Here's a very well done song I found this afternoon called Bailout Man by Eva Moon & the Lunatics. She's got a nice voice and the lyrics are entertaining. Her personal website is here.
He's still incredibly out of touch with the American people. Listen early on as he says that $500k in salary is ok. That he'll make do. Ken, some advice, next time you open your pie hole: remember that the average taxpayer earns less than $40k in this country and most work just as hard as you. Plus none of them has billed taxpayers for $45 billion nor requested a $120 billion guarantee on shit assets, nor did any of them give Merrill $15 billion to spend on bonuses. You are unique in your achievements.
And yet you still have a job (seriously wtf?), for which we are paying you $500k. I just contemplated that sentence. Why are you being paid at all for 2009? You should have been shit-canned months ago for driving BAC into the ground with the 2 most ill-conceived bank purchases of the last decade.
After the jump is the full interview with CNBC's Maria Bartiromo from this afternoon.
Updated on Feb 5, 2009 at 11:02 PM by
DailyBail
Updated on Feb 6, 2009 at 4:01 PM by
DailyBail
It's been 18 weeks since taxpayers rescued AIG to save Goldman Sachs, a few large hedge funds and several European banks, who all utilized the unhedged luddites of AIG to protect their own weakening portfolios. In late 2007 and early 2008 the brainiacs at Goldman hedged their porfolio of shit assets with a shit insurer, because well, they're Goldman Sachs, Lord of Idiots. Turns out Euro banks had been hedging their exposure to the mortgage pile on their books for years as a means to skirt regulations on capital ratios. Rule Bending Banking Bastards 101.
The problem was AIG didn't hedge their own exposure. They couldn't. They were the 'safe' place to buy protection. And the shitkeepers in control of AIG allowed their exposure to other people's waste to grow so large that there was no one capable of handling a hedge that size.
I recall a press release (can't find it now) from AIG's cfo in February of 2008 whining noticably about mark-to-market requirements being unfair. It was an obvious tell. It was the tell of early 2008. Such a public cry about accounting could only mean they were swimming in a brown pool. Turns out it was not a pool.
So far AIG has cost your kids $150 billion. Yes, $150 billion, go ahead and let it sink in. And the number will likely be closer to $200 billion the next time we're forced to mention them. They're in the news again this morning, with a piece in the WSJ about something extra-Mensa they were doing called '10 Cubed'. Please take a moment to consider just how stupid you have to be to lose $150 billion selling insurance on other people's shit. Thank you for that collective moment.
Inside I have more photo-shopped AIG photos with commentary. And since we taxpayers are the winners in the AIG Shit Sweepstakes, I've decided to do an AIG at the Outhouse links edition. Inside I am gathering articles on the entire mess. I've read way too many on AIG and I will deliver the 15 best links out there, both background and from today.
I will have much more meat to this post later. But for now enjoy this video from 60 Minutes about David Walker and the work he and Pete are doing to raise awareness of our looming fiscal crisis. Repeat after me. $32 Trillion. $32 Trillion. $32 Trillion. We have an unfunded medicare liability of $32 Triilion bucks. The unfunded social security liability, though a problem, is much smaller at $6 Trillion.
Inside are 2 more excellent video clips from Walker and Peterson, a man who has dedicated his entire net worth (over $1 billion) to waking up America. A link to their foundation is at the top of our page.
Thursday's links are now available: http://bit.ly/Q9Se
Wednesday's 40 stories with embedded commentary are here: http://bit.ly/XHOB
Updated on Feb 4, 2009 at 7:17 AM by
DailyBail
The maxim reads that if you're a financial journalist, chances are you will never do anything in your entire career that is meaningful to people. Painful to hear, but true. Occasionally you can have a positive impact on someone or some issue, but really, you're just covering news that other people make.
However the current crisis has altered the dynamic. The Daily Bail launched 3 weeks ago and we exist to fight the immoral transfer of trillions in debt from private banks onto the backs of future generations. If not stopped there will be $10 trillion of debt created by our government in the next five years, and most of it given to the banks. That amount is equal to our entire national debt for our first 232 years as a nation.
We're here to keep tabs on the heist. To provide an official daily record of the generational pillaging. The site is still raw and nobody knows us yet. Yet almost 100,000 of you have stumbled your way here in our first 18 days, via word of mouth, some support from bloggers and the calm words of one concerned taxpayer. Though we're grateful for the traffic we realize it's going to take millions of angry, Congress-dialing taxpayers to stop this well planned heist.
We're keeping the site free of advertising, and in turn please click on our feed or bookmark us. Telling a friend or 5 wouldn't hurt either. For those unfamiliar with feeds: click the large orange guy at the top right of any page. It's self explanantory once you click. It's completely free and there's NO sign-up of any sort. It's just a simple way of seeing our content. Check it out. Orange guy is hungry.
A special message to young people finding us through Twitter. This is Your Revolution and you need to help lead it. With respect, you need to wake the f up and understand that it is primarily your cash headed out the door and straight to the failed banks. And not to rub salt, but they just paid themselves over $18 billion in collective bonuses for their outstanding work in 2008, with your money.
We have a program building behind the scenes for letting Washington know what you think. But we have to achieve critical mass first. It's going to demand that a million of you, from teenagers to seniors call Congress and The White House on one day. It's one of the things we have in the works and we'll be announcing details soon in collaboration with partners.
Inside there are more photos of Iwo Jima plus several relevant links including Wednesday's Squirel with close to 40 stories and growing.
This 2 minute trailer is chilling. I.O.U.S.A. was a Sundance Official Selection in 2008. It premiered last August. Inside I have an abridged 30 minute version of the full length film. Both must be watched.
There is little company specific news this morning. It's all about the stimulus and the bad bank. Two buddies that aren't getting much respect out there. I couldn't find a single positive piece either mainstream or blog that was happy about the stimulus or the bad bank idea.
We have Nobel winner Joseph Stiglitz saying 'hell no, absolutely not' to the bad bank. He's now a site superstar along with David Walker and Peter G. Peterson. We also have Krugamn and his gang unhappy because there isn't going to be enough spending from their standpoint.
There are 45 links inside this morning. It's a Weekend Economic Blog Round Up. The 45 best bailout and economic stories in one link.
It will all make sense after the jump.
We had no idea there were so many great bailout songs out there. Big hat tip to CR for the link.
And in case you missed it earlier in the week, make sure to see this one by MC Bailout.
Four more outstanding bailout songs after the jump.
There are three more after the jump.
Check this out. Play along with Paulson and Bernanke as you try to prevent global economic collapse.
Beware of angry citizens with pitchforks!
Be sure to use your lifeline "...ask a Greenspan".
Craig is one of us.
Listen in and see just how much he hates the bank bailouts. Apparently he doesn't like getting ripped off by bankers either. Hmm. Maybe this anger is finally growing. Video after the jump.
Without comment on his reliability, I present the following CNBC Video from Charles Gasparino. We all know his track record with breaking stories. Take a rip inside and see the CNBC Video. If true it is outstanding news.
Plus we have some analysis from Carney at Clusterstock inside.
Same problem as always: how much do we taxpayers bid for these assets. And if we bid too little then the whole plan never happens. Good.
I will offer my solution again:
Sieze the banks. Put them into government receivership. Then look at the assets honestly for the first time. Write them down dramatically. All of them. Force the BONHOLDERS to take the hit(not the taxpayers). Wipe theses bondholders out.
Then re-capitalize with taxpayer dollars. We will invest only after the existing BONDHOLDERS have been wiped out.
Read this piece by fund Manager Whitney Tilson for a much longer version of my summary above.
Also see this piece by University of Chicago professor Luigi Zingales for a slight variation of my plan. Including another alternative.
Fianlly, see this summary of Dr. Zingales piece here by Blodget at Clusterstock.
This is Sheila Bair and she is not shy about her ambitions. As the outspoken head of the FDIC, she has become the most powerful banking regulator in Washington, and she wants to be your bad bank ceo. Bloomberg and others are reporting that she is likely to emerge from the regulatory dungheap as the victor in the shit sweepstakes.
Burdening taxpayers and their children with $5 trillion of bad assets is both stupid and immoral. And perhaps illegal. But Obama and Geithner's determination means its inevitable. One request: be the buyer of last resort and do not bid above market for a single securitized slug.
Inside we'll do a round-up on Bair including some background pieces. Also we'll take a look at more reaction to the stimulus. Our intial knee jerk was right, it's a taxpayer boondoggle that does little but add to our children's debt. See the best analysis here.
An experiment this morning, I have 3 squirrels after the jump all on bailout news. These are link aggregators that combine multiple URLs into just one link. Here. Click it and it will do something very nifty.
The Oracle speaks. Star banking analyst, Meredith Whitney has finally broken her silence on the good bank/bad bank proposal that's currently being floated as the administration's response to the banking crisis. She is the most important banking analyst on the Street and deservedly so. It turns out that Ms. Whitney is none too amused with the idea of burdening taxpayers with this pile of toxicity, and she states bluntly that it will NOT work. Get her view in detail from 4 sources including the original Oppenheimer report pdf. after the jump.
There's also word this afternoon that New York AG Andrew Cuomo is looking into clawing back the $15 billion of your money that Merrill used for bonuses just last week. There are 22 afternoon links after the jump.