Are you all as fed up with the "they gotta have skin in the game next time" gambit -- as fed up as Super Al Shooman and me iz?
I admit, the idea has some appeal. Next time -- if there is a next time -- if the red revolution doesn't turn all private banks into floating flood refuse -- let's make pretty damn sure any real live actual human agents have serious skin in the game. In fact, their whole hides oughta be up for skinning:
Behold Al's famous bankers' curing shed.
Let's at it -- let's design these damn agent incentive mechanisms. But in a word, that may prove -- daunting.
Some of you don't believe me? You think its do-able? Let's let the jury of our peers here decide.
Time passes; the all-star game comes and goes; the sun cools considerably --
"And in summation, comrades of the jury, the record we have presented to you clearly shows time and means enough exist for your self-appointed corporate agents to offload, one way or another, their personal jeopardy entirely onto your innocent asshole generic heads."
Aren't we maybe fools to think we can force them to put any of their skin in, when they view our skins -- quite rightly -- as little more than a giant mound of dandruff? Does our giant aggregation of little bits of skin even in the least guide our limited-liability agents to wider goals than they might head towards if guided solely by their very own guile alone?
Mates, no matter what we hope, no matter what we legislate, they are now, were ever, and always will be only guided by their very own personal guile and gain anyway.
No my fellow citizen-jurors, no no no no -- no more widows and orphans milled to financial powder by these privateering brutes. They've suffered enough. Emancipate them from their Marley-esque chains. Let's end the credit system as we know it, the system of irresponsible pillage and pilfer that now strangles middle America.
This by way of warmup. Now let's turn to the latest beacon swing of the Roubini lighthouse of gloom. Mr and Mrs America, and all ships at sea, feature this:
"Actual Macro Data Are Already Worse than the More Adverse Scenario for 2009 in the Stress Tests. So the Stress Tests Fail the Basic Criterion of Reality Check Even Before They Are Concluded"So what? Who cares about the latest installment of the perils of Pauline? It's pure tomfoolery, our great private banks about to go over Niagara Falls in a toilet bowl -- bah, humbug. The last 9 months has been one big no-stress test, and obviously that ain't about to change.
More to the point, who oughta care even if the bankster buggers are animated X-rays these days?
Private bankers and the banks they ride in and out of town on never never never lead economies out of real live honest-to-God slumps like the one the earth's in now. Not any more than equity markets or bond markets or any other paper asset shuffling and scuffling.
These dollar-denominated bag-heads await the robust recovery of product markets before they'll venture to join any expansionary process by re-introducing an ample flow of private lending. Fill every bank vault in America with gold coins, and they'll just sit on 'em, like Judge McDuck here:
Even before product markets can start to rock-and-roll again, gubmint's gotta spend and borrow to get the dough-ray-mee out there in hungry knarled toilin' hands to start the spending on these damn products anyhow.
So fuck the balance-sheet saga. It's like one big comic strip, longer than War and Peace, and its story line is a non-starter, even for grocery-store reading.
A robbery of the Treasury is in progress, folks -- not by John Dillingers or mongol hordes, but by bald ghouls in imported suits.
So what else is new?
Personally, I don't give a shit if it never stops -- if the finagle just runs it up and up. Hey, the faster it flows, the sooner it blows. Keep yer swap-ola goin', you silk-souled motherfuckers -- just as long as Uncle runs blue-whale budget deficits, deficits that dwarf anything peacetime America ever conceived of before, and just so long as job markets rip skyward as if fired from a million Stalin organs: Go ahead, bankster, knock yourself out.
Because, buster, in the end, you might as well be hording Reichsmarks for all the security it'll give your great-grandchildren. One day a people's congress will come along that mandates a series of fed actions so draconian, so prole-cattish, that it will erase this travesty of yours faster than Yeltsin wiped out the cumulative savings of 3 generations of Soviet workers!
[dub in roaring applause line here]
Where does this all leave the private banks that the Roubini lighthouse of gloom wants declared insolvent?
They're figments to begin with -- pure expressions of the zero origination cost of credit -- give me access to the circular Fed and Treasury paper flow, let me take my drinks right from the main pipe like the Mellons and the Buffets do, and I can become anything you want me to be, ranger!
Comments (10)
"you're gonna need a bigger set of rafters"
Posted by hapa | April 14, 2009 2:31 AM
Posted on April 14, 2009 02:31
hapa
tell
that to super Al
christ he's tighter then bark
man won't spend a dime on up date
i agree
the hide shed needs a serious big box remake
i'm thinking
keep an eye on
these giant hospital sponsored
organ bank ops out in california
wait till one goes bust
and grab her up for conversion ..get me ??
then we update the skin game too
we sever their heads
put em in a life saving vat
and distribute the rest
to the needy bone marrow and all
yes full face transplants too
the remaining banker ??
skulls lots a skulls
each one filled with a living evil brain
you know the drill..
their all together in one big block long
group tank
all these skulls
life lines dangling down like daddy long legs
what say u
...maybe we rip flow
the tank
get the fuckers
bobbing
like apples in a halloween dunking contest
get a web site with 24/7 viewing globe wide
live screen saver ???
i bet some skulls get a second celebraty life this way
talk about recycle
do able??
hey they got miracle bionic stablizers these days...
ya they might foul each others life lines now and again ..i'll admit it some msy die ...
but no gulag death rates comrade
imagine our roll out ...
" do these bankers have skin in the game ???
fuck citizen investor
these bastards have every thing but their devious pathological brains
in the game "
introducing
the bankers trust organ bank
"in life they stole they cheated
they pillfered and skim-ed
now their gonna be giving back!!!"
no no not we don't dooooo brains round here
mrs dingo
imagine its inevitable
some dope
will pilfer a head for the brain tank
caught in the act ...hopefully
" i was takin just one gov ..
not for gain guv ..its for me ritual bride "
"no you yellow crested pigeon
thats
the under water village of the ..abi normals
o you have any idea what this might lead to
just exactly
what type of wife are u looking for anyway ?"
"a lovely one guv but clever
u know crafty and clever "
Posted by op | April 14, 2009 8:47 AM
Posted on April 14, 2009 08:47
The problem I see is that all the ressentiment is already being channelled away from the bankers & cronies and towards the "Government" and "Socialists". The messaging for all the Teabaggery is putting a big emphasis on NOT "eating the rich", who are after all funding the protests. Obama gave them the opening, so I can't blame them for exploiting it and reforming it into some incoherent anti-tax campaign. that's just what they do. It is a bit alarming though to see how easily the Republicans have been able to channel that anger away from the cause. Apparently all it takes is for Glenn Beck to get up there and turn it into a series of WWF wrestling skits.
The gambit is going to backfire on Obama. Just wait until he has to order the ATF to take away the guns of some nutbars or has to order the army into some tax-protester's Galt's Gulch.
Posted by bob | April 14, 2009 9:27 AM
Posted on April 14, 2009 09:27
That's my concern about this mess, bob. All Obaman shit aside, I don't believe the fighting element, be it libertarian/green/red/black can avoid getting swept away in a bloodbath that seems as though it's bound to result from all this Obamian monkery. Things have been too backwards for too long.
Posted by Michael Hureaux | April 14, 2009 9:51 AM
Posted on April 14, 2009 09:51
Taibbi just posted an article along similar lines. I wonder if he reads this blog
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/04/14/americas-peasant-mentality/
Posted by bob | April 14, 2009 1:12 PM
Posted on April 14, 2009 13:12
this puts me in mind of a tale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-arBMWSD9s
Posted by hapa | April 14, 2009 1:54 PM
Posted on April 14, 2009 13:54
The tea partiers are a sign of the extreme lateness of the hour. If the DP and NerO weren't all-out scrambling to market the system to its victims yet again, this would be a dream situation, the ultimate neon-bright slowball-down-the-middle.
Alas, I see no signs that NerO voters have the capacity or sensibilities to break out of line, despite the increasingly blatant sell-out. (to wit: http://www.consumertrap.com/?p=1110)
MH may very well be right...
Posted by Michael Dawson | April 14, 2009 3:22 PM
Posted on April 14, 2009 15:22
the only souls that need to take this tea toss seriously are the obama-progs
premature popular front surrender to
the forces of moderation
able to tame the raging orc hordes
nonsense
the pendulum is swinging in precisely
the opposite direction
fascism isn't about pre emption its about
redemption
we gotta look like we're winning first then win some where and then
in a marginal industrial or post industrial state maybe glenn becksa get invited
to the quarter deck
and even then never at the center of centers
ie now
the us of a
the whole rumpus is to blunt reform
not putsch back
just push back
Posted by op | April 14, 2009 7:14 PM
Posted on April 14, 2009 19:14
"swept away in a bloodbath"
i trust this is a metaphor ??
my senses are dulled these days
by the odd motions in the global economy
the force is not calling to me in a clear voice
as it was say three weeks ago
i vowed long ago never to indulge
my wishful thoughts
i have not over stated any crisis
since the ford contraction of 75
till maybe this critter rose up in 07
a big one i thought this time a big one
at last the tide is about to turn
and in 2 brief years
we got left elements looking for the neo fascists
no no we got some serious ground to cover before that happens
and it won't "happen here" anyways
anti fascism as fascism is just
an agit prop framing device
the fusion of socialism with fascism
ie monolithic totalitarianism
in two flavors
social fascism as the essence of social democracy
social imperialism as the essence of state capitalism etc etc
hegelian dialectics at its most acrobatic
left in form right in essence
is the only competition event
more
spectacular
why it moves the proceddings
from athletics to magic
Posted by op | April 14, 2009 7:30 PM
Posted on April 14, 2009 19:30
low and behold a econ con column over at maison d'alex
--other then by my pal m w--
that i find delightful
http://www.counterpunch.org/morici04142009.html
"Increasing the spread for banks is like subsidizing parts purchases for car companies. The folks at GM would look like wizards if the Fed had been similarly generous with them.
This all comes at a cost to someone—America’s elderly.
Many retirees depend on interest from certificates of deposit. Those rates are down dramatically, and as CDs expire retirees are compelled to reinvest their savings at lower rates and live on less. They can take comfort that their sacrifices are helping pay off Wall Streets losses "
and to think
its by that
usual rider on
the slow train
to the sunset
pedro three finger mordicai
revolutionary ghost power baby
revolutionary ghost power
Posted by op | April 14, 2009 10:19 PM
Posted on April 14, 2009 22:19