You know what American Oilmen call lying politicians, 40% drops in value, and devastating hurricanes? Another day at the f****ing office!
Listening to the most overindulged population of whiners over these last several years, starting during Katrina, and culminating last night with Barney Frank, of all people, likening what is happening to the "Great Depression" induces in me hysterical laughter and/or the gag reflex.
To paraphrase Lloyd Bentson, "I have known people that survived the depression, and, Mr. Frank, we are not one of them."
Richter-scale outrage is the sentiment a statement comparing this to the depression would induce in my grandparents. Nearly as much as knowing that Bankers fleeced the world by creating and selling toilet paper for the price of gold, and got rich doing it. A massive redistribution of real wealth by creating valueless fluff and conning people to part with their cash for this pink wad of poisonous cotton candy.
We replaced the "Tech Boom", which was largely Cotton Candy, no nutritional substance, but at least not poison, with some chunks of meat and vegetable intertwined (remember the New Economy, where profits and revenues meant nothing?) with the Real Estate boom, where people kept on spending by borrowing on their homes and investing in residential real estate because the stock market was down for the count. All fueled by easy fed money. Bad enough that this boom drove the median house in California to 12 x the median salary, which should have been a wake up call for everyone. When people cannot afford to own homes based on price, rather than 3-card monte financing, you have a disaster in the making.
Who could think we could make it worse? Takes an MBA to screw it up much more. By securitizing overpriced mortgages, held by people that have been educated over the last 40 years that stiffing the lender is somehow ok, and selling this poisonous fluff in huge quantities to the world's banking institutions, who paid for it with OUR money, so that they could get their mark to market bonuses. Bankers suckering bankers.
I had lunch with a friend the other day and I told him that I never invested in financial institutions because they are run for the benefit of management rather than shareholders... much more so than other types of companies. I guess it is a hold over from the partnership days when they were all private. No other industry distributes annually over 40% of its earnings as bonuses to executives. That's why I stick with "hyper profitable ExxonMobil, with its 9% margins, and 99% after the 50%+ tax rates goes to shareholders.
In the end, all we have left is the real wealth that creates the real economy... the goods and services output, real estate, and commodities. Don't confuse this with cash. Cash is just the way we make wealth fungible... to tax it and distribute it. Except this time all that wealth gets divided by an extra couple of trillion dollars of paper, which makes the paper we hold now worth less. Divide 1 by 1 and you get 1. Divide 1 by 2 and you get 1/2. At least we were smart enough to sucker the Europeans more than ourselves, because their currency is DROPPING versus the dollar. heh heh.
This poisonous cotton candy crap started with Carter, was promoted by Clinton, Bush's HUD appointments allowed it to flourish, and Democrat congressional members made sure it never got touched. Enough blame to go around. "Bush's failed economic policies" works only with the ignorant or the kool aid drinkers. "Racist" as Mr. Frank is trying to characterize the Fannie Mae meltdown is a slap in the face to Martin Luther King. I was going to say a poke in the ... eye.
Bravo to the State of Texas for dealing with Hurricane Ike without outcry or fingerpointing, or concerts by brain dead celebretards. I'll take Fifth Ward Geto Boys doing it for themselves over Ray Nagin's Chocolate City whine choir any day. We don't need no Concerts for Galveston.
Katrina is Ike's bitch!
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