With “The Twist”, the only single ever topping the Billboard Hot 100 in separate runs, as reported on September 19, 1958 (one week) and again in January 1962 (two weeks), Chubby Checker spawned a bizarre dance “craze” that reached all the way into Jackie Kennedy‘s White House, according to press releases at the time anyway. To those of us who were there, however, the dancing frenzy, if any, seemed confined to Manhattan’s Peppermint Lounge, a mirror-lined, mob-operated hole-in-the-wall on West 45th, and a few Hollywood films, though the song itself did make it to our own college haunts along North Side Chicago’s fabled Howard Street. For years some folks, probably Chubby mostly, championed this remarkable claim that those three weeks, owing to the more than three year interval separating that first week from the last two, somehow made “The Twist” the greatest rock ‘n’ roll song of all time, efforts from the likes of Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, and The King himself, Elvis Presley, notwithstanding.
The other day, Ben Bernanke, Charlatan of the Fed, announced the nation’s latest monetary craze, also dubbed The Twist, "exchanging" $400 billion of short term U.S. Government paper which the Fed currently holds for the same amount in longer term maturities. Though we haven’t heard from Chubby yet, pundits have stepped in for him to herald the Charlatan’s initiative with Twist twists that are no closer to target this time.
As MacDougal Post readers know, when one arm of Government buys the paper of another arm, that debt is effectively extinguished in overall Government books. CPAs cannot account for the transaction in any other way. In what became known as QE1 and 2, the Bernanke Bunch printed money to retire obligations bought then. Since, in reality, the $400 billion paper we’re talking about here no longer exists, with The Twist, Government is now reissuing bonds of the same amount and similar maturities, offering them to actual third party investors, and retiring different securities farther out on the yield curve.
Remember, daddy outfits are supposed to wipe out all transactions between offspring outfits before reporting daddy’s transactions to us. In not doing that, the Charlatan is pulling off an accounting hoax, trying to avoid acknowledging the part about printing money to otherwise informed voters who don‘t understand this stuff too well. Republicans could win every race in 2012 by reminding this part of the electorate about the 70’s - what happened to our savings after Democrats got done financing both their “Great Society” and the Vietnam War with printed money.
All dough left in bank accounts, CDs, or other fixed income investments over that decade lost two-thirds of its purchasing power. Fixed-income retirees who could afford to eat three cans of cat food a week under Lyndon Johnson were down to one by the time "Great Communicator" Reagan showed up.
So why The Twist at this point in the Post-Financial Apocalyptic era?
Well, at the time this new monetary craze started sweeping the nation, short term rates were approaching zero while 30 year maturities cost the Government close to 3%, and 10 year maturities around 2%. Why not save money by retiring more costly obligations? With The Twist, Washington will pay investors next to nothing on the $400 billion reissued bills and notes and stop making large interest payments to outside parties on those $400 billion longer term bonds getting retired.
The twist is simply a cheaper way to finance the runaway deficit. Problem is, it’s grossly inflationary.
Today, consumer price hikes are being deferred by weak economic conditions. With the next recovery, we’ll see how quickly that turns around along with business activity - and how badly this ill-conceived monetary walkabout has hurt us.
Whatever the ultimate impact, you don’t want to be holding bonds when the fur starts flying. Go research the 70’s if you’re not getting more than a little scared about now. As we just pointed out, fixed income investors not switching into equities were crippled over those years.
That’s the message the Chubby Checker of this latest money-printing craze should be championing right now, but isn‘t. The man is covering up Umama's mess. Inherited, to be sure, but now all Umama's.
What Government has to do, is call our military back home. Tomorrow, for goodness sakes. America can't afford to send a single trooper off base for pizza any more, let alone armies and navies and corps and forces of them overseas blowing our tax dollars on munitions, trans-world logistical support, and long term health care for busted-up military victims.
For investors, there's no other way out.
September 28, 2011
September 23, 2011
Waterboarding Bloodbath Mary
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
Short-sellers just gangbanged the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 5.9% in two days, and it‘s all Bloodbath‘s fault. A while back, Bloodbath Mary Schlepiro, Chief Obfuscation Officer at the Securities & Excuses Commission, called off a scheduled public hearing on short-selling, claiming that short-selling had nothing to do with the Financial Apocalypse caused by short-sellers, and now The MacDougal Post is waterboarding her to find out the real reason why she ditched it.
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
“More water.”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
“Why’d you do it, Bloodbath. Why’d you call off that scheduled public hearing?”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
It was bad enough before hedge funds came along. The Crime Families trashed our stocks pretty good by themselves. Now every wisea$$ Harvard MBA with $100 billion to throw around is working under a broken business model that gives wisea$$ Harvard MBAs the idea they can gang up on whatever the hell stock they want to, and beat it into the ground.
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
Together.
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
“For no reason at all.”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.
“None.”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
Except to steal our money."
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.
"By throwing the world into a recession.”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
“Again.”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
"They have freaking conferences to get together on whose freaking lives they’re going to freaking destroy next."
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
“Conferences, you twisted b!tch.”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
“And the Dow is down 5.92%.”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
“In two days.”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
“TWO days, Bloodbath. Two freaking days.”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
“And do you know why, Bloodbath? Huh? Why?”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
“Short-selling, Bloodbath. It's short-selling. That's why.”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
Short-selling, short-selling, short-selling, short-selling, short-selling.”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst, mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst, mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst, mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst, mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
“SHORT-SELLING.”
“Bloodbath?”
“Bloodbath?”
“Slap the b!tch around until she wakes up. The country needs to know why she really called off that hearing.”
"5.92% in two days. Two freaking days."
Short-sellers just gangbanged the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 5.9% in two days, and it‘s all Bloodbath‘s fault. A while back, Bloodbath Mary Schlepiro, Chief Obfuscation Officer at the Securities & Excuses Commission, called off a scheduled public hearing on short-selling, claiming that short-selling had nothing to do with the Financial Apocalypse caused by short-sellers, and now The MacDougal Post is waterboarding her to find out the real reason why she ditched it.
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
“More water.”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
“Why’d you do it, Bloodbath. Why’d you call off that scheduled public hearing?”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
It was bad enough before hedge funds came along. The Crime Families trashed our stocks pretty good by themselves. Now every wisea$$ Harvard MBA with $100 billion to throw around is working under a broken business model that gives wisea$$ Harvard MBAs the idea they can gang up on whatever the hell stock they want to, and beat it into the ground.
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
Together.
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
“For no reason at all.”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.
“None.”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
Except to steal our money."
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.
"By throwing the world into a recession.”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
“Again.”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
"They have freaking conferences to get together on whose freaking lives they’re going to freaking destroy next."
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
“Conferences, you twisted b!tch.”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
“And the Dow is down 5.92%.”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
“In two days.”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
“TWO days, Bloodbath. Two freaking days.”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
“And do you know why, Bloodbath? Huh? Why?”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
“Short-selling, Bloodbath. It's short-selling. That's why.”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
Short-selling, short-selling, short-selling, short-selling, short-selling.”
“Mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst, mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst, mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst, mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst, mghhhhhhwrlgggggggggggpst.”
“SHORT-SELLING.”
“Bloodbath?”
“Bloodbath?”
“Slap the b!tch around until she wakes up. The country needs to know why she really called off that hearing.”
"5.92% in two days. Two freaking days."
September 20, 2011
Reality in Numbers
Three of the biggest stories of our times continue to go unreported.
1) For decades now, hometown drug pushers have ravaged their domain with impunity. Way too many of our own acquaintances tell of kin who’ve fallen into the personal hell these monsters are selling. The saddening tales we're confronted with are truly appalling. Surely, family catastrophe has always been a local issue, havoc wreaked on a community’s own, happening down the block or on the next one over, but the fish wrappers cover the drug scourge as some kind of Latin American thing, a preposterous foreign “war” trumped-up to take place thousands of miles away, thus not on their beat.
2) Starting in the 1800’s, elected Washington stooges have enabled Wall Street Dons to systematically plunder the country’s wealth by gangbanging our holdings of public securities with fraudulent bookkeeping transactions known as “short sales” that purport to sell real securities while only posting a fake accounting entry in the swindled buyer’s account that must be closed out at a later time with an equally phony entry before any genuine shares actually pass hands. Because a short-seller doesn’t even own the certificates he represents that he’s selling to us, these grifters have to buy them later on in order to slip bona fide stock into Mob-controlled accounts of marks who’ve been duped into thinking they own some. Gangland’s vast resources generate a gigantic tidal wave of selling, and the immense volume of bogus shares swamps prices of real securities, crushing the entire civilized world and Iceland last time.
A while back, Bloodbath Mary Schlepiro, Chief Obfuscation Officer of the Securities & Excuses Commission (SEC), cancelled public hearings on short-selling, claiming that short-selling had nothing to do with the Financial Apocalypse caused by short-sellers, and that got media attention for one day, pretty much the only kind of media attention short-selling ever gets. Our own calls to waterboard the complicitous b!tch to find out what the real reason was for slamming the door on those proceedings, remain unheeded.
3) Since 1981, CEOs and them have skimmed the entire amount of our December 1980 savings into their own pockets with another legislated swindle cleverly mislabeled "stock options". CEOs and them have their sights on holding 90% of the nation's wealth any year now, up from a whole lot closer to 0% back there in 1980, but talking heads aren't talking about this one at all, presumably because they‘re counted among the swindlers, or at least working for a bunch of them. CEOs grabbed control of the media about the time they started making middle class victims out of even seasoned investors.
And so, when, just the other day, fish wrappers, talking heads, and the remarkably ill-informed gurus they keep rolling out, plus whatever else we’ve got now, jumped all over this UBS rogue trader story with indignation, financial headlines screaming that one scapegoat or another needs to be served up for letting this guy drop $2.3 billion (at latest count) right under their somebody's very nose, we at The MacDougal Post were inclined to just let it slide. One more irrational take in another fantasy episode of the fictionalized soap opera our preposterous newshounds want us to think we’re living in. And on a tale that’s been told many times before as well.
However, duty calls, and thinking back on one great big theme drilled into an Auditing 101 class back in the day, the first words out of our professor’s mouth, constantly repeated at least daily, we feel it warrants presentation here and now. NOBODY can stop a good bookkeeping fraud. No accountant, nor accounting system, nor Government regulator, nor Government regulation, NOBODY NOWHERE NOHOW can beat a diligent, resourceful, hard-driven arch-criminal in the pursuit of accounting no good. And please, never ever count on your company’s independent auditor finding the creep out.
Your company’s independent auditor is the very target that this overachieving super-villain is hell-bent on beating.
There’s a lot to this, but when you finally get to the nitty-gritty, the part about accounting fraud prevention, the relevant part anyway, eventually it all turns on the confirmation of unrelated party transactions by the unrelated parties. The outfit under audit buys or sells something from or to somebody on the outside, and that somebody checks his records and confirms that said transactions took place.
So here’s what’s up with that. In a famous case from a decade or so ago, the bad guy started doing business with customers he totally made up, some run by people who were totally made up too, and he and a cohort or two were everybody else as well. He and his posse did all the paperwork for all parties involved, played the parts of every outsider, whether client, clerk, supervisor, CFO, CEO, or anybody else needed to pull the crime off. As time went by, the whole insane business was mostly being done this way. In the hands of a real gourmet numerologist, cooking the books is ridiculously time consuming, and there probably weren’t any minutes left in the day for the guys to go out and find some real sales to log.
After all was said and done, this fair-sized public company had been reporting remarkable growth in what turned out to be no business at all.
And it went to show everybody just what CPAs, and all your gallant pencil pushers out there with them, can be up against too.
With any company, at the financial control level all we’re really talking about is numbers. Realizing this, Post subscribers should be able to understand how the accounting profession might expect dodgy types to continue to pull off stuff like this. Take a few days if you need to, and most non-accountant investors do, and come to grips with your own risk here. (Helpful hint: If an industry keeps coming up with all manner of lunatic calamari like this, maybe one might want to stop throwing one's hard-earned and even harder-saved wherewithal into the horror of it all.)
The only protection a stockholder, or anybody else for that matter, has is the character of the people he’s gotten himself thrown in with. All a financial controller is going to do for you is try to stop crimes. That's right, only try.
Stopping doesn’t always happen. In the profession it isn’t even expected to. Except for the perp(s), the human factor is zero on this one. What we've got here is a real good bookkeeping fraud.
It’s all about numbers with the real good bookkeeping frauds, meaning you don't always have a handle on them. Sometimes they just get away.
Those slippery little rascals are funny that way.
1) For decades now, hometown drug pushers have ravaged their domain with impunity. Way too many of our own acquaintances tell of kin who’ve fallen into the personal hell these monsters are selling. The saddening tales we're confronted with are truly appalling. Surely, family catastrophe has always been a local issue, havoc wreaked on a community’s own, happening down the block or on the next one over, but the fish wrappers cover the drug scourge as some kind of Latin American thing, a preposterous foreign “war” trumped-up to take place thousands of miles away, thus not on their beat.
2) Starting in the 1800’s, elected Washington stooges have enabled Wall Street Dons to systematically plunder the country’s wealth by gangbanging our holdings of public securities with fraudulent bookkeeping transactions known as “short sales” that purport to sell real securities while only posting a fake accounting entry in the swindled buyer’s account that must be closed out at a later time with an equally phony entry before any genuine shares actually pass hands. Because a short-seller doesn’t even own the certificates he represents that he’s selling to us, these grifters have to buy them later on in order to slip bona fide stock into Mob-controlled accounts of marks who’ve been duped into thinking they own some. Gangland’s vast resources generate a gigantic tidal wave of selling, and the immense volume of bogus shares swamps prices of real securities, crushing the entire civilized world and Iceland last time.
A while back, Bloodbath Mary Schlepiro, Chief Obfuscation Officer of the Securities & Excuses Commission (SEC), cancelled public hearings on short-selling, claiming that short-selling had nothing to do with the Financial Apocalypse caused by short-sellers, and that got media attention for one day, pretty much the only kind of media attention short-selling ever gets. Our own calls to waterboard the complicitous b!tch to find out what the real reason was for slamming the door on those proceedings, remain unheeded.
3) Since 1981, CEOs and them have skimmed the entire amount of our December 1980 savings into their own pockets with another legislated swindle cleverly mislabeled "stock options". CEOs and them have their sights on holding 90% of the nation's wealth any year now, up from a whole lot closer to 0% back there in 1980, but talking heads aren't talking about this one at all, presumably because they‘re counted among the swindlers, or at least working for a bunch of them. CEOs grabbed control of the media about the time they started making middle class victims out of even seasoned investors.
And so, when, just the other day, fish wrappers, talking heads, and the remarkably ill-informed gurus they keep rolling out, plus whatever else we’ve got now, jumped all over this UBS rogue trader story with indignation, financial headlines screaming that one scapegoat or another needs to be served up for letting this guy drop $2.3 billion (at latest count) right under their somebody's very nose, we at The MacDougal Post were inclined to just let it slide. One more irrational take in another fantasy episode of the fictionalized soap opera our preposterous newshounds want us to think we’re living in. And on a tale that’s been told many times before as well.
However, duty calls, and thinking back on one great big theme drilled into an Auditing 101 class back in the day, the first words out of our professor’s mouth, constantly repeated at least daily, we feel it warrants presentation here and now. NOBODY can stop a good bookkeeping fraud. No accountant, nor accounting system, nor Government regulator, nor Government regulation, NOBODY NOWHERE NOHOW can beat a diligent, resourceful, hard-driven arch-criminal in the pursuit of accounting no good. And please, never ever count on your company’s independent auditor finding the creep out.
Your company’s independent auditor is the very target that this overachieving super-villain is hell-bent on beating.
There’s a lot to this, but when you finally get to the nitty-gritty, the part about accounting fraud prevention, the relevant part anyway, eventually it all turns on the confirmation of unrelated party transactions by the unrelated parties. The outfit under audit buys or sells something from or to somebody on the outside, and that somebody checks his records and confirms that said transactions took place.
So here’s what’s up with that. In a famous case from a decade or so ago, the bad guy started doing business with customers he totally made up, some run by people who were totally made up too, and he and a cohort or two were everybody else as well. He and his posse did all the paperwork for all parties involved, played the parts of every outsider, whether client, clerk, supervisor, CFO, CEO, or anybody else needed to pull the crime off. As time went by, the whole insane business was mostly being done this way. In the hands of a real gourmet numerologist, cooking the books is ridiculously time consuming, and there probably weren’t any minutes left in the day for the guys to go out and find some real sales to log.
After all was said and done, this fair-sized public company had been reporting remarkable growth in what turned out to be no business at all.
And it went to show everybody just what CPAs, and all your gallant pencil pushers out there with them, can be up against too.
With any company, at the financial control level all we’re really talking about is numbers. Realizing this, Post subscribers should be able to understand how the accounting profession might expect dodgy types to continue to pull off stuff like this. Take a few days if you need to, and most non-accountant investors do, and come to grips with your own risk here. (Helpful hint: If an industry keeps coming up with all manner of lunatic calamari like this, maybe one might want to stop throwing one's hard-earned and even harder-saved wherewithal into the horror of it all.)
The only protection a stockholder, or anybody else for that matter, has is the character of the people he’s gotten himself thrown in with. All a financial controller is going to do for you is try to stop crimes. That's right, only try.
Stopping doesn’t always happen. In the profession it isn’t even expected to. Except for the perp(s), the human factor is zero on this one. What we've got here is a real good bookkeeping fraud.
It’s all about numbers with the real good bookkeeping frauds, meaning you don't always have a handle on them. Sometimes they just get away.
Those slippery little rascals are funny that way.
September 11, 2011
Here’s How That Works
This Don screams “SELL! SELL! SELL!”, the Family Consigliore tells his goons to short big time then gets all the other Families in, and the henchman in charge of spreading lies through financial media types schedules a conference call with financial media types to spread the lie that “investors” are dumping stocks today because …
“Godfather… Godfather … Godfather…"
“WHAT?”
“What do I tell the financial media types on this one?”
“DO I LOOK LIKE I CARE?”
“Godfather, I have to tell the financial media types something. We’re gangbanging the Dow down by 300 points, and you haven't even finished your morning calamari yet.”
“TELL THEM EUROPE.”
“What about Europe?”
“DO I LOOK LIKE I KNOW? SOMETHING EUROPE.”
“What?”
“ANYTHING EUROPE. MAYBE THAT POSSIBLE RECESSION THING. POSSIBLE RECESSION THING IS GOOD TOO.”
“Thanks for holding, financial media types. Investors are dumping stocks today because they’re worried about something happening in Europe. And a possible recession too.”
And that’s how that works. You could look it up in yesterday's morning paper.
Wall Street hoodlums gangbang investors' investments while investors stay out of the market, and an oblivious financial media blames investors for the price declines in their own investments. Meanwhile, terrified 401(k) newbies flee from trumped-up delusions of financial Armageddon, jumping into AA+ Treasuries that pay next to nothing anymore in that pathetic Government-rigged arena.
This isn't even about selling stocks. Or investors. It's about gangsters flooding a frightened market, one that they themselves have scared completely out of its wits, with phony-baloney play shares that the crooks don't even own, defrauding everyone who buys them or actually holds the real stock as prices of both get pounded and pounded and pounded and pounded until finally these despicable hoods cover their short-sales, removing all the bogus shares from the trading floor - scoring obscene profits by totalling your savings.
Check out Saturday's stories, and read between the lines.
“Godfather… Godfather … Godfather…"
“WHAT?”
“What do I tell the financial media types on this one?”
“DO I LOOK LIKE I CARE?”
“Godfather, I have to tell the financial media types something. We’re gangbanging the Dow down by 300 points, and you haven't even finished your morning calamari yet.”
“TELL THEM EUROPE.”
“What about Europe?”
“DO I LOOK LIKE I KNOW? SOMETHING EUROPE.”
“What?”
“ANYTHING EUROPE. MAYBE THAT POSSIBLE RECESSION THING. POSSIBLE RECESSION THING IS GOOD TOO.”
“Thanks for holding, financial media types. Investors are dumping stocks today because they’re worried about something happening in Europe. And a possible recession too.”
And that’s how that works. You could look it up in yesterday's morning paper.
Wall Street hoodlums gangbang investors' investments while investors stay out of the market, and an oblivious financial media blames investors for the price declines in their own investments. Meanwhile, terrified 401(k) newbies flee from trumped-up delusions of financial Armageddon, jumping into AA+ Treasuries that pay next to nothing anymore in that pathetic Government-rigged arena.
This isn't even about selling stocks. Or investors. It's about gangsters flooding a frightened market, one that they themselves have scared completely out of its wits, with phony-baloney play shares that the crooks don't even own, defrauding everyone who buys them or actually holds the real stock as prices of both get pounded and pounded and pounded and pounded until finally these despicable hoods cover their short-sales, removing all the bogus shares from the trading floor - scoring obscene profits by totalling your savings.
Check out Saturday's stories, and read between the lines.
September 9, 2011
Genesis
Happy Spanks, Majority Whip, House Extramarital Relations and Intern Orientation Subcommittee, tossed his hat into the ring the other day and a perky campaign spokesbabe close to the Congressman cited his longstanding commitment to the annihilation of Middle Class spending power as reason why the Tea Party is expected to jump aboard the Spanks campaign bandwagon. This brings the number of presidential candidates who really should be committed to at least eight.
In a surprise twist to the ongoing 2012 race, Spanks, co-founder of the Konservative Khristian Koalition (KKK) went on to explain his sudden interest in the White House with a terse statement. “Thing is, God came down and actually did talk to me, and I really want to apologize to everybody for all those other times I said He did when He didn’t.”
Just as soon as the Supreme Court gives Happy the 2012 Florida recount, Spanks announced, the President Elect will declare martial law and haul everybody in Washington off to jail, invading Switzerland to find out just how much corporate payola “the real crooks in this country” have socked away. For his part, Congressman Spanks handed a check for $312 million over to the Sierra Club, explaining that he’d closed his Swiss bank accounts “kind of during that conversation with Him”, and, owing to Happy's House voting record “that’s where I, er We, decided the dough probably ought to go“.
This being the case, The MacDougal Post is pleased to announce that we are the first financial blog to endorse Happy Spanks for President of the United States of America, the fictional nature of his candidacy, and, for that matter, his persona, notwithstanding.
As far as our staff is concerned, the reality out there is way more nuts than this, and we no longer choose to live with it.
In a surprise twist to the ongoing 2012 race, Spanks, co-founder of the Konservative Khristian Koalition (KKK) went on to explain his sudden interest in the White House with a terse statement. “Thing is, God came down and actually did talk to me, and I really want to apologize to everybody for all those other times I said He did when He didn’t.”
Just as soon as the Supreme Court gives Happy the 2012 Florida recount, Spanks announced, the President Elect will declare martial law and haul everybody in Washington off to jail, invading Switzerland to find out just how much corporate payola “the real crooks in this country” have socked away. For his part, Congressman Spanks handed a check for $312 million over to the Sierra Club, explaining that he’d closed his Swiss bank accounts “kind of during that conversation with Him”, and, owing to Happy's House voting record “that’s where I, er We, decided the dough probably ought to go“.
This being the case, The MacDougal Post is pleased to announce that we are the first financial blog to endorse Happy Spanks for President of the United States of America, the fictional nature of his candidacy, and, for that matter, his persona, notwithstanding.
As far as our staff is concerned, the reality out there is way more nuts than this, and we no longer choose to live with it.
September 2, 2011
Justice
In the 1960’s commercial banks financed infrastructure projects in underdeveloped countries by syndicating revenue loans, that is, selling parcels to smaller banks. Theory was, most of the parcel holders couldn’t otherwise participate in this exciting new opportunity. By the 70’s much of the money had been pocketed by overdeveloped politicians, projects went bust, revenue bonds had no revenue, and small banks got left holding the bag.
In the 80’s the nation’s savings & loan industry fell into a crisis spawned by politicians tinkering with that business after industry executives paid them to, with even more devastating results.
During the first decade of this century, in the mother of all politically-generated banking catastrophes, bondholders the world over got crushed by securitized toxic mortgage loans packaged by investment bankers because politicians incentivized commercial bankers into lending money to people who couldn’t afford the monthly payments.
Hardly anybody has ever been arrested for any of this. As a fascinating footnote to that point, both the father and a brother of one perp, Neil Bush, fined for his part in the Savings & Loan debacle, later became Presidents of the United States.
This morning it was reported that politicians have some Federal Agency busting major banks with big lawsuits over each institution’s part in the securitized toxic mortgage loan thing.
How come nobody is busting the politicians?
In the 80’s the nation’s savings & loan industry fell into a crisis spawned by politicians tinkering with that business after industry executives paid them to, with even more devastating results.
During the first decade of this century, in the mother of all politically-generated banking catastrophes, bondholders the world over got crushed by securitized toxic mortgage loans packaged by investment bankers because politicians incentivized commercial bankers into lending money to people who couldn’t afford the monthly payments.
Hardly anybody has ever been arrested for any of this. As a fascinating footnote to that point, both the father and a brother of one perp, Neil Bush, fined for his part in the Savings & Loan debacle, later became Presidents of the United States.
This morning it was reported that politicians have some Federal Agency busting major banks with big lawsuits over each institution’s part in the securitized toxic mortgage loan thing.
How come nobody is busting the politicians?
September 1, 2011
Stranger than Fiction
Yesterday’s headline, Highest-Paid CEOs Often Earn More Than Company Pays in Income Taxes, begs a rewrite, but we‘re not sure where to go with it. Real-life amounts for both numbers are not made available outside executive suites, and those the story goes on to use don‘t even look close. For CEO pay, we’re looking, historically, at hundreds of millions total, maybe billions now, not tens of millions annually, and you'd hope that enlightened gurus would be wondering just how close corporate Federal Income Tax has been gamed down to zero.
Excesses in senior management pay come from stealing public savings by pilfering shares out of their stockholders over long periods of time, the extent of the theft hidden under an absurd theory that dollar amounts cannot be calculated because stock market prices change so much and the number of shares to be eventually looted can’t always be calculated at the time each swindle is planned out. And there is no way anybody in the public arena can figure out how much actual cash Federal Income Tax money a company has posted to IRS computers (after refunds) because 1) Washington goes out of its way to make CPAs shroud that number in titillating mystery, and 2) the IRS won’t tell us.
What we need to know is 1) how many shares the s#ns%fb!tch#s have filched from public stockholders over their careers so far, plus shares targeted for future capers, as well as aggregate other compensation pulled out of all the expense ledgers, and 2) the single net amount, increase or decrease, beside each company’s name on the computerized IRS cash ledger after all additions and subtractions to Federal Income Taxes have been entered for the period between Jan 1 and Dec 31 of each year.
Matching these numbers up kind of defies explanation, and you’d have to figure out what the headline should look like after you’ve decided on a story, if there even is one here. To us, comparing career executive pay to net annual Federal Income Tax paid (or refunded) looks like an Accounting 101 project gone fitfully astray.
Anyway, some Democrat is calling for hearings on whatever that headline meant to him. If proceedings go down, Post readers can delight in following them. It's a sure bet, what the clowns should really be going on about won't even come up.
Excesses in senior management pay come from stealing public savings by pilfering shares out of their stockholders over long periods of time, the extent of the theft hidden under an absurd theory that dollar amounts cannot be calculated because stock market prices change so much and the number of shares to be eventually looted can’t always be calculated at the time each swindle is planned out. And there is no way anybody in the public arena can figure out how much actual cash Federal Income Tax money a company has posted to IRS computers (after refunds) because 1) Washington goes out of its way to make CPAs shroud that number in titillating mystery, and 2) the IRS won’t tell us.
What we need to know is 1) how many shares the s#ns%fb!tch#s have filched from public stockholders over their careers so far, plus shares targeted for future capers, as well as aggregate other compensation pulled out of all the expense ledgers, and 2) the single net amount, increase or decrease, beside each company’s name on the computerized IRS cash ledger after all additions and subtractions to Federal Income Taxes have been entered for the period between Jan 1 and Dec 31 of each year.
Matching these numbers up kind of defies explanation, and you’d have to figure out what the headline should look like after you’ve decided on a story, if there even is one here. To us, comparing career executive pay to net annual Federal Income Tax paid (or refunded) looks like an Accounting 101 project gone fitfully astray.
Anyway, some Democrat is calling for hearings on whatever that headline meant to him. If proceedings go down, Post readers can delight in following them. It's a sure bet, what the clowns should really be going on about won't even come up.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)