H1N1 Pandemic Bill in Massachussetts introduces a Medical Police State
SEC Shuckin’ and Jivin’ on Madoff Report…
“U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff smelled something fishy in the August 3rd deal the SEC cooked up with Bank of America…….
That was the same view held by the Congressional questioners in the Madoff matter at the February 4, 2009 dust up with top SEC officials. After many rounds of pointed questions produced unresponsive answers, round tripper Andrew Vollmer, then Acting General Counsel of the SEC, explained why. He and his fellow SEC panelists were claiming executive privilege. This position elicited the following outburst from Congressman Ackerman: “Your value to us is useless…Our economy is in crisis, Mr. Vollmer. We thought the enemy was Mr. Madoff. I think it’s you…you were the shield…You come here and fumble through make believe answers that you concoct and attribute it to executive privilege….”
On April 2, 2009, another of Wall Street’s favorite law firms, WilmerHale, announced that Andrew Vollmer would be returning to the firm as a partner. According to the press release, before joining the SEC, Vollmer was a vice-chair of WilmerHale’s Securities Department…….
…And just what does the Madoff fraud have to do with the big firms on Wall Street? The multi billion dollar proceeds of the fraud were wired in and out of JPMorgan Chase where Madoff maintained his firm’s account. Also, Madoff partnered with Citigroup’s Smith Barney, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs to compete head on with the New York Stock Exchange in a venture called Primex Trading as reported here at CounterPunch on January 15, 2009.
Argentina Farmland Troubles
Here’s a clip from early in the year that might interest libertarians who’ve been looking outside the US for farmland, in anticipation of any further worsening of the economy.
The video depicts the effects of drought in Santa Fe province….and makes a rather vague (and likely, insubstantial) reference to global warming.
But there are many other problems in Argentina besides drought – bad government policies, problems with squatters, the depletion of the soil from soy monoculture, the influx of genetically modified foods, and the relatively high prices of land in recent years.
And now there’s also increasing social unrest.
I was talking to some American friends who live in one of the north-eastern provinces, Misiones. They liked where they were, but there were certainly problems. Foreigners couldn’t own the land outright, since it was on the border. And the little enclave of immigrants didn’t always get on with other foreigners. On the good side, they thought the land itself was a natural paradise….
Karl Denninger On Green Shoots
Muckety Maps Robert Rubin’s Connections
Cliff Stearns Questions Hank Paulson..
How about a little less grilling of Sarah Palin and a little more of Hank Paulson? Notice how much Paulson stammers..
Texas Holding Elders and Their Assets Against their Will?
The Hundred Who Made the Economy Collapse
Vanity Fair’s piece on the hundred who made the economic crisis manages to include blackberries and VIP rooms, Ralph Nader, George Bush and Bill Clinton, Woodrow Wilson, Republicans Hank Paulson and Hank Greenberg…
But it omits Robert Rubin….and Larry Summers…and Tim Geithner….and any of the numbers of hedge funds that were shorting companies for years….and it forgets AIG….and Barney Frank..[Correction: It does include AIG and Barney Frank, a great improvement] and even good old Eliot Spitzer, who should have done much more, for all that sound and fury about going after crooks…
What a tendentious list.
More anti-Christian Bile at Vanity Fair
I was trying to get a grip on the mentality that produced the Sarah Palin smear job (I carry no water for Palin and think she was a poor choice for veep, but…)
..and I came across this gem, “Blame America (and Jesus), for Jaycee Dugard kidnapping,” from the September edition of Vanity Fair. It implies that belief in the divinity of Jesus is somehow linked up with some kind of kinky sexuality. I kid you not…
[ Just try substituting a few other religious figures for that.
How about “Blame India (and Krishna) for sex-trafficking in Mumbai slums”? How do you think that sounds?
Or “Blame Saudi Arabia (and Muhammed) for terrorism? (Sorry, we already have that going around)
Ok. Here’s a anothr one. What about “Blame Israel (and Moses) for torture in military prisons.”
Has a ring to it….
[Note to religious fundamentalists – the above is satire meant to deride Vanity Fair’s bigotry – no offense is meant to Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, Krishna, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, or Judaism. Offense is meant to Vanity Fair, however, mainly for terminal idiocy and obvious bigotry].
Here’s the piece:
“It’s an American Gothic thing—or, by any other name, a white trash thing. On the fringe of communities across the country there is a mutant culture: trashy, marginal, uneducated, unhealthy, and nutty. People cluck about it, and are fairly careful to avoid it, but are, too, remarkably laissez-faire towards it. This is partly because white trash means…white. And partly because, in America, a white man’s home is his castle (no matter how much debris is in the yard), and you just don’t ask too many questions (and because so many homes in America look like the homes of sex offenders).
And partly because of Jesus.
If Phillip Garrido ranted about there being no God, if he passed out atheist tracts, instead of bizarre-o Jesus-saves stuff, he would likely have been carted off years ago. But Jesus saves you not just from your sins but from public opprobrium. It may not make you any less weird in people’s eyes, but it makes you part of a protected class of weirdos. Jesus is an acceptable refuge for the sex offender. God knows, Jesus may even incite the sex offender.
No matter. If you believe hotly enough in Jesus, you’re a good American—at least for all the other weird Christians with piles of crap in their backyards, which is a considerable demographic.”
More here, by Michael Wolff.
Gold Spike Related to Chinese Derivative Contracts Busting?
Here’s a zinger that might explain gold’s sudden spike since yesterday:
“Some of the State Owned Enterprises that stated their potential intentions to default were Air China. China Eastern and Cosco. Mainly in part because they took major derivatives losses over the past year but also, concerns are arising that the derivatives that they were sold by these foreign institutions are garbage, underwater and may never see the light of day. So why continue to pay for them? So the concern in the financial world is that holders of these losing products may just walk away, not unlike a home owner with a $600,000 mortgage on a home valued at $475,000 deciding to just hand in their keys. However, read on…this has nothing to do with morgtgage backed products. This time, the concern may be over Oil.
They (Reuters) cited 6 foreign banks. Where the story gets really intriguing is that among the major derivatives providers according to Reuters but also widely known in the industry, are Goldman Sachs, UBS and JP Morgan.
Here is the looming problem. These products are worth billions. One report that a good friend of mine did showed that if Goldman Sachs for example were to take this one up the rear, they could stand to lose 15 billion dollars. (This number is by no means confirmed)……. I would imagine that China, being the biggest purchaser of US debt, could surely collapse the US institutions that were at one point deemed too big to fail if they decide to go ahead with this plan.
This is why I don’t take tonight’s news that China purchased 50 billion dollars of IMF bonds lightly. In fact, I take it very seriously. This is why I take the buzz on the floor over the past two days very seriously as well as I do the incredible spike in Gold today. Most importantly, I do not take lightly the recent 25% correction we have seen in the Chinese Stock Market. Can all these events be interconnected some how? Is the Chinese stock collapse giving us a hint?”