Yea, yea, I know! It's been a LONG time! But since my last post, but "busy" is hardly a strong enough term to describe what I have been!! I have replaced the floors in my bedroom and bathroom, replaced bad floor joists, re-plumbed the bathroom, rewired the bathroom, rewired the bedroom, rebuilt a bathroom wall, replaced toilet, sink and tub , hung, and stained wall panels in bedroom, painted the bathroom, hung, and made appliance for the hanging of folksy, whimsical, bullshit knickknacks, such as my wife requires in her bathroom! All of this while fighting off the tenth case of Swine Flu in Henderson county, partially sawing my left hand off, and spreading blood, and contagion at the local hospital, which by the size of the bill I got, they seem to think I bought!!
Speaking of health care in this country, I can't seem to escape the Radical Right Wing smear campaign that seems to be echoing out of the Republican Party, who seems to have abandoned all pretense of relevance and pretty much admitted to the country that they are in the business of destroying any sort of health care reform whatsoever, and even several Democrats seem to want to help them do it, including the senator from my home district in North Carolina ,Heath Schuler.
Now I'm aware that Mark Twain, in his book "Puddin' Head Wilson" said that there are three kinds of lies, and they are Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics, and polls are a form of the latter, but in poll after poll, the public option has the support of at least two thirds of The American people, and the Democrats were elected to bring it about! Unfortunatley the insuarance lobby has spent their money well, and in a perfect example of lobbyist money working against the needs, and wishes of the American Public,. the public option is being fought by the very Democrats that were elected to bring it about!
From the right side of the aisle, we hear the same old litany of visionless tripe, lies, and baseless attacks against the President we've all come to expect. Having nothing to offer to The American People, all they seem to be able to do is attack any, and all who do.
Now don't get me wrong. I don't hate the Republican Party. I'm a centrist who enthusiastically supports, and practices my Second Amendment Rights. But right now, I see nothing and I mean NOTHING of any relevance from the Republican Party!
For a perfect example, let's take a look at sudden support of Medicare this week, and ponder how very different it is from their position on Medicare last week! I have a copy of a record album, (Remember record albums? They were played on a thing called a "Phonograph"), that was released by Ronald Reagan saying the same thing about Medicare that the Republican Party is saying about heath care reform right now! The date of the back says 1961! Now the Republicans are going to save it? BULLSHIT!!!!!
I will be going into this subject at some length in a later post, but right now I'm in the middle of researching, so I'll say so long for now, and it won't be for long!
Friday, September 25, 2009
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Foul Financial Fuck-Ups, and the Felonious Fuck-Sticks That Fabricate Them
Well good readers, I've been out of the fray for a while. I swore after the last post, I would NOT write another one, until a month after the new President was sworn in. That would give me time to see what manner of madness we would be dealing with for the next four years.
Fortunately we now have President Obama, and on this, the day after his first two months on the job, and except for that gaff on Leno, I like what I'm seeing, so far. That may change at any given time, but so far so good!
As many of you are doubtlessly aware... (Alright, as ALL OF US ARE AWARE!), most of the largest financial institutions in this country are circling the drain on their merry way to oblivion! All of their overindulged, overpaid, and under qualified bigwig CEOs, and Wall Street lackeys shrieking in protest!
The Republicans are all lined up with tear-stained eyes to blame it all on those dirty-bad-nasty Liberals and their godless ways! BULLSHIT!!!!!!! I lay this squarely on the head of none other than Phill Gramm himself! Sponsor, and coauthor of "The Gramm, Leach, Bliley Act of 1999"!
Ah yes! Let's talk about that weaselly little piece of larceny, along with it's partner in crime "The Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000"! Look these two pieces of legislature up! Use Google, use Ask, use whatever! Take your time! I'll just sit here and wait!
Oh? Back already? Jumping up and down and shrieking "WHAT THE FUCK!", a lot? Yea! I feel ya! Did it too!
I'll just wait for you to get done!
It's not like the blood was even hidden! Here's a press release:
CHAIRMAN GRAMM'S OPENING STATEMENT AT CONFERENCE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There it is, people! Every word of it! No slicing and dicing of the quotes, and hanging them together with those annoying three periods in a row! No trying to make the quotes say what the quotes don't! All of it! Every fucking word!!!!! Nothing left out! Nothing held back! Don't take my word for it! READ IT YOURSELVES!
From it's inception, this was the shadiest of shit! Conceived, and born to be the wettest dream of Big Finance! A grand and lovely gift! Wrapped and ribboned by their very own dimpled darling! Felonious Phill Gramm himself! A wondrous, and treacherous gutting of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933! A piece of legislation, which had been preventing the sort of things that caused The Great Depression from ever happening again! Of course the Glass-Steagall Act prevented savings banks, investment banks, and insurance companies from growing into the monstrous, all absorbing entities that, Citigroup, Bear Stearns, and Bank of America turned into! It would not allow them to grow large enough to rip up the rule book, hold the entire country hostage, and write their own law! Big Finance had to get rid of it!
Also in the 1999 slaughter of nearly all the regulation standing between Big Finance, and whatever acts of thievery in it's hearts' desired, was the obvious pulling of any teeth, and the funding, that any regulatory entity had! Felonious Phill, and His Gang, put the cops on horses, and the robbers on Harleys! Fifty years of common sense regulation! Gone! In the stroke of a pen!
Oh, I don't even attempt to say their weren't a few Democrat's hands involved! And from the start, they, and their fellow Republican lackeys, did their deeds in darkness, and made no secret of the fact! Thus giving Felonious Phill the cover he needed to pronounce the old mantras of "Bipartisan support" as to the reason they kept such a VERY tight lid on this turd! It's pretty damned obvious, this bill was written to set the weasels lose in the hen house, and seat the fox to watch the flock! And let us not forget that old "Blow-Job Bill" signed both of these turds into law, even though the Commodities Futures Act was neatly buried in a 1100 page budget bill.
Ah, and wasn't there rare rejoicing in Dittohead Punditland! Boss Rush worked The Forbidden Chemistry on his stash of Oxycontin tablets, and made most merry with the results! Tucker Carlson acted on all the evil thoughts, he'd ever had concerning his bow tie, and Glenn Beck danced with a brisk step in his Secret Mormon Underwear! Everything standing between the fleecing of The American People, and the wool baskets was gone! The sheep were ripe, the shears were sharp, and hands were strong and willing!
Now, came the grandest piece of thievery imaginable! A series of acts so grim in their scope, and blatant in their larceny, it boggles my jaded mind as to how they got away with it as long as they did! Banks wrote sub prime, and NINJA loans (No Income No Job Access), to anyone who could sign their name! NO oversight! NO credit ratings examinations! Mortgages were written by unregulated agents, who were paid by the note! They had their own private regulators, (who were on their pay roll), rubber stamp these loans as AAA, and sold them as Mortgaged Backed Securities,(MBS) with high yields to both a domestic and international market! Even though, in real terms, they weren't worth the paper they were written on!
One of the over-the-counter derivatives, also deregulated in 2000 was the Credit Default Swap in which companies like AIG guaranteed the buyer of a MBS that for a premium AIG would guarantee the over-rated, and under-secured mortgages, against any potential losses in the case of default. These securities themselves were bought and sold at increasing profit margins. This became the fastest growing market and today amount to almost 60 trillion dollars of global debt! SIXTY TRILLION DOLLARS TRACED BACK DIRECTLY TO REPUBLICAN SPONSORED DEREGULATION
Everything was just wonderful! Everything was just fucking dandy! Until August of 2007, when the housing bubble, (Which had been steadily fed by building starts, artificially supported by the buck-wild mortgage market), collapsed on top of them! Then, the sudden rush of defaults, and the resulting foreclosures exposed the whole sad affair! Bank-Supported Insurance Giants like AIG who had been writing loss prevention policies on just plain out bad loans, wound up with forty dollars of debt for every dollar of assets! Then, ( just like when The Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982 sank the Savings and Loans in the 90's), a glut of bad debt crushed the the entire financial industry! But now instead of just a few savings and loans, it was a huge chunk of the Global Economy which has suddenly become worthless at best, or turned into a giant sucking black hole, engulfing any, and, all money at worse!
Now, people, I want you to go to the library, and dig in the dusty tomes for anything about The Great Depression, and what steps were taken by The Hoover Administration, and The Roosevelt administration! Get yourself educated on the matter! We're living it again! Look at what worked, and look at what didn't! You'll come to the same conclusions that I did! President Obama is doing what needs to be done! I don't like it, and you shouldn't either, but its the only thing that will work at this stage in the game! We've got to pump money into the patients while we stop the bleeding! We've got one shot at this thing, and even if everything works out, we'll be paying the price for this for a long time to come!
Or we can take the Hoover Administration's way, and watch The Big Money sit on their asses, and count their bonus money! Oh! And they will get their bonus money7! That tax law that went through The Legislature like shit through a goose, is unconstitutional on at least two major points, AND THEY KNOW IT!! Big money plays, and the poor man pays! That's the free market system under Republican control!
It is the very Republicans, now howling about "Socialism" that caused the nightmare that we are living in now! The very ones screaming for MORE deregulation are the very ones that caused this whole sad scenario in the first place! The Few..The Loud..The Republicans!
There's a damned good reason for the dumbing down of America! There's a damned good reason for Republican-led opposition to any increase in educational funding! The Big Money wants the American People just smart enough to do the grunt work, and just dumb enough to buy their line of shit!
Numb, dumb, and hungry for more! That's what they're looking for in an American!
Well, We, the People woke up in 2008! I'm praying The Republicans won't sing us to sleep again!
Keep watch, people! And shoot at sound of a slow fiddle!
Fortunately we now have President Obama, and on this, the day after his first two months on the job, and except for that gaff on Leno, I like what I'm seeing, so far. That may change at any given time, but so far so good!
As many of you are doubtlessly aware... (Alright, as ALL OF US ARE AWARE!), most of the largest financial institutions in this country are circling the drain on their merry way to oblivion! All of their overindulged, overpaid, and under qualified bigwig CEOs, and Wall Street lackeys shrieking in protest!
The Republicans are all lined up with tear-stained eyes to blame it all on those dirty-bad-nasty Liberals and their godless ways! BULLSHIT!!!!!!! I lay this squarely on the head of none other than Phill Gramm himself! Sponsor, and coauthor of "The Gramm, Leach, Bliley Act of 1999"!
Ah yes! Let's talk about that weaselly little piece of larceny, along with it's partner in crime "The Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000"! Look these two pieces of legislature up! Use Google, use Ask, use whatever! Take your time! I'll just sit here and wait!
Oh? Back already? Jumping up and down and shrieking "WHAT THE FUCK!", a lot? Yea! I feel ya! Did it too!
I'll just wait for you to get done!
It's not like the blood was even hidden! Here's a press release:
CHAIRMAN GRAMM'S OPENING STATEMENT AT CONFERENCE
MARK-UP OF FINANCIAL SERVICES MODERNIZATION
Sen. Phil Gramm, chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, made the following opening statement today at the conference mark-up of Financial Services Modernization:
"America has been waiting 50 years for this bill, so I am going to be brief.
"Anyone who looks at the chairmen's mark will immediately see two things. One, there was a conscious effort not to go outside the scope of this conference. We thought it was important to have a bill that would stay inside the scope of the conference. I think members will find that, except for a few provisions related to the Federal Home Loan Bank System, where the provisions of this bill would dramatically change the operation of the Federal Home Loan Bank System. We did take a few steps to reign in the Federal Housing Finance Board in terms of actions they are taking that are opposed by the Treasury and where there is strong bi-partisan concern.
"Other than that, I am not aware of any major, or really any minor, provision outside the scope of the two bills. I think all of us recognize that if you want a bill, it means compromise. As Chairman Bliley said the other day when we presented the chairmen's mark, nobody ever gets all of what they want. You end up with compromise.
"I think again if people will look at the bill, they will see that there is a good faith effort in the bill to reach a compromise on numerous issues. There clearly was a compromise on CRA. Secretary Summers has said, and I quote, ‘The President will only support financial modernization that maintains the relevance of CRA. He will not permit it to be scaled back.' I would submit that anyone who reads the provisions of this bill will see that in fact the bill does meet that test. We have left a very tough issue, the unitary thrift issue, to be settled as a jump ball, but with the agreement, at least on the part of the three chairmen, that whatever happens on that issue, we are going to move ahead and pass this bill.
"I think that this is a bill, a mark-up document, where the more you look at it, the more knowledgeable you are about its content, and the content of current law, the better it is going to look.
"I want to thank Chairman Bliley, and I want to thank Chairman Leach. This has been a very difficult task but to do this work, it is worthy of our best efforts, and I think we have given our best efforts to it. Obviously, we are here today to finish the job, improve the product if we can and move ahead if we can't."--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There it is, people! Every word of it! No slicing and dicing of the quotes, and hanging them together with those annoying three periods in a row! No trying to make the quotes say what the quotes don't! All of it! Every fucking word!!!!! Nothing left out! Nothing held back! Don't take my word for it! READ IT YOURSELVES!
From it's inception, this was the shadiest of shit! Conceived, and born to be the wettest dream of Big Finance! A grand and lovely gift! Wrapped and ribboned by their very own dimpled darling! Felonious Phill Gramm himself! A wondrous, and treacherous gutting of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933! A piece of legislation, which had been preventing the sort of things that caused The Great Depression from ever happening again! Of course the Glass-Steagall Act prevented savings banks, investment banks, and insurance companies from growing into the monstrous, all absorbing entities that, Citigroup, Bear Stearns, and Bank of America turned into! It would not allow them to grow large enough to rip up the rule book, hold the entire country hostage, and write their own law! Big Finance had to get rid of it!
Also in the 1999 slaughter of nearly all the regulation standing between Big Finance, and whatever acts of thievery in it's hearts' desired, was the obvious pulling of any teeth, and the funding, that any regulatory entity had! Felonious Phill, and His Gang, put the cops on horses, and the robbers on Harleys! Fifty years of common sense regulation! Gone! In the stroke of a pen!
Oh, I don't even attempt to say their weren't a few Democrat's hands involved! And from the start, they, and their fellow Republican lackeys, did their deeds in darkness, and made no secret of the fact! Thus giving Felonious Phill the cover he needed to pronounce the old mantras of "Bipartisan support" as to the reason they kept such a VERY tight lid on this turd! It's pretty damned obvious, this bill was written to set the weasels lose in the hen house, and seat the fox to watch the flock! And let us not forget that old "Blow-Job Bill" signed both of these turds into law, even though the Commodities Futures Act was neatly buried in a 1100 page budget bill.
Ah, and wasn't there rare rejoicing in Dittohead Punditland! Boss Rush worked The Forbidden Chemistry on his stash of Oxycontin tablets, and made most merry with the results! Tucker Carlson acted on all the evil thoughts, he'd ever had concerning his bow tie, and Glenn Beck danced with a brisk step in his Secret Mormon Underwear! Everything standing between the fleecing of The American People, and the wool baskets was gone! The sheep were ripe, the shears were sharp, and hands were strong and willing!
Now, came the grandest piece of thievery imaginable! A series of acts so grim in their scope, and blatant in their larceny, it boggles my jaded mind as to how they got away with it as long as they did! Banks wrote sub prime, and NINJA loans (No Income No Job Access), to anyone who could sign their name! NO oversight! NO credit ratings examinations! Mortgages were written by unregulated agents, who were paid by the note! They had their own private regulators, (who were on their pay roll), rubber stamp these loans as AAA, and sold them as Mortgaged Backed Securities,(MBS) with high yields to both a domestic and international market! Even though, in real terms, they weren't worth the paper they were written on!
One of the over-the-counter derivatives, also deregulated in 2000 was the Credit Default Swap in which companies like AIG guaranteed the buyer of a MBS that for a premium AIG would guarantee the over-rated, and under-secured mortgages, against any potential losses in the case of default. These securities themselves were bought and sold at increasing profit margins. This became the fastest growing market and today amount to almost 60 trillion dollars of global debt! SIXTY TRILLION DOLLARS TRACED BACK DIRECTLY TO REPUBLICAN SPONSORED DEREGULATION
Everything was just wonderful! Everything was just fucking dandy! Until August of 2007, when the housing bubble, (Which had been steadily fed by building starts, artificially supported by the buck-wild mortgage market), collapsed on top of them! Then, the sudden rush of defaults, and the resulting foreclosures exposed the whole sad affair! Bank-Supported Insurance Giants like AIG who had been writing loss prevention policies on just plain out bad loans, wound up with forty dollars of debt for every dollar of assets! Then, ( just like when The Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982 sank the Savings and Loans in the 90's), a glut of bad debt crushed the the entire financial industry! But now instead of just a few savings and loans, it was a huge chunk of the Global Economy which has suddenly become worthless at best, or turned into a giant sucking black hole, engulfing any, and, all money at worse!
Now, people, I want you to go to the library, and dig in the dusty tomes for anything about The Great Depression, and what steps were taken by The Hoover Administration, and The Roosevelt administration! Get yourself educated on the matter! We're living it again! Look at what worked, and look at what didn't! You'll come to the same conclusions that I did! President Obama is doing what needs to be done! I don't like it, and you shouldn't either, but its the only thing that will work at this stage in the game! We've got to pump money into the patients while we stop the bleeding! We've got one shot at this thing, and even if everything works out, we'll be paying the price for this for a long time to come!
Or we can take the Hoover Administration's way, and watch The Big Money sit on their asses, and count their bonus money! Oh! And they will get their bonus money7! That tax law that went through The Legislature like shit through a goose, is unconstitutional on at least two major points, AND THEY KNOW IT!! Big money plays, and the poor man pays! That's the free market system under Republican control!
It is the very Republicans, now howling about "Socialism" that caused the nightmare that we are living in now! The very ones screaming for MORE deregulation are the very ones that caused this whole sad scenario in the first place! The Few..The Loud..The Republicans!
There's a damned good reason for the dumbing down of America! There's a damned good reason for Republican-led opposition to any increase in educational funding! The Big Money wants the American People just smart enough to do the grunt work, and just dumb enough to buy their line of shit!
Numb, dumb, and hungry for more! That's what they're looking for in an American!
Well, We, the People woke up in 2008! I'm praying The Republicans won't sing us to sleep again!
Keep watch, people! And shoot at sound of a slow fiddle!
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About Me
- stoney13
- Well!! I'm not here to be on anybody's side! I DON'T like George W. Bush and I will NOT call the bastard president! I'll call him President Pork Pie, but that is about as close as it gets! I'm not here to comfort the afflicted, but to afflict the comfortable! I learned a long time ago, that if you can make somebody laugh and think at the same time, they'll learn something! I'm trying to teach the American Public that there is another point of view out there, beside the Right Wing's This country's on a greased chute to Hell with Bush as it's Captain! I for one will not sit idley by while he drives the land that I love into the ground! This is my gift to this country. Maybe it's a little crude at times, maybe, it's a little rude at times! But in my world, rude and crude works! I'll post what I damn well please here and invite people to post comments the same way! Rant all you want!! I do! Freedom of Speech is the order of the day here! Like it? Let me know! Don't like it? Let me know! Silence me? AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN! So welcome one and all to STONEY'S RAGE!! It's all for America! I don't make a dime off it! And I won't have it any other way!
