Taxpayer-Insured Commercial Banks Continue To Write CDS in $Trillions

Protest that you numbskulls.

These banks' political contributions are going to your man in The White House.

Gretchen Morgenson has the story here for The New York Times.

Why is This Man Making Bad Bets With Our Money?

Kyle Smith wants to know, here.

Why Don't You Occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

Herman finds his voice (or we found his):


"Wall Street didn’t write these failed economic policies -- the White House did."

“Why don’t you move the demonstrations to the White House?”

“Wall Street didn’t write those failed policies, Wall Street didn’t spend a trillion dollars."

“Wall Street isn’t asking to spend another $450 billion.  It didn’t work with a trillion. It’s not gonna’ work with $450 billion. You can demonstrate all you want on Wall Street. The problem is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue!”

Herman! Herman! He's our man! If he can't tell 'em, nobody can!

More here.

Herman Cain: “We’ve got some altering and abolishing to do!”

Cain also quoted the Declaration of Independence, stating that “it is the right of the people to alter and to abolish” the government.  “We’ve got some altering and abolishing to do!” he said.

Story here.

For Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Occupy Wall Street Anger Counts, ObamaCare Anger? Not So Much.

As quoted in the LA Times here:

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco on ABC’s “This Week,” essentially called [Rep.] Cantor a hypocrite for criticizing the Wall Street protesters while embracing the “tea party” movement.

“I didn’t hear him say anything when the tea party was out demonstrating, actually spitting on members of Congress right here in the Capitol, and he and his colleagues were putting signs in the windows encouraging them,’ Pelosi said.

Pelosi said she supported the movement’s “message.”

“I support the message to the establishment, whether it's Wall Street or the political establishment and the rest, that change has to happen,” she said “We cannot continue in a way that does not — that is not relevant to their lives. People are angry.”

"The Hindenburg of anti-bank gasbags"

Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism, according to banklawyersblog.com, here.

Very entertaining.

The World: One Giant Organized Crime Which Keeps Two Sets of Books

I nominate "The Cost of Financial Ignorance" by Hernando de Soto in The Washington Post for most important editorial in the wake of TARP.

A few excerpts:

"Advanced nations seem to have forgotten . . . how important documenting assets and transactions is to the creation of credit. Consider that most private credit is made up not of bills and coins, anchored in bank reserves, but in papers that establish rights over the assets, equity and liabilities that guarantee loans. Over the past 15 years, however, as they package, bundle and resell securities, Americans and Europeans have gradually undermined the reliability of the records that guarantee or make credit trustworthy — the deeds, titles, liens and other documentation that establish who owns what and how much, and who holds the risks. ...

"When property is poorly documented, markets don’t get the information needed to connect assets to finance, and governments don’t obtain the data required to detect which connections have gone awry and how to fix them. This became obvious in 2008 . . ..

"The U.S. Treasury secretary created the Troubled Assets Relief Program to prevent a run on banks by purchasing the derivatives that financed the subprime mortgages. But officials realized within days that they couldn’t locate the assets or find criteria for pricing, buying and then removing them from the market. ...

"TARP authorities couldn’t locate knowledge about toxic assets fast enough because so many non-standardized types of records were scattered around the world. U.S. property and mortgage transactions records became obscured when companies were permitted to raise large amounts of financing by “bundling” mortgage loans into marketable liquid securities and recording these “derivatives” not with the traditional public registries but with the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, a private company whose registry reportedly holds about half the mortgages in the United States.

"These derivatives had a notional value of $600 trillion to $700 trillion — 10 times the amount of global annual production. They are still outside any property memory system."

'Our Citizens Ascribe Our Distresses To Every Thing But Their True Cause, The Banking System'

With its fictitious capital, otherwise known as credit without collateral, which enriches only those who issue it:

"The enormous abuses of the banking system are not only prostrating our commerce, but producing revolution of property, which without more wisdom than we possess, will be much greater than were produced by the revolutionary paper. That too had the merit of purchasing our liberties, while the present trash has only furnished aliment to usurers and swindlers. The banks themselves were doing business on capitals, three fourths of which were fictitious: and, to extend their profit they furnished fictitious capital to every man, who having nothing and disliking the labours of the plough, chose rather to call himself a merchant to set up a house of 5000. D. a year expence, to dash into every species of mercantile gambling, and if that ended as gambling generally does, a fraudulent bankruptcy was an ultimate resource of retirement and competence. This fictitious capital probably of 100. millions of Dollars, is now to be lost, and to fall on some body; it must take on those who have property to meet it, and probably on the less cautious part, who, not aware of the impending catastrophe have suffered themselves to contract, or to be in debt, and must now sacrifice their property of a value many times the amount of their debt. We have been truly sowing the wind, and are now reaping the whirlwind. If the present crisis should end in the annihilation of these pennyless and ephemeral interlopers only, and reduce our commerce to the measure of our own wants and surplus productions, it will be a benefit in the end. But how to effect this, and give time to real capital, and the holders of real property, to back out of their entanglements by degrees requires more knolege of Political economy than we possess. I believe it might be done, but I despair of it’s being done. The eyes of our citizens are not yet sufficiently open to the true cause of our distresses. They ascribe them to every thing but their true cause, the banking system; a system, which, if it could do good in any form, is yet so certain of leading to abuse, as to be utterly incompatible with the public safety and prosperity. At present all is confusion, uncertainty and panic."

-- Thomas Jefferson, to Richard Rush, June 22, 1819 

(source)

Unemployed? Was Your Hope Justified?

What, Me Worry?

TARP Was Designed to Accommodate the Fat Cats

If my memory serves me right, the whole idea was dreamt up in the first place by people at Bank of America and actively pushed in Congress long before the collapse of autumn 2008, according to a story in the New York Times from early 2008. I'd better go find that.

Anyway, TARP was for the fat cats, if not of and by them, too. And so says banklawyersblog.com, here:

[I]t's galling that special action was taken at the highest levels to accommodate the fat cats, while providing any TARP for the little guys was at first an afterthought, and that now that many of the small banks took that capital, no one in Congress or the federal banking agencies is falling all over themselves to relax any rules (e.g., amortization of CRE losses) to help them [exit] before the dividend rates rise.

My new best friend.

S&P 500 Close at 1155, 26 Percent Off the October 2007 High

For technical analysts, such a datum signifies that we are in a long term bear market since at least 2007 because the decline persists below 20 percent.

Today the Shiller p/e ratio is 19.79, shown here:

314 percent higher than the all-time low in 1920;

25 percent higher than the median;

20.5 percent higher than the mean;

and 55 percent lower than the all-time high in 1999 -- when a child was born somewhere, to mark that occasion, I am sure. Think of that: To be born at the height of irrational exuberance. I know such a person, but I didn't know the fact at the time.

A crash in the p/e ratio from here to the historical nadir would mean a collapse of nearly 76 percent.

Unthinkable? No. It is not necessary for such a crash to occur from a great height in the p/e ratio.

The collapse to the nadir in 1920 was from a p/e ratio lower than 25, as was nearly the case also in the early 1980s.

Price, and condition, that's all that matters, says the realtor. So should we all say. 

Steve Jobs on Family

Seen here:

“Steve made choices,” Dr. Ornish said. “I once asked him if he was glad that he had kids, and he said, ‘It’s 10,000 times better than anything I’ve ever done.’ ”

Rush Limbaugh Says The Banks Were Victims, The Bailouts A Success!

And the Tea Party got all hot and bothered over what, exactly?

Santelli's rant against the $75 billion mortgage bailout program called HAMP on CNBC? Noboby heard it!

The interventions bailing out private corporations like GM, Chrysler, and AIG, etc? Why, totally meaningless! Didn't happen!

This gag never appeared anywhere:

Nearly 400 failed banks haven't failed.

The FDIC hasn't had to pay $80 billion because of it.

1000 more with $400 billion in assets aren't really in danger.

Taxpayers aren't on the hook for $160 billion and rising for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. 

$10 trillion in taxpayer funds weren't really lent to every Tom, Dick and Hairy Bastard in the world at rock-bottom rates by the Federal Reserve!

The New York Times is simply mistaken that TARP will end up costing the taxpayers $37 billion. The CBO estimate of $25 billion is also quite simply wrong.

Partial transcript here:

RUSH: Will in Amanda, Ohio. You're up first. Great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hey thanks, Rush. Hey, don't you think the one common denominator between the Tea Party and the protesters on Wall Street is a lack of justice? And what I mean by that is the lack of criminal prosecution from anybody from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Wall Street, the banking industry, or even our own government officials.

RUSH: Um, okay --

CALLER: Not one prosecution, Rush.

RUSH: You want prosecution? Oh, "not one." I'm trying to understand. What's the correlation to the Tea Party?

CALLER: Well, the Tea Party gathered great strength after the bailouts that they tried to stop, and I think without the prosecution of anybody for crimes that have brought this country to its knees --

RUSH: Okay, name for me a crime and who you think should be prosecuted. I'm not disagreeing, I just want to know. Obama was asked this question today.

CALLER: Rush.

RUSH: Somebody asked him today, "How come there haven't been any prosecutions?" Who? And for what?

CALLER: I have to untie the other half of your brain for this one. Think about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

RUSH: Okay, when I think Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac I think Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: Okay.

CALLER: But look at the collusion that's taken place between Wall Street and the banking industry and selling the mortgages -- or giving mortgages to anybody -- 'cause we know we can sell 'em off over here and we don't care if they're qualified or not.

RUSH: All right.

CALLER: Do you think there was a lack of fiduciary responsibility from a lot of people?

RUSH: No! I think there was fear of government.

CALLER: The what?

RUSH: I think there was fear of government. You talk about all these mortgage-related projects. Why did they exist?

CALLER: That doesn't justify crime.

RUSH: I'm not saying it does. No, no, no, no. Wait a minute. (sigh) I'm not trying to justify crime, but when you have the... I don't know. ...

Now, it's risky saying this because I sound like I'm coming to the defense of bankers. ...

They were forced to accept the bailout. The banks have paid back their bailouts with interest. The government has made a profit from the bailouts.

Capitalism's Idea of More Efficient Regulation Than the Government Kind

"Failure."

-- Rick Santelli, on The Laura Ingraham Show this morning

Senate Democrat Millionaire Tax Would Pay Less Than 10 Percent of Jobs Bill Cost

In the first year. The Democrat trick is to levy the tax over ten years to pay for a spending bill this year, and to rely on data which is suspect.

So one would have to infer from an AP story here, but you have to do the math:

About 392,000 households would get hit by the Senate Democrats' proposed 5.6 percent tax on income above $1 million, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank. In 2013, the first year the tax would take effect, those households would see their taxes increase by an average of $110,500, according to the analysis.

The latter figure extracted from that many households comes to just $43 billion, $404 billion short after the money has already been spent.

Socialsecurity.gov reports here, however, that fewer than 80,000 individuals had net compensation in excess of $1 million in 2009, collecting in the aggregate $184 billion. Taxing each and every dollar of that amount, not just the adjusted gross income over $1 million as the Democrats propose to do, would net just $10.3 billion.

The Tax Foundation here has a much more conservative estimate of the numbers than The Tax Policy Center. It says that for 2009 there were just 230,323 tax returns reporting adjusted gross incomes in excess of $1 million, and just 8,148 reporting $10 million or more. (Adjusted gross income captures more than just wage compensation). It calculates that the 5.6 percent millionaires' surcharge all by itself would take an extra almost $45,000 in new taxes from the median filer in this group. That also comes to $10.3 billion in new revenues annually if that median filer is typical of millionaires.

Even over ten years for a one year jobs program Obama needs to get re-elected next year, either the rest of us will be paying the $344 billion the scheme is short, or it just gets added to the deficit, crowding out other spending.

The fact of the matter is, taxing the AGI of everyone in the top half of the country with an extra 5.6 percent surcharge still would not pay for Obama's one time $447 billion jobs spending bill.

That doesn't make any sense!

Senator Reid Goes Nuclear, So Does Senator McConnell

“We are fundamentally turning the Senate into the House."

-- Senator Mitch McConnell, R-KY, quoted here.

Sorry, Mitch, but the 17th Amendment already did that in 1913.

US Homeownership Rate Falls at a Great Depression-Like Rate

So says a story here, but written to obscure that fact:

[T]he U.S. may never return to its mid-decade housing boom peak in which nearly 70 percent of occupied households were owned by their residents. ...

Nationwide, the homeownership rate fell to 65.1 percent - or 76 million occupied housing units that were owned by their residents - from 66.2 percent in 2000. That drop-off of 1.1 percentage points is the largest since 1940, when homeownership plummeted 4.2 percentage points during the Great Depression to a low of 43.6 percent.

Since 1940, the number of Americans owning homes had steadily increased in each decennial census due to a mostly booming economy, favorable tax laws and easier financing. The one exception had been 1980-1990, when ownership remained unchanged at 64.2 percent.


So the recent drop to 65.1 from nearly 70 is 4.9 points (not even mentioned!), or 7 percent, compared with a Great Depression drop to 43.6 from 47.8 (again, not mentioned!), or 8.8 percent.

Instead, the article spins the story with the statistical irrelevancy of the homeownership rate in the year 2000, evidently because the 2000s was the bubble decade, which doesn't count, unless George Bush did it, if it's bad thing.

Another deliberate diversion by AP Obama. 

Sarah Palin Quit a Governorship, and Bails Out of a Race for President

Americans don't like quitters. Just like they don't like bailouts, unless they get one. All the Wall Street occupiers would go home tomorrow if you just gave them what they want: cancellation of their student loans. Political protest? I call it extortion.

I'm guessing the polling in the aftermath of Palin's Sept. 3 "crony capitalism" speech didn't look very good, either, otherwise Sarah would be getting ready to run right now, not announcing that she's quitting before she's begun.

I don't think anyone really believed her on Sept. 3, seeing how she defended the bailouts after McCain's defeat. She got the religion against bailouts long after the fact, then didn't press it home consistently as the number one issue and got sidetracked by all kinds of other stuff, only to find at this late juncture that the issue has, unhappily, lost its intelligibility among the electorate.

Government intervention in the financial sector has been too bewilderingly thorough-going and complex even for the experts to explain, even when they've been against it. Which is why people end up accepting facile explanations, which boobs like Rush Limbaugh excel at explaining and which elites are happy for people to believe as the surest way forward to business as usual.

One day after declining to run, here, Rush Limbaugh is telling his listeners that the bank bailouts were a big success, that TARP has been repaid, and that the banks are on the side of free-market capitalism, so don't be deceived and fall for occupywallst.org.

Too bad we haven't really had any free market capitalism since FDR, just big shots who stand to gain the most because they are the first in line for the money, which other big shots need at preferred rates to do business.

Try to remember that every time Rush takes an obscene profit center time out.

The rest is just entertainment.

Because Occupy Wall Street Refuses to Cooperate, Zuccotti Park Has Not Been Cleaned Since 9/16

Not a single headline like that could be written about The Tea Party.

Story here:

But Brookfield Office Properties, which owns Zuccotti Park, seems to be slowly building a case against protesters, saying Thursday that the protestors are interfering with the use of the park by others and are creating sanitary problems.

“Sanitation is a growing concern,” Brookfield said in a statement. “Normally the park is cleaned and inspected every weeknight. . . because the protestors refuse to cooperate. . .the park has not been cleaned since Friday, September 16th and as a result, sanitary conditions have reached unacceptable levels.”

They don't call 'em dirty commies for nothing.

Rush Limbaugh's Mission Accomplished: Tea Party Absorbed by Republican Party

Otherwise, Rush would not have tried so hard today to disagree with a caller who suggested the Tea Party was born of outrage over the bailouts. He even repeated the MSM mantra that TARP has been repaid in full by the banks, even though the program will end up costing taxpayers $37 billion.

It is apparent Rush now discounts Santelli's galvanizing rant against HAMP on CNBC in February 2009, which first floated the idea nationally of a Tea Party at Lake Michigan in August.

The nascent Tea Party didn't wait for summer.

The reason, of course, is that it is now safe for Rush to spin all that, with Palin and her cronyism message safely out of the way, since she announced yesterday she is not going to run.

Rush doesn't want the troops confused by an anti-bank message now that the left and the unions in league with Democrats and George Soros are in the process of co-opting the original message of the Tea Party. Rush is clearly aware that the Tea Party doesn't have the edge anymore, is politically leaderless, is inured to the problem, and just plain old too tired to mount a new charge against government bailouts. Most of us are graying baby-boomers, after all, taking naps in the afternoon, or wanting to. And some of us are broke.

Besides, Republicans have their mits all over the banking crisis, with New Gingrich and Phil Gramm leading the charge to overturn Glass-Steagall in 1999. Better now to emphasize the private, capitalist character of the banking industry as a target of the socialist left, rather than its dependence on and compromised relationship with the public, government institution called the Federal Reserve Bank, with its phony money and monetarist mission.

Rush Limbaugh the chameleon turns on a dime once again. 

'The Capitolist Pigs and There Damn Banks'

Seen at occupywallst.org here in reply to communist Lloyd J. Hart's posting of Marxist demands:

"I hope these demands get met. I would love to get a check mailed to me every month or week or whatever and not have to work like a slave for it! That would be [       ] sweet as hell. [    ] the capitolist pigs and there DAMN banks. I propose $2000 a month for ALL people in this country including the UNDOCUMENTED CITIZENS. We will take the money from teh DIRTY BANKS and give it to those of us that are DESERVING!" (italics added)

Corect spelin is so bourgeois to teh internet left.

Why the organizers leave that stuff up there even one day after the right has savaged it, I'll never know:

Wait, I do know. They sympathize with it.

Steve Jobs: 'I'm a Big Believer in Boredom'

As reported here:

Jobs usually had little interest in public self-analysis, but every so often he’d drop a clue to what made him tick. Once he recalled for me some of the long summers of his youth. "I’m a big believer in boredom,” he told me. "Boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity," he explained, and “out of curiosity comes everything.” The man who popularized personal computers and smartphones — machines that would draw our attention like a flame attracts gnats — worried about the future of boredom. “All the [technology] stuff is wonderful, but having nothing to do can be wonderful, too.”

Net Revenue from Dem. Surcharge on Incomes Over $1 Million in '09 = $9 Billion

Nowhere near enough to pay for Obama's nearly $500 billion "pass this bill now" jobs bill.

In 2009 (the last year for which the data is available) 78,147 people made more than $1 million in net compensation, according to socialsecurity.gov, here, pulling in about $184 billion. I said "billion."

A 5 percent surcharge on that, which is what the Democrats are proposing to pay for Obama's latest jobs spending bill of nearly $500 billion, is . . . drum roll please . . . $9.2 billion.

Sen. Harry Reid must think the whole country is as stupid as the voters in Nevada who re-elected him, the man Bob "Money Talk" Brinker has called "a good man."

Hell, CONFISCATING EVERYTHING from everyone who makes over $1 million WOULDN'T PAY FOR HALF the proposal.

Do you hear me? A 100 percent tax on everyone making $1 million or more would pay for precisely 41.0 percent of Obama's spending bill. SPENDING BILL! A 5 percent tax pays for 2.0 percent!

Which means YOU are paying to create someone else's MAYBE one year job.

Instant replay of stimulus bill, February 2009.

Reuters' Mike Dolan Gets It Wrong On Depressions

The relevant passage from his story here on the recent debate about whether we've had, face, or are in a depression makes a real hash of it:

But search for a precise definition of economic depression and you'll be hard pressed to find anything more specific than it's more severe than typical business cycle recessions, tends to cross multiple countries and lasts much longer.

Anecdotal rules of thumb -- cited in The Economist magazine and elsewhere -- center on a peak to trough drop in real gross domestic product of more than 10 percent or recessions lasting more than three years.

On that measure, the 1929-1933 Great Depression in the United States qualifies with a 27 percent loss of GDP and a peak unemployment rate of some 25 percent. The shorter 1937 and 1945 downturns qualify on the GDP measure alone too.

"Hard pressed"? The most useful rule of thumb learned way back in my childhood is not even mentioned: back-to-back years with GDP declines, on the analogy of recessions, which are back-to-back quarters with GDP declines. String out a recession long enough with annual GDP failing to surpass a previous high and you have a depression.

People may have to disagree about such definitions, but not about the data behind the theory.

The GDP decline of the 1929 depression is not correctly represented by the writer. Nominal GDP in 1929 was $103.6 billion, falling to its nadir in 1933 to $56.4 billion, a 45.56 percent drop, not 27 percent as the author states. It took until 1941 to surpass 1929 GDP.

Nor did GDP decline from 1937 to 1938 by more than 10 percent. It declined by 6.3 percent, from $91.9 billion to $86.1 billion. But GDP in 1939 exceeded that achieved in 1937, technically not a depression within a depression because there weren't back-to-back years of GDP decline.

And the GDP decline between 1945 and 1946 was a measly 0.36 percent, falling to $222.2 billion from $223 billion. The $1.9 billion decline between 1948 and 1949 was only 0.71 percent.

Missing from the story are the real 10 percent or greater depressions in the 20th century apart from The Great one: the depression of 1907-1911, when nominal GDP fell by 11.1 percent; and the depression of 1920-1925, when GDP fell almost 17 percent. Prohibition, dontchaknow. The roaring '20s were really a lot shorter than ten years.

If the 2008-2009 depression will compare to anything, it will be to 1937-1938's 6.3 percent decline, or to 1913-1916 when GDP fell 6.6 percent. The problem is the numbers are still fluid. The numbers from the Bureau of Economic Analysis still show a nominal decline in one year only, 2009, of 1.8 percent from 2008, despite reports of larger nominal declines in 2008 from 2007 and in 2009 from 2008 in the neighborhood of 3.8 percent.

If it's pretty clear we've had at most only a very small depression, we're technically out of it in 2010 due to government spending. It's equally clear, however, that current GDP is so anemic in the aftermath that we may well repeat the episode.

Prohibition: An Alliance Between Evangelical Christians and Criminals

So said George Will last year in his review of Daniel Okrent's book which details how the women's war on men's drinking inspired a chain of constitutional and social changes ills:

Women's Prohibition sentiments fueled the movement for women's rights -- rights to hold property independent of drunken husbands; to divorce those husbands; to vote for politicians who would close saloons. ...

Women campaigning for sobriety did not intend to give rise to the income tax, plea bargaining, a nationwide crime syndicate, Las Vegas, NASCAR (country boys outrunning government agents), a redefined role for the federal government and a privacy right -- the "right to be let alone" -- that eventually was extended to abortion rights. But they did.

Now the "darkly hilarious" story has been immortalized by none other than Ken Burns on none other than PBS.

Don't miss it.

You can watch it online, here.

Moochelle's June Vacay Flight Costs to Botswana and South Africa: Over $400K

As reported here.

There was no mention of any big game hunted while on safari in South Africa.

Admitting You Drive Drunk Declines 30 Percent Since 2006 Peak To Lowest Level Ever

In other words, the bad economy is producing more lying.

The AP has the full story here:

That led to a CDC estimate of more than 112 million episodes of drunk driving in 2010. CDC officials lamented that finding; still, it was the lowest estimate since the survey question was first asked in 1993, and down significantly from the 161 million incidents in the peak year of 2006.

Rep. Bachmann and Gov. Romney Support Obama's Murder of American Citizen

As reported here.

Rep. Ron Paul thinks it might be an impeachable offense.

Firing squad is more like it.

Are You Feeling Lucky? Well . . . Are Ya?

The Shiller S and P 500 p/e ratio stands at a still rich 18.9.

"It's a long way down . . . from number one." -- The (original) Highwaymen

On Third Anniversary of TARP, S&P 500 Closes at 1099.23, Same as it Did 3 Yrs. Ago

What are the chances of that?!

Spooky!

Pay attention to the hand in the following chart, and the dot under it, and the closing it signifies in small print in the upper right hand corner, which was a Friday three years ago, October 3, 2008, the end of a tumultuous week in American history on which President Bush signed the TARP legislation:

I remember this vividly, because Jim Cramer came on television the following Monday, October 6th, 2008 (after what seemed like a weeks' long freefall in the markets and sheer panic among the politicians trying to get TARP passed to save their donors' bacon on Wall Street) telling people to sell if they needed their money within five years.

Well, here we are, three years later . . . in the same place.

Do you still have your money? 25 million unemployed/underemployed don't.

You'll notice TARP, signed on this date three years ago, did nothing to stop the freefall in the markets. Obama and McCain both were for it. So were Sen. McConnell, Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor. And most Democrats. The real fight against TARP was in the Republican Party, and we lost, as did they.

TARP's final cost to the taxpayer may end up as much as $37 billion, an amount similar to the paltry one House Speaker John Boehner was proud to report to great fanfare that he and the Republicans saved in the spring of this year on the budget the Democrats never passed as required by law last year.

Nor are the banks really healthy after nearly $80 billion in FDIC payouts for 396 bank failures. And let's not even talk about the housing sector, the vast repository of the wealth of the American people squandered in the "let the good times roll" of HELOCs, refinancing, and flipping.

OK, let's talk about it: household net worth, which for many is all about their homes' value, is about $7.7 trillion off peak, or back at levels last seen in . . . 1997.

As for Jim Cramer, well, telling people to sell in a panic is just stupid, as is telling people to buy in a panic. Those who kept their heads and were patient and held on and invested new sums along the way made some big money in the markets right up to August of this year.

Don't fight the Fed, as the saying goes, until the Fed stops fighting, which it just did . . . sort of.

The significance of today's market is that the S and P 500 is back where it was after all the TARP intervention, all the Federal Reserve emergency lending (massive! trillions! to foreigners too!), stimulus spending and quantitative easing has run its course.

We've declined, we're moving sideways.

I expect more of the same . . . until we decide it is important to do otherwise.

Third Anniversary of TARP: Nearly 500 Banks Still Owe $19 Billion in TARP Bailouts, 160 Behind on Payments

Americans stand to lose $37 billion on TARP when all is said and done, as reported here.

But bank failures since January 25, 2008 now total 396.

The total cost of these failures paid by the FDIC to date is calculated here at $79.97 billion. 

Fran Tarkenton Imagines The NFL Run By The Teachers' Unions

Each player's salary is based on how long he's been in the league. It's about tenure, not talent. The same scale is used for every player, no matter whether he's an All-Pro quarterback or the last man on the roster. For every year a player's been in this NFL, he gets a bump in pay. The only difference between Tom Brady and the worst player in the league is a few years of step increases. And if a player makes it through his third season, he can never be cut from the roster until he chooses to retire, except in the most extreme cases of misconduct.

Let's face the truth about this alternate reality: The on-field product would steadily decline. Why bother playing harder or better and risk getting hurt?

No matter how much money was poured into the league, it wouldn't get better. In fact, in many ways the disincentive to play harder or to try to stand out would be even stronger with more money. ...

The only thing that might get done would be building bigger, more expensive stadiums and installing more state-of-the-art technology. But that just wouldn't help.

Read it all, here, at The Wall Street Journal.

Does Roseanne Even Know How Few People Make Over $100 Million Per Year?

The answer for 2009 was something fewer than 72, according to data published a year ago by socialsecurity.gov, here, which reveals only the aggregate number making beyond $50 million.

Just 72 individuals made in excess of $50 million in 2009, with an average wage of $84 million. In 2008 the number making in excess of $50 million was 131, with an average wage of $91 million. And in 2007 it was 151 people, with an average wage of almost $94 million.

The last time the average wage of the highest wage earners exceeded $100 million was in the year 2000 when 91 heavy hitters averaged $111 million in wages.

For a successful woman whose eponymous show went off the air in 1997 and is (conveniently for this discussion) worth $80 million, she sure doesn't grasp the difference between a wealth tax and a confiscatory income tax on high earners:

"I first would allow the guilty bankers to pay, you know, the ability to pay back anything over $100 million [of] personal wealth because I believe in a maximum wage of $100 million. And if they are unable to live on that amount of that amount then they should, you know, go to the reeducation camps and if that doesn't help, then being beheaded," Barr said with a straight face.

The video of the harridan is here.

The country has about 400 billionaires, but $1 billion invested conservatively at 3.0 percent nets just $30 million a year, and $3 billion nets $90 million a year, which could easily be the situation for 286 people on Forbes' famous list of the 400 richest Americans.

And by the way, in the top 100 this year, I count just two whose primary business is banking.

Greedy Little Monsters 'Occupy' This City and That, Seeking Forgiveness of Student Loans

In DC, the mostly leftist little monsters closest to the federal feeding trough were more careful to de-emphasize the fascist partnership between the current regime and the banks in hope of getting them to forgive their debts, too, and make the 1-percenters who already pay for almost everything pay for that as well. Stories here and here, and video here.

likes Obama, sees a bailout as reform

can't stay, has to go to class

Which just proves that greed is not the exclusive preserve of the rich and powerful. But cut off the student loan gravy train and the student protesters would be replaced by tens of thousands of unemployed PhDs, college administrators and support personnel from newly closed colleges and universities all across the land, which would be a good first step in improving education in America. 

Some worshippers at the altar of the great god have discovered that the religion is not all it's cracked up to be:

purportedly seen in Wall Street

Rules For Radicals

Bush's Patriot Act Has Paved The Way For Obama To Act As Judge, Jury and Executioner of American Citizens

And the numbskulls all around us, right and left, applaud, except, for example, for Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com, here:

[H]ow terribly upset so many Democrats pretended to be when Bush claimed the power merely to detain or even just eavesdrop on American citizens without due process. Remember all that? Yet now, here’s Obama claiming the power not to detain or eavesdrop on citizens without due process, but to kill them; marvel at how the hardest-core White House loyalists now celebrate this and uncritically accept the same justifying rationale used by Bush/Cheney (this is war! the President says he was a Terrorist!) without even a moment of acknowledgment of the profound inconsistency or the deeply troubling implications of having a President — even Barack Obama — vested with the power to target U.S. citizens for murder with no due process.

It is not sufficient, however, to prune the executive, overturn this deformity and return to the status quo ante in which Americans continue to sacrifice their right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, which is done all in the name of 50 million foreigners who we think must be allowed freely to visit our country each year while we pretend that they with us are all fellow citizens of one free world. This is the insane sickness of liberalism which threatens to kill us, that it is nearly a crime to believe that America is a distinct place with borders, a language and a culture which is ours and ours alone.

The dirty little secret here is that the more we embrace this horrid vision of global citizenship, the more we and our leaders become like the squalid tyrannies of Libya and Iraq than they become like us.

brothers in murder

  

Soc Gen's Albert Edwards Forecasts S&P500 at 400

I'm looking for a bear market decline to 575 because I think 800 is fair value and these things overshoot to the downside just as they do to the upside, but hey! 400 is in the same town as 575, just don't go there at night alone:

Edwards said he has been long government bonds for the same amount of time [since 1996] and now feels vindicated with the yield on the 10-year Treasury having fallen from 7 percent to 1.75 percent, "a hair’s breadth" from his longstanding ... 1.5 percent target.

He dismisses those who argue that stocks are cheap historically and believes US stocks are overvalued based on Tobin’s Q , or the ratio of firms' assets to their stock prices; Shiller, Graham & Dodd’s normalized price-to-earnings ratios; and cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings measures.

Read it here, if you dare.

For the record the Shiller p/e stands tonight at a still rich 19.45. Don't unleash all 100 Dalmatians until it's well below 10. The last time that happened?

1974-1984.

California AG Joins New York, Pulls Out of Negotiations to Settle Big Bank Abuses

Now there's some news worthy of being buried on a Friday evening where it can do as little harm as possible to the banks in question already down in the markets on a bad day and on a bad end to Q3:

California Attorney General Kamala Harris wrote in a letter on Friday that she will pursue her own investigation.

"California was being asked for a broader release of claims than we can accept and ... the relief contemplated would allow too few California homeowners to stay in their homes," Harris said in the letter to government officials leading the talks.

Read more about it here.

Herman Cain Comes Closest to a True Flat Tax

So says Stephen Moore for The Wall Street Journal, here, pointing out that FICA taxes do go in the shredder under Cain's 999 plan:

But the candidate who comes closest to a true flat tax is Herman Cain, the former Godfather's Pizza CEO. His argument for a "9-9-9" plan puts the current income and payroll taxes in the shredder and replaces them with a 9% personal income tax with no deductions, a 9% net business income tax, and a 9% national sales tax.

That would be rocket fuel for the economy, though the combination of a federal sales tax and an income tax is a big worry. But at least Mr. Cain has super-sized solutions to an economy with super-sized problems.

Solution? In 2008 Cain's 999 plan would have meant 900 billion fewer dollars in receipts for federal social insurance. I don't see how he could make up that difference, let alone an additional $300+ billion he comes up short compared to what was actually collected in 2008.

It looks more like a stealth plan to bankrupt Social Security and Medicare by ignoring it.

• A 9 percent tax on $8.50 trillion in adjusted gross incomes in 2008 comes to $765 billion (actual collected in 2008 was $1.03 trillion).

This is actually a huge tax cut on the wealthy and a big tax increase on everyone else. And does Cain intend to do away with deductions even for IRAs and 401Ks? If so that AGI number would be much higher, and the tax revenue higher, along with your tax bill. At least the billionaire will pay the same rate as the janitor, as Obama now famously says he wants.

• A 9 percent tax on $1.25 trillion in corporate profits comes to $113 billion (actual collected was $309 billion).

This is a huge tax cut on business, which is why Stephen Moore calls Cain's plan rocket fuel.

• A 9 percent tax on $4.40 trillion in total retail and food service consumer spending in 2008 comes to $396 billion. 

Does Cain intend this to be wider in scope than indicated? It is often said that 70 percent of the economy is consumer spending. In a $15 trillion economy, that's $10.5 trillion. A 9 percent tax on that would boost the receipts of a national sales tax to $945 billion.

But all told, Cain's plan would have collected only $1.274 trillion in federal revenue for 2008 when the government actually collected $2.5 trillion and still ran a deficit of close to $400 billion anyway.

We're currently spending $3.8 trillion in this country under Obama, $1 trillion more than in 2008. The 999 plan doesn't look up to the task.

Obama Executes American Terrorist in Yemen Without Trial

Your American citizenship means nothing, just as the War Powers Act means nothing. We live in a tyranny, where the rule of law is completely optional. You could be next:

Al-Awlaki's death is the latest in a run of high-profile kills for Washington under President Obama. But the killing raises questions that the death of other al Qaeda leaders, including bin Laden, did not.

Al-Awlaki is a U.S. citizen who had not been charged with any crime. Civil liberties groups have questioned the government's authority to kill an American without trial.

U.S. officials have said they believe al-Awlaki inspired the Fort Hood shooter, Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan, who is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in the November 2009 attack at Fort Hood, Texas.

In New York, the Pakistani-American man who pleaded guilty to the May 2010 Times Square car bombing attempt said he was "inspired" by al-Awlaki after making contact over the Internet.

Al-Awlaki also is believed to have had a hand in mail bombs addressed to Chicago-area synagogues, packages intercepted in Dubai and Europe in October 2010.

The complete story from CBS News is here.

Herman Cain's 999 Plan Would Have Cut Corporate Taxes in 2008 by 64 Percent

Average annual corporate profits for 2008, 2009, and 2010 were $1.47 trillion.

The average annual corporate tax paid on those profits was $331 billion for an average annual corporate tax rate of 22.5 percent.

How Herman Cain thinks he can lower the rate to 9 percent and still have enough revenue in combination with a 9 percent income tax rate and a 9 percent national sales tax rate is beyond me.

In 2008, those 9 percent rates would have yielded a mere $112 billion in corporate taxes (instead of the $309 billion actually collected), $400 billion in sales taxes, and $765 billion in income taxes, or $1.223 trillion short of the $2.5 trillion actually collected by the federal government.

If Cain leaves social insurance taxes in place, which would make it a 9997.65 Plan, not a 999 Plan, the $900 billion collected in 2008 in FICA taxes would still have left him $323 billion short of actual revenue collected in 2008.

See the corporate profits data in Table 11 from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, here:

Final Estimate of Q2 2011 GDP at 1.3 Percent

As reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis, here.

With Q1 GDP at 0.4 percent, average GDP is at a paltry 0.85 percent so far in 2011.

Average annual GDP from 1930-2000 was 3.5 percent.

For the ten years from 2000 it averaged 1.67 percent (Europe was worse, at 1.5 percent).

A measly 0.85 percent in 2011 is stall speed, and that means less government revenue, which makes the deficit worse and the national debt grow, interest payments on which will exceed $434 billion this year, about one eighth of current spending of $3.8 trillion, or 12 percent.

Think of that as having to make interest payments on debts of $236,000 totaling $7,440 every year, $620 every month, on a salary of $62,000.

The implied interest rate of 3.15 percent won't last forever, but let's be generous and assume it does while what you owe keeps growing by 9 percent per year for the next decade because you keep spending and you never pay it down. Let's also assume you get a crummy annual raise of 1.7 percent every year for ten years.

Now you'll owe over $596,000 supported by a salary of nearly $74,000, but your interest expense will have grown to nearly $19,000 from $7,440 ten years prior, amounting now to 25 percent of your income as compared with 12 percent of your income then. More than doubled.

That's where America is headed . . . if interest rates don't rise and slow growth mirrors 2000-2010.  

Herman Cain's 999 Tax Idea is a Pipe Dream

Total retail and food services sales, according to the US Census Bureau here, in 2008 came to $4.4 trillion. (For 2010, the annualized estimate based on 8 months' of data is running at $4.6 trillion).

To replace the federal tax revenue of $2.5 trillion in 2008 solely on the back of consumption taxes, such as a national sales tax, would imply a national sales tax rate of . . . 57 percent. Unthinkable, unless you are Greece.

Herman Cain doesn't advocate that. But his idea of a 9 percent sales tax would have generated, at most, a paltry $400 billion in 2008. Coupled with about $765 billion from a 9 percent income tax on about $8.5 trillion in total adjusted gross income in 2008, the business community would have been on the hook for the missing $1.3 trillion in 2008 federal revenue, when it actually contributed only $300 billion in taxes that year.

A 333 percent increase in the tax liability of American business sounds like something only a commie like Obama would propose.

Herman Cain's numbers don't even come close to matching the problem which we are facing.

Tariffs on Imports at 100 Percent Wouldn't Be Enough to Cover Federal Spending

Here are the import numbers (rounded) for the last three years for all goods and services, according to the latest revision from the US Census Bureau, here:

2008 = $2.5 trillion

2009 = $2.0 trillion

2010 = $2.3 trillion.

Federal revenues in 2008 equaled $2.5 trillion, coming mostly from income and social insurance taxes, as well as a more modest contribution from corporate and excise taxes.

To completely replace that income from tariffs would imply a 100 percent tariff, which is unimaginable.

Presumably at least some of our trade with the world is reciprocally fair, excluding it from such a punishing rate.

At some point along the tariff scale as you rise toward that extreme level, otherwise off-setting import revenues will fall as retaliatory tariffs are imposed by the global marketplace.

A 25 percent tariff on Chinese imports, as The Donald recommends, in 2010 could have generated only in our dreams something around $91 billion in revenues.

At a minimum, a vigorous reliance on tariffs for federal revenues today implies a much reduced size of the federal state.

Vanguard's Jack Bogle Admits No Assets Are Undervalued

Well, that's putting the best construction on it.

What he means to say is, Most assets are dearly priced.

Dollar cost averaging into stock index funds right now is buying at very high prices with the Shiller p/e near 20, when the mean is more like 16.

Oil is about $80 per barrel vs. $20 in the go-go days, gold is $1,586 the ounce vs. its last peak of $800 in 1979, and the price of the Vanguard Total Bond Index is at historical highs around $11.

People who own these things are nervous because the prospect for considerable increase in price is improbable, for various reasons. Some wonder when to sell. Many more have bought and will hold as they have been taught to do. How many people do you know who ride it on up, and ride it on down? Well, can you afford to do that facing retirement? What if the next leg down is really big? Let's say a retest of the 600 region of the Standard and Poor's 500 Index, and we bump along down there like Japan for another seven years.

People who don't own these things are also nervous, because what they do own, if they own anything like cash and real estate, is declining in value and is returning nothing. They wonder when to buy the other things, and don't especially believe it when people like Mr. Bogle tell them they've got to invest in the markets at these prices.

What would you expect him to say, under the circumstances, Don't buy my funds?

He sells good stuff, but maybe you should wait for a sale, and be patient with what you do have, and try to find a way.

Read him, here.

Hallmark's New Unemployment Cards Are Flying Off The Shelves in Dallas

So, what does that tell you about Texas, Governor?

Story here.

High Tariffs Allowed Domestic Producers To Get Really Rich Off Captive Consumers

So says John Steele Gordon, who provides a short history of taxation for The Wall Street Journal, here:

After the Civil War, nearly all the wartime taxes—including the nation's first income tax—were repealed and the federal government relied mostly on the tariff for revenues. It provided the government with more than ample peacetime income. In 1882, the government had revenues of $403 million, but expenses were only $257 million, a staggering budget surplus of nearly 36%. The reason the tariff was so high was, ostensibly, to protect America's burgeoning industries from foreign competition.

Of course, the owners of those burgeoning industries—i.e., the rich—were greatly helped by the protection, which enabled them to charge higher prices and make greater profits than if they had had to face unbridled foreign competition.

But the tariff is a consumption tax, which is simply added to the price of the goods sold. And consumption taxes are inherently regressive.

Which ought to get more attention on the right when one considers that liberals like Paul Krugman, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama and so-called conservatives like Herman Cain, Rick Perry and Mitt Romney all seem to like consumption taxes in one form or another.

The move would raise more revenues off the rank and file, and preserve the fortunes of the rich, which is why so many politicians support them. The better to eat you with, my dear.

FORD = Fascist Obama Reelection Debacle

FORD Wimps Out Again, Pulls Anti-Bailout Ad After White House Intimidation

And Daniel Howes for The Detroit News sums it up this way, here:

Ford supported the bailouts before Congress, in public statements and still does today, despite the recurring snarkiness you hear around its offices in Dearborn that it "didn't take the money."

No, it didn't. But Ford did seek a line of credit from the feds, borrowed billions under a government program to "retool" its plants and effectively failed first. That's why it recruited a superstar CEO from Boeing Co. and gave him some $23 billion in borrowed money to save the Blue Oval from bankruptcy.

Or it would have taken the money, too.

Peter Orszag Comes Out For Less Democracy

Here.

But like everything else about liberalism, you'll have to pay just for the privilege of reading why.

Wolfgang Schauble Calls Tim Geithner's EFSF Leverage Idea STUPID!

It's about time someone did.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has the quotation from the German finance minister, here:

"I don't understand how anyone in the European Commission can have such a stupid idea. The result would be to endanger the AAA sovereign debt ratings of other member states. It makes no sense," he said.

Female Dem. Gov. of NC Gets Hysterical Over Growing Tea Party Power

As reported here:

I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover. I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.

She calls herself Bev Perdue.

This is obviously a desperate ploy to short-circuit Tea Party anger and get it to go away out of sheer fatigue and get it accustomed to the idea of the increased power of the state under Obama. The outcome would be two more years of the status quo, with a divided Congress doing nothing because that's the way Sen. Harry Reid wants it.

What's next? Suspension of presidential elections? 

This is a small depression by comparison with historical depressions, but a woman governor of a southern state completely loses her mind and calls for a blatantly unconstitutional recourse to tyranny to get us over it.

Did FDR propose such a measure under far worse circumstances?

If ever there were an argument to deny the vote, and the right to serve in office, to women, this is it.

No more Sarah Palins. No more Michele Bachmanns. No more Hillary Clintons. No more Debbie Blabbermouth Schultzs. No more Nancy Pelosis. No more Laura Ingrahams. No more Tammy Bruces. No more Barbara Boxofrocks. No more Jennifer Granholms.

No more . . . Ann Coulters.

Radiation Hotspots South of Iitate Japan in Namie Range from 11-20 Microsieverts/Hr

Measurements in Iitate, Japan, are much lower by comparison at 2.6 microsieverts per hour, but are still far above normal of 0.11 per hour.

Libertarians WANT a Revolution, Real Conservatives are Trying to Prevent One

Rep. Ron Paul is at it again, here:

"The country is ripe for a true revolution".

If Republicans know what's good for them, they'll purge these cranks from the party.

Bing-Bing-Bing! Ricochet S&P!

The Incident at Fukushima Six Months Later

Bloomberg.com has a very affecting story about the aftermath of the earthquakes, tsunami, and nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima.

A brief excerpt:

The area’s [Minami Soma's] biggest festival, Soma Noma Oi, a re-enactment of samurai battles, attracted 200,000 visitors last year. This year 37,000 came. Of the 300 horses typically used in the event, 100 were drowned in the tsunami and another 100 were evacuated due to radiation.

Read all of it here.

Rep. Maxine Waters Gets A Little Upset With Uncle Tom Obama

For saying this, as reported here:

“[T]ake off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. We are going to press on. We’ve got work to do, CBC.”

Video of Maxine here:

"I don't know who he was talking to because we're certainly not complaining," Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) said on CBS' "Early Show" in response to President Obama telling blacks to stop complaining.

"I found that language a bit curious because the president spoke to the Hispanic Caucus, and certainly they're pushing him on immigration... he certainly didn't tell them to stop complaining," she said. "And he would never say that to the gay and lesbian community, who really pushed him on Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

The Cure for Drowning Victims: Ye Olde Smoke Enema

Particularly effective in cases of drowning in debt.