What happened?
The short answer is that the mortgage packagers lied to the buyers. The folks who created the bonds mixed good loans with bad loans and then lied about it.
It's a rookie mistake: NEVER lie to money.
Now the money - bond buyers - is frightened. They will likely stay frightened for some time.
They'll stay away longer if there is no bailout. They will come back eventually, but they will be very leery of new bonds.
The solution is to provide very detailed disclosure and expect mistrust. After all, when you lie to a nervous buyer, it takes a long time to rebuild trust.
It'll happen, so have patience.
Why did they lie to money?: because no one told them they could not. There was no regulation - no cop on the beat - , so they got away with it.
But what are the long term effects?
Basic long term effect is that free market capitalism with no oversight and ineffective regulation has once again proved to be a disaster.
It is predictable and avoidable. So, why do we have to re-learn that lesson again and again??
The Great Depression, the Dot.com bust, Enron, etc., etc.
We have to re-learn it simply because there is too much money to be made privately by acting greedily.
The money goes to buy loose regulations from Congress.
Congress took down the firewall between banks and investments we had built after the 1930's depression.
We took them down in the 1970's and promptly got the S&L meltdown and bailout and now the mortgage meltdown and eventual bailout.
Will we learn the lesson this time? Who knows? It's a crapshoot.
One thing is for sure.
Capitalism is dead.
The capitalism that insists on a laissez faire, laissez passer, i.e., zero regulation or government oversight, is dead because it does not produce good results for most people.
The United States founding fathers broke from England to secure both liberty and property. The current debacle has destroyed property for many of our citizens. This happened because businesses insisted on the liberty to pursue their selfish gains regardless of the cost to the country.
The world declared that communism and socialism were dead upon the demise of the Soviet Union. The declaration was made because the system failed to provide a good life for its subjects.
Free market capitalism is dead for the same reason - it has failed to provide a good life for most of its citizens. Many in the United States believe that our citizens have one of the highest standards of living in the world. This is not true by most objective measures.
Capitalism's apologists insist that letting entrepreneurs work for personal gain is good for the economy because they will build capital in the form of money for themselves and that they will use that capital to invest in new businesses. From the new businesses will come jobs and economic growth.
That idea is wrong. It is wrong because the individuals who accumulate the wealth have little or no necessary incentive to risk it on new businesses. They are just as likely to buy a yacht and an Italian villa as they are to invest in a new business.
There are people who make such investments, but allowing their ranks to grow in the hopes of creating more new businesses just does not work.
Today, the world had too much capital. Capital markets are worldwide and operate on a 24/7/365 basis thanks to the internet.
There is so much capital around that its owners have a hard time placing it in secure investments. At the same time, just about every sound business idea is able to receive funding. In addition, investors spend much of their time on financial or non-productive investments. Thus we have the derivatives that brought the financial system to the brink of collapse.
This is happening at the very time when more and more people around the world are sliding into poverty, despair and violence.
Copyright, 2008 by Mike P. McKeever, Santa Rosa, CA. This text can be posted in any electronic forum. For publication in printed form please request permission from the author: email: mpmckeever@earthlink.net.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Too Dumb, 7 - 'Let them eat cake'
Seems like Sara will do what she wants when she wants, responsibilities be damned.
Sounds familiar.
See details here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/29/MNL7137MLQ.DTL&hw=Palin&sn=002&sc=907
Sounds familiar.
See details here:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/29/MNL7137MLQ.DTL&hw=Palin&sn=002&sc=907
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Too Dumb, 6 - 'McCain is Dangerously wrong,' Joe Biden
"John is more than wrong -- he is dangerously wrong. On a question so basic, so fundamental, so critical to our nation's security, we can't afford a commander in chief so divorced from reality and from America's most basic national interests," Biden said.
Read the article at: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/articles/2008/09/24/biden_says_mccain_often_wrong_on_national_security/
Read the article at: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/2008/articles/2008/09/24/biden_says_mccain_often_wrong_on_national_security/
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Too Dumb, 5: 'disconnected from knowledge and principle'. G. Will
Here's a short quote from George Will:
Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.
Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated. This childish reflex provoked the Wall Street Journal to editorialize that "McCain untethered" -- disconnected from knowledge and principle -- had made a "false and deeply unfair" attack on Cox that was "unpresidential" and demonstrated that McCain "doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does."
read the rest at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/22/AR2008092202583.html
Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.
Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated. This childish reflex provoked the Wall Street Journal to editorialize that "McCain untethered" -- disconnected from knowledge and principle -- had made a "false and deeply unfair" attack on Cox that was "unpresidential" and demonstrated that McCain "doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does."
read the rest at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/22/AR2008092202583.html
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Bailout Prevention: Derivative Disclosure
Here's my idea to prevent a recurrence of the present debacle:
Broaden the definition of a 'security' to include all financial instruments sold in any market and require that each be subject to full disclosure laws just like stocks and bonds.
Apparently, the salesmen selling the junk could not even understand it - no wonder we have a disaster.
If you use the idea, the price is $1.00
For more, read Pat Buchanan here: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=28670
Broaden the definition of a 'security' to include all financial instruments sold in any market and require that each be subject to full disclosure laws just like stocks and bonds.
Apparently, the salesmen selling the junk could not even understand it - no wonder we have a disaster.
If you use the idea, the price is $1.00
For more, read Pat Buchanan here: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=28670
Monday, September 22, 2008
Palin/McCain - Too Dumb, 4 - Reckless
From The Sunday Times
September 7, 2008
The fright begins as John McCain reveals his reckless side
Sarah Palin has opposed his key policies, so why did he pick her?
Andrew Sullivan
There is one reason the job of vice-president exists. In a system with a single executive, you need someone to fill in if the president is incapacitated or dies. In war time this is especially important. More salient: McCain just turned 72 and would be the oldest first term president in American history with four cancer scares and the awful residue of Vietnamese torture in his bones.
The pick is also the first presidential-level decision a candidate has to make. You learn a lot about the candidate. And with Obama and McCain, we have two men who have never been executives - just legislators, book-writers and celebrities. So the decision is the first time we can compare the two men on a presidential decision
level.
In Joe Biden, Obama revealed his core temperamental conservatism. It was a safe choice of someone deeply versed in foreign policy, and with roots that connected to the working class white ethnics he needed. It wasn't flashy; and was even a little underwhelming; but it was highly professional.
What we have learned about John McCain from his selection of Sarah Palin is that he is as impulsive and reckless a decision-maker as George W. Bush. We know this not because of what we have learned about this Pentecostalist populist since she exploded on the scene last Friday morning (and God knows we have learned more than we ever wanted). We know it because of how McCain made the decision. He wanted his best friend, Joe Lieberman, the former Democratic vice-presidential candidate for Al Gore. That pick would have been remarkable for its bipartisan nature, would have impressed independents, and signaled a centrist presidency centered on foreign policy.
It would have been bold while not being rash.
But McCain is in charge of a party that is now, at its core, religiously motivated. Joe Lieberman, for all his political talents, is Jewish, pro-choice on abortion, gay-inclusive, and domestically liberal. McCain faced an insurrection in his party base if he picked him. Without the evangelical base, he wasn't going to win. So last week, McCain picked someone he had only met once before.
I repeat: he picked someone he had only met once before. His vetting chief sat Palin down for a face-to-face interview the Wednesday before last. It's very hard to overstate how nutty and irresponsible this is. Would any corporate chieftain pick a number two on those grounds and not be dismissed by his board for recklessness?
The recklessness was much more fatal in the new media world than in the old one. In the old media world, the Republicans could try to control the flow of information, browbeat the press and prevent the entire weird family background and series of scandals and rumors of quite incredible events from getting into the mainstream. But those days are over. Within minutes of the announcement, everyone reached for oogle. I recommend for starters the two following stories that appeared in the Anchorage Daily News last March and April.
Within hours, the McCain campaign was under siege, as the vetting process the professionals didn't do was done by thousands of bloggers and citizen journalists. Palin's reality show family life, her vendetta against her ex brother-in-law, her endorsement of a mayoral candidate who ran against her own mother-in-law, her attempt to ban books in her local library, her friendship with one of her husband's former business partners, and on and on: this was the first major campaign event that was covered by the underground media before it reached the mainstream. The American mainstream press spent a large part of last week wondering how much truth the public could bear to hear.
McCain's entire campaign, moreover, was based on his superior experience to Obama, who was allegedly too unknown and risky for the Oval Office, and too jejune on foreign policy. And then McCain turned around and picked a total unknown who
had been a mayor of a town in Alaska of a few thousand and then had only just got elected as governor of a very strange state with 700,000 people. More to the point, there is virtually no record anywhere of her views on foreign policy in the public record.
There is one documented instance. It came in an interview with the Alaskan Business Monthly in December 2006. She was asked about the central issue of McCain's campaign: the surge in Iraq, which he championed. She said she hadn't focused on the war with Iraq but had heard about the surge "on the news." She then said that she hoped there was an "exit plan." That was it. So on the central issue of McCain's campaign, Palin took the opposite position to John McCain.
McCain's major domestic issue in the election, moreover, is the economy and the rocky time many middle class Americans are having. All the polls show that he needs to offer something tangible to counter Obama's reconstructed Clintonomics and universal healthcare. By his own admission, he has never been that interested in economic issues. And his vulnerability is the sense that he doesn't get how distressed many Americans feel. So who does he pick? A governor whose state is essentially an oil company and whose major problem in the two mintes she has been in office has been what to do with a $5 billion oil surplus! She decided to send half a billion dollars' worth of checks to every Alaskan this summer. And people wonder why
she's popular in her state.
It would be very hard to pick a governor in America who knows less about the struggles of most Americans in the current economy. Alaska's economy is currently like Russia's: booming because of commodity prices. And her one key policy issue in Alaska has been drilling for oil in the protected Alaskan National Wilderness Reserve - a policy McCain, against most of his Republican colleagues, has always opposed! Oh, and she's against protecting the polar bears as well. This is McCain's
green conservatism: building pipelines, drilling in protected wildernesses and screwing the polar bears.
There are other obvious liabilities with Palin. To say the very least, her private life and family are colorful. The rumors about them do not stop coming, and the tabloid press has only just arrived in what can only be called Arkansas with penguins.
Palin, moreover, currently has two ethics investigations into her conduct in the 18 months she has been in office - and one report is scheduled to go public days before the election. What was McCain thinking? And Palin's edcuation? Six colleges in five years ending in a degree in sports journalism from the University of Idaho. That's the background of someone who could be president of the United States at any moment after next January.
Who does John McCain think he's kidding? And what on earth was he thinking? This was a rash, impulsive, reckless pick. We have no idea where it's headed - and i wouldn't hazard a wild guess what we will have found out about Palin in a week's time. Maybe it will win some votes from evangelicals. Maybe Palin will reveal herself as something more than a former sportscaster who can deliver a speech. But it shows a deep unseriousness about governing the most powerful nation on earth at a time of great peril.
If you thought a president who went to war on flawed intelligence with no plan for the aftermath was reckless, then I have news for you. You haven't seen anything yet. Imagine the kind of decision-making McCain has just demonstrated applied to life-and-death decisions with respect to Iran and Russia.
Yes, you have permission to be afraid.
Read
September 7, 2008
The fright begins as John McCain reveals his reckless side
Sarah Palin has opposed his key policies, so why did he pick her?
Andrew Sullivan
There is one reason the job of vice-president exists. In a system with a single executive, you need someone to fill in if the president is incapacitated or dies. In war time this is especially important. More salient: McCain just turned 72 and would be the oldest first term president in American history with four cancer scares and the awful residue of Vietnamese torture in his bones.
The pick is also the first presidential-level decision a candidate has to make. You learn a lot about the candidate. And with Obama and McCain, we have two men who have never been executives - just legislators, book-writers and celebrities. So the decision is the first time we can compare the two men on a presidential decision
level.
In Joe Biden, Obama revealed his core temperamental conservatism. It was a safe choice of someone deeply versed in foreign policy, and with roots that connected to the working class white ethnics he needed. It wasn't flashy; and was even a little underwhelming; but it was highly professional.
What we have learned about John McCain from his selection of Sarah Palin is that he is as impulsive and reckless a decision-maker as George W. Bush. We know this not because of what we have learned about this Pentecostalist populist since she exploded on the scene last Friday morning (and God knows we have learned more than we ever wanted). We know it because of how McCain made the decision. He wanted his best friend, Joe Lieberman, the former Democratic vice-presidential candidate for Al Gore. That pick would have been remarkable for its bipartisan nature, would have impressed independents, and signaled a centrist presidency centered on foreign policy.
It would have been bold while not being rash.
But McCain is in charge of a party that is now, at its core, religiously motivated. Joe Lieberman, for all his political talents, is Jewish, pro-choice on abortion, gay-inclusive, and domestically liberal. McCain faced an insurrection in his party base if he picked him. Without the evangelical base, he wasn't going to win. So last week, McCain picked someone he had only met once before.
I repeat: he picked someone he had only met once before. His vetting chief sat Palin down for a face-to-face interview the Wednesday before last. It's very hard to overstate how nutty and irresponsible this is. Would any corporate chieftain pick a number two on those grounds and not be dismissed by his board for recklessness?
The recklessness was much more fatal in the new media world than in the old one. In the old media world, the Republicans could try to control the flow of information, browbeat the press and prevent the entire weird family background and series of scandals and rumors of quite incredible events from getting into the mainstream. But those days are over. Within minutes of the announcement, everyone reached for oogle. I recommend for starters the two following stories that appeared in the Anchorage Daily News last March and April.
Within hours, the McCain campaign was under siege, as the vetting process the professionals didn't do was done by thousands of bloggers and citizen journalists. Palin's reality show family life, her vendetta against her ex brother-in-law, her endorsement of a mayoral candidate who ran against her own mother-in-law, her attempt to ban books in her local library, her friendship with one of her husband's former business partners, and on and on: this was the first major campaign event that was covered by the underground media before it reached the mainstream. The American mainstream press spent a large part of last week wondering how much truth the public could bear to hear.
McCain's entire campaign, moreover, was based on his superior experience to Obama, who was allegedly too unknown and risky for the Oval Office, and too jejune on foreign policy. And then McCain turned around and picked a total unknown who
had been a mayor of a town in Alaska of a few thousand and then had only just got elected as governor of a very strange state with 700,000 people. More to the point, there is virtually no record anywhere of her views on foreign policy in the public record.
There is one documented instance. It came in an interview with the Alaskan Business Monthly in December 2006. She was asked about the central issue of McCain's campaign: the surge in Iraq, which he championed. She said she hadn't focused on the war with Iraq but had heard about the surge "on the news." She then said that she hoped there was an "exit plan." That was it. So on the central issue of McCain's campaign, Palin took the opposite position to John McCain.
McCain's major domestic issue in the election, moreover, is the economy and the rocky time many middle class Americans are having. All the polls show that he needs to offer something tangible to counter Obama's reconstructed Clintonomics and universal healthcare. By his own admission, he has never been that interested in economic issues. And his vulnerability is the sense that he doesn't get how distressed many Americans feel. So who does he pick? A governor whose state is essentially an oil company and whose major problem in the two mintes she has been in office has been what to do with a $5 billion oil surplus! She decided to send half a billion dollars' worth of checks to every Alaskan this summer. And people wonder why
she's popular in her state.
It would be very hard to pick a governor in America who knows less about the struggles of most Americans in the current economy. Alaska's economy is currently like Russia's: booming because of commodity prices. And her one key policy issue in Alaska has been drilling for oil in the protected Alaskan National Wilderness Reserve - a policy McCain, against most of his Republican colleagues, has always opposed! Oh, and she's against protecting the polar bears as well. This is McCain's
green conservatism: building pipelines, drilling in protected wildernesses and screwing the polar bears.
There are other obvious liabilities with Palin. To say the very least, her private life and family are colorful. The rumors about them do not stop coming, and the tabloid press has only just arrived in what can only be called Arkansas with penguins.
Palin, moreover, currently has two ethics investigations into her conduct in the 18 months she has been in office - and one report is scheduled to go public days before the election. What was McCain thinking? And Palin's edcuation? Six colleges in five years ending in a degree in sports journalism from the University of Idaho. That's the background of someone who could be president of the United States at any moment after next January.
Who does John McCain think he's kidding? And what on earth was he thinking? This was a rash, impulsive, reckless pick. We have no idea where it's headed - and i wouldn't hazard a wild guess what we will have found out about Palin in a week's time. Maybe it will win some votes from evangelicals. Maybe Palin will reveal herself as something more than a former sportscaster who can deliver a speech. But it shows a deep unseriousness about governing the most powerful nation on earth at a time of great peril.
If you thought a president who went to war on flawed intelligence with no plan for the aftermath was reckless, then I have news for you. You haven't seen anything yet. Imagine the kind of decision-making McCain has just demonstrated applied to life-and-death decisions with respect to Iran and Russia.
Yes, you have permission to be afraid.
Read
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Palin/McCain - Too Dumb, 3
Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska:
"She doesn't have any foreign policy credentials," Hagel said Wednesday in an interview. "You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don't know what you can say. You can't say anything."
See the interview at: http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=2835&u_sid=10435997
"She doesn't have any foreign policy credentials," Hagel said Wednesday in an interview. "You get a passport for the first time in your life last year? I mean, I don't know what you can say. You can't say anything."
See the interview at: http://www.omaha.com/index.php?u_page=2835&u_sid=10435997
Monday, September 15, 2008
Palin/McCain - Too Dumb, 2
Columnists Matier & Ross, San Francisco Chronicle, September 15, 2008:
The former Alaska public safety commissioner who refused to fire a state trooper embroiled in a domestic dispute with Gov. Sarah Palin's sister says he holds no grudge, but still believes the GOP vice presidential nominee is too thin-skinned for the job she hopes to fill.
"She apparently has difficulty compartmentalizing personal feelings from official acts," said Walter Monegan, who spent 33 years in the Anchorage Police Department - five years as chief - before Palin named him as the state public safety commissioner late in 2006."
Read the rest at: http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/matierandross/
The former Alaska public safety commissioner who refused to fire a state trooper embroiled in a domestic dispute with Gov. Sarah Palin's sister says he holds no grudge, but still believes the GOP vice presidential nominee is too thin-skinned for the job she hopes to fill.
"She apparently has difficulty compartmentalizing personal feelings from official acts," said Walter Monegan, who spent 33 years in the Anchorage Police Department - five years as chief - before Palin named him as the state public safety commissioner late in 2006."
Read the rest at: http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/matierandross/
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Palin/McCain - Too Dumb To Serve
This duo would be a disaster for the United States.
McCain's primary claim is that he is strong on defense because he stood up to torture. The reason he was shot down and captured is that he disobeyed orders from smart people and flew where he was not supposed to fly.
At the first news of the Georgia/Russia dust up, he pronounced that he was a Georgian and that we should invade South Ossetia and fight Russia.
Even the blood drunk Cheney/Bush duo is smarter than that. The Bush administration took force off the table right away.
Imagine a President dumber than Bush.
Now imagine a President dumber than McCain. That would be Sarah Palin.
McCain will die in office if elected - even Matt Damon knows that.
Then Palin will be President. She echoed McCain's 'Let's fight the Russians' after the issue was firmly in hand by smart people: the EU headed by Sarkozy of France.
The EU made an agreement with Russia that has Russian troops withdrawing and European observers guaranteeing the peace.
C'mon folks, pay attention.
McCain's primary claim is that he is strong on defense because he stood up to torture. The reason he was shot down and captured is that he disobeyed orders from smart people and flew where he was not supposed to fly.
At the first news of the Georgia/Russia dust up, he pronounced that he was a Georgian and that we should invade South Ossetia and fight Russia.
Even the blood drunk Cheney/Bush duo is smarter than that. The Bush administration took force off the table right away.
Imagine a President dumber than Bush.
Now imagine a President dumber than McCain. That would be Sarah Palin.
McCain will die in office if elected - even Matt Damon knows that.
Then Palin will be President. She echoed McCain's 'Let's fight the Russians' after the issue was firmly in hand by smart people: the EU headed by Sarkozy of France.
The EU made an agreement with Russia that has Russian troops withdrawing and European observers guaranteeing the peace.
C'mon folks, pay attention.
Saturday, September 6, 2008
Paranoid, Delusional Rant
Sometimes I don't sleep all that well. And, the mind wanders in trying to fit a theory to the facts. So, be warned - the following has no verifiable link to reality and may cloud your mind permanently. Read at your own risk.
It was 2.45 PM on a sunny August afternoon in Washington DC as Lord Darth Cheney paced relentlessly in his shuttered and darkened room. His mind was in a turmoil. 'Fear is money. fear is money', he muttered endlessly.
'My precious, my precious, what will happen to my precious?' he sighed.
His concerns knew no bounds. The Iraq situation was becoming almost stable, just a few deaths per day. Afghanistan was old news.
'How can I get more fear? After all, my precious babies need more food. What will happen if I can't get new contracts for Blackwater, KBR and Halliburton.? I need more fear. Will my precious starve? The democrats and that BLACK Obama will win and undo all my work. Woe is me, woe is me.'
Then a thought, a bolt of inspiration: 'The Cold War! I can bring it back! Oh joy, oh joy. Even Obama can't stop a Cold War.'
A caution crept in to his mind: 'But, Russia is acting maturely and everyone else just wants to live life. How can I bring back the Cold War if no one wants it?'
The answer came in a flash: 'Perception is reality! Ah Ha! I don't have to do anything but create an illusion of Cold War. That's simple. All I need is a trigger.'
Like a bolt from the black, a call on the secure line from Tbilisi: 'Dickie, this is Saak. Just for your info, the usual rocket attacks are happening near South Ossetia. Nothing to get your panties in a bunch...'
Lord Vader, oops.....Cheney, hung up the phone and thought for a bit.
'Ya know,' he said out loud, 'it's perfect. Saak shells the Russian peacekeepers in retaliation for the rocket attacks - oops, I forgot to ask Saak where the rockets were coming from. But, it doesn't matter anyway. Rockets is rockets.
The Russians get pissed and invade Georgia to protect their citizens. Presto. Cold War. It's perfect. No one gets hurt except for a few Georgian and Russian troops and maybe some collateral damage to civilians. What a genius I am'
He calls Tblisi. "Oh, Saak, listen I know it's three in the morning there but we have a real problem. Listen I have reliable reports the Russians and Ossetians are killing and raping Georgian women and children. I can send you photos. You need to get the Ossetians now, right now. The Russians, not a problem. We got your back. NATO is behind you all the way.
No, no, don't worry about our Pres. He can't even find Georgia on a map. He'll probably just confuse your country with our state with the same name. You know, the state in the south, where "Gone with The Wind" was set. Yeah, Atlanta. You got it.
Congress? Don't worry about them, we have the Constitution so screwed up, they never will figure it out. And that's only if they find out at all, which they probably won't.
That's right, Saak baby. Go get 'em. The coast is clear.'
It was 2.45 PM on a sunny August afternoon in Washington DC as Lord Darth Cheney paced relentlessly in his shuttered and darkened room. His mind was in a turmoil. 'Fear is money. fear is money', he muttered endlessly.
'My precious, my precious, what will happen to my precious?' he sighed.
His concerns knew no bounds. The Iraq situation was becoming almost stable, just a few deaths per day. Afghanistan was old news.
'How can I get more fear? After all, my precious babies need more food. What will happen if I can't get new contracts for Blackwater, KBR and Halliburton.? I need more fear. Will my precious starve? The democrats and that BLACK Obama will win and undo all my work. Woe is me, woe is me.'
Then a thought, a bolt of inspiration: 'The Cold War! I can bring it back! Oh joy, oh joy. Even Obama can't stop a Cold War.'
A caution crept in to his mind: 'But, Russia is acting maturely and everyone else just wants to live life. How can I bring back the Cold War if no one wants it?'
The answer came in a flash: 'Perception is reality! Ah Ha! I don't have to do anything but create an illusion of Cold War. That's simple. All I need is a trigger.'
Like a bolt from the black, a call on the secure line from Tbilisi: 'Dickie, this is Saak. Just for your info, the usual rocket attacks are happening near South Ossetia. Nothing to get your panties in a bunch...'
Lord Vader, oops.....Cheney, hung up the phone and thought for a bit.
'Ya know,' he said out loud, 'it's perfect. Saak shells the Russian peacekeepers in retaliation for the rocket attacks - oops, I forgot to ask Saak where the rockets were coming from. But, it doesn't matter anyway. Rockets is rockets.
The Russians get pissed and invade Georgia to protect their citizens. Presto. Cold War. It's perfect. No one gets hurt except for a few Georgian and Russian troops and maybe some collateral damage to civilians. What a genius I am'
He calls Tblisi. "Oh, Saak, listen I know it's three in the morning there but we have a real problem. Listen I have reliable reports the Russians and Ossetians are killing and raping Georgian women and children. I can send you photos. You need to get the Ossetians now, right now. The Russians, not a problem. We got your back. NATO is behind you all the way.
No, no, don't worry about our Pres. He can't even find Georgia on a map. He'll probably just confuse your country with our state with the same name. You know, the state in the south, where "Gone with The Wind" was set. Yeah, Atlanta. You got it.
Congress? Don't worry about them, we have the Constitution so screwed up, they never will figure it out. And that's only if they find out at all, which they probably won't.
That's right, Saak baby. Go get 'em. The coast is clear.'
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Corruption in the USA - Primer
[Used with permission.]
Lobbying is a sore topic with me.
I have a seminar on "Corruption" which has dealt with it. In short- the US has legalized corruption through our lobbying "regulations."
There are 535 members of congress and many times that number of lobbyists. They in the aggregate spend several million per member each year.
In theory they represent legitimate interest groups. In practice there are very few of my interests represented!
Here is a quick example: a quote from a lobbyist explaining how the laws regulating lobbyists are worth less than the paper we wasted celebrating their passage.*
There is plenty of additional dirt on Google.
"Put it this way, legally, I could donate an unlimited amount of money to anyone I want.
I will give you a generic example, a law is in the process of taxing computers. Some environmental group is stating that the additional costs of recycling a computer is costly and that the people buying them should pay a 10% additional tax to cover the costs. They hired a lobbyist firm to make their cause and now there is a percentage of congress that is on board with this. Now we got tech firms calling us right and left (in this example). The problem is the law states that I can only donate a $5,000 or so per company. IE: The company can only donate $5,000 to a politician. But the system is so freaking backwards that when something like a tax on computers show up in congress that I could spend huge amounts of money for my lobby effort. In this example, I want to stress that this isn't happening.. it's just an example of how much money I could gather in about 8 hours if I needed it for this or that effort.
In this case, I would just inform a counterpart of this problem, and they would address their client within a day I start the ball rolling to have millions of dollars in Washington.
The key is not to have the checks come from my office, the key is to have it come from other like minded areas. So in reality, I generally call another Lobbyist that represents the firm in question.
I would get $5,000 from AOL because they want to continue to throw that 'buy AOL now icon on your desktop.
I would get another $5,000 from Intel because they want to continue to sell processors.
I would get another $5,000 from AMD because they want to continue to sell processors
I would get another $5,000 from Microsoft because they want to sell Vista.I
would get another $5,000 from Norton, because they want to sell their anti-virus stuff
I would get another $5,000 from Valve, because they want to sell video games
I would get another $5,000 from CDW, because they want to sell more products
I would get another $5,000 from Google, because they want more people to visit their site
I would get another $5,000 from Ebay, because they want more people to buy stuff from their site
I would get another $5,000 from Yahoo, because they want more people to visit their site.
I would get another $5,000 from Redhat, because they want to sell more servers
The funny thing is I didn't even get to the computer manufacturers yet
I would get another $5,000 from Dell so their product isn't taxed
I would get another $5,000 from HP so their product isn't taxed
I would get another $5,000 from Apple so their product isn't taxed
I would get another $5,000 from local firm ABZ so their product isn't taxed
I would get another $5,000 from regional firm ACB so their product isn't taxed
When all is said and done, my 8 hours of effort (1 business day) I could have anywhere between 5-10 million - all in $5,000 dollar donations from all the industries and firms that touch the PC."
--
Professor Bruce W. Bean
Lecturer in Global Corporate Law
September 2008
Lobbying is a sore topic with me.
I have a seminar on "Corruption" which has dealt with it. In short- the US has legalized corruption through our lobbying "regulations."
There are 535 members of congress and many times that number of lobbyists. They in the aggregate spend several million per member each year.
In theory they represent legitimate interest groups. In practice there are very few of my interests represented!
Here is a quick example: a quote from a lobbyist explaining how the laws regulating lobbyists are worth less than the paper we wasted celebrating their passage.*
There is plenty of additional dirt on Google.
"Put it this way, legally, I could donate an unlimited amount of money to anyone I want.
I will give you a generic example, a law is in the process of taxing computers. Some environmental group is stating that the additional costs of recycling a computer is costly and that the people buying them should pay a 10% additional tax to cover the costs. They hired a lobbyist firm to make their cause and now there is a percentage of congress that is on board with this. Now we got tech firms calling us right and left (in this example). The problem is the law states that I can only donate a $5,000 or so per company. IE: The company can only donate $5,000 to a politician. But the system is so freaking backwards that when something like a tax on computers show up in congress that I could spend huge amounts of money for my lobby effort. In this example, I want to stress that this isn't happening.. it's just an example of how much money I could gather in about 8 hours if I needed it for this or that effort.
In this case, I would just inform a counterpart of this problem, and they would address their client within a day I start the ball rolling to have millions of dollars in Washington.
The key is not to have the checks come from my office, the key is to have it come from other like minded areas. So in reality, I generally call another Lobbyist that represents the firm in question.
I would get $5,000 from AOL because they want to continue to throw that 'buy AOL now icon on your desktop.
I would get another $5,000 from Intel because they want to continue to sell processors.
I would get another $5,000 from AMD because they want to continue to sell processors
I would get another $5,000 from Microsoft because they want to sell Vista.I
would get another $5,000 from Norton, because they want to sell their anti-virus stuff
I would get another $5,000 from Valve, because they want to sell video games
I would get another $5,000 from CDW, because they want to sell more products
I would get another $5,000 from Google, because they want more people to visit their site
I would get another $5,000 from Ebay, because they want more people to buy stuff from their site
I would get another $5,000 from Yahoo, because they want more people to visit their site.
I would get another $5,000 from Redhat, because they want to sell more servers
The funny thing is I didn't even get to the computer manufacturers yet
I would get another $5,000 from Dell so their product isn't taxed
I would get another $5,000 from HP so their product isn't taxed
I would get another $5,000 from Apple so their product isn't taxed
I would get another $5,000 from local firm ABZ so their product isn't taxed
I would get another $5,000 from regional firm ACB so their product isn't taxed
When all is said and done, my 8 hours of effort (1 business day) I could have anywhere between 5-10 million - all in $5,000 dollar donations from all the industries and firms that touch the PC."
--
Professor Bruce W. Bean
Lecturer in Global Corporate Law
September 2008
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