charles munger parable on usa

some obvious barbs at america’s finance based economy.

excerpt:

But even a country as cautious, sound, and generous as Basicland could come to ruin if it failed to address the dangers that can be caused by the ordinary accidents of life. These dangers were significant by 2012, when the extreme prosperity of Basicland had created a peculiar outcome: As their affluence and leisure time grew, Basicland’s citizens more and more whiled away their time in the excitement of casino gambling. Most casino revenue now came from bets on security prices under a system used in the 1920s in the United States and called “the bucket shop system.”

The winnings of the casinos eventually amounted to 25 percent of Basicland’s GDP, while 22 percent of all employee earnings in Basicland were paid to persons employed by the casinos (many of whom were engineers needed elsewhere). So much time was spent at casinos that it amounted to an average of five hours per day for every citizen of Basicland, including newborn babies and the comatose elderly. Many of the gamblers were highly talented engineers attracted partly by casino poker but mostly by bets available in the bucket shop systems, with the bets now called “financial derivatives.”

http://www.slate.com/id/2245328/pagenum/all/#p2

eric schmidt on america’s crony capitalism

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/09/AR2010020901191.html?wpisrc=nl_tech

excerpt: 

More than ever, innovation is disruptive and messy. It can’t be controlled or predicted. The only way to ensure it can flourish is to create the best possible environment — and then get out of the way. It’s a question of learning to live with a mess.

First, start-ups and smaller businesses must be able to compete on equal terms with their larger rivals. They don’t need favors, just a level playing field. Congress should ensure that every bill it passes promotes competition over protecting the interests of incumbents.

why barney frank loves the banks

Barney Frank takes pride in being the Left’s darling, but he’s almost entirely funded by Wall Street and his votes show it.

http://www.alternet.org/politics/144454/how_wall_street_bought_barney_frank?page=entire

geithner gone by january?

Here is what Geithner had to say about financial markets in a speech in Atlanta in May 2007, just about a year before the crisis really ignited:

“Changes in financial markets, including those that are the subject of your conference, have improved the efficiency of financial intermediation and improved our confidence in the ability of markets to absorb stress.”

Later he added, “The larger global financial institutions are generally stronger in terms of capital relative to risk. Technology and innovation in financial instruments have made it easier for institutions to manage risk.”

That rosy description by a Fed president kind of makes you want to run out and buy stock in Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., doesn’t it? No wonder the Fed failed to press the industry harder. It thought that financial innovations had worked a miracle.

Geithner used to be asleep at the wheel in New York. Now he is asleep at the wheel in Washington.

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a1B7Cs1f.TO8

i love our fubar government-crony-capitalistic welfare state

lets just make EVERYTHING free and let the gov’ment tell us what we need and don’t need….

more about “i love our fubar government-crony-cap…“, posted with vodpod

 

peter orszag as dr. floyd ferris

continuing with my atlas shrugged theme…here’s ‘director of office of the budget’ for the obama white house….this guy is right out of atlas shrugged…”the economy doesn’t like us right now and we need to somehow make the economy happy again”…..

also found out that his mentor is robert rubin…one of my 3 assholes of the financial apocalypse.

more about "Peter Orszag on The Daily Show (Part 1)", posted with vodpod

more about "Peter Orszag on The Daily Show (Part 2)", posted with vodpod

tim geithner a real life wesley mouch?

for those that don’t know…wesley mouch was one of the main spinless vague-speaking bureaucrats in ayn rand’s atlas shrugged.

timmy geithner is america’s wesley mouch…the central planner bureaucrat trying to ‘fix’ the economy with vagueness…

come on barack obama..where’s the change????…every day these asshole bankers are still in your white house you lose a little more credibility….fix the goddamn banks before you take on your pie-in-the-sky health for all beaurocrazy…

more about “time geithner a real life wesley mouch?“, posted with vodpod

 

another atlas shrugged moment

excerpt:

“We thought cash for clunkers was the ultimate waste of taxpayer money, but as usual we were too optimistic. Thanks to the federal tax credit to buy high-mileage cars that was part of President Obama’s stimulus plan, Uncle Sam is now paying Americans to buy that great necessity of modern life, the golf cart.

The federal credit provides from $4,200 to $5,500 for the purchase of an electric vehicle, and when it is combined with similar incentive plans in many states the tax credits can pay for nearly the entire cost of a golf cart. Even in states that don’t have their own tax rebate plans, the federal credit is generous enough to pay for half or even two-thirds of the average sticker price of a cart, which is typically in the range of $8,000 to $10,000. “The purchase of some models could be absolutely free,” Roger Gaddis of Ada Electric Cars in Oklahoma said earlier this year. “Is that about the coolest thing you’ve ever heard?”".

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204574473724099542430.html

yet another example of ayn rand’s ‘atlas shrugged’ playing out in real world

these types of posts could become commonplace if the gov-ment continues to take over industry + putting no-experience beauracrats in charge…

excerpt:

WASHINGTON — It is not every 31-year-old who, in a first government job, finds himself dismantling General Motors and rewriting the rules of American capitalism.

But that, in short, is the job description for Brian Deese, a not-quite graduate of Yale Law School who had never set foot in an automotive assembly plant until he took on his nearly unseen role in remaking the American automotive industry.

Nor, for that matter, had he given much thought to what ailed an industry that had been in decline ever since he was born. A bit laconic and looking every bit the just-out-of-graduate-school student adjusting to life in the West Wing — “he’s got this beard that appears and disappears,” says Steven Rattner, one of the leaders of President Obama’s automotive task force — Mr. Deese was thrown into the auto industry’s maelstrom as soon the election-night parties ended.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/01/business/01deese.html?_r=4&emc=eta1

railroading of bank of america will continue to haunt bailouts…

this reads like a page from atlas shrugged…

Excerpt:

In the name of containing “systemic risk,” our regulators spread it. In order to keep Mr. Lewis quiet, they all but ordered him to deceive his own shareholders. And in the name of restoring financial confidence, they have so mistreated Bank of America that bank executives everywhere have concluded that neither Treasury nor the Federal Reserve can be trusted.

Mr. Lewis has told investigators for New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that in December Mr. Paulson threatened him not to cancel a deal to buy Merrill Lynch. BofA had discovered billions of dollars in undisclosed Merrill losses, and Mr. Lewis was considering invoking his rights under a material adverse condition clause to kill the merger. But Washington decided that America’s financial system couldn’t withstand a Merrill failure, and that BofA had to risk its own solvency to save it. So then-Treasury Secretary Paulson, who says he was acting at the direction of Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke, told Mr. Lewis that the feds would fire him and his board if they didn’t complete the deal.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124078909572557575.html