Of course, it’s a Brit stand-up comedian who explains it….Not entirely SFW.
H/t Majikthise
Author: Matthew G. Saroff
It’s Bank Failure Friday!
And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.
- Dwelling House Savings and Loan Association, Pittsburgh, PA
- Colonial Bank, Montgomery, AL
- Union Bank, National Association, Gilbert, AZ
- Community Bank of Arizona, Phoenix, AZ
- Community Bank of Nevada, Los Vegas, NV
So, Colonial Bank, the largest failure this year, failed. I mentioned it earlier:
All deposit accounts have been transferred to Branch Banking and Trust Company, (BB&T), Winston-Salem, NC (“assuming institution”) and will be available immediately. The former Colonial Bank locations will reopen as branches of BB&T. Each location will operate by the same schedule it did prior to this transaction.
Goldman Says Curbing Speculators May Disrupt Markets
Well, isn’t that special, Goldman Sachs thinks that we as a society owe them the right to rape us:
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the bank that makes the most money from commodities, fixed-income and currency trading, said attempts to curb speculation may be “disruptive” to energy markets.
“The role that is played by non-traditional participants such as index investors and other financial participants often has been mischaracterized,” Don Casturo, a Goldman Sachs managing director, said today at a Commodity Futures Trading Commission hearing in Washington.
Somehow, I think that your being hung from a lamp post when the revolution comes would be more disruptive.
Unfortunately, it appears that Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner and Lawrence “Never Right in the Real World” Summers largely agree.
But I Bought My PC a Week Ago!!!!!
A quad-core, Blu-ray, Windows 7 desktop for $650
by Rick Broida
Update: Sorry, folks, looks like the discount code has expired.
If you’re in the market for a new desktop that’s equally well-suited to games and movies, HP has a ridiculously good deal going. It’s the HP Pavilion Elite e9110t, which you can get for $649.99 shipped after a few configuration tweaks and a coupon code.
The tiger in the tank, Intel’s 2.33GHz Core 2 Quad Q8200 processor, roars along with 6GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive, and a 512MB GeForce G210 video card. Those are some kick-ass specs.
Other highlights: a Blu-ray drive with LightScribe-DVD capabilities, an 802.11n Wi-Fi adapter, and a 15-month subscription to Norton Internet Security 2009 (aka the good version).
There is, of course, no good version of Norton anything!!
Perhaps best of all, the system comes with Windows Vista Home Premium but is eligible for a free Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade come October 22.
By the way, this is a new Pavilion, not a refurb, so you get HP’s full one-year warranty. Here’s how to put it all together, courtesy of DealNews:
1. Ctrl-click this link to open the product page in a new tab.
2. Click the Customize & Buy button next to the $649.99 option.
3. Click the Memory option and choose the free 6GB upgrade.
4. Click the Primary CD/DVD Drive option and choose the Blu-ray player.
5. Click the Networking option and choose the Wireless-N LAN card and external modem.
6. Click Review & Buy, then apply coupon code DTM4558.Presto! That should get you out the door for $649.99. In an ideal world, this system would also have a TV tuner (which you can add for $80), but it’s still one of the best desktop deals I’ve ever seen.
HP’s various discounts on this system end Aug. 15, so you’ve got a little time if you want to shop around. I’ll be mighty surprised if you can find a better configuration for the money.
I suppose that this is unavoidable…..But I’m still pissed off.
Deep Thought
Demotivator Edition
Economics Update
You know, someone had better tell the ordinary people of the US that things are getting better, because they are not buying it. 63.2 in August, down from 66 in July.
What’s more, we are seeing more signs of deflation, with consumer prices falling by 2.1% year over year, the biggest drop since January, 1950.
What’s more, commercial real estate is going through the economy like a guy in a hockey mask through a road trip of teenage girls in a slasher flick, with commercial mortgage backed bonds falling, which has driven up their yields, and commercial real estate prices falling by 17% in the first ½ of the year.
We do have some good news in industrial production, where output rose by ½%, beating expectations, largely on “cash for clunkers”.
The confidence figures had currency traders moving to the Yen, and it also pummeled both crude oil and wholesale gasoline futures.
Will This Bank Make Tonight’s List
There are reports that Colonial BancGroup is near collapse, and desperately attempting to sell itself off to BB&T.
If it fails, it would be the largest failure so far this year, and the 6th largest bank failure ever.
Of note is the fact that if the bank fails, then about 25% of all “warehouse lending” goes away.
Warehouse lending is a form of short term lending used most often by folks like independent mortgage brokers.
There would be some real repercussions here in the housing market, even with independent brokers having a much smaller piece of the pie than they did 3 years ago.
Unbelievably Bad Political Analysis
Someone at Political Wire declares that Richard Burr (R-NC) is comfortably ahead of all potential challengers, because he has 43% of the voter against all of the, 43%-31% against Elaine Marshall, 43%-28% vs Cal Cunningham, and 43%-27% against Kenneth Lewis.
Just so you know, the rule of thumb is that undecideds break at least 2:1 against the incumbent,* so any time an incumbent is below 50%, they are in trouble, and an incumbent at 43%, is is very real trouble, particularly when his approval number is 38%.
This number has his campaign staff soiling their drawers.
Morons.
*I ran the numbers against Elaine Marshall and it comes to a 3% margin in the best case.
Primary Challenges Work
Surprise, surprise, with a credible primary challenge, Arlen Specter has flip flopped, and now says that he will support the pro-union Employee Free Choice Act. (EFCA)
So, who’s next on the hit parade?
Time to Boycott Whole Foods and Shop at Trader Joes
Because Whole Foods CEO John Mackey thinks that all you need to do to fix health care is to eat natural foods, particularly those purchase from his store.
This guy runs a major retailer, and has been virulently anti-union, and is a Randroid nutjob, so shop elsewhere for the month of August.
Krugman Says, “I Told You So!”
In early 2008, Krugman says that Obama’s post partisan unity shtick would fail, because the Republicans would crank up every dishonest, and quite honestly clinically insane, argument.
Well, today, Krugman says, “I told you so,” and he is right:
Sure enough, President Obama is now facing the same kind of opposition that President Bill Clinton had to deal with: an enraged right that denies the legitimacy of his presidency, that eagerly seizes on every wild rumor manufactured by the right-wing media complex.
This opposition cannot be appeased. Some pundits claim that Mr. Obama has polarized the country by following too liberal an agenda. But the truth is that the attacks on the president have no relationship to anything he is actually doing or proposing.
Fundamentally, we have a president who wants people, including his opponents, to really like him, in a pathological kind of way, and he believes that he has the ability to make it so.
He is disastrously wrong.
If he wants any meaningful change, he needs to want his opponents to fear him, like LBJ….And, of course, avoid a military counter-insurgency in Asia, which is what did Johnson in politically.
….Uh oh…..
Howard Dean Calls Out the Dems
He is saying that Democrats who work to kill or minimize the public option will be primaried:
Former Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean fired one of the clearest warning shots at hesitant Democratic lawmakers on Thursday, insisting that if the party was unable to produce a health care bill with a public plan, there would be electoral consequences.
“I do think there will be primaries as the result of all this, if the bill doesn’t pass with a public option,” Dean said, in a phone interview with the Huffington Post.
The essence of the problem is that no one fears the people, the majority of the people who favor real healthcare reform, and it has to be more than primaries.
We have to be willing to support Green Party candidates and the like in the general election against the most egregious of the Blue Dogs in the general.
If we lose 4-5 seats this way, it will move 40-50 allegedly Democratic Party votes in our direction in Congress.
We can see the effects of real challenges to incumbents in the voting patterns of Arlen Specter, which have become much more loyal since Sestak decided to run against him in the primary.
Right now, there are no consequences for DINOs who actively oppose core party values.
21% Delinquent?!?!?!?
It turns out that ING’s portfolio of Alt-A residential mortgage backed securities are 21% Delinquent.
Alt-A mortgages are technically prime, but include things like interest only, negative amortization, and a plethora of other dicey loan instruments, and 1/5 of their loans are delinquent.
Great googly moogly.
Dick Cheney is Such a Whiny Bitch
This is normally not a phrase I use, even with the most annoying members of my family, but I think that for Dick Cheney, it is very clear that his complaints about George W. Bush remove any doubt about the fact, and furthermore it places his comments about the repudiation of his Manichean, and quite frankly delusional, view of the world by the voters in the proper context.
We need to call him a bitch, because to call him anything else grants him a credibility and gravitas that he simply does not deserve.*
The man, who has an uninterrupted record of failure in his life, recommending that Ford dump Rockefeller as VP, moving to contractors in the military, invading Iraq, etc., is now saying that George W. Bush was not hard line enough for him:
“In the second term, he felt Bush was moving away from him,” said a participant in the recent gathering, describing Cheney’s reply. “He said Bush was shackled by the public reaction and the criticism he took. Bush was more malleable to that. The implication was that Bush had gone soft on him, or rather Bush had hardened against Cheney’s advice. He’d showed an independence that Cheney didn’t see coming. It was clear that Cheney’s doctrine was cast-iron strength at all times — never apologize, never explain — and Bush moved toward the conciliatory.”
Truth be told, I really think that this is really all about two words, “Scooter Libby,” and Cheney is upset, because he believes that without a full pardon, Libby may some day roll over on his flabby, lily-white ass.
He knows that Omertà means less in politics than it does in the Mafia, which means that it means nothing at all, and it terrifies him.
*Yes, I understand that the social dynamics of the situation, where in order to diminish a man you essentially call him a woman, and in order to diminish a woman, you essentially call her a man,† but you go to war with Dick Cheney with the societal norms you have—not the societal norms you might want or wish to have at a later time.
†See Clinton, Hillary and Pelosi, Nancy.
Les Paul Dead at 94
He is one of the (many) fathers of the solid body electric guitar, and was one of the first to use multi-track recording, which is the basis of modern record production, in addition to being a seriously kick ass guitar player.
Larry Wilmore is a F%$#ing Genius Too
He’s the Daily Show‘s “Senior Black Correspondent.”
Something Smells Very Fishy Here
Remember that guy who allegedly stole Goldman Sach’s proprietary high speed trading software? You know, the stuff that ran on their co-located servers in the exchanges, and so as to engage in front-running the entire market?
Well, it looks like there is a no jail time deal for Sergey Aleynikov in the offing about this.
Goldman Sachs has apparently folded like a bunch of overcooked broccoli, after the defense got a ruling saying that said that they were to be given access to all relevant personnel records.
So, Goldman Sachs, that great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity,* the folks who think, probably correctly, that they own the United States of America, acted like a prison bitch when confronted with the possibility of his reviewing his own personnel file???
Something is very wrong here.
What on earth are they hiding?
FWIW, any tips received will be kept in strictest confidence.
*Alas, I cannot claim credit for this bon mot, it was coined by the great Matt Taibbi, in his article on the massive criminal conspiracy investment firm, The Great American Bubble Machine.
Not Enough Bullets, Stealing from the Poor to Give to the Rich Edition
Paul Krugman catches this measure of income inequality.
The top 0.01%, or the richest 1/10000, now earn more than 6% of of all wages, a higher percentage than we had at the peak of the guided age.
These wages come from somewhere, and they come from the rest of us, but trying to fix this is beyone the political pale, because we are not citizens, we are serfs.
This is Wicked Stupid
It looks like the US Military is going to resume training the Georgian army.
Considering the fact that President Mikheil Saakashvili is a truly delusional and despotic nutcase who is spoiling for another war with Russia, this is a very bad idea on that level, but it’s also clear that the Georgian state security apparatus has been completely penetrated by the Russian intelligence service that they knew to the minute, if not the second, when the Georgians were going to invade South Ossetia.
But we need bodies for Afghanistan, so we’re training them.
I Got Nothing Here
Seriously, this actual letter from Michelle Bachmann (R-Land of Oz), leaves me without a proper rejoinder.
I know that there should be some sort of rejoinder to this, something witty and devastating, but the stupidity, and self-centered immaturity stun me, and I’ve got a 12 year old daughter:
Don’t let them Palinize me!
Dear Friend:
Last month, I appeared on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News Channel. I was talking about the Democrats’ latest scheme to pick the taxpayer’s pocket to pay for a $1.5-billion slush fund for ACORN.
Before getting into the meat of this terrible new anti-taxpayer proposal, Sean Hannity said that he considers me “the second most hated Republican woman,” second only to Governor Sarah Palin.
With Governor Palin taking a well-deserved step out of the spotlight, it appears that I may be absorbing even more of the liberals’ scorn.
And, I’d really appreciate your support so that I can defend myself against their attacks. Click here to make a donation!
I’m out there every day speaking the truth about their attempts to guide this nation into socialism:
• Their government-run health care proposal that will put government bureaucrats in between you and your doctor and end up rationing care — and the most vulnerable will suffer first and most.
• Their cap-and-trade national energy tax that will drive up energy costs for every American and send our jobs overseas.
• Their spending spree that has pushed the national budget deficit over the $1 trillion mark for the first time in our history. We’re already closing in on $2 trillion and there’s no end in sight to their spending.
• Their dozens of White House czars with power over your lives and futures and absolutely no accountability to Congress or the people.
• And, speaking of unaccountable — when are they going to open up the Fed’s books to the public?
• Their political patronage to groups like ACORN — doling out billions of your tax dollars and partnering with them to collect your private information for the Census.
But just as they did with Sarah Palin, the more I talk about the issues, the more they attack with below-the-belt personal hits. In fact, yesterday, a Minnesota paper gave a full column to a hit piece on one of my kids!
Can you help me to defend against these attacks? Click here to make a donation! [Yeah, like I’d supply a frelling link to that nutjob]
I’ll tell you the truth: Their sticks and stones will not stop me from going out and speaking the truth about their bad policies! And, your support really helps!
God bless and thank you for your support.
Sincerely,
Congresswoman Michele Bachmann
From the Urban Dictionary:
Palinize:
To smear or mock someone using falsehoods, baseless accusations or unsubstantiated character assassinations for the purpose of blocking them from achieving a goal.
To exaggerate the truth or lie by omission.
To attack a person for his or her conservative values by focusing an inordinate amount of attention on a single example of that person falling short (or being perceived as falling short) of the values they espouse.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to wrap my head before it f$#%ing explodes.
I would note, however, that she does not give one of the more popular definitions from the Urban Dictionary, you know, something like, Palinize, “When someone answers a question without any form of intelligence or foresight. In an attempt to divert from giving a correct answer and in the process sounding unintelligible.”