naked capitalism

attempter says:

I read the cat article earlier, and it made me laugh. I'm very familiar with that whiny purr.

Although I don't find it annoying the way the article does, but rather comical.

RTD says:

Re: CIT and Goldman, this Bloomberg article NAILS it:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a9IV.uJ0d8Zk

First paragraph:

"Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which provided a $3 billion credit facility to CIT Group Inc. more than a year ago, said today that it has offset any exposure to the company with collateral and hedges."

Last paragraph:

"Goldman Sachs’s comments on its vulnerability to CIT Group echo comments made last year about exposure to American International Group Inc., the New York-based insurer that was bailed out by the Federal Reserve. Goldman Sachs, which also said it had no material exposure to AIG because of collateral and hedges, got $12.9 billion from the firm between the government rescue of the insurer in September and the end of 2008."

Spot on!

We are ultimately going to bail out CIT. Not because of concern (legitimate) over the impact a failed CIT will have on small businesses, but because Goldman will always be protected regardless of the political regime in power or the cost to the taxpayer.

Richard Kline says:

Regarding Goldman Sachs' upper echelon, my personal position, aside from complete refulsion, is, "Let them steal but just keep the film rolling." They remind me of the Prussian Junkers in 1913, striding with well-deserved confidence straight toward the obsolesence and/or liquidation of their way of life. Just keep the film rolling.

Richard Kline says:

I agree with much of what Marshall Auerback has written, and find interesting many points there of which I'm insufficiently convinced. Regretably rather than highlight those points—check him out—I'll mention one issue where I disagree. He makes an interesting argument regarding the relationship of tax revenue to currency or 'currency' issue in a fiat regime: none. That is not the case. The relationship betweent he medium for exchange and any underlying source of value is a fuzzy one; they are loosely coupled rather than rigidly so. However, with no underlying source of value either confidence in the viability and stability fo the medium collapses, the issuance of the medium loses any engagement with demand, or both. (See Zimbabwe, 2009). Their is a coupling; the key is how the relationship is managed. Furthermore, the context in which a currency is issued matters a great deal. Big issuers get different treatment than small issuers for instance. Issuers when employment is stable are treated differently than when employment is unstable. It's a complex relationship, with loose-coupling and a variable degree of context-dependence, so it's a mistake to consider 'currency' issue as, in effect, context-independent.

California issuing 'currency' when it doesn't have real values flowing in comensurable to that will create an unstable medium of exchange which destroys institutions that become clogged with it. Those Thirteen colonies issuing their own money were desperately impoverished; their currency was disliked by their own citizenry; their currency was often shunned in neighboring jurisdictions. Issuing a _stable_ currency is the key, and for that one needs a credible coupling to a source of real value. California's warrants have an incredible coupling, and when last seen were being dishonored by much of the banking system.

And following a point of agreement with Auerback, as soon as the idjits in Washington realize that they just put California in the sovereing currency business, they'll reverse themselves on the hurry-up and issue cease and desist. Unless they really go long dumb.

kjmclark says:

There were quite a few announcements on swine flu yesterday:
- Vaccine production is going poorly; yield of virus is only 25%-50% of the normal yield for seasonal flu.

- Therefore unlikely to be able to produce vaccines in the quantity/timeframe called for.

- Animal studies find that the virus has an unusual ability to directly infect the lungs, instead of the more common upper respiratory tract.

- Blood samples from 1918 flu survivors show that they have positive reactions, indicating this flu virus is closely related to the 1918 bug.

Recall that the 1918 flu is considered one of the worst pandemics in human history. 40-100 million of the then 1.8 billion people in the world died. That flu was considered a mild illness until late summer. By the middle of the next summer it had largely run its course, so most of the deaths were in one northern-hemisphere winter.

As John Barry puts it in "The Great Influenza", "One cannot know with certainty, but if the upper estimate of the death toll is true as many as 8 to 10 percent of all young adults then living may have been killed by the virus.

"And they died with extraordinary ferocity and speed. Although the influenza pandemic stretched over two years, perhaps two-thirds of the deaths occurred in a period of twenty-four weeks, and more than half of those deaths occurred in even less time, from mid-September to early December 1918. Influenza killed more people in a year than the Black Death of the Middle Ages killed in a century; it killed more people in twenty-four weeks than AIDS has killed in twenty-four years."

Ryan says:

Compare Japan with US on the following page.

I'm not going to. You know why? Because your country has been sucking off our country's tit for the past 50 years. I'm a military brat, I know plenty of people from Okinawa and I know how your country thanks them. If you think we're so bad, than when China comes to attack and annex you don't come ask for our help, enjoy becoming a vassal state to the Chinese Communist Party.

BTW, what are you expecting from Chinese communist party's brainwashing of its own people?

It's not just the Chinese. The Chinese hate you, the Taiwanese, the Koreans, the Filipinos, the various Southeast Asian states. I'm reading a grand book on the war right now, The Second World War by John Keegan, the British royal military academy historian and is as good a source as you'll find on the subject, and everything you stated was absolute insane rhetoric on your part. If you honestly believe that crap, please by all means go say it in a public forum and post your name to it.

http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=8414&IBLOCK_ID=35

And if we rotate the globe, voila!: the Asian theatre also turns out to be a classic battle of fascism vs…more fascism. The Imperial Japanese military caste was beyond fascist. Seriously, they were so hardcore that it was taboo even to suggest the possibility of anything going wrong with the grand plan for total victory, which is why nobody dared to develop anything resembling a strategic plan. That was a good way to get yourself hacked into Kobe beef. The Japanese brass responded like Travis Bickle to questions like that: "You talkin' to us? You askin' us that question? Cuz we don't see any other Japanese brass around here…" Cut to: arterial sprays where the insolent questioner used to be.

And in the opposite corner: Chiang Kai Shek, the Asian Churchill: a totally incompetent military leader and lifelong fascist who saw how the wind was blowing and repackaged himself as a crusader for democracy in order to get aid from the gullible Americans. Chiang only valued one thing: obedience. And he only trusted one guy: himself. That's why he personally held 82 official positions in China, including head of all the armed services. He picked his generals for their incompetence, because he suspected that talented men might turn against him. Any sign of independent thinking, never mind criticism, meant the chop, and I mean that literally. Chiang even had himself declared the head of the Chinese Boy Scouts, that breeding ground of coups. That was the Good Guy of the Asian theatre. Oh wait, I'm forgetting Mao, another champion of human rights.