[step away from the keyboard -ed]
Don't get me wrong, I'm as much into anarcho-capitalism as the next guy, I think I'd do pretty well whatever the ground rules.
It's just that #OWS isn't showing the kind of higher-level cognitive abilities you'll find at, say, MI-6 or the initiative of the Navy Seals or even the spirit of Danton [warning: digression ahead! -ed]
"L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace!"Instead we get pigs in Boston spitting on a female member of the Coast Guard.
("Audacity, audacity — always audacity!")
-incorrect quote incorrectly cited to Frederick the Great
in the movie Patton (see below)
"De l'audace, encore de l'audace, toujours de l'audace..."(audacity, more audacity, and ever more audacity...)
-Georges Danton
It's hard to summon any response other than ridicule.
On the other hand we were warning of what was to come by late 2007.
In March 2008 it was "Dear Senator Dodd...(FNM; FRE)":
As Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs are you sick unto death of these "capitalists of convenience"?Here's a comment at MarketBeat in June 2008:
For example, what the hell is the mis-(mal) capitalized Fannie Mae doing paying out One Billion Four Hundred Million dollars in dividends on common stock?
This idea that it's okay to privatize the profits while socializing the potential losses is incomprehensible.
It seems to me that one of your aides might know the cell phone number of someone with the power and authority to shake some of these B.S. artists up a bit.
How 'bout the OFHEO throwing a ten-year clawback on stock and option grants?
I understand you need the GSE's to reliquify the system fast, before the public realizes that the emperors actually have no clothes, and start hunting bankers for sport, but when do we say enough is enough?....
Re: “…commodity derivatives contracts outstanding could well grow at a rate faster than other derivatives markets…”Five days after the fall of Lehman Brothers on Sept. 15, 2008:
Commodities are also underrepresented in the structured product universe.
Collateralized Commodity Backed Obligations anyone?
Commodity SIV’s?
Hybrids?
Synthetics?
Just be sure you’ve got the helicopter gassed up because when the townsfolk come, it won’t be with pitchforks and torches.
And pinstripes make lousy protective coloration. As they used to say in the Brit. nature shows:
“Sadly now, there can be but one outcome…” Comment by - June 17, 2008 at 4:47 pm
American Taxpayer on the Hook for $1 Trillion of Banks Non-, Mis- and Malfeasance. Plus: Music to Hunt Bankers By
It appears there will be a decade long wealth transfer from savers to bankers. To reliquify the big banks balance sheets, the powers that be will let the banks borrow cheap from the Fed or at artificially low shorter term rates, then turn around and lend at higher rates to the Treasury. There is probably a carbon trading angle here too*. You just watch.We were planning action directe* a month after Fannie and Freddie were nationalized, Lehman filed bankruptcy, AIG became a subsidiary of the U.S. Treasury, Merrill, Washington Mutual etc, etc.:
It wasn't hard to add up how much the taxpayer would be stuck with, even I could do it:
September 7
...The big losers are the American taxpayers who may be on the hook for a Trillion dollars and who may see their government lose its AAA credit rating, with the increased borrowing costs that implies....
Go Long Pitchforks: How To Profit From The Coming Populist Backlash.
*(From the French version of Wikipedia: Action directe (AD) est un groupe clandestin (aux influences anarchistes et communistes...)
From Wikipedia: Action Directe was a French Maoist/Marxist-Leninist militant group which committed a series of assassinations and violent attacks in France between 1979 and 1987. )
In December 2008 I announced a research initiative:
Goldman Sachs’s Tax Rate Drops to 1%, or $14 Million
...Meanwhile I shall be doing due diligence on an implement with the light weight of the DuraFork but with the aperture making ability of steel tines.By March 2009 we thought the idea was catching on:
Zeitgeist: London Protesters Threaten Bankers, Evoke Executions
In April '09 I reported back on the due diligence:
...Most of the pitchfork manufacturers are smaller, privately held companies*. You run into the same problem with tree shredder manufacturers:
Last November it was "Zeitgeist: Irish Republican Army Threatens to Shoot Bankers (Are you listening Wilbur Ross and Carlyle Group)".This is not your average rotary mulcher. Watch as the "SLASHBUSTER"® HD 480B brush cutters chew through 10-14 inch diameter trees with ease. No auxiliary engine is necessary. Horsepower-for-horsepower this is the highest performance tree shredder available....
So I hope the Best and the Brightest folks in the park understand why we post:
Some Thoughts on the OccupySesameStreet Protests
Breaking--From the OccupySesameStreet Protests: "Three Die After The Electric Company Privatized"--Breaking
Today in OccupyWallStreet News: "I'm a F***ing Journalist, You Motherf***er!
Smackdown: Hacktivists "Anonymous" Call Out MoveOn.org Over #OccupyWallStreet
#OccupyWallStreet: "You can have sex with animals."
Ayatollah Khamenei says Occupy Wall Street could mark the fall of the west
#Occupy(insert your cause here)
It's not because we hate you.
Or don't understand you.
It's because you're.......boring.
And three years late.
Now where'd I put that wood chipper?
Should the IRA possess a sense of rhythm I suggest the tune I was comforted by during the height of the financial crisis, the rondo from Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 2.
(well that and the Ramones' "I wanna be sedated")
Music to Hunt Bankers By
