The Engine of Mayhem

"Press Releases

AJC Strongly Condemns Rev. Jesse Jackson's Comment on American Jews
October 14, 2008 - New York - The American Jewish Committee (AJC) has condemned the Rev. Jesse Jackson's statement about 'Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades.'
"Rev. Jackson's remarks, which appeared in an interview with the journalist Amir Taheri in today's New York Post, echo classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jewish power," said AJC Executive Director David A. Harris. 'This statement, regrettably, is not the first troubling comment by Rev. Jackson regarding Israel, Zionism and the Jewish people.'

Arguing as a private citizen that an Obama administration could bring significant change to U.S. foreign policy, Jackson was quoted as saying that "Zionists who have controlled American policy for decades" would lose much of their influence should Senator Obama be elected president."


http://www.ajc.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=ijITI2PHKoG&b=849241&ct=6107743

And people are upset about raciest comments some in the crowd are allegedly saying at Palin events? Isn???t this the same Democrat leader who once called New York "Hymietown"?

Both parties in Congress and the administration had a hand in covering up the impending collapse, and nobody wanted anything different. I'm sick of the finger pointing; it's time to look at what happened and realize that some of our (my) most precious assumptions don't work anymore. Free markets only work when companies can collapse without sucking everyone else down with them. I could care less about Wall St., and the Dow Jones will recover in a year or two. But the fact that my job is at risk, even though what I do has *nothing* to do with mortgages hedge funds... That gets my attention.

If we can't afford to let companies fail, then we can't afford to let them do as they please, especially when the CEO's are motivated to build a bubble, get out, and let their companies fail right after they sell off their options. I can't believe I'm saying this, but it is time for some *serious* regulation, including *serious* restrictions on executive compensation. How about all their bonuses stay in an escrow account for 5-10 years after they leave? Not to mention *tight* regulation on debt to asset ratio's for *all* financial companies.

Do I sound a little *frustrated*?

This administration and its Republican majority in Congress, including Senator McCain, over most of the last 8 years, have deliberately created this problem. It's no suprise. The U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, Administrator of National Banks publishes a report 4 times a year showing, for example, that J.P. Morgan Chase Bank NA has total derivatives of $89,997,271 TRILLION, which gives them a total credit exposure to capital ratio of 411.6 times (not 411.6%). I have read the estimated wealth of every economy in the world added together is around $97 trillion. Bank of America and Citibank National ASSN each have over $35 trillion of derivatives and credit exposure to capital ratios each of over 200 times. This didn't happen overnight. This information can be found on the report they publish, "OCC's Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities First Quarter 2008. Table 4." For years, economic experts and others such as Warren Buffet have repeatedly warned this administration of the dangers of not regulating the banks to prevent this from happening. They continually refused to regulate. In my mind, a main danger here, is that money such as drug lord's, fascist vast profits from wars politically motivated and mismanaged, and the very people who managed these banks and made billions of dollars, will again clean up by purchasing for pennies on the dollar, as we are the victims of the mess they deliberately created. I think it is most wise to keep in mind author Samuelson's warnings about too much deleveraging of debt too fast. This could be most difficult to control. I think controlling marginal changes, like one quick step after another, would be safer. Kind of like preventing the ship from being attacked, and the pirates with their life rafts looting all the gold, as everyone else is scrambling for safety.

LETS DO THE SUBPRIME WARP AGAIN!
(THE END OF MORAL HAZARD)
(Lets Do the TIME WARP, Rocky Horror Picture Show)
WilliamBanzai7

It's astounding, markets are fleeting
Greenspan's Madness takes its toll
But listen closely, not for very much longer
We've got to regain control

I remember doing the Subprime Warp
Drinking those moments when
MORAL HAZARD would skip past me and the greed would be calling
Let's do the Subprime Warp again...
Let's do the Subprime Warp again!

It's just a AAA CDO to the left
And then a backstop CDS to the right
With your hands on your FLIPS
You bring those TOXIC TRANCHES in tight
But it's the ALT-A thrust that really drives you insane,
Let's do the Subprime Warp again!

It's so dreamy, oh fantasy free me
So you can't see me, no not at all
In another dimension, with fraudulent intention
Well-deluded, I see all
With a bit of a mind flip
You're there in the SHADOW BANKING slip
And nothing can ever be the same
You're spaced out on SECURITIZATION, like you're under sedation
Let's do the Subprime Warp again!

So what he is saying is, "Preserve the bubble, or deflate it slowly." It's ridiculous. Deleveraging will proceed as fast as an oligopolistic economy will allow. And the oligopoly will lose. Nothing will stop or slow deleveraging. There is no value in "stability" and no meaning, either, when nothing can be valued. That is the situation we are in today.

I suppose cani77 meant Bob Prechter.

THE GREAT BUSH DEPRESSION
I follow an economist named Bob Proctor. He has called the top and bottom of every market crash since the 70s correctly.
He perfectly predicted the current meltdown and the picture he paints about what will happen next
is terrifying.He thinks it will be worse then the great depression.
The banks in the U.S. are going under one after the other. Countrywide ,Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch , Fanny and Freddy Mae ,AIG
The government took them over because they are bankrupt. Even with the goverment nationalizing hundreds of billions of dollars in debt the stock market is crashing
the credit markets are frozen and all of us may suffer beyond anything seen in generations
McCain just like Bush " doesn't understand the economy".
That not just my opinion its his own words. Not only does he not understand how to fix it but he does not understand how its been broken.
It is no surprise that he doesn't. The people that make up these securities use quantum mathematical models very few people understand.
Bush and McCain both can take the credit for this mess since they helped deregulate the laws that were protecting us.
Bush's economic advisor Phil Graham wrote the deregulation bill that allowed banks to take huge risks with all of our future.
Now, Phil Graham is the head of McCain's economic policy.He is also McCain's choice for the next secretary of the treasury.
No one in this country can afford for that to happen. The last time Bush met with his economic advisors was in March. He was the last to know somthing was wrong. Phil Graham had the guts to say that we are in a mental recession after he helped create the worst economy meltdown in our lifetime. Check out this link to the truth http://my.barackobama.com/keatingvideo
It will take the best and brightest minds in the world to get us out of this nightmare. As bad as Bush has done, McCain would be
even more destructive because things are in much worse shape. The next president will not inherit a budget surplus like Bush did but a crashing economy and a 11,600,000,000,000 (trillion) dollars deficit. Most of it Bush created and it will take decades to pay it back.
If you do what you have always done then you will get what you have always got.
When it comes to policy Bush and McCain are the same 90 percent of the time.
So why are the polls even close then ?
Mccains team just said they no longer want to talk about the economy.Instead they would like to spend time talking about obama
which means running the biggest smear campaign in history.
They think they can just tell you lies and you wont be smart enough to see through it
Let's teach him we are smarter than that
Stand up and hold them accountable
Bush isn't on the ballot this year but his policies are
Elect Obama Biden 2008






Check out this video of sarah palins interview and ask your self if she understands what she is talking about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r36Xc0GG4iQ

THE GREAT BUSH DEPRESSION
I follow an economist named Bob Proctor. He has called the top and bottom of every market crash since the 70s correctly.
He perfectly predicted the current meltdown and the picture he paints about what will happen next
is terrifying.He thinks it will be worse then the great depression.
The banks in the U.S. are going under one after the other. Countrywide ,Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch , Fanny and Freddy Mae ,AIG
The government took them over because they are bankrupt. Even with the goverment nationalizing hundreds of billions of dollars in debt the stock market is crashing
the credit markets are frozen and all of us may suffer beyond anything seen in generations
McCain just like Bush " doesn't understand the economy".
That not just my opinion its his own words. Not only does he not understand how to fix it but he does not understand how its been broken.
It is no surprise that he doesn't. The people that make up these securities use quantum mathematical models very few people understand.
Bush and McCain both can take the credit for this mess since they helped deregulate the laws that were protecting us.
Bush's economic advisor Phil Graham wrote the deregulation bill that allowed banks to take huge risks with all of our future.
Now, Phil Graham is the head of McCain's economic policy.He is also McCain's choice for the next secretary of the treasury.
No one in this country can afford for that to happen. The last time Bush met with his economic advisors was in March. He was the last to know somthing was wrong. Phil Graham had the guts to say that we are in a mental recession after he helped create the worst economy meltdown in our lifetime. Check out this link to the truth http://my.barackobama.com/keatingvideo
It will take the best and brightest minds in the world to get us out of this nightmare. As bad as Bush has done, McCain would be
even more destructive because things are in much worse shape. The next president will not inherit a budget surplus like Bush did but a crashing economy and a 11,600,000,000,000 (trillion) dollars deficit. Most of it Bush created and it will take decades to pay it back.
If you do what you have always done then you will get what you have always got.
When it comes to policy Bush and McCain are the same 90 percent of the time.
So why are the polls even close then ?
Mccains team just said they no longer want to talk about the economy.Instead they would like to spend time talking about obama
which means running the biggest smear campaign in history.
They think they can just tell you lies and you wont be smart enough to see through it
Let's teach him we are smarter than that
Stand up and hold them accountable
Bush isn't on the ballot this year but his policies are
Elect Obama Biden 2008






Check out this video of sarah palins interview and ask your self if she understands what she is talking about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r36Xc0GG4iQ

Mushrooms, listen up, stop swallowing manure...this is not about some mortgage defaults, this is about a global financial system based on pure air...fiat currencies, fractional reserve banking, opaque central banks, deficit-mired fiscal policies, and vast pools of under-secured (or in government's case, unsecured) debt instruments. Eventually all this air-puffed debt must collapse to its true value, which is only a fraction of face value. If governments decide to just air-puff their currencies (by printing bailout bucks) so that face value in real terms declines towards true value, the consequences are no less painful. At some point these devalued currencies can no longer fulfill their roles as a store of value or a medium of exchange, and then the global financial system is really in meltdown.

Fire your editor:

The first paragraph include a bad oppositional typo:
"Only rapidly falling prices attract sufficient buyers. " This should read that falling prices DO NOT attract sufficient buyers.
Th

Your analysis is good, but it won't resonate in the current economic crisis.Also, it's a Presidential election year. For the average American struggling with debt and other financial problems, there is no such thing as "deleveraging" too quickly.

The answer seems abvious. When, I mean WHEN, this mess is no longer a mess, leveraging more than 15:1 should be limited to the casinos in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, Macau and such places only and managed by the MAFIA.

It's about time that Wall Street and Main Street de-leveraged. Thanks to the Voo Doo Tinkle Down economics of Ronny Raygunz the whole world is all wet from the wrong kind of Golden Shower. Ronny and the repugnant ones decided to borrow from the future with no intention of ever paying it back because that lie helped to get them elected. They stole from Social Security with no intention of ever paying it back so they could bankrupt the system and ruin it for the people that really need it.

It's about time that Americans learned that borrowing from the future is a losing proposition. We used to pride ourselves on being a frugal nation, now we're just a bunch of spendthrifts who have leveraged themselves into a deep pit.

Bill Clinton points to liberal Congressional Democrats' protection of Fannie and Freddie from scrutiny as a primary cause of the current economic meltdown.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsynspIqAoE

To prove Bill Clinton's point, this is a link to a C-SPAN video clip of the Congressional hearings at roughly the time McCains attempt at S.190. to fix fannie and freddie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs

"Video Unearthed Democrats in their own words Covering up the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Scam that caused our Economic Crisis"

The link below describes how some of those Democrats in Congress tried to use the original version of the bailout bill to divert money eventually recovered to groups like ACORN. See: Wall Street Journal

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122247015469280723.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

And here is Lou Dobbs reporting on ACORN corruption and ties to Obama, including Obama Campaign paying ACORN $800,000 for voter registration activities, and Obama representing them when he was a practicing attorney.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2008/10/09/ldt.tucker.acorn.under.fire.cnn

The link below contains a purported list of the top 25 in Congress who got contributions from the folks at Fannie and Freddie. Obama is listed third, after Dodd and Kerry, even though Obama is just a junior Senator. Obama is followed next by Clinton. Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi are on the list as well.

http://www.investors.com/editorial/IBDArticles.asp?artsec=16&artnum=1&issue=20080918

Excellent "big picture" analysis! Mr. Samuelson succinctly communicates the global situation and uncovers a key dimension to be considered in managing a recovery. I would like to see a further analysis of how the deleveraging might proceed to achieve a successful transition.