Megan nails it: the government is using its intervention in the banking system to pressure banks to give special deals to the government’s special friends.
Securitization
From the point of view of oligarchs and crony capitalists, the crisis is not that a lot loans were made to no hablo English wetbacks. The crisis is that people are rejecting securitization of debt. The Obama regime’s capitalism smashing measures are intended not to destroy capitalism, nor to install socialism, but to restore securitization of debt. This is socialism for the financiers, not for the proles: Crony socialism, crony …
Courage
A kid carrying a gun, and wearing an explosive vest, attempted to enter a mosque. It seems that though the congregation were Muslim, they were the wrong kind of Muslim. A guard tackled him. That is courage.
Galt strike or inadequate aggregate demand?
The Randian concept of a Galt Strike is that if the elite slack off, the masses will be impoverished – that countries are rich or poor according to whether the elite is productive, while the masses and resources do not matter much, except in extreme cases such as oil rich sheikdoms. There has been a large fall in GDP over the past six months: The Keynesian explanation of this fall is …
Trillion missing, top accountant dead
David Kellerman, the acting Chief Financial Officer and Senior VP at Freddie Mac, was found dead early this morning from at his home in Virginia. It is described as an apparent suicide. The press is rightly comparing this with the very similar “suicide†of Enron’s top accountant. When large sums of money disappear, the person who knows most about where the money went often, by an interesting coincidence, winds up …
Iran tells it like it is:
In his April 15, 2009 speech, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told America: We say to you that you yourselves know that you are today in a position of weakness. Your hands are empty, and you can no longer promote your affairs from a position of strength. … with the grace of God, and thanks to Iran’s national unity, the recommendations of Supreme Leader, and the following of his [path], nearly …
We are all terrorists now
The liberty papers found an interesting Obama document. It seems that it is not those poor misunderstood adherents of the Religion of Peace that are a problem. It is any American who disagrees with the Obama agenda. Michael Malkin confirms the document is real, not a parody. Veterans are also terrorists, no doubt it comes of persecuting those poor adherents of the Religion of Peace.
Dr Lindzen on “corrected†data
Dr. Richard Lindzen on “corrected†climate data. it has become standard in climate science that data in contradiction to alarmism is inevitably ‘corrected’ to bring it closer to alarming models. None of us would argue that this data is perfect, and the corrections are often plausible. What is implausible is that the ‘corrections’ should always bring the data closer to models.
Worshippers of the Obamessiah start to wake up
The New York Times almost gets it right: Obama’s Ersatz Capitalism What the Obama administration is doing is far worse than nationalization: it is ersatz capitalism, the privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses. It is a “partnership†in which one partner robs the other. Close but no banana. It is crony capitalism, which at its more socialist extreme is fascism, the corporate state, where business and the citizen …
Government pisses away the entire GDP in five months
Bloomberg reports that since November, the government has spent, loaned, or guaranteed 12.8 trillion, an amount very close to one year’s GDP – one year of everyone’s income, or $42,105 for every man, woman, and child in America.