Sarah Palin sacrificing herself for interracial harmony!

Could I have been wrong all these years, that Caribou Barbie (aka Sarah Palin) is actual not a racist and loves (really loves!) other people and races?

News reports based on the yet unreleased book by Joe McGinniss titled "The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin" claims that Palin has a fetish for black men, has used illicit drugs, and has had marital affairs.  It has been suggested by Caribou Barbie that Mr. McGinniss, -who was invited to live in Sarah Palin's neighbor's house and observe the Palin family- is a pervert and maybe even a pedophile!  As everyone knows, Sarah doesn't pull punches when this hockey mom with lipstick gets angry.

Sludge like this is better left in the pages of tabloid newspapers, preferably owned by arch-douche bag Rupert Murdoch.  There are probably far more damaging and news worthy stories about Palin, which has been richly covered elsewhere.  However, my contempt of Palin and the entire faux-populists and deranged crypto-fascists of the Tea Party movement demand me to at least bring to light these allegations.

McGinniss has some choice words about Palin that have raised my eyebrows:

• He describes in the book "that Palin had a sexual ‘fetish’ for black men and had a one-night stand with Miami Heat player Glen Rice while dating future husband Todd Palin. Rice is said to have confirmed the encounter to the McGinniss."
• States that Palin "married her husband only after being impregnated, saying that her first child, Track, was born eight months after the wedding."
• Palin engaging with Brad Hanson, her husband’s one time business partner, in a six-month affair that lead to the dissolution of the two men's snowmobile dealership.
• Palin furthermore has in the past used marijuana and cocaine

Some of these things are pretty lame, while others are just typical low class shenanigans.  The whole black men fetish I find amusing.  It's awfully cold up there in Alaska and a piping hot thick drink of black goodness is maybe what she really needs.

***

Really though, I think more attention should be given to a documentary that is currently being shown at the Toronto International Film Festival, called "Sarah Palin - You Betcha."  The documentary, profiled in the Guardian newspaper, is by British film maker Nick Broomfield, who says that Palin "represents the forbidden in a weird and mischievous way" to the minds of evangelical Christian men in the Republican party.  People who are most knowledgeable of her, describe Palin as "dangerous", a "sociopath" and "disrespectful to intelligence".

The Guardian article summarizes Palin in a more coherent manner:

[Broomfield] has her down as a political opportunist who'll simply try to fill any power vacuum – a theory that fits neatly with the portraits offered of her as an overgrown prom queen, a beauty pageant back-stabber (there's some great footage of her puffing on a flute during Miss Alaska 1984, a dead spit for Rula Lenska) who thrives on gossip and vendettas and formulates policy with populist short-sight. Any allegiance to intellectual or fiscal ideologies is flaky at best. Her erratic decision-making meant she left Wasilla with a £22m deficit after her stint as mayor, then, as state governor, slapped an enormous tax on oil companies in Alaska. "She got that through with Democrat support," says Broomfield. "Most of the Republican party were against it."

The dangerous stupidity of this woman and her equally imbecilic followers should not be underestimated.

Krawcheck Down at BofA

I'm not a finance specialist, so I didn't know who Sallie Krawcheck was until today.  According to her online resume, she has had a fairly storied career given that she is only 46.  Until this week she held the position of Chief Executive Officer at Merrill Lynch.  Previously, she was formerly CFO at CitiCorp and Chairman and CEO of Citi's Global Wealth Management.

In an article on her and BofA in the NY Times Dealbook, it states that Ms. Krawcheck distinguished herself early in her career

as a stock analyst, covering securities companies. Early on, she made headlines with some of her bold calls, notably upsetting Wall Street executive Sanford I. Weill when she criticized the acquisition of Salomon by his firm the Travelers Group. Shortly after Alliance Capital Management purchased Bernstein in 2000, she was named chairman and chief executive.

My first thought, was how does someone at that age usurp so many people within the dog-eat-dog world of  finance to achieve so many senior positions at such an early age?  What happened to all the people who were in their 50's and 60's at the time she received her postings, who had been working in the industry before her?  The situation leads me to ask, what is it that these people are doing that is so valuable in these executive suites?  According to published articles on her, she was profiled in Fortune magazine titled, "Looking for the last honest analyst."  Krawcheck was brought into Citigroup in 2002 when its former chief Sandy Weill wanted to clean up the reputation of its tarnished Salomon Smith Barney division.  As Citigroup's CFO she used to work just down the hall from the company's former CEO Charles Prince, who was forced to resign his position at the end of 2007 as the credit crisis from the housing market emerged.  In an article in Fortune magazine in 2006, a year prior to the start of the Great Recession, she said, "The consumer doesn't seem stretched. I wouldn't bet against U.S. consumers. They're pretty rational folks."  That statement as we know today, four years into the Great Recession, is just rubbish.

Maybe this line of thought isn't germane to the actual point of  this post, but the personality based politics of  these financial firms strikes me as odd.

The point of this post is that Bank of America after hiring Krawcheck just two years ago has decided to terminate her.  Zerohedge blogger is calling her the first sacrificial lamb to be used by Bank of America in its attempt to re-organize its top management.  Consider this section of the NY Times article on the restructuring:

Since her arrival, the wealth management group has posted steady results, even as the broader market has been battered by billions of dollars in losses. In the second quarter, the division earned $506 million, down slightly from the previous period, but up from $329 million in the second quarter of 2010.
In particular, the Merrill Lynch brokerage force has been a surprising bright spot for the troubled bank, increasing its client base since the 2009 takeover by Bank of America.

Does firing the the head of one of the few divisions that does make money for the organization make sense to you?  I suppose it does if one assumes that Merrill's wealth management division no longer operates for the primary benefit of its clients, but for the shareholders of Bank of America instead.  Felix Salmon thinks:

that wealth management at BofA, then, is going to act a bit like dialup revenues at AOL: a steady and dependable revenue stream, in long-term secular decline, which can be used to fund investments in the rest of the business.

Whatever is going on at BofA suggests that this overstuffed Frankenstein operation is heading for even more serious problems than is currently being discussed publicly.  More than just management changes need to be imposed on this To-big-to-fail loser.  The entire beast needs to be cut up and sanitized for the good of the global economy.

Quote of the day: Taibbi on Obama

Listening to Obama talk about jobs and shared prosperity yesterday reminded me that we are back in campaign mode and Barack Obama has started doing again what he does best – play the part of a progressive. He's good at it. It sounds like he has a natural affinity for union workers and ordinary people when he makes these speeches. But his policies are crafted by representatives of corporate/financial America, who happen to entirely make up his inner circle.

I just don't believe this guy anymore, and it's become almost painful to listen to him.

- Matt Taibbi, "Obama and Jobs: Why I Don't Believe Him Anymore."

The political left which vaulted Mr. Obama into the White House has all but given up on him delivering anything remotely resembling his promises as a candidate in 2007 and 2008.  The standard argument by centrists and those still on the Democratic party kool-aid, is that he has delivered substantial results and has been hamstrung by Republican opposition in going further.  I find this argument absurd.  

A firestorm was unleashed amongst the political left when Prof. Drew Westen in an NY Times Op-ed, described Obama's failure to articulate a cogent and realistic picture of the political landscape in the dreary days of January 2009 and ask Americans for collective sacrifice. This is a man who was voted by a majority of Americans to turn the country around after eight horrible years under the Bush administration. He was a given an unequivocal mandate to enact liberal and far-reaching changes.  None of that has happened.   Instead we have seen a massive capitulation to business interests, the expansion of the Afghan war, and a constant rejection of liberal stances and policies in favour of Republican talking points, which include low-taxes, reduced regulations, slashing government jobs, and anti-growth austerity economics. Mr. Obama was willing only a month ago to increase the age of retirement and slash Medicare benefits for the elderly to appease the Republicans in the debt-ceiling debate.

The only reason much of the Democratic base hasn't completely abandoned him, is that the Republican label is so toxic and filled with so many morons, racists, homophobes, crony-capitalists, and religious nutters, that it is impossible not to prefer him over his opponents.

***
Further posts expanding and justifying my thoughts on Mr. Obama's tepidness are included below:

• My open letter to Mr. Obama last year is here
• Robert Reich's comment on Mr. Obama as a centrist leaning politician is here
• A critique of Mr. Obama's support for the Bush Administration's torture program (here and here).
• Daniel Elisberg, noted whistle blower and source of the Pentagon Papers, condemns Mr. Obama's pro-corporatist agenda here.
• Eliot Spitzer on Obama's first year is here
• Ralph Nader on Obama's early failures and capitulations (here, here, and here)

A decade of hell and the fall of America

The above chart (h/t Economist's View, "How long will it take for the economy to recover?") issued by the CBO describes what should be the central discussion amongst Americans.

While the developed world was on summer vacation, the economies of Europe and America have begun to decline in an alarming fashion.  Europe is scrambling to stabilize its weak perpherial economies. The march of the PIIGS has expanded to the point where Spain and Italy are no longer just question marks.  European banks are seeing formidable potential losses arise from sovereign debt issues.  Credit is tightening up and these same European banks are looking to national governments and the EU for assistance. Indecision amongst Europe's prominent leaders and a growing populist revolt across the continent have contributed to growing unease in the markets. The breakup of the entire European economic union and the failure of the Euro currency is now seriously being considered.

In America, zero jobs were added to the economy last month. Growth for the second quarter (Q2-2011) was revised to 1% (annualized).  Financial institutions like Bank of America are in trouble and Warren Buffett has again been brought, as the non-governmental creditor of last resort, to prop up the ailing bank. The Republicans have inflicted serious damage to the American economy, in their traitorous advancement of no-taxes and no-growth governance.   Obama is floundering in his dismal attempt to appease his corporate backers, while carving out a middle path for his own election.

The above chart should make you terrified.  Although the rose-colored glasses of 3.5% annual growth is being portrayed, it is the green line with 2.5% growth that is most alarming.  The difference of 1% means that America effectively will lumber along for the next decade with little to no growth, unemployment will remain obscenely high, structural unemployment and a permanent underclass will arise, the deleveraging process will take longer, and governments will be unable to adequetely deal with further social or economic problems effectively.  This is the best case scenario we are working with at the moment, taking into account the data and Rogoff and Reinhart's post-crisis modelling.

Now consider that the world heads into a protracted recession, with China crashing shortly afterwards -taking those countries like Canada and Australia that have been dependent on commodity exports with it- and you've got a recipe for global armageddon.  The world stops growing and economies across the planet try to dig themselves out of this hole.  Here too the data suggests as in the case of the Asian and Latin American crises, that a ten year window will be required to get back any reasonable trendline.  The implication is an entire generation of workers see reduced income, mounting debt, and insufficient job opportunities.  How are these countries going to pay for the benefits sold to the baby-boomer generation, when the children of the boomers are unable to find long-term jobs and thus fund those liabilities?

We have come to the end of the line.  All the major economies of the world are now posed to fall and in that cataclysmic descent, we shall venture hopelessly through a decade of stagnation, decline, and possible collapse.

Sino-Forest faces more scrutiny

The beleaguered Chinese forestry company Sino-Forest has had its ratings withdrawn by Standard and Poor's (S&P) today subsequent to news that its Chairman and Chief executive Alan Chan has resigned.  S&P states that the charges laid against Sino-Forest are most likely true and as such, it is forced to de-list.  Moody's Investors Service on the other hand has cut Sino-Forest's rating "to Caa1 from B1 and warned it was continuing its review of the company for further downgrade."

This blog earlier wrote an article describing the underlying fraud and failures of corporate governance associated with Sino-Forest.  In the days ahead there will be plenty of finger-waving at the company and its managers. The fact that corporate fraud  is involved is hardly new.  The tool most used by white-collar criminals is accounting gimmickry to conceal nefarious activities that enrich the owners and/or management.  I have written previously on the wide-spread corruption within China and prevalent ethos of fraud within America's most vaunted institutions, such as AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Big Pharma, and Moody's.  The fact remains that China is learning from the Master, the United States of America, when it comes to engaging in corporate malfeasance.

The questions that need to be addressed are:

1. Are any rating agencies actually capable of rating any company's true credit worthiness?
2. Why are accounting agencies constantly failing to detect this level of deception?
3. Why aren't agencies such as the the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) given more resources and talent to investigate and prevent systematic corruption within its jurisdiction?
4. Why aren't Canadian governments more vigilant in prosecuting corporate criminals?
5. Why aren't US governments more vigilant in prosecuting corporate criminals?
6. Why are so few white-collared criminals prosecuted and furthermore found guilty in both Canada and the USA?

Only once the public begins to ask and demand answers to these questions, will substantial change occur.

The other Sarah Palin movie

Sarah Palin (aka Caribou Barbie) and her entourage of semi-literate Alaskan troglodytes are now the subject of another movie. Unlike the celebrated bizzaro-land movie called "The Undefeated" (apparently no one has told her that she lost 2008 election), there is a documentary at this year's Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) documenting the actions of everyone's favorite candidate/beauty contestant.  The documentary is called "You Betcha!" which sounds just about right.

It doesn't surprise me that the dismally educated people in middle-America still gravitate to her beauty pageant veneer and fixate on her "us against them" nostrums.  After all, these populist shibboleths have existed since popular uprising have existed (yes... what the Romans have done for us lately!) and have a constant fan base regardless of who is in office. The problem with this half-wit, is that she actually thought being a politician was just a little more than being a B-rated celebrity and all those fans of hers, weren't just buying a ticket to indulge in the latest Republican merry-go-round ride.  She has zero policy credentials on any subject of relevance, whether that be foreign policy, America's global hegemony, the financial industry, or cost structure and delivery of social services like Medicare.

As a candidate Palin was so dismally incompetent on a national level that within a few weeks of the public becoming aware of this hockey-mom with lipstick, the McCain-Palin ticket started to tank with independent voters, women, and moderate Republicans.

While she was a positive force leading up to the 2010 mid-term elections for the Tea Party crowd, the problem that arose was that Palin wasn't always willing to follow the Republican script and would too often improvise. An example of her idiocy was her over-the-top media retort that erupted subsequent to Congresswoman's Giffords' attempted murder earlier this year. Since that incident Palin's numbers have been in decline. 

My take on the great American grifter is that she would really love to run for president, but isn't too keen on all that policy stuff and book-learning; like most of her fans.  She clearly loves the attention and the not insignificant pocket change that her and first-dude Todd have managed to pull in since abandoning the Alaska people for a staring role in this week's TLC re-run.  However, the media has already moved on to observe the craziness of Michele Bachmann (R-MN) and almost as verbally irresponsible Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX).

So like any good huckster she now moves from state to state, trying to locally re-invent herself, while trying to boost her flailing popularity nationally.  I think she will self destruct at some point and hopefully she will take as many Republicans with her in the process.

Dick Cheney unrepentant in having destroyed America

Richard Cheney, the 46th vice-president of the USA, is about to release his memoirs next week titled, "In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir. 

According to a CBS News/New York Times poll conducted when Dick Cheney left office in January 2009 his approval ratings (13%) were less than that of George W. Bush's (22%).  At their departure both men received historic disapproval ratings and continue to be considered by the majority of Americans as having failed to improve America.  The Bush presidency is highlighted by some of the following:

• advancing the unconstitutional notion of a unitary presidency
• repeated and consistent withdrawal from international treaties and agreements
• pushing through the civil rights destroying PATRIOT act
• massive and illegal wiretapping and spying on American citizens
• using torture upon seized enemy combatants and prisoners of war
• the failure to prevent the 9-11 attack on New York City and the Pentagon
• failing to adequately neutralize Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda's terrorist network
• pursuing the Iraq war under bogus pretenses and then failing to contain the regional civil war
• the abandonment of New Orleans and its citizens after Hurricane Katrina
• allowing the housing bubble to expand and eventually cause the financial collapse of 2008
• promoting corporate-written legislation that bolstered special interest profits
• promoting a laissez-faire regulatory framework that allowed corporate crime to exponentially grow throughout his two terms
• advancing the interests of oil and gas companies and rejecting sustainable and renewable forms of energy production
• denying climate change was occurring
• doubling the national public debt
• cut taxes for the richest Americans, while expanding the deficit
• cut national science and engineering budgets to pay for his wars and tax cuts
• limited scientific investigations on subjects deemed controversial for religious supporters, such as stem cell studies and environmental assessment studies
• preventing any international agreement that would prevent rises in global warming gases, which in the end may possibly be his greatest failure if even conservative predictions about climate change prove true

Cheney undoubtedly represented the very worst elements of the Bush administration.  Although Bush's approval didn't collapse until after Katrina, Cheney's approval amongst most Americans was in the gutter early into his first term.  His approval was constantly in the twenty-percent area and never improved.  He represented to his base an unapologetic statist who wanted to project American hegemony to its fullest level.  Cheney famously stated that "deficits don't matter!"  He was responsible for pursuing an energy policy that promoted America's addiction to foreign fossil fuels.  And as former Secretary of Defense, he was very familiar with the nature of the Pentagon machinery and sought to project America's military power domestically and across foreign shores.

To the rest of America, Cheney represented a Machiavellian operator.  With his over-the-top rhetoric, war making bravado, riddiculous claims that 3rd world nations with 2nd rate militaries were a threat to America, and his continuous scowl, the public turned on this crypto-fascist.

Reviews of Cheney's memoirs indicate a man who controlled both the president and policies of the Bush presidency in it early years. During the infamous 9-11 attack, Cheney states, despite clear lines of command set forth in the constitution, that it was him and neither Bush nor Rumsfeld who was in command of immediate operations.  At that moment in history, Cheney made it clear that the president of the United States had been unofficially deposed and that he had assumed all the controls of commander-in-chief.

The NY Times review of the book further highlights a man who is completely unrepentant of his actions.  The Times describes the book as being

often pugnacious in tone and in which he expresses little regret about many of the most controversial decisions of the Bush administration — casts him as something of an outlier among top advisers who increasingly took what he saw as a misguided course on national security issues.

So it is clear that as Cheney's policy failures mounted, George W. Bush and others in the Bush administration became progressively unwilling to accept Cheney's worldview and provocations.  In the end, the rift was so great that Bush himself was unwilling to even grant full pardon to Cheney's Chief of Staff I. Lewis Libby for his acts of lying to prosecutors in order to protect Mr. Cheney.

What we know is Mr. Cheney is on his last legs and death is hunting him. This book is an attempt by a dying man to justify his evil by throwing sand in our collective faces. I'm sure Ozymandias would have done the same.

Sino-Forest just another example of Chinese fraud

According to news reports (NY Times and Toronto Star), the once highly traded Chinese forestry company Sino-Forest has come under the examination by the Ontario Securities Commission for "fraudulently inflating its revenue and exaggerating the extent of its timber holdings."

The story follows a general trend that has become all too normal. Corporations attempt to inflate their earnings and value through shady accounting and off-sheet intermediaries.  The purpose, just as in other notable cases, is to exploit ignorant investors into the next so-called big thing. 

In Canada, the obvious comparison is Bre-X, a Canadian mining company that claimed that it discovered copious reserves of gold within Indonesia, during the mid-90's.  Independent investigations into the company's claims found that their initial findings were falsified.  The collapse of Bre-X lead to billions of dollars in losses for institutional investors, including $45 million for the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement board, $70 million of the Quebec Public Sector Pension fund, and $100 million for the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan.  No criminal charges have ever been laid in this debacle.

The American corollary is of course Enron, the company that defined the roaring 90's and the incipient corporate crime wave that has made a complete mockery of Anglo-American capitalism.   It was discovered that the company had created numerous offshore entities that were used "for planning and avoidance of taxes, raising the profitability of a business."  The totality of the expansive fraud committed by management and energy-traders resulted at the time the largest Chapter-11 bankruptcy in the history of the USA, the collapse of the accounting firm Arthur Anderson, and the introduction of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

In the case of Sino-Forest, in June 2011 it was described by Muddy Waters Research, an investment research firm, that the company was a “multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme” that was “accompanied by substantial theft.”  In addition,

A reporter for The Globe and Mail of Toronto subsequently spent two weeks visiting various properties ostensibly owned or controlled by Sino-Forest and its subsidiaries. It proved to be a trek that frequently led him to nonexistent addresses and empty offices. Like Muddy Waters, the newspaper also found evidence that Sino-Forest had greatly inflated the size of its forestry assets.

The accountants of Sino-Forest, Ernst Young Canada, at this moment are conveniently being given distance from the fiasco, by being allowed to claim "geographical and cultural differences" in understanding the Chinese market.  Given that Sino-Forest's management and operations are all in China, it raises the question whether Canadian accountants and regulators have the competence and ability to protect investors from unscrupulous foreign operations.

According to Forbes magazine, the SEC and PCAOB have been reviewing companies that operate in China but are traded in American markets and have found similar situations.

In the past six months alone, more than 25 New York-listed Chinese companies have disclosed accounting discrepancies or seen their auditors resign. In the process, questions have been raised about the strength of governance and financial oversight at many small-cap Chinese companies. In the past year, Nasdaq and NYSE Euronext have halted trading in the shares of more than 20 small and micro-cap Chinese companies. Five Chinese companies have been de-listed.

As bad as corporate governance is in North America, the Chinese are considerably worst in providing independent and qualified directors.  In the case of Sino-Forest, none of the directors had any experience in the forestry industry or competentence in risk management.

As for Canada, it is obvious that the Ontario Securities Commission is clearly incapable to adequately investigating all the corporate crime that potentially exists under its mandate.  Richard Powers, a business law professor at the University of Toronto, has stated that situations like Sino-Forest will force regulators to evaluate the, "practice of letting companies acquire dormant shell companies to list on the stock exchange."  Until governments get serious about giving teeth and muscle to financial regulators, fraud -whether it emanated domestically or via foreign nationals- will only continue to persist to the detriment of the market as a whole.

Quote of the day: Shiller on economic delusions

Economists who adhere to rational-expectations models of the world will never admit it, but a lot of what happens in markets is driven by pure stupidity – or, rather, inattention, misinformation about fundamentals, and an exaggerated focus on currently circulating stories.

- Robert Shiller, "Debt and Delusion"

Quote of the day: The Price of Deceit

When you build up large stocks of mistrust and ill will, nothing can happen for a very long time. But when something does happen, it’s much quicker and much worse than anybody could have anticipated. The markets might not be punishing the US government at the moment. But the mistrust and ill will is there, believe me. And when it appears, it will appear with a vengeance.

- Felix Salmon, The damage already done by the debt ceiling debate.