Financial fuckery thread

[Cain]

Yep.  The last downgrade cost the US more than the damage from all Al-Qaeda attacks on US installations and sites combined.

[Jenne]

Yep.  The last downgrade cost the US more than the damage from all Al-Qaeda attacks on US installations and sites combined.

Yeah, tell THAT to the Tea Baggers, though.

[Precious Moments Zalgo]

Warren Buffet knows something we don't know.

Bank of America [BAC  6.99] soared 20 percent after Berkshire Hathaway [BRK.A  106350.00  ---  UNCH] said it will invest $5 billion in the bank.

[Disco Pickle]

Warren Buffet knows something we don't know.

Bank of America [BAC  6.99] soared 20 percent after Berkshire Hathaway [BRK.A  106350.00  ---  UNCH] said it will invest $5 billion in the bank.

not digging back through the thread, but wasn't there someone here that shorted it?

hope you covered that ages ago

[Precious Moments Zalgo]

Oh, wait, nevermind.  Buffet invested in BofA because he was bribed. 

Bank of America Corp. (BAC), seeking to snap this year's stock plunge, will pay billionaire Warren Buffett $300 million annually to do what he did for Goldman Sachs Group Inc. during the credit crisis: bolster confidence.

The $5 billion sale of preferred equity, which initially sent the shares up 26 percent, may improve investor perceptions without meaningfully affecting the source of their concern, the bank's capital, according to analysts including William Tanona at UBS AG. The deal gives Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A) warrants that could make it the lender's largest stockholder.

[Cain]

Gonna say, 5 billion is a drop in the ocean when it comes to BoA's supposed exposure.

[Jenne]

...that's what it sounded like to me on NPR this morning.  They wanted someone to put some good ol' CONFIDENCE back into the American economy. 

[Cain]

I've said it once and I've said it before, the American economy is out of fuel, it is running on fumes and a whole lot of Clap Your Hands If You Believe.

[Disco Pickle]

I've said it once and I've said it before, the American economy is out of fuel, it is running on fumes and a whole lot of Clap Your Hands If You Believe.

Bernanke is supposed to be speaking later.  The US exchange is already selling off in anticipation.

[Cain]

Rumour is its going to be another round of quantative easing.  More free money to inflate the bubble!

[Disco Pickle]

Rumour is its going to be another round of quantative easing.  More free money to inflate the bubble!

Wouldn't surprise me at all.  It's the only thing they have that they can do.

Just for once I wish he'd come out and say "Look, we don't know what we're doing and we have to admit, finally, that we're largely to blame for all of this mess (and the one in the 70's, and more going back) and printing more money is only going to delay this so we're Volkerizing the interest rate for a few years to try and help get this shit over with.  Oh, and I'm finally beginning to think Keynesian economic policies are teh sux0r."

Even if I'd loose my ass on the bonds I'm holding, at least I'd be surprised.

[Cain]

We have a system now which combines the worst of Keynesianism, Monetarism and Feudalism, with none of their virtues, which deserves some kind of recognition, I believe.

I'd also like to remind everyone we've been, essentially, in a recession since 1973.  The appearance of economic growth has been due to financialization of the economy, dealing in phantom sums of cash, and through the lowering of tax burdens on transnational corporations.  Every single instance of apparent economic progress since this time has been a bubble, which has burst five to eight years later.

We've also essentially moved back to a pre-18th century model of taxation now.  Historically, the right to taxation was sold to unscrupulous individuals, who would then use that money in risky financial speculation.  Now we just use public servants to hand the money over to the speculators in question.

[Disco Pickle]

We have a system now which combines the worst of Keynesianism, Monetarism and Feudalism, with none of their virtues, which deserves some kind of recognition, I believe.

I'd also like to remind everyone we've been, essentially, in a recession since 1973.  The appearance of economic growth has been due to financialization of the economy, dealing in phantom sums of cash, and through the lowering of tax burdens on transnational corporations.  Every single instance of apparent economic progress since this time has been a bubble, which has burst five to eight years later.

We've also essentially moved back to a pre-18th century model of taxation now.  Historically, the right to taxation was sold to unscrupulous individuals, who would then use that money in risky financial speculation.  Now we just use public servants to hand the money over to the speculators in question.

You forgot to blame it first on Nixon, then Gerald Ford, then Jimmy Carter, then heap a giant pile of blame on Reagan followed by a serving for HW Bush.  Clinton gets a pass.  Always.  I mean, right?  Then the biggest contributors in the public mind: Bush II followed by Obama.

That's about as far back as the memories go for almost anyone I talk with about it.  They always skew away from their own party's president when discussing it.

They almost universally think that a sitting president has anything to do with monetary policy, and has the "Mighty Pen" he can use to either raise or cut taxes, all by his executive branch self.

I find myself increasingly more worried about the people we DON'T elect than I do the ones we do.  The people who just go find some consulting work in D.C. for 4 - 8 years and then come right back to doing what they were doing.

Different face, same agendas.

Lol elections.

[Cain]

Well, Nixon did decide to trash Bretton Woods, which kinda led to the current situation (as I understand it, he thought the US would be the best placed to take advantage of the post-Bretton chaos.  He thought wrong), so he deserves a lot more blame than he currently gets, as does the OPEC cartel.

As for Clinton, the major thing I can recall from under him was NAFTA, aka Not A Free Trade Agreement, the 1998 "Asian" financial crisis, helping inflate the dotcom bubble...  I can think of a few things, anyway.

But yeah.  Lots of anonymous faces in the SEC, Treasury...not to mention the revolving door between those and the investment banks and major hedge funds, they're power brokers on a par with sitting politicians.  Another factor that cannot be discarded is the academic economics angle... Larry Summers and the rest.

It's times like this that I think bombing the Harvard Business School and banning its alumni from managing anything more than a McDonald's store would, if not actually solve a lot of problems, at least stop any more from happening.

[Disco Pickle]

Well, Nixon did decide to trash Bretton Woods, which kinda led to the current situation (as I understand it, he thought the US would be the best placed to take advantage of the post-Bretton chaos.  He thought wrong), so he deserves a lot more blame than he currently gets, as does the OPEC cartel.

As for Clinton, the major thing I can recall from under him was NAFTA, aka Not A Free Trade Agreement, the 1998 "Asian" financial crisis, helping inflate the dotcom bubble...  I can think of a few things, anyway.

But yeah.  Lots of anonymous faces in the SEC, Treasury...not to mention the revolving door between those and the investment banks and major hedge funds, they're power brokers on a par with sitting politicians.  Another factor that cannot be discarded is the academic economics angle... Larry Summers and the rest.

It's times like this that I think [EDIT: replacing the Harvard Business School with a Clown College] just looking out for you man.  I'm not paranoid, but I also don't take unnecessary risks to get a point across and banning its alumni from managing anything more than a McDonald's store would, if not actually solve a lot of problems, at least stop any more from happening.

I give Nixon a pass on Bretton-Woods.  He didn't put it in place and he had nothing to do with the run on the US by foreign governments to cash in the dollars to gold.  They were printing money and it was, possibly for the last time, OBVIOUS and any sitting President in his place would have been pressured to do the same thing by the cost of the Vietnam War, a war I will never agree was necessary, and precipitated the collapse of Bretton-Woods.  If anyone, I blame LBJ for stepping up that war and lying about it, causing the increase in spending necessary to perpetuate it.

Clinton supporters amaze me for their ability to completely blank out when NAFTA is brought up, especially considering how protectionist and Union supporting a large number are.  I know it was in the works long before he signed it into law but man the glazed eyes and "BUT NO IT WAS BUSH I AND II" talk I hear when you mention Clinton and NAFTA.

As you said, the sharks are the back door guys that get "appointed" to one administration, (usually after taking a fat severance from a major financial institution so they can bring in new Harvard meat" and when that one gets voted out, they just go to work for one of their buddies in D.C. until "their guy" gets back in.  

I'm not even sure that Academic Economics should even be a term anymore.  It certainly cannot, looking back over the last 50 years, be in any way considered a Science.  Despite blatant evidence and the numbers to back it going on 40 years, they continue to use the same exact medicine that was taught by Keynes.  The end result is that we all suffer, because the "growth" was really only an illusion of growth, and since deflation is seen as worse than inflation, to be avoided at all costs, even at the risk of stagflation, we all become more poor as the decades grind on.

[EDIT CONCERNING THE ABOVE BOLDED]  I keep forgetting, considering your areas of expertise, you're likely used to having a knock at your door to discuss those sorts of things.  Just meant that spiders look for that sort of thing.  Something you must already know as well.  Never mind then.  Continue on.