Thursday Links (22 Articles, August 20, 2009)

Majority Of Americans Now See War In Afghanistan Not Worth Fighting

America's Japanese Banks

Citigroup's Asset Guarantees To Be Audited By Neil Barofsky SIG TARP

FASB Has Teeth, Watch Out

Bacchus: Social Security To Go Broke In A Few Years

Public Workers Hefty Pensions Strain Budgets

More Detail On JPMorgan's Bailout Of California IOUs

Colonial Bank Marks A New Low For Loans

NYSE Responds On HF Trading

Coming Soon: Lehman Brothers, The Movie

A Quick Death For Cash For Clunkers

Rex Rice For Congress (Anti-Bailout Candidate)

You're The CDC: Play The Swine Flu Video Game (excellent timewaster)

Stop Deficit Spending

We Broke The Bank

Gm Cancels Buick SUV 1 Week After Announcing It

Carly Fiorina Considers California Senate Run Against Boxer

Petition For A Free And Independent Texas (voters growing restless)

Crime Spotting: Crime Has Never Looked So Good

Newspaper Industry Ad Revenue At 1965 Levels

Will Microsoft Be Able To Continue Selling Word?

Huffington Post: Tuesday's Late Night Comedy Round-Up

Wednesday's Links (28 Articles)

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The Natives Are Growing Restless: Irate Grandmother Berates Republican Congressman For Deficit Spending And Bailout Vote (Video)

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Peter Schiff Takes On Warren Buffett's Debt Machine

Schiff responded quickly to Buffett's NYT editorial with a broadside launched on FBN.  Schiff's thesis is the same as ours: only after advocating wasteful, borrowed stimulus spending has Buffett gotten religion on debt and deficit issues.  Excellent short discussion.

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Max Keiser Sleeps For An Hour And Then Immediately Returns To Attacking Goldman Sachs (Video)

Does this guy sleep?  Never seems to take a break.  This is medium Max.  Not completely over the top.  Targets include Goldman Sachs, the banking oligarchy, Wall Street, Obama, Bernanke and the Federal Reserve.  Excellent short clip runs about 4 minutes.  As usual with Max its part comedy part straight truth.  He makes me laugh therefore he gets posted a lot.

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Warren Buffett Warns: We're Going To Be Crushed By A Mountain Of Debt (NYT Editorial On Federal Deficits & Spending Gone Wild)

Well it's about time Buffett came around.  Been making the case repeatedly and painfully.  Since the day we launched.  The debt and deficits are going to kill Obama.  A $2 trillion deficit this year is 4x(Bush).  That's a big freaking number.  Warren Buffett finally got on board the sanity train with his editorial in this morning's New York Times 'The Greenback Effect'.  The shit stat of the whole piece is that we are spending 185% of what we take in this fiscal year.

Here are a few thoughts from the Oracle (yet none of this is new information):

• "To understand this threat, we need to look at where we stand historically.  If we leave aside the war-impacted years of 1942 to 1946, the largest annual deficit the United States has incurred since 1920 was 6 percent of gross domestic product.  This fiscal year, though, the deficit will rise to about 13 percent of G.D.P., more than twice the non-wartime record.  In dollars, that equates to a staggering $1.8 trillion.  Fiscally, we are in uncharted territory."

• "An increase in federal debt can be financed in three ways: borrowing from foreigners, borrowing from our own citizens or, through a roundabout process, printing money."

• "Then take the second element of the scenario — borrowing from our own citizens.  Assume that Americans save $500 billion, far above what they’ve saved recently but perhaps consistent with the changing national mood.  Finally, assume that these citizens opt to put all their savings into United States Treasuries (partly through intermediaries like banks)."

• "Even with these heroic assumptions, the Treasury will be obliged to find another $900 billion to finance the remainder of the $1.8 trillion of debt it is issuing.  Washington’s printing presses will need to work overtime."

Henry Blodgett and Aaron Task discuss the Buffett editorial.

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Links (28 Articles: August 19, 2009)

Warren Buffett's NYT Op-Ed On The Debt Crisis

JP Morgan To Bail Out California's IOUs

Bob Novak's Public Service: Exposing The Corrupted

Mark Cuban: Thoughts On The Economy

In Appraisal Shift, Lenders Gain Control

Interview With Gerald Celente

Deflation Might Be Nice

Pay Czar To Scrutinize New AIG CEO Pay Package

Lehman Bankruptcy Fees Keep Climbing

LA Real Estate: Tales From The Deep

81% Of Americans Deluded About Their Home's Value

Options Backdating Conviction Of Brocade CEO Greg Reyes Overturned

Paulson Rewrites History Before Congress

Another Triumph For American Journalism

The Financial Crisis: An Inside View (from a Treasury official under Paulson)

Reluctant Shoppers Hold Back Recovery

The Highest P/E Ratio Ever

Google Hires Mortgage Analyst (why?)

Hello Deflation!

Bailout: The Board Game

Only 25% Of High Schoolers Should Be Attending College

What They Brought To The Table

New Study: Does Exercise Reduce Your Cancer Risk?

For Senior Athletes, Drug Questions Emerge

Brain Is A Co-Conspirator In Vicious Stress Loop

Mental Stress Training Is Planned For U.S. Soldiers

Father And Son Across 1,000 Finish Lines

Monday Links (30 Articles)

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Healthcare Reform Costs & Savings (For Visual Learners)

I try to stay above the fray in the health care reform discussion because my brain can't break from it's obsessive-compulsive pattern of constant re-firing on bailouts, and so I just haven't had the time to learn the issues well enough to open my mouth.  But I will still offer 3 basic thoughts on healthcare:

• The government runs Veterans healthcare and it's a freaking disgrace.

• We need to stop spending so much in the final months of a patient's care.

• It is economically inefficient and damaging to tie healthcare insurance to employment.

I do understand national debt and deficit issues far too easily however, and so videos like this one always strike a chord.  It's another great visual clip from 10000 Pennies.

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Fed Extends Emergency TALF Program Until Mid 2010

Updated on Aug 19, 2009 at 2:38 AM by DailyBail

No real surprise here.  Bernanke can't pull the punch bowl. 

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Jon Stewart To Lou Dobbs: Do You Even Watch CNN? (Obama Birth Certificate Controversy Finally Laid To Rest)

I haven't paid any attention to this issue because I assumed it was complete bullshite.  Now I'm sure.  Birthers, have a gander at this.  Kitty Pilgrim has the proof starting at the 3:40 mark.  The comedy is worth watching from the beginning.

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Financial Comedy Collection

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Dr. Rand Paul Officially Declares For a Kentucky Senate Run And The 2012 Presidential Race

He's Ron Paul's son.  Officially Randall Paul, born in 1963, eye-surgeon from Bowling Green, Kentucky.  If the Republicans have nary a brain cell left they will fast-track Dr. Paul straight to the 2012 Presidential ticket.

This is the guy.  Hell I'm inspired to drop the Daily Bail and go to work for him now. This is an intelligent candidate.  Sarah Palin, step aside.  Career politicians are the problem.  Future President of the United States, Dr. Rand Paul understands. 

Remember in '92 Clinton campaign catchphrase was "it's the economy, stupid."  Mark my words, in 2012, it'll be "it's the debt, stupid."  Book it, Dano.

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Ratigan & Nassim Taleb On The Idiocy Of Cash For Clunkers And Generational Theft

As usual with Dylan Ratigan, the cash for clunkers debate evolves quickly into an outstanding discussion of the banks, generational theft, too big to fail, financial regulation and the Wall Street bailouts.  Larry Summers is nicely flailed along with Geithner and Bernanke.  Taleb criticizes Obama specifically and forcefully, and admits publicly to his own Libertarian leanings.

The central question is how do we create programs that help the economy without rewarding bad behavior.  In a familiar refrain, Taleb counters that the core economic problem is too much debt, and absolutely nothing has happened to ameliorate the problem.  Bravo.

Farzad correctly points out that the problem is ultimately political.  Finally.  As I've been screaming about since the day of our launch, both parties are too concerned with the next election to make the right choices about the economy and our 3-decade build-up of debt. 

This is an outstanding discussion that I've been saving since its broadcast 10 days ago.  If you're pressed for time, begin watching at the 3-minute mark.  Endeavor to see this one.

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Having Successfully Blocked Out Last Year's Massive Predictive Failure, Abby Joseph Cohen Says "The Recession Has Ended! Expect 2% Growth For 2010"

If you've been watching markets for the last 2 decades, you've seen 2 women rise to the level of Wall Street guru (though perhaps in both cases they were partly self-anointed and partly CNBC hoisted).  They are Elaine Garzarelli and Abby Joseph Cohen of Goldman Sachs.

Before you get excited by her extremely positive outlook, be aware that she's a perma-bull who has completely whiffed in her predictions for several years running.  In '08 she called for a sharp rise in the S&P 500 to a 2008 year end-level of 1675.  The index finished the year below 1000.  Ouch.  And that was on top of a massive failure of prognostication in 2007. 

She's essentially useless and is additionally guilty of being personally annoying.  I can't pinpoint it, but I think it's the slow and methodical delivery based so obviously on talking points that causes me to throw things at my television whenever she appears.  Oh yeah, and there's the fact that she foresaw none of the housing-financial crisis.  She apparently lives in a Goldman air-chamber and has not been exposed to reality for nearly a decade.

Her '08 call was a serious miss.  It should have wrecked her career and reputation as a financial pundit, but the tools who run CNBC and Bloomberg would never allow actual performance to get in the way of ratings.  So she appeared again today on Bloomberg to blow more smoke up your...

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WalStreetPro2 Dissects The Latest Economic Numbers & Tells The Truth About The 1-Party System

Kevin is a reader of John William's Shadow Stats apparently.  About 2 minutes in, he answers the question we are asked constantly either in comments or by email: why weren't you complaining about Bush's bailout policies or his deficit spending?...why are you picking on Obama?

And for the record, I have been complaining about deficit spending and the debt build-up for 2 decades.  I have criticized every President and every Congress since Reagan.

However, Obama fans should be aware that his deficits over his 4-year term will be quadruple the size of Bush's deficits.  And yes I understand that the economy is in worse shape and tax receipts are down sharply, but 4X(Bush) is a big freaking number.  Capisce.

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WalStreetPro Partial Archive

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Max Keiser: "Obama's In The Pocket Of Wall Street; He's Been A Failure On This Score, A Huge Disappointment"

Another outstanding discussion from Max Keiser.  This time he's paired with Thorsten Polleit, Chief Economist for Barclays Capital.  Completely new to me, Polleit is a monster, in ideas if not presentation.  The discussion begins with an examination of the positive GDP figures released last week in France and Germany, but quickly shifts to the U.S. and our failed policies, regulation (or lack), the Federal Reserve bailouts, and corporate criminals.  Goldman Sachs, Bernanke, over-easy Central Banks, and Keynes are all skewered. 

Polleit is an extreme anti-fiat currency, anti-Cental Bank, anti-debt and anti-Keynesian, and his views in particular should not be missed.  And Keiser is his usual hilarious self as he emasculates the guilty with his strangely appealing, yet undeniably sick sense of humor.  We kid because we care, Max.  Keep up the fight.

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Max Keiser Archive

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