Americans are the most confident people in the history of people, a point economists have been overlooking ever since John Maynard Keynes first demonstrated that rich people pay better and way more often once you start telling rich people what rich people want to hear, so when the Conference Board Index slumped to 44.5 today from 59.2 in July, it came as no surprise to your MacDougal Post staff that the nation’s talking heads got it all wrong once again in their knee-jerk talking head coverage.
See, what this 14.7 point freefall really indicates is that 1) U.S. consumers are a) brimming with confidence that Blatant Umama has absolutely no idea what he’s doing and b) more than somewhat assured that his Republican adversaries are even further along in that regard, and 2) the flabbergasted nation’s entire back-to-school buying crowd is pretty much unwaveringly certain that the country is going down the crapper so fast even the Conference Board can’t keep up with it, notwithstanding all their fancy Conference Board numbers and whatever else they've got.
Face it, the plan to help people in the ghetto who don't eat fresh fruits and vegetables eat fresh fruits and vegetables smacks of the plan to help people who didn’t have enough money to buy pricey houses buy pricey houses, recently followed by a proposal to help people who don’t have enough money to refinance their formerly pricey houses refinance their formerly pricey houses. How could any of his Democrat calamari possibly work?
And next month Blatant faces the prospect of convincing people he, after solving that fruits and vegetables thing for the Missus, finally has a plan to give jobs to people who don’t have jobs, which, he must've just noticed, has been going around the past few years or so.
Consumers have stopped listening to any of this by now.
But if you want to see some really wildly over-the-top Consumer Board numbers, just wait until the House gets back in session, apparently September 7, a date suspiciously tough to nail down. Give the Republican buffoons there a few more months like the last one they exasperated us with, and the Index will drop down to those exhilaratingly overconfident levels only a three ring Washington circus can bring.
"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, welcome to the Daffiest Show on Earth. And now inside The Big Top's center ring, once again it’s time to ………..
Bring on the clowns."
Da da da-da, da-da da-da, da-da,
Da da-da-da, da da-da-da,
Da-da-da-da, da-da, da-da-daaaaaaaaaaaa.
August 30, 2011
August 25, 2011
Our Unsuspecting Planet
Remember how Democrats tried to help people out a while back? People who didn’t have the money to buy pricey houses. Help people who didn’t have the money to buy pricey houses buy pricey houses, is what it was.
Readers may recall how that one turned out. Spawned the toxic paper asset industry that triggered a thermofinancial war devastating pretty much the entire unsuspecting planet, at least the parts we hadn‘t already blown up with conventional Republican warfare at the time.
It’s a small planet, and fragile, and the econostructure can’t withstand extreme good intentions.
Well, this morning’s online New York Times reports that the Obama Administration is considering a proposal to help people who don’t have the money to refinance their home mortgages refinance their home mortgages. The article is short on details, and the word “unclear” comes up, and the information in the article is attributed to people who weren’t allowed to talk about the information, and to be honest, our staff CPA was too aggravated by all this calamari to get much beyond the fifth paragraph, so we have no idea how the rest of the article went.
What we do have, however, is a suggestion. Clearly, this White House is, well, dysfunctioning seems the best way to put it, dysfunctioning with some kind of learning disability.
Let’s be suspecting this time.
Readers may recall how that one turned out. Spawned the toxic paper asset industry that triggered a thermofinancial war devastating pretty much the entire unsuspecting planet, at least the parts we hadn‘t already blown up with conventional Republican warfare at the time.
It’s a small planet, and fragile, and the econostructure can’t withstand extreme good intentions.
Well, this morning’s online New York Times reports that the Obama Administration is considering a proposal to help people who don’t have the money to refinance their home mortgages refinance their home mortgages. The article is short on details, and the word “unclear” comes up, and the information in the article is attributed to people who weren’t allowed to talk about the information, and to be honest, our staff CPA was too aggravated by all this calamari to get much beyond the fifth paragraph, so we have no idea how the rest of the article went.
What we do have, however, is a suggestion. Clearly, this White House is, well, dysfunctioning seems the best way to put it, dysfunctioning with some kind of learning disability.
Let’s be suspecting this time.
August 24, 2011
1 in 3
Traditionally, Crime Family pundits measure stock market declines by percentage gradients. Any dip under 5% is a normal market fluctuation, 5% to not yet 20% a correction, and 20% or more your dreaded Bear Market. This time our tormentors have added a new one. Anything over 15% on the way to 20% is The End of Days. Unable to label the extant falloff ursine, our tormentors are hell bent on flagellating us with cruelty way beyond applicable.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average peaked at 12,876.00. 15% below that was 10.944.60, and 20% would be 10,300.80, if you want to keep score.
Our astute Post readers may have noticed that so far The End of Days can’t be attributed to anything that's actually happened. On the one hand, 1) conjecture that some as yet unspecified thing over in some as yet unspecified European country might get bad enough to create some as yet unspecified dire banking event, and on the other, 2) an imagined threat that the recent slowing in economic growth here might spawn a double-dip recession, are pretty much it.
Growing at a reduced rate is nowhere near shrinking in aggregate size. It’s wildly irresponsible for Gangland mouthpieces to make this leap. And that European balderdash is simply the same old, same old. The classic bank failure argument that Wall Street con artists pull out whenever the Dons smell blood.
One headline really caught our eye though. A pair of fortune tellers saw a 1 in 3 chance of another recession in their tea leaves. Soon after, another crystal ball gazer put that at 1 in 2 ½.
Where do they get these guys anyway? We’d love to audit the math behind those fabrications. Just give our profession some financial reform with teeth, and we’ll put those dillies behind bars for as long as the law allows. Securities fraud has never been more blatant. Why the Crime Families are empowered to get away with calamari like that is beyond us.
All the SEC has to do is pick up a newspaper and walk it over to the judge. “Jeeze, you think this is a scare tactic, Your Honor? You know, trying to terrify the 401(k) crowd out of stocks at lows so the hucksters can lure these marks back in later at highs.”
“Here’s your search warrant. Go grab the spreadsheets. I’ll hang the s#ns#fb!tch%s in the morning.”
Please, somebody, just give us the laws.
Anyway, in a different life, we did a study showing that the stock market predicted something like 15 out of the last 5 recessions. In other words, there’s only a 1 in 3 chance that any given short-selling attack should’ve ever taken place.
(How many of those recessions were caused by short-sellers crushing consumer confidence, we’ll never know. Maybe our odds would improve to 1 in 15 if we didn’t give the Families the chance to short-sell prosperity away.)
1 in 3 and 1 in 3. Same thing. We like our perspective better though. For one thing, it’s not a moneyplucking lie. These perps are given the right to destroy financial assets with play shares, and rely on wagging their tongues to pull off the sting.
The persons of interest here belong in jail. Whole cashsucking pack of them.
Them and all their tutti-frutti economists too.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average peaked at 12,876.00. 15% below that was 10.944.60, and 20% would be 10,300.80, if you want to keep score.
Our astute Post readers may have noticed that so far The End of Days can’t be attributed to anything that's actually happened. On the one hand, 1) conjecture that some as yet unspecified thing over in some as yet unspecified European country might get bad enough to create some as yet unspecified dire banking event, and on the other, 2) an imagined threat that the recent slowing in economic growth here might spawn a double-dip recession, are pretty much it.
Growing at a reduced rate is nowhere near shrinking in aggregate size. It’s wildly irresponsible for Gangland mouthpieces to make this leap. And that European balderdash is simply the same old, same old. The classic bank failure argument that Wall Street con artists pull out whenever the Dons smell blood.
One headline really caught our eye though. A pair of fortune tellers saw a 1 in 3 chance of another recession in their tea leaves. Soon after, another crystal ball gazer put that at 1 in 2 ½.
Where do they get these guys anyway? We’d love to audit the math behind those fabrications. Just give our profession some financial reform with teeth, and we’ll put those dillies behind bars for as long as the law allows. Securities fraud has never been more blatant. Why the Crime Families are empowered to get away with calamari like that is beyond us.
All the SEC has to do is pick up a newspaper and walk it over to the judge. “Jeeze, you think this is a scare tactic, Your Honor? You know, trying to terrify the 401(k) crowd out of stocks at lows so the hucksters can lure these marks back in later at highs.”
“Here’s your search warrant. Go grab the spreadsheets. I’ll hang the s#ns#fb!tch%s in the morning.”
Please, somebody, just give us the laws.
Anyway, in a different life, we did a study showing that the stock market predicted something like 15 out of the last 5 recessions. In other words, there’s only a 1 in 3 chance that any given short-selling attack should’ve ever taken place.
(How many of those recessions were caused by short-sellers crushing consumer confidence, we’ll never know. Maybe our odds would improve to 1 in 15 if we didn’t give the Families the chance to short-sell prosperity away.)
1 in 3 and 1 in 3. Same thing. We like our perspective better though. For one thing, it’s not a moneyplucking lie. These perps are given the right to destroy financial assets with play shares, and rely on wagging their tongues to pull off the sting.
The persons of interest here belong in jail. Whole cashsucking pack of them.
Them and all their tutti-frutti economists too.
August 22, 2011
The Ex-Girlfriend
Recently we watched a purportedly romantic TV movie about Kate Middleton and Prince William from first meeting through nuptial extravaganza. Thing was advertised as romantic anyway.
It’s not. Even more recently we had a second viewing. William & Kate is a horror flick. The worst kind of horror flick. We’re never going to suffer though it again.
Seen through the eyes of the TV filmmaker's antihero, the guy young Kate dumped as soon as her prince showed up, this TV movie is so horrid he’s only in it for maybe half a minute. Then they go on to crush the poor slob with the weight of the consequences of this royal hookup for 119 1/2 minutes more, minus commercial breaks, though, pointedly, his existence is never ever mentioned again.
This William character has been passing himself off as William Wales, but everybody knows who he is anyway. He’s Prince William, future King of England, catch of the century, and girls have come to this small college in Scotland from as far away as America just to try and catch him. From what we remember about girls in America, we’re surprised they all don’t come from there.
Anyway, after this callous breakup with our antihero, it’s Kate, surprise, surprise, who catches young Mr. Wales, and suddenly our antihero’s life is never going to be the same again. The TV cinematographic consequences are so horrendous we don’t even remember the woeful sot’s name.
From that moment on, ex-girlfriend’s face is never out of the newspapers. Never off the TV screen. Bitch steps out of the castle, and paparazzi dwell on what she’s wearing, doing, and riding in, where’s she’s going, who she’s with, how she’s getting there, how she’s getting back, and everything else they can come up with along the way. Herds of paparrazzi. And if Bitch doesn’t step out of the castle, they make stuff up about her and stick it in the national media anyway.
How can our antihero possibly live with that. For the rest of his life. Anybody who’s ever had his/her own breakup can relate to this. From the instant it’s over, the ex is in your face. They’ve got Katie Waitie billboards up, for goodness sakes, Katie Waitie posters on the sides of buses. (Prince makes future Princess wait home while Prince throws down with his guys, sniffle, sniffle). And she’ll remain in your face for the rest of your life. And after that too probably. If this film teaches men anything, it's what forever must actually mean.
You really have to feel for the beleaguered commoner. That he's now been totally written out of the TV cinematic effort since the very beginning just adds to the depths of his never-mentioned personal tragedy.
To our subscribers, William & Kate must sound a lot like living through a market downturn. Thing is, it’s not. Give the extant dip six months max, a reliable yardstick, maybe the occasional nine. This guy’s hell is going to rain down on him forever. So every time you start feeling sorry for yourself, think of fabulously lucky Kate Middleton’s wretched boyfriend’s long-suffering misfortune and cheer your sorry a$$ up. Even catastrophies like the Great Depression eventually recover. His misery will never end.
It’s not. Even more recently we had a second viewing. William & Kate is a horror flick. The worst kind of horror flick. We’re never going to suffer though it again.
Seen through the eyes of the TV filmmaker's antihero, the guy young Kate dumped as soon as her prince showed up, this TV movie is so horrid he’s only in it for maybe half a minute. Then they go on to crush the poor slob with the weight of the consequences of this royal hookup for 119 1/2 minutes more, minus commercial breaks, though, pointedly, his existence is never ever mentioned again.
This William character has been passing himself off as William Wales, but everybody knows who he is anyway. He’s Prince William, future King of England, catch of the century, and girls have come to this small college in Scotland from as far away as America just to try and catch him. From what we remember about girls in America, we’re surprised they all don’t come from there.
Anyway, after this callous breakup with our antihero, it’s Kate, surprise, surprise, who catches young Mr. Wales, and suddenly our antihero’s life is never going to be the same again. The TV cinematographic consequences are so horrendous we don’t even remember the woeful sot’s name.
From that moment on, ex-girlfriend’s face is never out of the newspapers. Never off the TV screen. Bitch steps out of the castle, and paparazzi dwell on what she’s wearing, doing, and riding in, where’s she’s going, who she’s with, how she’s getting there, how she’s getting back, and everything else they can come up with along the way. Herds of paparrazzi. And if Bitch doesn’t step out of the castle, they make stuff up about her and stick it in the national media anyway.
How can our antihero possibly live with that. For the rest of his life. Anybody who’s ever had his/her own breakup can relate to this. From the instant it’s over, the ex is in your face. They’ve got Katie Waitie billboards up, for goodness sakes, Katie Waitie posters on the sides of buses. (Prince makes future Princess wait home while Prince throws down with his guys, sniffle, sniffle). And she’ll remain in your face for the rest of your life. And after that too probably. If this film teaches men anything, it's what forever must actually mean.
You really have to feel for the beleaguered commoner. That he's now been totally written out of the TV cinematic effort since the very beginning just adds to the depths of his never-mentioned personal tragedy.
To our subscribers, William & Kate must sound a lot like living through a market downturn. Thing is, it’s not. Give the extant dip six months max, a reliable yardstick, maybe the occasional nine. This guy’s hell is going to rain down on him forever. So every time you start feeling sorry for yourself, think of fabulously lucky Kate Middleton’s wretched boyfriend’s long-suffering misfortune and cheer your sorry a$$ up. Even catastrophies like the Great Depression eventually recover. His misery will never end.
August 19, 2011
The Short-Seller
Picture the ugliest homo sapien you’ve ever seen. Some flesh crawling, blood curdling, creepy psycho fiend from a movie maybe. Or an in-law. Any in-law. Now imagine this puke breaking into your home and sticking a gun in your face. Lowlife holds your family hostage while stuffing your valuables in a bag.
All your valuables. He prowls around forever.
You’ve never seen anyone more odious than this. The horrid monster is pouring sweat, spraying spit, dripping snot all over the place. Your place. When it’s over, you won’t want to live there anymore. Probably won’t stay another minute. He’s pawing through your things with those grimy fingers, and you’ll have to trash them all when he’s finally through with you.
He stinks, really stinks, reeks of the most awful stench, like he hasn’t changed those filthy clothes in years. Or washed.
Then he kisses your daughter.
Okay, maybe we'd better shut this one down right here.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 419.63 points yesterday, and this morning Dow futures are down another 142.
The ask on your precious IBM, darling of your financial life, the blue chip you've nurtured for going on 60 mostly wonderful years, is under 162. One ... freaking ... sixty-two.
The short-seller has stepped inside your financial accounts and messed your family up. With play shares. Once again the cashsucking moneyplucker flooded the market with phony-baloney paper he doesn’t even own, and soiled everything you’ve got. Even if you don’t have any stock.
Just take a look around and see what he’s done to your country.
This calamari has nothing to do with Europe, nothing to do with sudden projections of declining growth. It’s all about The Beast. The man with a trillion shares.
A trillion bogus shares that don’t even exist. Hideous sot just dumps them into our very real lives, and pulls them back out after he’s had his way with our savings. Creep uses any excuse he can get.
And the goons you vote into office give him that power.
Make up your minds now. While this calamity is happening to us. Throw the moneypluckers out of office. Never vote for an incumbent again. You’re not a Republican, and you’re not a Democrat.
You’re a Victim. And it's the Republicans and Democrats who let the horrid creature dip into your financial house. Both parties hand him the keys with their despicable laws.
Way down at the bottom of what today's politics is really all about, Wall Street mobsters purloining everything we’ve got, you’re the financial carcass they’re picking at, Mr. and Ms. Investor.
No. Never vote for a cashsucking moneyplucking incumbent again.
All your valuables. He prowls around forever.
You’ve never seen anyone more odious than this. The horrid monster is pouring sweat, spraying spit, dripping snot all over the place. Your place. When it’s over, you won’t want to live there anymore. Probably won’t stay another minute. He’s pawing through your things with those grimy fingers, and you’ll have to trash them all when he’s finally through with you.
He stinks, really stinks, reeks of the most awful stench, like he hasn’t changed those filthy clothes in years. Or washed.
Then he kisses your daughter.
Okay, maybe we'd better shut this one down right here.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 419.63 points yesterday, and this morning Dow futures are down another 142.
The ask on your precious IBM, darling of your financial life, the blue chip you've nurtured for going on 60 mostly wonderful years, is under 162. One ... freaking ... sixty-two.
The short-seller has stepped inside your financial accounts and messed your family up. With play shares. Once again the cashsucking moneyplucker flooded the market with phony-baloney paper he doesn’t even own, and soiled everything you’ve got. Even if you don’t have any stock.
Just take a look around and see what he’s done to your country.
This calamari has nothing to do with Europe, nothing to do with sudden projections of declining growth. It’s all about The Beast. The man with a trillion shares.
A trillion bogus shares that don’t even exist. Hideous sot just dumps them into our very real lives, and pulls them back out after he’s had his way with our savings. Creep uses any excuse he can get.
And the goons you vote into office give him that power.
Make up your minds now. While this calamity is happening to us. Throw the moneypluckers out of office. Never vote for an incumbent again. You’re not a Republican, and you’re not a Democrat.
You’re a Victim. And it's the Republicans and Democrats who let the horrid creature dip into your financial house. Both parties hand him the keys with their despicable laws.
Way down at the bottom of what today's politics is really all about, Wall Street mobsters purloining everything we’ve got, you’re the financial carcass they’re picking at, Mr. and Ms. Investor.
No. Never vote for a cashsucking moneyplucking incumbent again.
August 18, 2011
Arthur Anderson Revisited
In 2002 Arthur Anderson, then one of the Big 5 accounting firms, was convicted of obstruction of justice for destroying documents partners considered evidence of wrongdoing in their Enron audits. This turned destroying documents into the biggest accounting scandal in history, and nobody wanted to do business with these crooks anymore. Employment at the firm fell from 85,000 then to maybe 200 today, all involved in shutting down whatever fetid remains are left inside their moribund operation.
Wednesday, Rolling Stone reported that for at least twenty years staff at the Securities & Excuses Commission (SEC) routinely destroyed all documents related to all SEC inquiries that did not turn into investigations.
It took a whistle-blower to bring this out in the open. Apparently a 13-year employee named Darcy Flynn first raised questions in early 2010. Nobody else at the agency charged with bringing enforcement actions against people destroying documents saw anything wrong with destroying documents.
In reporting the story on Thursday, the New York Times noted that “it is common for S.E.C. employees to leave the agency for the private sector and then begin representing clients before the agency. Mr. Flynn contends that the practice increases the likelihood that S.E.C. investigators could do undetected favors for former colleagues and their clients by quashing investigations.”
There was no mention of anybody at the commission getting fired.
Your Post is already calling for Washington to waterboard Bloody Mary Schapiro, Chief Obfuscation Office at the SEC over calling off scheduled public hearings on short-selling a couple years ago, claiming that short-sellers had nothing to do with the Financial Apocalypse caused by short-selling. If the torturers can get her to give us the real reason why she cancelled, we could tell you about it.
Now we figure the torturers might as well toss in a few questions about this stuff too.
Clearly, we'd have better enforcement actions if somebody fired the pack of them and let Rolling Stone do it. Maybe The MacDougal Post will have to start calling for that next. God help us, we can't think of anything else to do.
Wednesday, Rolling Stone reported that for at least twenty years staff at the Securities & Excuses Commission (SEC) routinely destroyed all documents related to all SEC inquiries that did not turn into investigations.
It took a whistle-blower to bring this out in the open. Apparently a 13-year employee named Darcy Flynn first raised questions in early 2010. Nobody else at the agency charged with bringing enforcement actions against people destroying documents saw anything wrong with destroying documents.
In reporting the story on Thursday, the New York Times noted that “it is common for S.E.C. employees to leave the agency for the private sector and then begin representing clients before the agency. Mr. Flynn contends that the practice increases the likelihood that S.E.C. investigators could do undetected favors for former colleagues and their clients by quashing investigations.”
There was no mention of anybody at the commission getting fired.
Your Post is already calling for Washington to waterboard Bloody Mary Schapiro, Chief Obfuscation Office at the SEC over calling off scheduled public hearings on short-selling a couple years ago, claiming that short-sellers had nothing to do with the Financial Apocalypse caused by short-selling. If the torturers can get her to give us the real reason why she cancelled, we could tell you about it.
Now we figure the torturers might as well toss in a few questions about this stuff too.
Clearly, we'd have better enforcement actions if somebody fired the pack of them and let Rolling Stone do it. Maybe The MacDougal Post will have to start calling for that next. God help us, we can't think of anything else to do.
August 17, 2011
The Second Coming of George W. Bush
Now, Readers, we’ve been here before. Should a corporation transfer money from one subsidiary to another, and issue bonds in connection with it, bonds issued and bonds held cancel each other out, and the results of this transaction do not appear on the parent corporation’s balance sheet.
If the subsidiaries are located in different countries, red flags go up, raising tax evasion and money laundering issues in a dutiful auditor's eyes.
If daddy is the United States of America, and its Federal Reserve Bank, in charge of printing money, hands crisp brand new currency over to its Treasury Department, in charge of borrowing money, in exchange for U.S. Government Bonds, that transaction also gets washed off daddy’s balance sheet.
The Fed has printed money. That’s all that’s happened here.
And when the Charlatan of the Fed claims that bonds actually exist and calls it Quantitative Easing, he’s a lying, monetarysucking moneyprinter.
Whatever else is going on with Rick Perry, he’s the only dipstick in politics who’s on to Ben Bernanke.
Your MacDougal Post applauds the Texas whack job, anointed Dubyah II in wild-eyed Liberal nut case circles, for that one.
If the subsidiaries are located in different countries, red flags go up, raising tax evasion and money laundering issues in a dutiful auditor's eyes.
If daddy is the United States of America, and its Federal Reserve Bank, in charge of printing money, hands crisp brand new currency over to its Treasury Department, in charge of borrowing money, in exchange for U.S. Government Bonds, that transaction also gets washed off daddy’s balance sheet.
The Fed has printed money. That’s all that’s happened here.
And when the Charlatan of the Fed claims that bonds actually exist and calls it Quantitative Easing, he’s a lying, monetarysucking moneyprinter.
Whatever else is going on with Rick Perry, he’s the only dipstick in politics who’s on to Ben Bernanke.
Your MacDougal Post applauds the Texas whack job, anointed Dubyah II in wild-eyed Liberal nut case circles, for that one.
August 13, 2011
Verizon Strike
When 1) top management at Verizon, pulling down a combined pay package topping a quarter of a billion dollars over the past 4 years, demands that 45,000 middle class workers accept similarly staggering cuts in salary and benefits and 2 ) the Starbucks CEO asks everyone in the country to stop making campaign contributions to politicians running the country solely to grab bigger and bigger campaign contributions, real life starts to take on aspects of the surreal world subscribers expect to find inside their MacDougal Post cyber pages.
Maybe if we stay the course, everything will come out all right in the end with whatever pops up on your computer screens.
At least we can stop wondering whether or not people think that we're crazy.
Maybe if we stay the course, everything will come out all right in the end with whatever pops up on your computer screens.
At least we can stop wondering whether or not people think that we're crazy.
Short-Selling Ban in Europe
You saw it in 2008 with short-sellers trying to gangbang stock prices low enough to trigger bond indenture codicils forcing companies to redeem those bonds. Before Governments insured bank deposits, earlier generations experienced it when depositors made runs on banks, clamoring to get their money out, and right this dang minute, Sonny. You’ve suspected it in recent years, as somebody’s cash flow somewhere has been decimated by those toxic sub-prime mortgage loans that brought down the civilized world and Iceland in the Financial Apocalypse.
In these kinds of cases, financial institutions have to liquidate assets unexpectedly. A wise old man once told us that banks are always technically insolvent, meaning they wouldn’t be able to cover their liabilities if everyone asked them to, but in the normal course of business that doesn’t happen.
When it does, of course, actual insolvency results. From there they pretty much all go under.
The real problem lies in how banks get driven to that point. For every financial institution in the world, there's at least one moneysucking broker who knows exactly what securities the institution will have to sell, and when, and will jump all over those prices with his moneysucking broker buddies, trashing market quotes with short-selling, making themselves a bundle by crippling the financial institution‘s ability to raise cash liquidating that specific paper. These instruments have to be sold at any price, and as soon as the problem institution is done getting rid of them, market prices return to where they were before the moneysuckers swindled this particular customer of theirs.
Generally, what Wall Street racketeers have to do first is short-sell the institution’s own common stock down low enough to get the ball rolling.
According to the NY Times, beginning Friday France banned new short-selling and adding to existing short positions in 15 financial stocks for 15 days, Italy and Spain took similar 15 day actions, and Belgium did so for an indefinite period. Greece and Turkey already have such bans.
Bloomberg reported that the Securities and Excuses Commission here would do no such thing.
We don’t know what’s up, but European regulators are obviously worried enough about something to implement radical controls. If the real story ever comes out, and we’re hoping that never happens, it’s our guess the details will fit neatly into the opening paragraphs of this piece, maybe adding a whole new example of criminal activity by short-sellers that world investors have not endured before, probably some demonic manifestation bubbling out of an undead laboratory run by the derivatives crowd.
Major U.S. financial institutions were temporarily nationalized after the Big One in 2008. We dream of the day when somebody in Europe will step up and make that measure permanent, addressing there the explicit reason cited for most of the stock market crashes the world has experienced since Gamed-Market Capitalism began - the latest impending scary money center bank failure.
And then we'd hope it would catch on. Whatever, banning short-selling for 15 days is no way to deal with a systemic problem.
People here keep arguing that we have too much Government. Others say we don't have enough. From our perspective at The MacDougal Post, it sometimes looks like we don't have any at all.
In these kinds of cases, financial institutions have to liquidate assets unexpectedly. A wise old man once told us that banks are always technically insolvent, meaning they wouldn’t be able to cover their liabilities if everyone asked them to, but in the normal course of business that doesn’t happen.
When it does, of course, actual insolvency results. From there they pretty much all go under.
The real problem lies in how banks get driven to that point. For every financial institution in the world, there's at least one moneysucking broker who knows exactly what securities the institution will have to sell, and when, and will jump all over those prices with his moneysucking broker buddies, trashing market quotes with short-selling, making themselves a bundle by crippling the financial institution‘s ability to raise cash liquidating that specific paper. These instruments have to be sold at any price, and as soon as the problem institution is done getting rid of them, market prices return to where they were before the moneysuckers swindled this particular customer of theirs.
Generally, what Wall Street racketeers have to do first is short-sell the institution’s own common stock down low enough to get the ball rolling.
According to the NY Times, beginning Friday France banned new short-selling and adding to existing short positions in 15 financial stocks for 15 days, Italy and Spain took similar 15 day actions, and Belgium did so for an indefinite period. Greece and Turkey already have such bans.
Bloomberg reported that the Securities and Excuses Commission here would do no such thing.
We don’t know what’s up, but European regulators are obviously worried enough about something to implement radical controls. If the real story ever comes out, and we’re hoping that never happens, it’s our guess the details will fit neatly into the opening paragraphs of this piece, maybe adding a whole new example of criminal activity by short-sellers that world investors have not endured before, probably some demonic manifestation bubbling out of an undead laboratory run by the derivatives crowd.
Major U.S. financial institutions were temporarily nationalized after the Big One in 2008. We dream of the day when somebody in Europe will step up and make that measure permanent, addressing there the explicit reason cited for most of the stock market crashes the world has experienced since Gamed-Market Capitalism began - the latest impending scary money center bank failure.
And then we'd hope it would catch on. Whatever, banning short-selling for 15 days is no way to deal with a systemic problem.
People here keep arguing that we have too much Government. Others say we don't have enough. From our perspective at The MacDougal Post, it sometimes looks like we don't have any at all.
August 11, 2011
4.62%
A 4.62% drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) is catastrophic. At this pace, prices of those 30 stocks would collapse to zero in 21.65 sessions. That‘s in 1 month, 1 day, 4 hours, 1 minute, and 48 seconds, not counting market holidays.
We had a 4.62% drop in the DJIA Wednesday. Were that to continue, the common stock portion of your portfolio would become worthless at 31 minutes and 48 seconds after 1 PM, Eastern, on Thursday, September 8, adjusting for the market being closed on Labor Day.
Don’t bother to mark that down on your calendar.
The current plummet in stock prices is caused by Mary Schapiro, Chief Obfuscation Officer (COO) at the Securities and Exchange Commission. The COO called off public hearings on short-selling after the Big One, explaining that short-sellers had nothing to do with the Financial Apocalypse caused by short-selling.
Readers will recall that The MacDougal Post called for her waterboarding to get at the real story behind that cancellation.
That’s not going to happen either.
We don’t know why we bother. Moneysucking market-riggers dump massive quantities of non-existent, phony-baloney shares in with the real shares that you and I own, then yank them out again when quotes get trashed, and do it over and over again, and the media calls them “investors”. We say they're Gangland henchmen, but nobody listens to us.
These are fraudulent shares the lowlife scum don’t even own. And the suckers buying them aren't told this calamari is fictitious. There's nothing on a broker's ticket saying, "We're not selling you anything really."
Now, investors invest, mostly hanging onto their investments in times like these, watching in total disbelief as SEC goons let Wall Street Racketeers manipulate prices South, gobbling up the wealth of law-abiding folk they can scare into getting out. Presumably that’s the 401(k) crowd these days, working stiffs tricked into abandoning employer pension plans to get fleeced running their own retirement shops.
If real investors do sell into a swoon, it's often because of their health. Thugs prey on the weak, people who can’t take it any more once their life savings shrink down pretty good. Even the strong have bad moments, and get whipsawed from time to time like everybody else.
That's a hell of a way to run a financial sector.
As for those 401(k) victims, The Doomsday Generations, as we think of them around here, they are the walking financial dead, and we should mourn over their portending misfortune every day of our lives. History will show that the future homelessness and suffering of these US citizens, by the tens of millions, was caused by Mary Schapiro, who wouldn’t reign in the short-selling that’s destined to devastate their Golden Years, and history will also record that nobody ever knew that Mob Kingpins were behind it.
You try getting funding for academic research that threatens to bring down one of the big time Wall Street rackets.
We had a 4.62% drop in the DJIA Wednesday. Were that to continue, the common stock portion of your portfolio would become worthless at 31 minutes and 48 seconds after 1 PM, Eastern, on Thursday, September 8, adjusting for the market being closed on Labor Day.
Don’t bother to mark that down on your calendar.
The current plummet in stock prices is caused by Mary Schapiro, Chief Obfuscation Officer (COO) at the Securities and Exchange Commission. The COO called off public hearings on short-selling after the Big One, explaining that short-sellers had nothing to do with the Financial Apocalypse caused by short-selling.
Readers will recall that The MacDougal Post called for her waterboarding to get at the real story behind that cancellation.
That’s not going to happen either.
We don’t know why we bother. Moneysucking market-riggers dump massive quantities of non-existent, phony-baloney shares in with the real shares that you and I own, then yank them out again when quotes get trashed, and do it over and over again, and the media calls them “investors”. We say they're Gangland henchmen, but nobody listens to us.
These are fraudulent shares the lowlife scum don’t even own. And the suckers buying them aren't told this calamari is fictitious. There's nothing on a broker's ticket saying, "We're not selling you anything really."
Now, investors invest, mostly hanging onto their investments in times like these, watching in total disbelief as SEC goons let Wall Street Racketeers manipulate prices South, gobbling up the wealth of law-abiding folk they can scare into getting out. Presumably that’s the 401(k) crowd these days, working stiffs tricked into abandoning employer pension plans to get fleeced running their own retirement shops.
If real investors do sell into a swoon, it's often because of their health. Thugs prey on the weak, people who can’t take it any more once their life savings shrink down pretty good. Even the strong have bad moments, and get whipsawed from time to time like everybody else.
That's a hell of a way to run a financial sector.
As for those 401(k) victims, The Doomsday Generations, as we think of them around here, they are the walking financial dead, and we should mourn over their portending misfortune every day of our lives. History will show that the future homelessness and suffering of these US citizens, by the tens of millions, was caused by Mary Schapiro, who wouldn’t reign in the short-selling that’s destined to devastate their Golden Years, and history will also record that nobody ever knew that Mob Kingpins were behind it.
You try getting funding for academic research that threatens to bring down one of the big time Wall Street rackets.
August 9, 2011
Change in Sovereign Credit Rating
The spectacle of a President in complete denial, refusing to acknowledge the scope of the problem, his personal responsibility for resolving it, and take any actual action at all, has sparked massive short-selling by every moneysucking financial moneysucker on the face of the planet with no end in sight.
Effective immediately, we are lowering our credit rating for all obligations of the United States of America to CC+, total calamari status, with a beleaguered outlook, because the whole world is getting flushed down the crapper every time the calamari-for-brains nincompoop opens his calamari-for-brains nincompoop mouth.
As waves of rioting over scheduled reductions in welfare payments sweep across Great Britain, investors on our side of the pond wait with baited breath to see what upcoming spending cuts here will do to sales of fresh fruits and vegetables throughout our own Ghettos.
Effective immediately, we are lowering our credit rating for all obligations of the United States of America to CC+, total calamari status, with a beleaguered outlook, because the whole world is getting flushed down the crapper every time the calamari-for-brains nincompoop opens his calamari-for-brains nincompoop mouth.
As waves of rioting over scheduled reductions in welfare payments sweep across Great Britain, investors on our side of the pond wait with baited breath to see what upcoming spending cuts here will do to sales of fresh fruits and vegetables throughout our own Ghettos.
August 8, 2011
Blame the Accountant, Part II
The Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted 634.76 points today as one more White House jerk blamed people who work with numbers for the numbers White House jerks are making them work with. Global markets continue to get crushed because these morons won't take responsibility for their moronic actions, apparently ready to finger everybody on the planet before doing anything about the real problem, them-freaking-selves.
Reflecting this development, apparently the final straw for our staff CPA, The MacDougal Post is initiating coverage of the United States of America with a junk bond rating of BB+ and a positive outlook, given our projection that everybody in Washington will get voted out of office, starting in just 15 sorrowful months.
And take all these White House jerks with them.
One more word, and we’re lowering the rating of their stupid junk bonds all the way down to calamari status.
Reflecting this development, apparently the final straw for our staff CPA, The MacDougal Post is initiating coverage of the United States of America with a junk bond rating of BB+ and a positive outlook, given our projection that everybody in Washington will get voted out of office, starting in just 15 sorrowful months.
And take all these White House jerks with them.
One more word, and we’re lowering the rating of their stupid junk bonds all the way down to calamari status.
August 7, 2011
Blame the Accountant
Every seasoned CPA has experienced this before. The outrage. The denial. The clucking. Dealing with an irresponsible big shot client, it happens to us all the time.
And they actually cluck. They truly do. Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck.
He isn’t to blame. You are. And the search for discrepancies begins. If Mr. Big Shot spots anything, he’s absolved. Anything. Absolutely any tiny little thing in your numbers. That makes everything all your fault.
It’s Big Shot magic at work.
These issues almost always swirl around taxes. The taxes this middle-aged child doesn’t want to pay.
Standard & Poor’s cut the credit rating of the United States of America because Government here no longer has the power to increase taxes, and our Mr. Big Shot had his whole staff throwing a hissy fit with him.
Somebody pulled a math error out of his due process, claimed it was the sole cause of the country’s fiscal tailspin, and Mr. Big Shot walked away from all responsibility for the mess that’s swirling smack dab around him.
Walked, nothing. They made a dang parade out of it, complete with toots and huzzahs.
Readers, without proper revenue-raising authority behind government securities, they will get a junk rating every time. Nobody charged with fiduciary responsibility can hold that kind of garbage. In the case of a sovereign nation piling up debt, investors will see inflation chop the purchasing value of long-term principal into tiny little fractions way before this toxic paper matures.
Look for further cuts in our credit rating based solely on Mr. Big Shot’s inattention to that specific issue. It’s a smoldering bomb, and he‘s pretending he can‘t see the smoke. And don’t ever expect to find the real reason in print. When the problem is some kind of character flaw in management, that gets called something else.
Face it, Republicans will not let this specific individual, Mr. Blatant Umama, perform the duties of his office. If Mr. Big Shot gets reelected next year and the GOP holds the House, The MacDougal Post projects the USA credit rating, at least at Dagong, quite possibly the only relevant rating agency in today's world, to drop below investment grade status at that time.
Even if you're into financial roller coasters, that sounds like one ride you really don't want to take.
And they actually cluck. They truly do. Cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck, cluck.
He isn’t to blame. You are. And the search for discrepancies begins. If Mr. Big Shot spots anything, he’s absolved. Anything. Absolutely any tiny little thing in your numbers. That makes everything all your fault.
It’s Big Shot magic at work.
These issues almost always swirl around taxes. The taxes this middle-aged child doesn’t want to pay.
Standard & Poor’s cut the credit rating of the United States of America because Government here no longer has the power to increase taxes, and our Mr. Big Shot had his whole staff throwing a hissy fit with him.
Somebody pulled a math error out of his due process, claimed it was the sole cause of the country’s fiscal tailspin, and Mr. Big Shot walked away from all responsibility for the mess that’s swirling smack dab around him.
Walked, nothing. They made a dang parade out of it, complete with toots and huzzahs.
Readers, without proper revenue-raising authority behind government securities, they will get a junk rating every time. Nobody charged with fiduciary responsibility can hold that kind of garbage. In the case of a sovereign nation piling up debt, investors will see inflation chop the purchasing value of long-term principal into tiny little fractions way before this toxic paper matures.
Look for further cuts in our credit rating based solely on Mr. Big Shot’s inattention to that specific issue. It’s a smoldering bomb, and he‘s pretending he can‘t see the smoke. And don’t ever expect to find the real reason in print. When the problem is some kind of character flaw in management, that gets called something else.
Face it, Republicans will not let this specific individual, Mr. Blatant Umama, perform the duties of his office. If Mr. Big Shot gets reelected next year and the GOP holds the House, The MacDougal Post projects the USA credit rating, at least at Dagong, quite possibly the only relevant rating agency in today's world, to drop below investment grade status at that time.
Even if you're into financial roller coasters, that sounds like one ride you really don't want to take.
August 5, 2011
Unsettling Settlement News
Today, New York State’s Attorney General asked a judge to reject an agreement concocted between Bank of America (BAC) and a tiny number of institutional investors that would have paid $8.5 billion to settle the “current unpaid balance” of $220 billion on some securitized home mortgage loans with a face value of $424 billion, imposing that settlement of 4 cents to the dollar on every investor holding those bonds. Among the reasons, the securitization process was so flawed that these things probably aren’t bonds at all. Countrywide Financial, the original lender BAC absorbed as part of all those deals brokered by Goldberg Styx kingpins in Washington to keep Goldberg Styx alive, screwed up the paperwork so bad it may not be possible for Bank of New York Mellon, trustee for all the bonds, to foreclose on the homeowners who couldn’t afford the homes they got talked into owning, meaning BAC still holds the mortgages and never actually securitized them into anything in the first place. Then there's all the fraud. Everywhere.
Lender fraud. Securitizer fraud. Trustee fraud. Underwriter fraud. Fraud was a really big problem to the Attorney General here.
In short, the Attorney General thinks BAC has to give the bondholders all their money back and put the mortgage loans on the BAC balance sheet, and he wonders why this resolution shouldn‘t apply to all the bonds securitizing the civilized world and Iceland into Financial Armageddon a few years ago.
The MacDougal Post suggests subscribers may want to wait a bit longer before taking a second look at, well, pretty much the entire financial sector. After this news, our prognostication is beyond grim, and frankly we’ve never even heard of that many stocks all hitting zero together before, and nobody here can figure out what else to tell you about investing in the racketeering scum at this time.
If any of you can come up with a reason why this guy isn't right, or why being right in New York isn't a whole lot different than being right in Washington, please let us know.
We'd be delighted to pass it along.
Lender fraud. Securitizer fraud. Trustee fraud. Underwriter fraud. Fraud was a really big problem to the Attorney General here.
In short, the Attorney General thinks BAC has to give the bondholders all their money back and put the mortgage loans on the BAC balance sheet, and he wonders why this resolution shouldn‘t apply to all the bonds securitizing the civilized world and Iceland into Financial Armageddon a few years ago.
The MacDougal Post suggests subscribers may want to wait a bit longer before taking a second look at, well, pretty much the entire financial sector. After this news, our prognostication is beyond grim, and frankly we’ve never even heard of that many stocks all hitting zero together before, and nobody here can figure out what else to tell you about investing in the racketeering scum at this time.
If any of you can come up with a reason why this guy isn't right, or why being right in New York isn't a whole lot different than being right in Washington, please let us know.
We'd be delighted to pass it along.
August 4, 2011
Functional Government
Make no mistake about it. Washington is not dysfunctional, the term brain-washing flim-flam artists have carefully settled upon in explaining away recent events. The place is flat out corrupt. Crime-ridden and maniacal. A government of the robber barons, by the robber barons, for the robber barons, elected functionaries operate quite proficiently in this rat-infested sewer as a pack of mob stooges bribed with “campaign contributions” to serve the money-sucking master class.
You don’t hear this from the talking heads. Media disinformation has billowed into a mammoth corporate smokescreen, and the hired help would get canned for bringing the topic up. From Rupert Murdock TV all the way across the political spectrum to Al Gore TV, what you see is rich people propaganda, and every single one of these rich people has his fingers around your wallet. Smiley-faced spincasters are simply not allowed to spill the beans. Not about where the elites are filching their money from anyway.
No, Ma’am, not a bleeping word.
Voracious CEOs and them slobber to sate their unfathomable greed with our hard-earned savings by pilfering shares through a basically open-ended “stock option” swindle enabled by Congress effective Jan 1, 1981. That’s right. The profligate sting’s been going on for three decades now, and it‘s made the contemporary corporate CEO the most successful criminal mastermind in the history of mankind. There. Now how difficult is that to get across?
Through 1980, company executives got paid with paychecks like everybody else, and were what you might call comfortable. Afterwards, the arch-fiends started pilfering your nest egg and mine to become a ruling class of the obscenely mega-rich, this festering pustule of billionaire mob kingpins.
It’s either 1) spiraling socialism, poverty for us, superabundance for the party-wired financially-overstuffed upper crust, or 2) grand larceny, and we opt for grand larceny. Whatever, Government has been redistributing wealth by making your hard-earned stash somebody else’s sticky-fingered take home pay. The enterprises these monied gangsters run don’t turn the kind of profit that would generate this outrageously over-the-top largess. Racketeers have to loot it from their shareholders' accounts.
That the thieving pigs can pay elected officials to enable this audacious confiscation of your family’s financial future is reason enough to reexamine the death penalty in our society. Clearly, the traditional public stoning would discourage this kind of criminality, at least better than anything we’ve got on the books in these unenlightened times. Crimes against savings should be punishable by public stoning, sentence to be carried out at time of verdict.
In the middle of the verdict, if the sonofab!tch is a banker.
Twisting this whole doggedly efficient, decades-long operation around and calling it “dysfunctional” is misinformation. With a dishonest, complicit media, one wonders what could possibly come along to illuminate all the mobsters’ ungodly deceptions. Crime Lords run both the Government and the whole boob tube/fish wrapper cover-up operation. Now this is the apex of results-oriented effectiveness. There’s no dys about that functionality.
Grand Larceny on their scale is as capable as Government gets.
You don’t hear this from the talking heads. Media disinformation has billowed into a mammoth corporate smokescreen, and the hired help would get canned for bringing the topic up. From Rupert Murdock TV all the way across the political spectrum to Al Gore TV, what you see is rich people propaganda, and every single one of these rich people has his fingers around your wallet. Smiley-faced spincasters are simply not allowed to spill the beans. Not about where the elites are filching their money from anyway.
No, Ma’am, not a bleeping word.
Voracious CEOs and them slobber to sate their unfathomable greed with our hard-earned savings by pilfering shares through a basically open-ended “stock option” swindle enabled by Congress effective Jan 1, 1981. That’s right. The profligate sting’s been going on for three decades now, and it‘s made the contemporary corporate CEO the most successful criminal mastermind in the history of mankind. There. Now how difficult is that to get across?
Through 1980, company executives got paid with paychecks like everybody else, and were what you might call comfortable. Afterwards, the arch-fiends started pilfering your nest egg and mine to become a ruling class of the obscenely mega-rich, this festering pustule of billionaire mob kingpins.
It’s either 1) spiraling socialism, poverty for us, superabundance for the party-wired financially-overstuffed upper crust, or 2) grand larceny, and we opt for grand larceny. Whatever, Government has been redistributing wealth by making your hard-earned stash somebody else’s sticky-fingered take home pay. The enterprises these monied gangsters run don’t turn the kind of profit that would generate this outrageously over-the-top largess. Racketeers have to loot it from their shareholders' accounts.
That the thieving pigs can pay elected officials to enable this audacious confiscation of your family’s financial future is reason enough to reexamine the death penalty in our society. Clearly, the traditional public stoning would discourage this kind of criminality, at least better than anything we’ve got on the books in these unenlightened times. Crimes against savings should be punishable by public stoning, sentence to be carried out at time of verdict.
In the middle of the verdict, if the sonofab!tch is a banker.
Twisting this whole doggedly efficient, decades-long operation around and calling it “dysfunctional” is misinformation. With a dishonest, complicit media, one wonders what could possibly come along to illuminate all the mobsters’ ungodly deceptions. Crime Lords run both the Government and the whole boob tube/fish wrapper cover-up operation. Now this is the apex of results-oriented effectiveness. There’s no dys about that functionality.
Grand Larceny on their scale is as capable as Government gets.
August 3, 2011
Dagong Cuts US Rating
China's Dagong Global Credit Rating Co. Ltd. today cut the sovereign credit rating of the United States from A+ to A with a negative outlook, explaining that the country’s new debt limit will not change the fact that growth in national debt has surpassed that of both the overall economy and the Federal Government's fiscal revenue, which has led to a decline in its debt-paying ability.
One concludes that financial analysts would have to crank in a long term systemic devaluation in the US Dollar over the time of this still-neglected problem, so it’s difficult to rationalize why our own rating agencies haven’t done the same.
Perhaps Standard & Poor's and them are no longer relevant in the Post Financial Apocalyptic Era they had such an important role in creating.
One concludes that financial analysts would have to crank in a long term systemic devaluation in the US Dollar over the time of this still-neglected problem, so it’s difficult to rationalize why our own rating agencies haven’t done the same.
Perhaps Standard & Poor's and them are no longer relevant in the Post Financial Apocalyptic Era they had such an important role in creating.
August 2, 2011
The Morning After
How come nobody writes headlines about the paychecks Tea Party members must be cashing in this morning for refusing to tax corporate elites? To hurl the nation through chaos like we’ve just witnessed must’ve cost somebody a pretty penny. Somebody who can hand out millions and millions to crooked Washington stooges because he and his ilk have been manipulating government to loot billions and billions in "stock option" booty from their shareholders for decades now.
There’s no other plausible explanation.
We bet each of these 43 politicians raked in a bundle. One of them even said he didn’t care whether he got reelected or not. Of course not. It doesn't even look like this was about politics.
It was about the windfall. Marauders amassing personal wealth by attacking in one fell swoop. Whoever’s bankrolling this Tea Party calamari had to be giving them a single shot at a tidy sum. The gateway to personal fortune probably opened up and these thieves jumped through, selling the country down the river.
Was it one big fat deposit in some offshore bank account or a hefty downpayment followed with promises of much, much more to come? Both would’ve done the trick.
Where’s the media on this one, huh?
Oh, yeah. They’re owned by the likes of Rupert Murdoch. All of them.
Lock, stock, and barrel.
There’s no other plausible explanation.
We bet each of these 43 politicians raked in a bundle. One of them even said he didn’t care whether he got reelected or not. Of course not. It doesn't even look like this was about politics.
It was about the windfall. Marauders amassing personal wealth by attacking in one fell swoop. Whoever’s bankrolling this Tea Party calamari had to be giving them a single shot at a tidy sum. The gateway to personal fortune probably opened up and these thieves jumped through, selling the country down the river.
Was it one big fat deposit in some offshore bank account or a hefty downpayment followed with promises of much, much more to come? Both would’ve done the trick.
Where’s the media on this one, huh?
Oh, yeah. They’re owned by the likes of Rupert Murdoch. All of them.
Lock, stock, and barrel.
August 1, 2011
The Case for Junk
Where direct obligations of federal, state, and local governments enjoy investment grade ratings, it is largely because of their taxing power. Functionaries cover cash outflows mostly by exercising that unique authority.
For whatever reason, a wing of whack jobs inside the House of Representatives has caused the U.S. Government to repudiate its taxing power. Financial analysts have had no choice but to crank this into the equation. If the new metric is deemed to be of no consequence, an aberration perhaps, something that will pass after the next election, the AAA rating can stand, but events in Washington will be put on some kind of “watch” status. If these flakes truly deny our nation the flexibility of raising additional taxes to cover budget shortfalls, then Treasuries would have to be marked down to junk status, given everything else going on in Washington right now, including its total inability to control spending - ever.
Paramount there is the whack job denial that war spending put us down this path. There’s no way an analyst can throw that one into the mix and come up with the kind of financial projections that would support a gilt edge rating.
Estimates related to the latest “debt deal” cite total budget savings of $900 billion over ten years, less than our call on what the mess would eventually cost if AAA turned into AA as a result of fabricating the unnecessary crisis in the first place.
For whatever reason, a wing of whack jobs inside the House of Representatives has caused the U.S. Government to repudiate its taxing power. Financial analysts have had no choice but to crank this into the equation. If the new metric is deemed to be of no consequence, an aberration perhaps, something that will pass after the next election, the AAA rating can stand, but events in Washington will be put on some kind of “watch” status. If these flakes truly deny our nation the flexibility of raising additional taxes to cover budget shortfalls, then Treasuries would have to be marked down to junk status, given everything else going on in Washington right now, including its total inability to control spending - ever.
Paramount there is the whack job denial that war spending put us down this path. There’s no way an analyst can throw that one into the mix and come up with the kind of financial projections that would support a gilt edge rating.
Estimates related to the latest “debt deal” cite total budget savings of $900 billion over ten years, less than our call on what the mess would eventually cost if AAA turned into AA as a result of fabricating the unnecessary crisis in the first place.
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