naked capitalism

Richard Kline says:

Svelte Citzen of the World: “What I want to know is, Where’s MY Bailout? Foraging has been all downhill since the Pre-pottery Neolithic. Can’t a working mother catch a break, here?”

john says:

I saw a report on local TV news that blood banks buying blood were booming. Some were up to 800 donors a week.

Anonymous says:

Typically awful article by Gretchen Morgenstern. Lots of finger-wagging and not a second spent trying to understand why the banks might be acting this way.

lineup32 says:

Gretchen is a good reflection of the general public and probably most of Congress. The horror of the banking industry actually evaluating risk in its lending, what will happen to our consumer driven GDP without cheap,fast available credit!
Maybe someday they will catch on to the fact that most of the profits and growth from consumer side corporate profits was based on leveraged credit creation.

doc holiday says:

This is a visual metaphor that uses a squirrel to represent the act of piracy. This land-based model is a reference to training exercises associated with terrorist organization and the more recent aerobic activities connecting Somalian pirates to mobile oil reserves.

As such, this metaphor strongly hints at the mobility of pirates who bring the fight to where they want to be, versus the authorities taking the fight to the pirates.

The real essence of this metaphor is thus, that if society is to be free, if were are to live in a time of justice and have a better future, then authority has to take the good fight to where injustice is, e.g, our banking system which is run by Somalian pirates, is a very liquid form of terrorism which is not regulated or controlled, because our government has made the game of banking into a network of chaos which is collapsing under its own weight. Too many pirates have wrecked the kitchen and now Rome is burning.

This squirrel pirate represents a CEO raiding the cookie jar (yet again) only this time, the cookie jar has become a direct conduit of TARP tax payer revenues. The pirate doesn't even need to go out on hit and run attacks to steal or hint at ransom requests — because the loot is now being delivered as a direct deposit to the pirates Cayman bank accounts — which of course, are tax free and off the books.

Furthermore, this expansion of this metaphor between pirates, squirrels and CEOs can be built upon by adding in metaphorical dog associations (it's that friggn bad today):

Chocolate contains theobromine. A naturally occurring stimulant found in the cocoa bean, theobromine increases urination and affects the central nervous system as well as heart muscle. While amounts vary by type of chocolate, it's the theobromine that is poisonous to dogs.

If a 50-pound dog eats a teaspoonful of milk chocolate, it's not going to cause serious problems. However, if that same dog gorges himself on a two-layer chocolate cake, his stomach will feel more than upset and soon it's likely he'll be vomiting or experiencing diarrhea.

> So, here we are now with sweet thoughts of Somalian CEOs gorging themselves (to death) on compensation and XMAS bonuses, while the authorities have turned a blind and patched-over eye to the corruption and terrorism caused by these pirates. Meanwhile, society sits back with the vague notion thinking the cops are protecting us all from the nasty crooks — but, what an absurd notion, to not realize that the cops are on the take getting drunk with the pirates and playing an active part in the collusion that brought us all to the point of systemic collapse.

Maybe society should let these dogs and pirates gorge themselves until a point where they get either so fat or sick that they can't find the strength to get the lid off the cookie jar, and then after they stagger around in a mindless dizzy spell, maybe these rodents will fall off the ledge and cease to exist!

The sad reality is though, society is collectively impotent and unable to snap out of being in a state of denial, because the vast majority of people are searching for the means to join the pirate clubs and to live the good life, a life filled with riches beyond imagination.

Now, wash your filthy hands you fuc-ing pirates… and run the Jolly Roger up the pole for Obama …

Anonymous says:

I think the following link about 40k people picking their own food in Colorado is more telling. Hope it was nice weather that got the people out to the farm to pick leftover harvest.

Thousands pick up free vegetables on Colo. farm
Sunday, November 23, 2008

PLATTEVILLE, Colo. — A farm couple got a huge surprise when they opened their fields to anyone who wanted to pick up free vegetables left over after the harvest _ 40,000 people showed up.

Joe and Chris Miller’s fields were picked so clean Saturday that a second day of gleaning _ the ancient practice of picking up leftover food in farm fields _ was canceled Sunday.

“Overwhelmed is putting it mildly,” Chris Miller said. “People obviously need food.”

http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2008Nov23/0,4670,FoodGiveaway,00.html

plugra

Anonymous says:

River said: “According to Mises in order to understand the business cycle one must understand what the biz cycle does to Main St, the real economy. The Fed starts the party by lowering interest rates. Cheap money attracts entrepreneurs who promptly make bad investments with the cheap money. Then the Fed ends the party, the hammer slams down, interest rates are raised. Main St entrepreneurs are big losers during the bust. Wall St are the big winners, in fact, the game is rigged so that Wall St cannot lose. Wall St makes money in the boom, and during the bust they are bailed out by us, the taxpayers.”
Here’s an alternative/additional explanation: http://prorev.com/moneyreform.htm .