Budget Hypocrisy: How Can You Tell When Robert Gibbs Is Lying?

His lips are moving. 

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is a condescending troll.  I leave the room when he breaks into his soft voice.  Jennifer Loven from the Associated Press and ABC's Jake Tapper question Gibbs why the Obama administration was grandstanding about saving $100 million in his proposed budget when Gibbs downplayed the significance of $8 billion in earmarks less than a month ago.

This is some beautiful stuff.  Can't really explain the joy I get from watching Gibbs get slapped around.

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Bailout Justice: Will Ken Lewis Survive As CEO Of Bank Of America (CNBC Video)

Robert Reich tees off on Lewis and oligarchic, chrony capitalism.  Bravo.

4 clips are below the fold, 3 where Lewis gets reamed by various partygoers and 1 clip with Maria from Monday where he attempts to ream you..

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Bailout Comedy: Treasury Department Issues Emergency Recall Of All US Dollars (Brilliant Video From The Onion)

Treasury Department Issues Emergency Recall Of All US Dollars.

A quick dose of genius financial satire from the Onion (1:44).

"The die poisoning causes your internal organs to rot from within until you puke up your guts and die. I said no questions. There really is no time to think about this. Just listen to me and send in your money."

See also:

Is It Time to Close the National Money Hole (Onion Video)

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A Night With The Bears: Ian Gordon, Meredith Whitney And Nouriel Roubini With Eric Sprott (Video)

A Night With The Bears at Toronto's Elgin Theatre.  Hosted by Sprott Asset Management, the event put four of the world's most pessimistic market watchers — Eric Sprott, Meredith Whitney of Meredith Whitney Advisory Group, Dr. Nouriel Roubini of New York University and Ian Gordon, author of The Long Wave Analyst newsletters — in the same room to share their views on the economy and the markets.

Clips are below the fold.

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Protesters At Chicago Tea Party Confront CNN Reporter (Must See Video)

Updated on Apr 20, 2009 at 2:22 PM by DailyBail

The link has been FIXED.

Hat tip to James for posting this clip in comments.  I'll have more on this video in the morning, but for now just watch it. It's a series of off-camera confrontations a CNN reporter was having with the crowd at the Chicago Tea Party.

Apparently, the crowd grew angry with the reporter because she was selecting wacko protestors to interview in order to make the entire rally look pitiful. 

It gets very interesting at the 1:45 mark.

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Bailout Comedy The Daily Show: Jon Stewart Wonders About The Goldman Sachs Connection To Washington

In the latest edition of 'Clusterf**k to the Poorhouse', Jon starts to put the pieces together: Henry Paulson, Ed Liddy (CEO of AIG) and Robert Rubin (former CEO of Goldman).  The only salient rub he didn't mention was the inappropriate inclusion of Lloyd Blankfein at the Paulson meeting last Fall where AIG's fate was decided.

Also, and not coincidentally, his writers stole my puppy gag about how to make the financial crisis seem more palatable. I know people from the Daily Show read my stuff because I see their IP addresses in my logs.  Feel free to use what you want, just have me on the show, damnit.

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Stiglitz Slams Geithner, Summers, Obama and Goldman Sachs

Considering what we do here, is there really a need to explain the anger people feel about using borrowed money to bail out failed, private banks for their extreme leverage and risk, while their executives and employees made hundreds of billions in bonuses over the last decade.

Count me in the group that is extremely disappointed with President Obama for his continuation of the Bush-Paulson bailout doctrine. Continued capital injections while we whistle by the graveyard is just another way of saying 'Hello, Tokyo!" The Geithner PPIP is a taxpayer-leveraged give-away to the least deserving cretins since Enron was still breathing.

The time has long since passed for half-assed measures. The adult discussions need to begin. Bank shareholders and taxpayers have been hurt. Bank bondholders are still whole. Bill Gross is kicking our ass. Wall Street owns Washington.  George Carlin said it in his unique way.  Dylan Ratigan might have been fired over it.  Simon Johnson won't stop writing about it.  Glenn Greenwald proved it with links, and Matt Taibbi had a few thoughts as well.  But Geithner, Summers and Obama won't even acknowledge it.

Not to be outdone, Nobel laureate Dr. Joseph Stiglitz chimed in Friday with another round of truth for the disconnected troika.

The videos after the jump are as must see as it gets. Stiglitz nails it.

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Does The Devil Reside at 85 Broad Street: GoldmanSachs666.com Is Making Progress

Most of you know the story already.  Mike Morgan started a little blog.  Lloyd Blankfein was wearing a man-thong and felt especially irascible.  He instructed Goldman's lawyers to sue.  Mike Morgan's blog got a wee bit of attention.

It appears he's not wasting the traffic.  Check it out if you haven't already.

See also:

Maxine Waters Asks The Goldman Question

Goldman Examined

Dylan Ratigan on Hank Paulson

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The Daily Show Goes Tea-Bagging: Jon Stewart On The Tea Parties

Purely a guess on my part, but I doubt these two protesters are Republicans.  I have never heard of FairTax.org so if I'm wrong, feel free to tar and feather me in comments.

More on the tea party protests from Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. Cody Willard gets appropriately skewered as does everyone else. It's all in good fun. Two videos after the jump.

And pay no attention to the guy screaming "Obama's a fascist" while wearing a UVa lacrosse t-shirt. We think it's Jerry Falwell's son just trying to run a bit of subterfuge.

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More Reason Not To Fear The PPIP: Jamie Dimon Talks Some Shit

This one could go either way.  Either he's bluffing the market to make eventual sales into the PPIP easier, or the mark-to-market accounting adjustments changed the entire game, as I wrote last week.  Joe Weisenthal at Clusterstock listened to the JPMorgan conference call early this morning and reported the following nugget.

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Thoughts On A $2 Trillion Annual Deficit And Collective Tea-Bagging

Until now I have avoided comment on the hundreds of tea parties held nationwide yesterday.  I haven't missed the fact that certain pundits are having a field day with the tea-bagging comedy.  I've enjoyed the laughs. Tea-bagging, though inherently juvenile, is still funny.  But jokes aside it's time to examine the movement and yesterday's events.

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TARP Inspector Neil Barofsky Smells Bank Fraud

Treasury Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky wants to know if banks committed fraud in order to qualify for TARP.  “I hope we don’t find a single bank that’s cooked their books to try to get money but I don’t think that’s going to be the case,” said Mr Barofsky.

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Insomnia Cure: Listen To Larry Summers Talk About The Economy

Summers is a nasal drone. How he became a debate champion at MIT is beyond comprehension. Wall Street Larry was on with Maria Bartiromo this afternoon. We have both CNBC clips after the jump.

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Eliot Spitzer Wants Back In the Game And Deserves A Second Chance

I consider this a postitive development. Though tonight he is repudiating the story first reported in the Page Six column of the New York Post, Spitzer's denial is to be expected either way. It's too early to declare for the 2010 race, his true intent notwithstanding,

Page Six reports that former New York governor Eliot Spitzer would like to be Attorney General of NY, a position he held for two terms before moving on to the Governor's mansion. Let me be one of the few so far to support former Governor Spitzer in his campaign trial balloon. Here's why.

Prostitution should probably be legal and regulated.  His crime was against his wife and family and not the people of New York.  He has already paid the substantial price of losing his job as well as the residual social embarrassment.

No one can deny that he gets a special kick from indicting financial giants. Talk to Hank Greenberg, longtime CEO of AIG as well as Henry Blodget. I think Frank Quattrone and Mary Meeker also might have a few thoughts on Eliot. Cuomo is the only prosecutor in the country doing anything substantial in terms of indictments of financial charlatans.  He is exactly what we need to follow Cuomo.

His arrest was the result of a Karl Rove persecution over a charge Spitzer made aginst the Bush White House related to unfair lending practices by large banks.

Let us know if you would like to see Spizer back as Attorny General handing out indictments like candy to folks such as Joseph Cassano, Hank Paulson (a man can dream), Richard Fuld and Bob Lewis of AIG.

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