it got pretty bad, alex

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so how was your thursday?

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i come in as usual, drop my shit and head downstairs, only to find the always-impeccable queen susan not behind her desk as usual, but in front of a copier instead.

"there's nobody," she explains, as i laugh, grab half the pile outta her arms and head off to another machine.

later, it gets more real as i find myself in document-clerk mode--sorting, collating and indexing shit that i'd never have bothered with in my old life.

and still, i smile.

on saturday, management (and i) will gather with a crew of movers, roll up our collective sleeves and compress the three former floors of our firm down to two.

and you know what? we'll do it all cheerfully--if not with the ebullient, carefree cheer of yesteryear, then at least with the grim cheer of those who have somehow survived the latest round and lived to work another day.

sandy and i are obviously soulmates

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i've never been much of a letterman fan--there's something about the guy raises my hackles.

so i rarely watch him--unless, of course, i happen to be flipping by and he's got animals on--then i'm totally there, because his craven, irrational terror of animals is always fun to watch.

tonight my drunken synapses, casting randomly about for some warm memory from my past to latch onto, found a hit. i immediately went to youtube, searched for "letterman" and "monkey in a dress," and lo and behold, there it was.

if the following clip doesn't reduce you to helpless fits of laughter, then either you and i are not soulmates, or you need another drink.

for those of you who think more government is the answer

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i present for your delectation the following:

in their tireless quest to make life better for their state and thus the world, the california air resources board has announced that it is considering a proposal--the "cool paints initiative," they call it--to ban black and other dark colors for new cars sold here.

see, they figure that, since dark colors soak up more heat, it requires more of our precious natural resources to cool 'em down, and the future of the planet requires their swift action to rectify the situation.

think i'm kidding? no, they're dead serious--you can read about it here.

in the course of my time here on earth, i've come to recognize that there are certain personality types who are compelled by their obsessive nature to meddle, micro-manage and control the details of other peoples' lives--they really can't help it; it's in their dna. you know what i'm talkin about--every family has at least one, and they tend to make everybody's lives miserable.

and if they're ambitious, these people are just the types who tend to go into public service so they can really meddle on a grand scale--you know, protect the public from itself, because god knows somebody has to do it. the conservative ones generally want to regulate your morality, which, annoying as that is, often pales in comparison to what the earnest do-gooder liberal ones set out to achieve.

having lived in california for almost 20 years now, i've had a ringside seat to insanity of this sort for so long that i've almost become numb to it--it takes a humdinger like this one to even move my needle anymore.

scary thing is? this mentality is no longer confined to california--get ready, america.

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update: in response to the uproar this story stirred up, the board quickly backed off its position, claiming its intentions were misconstrued or some such bullshit.

now, if only the public would get as worked up about the important stuff.

why i'm suddenly a matt taibbi fan--and why you should be, too

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frankly, i'd never heard of the guy--i mean, i knew his father from dateline nbc, but i had no idea mike had a son, much less a son who was a well-known journalist [what can i say? i'm behind the curve on lots of shit, living deep in my reactionary cave as i do].

anyway, the other night i was forcing myself with gritted teeth to watch rachel maddow for the second time (you know, because i'd been told i should) when all of a sudden, with the introduction of her first guest, her show became interesting to me for the first time.

seems our boy matt had just written an article for rolling stone on the how and why of the aig collapse, and, shortly after sitting down in the guest chair, made one of the smartest, most concise and to-the-point assessments of the whole mess i'd ever heard.

what he said was this:

If these companies are too big to fail, then they're too big to exist. In a capitalist society, we can't have a situation where all you have to do to stay in business forever is to get so big that when you screw up, the government has no choice but to come in and bail you out.

i've watched the hearings, i've read the articles, i've seen all the posturing and finger-pointing from d.c. to wall street--and nowhere, from no one in any position of power, have i heard it put like that.

and, you know why? because almost no one in our government has even the slightest interest in really fixing things--they just want to paper it over, maintain the status quo and kick it down the road for the next guy.

well, needless to say, i headed off to find matt's article, and it's great--he lays it out better than anyone i've read so far, and in a way that even a non-financial genius can understand.

the money quote:

To fix [the] problem, the government should have slowly liquidated these monster, too-big-to-fail firms and broken them down to smaller, more manageable companies. Instead, federal regulators closed ranks and used an almost completely secret bailout process to double down on the same faulty, merger-happy thinking that got us here in the first place, creating a constellation of megafirms under government control that are even bigger, more unwieldy and more crammed to the gills with systemic risk.

and then he wraps it up and puts a bow on it:

By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future.

because that's the essence of the thing, folks--they want to keep it complicated and opaque; it's easier to rob, steal and fund campaigns with impunity that way.

every american should read this article--and then grab their tar and feathers.

but, of course, they won't.

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since i'm feeling all warm, generous and giving--and just to belabor the point, because when i drink that's what i do--before i head off to bed i'm gonna leave you with one more quote:

It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.

not matt taibbi this time--that one was henry ford, just shy of 100 years ago.

why i hate politicians

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[yet another in a never-ending series]



ok, so lemme make sure i have this right: today, our glorious secretary of state hillary clinton lays back and spreads her legs for mexico by agreeing with its government's contention that the out-of-control drug violence spewing from their country across our border is at least half the fault of the united states, due to (1) our "insatiable" demand for illegal drugs, and--this one i especially love--(2) our inability to stop weapons from being smuggled into mexico.

yeah.

you may or may not recall (but i certainly do) that the last time we heard from hillary on the issue of mexico was back in 2006 when, as senator, she not only fought the border-fence bill but actively pushed for "comprehensive immigration reform" (i.e., open borders) in an attempt to appease those self-same mexican government officials who were screaming back then that all of our bothersome law-enforcement at the border was impinging upon their citizens' god-given rights to enter and leave our country whenever and wherever the fuck they saw fit.

so i guess what hillary and mexico are now telling us is that the bad, bad united states must find a way to stop all the guns and drugs from indiscriminately going back and forth, while allowing the human traffic to continue unmolested. neat trick, huh?

and this story was, naturally, reported upon by the mainstream press without the slightest trace of irony, let alone scrutiny.

you know, i expect this kind of having-it-both-ways bullshit from corrupt, third-world countries that are circling the drain, but surely not from a high-level representative of the united sta--

oh, wait--for a second, i forgot.

and to the banana republic for which it stands...

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[wordy as hell, but read it if you care about what little money you have left]

our descent into third-world-nation status is happening so much faster than even i in my darkest dreams could have imagined that it leaves me stunned and shaking my head in disbelief.

consider the two signal events of this past week:

1. the aig farce

so it turns out that, as a consequence of legislation not only (a) poorly and corruptly conceived; but then (b) deliberated and voted upon in criminal haste, previously-contracted bonuses were paid out to the aig folks with our goddam tax dollars--talk about the wrong thing at precisely the wrong time, huh?

so, what to do when your constituents are screaming for blood?

well, if you're our craven, inept, scared-shitless house of representatives, you figure the best way to make sure the blame doesn't come back to where it actually belongs is to (a) lie about it, (b) point the finger at the effect (i.e., the aig bonus recipients) instead of the cause (i.e., yourself), (c) draft and quickly pass new panic legislation in a lame-ass attempt to undo what was already done, and (d) hope the american people continue on their dumb-streak and buy it.

where do i even start with what's wrong with this picture?

how about with the chilling effect such interventionist legislation will certainly have on any company that has or will accept TARP or TALF money? i mean, if they do well in the future, is the wrathful congress gonna come after 'em later and take their bonuses away? seriously, what's the incentive on the part of the people who actually run these companies to (a) take the goddam money in the first place, and/or (b) stick their head up above water and try to shine when they're only gonna get it cut off? you can't save 'em and penalize 'em at the same time, you assholes.

or, how about the real problem: the fact that what the house just did--imposing an ex post facto tax on the bonuses of specific individuals--is clearly unconstitutional?

see, according to that pesky ol' constitution, there's two things congress isn't allowed to do--actually, before i go any further, lemme just go to the source and quote chapter and verse:

"No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." (Article 1, Sec 9.)

in case you're curious, a "bill of attainder" is basically any law aimed at a specific group of individuals (like the aig bonus recipients, for instance)--this was put in there to prevent the sort of kangaroo-court shit that's happening now; and ex post facto means "after the fact"--as in, congress retroactively taxing at 90% bonuses that were previously granted by self-same congress without the burden of said taxes.

so basically, our august house of representatives is ready to throw the rule of law under the bus in at least two different ways in a craven attempt to save their own individual and collective skins come election time. good god.

two questions remain. in the face of such populist outrage focused at aig, and faced with similar concerns,

1. what will the senate do with this mess?

and, more importantly,

2. what will our approval-craving, constitutional-law-professor president do when the bill ultimately comes across his desk?

buck stops here, barack--you don't get to vote 'present' this time.

2. but fuck all that; here's the thing you really need to pay attention to

ben bernanke, our depression expert and fed-head genius, announced on wednesday that, in an attempt to free up capital so banks can lend more low-interest money, he's gonna buy up not only all the mortgage-backed securities they wanna sell him, but all the unsold treasury bonds the government issues as well.

so basically from now on the government is gonna print all the bonds they wanna sell, and the fed is gonna print up all the money necessary to buy 'em. great.

this brings to mind, what--argentina? weimar republic? zimbabwe? madoff? [insert ponzi scheme of your choice here]?

whatever--upon this pronouncement by bernanke, three things happened dramatically, immediately and simultaneously (and i would know because i was watching both cnbc and my thinkorswim account at the time):

1. the market, in a burst of reflexive euphoria, went from -125 to +125 in about ten minutes

2. the price of oil jumped like a goddam motherfucker; and

3. the price of gold did likewise.

within a day (i.e., once the afterglow wore off and everyone had a chance to think about what this all meant), the market dropped like a rock--but oil and gold stayed way up.

see, the market understands that, when you keep printing more money, inflation is inevitable, so everybody with half a brain is gonna rush to buy inflation hedges like gold and commodities like oil, thus driving up the price of everything. [get ready for that, ok?]

basic economics, right? so why doesn't bernanke realize this? i mean, seriously, does he really think that, even if he frees up money to lend by buying up all that useless shit, any bank in its right mind is gonna commit its precious capital to long-term low-interest loans in the face of the inflation he's suddenly created?

sometimes the conspiracy theorist in me really does think they're doing all this on purpose--and this is definitely one of those times.

two words for anyone who still reads this shit: buy gold