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Larry Summers appears to have a less than operational moral compass. The former Treasury Secretary, now head of the National Economic Council (and presumed Fed chairman if Obama decides against recommending Bernanke for another term) was in the employ of hedge fund DE Shaw to the tune of $5 million for sixteen months while working with actively on Democratic economic policy, with the clear expectation that he would have a policy role. In other words, Summers is already way too cozy with the financial services industry. And now we have the latest, from Mark Amos (hat tip reader Marshall). I’ve put up some excerpts, and strongly recommend you read the entire piece. Ames points out that a number of very big Wall Street firms made an unusual investment in a start-up, one Revolution Money, a “PayPal meets Mastercard” in the Steve Case “Revolution” sphere. Weirdly, the company says Summers was on the board, and Summers certainly was talking up to the media, but filings suggest otherwise. But while the exact nature of Summers’ relationship is unclear, he was certainly promoting the venture.
Stacy Summary: Corruption, corruption, corruption. It's quite clear that the whole system is rotten. Part of the problem with government being so close to bankers and corporations is that the politicians feel like they should be getting kickbacks and be able to live the lifestyle that they themselves help create for said bankers with your tax money. Also, by voting in these politicians we give this whole set up legitimacy.
What do you think?
The dollar was up to its armpits in quicksand, and oil prices had crept stealthily into the death-to-airlines range, and if, in the old slogan, what's good for General Motors really is good for the USA, then destiny was dealing a harsh lesson to The Land of the Free -- while I made a drive on Thursday (in a Japanese rent-a-car) through the remotest ends of upstate New York State into the province of Ontario, Canada, to see what I could see. What I saw was pretty scary.
So what should we expect from Geithner’s upcoming China trip? Not much. China refuses to talk politely about its exchange rate and rebuffs all sensible diplomatic initiatives on this front – they have held the IMF at bay for nearly 2 years on this exact issue. The rhetoric is that their fiscal stimulus will bring down their current account surplus without need for significant exchange rate appreciation. This is smokescreen. The reality is that the administration is afraid that China will shift out of its dollar holdings, pushing up interest rates on Treasury debt and jeopardizing their Fiscal First reflation strategy. The Chinese have played up these fears by speaking obliquely on the desirability of a non-dollar international reserve currency – this is a pipedream, but you get the point. The administration has essentially blinked in the face of Chinese growling.
"We Give Years to Your Life and Life to Your Years!" For a generation or more, the Sun Belt thrived like no other region in America — a growth so steady it felt as though the boom would never end. But now it has, replaced by a bust that has left some swaths of the region suffering as severely as anywhere in the current recession. What brought the dark clouds to the Sun Belt, and are they here to stay?
As you walk into the Retiro train station in downtown Buenos Aires these days, you pass a long line of people snaking their way from the station’s entrance to a single window. At first glance, this is unsurprising: what’s more common than a queue in a train station? But there is something distinctive about this line: it ends at a window bearing a sign that reads “Coins.” The people standing patiently in line are not, it turns out, waiting to buy train tickets. Instead, they’re waiting to do something that’s become very difficult in Buenos Aires: make change..
Discussion of the 50% Retracement Rule,
potential future price levels, time studies, key dates, Fibonacci, Gann, Astro numbers, Robert Rhea's Great Depression analysis.
Societal collapse nearly always translates into political disintegration. It is a normal consequence of the way complex society works. Whenever a polity increases in size, the percentage of its resource base it has to devote to its internal functioning increases as well. As long as the increase in productivity or gross resource base makes up for it, all goes well, but the law of decreasing returns means that at some point the polity is caught between rising costs and stagnating incomes. Its net resource base, the one it can mobilize to face an emergency shrinks and it slowly loses the control of its territory. It can then be taken over by foreign invaders, or disintegrate as warlords or local governments seize effective control of the territory. The net result is always the same : a large polity, endowed with large potential resource it can no longer mobilize is replaced by smaller polities, with a smaller resource base but a better mobilization capacity.
“The bond-market vigilantes are up in arms over the outlook for the federal deficit,” said Edward Yardeni, who coined the term in 1984 to describe investors who protest monetary or fiscal policies they consider inflationary by selling bonds. He now heads Yardeni Research Inc. in Great Neck, New York. “Ten trillion dollars over the next 10 years is just an indication that Washington is really out of control and that there is no fiscal discipline whatsoever.”
First I ever heard of a group of investors literally manipulating the bond market to force a government to do their bidding. Not that it doesn't go on, maybe just that Bloomberg covered it. Bloomberg is reporting this round of bond intimidators are foreign investors. Economic war games anyone?
If you have any info that would help, please contact me at my private email address: bailout@michaelmoore.com
