|
americanre
Greed Is Good - NOT! - Subscribe
|
|
Back in 1987, the movie Wall Street introduced the central meme of the 1980's and after to the general public: "Greed.... is good." Christoph Uhlhaas, writing for Scientific American, wondered about that bold and unsubstantiated assertion, claiming that the large number of successful transactions on sites such as eBay refutes the common wisdom regarding "Homo economicus (economic man)" being "a rational, selfish person who single-mindedly strives for maximum profit." Studies led by economist Axel Ockenfels of the University of Cologne in Germany, conducted with economist Gary Bolton of Pennsylvania State University, tend to support that doubt. They found through their studies that a sense of fairness is the largest determinant in the conduct of transactions, but that the balance between fairness and selfishness can be manipulated. Such manipulations are rife within the collapsing home mortgage industry. After share trading of American Home Mortgage was halted by the New York Stock Exchange, American Home Mortgage's lenders (Bank of America Corp, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bear Stearns Cos, Credit Agricole SA's Calyon affiliate, and UBS AG) cut off their credit, leaving AMC holding worthless contracts for new home loans valued at over $300 million, with as much as another $500 million in existing loans no longer secured. Other lenders, MGIC Investment Corp and Radian Group Inc, are now tilling the same barren patch, facing the necessity of writing off over $1 billion in loans themselves. New Century Financial Corp. has already filed for bankruptcy protection, and Countrywide is struggling to stay on their feet. That's what they get for allowing their greed to overrule their traditional conservative practice of not making loans to people who could not document income or assets just because profits were (temporarily) very lucrative when doing otherwise. Facing up to the inevitable (something the Bush administration should be doing about so many things), American Home Mortgage Chairman Michael Strauss closed the business, terminating over 7600 employees, including over 1400 in Melville, NY and 155 in hard-hit Northern Indiana. In addition, thousands of housing hopefuls are now back in the market seeking sheltering loans in a much harsher economic environment. But don't cry for these mortgage brokers, who lost their jobs to sub-prime lending. Michael Strauss shares their pain having experienced the loss $42.8 million in 20 minutes the other day before trading was halted. That sense of fairness referred to by Professors Ockenfels and Bolton leads one to feel sympathy for everyone affected by the collapse of American Home Mortgage - until one discovers that Strauss provided for himself to the tune of $1.8 million, an amount that none of his employees can expect to see. I guess that proves that greed really is good - if you are the sole beneficiary. Otherwise, ask not for whom greed toils, for it does not toil for thee. |
|
americanre
"Brighter Than A Thousand Suns..." Aug 7th, 2007 2:39:03 am - Subscribe
|
Guardian columnist Max Hastings writes:"The US and its allies do not play by the rules they impose on others. Higher standards are expected from a sovereign state than a terrorist organisation. Somehow, though surely not under this US President, this is what we must regain." If survivors fear Japan has forgotten the lessons of Hiroshima, have not the American people also? Are we to relive those horrible times again and make George Santayana a prophet? Are you so enamored of the reams of propaganda that justify nuking Japanese cities during WWII that you are willing to allow the same excuse to be used again, in some current or future war, and do nothing to prevent the use of atomic weapons today? If so, I hope you are near Ground Zero when a Bomb goes off. Then maybe your ghost can explain to the rest of us what a fabulous experience that was for you as you turned to ash in a flash. Today is a sad day in the history of the world - It was the day that Little Boy roared. The Hiroshima bomb, known as "Little Boy" - a reference to former President Roosevelt, devastated an area of five square miles (13 square kilometres). More than 60% of the buildings in the city were destroyed. Keep this in mind when George Warmonger Bu$h talks about tactical nukes - they will have a similar yield in firepower and in casualties. Sixty years ago today, the ultimate act of terrorism - one that is today used to scare otherwise rational human beings into believing the unbelievable - was first committed. In an act of wartime revenge rife with racism and nationalism, the city of Hiroshima was levelled by the newest weapon in our arsenal, the atomic bomb. In an instant, 70,000 Japanese paid with their lives for the attack on Pearl Harbor which killed less than 5% of that number. [Concerning the racism involved in the decision to drop the Bomb on Japan: In The Rise of American Air Power by Michael S. Sherry, he writes that "the Japanese seemed an enemy by virtue of race." [p.245] Because of this officially-sanctioned division between Good Caucasian Human and Evil Asiatic Sub-human (see any site that presents WWII propaganda), it was possible to ignore certain societal and religious injunctions against the usage of savagery and barbarity (even though the Nazis did evil things on a larger scale than the Japanese), and many vile weapons were used against Japan and restricted to the Pacific theater of operations, because it was easier to perform retribution on the Japanese due to their Asian genetics - 'they aren't like US!'] Such distintions continue to hold a place in American foreign policies. While there is still an artificial genetic differentiation, religious bigotry is again in play ('Christian' v. 'Muslim') as it was in 1942-45 ('Christian' v. 'Shinto' / 'Buddhist' / others ...) as a foil to block the economic justification for taking from those who 'aren't like US!' In Nijyuu Hibaku (Twice Bombed, Twice Survived: The Double Atomic Bomb Victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki)], by director Hidetaka Inazuka, seven survivors who lived through both atomic bombs recount their experiences. These people suffered the terror of an atomic blast, not once--but twice. For a long time, no one noticed that such double-bombing victims existed. There is no good excuse for this oversight, as Robert Trumbull wrote Nine Who Survived Hiroshima and Nagasaki, published in 1957 by Charles E. Tuttle Company of Tokyo, Japan, from data gathered during the 1950 census conducted by the Atomic Bomb Commission. The only logical explanation for this 'ignorance' is that the Japanese government didn't want to acknowledge that some of its wartime citizens got to experience Hell twice. A couple of WWII veterans of the Pacific War who would have been personally affected by Operation Downfall - the invasion of the Japanese homelands - still felt it necessary to make amends for the atomic bombings which happened instead of the traditional massive invasion, thus saving their lives to be able to make apoligies. It wasn't just Japanese who suffered from the Bomb - among the Nagasaki dead were American POWs. Some believe to this day that without these bombs, Japan wouldn't have surrendered, and would have fought to the last person when invaded. I wasn't there, so I can't say who was right. But I can defer to some who were there to tell their story - an Army Air Force chaplain and a US Marine [slated to participate in the invasion of the Japanese homeland]. But was there another option? And was there another reason? According to this article, the answer to both questions is: YES. So why was the Bomb dropped on Hiroshima? British scientist P.M.S. Blackett suggested (Fear, War, and the Bomb), that the United States was anxious to drop the bomb before the Russians entered the war against Japan.... the Japanese would surrender to the United States, not the Russians, and the United States would be the occupier of postwar Japan. In other words, Blackett says, the dropping of the bomb was "the first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with Russia." "The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants." - General Omar Bradley (Eisenhower's field commander) Just what kind of a leader could George W. Bush be if it wasn't for the Manhattan Project? Bogged down in third-world Iraq and fourth-world Afghanistan, and fought to a standstill by irregular forces in both countries, the foreign policies of Bu$hCo revealed that the United States wasn't to be feared on a conventional level any longer. Thus, Bu$h'$ empty boasts about winning the 'War on Terra' merely reveal him to be the biggest fool on the planet. The only thing that keeps this disdain from being blatant and open is the fact that this fool is nuclear-armed. The power of The Bomb isn't just in its properties as an explosive, but also as a tool for international blackmail. Would Iran fear the US today without the means to make Teheran vanish in an instant? Would the American people support the costs of a conventional war in any distant part of the world without it? Would the Russians have had as much to fear from the American paranoiacs who listened to James Forrestal about how the Russians were coming? But with the Bomb, King George is a Really Big Man on Terra. Everyone is going to listen respectfully to him, no matter how insane his hostile ranting [Axis of Evil], or how blatantly false his lame lines of professed friendliness [Pooty-Poot], for no one wants him to begin the snap count for the 'football'. Which would you prefer to be the motto of your nation - 'We want to be a part of the world community' or "You're either with us or you're against us"? It's either the 'Lady' or the "Tiger" - so choose wisely. More of my thoughts and research on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima: Lest We Forget De-blessing The Original Child Killing For Peace The Atomic Swaggerer Choosing Between The Liberty Lady And The Atomic Tiger The New Dr. Strangelove Club Of The New World Order |
|
americanre
White Might For White Rights Aug 11th, 2007 8:02:50 pm - Subscribe
|
|
On the eve of the secession of the slave-owning states over the election of Abraham Lincoln, The Valley Spirit of Franklin County, Virginia published on December 26, 1860 one of the most honest contemporary admissions that the pending internecine strife was in part about race: "The Democratic Party maintain that our government was formed by white men to be controlled by white men for the prosperity and happiness of their race." Just because the South lost the Civil War doesn't mean that this attitude had changed - not in the slightest. As New Republic assistant editor Clay Risen wrote in the Boston Globe on March 5, 2006: "For almost 100 years, a coterie of white elites had controlled the South by leveraging racial antagonisms and legal discrimination to ensure white solidarity behind the Democratic Party. Southern historians argue that the initial shift to the right was led by older whites in a backlash against [Lyndon] Johnson's civil rights efforts. [Johnson] forfeited the region to the Republicans by signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Legend has it that as he put down his pen Johnson told an aide, "We have lost the South for a generation." The modern version of racism doesn't concern the emancipation of the black race, but the political and economic exploitation of the brown race. With whites becoming the minority in American cities, and with whites now the minority in 1-in-10 rural counties, the new immigration enforcement plan has to be a calculated strategy to reverse currently declining political fortunes for the contination of Republican Party rule of the United States. The White House is striking back at the lame Democratic Party in retaliation for its inept conduct of governance. It appears that the GOP is abandoning their hoped-for recruitment of Hispanics as party members through "moral issue" appeals in favor of attempting to retain white males - already hard hit by employment dislocation - from being slammed again by the pending collapse of the mortgage industry. Would any unemployed man not become even more angry at losing his home without having a chance to avoid foreclosure through having a steady job? Why not direct that anger at those who "betrayed" the "God's Own" Radical Religious Party's "friendly" overtures to join the effort to enrich the Masters' Race? So on with the show! Crying crocodile tears over the failure of the Congress to pass George W. Bush's immigration "reform" bill, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced plans to step up enforcement of immigration and residency laws, including increasing the number of ICE men on border patrol and higher fines for employers. New rules have been announced, requiring employers to fire workers who cannot provide verifiable documentation proving legal residency. Chertoff acknowledged in an interview with the Los Angeles Times that employers - particularly those in immigrant-dependent industries like agriculture, hospitality and healthcare - would suffer "painful economic fallout" from the new enforcement rules, but declined to feel any sympathy for those who are the traditional constituency of the Republican Party, saying, "We have been crystal clear about what the consequences would be." Needless to say, said constituency is feeling a bit put out by this declaration of war by the White House against everyone involved in low-wage labor. Representatives of both labor and management, interviewed by various news organizations, wonder if this isn't a pressure tactic aimed specifically at the Congress to be more amenable to Oval Office objective when it returns from a vacation longer than most workers will see this year (like Bush can talk!). remarked: "People will feel it when they go grocery shopping." And so they will! Mike Stuart, president of the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association, confided: "I'm very fearful of our ability to grow and harvest at the level we're doing now." Any reduction in production of Florida's oranges will thus make your morning date with Minute Maid a tad more costly. Vernie Glasson, executive director of the Texas Farm Bureau, reminds us: "Agriculture is labor intensive. When melons or onions need to get harvested, you have to harvest them. Farmers and ranchers out here don't have a human resources office with someone sitting there in the air conditioning doing paperwork." Bill Hammond, president of the Texas Association of Business and a board member of Texas Employers for Immigration Reform, pointed out in the Houston Chronicle that the new immigration policy "forces employers to choose between criminal penalties and illegal racial discrimination." Not that this argument will resonate with a sociopath who mocked the appeal of a prisoner he was about to allow to be executed. The Bush attitude is reported to be: "They asked for it!" Hammond also predicted that Texas would lose 300,000 to 400,000 jobs at a time when construction of new homes is being affected by the collapsing housing sector. But political expediency is clearly far more necessary to continued Republican rule than are the small businessmen - like America's farmers, who hire 1 million farm workers (half of whom are undocumented. “This is not just painful, this is death to the American farmer,” moaned Maureen Torrey, who runs a family dairy and vegetable farm in Elba, N. Y. Actually, corporatization is more likely to be the death of the family farm, but I digress. At the other end of the food chain, John Gay of the National Restaurant Association fretted, "We are concerned that the new regulations will result in employers in numerous industries having to let workers go." Such service industries would include construction, janitorial and landscaping companies, and hotels and restaurants. Craig J. Regelbrugge of the American Nursery & Landscape Association, in a Google comment posted on the news page covering immigtant worker stories (can't locate a good link for this), worries: "The rule now being anticipated won't solve the problem, and will have unintended consequences." Such consequences might include higher food costs, and more identity theft. He doesn't mention the fines which would take away capital for other business needs. Regelbrugge also suggests that some employers will leave the country rather than remain to abide by the new regulations. At the other end of the political spectrum, California is expected to be hit hard by the new regulations. "DINO Di" Feinstein predicted a "catastrophe" in the state's $32 billion agriculture industry if estimated 2.5 million illegal immigrants working as farm hands are returned to their place of origin. Deborah Meyers, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, agrees, and predicted the fallout to be quite visible within six months. "Some employers are going to find themselves having to fire significant portions of their workforces," she said. Larry Rohlfes, assistant executive director of the California Landscape Contractors Association, predicted that many of these displaced workers would go underground and become unlicensed contractors. "It's going to hurt our remaining workers because the underground economy competes with us and because they have much lower costs," Rohlfes said. The newspapers across the land are taking up the challenge. The Mercury News said in an editorial that the new rules are the "Wrong way to police immigration". The New York Times calls it "The Misery Strategy. Michigan State University's The State News declares, "If anything, it will only leave many people unemployed and hopeless, while feeding an ever-growing racism against anyone who appears to be Latin American." The Centre Daily Times of State College, PA reports that "Migrants from Mexico and Central America are finding it harder to get jobs and are living under a dramatically increased sense of siege." Immigrants are reportedly hoarding funds to pay for a trip back home should things get worse. Thinks look like they are about to get worse. The "authoritarians" of the Republican Party have long sought to impose natioal identity cards on the American people. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina will introduce legislation to replace the current Social Security card with plastic biometric cards "that can't be duplicated" as a means of preventing false identities. He should talk this over how well this plan works with Arnold Schwarzenegger's Department of Motor Vehicles. But let's say that the Great White Fear of losing dominance comes about. One resident of Oklahoma saw a silver lining when he wrote to the editor of The Oklahoman, "Doe [sic] this mean that if white people become the "monority" then we can get jobs we aren't qualified for just because we are white and someone needs to meet a quota?" If "Jeff, Moore" wants to evade non-whites, he might consider moving to Garfield County, Montana, where whites make up 98.9 percent of the population. Or, perhaps more to his Confederate leanings, he might consider attending the GOP District Convention hosted by White County, Georgia. Just stay away from Texas, where The Austin American-Statesman reports Texas as having the most majority-minorities counties in the nation. |
|
americanre
Loon Night At The Oil Aces Aug 17th, 2007 11:31:20 pm - Subscribe
|
|
Laila Fadel, McClatchy's Baghdad bureau chief, doubts Bush administration claims that The Surge is working, an assertion based on specific statistical data gathered by McClatchy paired up against vague and ill-defined claims offered by US military officials. She also reports that US officers stationed in Baghdad believe that what progress that has been realized depends upon the various factions settling their differences and establishing a real government. Is that why Iraq is "set up for a major political change"? Blogger Rick Moran of The American Thinker espouses the view that "Maliki has seen his government lose both credibility and along with it, power," so it isn't at all clear just what can be achieved with this announcement. ABC News later reported that little was accomplished, as the moderate Iraqi Islamic Party led by Iraq's Sunni Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi refused to be a part of this latest dog and pony show. But Maliki, surely with massive amounts of prodding from the Bush administration desperate from some cover for their future assertion of success to be issued by Gen. David Petraeus, is pressing onward with only two-thirds of a loaf. This is causing concerns among the world's observers that more trouble is being created than is being cured. Correspondents in Baghdad writing for The Australian point out that the largest prize in the Bush Oil War pantheon - the new oil law donating a huge chunk of Iraq's oil reserves to foreign (read: US) oil companies - will likely be passed by the new Shi'a-Kurd coalition. These two groups will retain some of the remaining oil reserves, but there is no guarantee that any crumbs will remain for the Sunnis who won't play George's way. The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, owned by conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, editorialized [links added]: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was calling for a crisis summit because half his Cabinet has been emptied by boycotts and resignations. A crumbling of the government is occurring while the U.S. "surge" supposedly is producing positive results. It has been clear for some time now that fractious politics in Iraq could render largely irrelevant any gains on the battlefield because religious and ethnic factions act as though they do not wish to coalesce as a nation. The government is run by the Shiite majority, the Sunni minority feels put upon and many Kurds would just as soon go their own way. With astonishing understatement, an Associated Press dispatch says, "A full-scale disintegration could touch off power grabs on all sides and seriously complicate U.S.-led efforts to stabilize Iraq." That "full-scale disintegration" may well be underway. The National Concord Front is calling upon Sunnis to pressure Maliki "to reactivate a real participation in the political process". That pressure could prove fatal to Maliki's political future. The Al-Ahram Weekly of Egypt believes that Al-Maliki's days are numbered. The Sunnis refuse to belong to his "government", the Kurds are reported to be angry over Maliki's promises to Turkey to expel the PKK from norhtern Iraq, and the Shi'a man on the street angrily states, "I don't care whether Al-Maliki's government continues or not. No official is thinking about the Iraqis. ... They think of how to save Bush, who has a report to submit to the Congress in mid-September." One wonders if Maliki's competition will succeed in derailing that particular train with something spectacular. I personally doubt that a visit to Saddam Hussein's hometown will favorably sway the Sunnis away from such a course. |
|
americanre
So Blow Ye Winds, High-ho! Aug 20th, 2007 3:41:16 am - Subscribe
|
|
Too many Bush supporters are like the lead character of Annie, always sure that "the sun will come out tomorrow" and everything will by just Warbuck-y! Unfortunately, reality doesn't support that particular fiction. The sun will certainly be out in Cibola tomorrow, but the heat isn't going to be comforting. The Arizona Star of Tucson, Arizona reports that one of their biggest employers, First Magnus Financial Corp., gone "from boom to bust" in just three weeks, a catastrophe for more than 6000 employees - 99% of the total workforce - about to be laid off as the company considers seeking bankruptcy protection. This is bad, but it gets worse. USA Today reports that the crisis initiated in the mortgage industry are spreading to other sectors of the housing industry. The profits of housing builders are getting slammed by reduced sales. It doesn't stop there. Columnist Robert Kuttner writes that major retailers like Wal-Mart and Home Depot are admitting that sales are down, and presents a case that today's home mortgage crisis is the step-child of the 1980's S&L debacle - which just happened to involve a shady character whose patronym was "Bush". Just like in the 1980's, the government is about to spend a whole lot of "Your Money" to bail out a vital domestic financial system stripped to the chassis by well-connected crooks who need a diversion to make their getaway. Initially, investors sought safe havens in Federal securities, but, to those with some understanding of market vagaries, it should come as no surprise that Treasury bills went down in price after the Fed announced the protection of the guilty parties through a reduced bank-only interest rate. But even the captive and tamed domestic business media isn't sure this slight-of-hand will be sufficient, with most economists contacted by CBS MarketWatch stating the opinion that Fed Chairman Bernanke and his band of Merry Money Men have much more work to do before they can return to Not-So-Sure-It-Would Forest. Sympathetic members of the captive and tamed domestic propaganda mill loudly trumpet that Bernanke stands for Truth (as the White House sees it), Justice (for the Havemore investors), and the American Way (to scandalous wealth), but others members who should be sympathetic are asking financial disaster. Some more directly affected by yet another scam are less-than- diplomatic about the sub-prime crisis, calling the Fed's action "a classic Ponzi scheme", and quoting Chris Johnson, chief investment officer at Johnson Research Group, declaring, "It's a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound." Jim Cramer, the host of a cable TV investing show Mad Money and a man who made his fortune as a hedge fund manager, recently emulated reggae legend Bob Marley, using Marley's Redemption Song as a metaphor for those investors who see, as Scotland on Sunday does, that there is only one way for the markets to go - DOWN! The Financial Times is less agitated about the immediacy of doom, but they grudgingly admit that the Fed will be judged on investor panic levels. This alone is a mighty Augean Stable for our neo-confidence Hercules to clean out, but he has much else yet to accomplish. He dare not cease his mighty labor, for the alternative is already clearly dire. A "major financial institution" might be about to fail, or- worse! - the economy may slow and risk blowing away the cover of a Bush "booming economy" like a Jamaican palm frond buffeted by Hurricane Dean. The Times of London sees Bernanke as sailing uncharted waters in such a tempest, seeking a passage to solve problems that aren't evident to most of us - or himself - yet. But the crews of the Nino Scalia, the Exploding Pinto, and the Satanic Marina aren't so sure that this captain knows his heading. The Economist opines that a "climate of suspicion" has arisen among investment bankers, and with whispers of the dreaded 'R' word being issued in the darker holds of the leaking ship, Captain Bernanke has no choice but to stay the course, even into the eye of the storm: a deeper housing recession, weaker employment and eroded economic growth. The anchor is often the first thing cast overboard, and the very thing that keeps foreign investors in the mortgage markets - the interest rate - will be so dispatched if Friday's bailing fails to stem the flow. This is seen as likely by some observers, for fear of the storm continues unabated, and the weather eye see more storm signs ahead. Against such concerns, it's quite difficult to say "Don't Panic!" But this isn't The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy - it's more like Star Wars - Reality Strikes Back, according to Swiss central bank president Jean-Pierre Roth. He says, "The origins are in cheap credit. What happened is unbelievable." He concluded, "There will be victims." With more U.S. hedge funds likely to crumble in '07, and with confidence at low ebb, and with the analysis showing the Fat Lady isn't even warming up yet, it's no wonder that the financial balast is being shifted about to improve boyancy while the eye of the storm provides a moment of calm. The Old Salts see a change of course ahead despite sighting the high-flying Loonie off the Cliffs of Dover. One has to sail past the treacherous shoals before one can enter the safe harbor and weather out the gale. |
