A Democratic majority in the California legislature can't pass a budget because the Republican minority refuses to cooperate, refuses to raise any taxes, and, unlike any other state in the country, a 2/3 majority is required to pass a budget.

When do 2/3 of politicians agree on anything other than going to war for no reason, lest they be scalped by illiterate, drunken Southern idiots?

Meanwhile, U.S. Senators are acting like children and doing everything they can to block change for the better, in the health care realm and every other realm you can imagine. Their plan is clearly to prevent ANY legislation from taking place, in order to claim in the next election that "Democrats are pussies who didn't do anything with a sitting President and a Congressional majority. Vote for me because I believe in God, I think your sons should die on foreign soil somewhere so my oil stocks will skyrocket, I will increase spending while cutting taxes, and I believe in God, dontcha know..."

Meanwhile, they are being picked off one-by-one in bigamist/nymphomaniac/pederast sex scandals, each more sordid than the one before. Praise Jesus!


Even OBAMA had to pretend to be religious in order to become president. Everyone I know cringed when he referred to God in one of his speeches (I can't remember which one, but it was in the heat of the race, when he clearly needed the stupid vote to carry him into office) because we viewed him as one of us--the first President in recent memory who is smart and capable and has no regard for the control-mechanism-bullshit that is religion.

Was he just posing? Was he serious? Were we wrong? We would all like to think we wouldn't, couldn't, pander to the masses as he did, but it's impossible to say. None of us have been so close to the presidency we could taste it. You know what they say about power, motherfucker--it corrupts.


The only fact available to us here is that the stupid people in America--who far outnumber the intelligent ones, obviously, sadly--will not vote for a President who is smart enough to realize religion is little more than a island of comfort in a sea of unanswered questions about our existence, little more than a tool of control exerted over weak minds, because not only does the fear of the unknown scare them nearly to death, but it would mean that they were wrong and dumb and have been wasting a lot of time in church.

As the Marquis said far more eloquently, all these people want to do is operate humbly, peacefully, within a system they never even care to understand--that is why they are so easily manipulated and why the world is the way it is these days.


Some day soon--hopefully in my lifetime, so I can have the pleasure of watching Rome burn--activist intellectuals will realize revolt is the only answer and act accordingly. Remember: we outnumber the people in charge!

Will we win? You never know. We can certainly give 'em a good fight, but we might wind up needing a meteor on our side, just to make sure of things. It'll be hard for any surviving enemies to care about interest rates, environmental raping, and corporate tax subsidies when Wall Street is rubble and a war-painted, pipe-smoking professor is bringing a sledgehammer down on their nuts.

_

But whatever is a dandy to wear?

Embarrassed by your too-fancy hat in 'these economic times?'

As Michael Jackson would say, 'you are not alone.'

"...modesty has been a byword this recession, and baseball caps are no exception. Consumers are opting for Corollas over Cadillacs, Formica kitchen counters over granite and, it turns out, hats with traditional designs over garish ones."

(courtesy nytimes.com)

Sure, that makes total sense--the 10% decline in sales of garish hats must be because consumers "don't want to look too rich and fancy" in these Great Depressiony times. I mean, can you imagine the embarrassment if somebody realized you were wearing a brand-new $35 hat that was really ugly, rather than a brand-new $35 hat that was really plain?

My balls shrivel in fear of that day.

I wonder if anybody at New Era/NYTimes has considered the fact that the steep drop in sales might instead have something to do with people "buying less shit they don't need cuz they broke."

1 in 10 people in this country are fucking unemployed.

But, for the sake of argument, let's assume New York Times reporter Ken "Boring" Belson did his homework and the numbers don't lie--people are buying less-garish hats because they are poor.

Is this the first good news to come out of the financial crisis?

The hick in me is, for some reason, angered by this news. It almost makes him want to staple some hot-pink tassels onto a (traditional) Cubs hat and parade down the filthy, desolate sidewalks of Wall Street, preening himself in the smudged windowpanes of the once-mighty Goldman Sachs, making Indian battle cries, and waving a gun around.

There are, after all, some rights that are gloriously unalienable, you fucking terrorists.

_

Reader Poll: Should the $100 million man get his due?

As many of you already are aware, Andrew J. Hall is set to receive a $100 million bonus from a unit of Citigroup--a company which would have gone bankrupt had they not been bailed out by the taxpayers to the tune of $45 billion.

To make matters worse, his impressively profitable performance derives from speculation in energy markets, which is a practice on which the government is considering placing heavy restrictions.

Andrew Hall is one of those guys who manipulates the price of crude oil/gasoline, irrespective of the effect his efforts may have on millions of consumers with far less money than he, purely in the name of profit.

But then again, Mr. Hall has a contract--and this is America. He made Citigroup billions of dollars and we want them to make money so they can pay us back, right?

Or do we ever really expect to be paid back? I certainly won't hold my breath, or even stand on one leg.

Technically speaking, Mr. Hall did nothing wrong--he performed his job within legal boundaries (one would assume, although you never know when oil is involved) and it's the system that's broken.

But how do you fix a system if you keep giving people financial incentives to be selfish pricks? Maybe denying him his exhorbitant bonus would be a good first step in "putting things right that once went wrong."

And so it is that, not for the first time, I wish we would have simply let all the selfish, stupid, speculative financial firms in trouble just go bankrupt, allowing the healthiest ones to feast on their remains and grow stronger--things might have been a lot hairier, maybe, but such is the cutthroat nature of capitalism and, in the end, decisions like these would have been so much easier:

"Sorry, Mr. Hall, I know you made us billions of dollars in profit from all those stupid commoners who have to buy gas from the oligopoly to get to their $6/hr jobs cleaning the shrimp you eat out of the mouths of blue-blood virgin debutantes every Friday afternoon at the closing bell, but we have no money to pay you! We fucked up! Now, do me a favor and go fuck off back to your German castle and jerk off on your Schnabels!"

Man, life would be so much easier...

Or would it? What do you think, world?

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I Mean--Ya Gotta Feed the Monkey, Right?!

This just in:
Annie Leibovitz may be a raging cokehead with holes in her purse and the financial savvy of Donald Trump.

Why the hell else would a woman who earns over $3 million a year need to take out a $24 million loan she will never be able to pay back without selling her entire catalog?

Better yet, how will her three children ride her coattails for the rest of their lives if they lose the right to her future royalties?

I'm really worried...

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U.K. Shocker!

Extry! Extry! Read all aboat it!

This just in:

Some law enforcement officers look at pornography, gamble on sporting events, sleep on the job, and are generally successful at avoiding any real work.

Oh--and they can be so dumb that they invest $196,000 in a bogus scam run by a fellow officer. As awful as it is that John Q. Law got took, how many fucking times in this day and age do we need to re-learn that you never invest money you can't afford to lose, much less invest all your money in one place.

Although their supervisors are aware of their officers' counterproductive and illegal behavior--and are often complicit--they refuse to investigate such claims, even when made by their own men in a court of law.

Example:

Scotland Yard said there had been no other disciplinary hearings in relation to the allegations and admissions made in the Page trial.

Detective Superintendent Tony Evans, head of specialist investigation at the Met's directorate of professional standards, said he would not be making any further inquiries into the culture within the royal protection unit. He said the allegations were "historic" and "unsubstantiated".

"I took the decision that [the allegations] would not be investigated. Following the verdict I don't think I will revisit that decision," Evans said.

(courtesy The Guardian)

Hmm. I guess that makes...no sense...unless maybe they just don't want to look bad, which...makes sense...

Wise up, world--you cain't trust your cops any more than your neighbors, priests, bosses, or bankers. And mattresses, FDIC-insured savings accounts, Van Goghs, gold bricks, and tangible real estate in a desirable location are the only good investments around. Until the revolution.

Recognize.

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What Recession?

It's nice to know that no matter how tight international funds may be, there's always room in somebody's budget not only to pay a man who is not even a painter to paint pictures he never intends to sell (and might even throw away), but also to rent a beautiful building in Venice for him to do it in (and fly him and his subject there, put them up, feed them...).

Now, don't get me wrong--I think it's a somewhat fascinating project and might even result in some good art, if by accident. If somebody were doing it in his or apartment, garage, or studio and had an intended purpose for the resulting paintings, I'd be all for it.

But this is ridiculous.

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The End of an Era

Credit card companies--whose usurious interest/fine policies are now suddenly under fire from politicians seeking broader support from the long-ignored working poor--now want to begin charging their loyal, bill-paying customers annual fees and collecting interest immediately after each purchase, eliminating the several-week grace period such people currently enjoy.

Why would they do this when it will stop most of those people from using credit cards for anything but online purchases? To make up for lost income on which they have ill-advisedly come to rely.


Is that not like a pimp who also owns a strip club charging a higher cover and more money per lap-dance to loyal bill-paying customers after the Feds shut down his pimping side-business? Hmm...maybe that's a stretch.

I really hope the government prevents them from enacting those policies, although for some reason I feel it will be difficult to prevent, despite the fact that we actually own most of those companies now...

Oddly, the most irritating thing about this New York Times Business Section article about the current credit card situation is not all that, but this:

People who routinely pay off their credit card balances have been enjoying the equivalent of a free ride, [David Robertson, publisher of the Nilson Report, which tracks the credit card business] said, because many have not had to pay an annual fee even as they collect points for air travel and other perks.

"Despite all the terrible things that have been said, you're making out like a bandit," he said. "That's a third of credit card customers, 50 million people who have gotten a great deal."

Shocking.

A 'free ride?' How, exactly, have we gotten a free ride? It seems that credit card companies--and their highly-paid advocates in politics and the media--would like you to think they only make money when their customers don't pay their bills on time.

Not true.

If this NY Times article were better researched and more evenly reported, it would mention that credit card companies reap billions of dollars a year from doing exactly what credit card companies are supposed to do--taking a small cut from every purchase charged to one of their cards.

Why do you think a lot of small businesses don't allow their customers to use credit cards? It is partly to keep some transactions off the books, for sure, but mostly it is because allowing credit card use will either cut into their meager profits or result in them needing to raise prices slightly, thereby losing any competitive advantage they may have had against larger, corporate stores.


Fees and penalties were supposed to be gravy for credit card companies, a bonus to help fill the coffers, to smooth them through low spots in consumer spending, not the main source of revenue. But greedy people are greedy and once the bankers smelled blood they got a taste for it; they saw an opening, an immoral and quasi-legal income stream to exploit, and they did so with gusto.

The fact that credit card companies and their bloated executives now rely too heavily on penalties in a somehow-still-insufficient attempt to quench their insatiable thirst for moneymoneymoneymoney is not my fault. It's not your fault.

It's nobody's fault but their own.


This whole scenario calls to mind a similar problem we have with parking tickets.

Example: I got a parking ticket in Los Angeles the other day. It seems I forgot to move my car in time for street cleaning, which resulted in a $58 fine.

$58.00?

If I were making $7-8.00/hr--which is what most people with jobs actually make these days--that parking fine would be an entire day's wages. Does that sound fair? No way.

Oops--I forgot to put a quarter in the meter. $45.00 fine. What?!

Clearly these fines have gotten out of hand and need to be corrected, but the problem is that--much like credit card companies--cities have come to rely heavily on the millions of dollars of annual income from parking fines. Each year, their budgets are based on an expected amount of parking violations, the number and salary of their employees reflect this future wealth, and holes in city budgets are able to be plugged with whatever might be left over.

Therefore, if ticket amounts were reduced to a sensible level, or if car owners suddenly became more vigilant and stopped making mistakes, cities would either go bankrupt or be forced to enact an immediate and many-fold increase in the annual automobile registration fee.


And so here we are, living in a world where both our city governments and banks have come to depend on bad behavior and excessive fines to keep themselves solvent.

And it's somehow our fault, and so we must pay. Or cut up our credit cards!

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How Do You Know You're An Idiot?

You are a bank that buys 450,000 pounds of uranium.

What, you mean using other people's money to make yourself endless amounts of money wasn't easy enough for you, Mr. Lehman?

Did you get bored with it after 70 years of nearly unfettered success, since the last time you and your cronies blew it?

What stupid decision will be next?

"Hey, Stoddard! I just got a hot tip from a friend over at the Pentagon--get me 400 million tons of pencils--STAT! We can't lose!"
"Got 'em!"
"Oh, shit--wait..."

The only way to lose money in banking is to be an asshole. Unfortunately, assholes seem to gravitate toward the industry like power-abusers to politics.

At least they learned their lesson--wait...

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You've Come a Long Way, Sugar Baby

Wow.

No wonder the boners on Wall Street were so hungry for dangerous short-term profits--maybe the Obama administration should begin regulating the Sugar Daddy/Baby industry, as part of their oversight of the financial markets.

And maybe I should get a federal stipend to dive head-first into the trenches, as an undercover operative, taking a bullet for my country...

"Hello, Mr. Obama? I've got a proposition for you. Now hear me out..."

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The Party Had to Stop Sometime, Florida...

All those romantics out there with dreams of one day owning a boat, or even just joyriding in one for an afternoon with a handful of strange, now is the time to be you. Just head out to the coast and scoop one up, yo!

All those bored businessmen and backwoods billies who spent their days wondering what it would be like to commit a relatively benign white-collar crime, who wondered whether they would be smart enough to get away with it, well done and thanks for helping the aforementioned dreamers out.

Sorry not all of you got away with it:

Too bad the law ain't so slam-dunk with the assholes who caused this Great Depression Redux in the first place...

Happy boating, dreamers!


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The Trouble With Baby Boomers

Jeffrey Skilling, age 1

'Baby Boomers'

Such a cute moniker. It makes them seem cuddly, permanently wrapped in soft blue and pink blankets, shaking their rattle, full of innocence and limitless potential.

The truth of the matter is much bleaker, however.

Baby boomers in the media, at work, around the family dinner table, like to chide the members of younger generations for their cynicism, sarcasm, apathy, and selfishness.

Well, is this not a product of the sociopolitical climate they have presided over for far too long?

Flagrantly corrupt, immoral, and hypocritical politicians. A government ruled by special interests. An environment ravaged by their greedy corporations and their greedy disposable lifestyles, their mentality that the world will always be one of plenty, that resources and landfills are not finite. A military/industrial complex that is rapidly leading to a guerrilla World War III. An illogical, strict intolerance for gays, abortion, immigrants, and alternative energy. A refusal to solve health crises, because (as Chris Rock once said) the money is in the treatment, not the cure. Pure, unadulterated greed. A dearth of heroes, a plethora of villains.

It must have been nice to grow up in a world where people would have jobs after college. Where somebody with a history degree might end up becoming a CEO, an advertising executive or a college professor. Where you didn't have to acquire an MBA to answer phones, a master's degree to teach kindergarten. Where you worked only 40 hours a week and had full health and pension benefits. Where only one parent had to work and you could afford a house and a car and food on the table. I suppose it makes sense--such luxury must have spoiled you rotten.

Baby boomers, do you not see how drastically that world has crumbled on your watch? There are no jobs. College tuition has tripled, quadrupled. Housing costs have skyrocketed. Wages have failed to keep pace even with mere inflation, much less the artificial rise in costs of products due to the corporatization of every major industry, every type of retailer, big or small. A cup of coffee costs $3. Minimum wage is $6.55/hr. Health benefits have disappeared. Asking for a pension would be laughable. Doctors and hospitals are in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry. The same diseases linger. Art has become a commodity, ruled by fearful bean counters. Confidence in government, medical professionals, financial managers, and just about everybody else is at an all-time low.

And it is not at an all-time low because we are being cynical and enjoy hatching conspiracy theories just to fuck with you, to rebel. It is at an all-time low because even if we only look at the people who have been CAUGHT for the evil deeds they have done, our cynicism and 'crazy' theories and critical thinking have turned out to hold much more water than your idea of blind trust in professionals and leaders. Your idea of 'put your nose to the grindstone and never look up, people are inherently good and will take care of you, have a little faith' suddenly holds no water.

How many of you trusted Bernie Madoff? How many of you trusted your financial managers who told you the market will only go up? How many of you trusted your doctor when he put you on bum, possibly even unneccessary, medication that made things worse or killed you? How many of you voted for Ronald Reagan/George Bush/George Bush? How many of you now blame Obama and 'crazy young daredevil traders' for the problems their policies and cronies caused?

I do not mean to imply that all Baby Boomers are necessarily complicit in our societal downfall--but the fact of the matter is the multitude of innocents among them have done little or nothing to stop things. Protest? They make fun of protests! That was something hippies did! That is something crazy youngsters on drugs do! [Nevermind that they would have just been tear-gassed and wrongfully imprisoned by the man if they had protested, if there hadn't been enough of them to overrun the Bastille and start beheading people]

99% of Baby Boomers fall into one of two categories: the perpetrators and the gullible lambs led to slaughter. They did not question authority; they had faith in the integrity of their leaders; they trusted blindly. And look where it got us.

Yet they chide us kids for our fact-based, knee-jerk, implicit mistrust in those in power.

They are at retirement age. Most of them are still working, holding on to jobs that should be ours, would have been ours, if they had acted like their parents and actually retired at 55. Many are well into their 60s and going strong. Why are they still working? Because they are greedy, they have gotten used to having a ton of money coming in, used to being able to buy a vacation house, another car, a boat, going on lots of vacations, piling up more and more savings for retirement, playing the game.

Another, more disturbing reason, is that they have been a generation so used to working hard--because, I commend them, most came from very humble beginnings, and have earned what they received by working loyally and diligently--that most of them wouldn't know what to do with themselves if they retired. The men cringe at the idea of sitting around the house with their old wives all day, with nothing to occupy their time, because they rarely acquired any hobbies or interests beyond sitting at the office or in front of a TV screen; the women cringe even more at the thought of having to deal with their husband being around the house all day, when they have grown accustomed to their peace and quiet. And so the men continue to work and the women let them.

It is too bad that they don't realize we are a generation that works even harder, even longer--for much less. And that sad reality only makes us want to work less, only fuels our cynicism, only further chips away at our faith in humanity, at our hope for the future.

I want every Baby Boomer reading this (are there any?) to look at themself in the mirror and think about what kind of world--moral, intellectual, physical--he or she has left us.

What reasons do we have not to be cynical and apathetic?

Hey, Broseph--pass the bong and let's disappear into a fantasy world once again...it's so much better than reality. You get that job at Starbucks yet? Oh, you just finished your stint at Coffee University and are waiting for an offer? Shit. I should do that--I'd love to make $10 an hour...


***


Bonus thought for the day:

As Lord Acton once said: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."

I think it is interesting that most people repeat this quote as "power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely." It leaves out one of the most important aspects of his insightful observation. Power corrupts, sure--but, more importantly, more simply, power attracts the wrong kind of people. And so we are smart to be wary of them, to keep watch over them, to be fearful of ulterior motives. To not do so would be ignorant and emboldening to them. As they have proven time and time again...

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What is the Better Question?

1. If 'bonuses' are not tied to individual or corporate performance, and must be paid even if the employee has left the company...then why are they called bonuses? Why aren't the amounts just added into the employee's salary? Hmmm...something is surprisingly fishy with the way these financial guys do business...who would have seen that coming? In slightly-related news, wow.

2. How can a film critic worth a damn equate Julia Roberts and Clive Owen to Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant with a straight face? If you don't believe me, watch the laughable trailer. The uninspired 'banter' reminds me of a bad local news broadcast, except without the energy. Did Julia Roberts even realize she was supposed to be mysterious, witty, and charismatic? Did she record her dialogue over the phone? It seems like her agent told her she was in Hook again. Bottom line: if you can't even cut a trailer with some energy to it, the movie will certainly fall flat.

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News from the Future!

The Northrop-Grumman Internet Times-Dispatch April 16, 2159

220 Year-Old Bernie 'Ponzi' Madoff Paroled for Good Conduct

His 150-year prison sentence drawing to a close, Mr. Madoff said that although he will certainly miss the familiar, lush grounds of the minimum-security prison he has called home for several lifetimes--as well as his numerous golfing buddies there--he was also excited about the prospect of reconnecting with his wife, children, and other loved ones.

"Luckily, I stole enough money to make us all live forever. Cryonics is an amazing thing!"

Meanwhile, the descendants of those financially raped by him around the turn of the millenium are up in arms across the globe.

"Godsfhoisdnlmf;sdmf;ldsmklmnslkfnl!!" One of them cried unintelligibly, his tongue long ago bartered for a handful of week-old rice. Of course, with no education to speak of, a tongue may not have made a difference...

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