Charlie Rose interviews Charles Ferguson of the "Inside Job"

http://www.charlierose.com/view/content/11321

The above link is to a recent interview (29 November 2010) between Charlie Rose and Charles Ferguson who produced the well reviewed documentary on the origins of the financial collapse of 2008 and the subsequent global bailout of the financial industry by governments across the world.

He states specifically, "the film is about the systemic corruption of the United States by the financial industry and the consequences of that systemic corruption."

In the interview Ferguson makes it clear that the corruption of America and its legislative and regulatory processes are profound.  He makes the case that much of what happened would not have occurred if the businessmen behind these monolithic investment banks were not so incompetent and blinded by greed and the US government had not abdicated its role, as an agent for fairness, in properly regulating the whole industry.  The actions taken by the government was to save the banks and the elite bankers, while allowing the rest of the population to fend for itself.  The bankers, with the exception of Lehman Brothers, were not made to make any sacrifices.

Ferguson further contends that "massive criminal fraud" was undertaken. Despite the nauseating proclamations by the financial industry and their media stooges, it is clear that both government and the largest corporations in America engaged in what may stand as the largest criminal event of the past quarter century. The reality is that none of these people, given the political climate and entrenched corruption of government, will be held accountable for their actions in destroying trillions of dollars of wealth, eliminating millions of jobs, and pushing families off the cliff.  When ordinary people lose their health care, lose their homes, lose their life savings, and end up destitute, the same people who caused this mayhem will snicker and call the rest of the population parasites!

I've said it numerous times on this blog, that only when people recognize the true nature of corporations in their society and begin to combat the force of coruption through monied politics, will things change.

Flow Chart of human hookups, first-dates, and relationships

I'm not sure how accurate any of this data actually is, but it's interesting just to think about in the idle spaces of own existence.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/.a/6a00d83451c45669e2013489aeda81970c-popup

(h/t to Andrew Sullivan's the Daily Dish)

Things I found interesting:

1. 5.4% of people die without ever getting married.
2. 56% of people claim to be unhappy with their sex lives (Forget viagra and other boner drugs!  I see an opening here for subscription based tantric sex lessons offered at the local Learning Annex!)
3. Largest reason for breakups is a loss of interest (that seems accurate based on my own experiences)
4. 22% of people worldwide have engaged in infidelity (again, based on hereditary disease profiles I've reviewed that seemed entirely correct)

Arizona's indulgence with the banality of evil

I have been for some years awed by the grotesque indecency and outright evil that presents itself as the norm in the low-tax geezer-vista that is the state of Arizona.  Many will recognize the ongoing battle between locals and illegal immigrants.  My disgust does not entail this well discussed legal tussle and the underlying racial animus prevalent across the state.  Instead, I'd like to draw attention to the mindset and legislative behavior of the state's Republicans, who with their tax-free and minimalist government ideology have created a perfect example of the banality of evil.

I came across this example in the NY Times of the lengths many of the well-heeled denizens of the state will go to, in order to protect their personal fortunes from the local taxman.  Consider the following:

“Arizona is seeing more of the traditional battle of the generations...between some retirees who want taxes — including school taxes — kept low, and most parents who want better support for the schools their kids attend.”

Patrick Flynn, the president of a homeowners group in Troon, AZ in 2007, states that he has no qualms about education, he "just does not like the idea of paying for it."  In this particular exhibition of generational greed and malice, the residents of the district created a bogus local school district with no schools, teachers, or students to prevent their property taxes from being raised.  Families with children must pay adjacent districts to have their children participate in schooling.  As a state senator explains, “The whole purpose of this was to avoid taxes on their million-dollar homes.”

In an earlier post titled "The young must die so Geezers can pay low taxes" I explained how the Governor of Arizona planned to eliminate health coverage for 47,000 low-income children.  In the name of fiscal austerity the legislators gladly abandoned their most vulnerable citizens so that these modern day Merchants of Venice wouldn't have to worry about wasting their well earned shekels on youthful vermin.  The fact that the elderly receive federally subsidized Medicare and have no worries about paying for health care costs is an irrelevance to these hypocrites.  Racial bigotry is used by the citizens of the state to claim that most of the children were the offspring of illegals, who shouldn't be receiving benefits regardless.

What has drawn my particular ire today though is another instance of greed masquerading as fiscal rectitude.  The NY Times has a horrible story of how Arizona legislators have stripped citizens belonging to the state Medicaid program from having life-saving transplants.  Persons who for whatever reason that were waiting for a liver, lung, or other tissue were told to drop dead by their own representatives.

When Alan Grayson, the former congressman for Florida, said in 2009 that the Republican plan for health care reform was, "Don't get sick. That's right, don't get sick."  The MSM and Republicans bemoaned his rhetoric and yet evidence is abundant that he was absolutely correct.  On the floor of the House of Representatives, Grayson offered this scathing critique of the Republican party's program for health care

According to this study, “Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults” which was published two weeks ago, 44,789 Americans die every year because they have no health insurance. That’s right, 44,789 Americans die every year, according to this Harvard study called “Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults.” You can see it by going to our website, grayson.house.gov. That is more than ten times the number of Americans who have died in the war in Iraq.

It’s more than ten times the number of Americans who died in 9/11. But that was just once: this is every single year. That’s right: every single year. Take a look at this. Read it and weep. And I mean that – read it and weep because of all these Americans who are dying because they don’t have health insurance.

The state of Arizona offered this pathetic rational for why the government was serving poor and sick citizens a death sentence:

State Medicaid officials said they recommended discontinuing some transplants only after assessing the success rates for previous patients. Among the discontinued procedures are lung transplants, liver transplants for hepatitis C patients and some bone marrow and pancreas transplants, which altogether would save the state about $4.5 million a year.

While many states in the union have reduced or eliminated aspects of health coverage during the Great Recession, Arizona once again goes the extra distance to condemn their citizens to the vagaries of market-based health care; i.e. pay or you fucking die!  The cruelty and lack of any resemblance of ethics of these people is mind-boggling.

The behavior of all levels of government in Arizona is one of maximizing short term financial gains for their most well off citizens, while brutally undermining the health, education, and well-being of large portions of their population.  How is it that the richest country in the world has a health care system that is on par with second-rate industrial nations?  The justifications of the proponents of this lot are always anchored to some bizarre notion of moral indignation that others are getting a free ride, while they -the greediest generation, who never sacrificed, never went to war in the name of democracy and freedom, and who had their entire lives subsidized from birth- continuously demand others do without, what they loudly proclaim is their deserved entitlement.

Brazil recognizes Palestine as an independent nation

Brazil is Latin America's superpower.  For the past decade it has been part of the BRIC group of emerging markets that has grown at an impressive rate compared to the nearly stagnant and tepid grown witnessed respectively in Europe and the USA during the same period.  Today, Brazil is the 8th largest economy in the world, with a GDP $1.57 Trillion (USD).  It has a large and diversified economy with agriculture, mining, manufacturing, and service sectors.

Today, according to the Washington Post (via the Associated Press), Brazil is formally recognizing Palestine as an independent and autonomous nation state based on 1967 borders.

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva... sent a letter to Abbas on Dec. 1, saying Brazil recognizes Palestine and hopes that the recognition will help lead to states of Israel and Palestine "that will coexist peacefully and in security."

With the so-called peace process continuously undermined by Israel's gimmickry and bad-faith negotiations on the part of the USA for much of the past decade, there is little reason to believe that there will ever be an independent Palestine under the current settings.  Brazil's recognition therefore is an interesting and potentially thorny issue for Israel.  The PLO formally declared Palestine as independent state in 1988 and at least 102 other nations also recognize it as such.  There are another 44 states, that have some form of informal recognition of the PLO or the PNA in governing the Israeli controlled occupied territories.

If the rest of the world realizes that Israel has no intention of ever surrendering the occupied territories over to an independent Palestinian government, then it is likely more Western countries will follow Brazil's stance.

Quote of the Day: Chomsky on the Financial Fraudsters

The capitalist class in the ’50s was sort of part of a social contract. It was part of the tenor of the times… Changes have taken place since then… In the financial institutions, which by now dominate the economic system, the management level repeatedly acts in ways which will destroy their own institutions if it’ll increase their benefits, and benefits are not small. You know, you take a look at the revenue of, say, Goldman Sachs – a very high percentage of it just goes to payment of management and bonuses. There was a time traditionally – say, GM in the 1950s – it was trying to develop a consumer base that would be loyal and lasting and they were thinking in terms of an institution that would remain and grow and thrive in the society. By now, a lot of the investment firms – bankers, hedge funds – are perfectly happy to destroy what they’re in and come out with huge, tremendous benefits. That’s a new stage of capitalism.

- Noam Chomsky on today's Casino-capitalists. (link: h/t Felix Salmon)

Matt Taibbi talks about the Tea Party, Palin, & the Banks

I really hope if you have an opportunity to watch Eliot Spitzer on his CNN news-talk show, Parker-Spitzer.  The man always impresses me when he's debating friend or foe, with his enormous knowledge of governance, financial affairs, and the inherent corruption that exists between government and big business.  There really isn't any other show on the MSM cable channels, in America at least, that I think is worth watching.  Even if you're into liberal talk shows, MSNBC's lineup tends to be a little repetitious and self-serving when it comes to engaging in substantive issues. 

The above video post is another with Matt Taibbi, who grouses on the media obsession with Caribou Barbie and the Tea Party movement, the criminality of the banks, and the incompetence of Tim Geithner and Alan Greenspan.  Spitzer and Taibbi unleash a real pummelling on the ass-clowns of casino-capitalism!

Matt Taibbi explains the Financial sector's hold on Democrats

I personally think the reason Rick Sanchez got cut from CNN was that he rubbed some of the MSM top honchos the wrong way during his time at the anchor desk.  Populism is fine for the plutocrats when it works to their advantage, as in the case of the ignorant and deranged Tea Party advocates.  However, when discussions of the collusion between those at the top of the economic pyramid (i.e. the banks) and government officials begin, which leads to the magnification of the nexus of institutional corruption, the grand-poobahs get antsy. 

Consider the above video with Sanchez and Rolling Stone magazine contributor and author Matt Taibbi, where the discussion veers into understanding the basis of the 2009 financial sector bailout pursued by the Obama administration. In it, Sanchez makes the connection that Washington DC is effectively corporate controlled territory. He notes that Goldman Sachs and other bankers wield inordinate levels of power over the legislative and executive branches and control the system through campaign contributions to both parties and the installation of their people into key government portfolios. There was no requirement for Obama to bring people like Larry Summers, who had been an architect of the deregulatory fiasco of the 1990's that lead to this current economic malaise, into the fold.  There was no requirement to appoint Tim Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury or to re-appoint Ben Bernanke, other than it appeased the poobahs on Wall Street.

For all the talk of change, the Obama administration made sure that corporate America knew that the new sheriff in town was going to be the same as the old one.  They let it be known that "Greed was still good," and regardless of how the economy reacted, all the merry sociopaths, looking down at us little people from the glass towers in the Financial District, would still get all their bonuses that would allow them to feed their insatiable want for coke, hookers, and good times.

All this nonsensical talk that Obama is somehow a socialist is the musings of truly stupid people.  The facts are plain to see that this administration is not terribly different than any of its Republican or Democratic predecessors.  The facts are also clear that it is the greedheads at the top of the financial food chain who have been the winners for the past 30 years.  When the next economic calamity arises in the near future, we'll see who gets saved again and who the ignorant masses will blame for it.

The Other Fame Monster

I'm not a twelve year old girl, so I'm not really sure what Justin Bieber is about.  Although, I understand he's an androgynous teenage singer from Ontario, Canada.  Regardless, an interview in today's Guardian newspaper illustrates that perhaps the concept of young people manufactured to be a global media stars without the benefit of having a strong family framework, probably isn't very good for the developing child. To illustrate consider the following excerpt:

A few days after the Sunrise incident, Justin was in New Zealand, being interviewed by a presenter with a strong Kiwi accent. He asked Justin if Bieber was the German word for basketball.

"German?" Justin asked.

"German," said the interviewer. Justin looked blank-faced. "German," said the presenter. "You know? German."

"I don't know what that means," said Justin.

"Here," said the interviewer, showing him the word German written on his card.

"I don't know what that means," said Justin. "We don't say that in America."

It's one thing not to be able to understand multi-varable calculus at the age of 14 or not to have a grasp of global political forces driving the Basel III accord even if you're much older, but not to know what Germany is? 

I'm sorry, but the child is clearly a moron, just like his backwater and hick parents.  Where do these assholes come from?  Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan...etc, they're all white-trash morons whose money-grubbing parents catapulted them into a world in which these children barely understand and clearly in the case of the latter two stars, unable to cope with.  Teenage actors, singers, and entertainers rarely do well in life.  Education is one of the ways that allows these young people to make better decisions and hopefully salvage themselves in the upcoming years, when their lives start to disintegrate around them.  However, if you read the Guardian's article, it's pretty clear there's not much in this kid's head and what education he's getting is useless.

Galbraith on why the Democrats lost the Election

The original sin of Obama’s presidency was to assign economic policy to a closed circle of bank-friendly economists and Bush carryovers. Larry Summers. Timothy Geithner. Ben Bernanke. These men had no personal commitment to the goal of an early recovery, no stake in the Democratic Party, no interest in the larger success of Barack Obama. Their primary goal, instead, was and remains to protect their own past decisions and their own professional futures.

James K. Galbraith, professor of economics, offers his summation on why the Obama administration and the Democrats in congress, failed to obtain better results in last week's election.

A few commentators, like Kevin Drum over at MotherJones.com, do not believe that even if Obama had pursued a strategy where the economy was this Administration's central objective, that the Democrats would be substantially better off.  Given the people who Obama sought consul from, it seems entirely correct to me that the Democrats would still have lost the house of representatives to the Republicans with such a strategy.  

As a corollary to Drum et al's sentiment, Galbraith elaborates in his opinion piece that Obama upon entering office had a limited understanding of economics, and coupled with a desire to pursue a centrist-right policy that maintained the status quo as much as possible, through the appointment of Clinton leftovers and Wall Street yes-men,  he essentially abdicated the mantel of being an agent of change and became an enabler of of Wall Street's mismanagement.

The obvious conclusion is that if Obama had pursued, as soon as he arrived in office, a bank nationalization program or something more similar to what the British engaged in and what the Swedes did in the early 1990's, he would have been able to dismantle the banking-congressional lobbyist nexus and create national banks capable of effectively lending money to both businesses and the American public a short time after.  Make no doubt that the process would have been bloody, but through inflicting maximum pain on the management and shareholders of the corrupt banks and insurance companies -something that was universally desired by the American public- Obama would have consolidated his record of being a giant-killer and a vanguard for the "little guy."

Instead, the timid and frustratingly feeble performance of Mr. Obama and his pro-business acolytes in the White House, have left his administration and the Democrats vulnerable to attacks from multiple fronts and potentially dead in the water for the next two years.

Glenn Greenwald on why the Democrats lost

With that strategy, the Democratic Party now reaps what it has sown.  Its message and identity are profoundly muddled, incoherent, unclear, uninspiring, and self-negating.  Worse, its policies are mishmashes of inept half-measures that, with a handful of exceptions, produce little good for anyone (other than Wall Street, the Pentagon and other corporate interests).  They are perceived as -- and are -- beholden to Wall Street, special interests, and the corporations they vowed to confront.  They are without any ability to confront the massive unemployment crisis and financial decline the country faces.  And as a result of all of that, they lay in shambles.  Anyone who can survey all of that and cheer for the strategy which Democrats have been pursuing -- let's build our majorities by relying on GOP-replicating corporatist Blue Dogs -- or who thinks that this election loss happened because "Democrats are too liberal," resides in a world that has very little to do with reality.  And that's true no matter how many times they repeat the simplistic snippets of exit polls to which they've obsessively attached themselves.

Glenn Greenwald in a blog post at Salon.com, takes on MSNBC commentator Lawerence O'Donnell in his assertion that the Democrats lost because they are too "liberal" and the country simply prefers "conservative" candidates and governance.

Over the past decade, I too have excoriated those who babble about the fundamental divide between philosophical and political liberalism and conservatism in America.  The terms in themselves are inexhaustibly used incorrectly by both sides to impugn their opponents and distort the overall discussion.  Virtually no credible conservative government has existed at the federal level in the past forty years in America.  Ronald Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, and Dubya were pro-corporatist presidents who advanced statist agendas.  Government under each of these men was widely expanded; the national debt ballooned; war and the invasion of numerous countries in violation of international law was conducted; treaties were maligned and rejected at whim; established precedents in US constitutional law were regularly dismissed and abrogated with presidential approval; corporate take over of the executive and legislative branches was perfected under Republican rule over these decades.  At what point did the fanatics of conservative causes rally against these changes?

The pro-corporatist Democrats have always used the excuse that they could not execute a liberal agenda, that was and is favored by a majority, because of the stalking horse of conservatism amongst the population.  People now realize that because of gerrymandering, corporate donations and special interest meddling, and a two-party system that invalidates third party politics, that there is very little that they themselves can do to upend and change a system.  America has for the past decade not been a democracy, but  a plutocracy governed by people who are servants, not to the constitution or the people, but to multinational corporations: including bankers, insurance companies, the military-industrial complex, oil companies, and a bevy of special interests that are more than willing to bribe politicians into executing their agenda.

O'Donnell represents the liberal version of a cultural manager; a person who nonchalantly bemoans the tyranny of the left-wing of the Democratic party, but refuses to address the perennial failure and Pavlovian response of the Democratic party hierarchy in pursuing Republican-light policies once they are elected.  Clinton was elected to improve the economy, introduce health care, and end the brutal twelve years of Republican mismanagement.  Instead, he pursed a strategy of triangulation and capitulated to conservative policies of energy and financial deregulation, which has left the American economy broken and on unsound footing.  Obama in the face of aggressive citizen support has sought legislative capitulation to the banks, big oil, big-pharma, insurance companies, and the Military-Security state.  Obama's claims which he made during the 2008 election, of attacking special interests and the oligarchs appear little more than pleasant lies told to naive children.