Yet Again, Religion Makes People Stupid

It wasn't that long ago that Bernie Madoff was busted duping his fellow Jews with impossibly high returns on investments. Greed and misplaced faith were their downfall.

Now it's the Christians' turn:

"It was a good place where Christians would be investing in the work of other Christians," said Karen Lamb, a 55-year-old Terre Haute, Ind, housewife.

More than five years later, the Lambs still are waiting to get most of their $53,000 investment back. Now a former pastor is going on trial for what authorities call a multimillion-dollar scheme that preyed on thousands of parishioners who thought they were helping build churches but were actually buying the man and his sons planes and sports cars.

Authorities say Reeves, founder and owner of now-defunct Alanar, and his three sons duped about 11,000 investors into buying bonds worth $120 million secured by mortgages on construction projects at about 150 churches. The men diverted money from new investments to pay off previous investors, pocketing $6 million and buying two airplanes, sports cars and vacations, according to court records.
Officials say the scheme operated mainly in Indiana, though church members in other states, including Florida, Michigan, Maryland and Oklahoma, also were victimized.

(courtesy HuffPo)

When will people learn that a common religion does not equate common values, that thieves are thick among religious folk, as they are with all folk, and--most importantly--that you should never invest ALL of your money in one place?

Probably never, so maybe it's a blessing in disguise that most people out there have no money to invest thanks to the Lords of Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce.

In the meantime, be wary your fellow churchgoers...

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Politics is Politics is Politics

It's so weird that the Democrats are not sticking it to Wall Street right now in the much-blathered-about Financial Reform Bill, considering they have the votes and there is a bipartisan public outcry for real reform, right?

There has never been a better chance to help the little guys, right?

Wrong. While the time is certainly ripe for reform, there is unfortunately an election this fall and, therefore, the financial titans are in the perfect position to play one side against the other to get the watered-down 'reform' they want.

If incumbent Republicans don't use every childish trick in the book to delay votes, reject amendments, and extract toothless compromises, they won't get any money and they will lose their elections to even-more-nutjobby Teabaggers.

If Democrats (who receive more funding from Wall Street than the GOP, by the way) stand tall and clamp down on derivatives (among other issues), Goldman Sachs--who stands to lose 41% of their earnings--will make sure Republicans won every seat in November to overturn the law before it takes effect.

Thus, the pickle we are in and why we will stay in this pickle we have been in for quite some time now. Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and those pesky SEC lawsuits against Goldman will ultimately amount to little more than huffing and puffing and a whole bag full of money for a bunch of lawyers.


Sadly, in order to perform any potential future good, the Democrats need to take a dive in order to stockpile every penny they can get from Wall Street or the Republicans nutjobs will crush them and the nation will be handed once again to the heedless, farting toddlers obsessed with deficit nonchalance, corporate tax cuts, propaganda, environmental destruction, "family values for you not me," and the raping of the middle-class-cum-working-poor.

The really bad news, however, is that there will always be another election waiting in the shadows and there will always be those--on either side of our two-headed monster--that will vote against what is just in order to line their pockets with gold.

...and you wonder why not a single city in the United States made it into the top thirty in Mercer's Best Places to Live in the World survey (Honolulu was 31st).

How have all these other (European, Canadian, Oceanic) nations figured out how to bribe and steal while also giving the people a better quality of life? Are they just slightly less greedy? I might have to head over to Germany and do some research...

Gute Nacht!

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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...

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Movie Reviews In Briefs

The following are movies I saw for the first time during the last couple months, in the cutting-edge theater aboard my $60 million private jet, in my underwear, while doing my annual ten-month-long mansion-crawl:

[ratings are out of four stars]

Valentino: The Last Emperor = 3.5 stars
Interesting fellow, colorful interviews, informative glance into a somewhat strange world, but a little one-note and without much of an arc.
Two simple ideas for improvement:
- maybe checking in with/interviewing his fleet of servants would have added some more flavor?
- interviewing Karl Lagerfeld and some other designers (Tom Ford? Ralph Lauren? Michael Kors?) for their take on the man paraded before us as a genius, but with little actual description of why he is so revered.

Observe & Report = 1 star
I love dark comedies, but they have to be funny. Aside from a few brief moments, this wasn't funny. AND the plot was weak and disjointed. Bummer. I hate to say it--but it is actually possible that this was the worst mall cop movie of this year's crop. I also hate that I now have to watch Paul Fart: Mall Cop to find out for sure...

Gomorrah = 2.5 stars
Disappointing. I really wanted to like it, since it's Italian and about a fascinating subject matter, but it just wasn't good enough. I didn't care about anybody in the movie--they were pretty much universal assholes or brainless schlubs. The ending was pretty great, really demonstrated the pointlessness of it all, but would have packed more of a punch if everything before it had made me care more. Ultimately, the movie was a great statement of the futility of organized crime, but not a very entertaining experience.

Elegy = 2 stars
Ben Kingsley's apartment was cool, Penelope Cruz was delectable, and I can relate to the blunt truth of the socio-sexual philosophy, but that's about all I really liked about this movie. The rest was...okay. Dennis Hopper was atrocious, with most of the blame shouldered by the writer--I get it! He's Ben Kingsley's confidante, maybe even his conscience, but that doesn't mean he is an interesting character. I was bored whenever he was onscreen and that is a perfect example of talent wasted. As in most older lover/younger lover scenarios, I found Kingsley/Cruz's relationship completely unbelievable (Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is a glaring exception) and, therefore, it is hard to invest anything in it--which ruins the entire purpose of the story.

W. = 2 stars
I enjoyed Karl Rove's smarminess and Dick Cheney's assholeness, but that's about it. I feel like--even though I'm sure his camp hates it--it was too soft on GeorgieBoy. He made the decisions and he needs to be held accountable for them; this movie was too sympathetic by simply shifting the blame to his devious subordinates. Oh--and the husband/wife subplot made me want to vomit.

Idiocracy = 3 stars
At times funny, at times painfully true (already), but ultimately brought down by poor acting, a cardboard plot, and many missed opportunities for bigger and better laughs (example: the opening Darwinian sequence).

Wall Street = 2 stars
What a disappointment! I've heard such good things over the years, but this did not measure up. Charlie Sheen is boring. Michael Douglas is good, but is character is pretty one-note and not all that interesting or deep--he certainly did not deserve an Oscar for the performance. The story plays out fairly predictably and the Martin Sheen blue-collar, down-home hokiness ultimately swallows this entire movie in the end. Bottom line: I know Oliver Stone is smarter than this movie. I understand why they are remaking this turd (timely=money!) but fail to see the need.
Addendum: If you are interested in seeing a fascinating take on stock trading, you should rent Antonioni's L'Eclisse instead.


Unrelated--how strange and...awesome?...is it that Netflix actually has the following category:

Visually-striking Dark Movies based on real life

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For the Love

Is there anybody in the Pennsylvania legal system that is not a raging asshole criminal?

Between this bullshit and Blagojevich, Madoff, Robert Allen Stanford, AIG, Citibank, Alex Rodriguez, and the men of Wall Street, I just don't know how much more soul-destroying news I can take this year.

And it's only February.

Ready the coffin, my good man!

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