after reading two threads down (the cit chap 11 thread)...

you guys are scaring the shit outta me

yes things are very bad

this means people have to get to work...work the system...hard damn it

stop all the talk about effin ptichforks and torches...and run for political office

im giving serious consideration to filing for the 9th congressional district in washington state

and i expect at least 434 of the users and lurkers to do the same

i dont care what your position is on green house gases or abortion damn it

thats not the issue here, you know what has to be done

replace the house of representatives...and in so doing

drive a stake in the heart of the system that is bailing out the bankstas...period...nothing else matters

From last thread:

noob goldberg wrote:

*There are different lifecycle stages that any beginning, growing, and established firm passes through, and earlier ones tend to have greater demands on human resources than established ones. What's the old NASA quote? "Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor." For smaller firms unable to absorb the significant initial cost of creating a highly-efficient production system, the use of human skill remains the only viable option.
*
Again, I don't disagree from a practical standpoint. However, if you look over the past thirty years, not only computing hardware but also computing software has evolved to a tremendous degree. In many ways, a small team using well integrated, widely available software can be very competitive with a larger company as long as it sticks to a narrow product mix.

As an example, small business accounting software like Quickbooks is often as capable if not more capable than what large companies use. There are many similar examples in all kinds of business sectors. Thirty years ago, this was not at all the case. The small business could hardly afford a computer, general purpose software availability was limited and business specific software had to be custom developed and was therefore basically unaffordable.

Therefore, the small business today is much better off and doesn't need anywhere near as many people as in the old days. I was heavily involved in DOT-COM and if there is one thing that it made clear is that small teams can achieve incredible feats in short order. Many failed and there was great over exuberance. However, who would have imagined that an Amazon could actually compete with a Walmart within a few short years of its existence. This is in one of the toughest business areas where warehousing, inventory management and logistics play a huge role.

This evolution happened in less than 20 to 25 years. What will happen in the next 25?

The party's over
It's time to call it a day
They've burst your pretty balloon
And taken the moon away
It's time to wind up the masquerade
Just make your mind up the piper must be paid

Nat King Cole sings in your head...

blinkered

thanks for the thought

my plan is to run NOT accepting any campaign donations

advertise myself as the candidate that can not be bought

refuse to accept any salary until... and if i am re-elected

run a personal appearance (doorbell, speak at events) and internet and yard sign campaign

my platform

end the federal reserve and restore all appropriate power to the treasury

ballanced budget amendment to the constitution

re authorize, pass..glass steagal legislation

set a limit to size of both depository and other financial institutions..an end of too big to fail

open a bank of the united states of america and issue currency direct from the treasury

RE wrote:

This evolution happened in less than 20 to 25 years. What will happen in the next 25?

I think that is the most important, and exciting question. Computers and automation are certainly beneficial; I was shocked when I visited a firm I used to work for years ago that installed a robot to palletize heavy bags, replacing 3 human workers. The reason was not because they wanted the extra expense and maintenance concerns, but because they simply couldn't fill those positions reliably, and the costs for a robot finally declined to where it made economic sense.

You raise an interesting thought, and I'm going to put some thought into it and discuss it with you sometime in the future, if you don't mind. In the interests of full disclosure, I'm very interested in the field of operations management and decision science, so I'll probably be slanted toward that approach. But the questions you raise are important, and I want to work through them at some point in the future.

But now I have to head to bed.

squidward wrote:

maximize shareholder value

If i never heard that phrase ever again, it would be one too many times.

Remeber to get money upfront to host or cater a Christmas party. Things can change very fast.

Sorry I was away on the CIT announcment. It might have been better on a Friday. It seems so out of place on a Sunday. One question: Where did the 2.3B go?

pay interest to bondholders?

Jim P-Town

Sales tax numbers don't lie. Small business is getting killed.

Remember
1. If you are a resturant/hotel get individual cc copies - compnay ones wont do
2. If your the caterer get 1/3 ujp front in cash

Shame the CIT thingy did not happen on a Friday. Seems out of place on a Sunday.

Still, I gotta ask where did the $2.3 B go? Covered GS positions?

Tim waiting for 2012 wrote:

Small business is getting killed.

Don't doubt that. But the fascade is still in place.

some thread music

jim morrison and the doors

when the musics over...when the musics over
turn out the lights...turn out the lights

YouTube - The Doors - When The Music's Over

Old 'politics'...

'Hey now baby, get into my big black car
I wanna just show you what my politics are.'

-Cream, 'Politician'

I'm going to beat my favorite drum again.

Manufacturing policy.

This country needs one.

mp wrote:

Manufacturing policy.

OMG: don't say that! Beck and Limbaugh and Drudge will be screaming '5 year plan'.

Damn commies. Hitler's camps. Pol Pot at work. Terrists and traitors!

Mp

The wage gains that were denied to workers over the past 20 years will be painfully won back in the future. Just a prediction.

Well, it has reached the point where they're using call centers in India to run the Jack In The Box drive-thru.

1 currency now -yogi

thanks...i would hope you would consider running up their in ...is it new york?

What they should do is have a sitdown with the Germans and talk with them about their policy.

The Germans have got it worked out.

All we'd have to do is make a xerox copy of their program.

That would be a good start.

keyser, thanks

are you interested in driving a stake thru the heart of old school politics too?

I suspect there are many businesses running negative cash flow waiting for a real recovery.

ladies and gentleman

just , please think about this for one minute

435 CR ers running for congress

all with a commitment to run without campaign money so they cant be bought

and an agreement to vote to end the federal reserve and balance the budget

i think when the dems and repubs get wind of this

they will shit their pants if

we are running in all 435 districts under one party name

take back your country

Mock, your heart is in the right place, but it ain't gonna happen.

You should run for office.

You could do it.

Mock...flashback...

'This old world may never change
The way it's been
And all the ways of war
Can't change it back again

I'm not the one to tell this world
How to get along
I only know the peace will come
When the hate is gone

I've been searchin''

'The Dolphins' - Fred Neil

RE wrote:

Chancellor Alistair Darling

He'll be gone real soon now. He's labor, and labor will be beaten by Conserv party - which will not carry out his policy.

Jim in Portland

MP

yes very very difficult...long long odds

but we have no other choice...really , no other choice

and wee have an advantage

the internet...and...people are as angry as i have seen them in 40 years

it is true in many states there are high hurdles to getting on the primary ballot

but it can be done

if we have to...in some states...run in a write in ballot campaign

i know that sounds crazy...but most jurisdictions place little or no hurdles in the way of that path

desperate times call for desperate measures

Bedtime: some good portland ale tonight so no needed (lol)

Jim,

Yes, he'll be gone. However, I'm not so sure that the Conservatives will not follow through:

*The Conservatives said the break up of the state-owned banks had already been "well trailed".

A spokesman added: "We have called for more competition in banking, and for government stakes to be used to strategic effect to that end." *

The Crash will wipe out the two 'old' political parties...and no fascist party will get any traction...that will be so 'old hat'...

TARP may have been a historic turning point...a bridge to...WAKE UP

not at all, just a later climactic chapter of an era of looting. the final few snacks enjoyed by GS on the corpse of CIT are the sad, fading coda of a historically brief orgy which began with the LTCM sleight-of-hand and peaked with the 'disappearance' of hundreds of billions in faraway sands seven years ago.

MP
in your earlier comments you wrote about the need at a national level for a manufacturing policy,
I hope I'm not misreading you. I remember in the late 1980s how Japan's MITI was all the rage and
how they would one day bury us because we rely on Smith's invisible hand of the market to choose
winners and losers (never mind as a Marxian economist might point out, that true price competition in markets
hasn't really happened since the 1800s save for the brief period say of DotCom where competitors were jockeying
to be price leader)...
so, was MITI that much of a success in the end?

The R's and D's will never die off to leave a vacuum. Something has to push them out. And honestly, I don't see anything in the country that is up to that task.

Duke, I think MITI put the Japanese economy on the map. Same with Korea.

I remember going to a meeting at the South Korean consulate in San Francisco during 1971. They were introducing what they called their "first five-year plan."

Well, needless to say, the name of the program was ill-chosen and had some of us looking at each other, but it was a very ambitious manufacturing program. Few thought they'd pull it off. I was one who thought they would. In fact, they exceeded all of their expectations.

My basic belief is that, in the 21st century, talk about "relative advantage" is so much bullshit because we've got capesize freighters now, fiber optic communications, and so forth.

A nation has to decide what their standard of living is going to be and work to that end. IMO, you do that by having a balance of economic activity, and manufacturing is part of that balance. We can't all be movie producers or software developers.

Besides, there are national security reasons for having a strong manufacturing sector. They're just now beginning to figure that out.

Dxy move tonight correlates to a pretty large upward move on the spx tomorrow.

serving breakfast in Yerp: and how would you like your ass handed to you Mr Bull?

FUTURES
VALUE CHANGE % CHANGE
DJStoxx 50 2,726.00 -89.00 -3.16
FTSE 100 5,001.00 -112.50 -2.20
DAX 30 5,403.50 -190.00 -3.40
CAC 40 3,589.50 -111.00 -3.00
S&P/MIB 22,005.00 -710.00 -3.13

Shanghai meanwhile is vaulting higher. Disney is coming!

It's a small world after all.

C

China apparently had a good manufacuring report today.

Plus they love koolaide over there.

No, I'm serious, Disney is coming and Bloomie is putting that behind Shanghai Jielung Corp's moonshot today.

C

"No, I'm serious, Disney is coming and Bloomie is putting that behind Shanghai Jielung Corp's moonshot today."

at the new park I bet you'll be able to see Donald, Pluto and the koolaide man waving to the kids.

and labor will be beaten by Conserv party

It's the Conservative's election to lose, there are a lot of folks po'd with Labor but that still doesn't mean the Con's have got it in the bag.
~splat

The Nerd's at /. look at and economic policy -

Slashdot | Nothing To Fear But Fearlessness Itself?

'We are governed at all levels by America's luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they're not optimists — they're unimaginative. They don't have faith, they've just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don't mind it when people become disheartened. They don't even notice.' With apologies to FDR, do we have nothing to fear but fearlessness itself?"

yagij - eligible to book as Tier 1 under Basel II. Lapped it up. And more, and worse.

C

Counterpointer wrote:

eligible to book as Tier 1 under Basel II. Lapped it up. And more, and worse.

O...M...G... The comments on that ZH post is dripping with the basic "Regional Banks are hosed". Can I think that European banks will also be hosed?

Now you've got me re-checking. Pretty sure I was tracked through this by a finance wiseguy from a large non-romance language state in Yerp. US exotica was easily sold to banks across the water because the sellers had trash to dispose of (AAA, natch), and the buyers had an incentive to buy it, not look at the rigor of the ratings or the structuring, wave it near someone who'd heard of risk in a meeting a long time ago, and then book it under Tier 1. The idea behind Basel II was ok for standard prescriptions, but failed to take into account the, uhh, "valuation challenge" of the exotica, and the leverage gained thereby. All fine on the up of course.

C

Well, something has eased Yerpeen concerns, futures have turned.

C

Goldman Sachs can afford a party. They made 3 billion profit last year and paid federal income tax at the rate of....

(drum roll)

at the rate of .6%

Tim waiting for 2012 wrote:

The pain is really starting to hit Main Street this year.

Hat tip Juvie--Pain Street USA

Agreed. Thank you.

*mock turtle wrote:

you know what has to be done
replace the house of representatives...and in so doing
drive a stake in the heart of the system that is bailing out the bankstas...period...nothing else matters*

You can't be serious. You need to recognize you can't stop the bailouts....then your ATM cards will be in Chinese and Arabic sometime soon. We don't have an economy without a fraudulent banking system. Face it: the banks own you.

YSLP-

My point is that we're protecting finance because it is all we have left. Look at economic development since the Middle Ages....take say, Venice. Was there in August. Venice began as an isolated trading center isolated from the rest of Europe's wars (sounds like UK, US), grew into a powerful transshipment and manufacturing economy, once Europe's largest (sounds like UK, US), they there refused to upgrade their shipping technology and were outdone by Spain and Portugal and fell into manufacturing decline in the Age of Exploration (sound familiar?) and become a finance center. After successive financial bubbles in the 18th century, they collapsed and fell to Napoleon in 1792 (or was it 1797?). They keep re-inflating bubbles because there was nothing else to compete at.

The Chinese and Arabs controls so much cash, equities, and commodities that it creates a competitive advantage over our banking system. Sure they don't know how to run banks, but they will just hire westerners who do. Look what was done with Emirates Airlines, etc.

Seems to me that weaker dollar, leading to higher oil prices will accomplish the same thing. Did all those offshore manufacturing positions take $100 barrell/oil into account? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it just reduces the benefit of cheap labor by 50%; which still results in over 500% savings overall. And then soon it won't even be worth selling cheap crap to America...

YLSP wrote:

Seems to me that weaker dollar, leading to higher oil prices will accomplish the same thing. Did all those offshore manufacturing positions take $100 barrell/oil into account? Maybe, maybe not.*

I'm doing an online renewable energy degree right now (for fun, actually), and it seems to me without major new energy sources powering shipping technology, we're probably all going to be farming in 2020-5. Assuming that is a baseline scenario that the market will drive, will still don't really industries to grow without finance, since China is leading most of the renewable energy development (solar power manufacture, BYD making car batteries, huge wind power contracts, etc....)

Terry wrote:

would love to hear other perspectives

of course, you won't over there

Theoretically we could generate enough wealth from introducing the new technology to provide sufficient transfer payments to those out of work. However, even if this economic logic were true , it still leaves unaddressed the social question of whether a society can operate on that basis. In all the discussion of globalization and free trade this basic conflict has been left unanswered. IMO it is necessary if we are going to preserve the social order that we allow people to work. Rather than providing transfer payments to unemployed workers we should provide incentives to keep people in jobs that could be automated away- either by outright payments to employers or through higher taxes on automation equipment.

rosethorn wrote:

But manufacturing, repair and maintenance of automated manufacturing equipment is something that would require skilled workers

Rosethorn - not entirely clear the point you are trying to make. If it is that automation will create better jobs than it replaces I think you are falling into the "equality" trap. Lets face it every population has a bell curve and all the people whose jobs are replaced on the lower part of the bell curve can't simply move up. That would result in a society in which everybody is above average. If we believe that it is important that people work (rather than receive a transfer payment) then you have to have low skilled jobs .

alybaba wrote:

Interesting essay on the "best and the brightest" being in charge of the system, from earlier this year: Achievetrons

I strongly suggest you watch the movie "In the Loop" to get a feel for the back-door mechanisms of government. Also highly recommended for anyone who think there is a cabal of mysterious intelligencia running the world behind closed doors.

It's a comedy, not a documentary, but I found it bizarre how close the satire was to my experiences in real life.

The government is run by 20-30 year-olds and, although they're smart, they're all kids with little life experience, and minimal maturity. Give it a watch!

YLSP wrote:

Although to be honest why would anything think Krugman was other than a Democratic lapdog?

Krugman has been fairly critical of he O administration quite a bit, but further from the left.

Looking through Congressional Hearings of the past year. There was one on Mark-to-Market accounting:

Excerpt: We can, however, no longer deny the reality of the procyclical nature of mark-to-market accounting. It has produced numerous unintended consequences, and it has exacerbated the ongoing economic crisis. If the regulators and standard setters do not act now to improve the standards, then the Congress will have no other option than to act itself. To say that the Congress will have to act is not to advocate an outright suspension of mark-to-market accounting. If we do away with this standard entirely, accounting will revert to the very kind of subjectivity and sleight-of-hand that made mark-to-market necessary in the first place. The standard does not provide transparency for investors, but its strict application in the current environment is, in too many instances, distorting rather than clarifying the picture.

Take the case of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta. Last September, the bank estimated that it would lose $44,000 in cash flows on 3 private label mortgage-backed securities starting in about 15 years. The magic of mark-to-market accounting required this relatively minor shortfall to be treated as an other than temporary impairment loss of $87.3 million. I find that accounting result to be absurd. It fails to reflect the economic reality. We must correct the rules to prevent such gross distortions.

Bank regulators must also consider liberalizing regulatory capital requirements and granting reasonable forbearance in the current economic environment. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency can be of particular assistance on this issue. I therefore look forward to the Agency’s testimony today.

Did you see that doublespeak? We're not against mark-to-market per se... but we do find the result of mark-to-market rather troubling.

More:
Today’s market is not a fair market. It is not a real market. It is a panic market and it is a buyer’s market. Companies are forced to mark their markets, their assets to market despite the fact that they have no inclination to sell them, are watching their company’s value disappear. The great unraveling of so many firms’ balance sheets is not the consequence of unsound business practices or even declining sales but simply the result of our regulators’ unwillingness to implement the more effective accounting rule that will not pull enterprises under the rising tide of an economic crisis.

And let’s be clear about the scale of the problem, it is not just the high-flying Wall Street traders who are suffering as a result of the mark-to-market rule. Many of the financial institutions that receive TARP funds, taxpayer money provided to keep our national credit markets operating, our lending institutions that have reserve requirements that they are obligated to maintain by law.

(Some of the witnesses)
Recently, I read a book that did report on FDR suspending mark to-market accounting. The book concluded that had FDR suspended
the rule earlier, the country would have been spared at least 2 years of the Great Depression.

,rads

They pretend they can't come up with money for a party, and we pretend to care-relieved of forced socializing under the influence.

Opining on someone else's writing is impressive?

Comrade Alexei, not inevitably, no. But I thought so in this case. Evidently you disagree? Are there reasons?

Fewer Christmas parties means fewer people getting fired for getting liquored up and shagging the boss's wife in the bathroom.

Eric wrote:

Fewer Christmas parties means fewer people getting fired for getting liquored up and shagging the boss's wife in the bathroom.

That was a little too detailed to be completely generic, Eric, and it also appeared to be flavoured with a tinge of regret and remorse.

I toiled for a company once upon a time, and the owner-an overwrought understudy of Napoleon complexity, in a five foot five frame, was an asshole in real life, but all one needed to do was add alcohol and he could push the envelope considerably on his claims to being one of the most unlikable people you've ever met.

Holiday parties were only made palatable by the bonus envelope, hopefuly full of Benjamins...

That was a little too detailed to be completely generic, Eric, and it also appeared to be flavoured with a tinge of regret and remorse.

Nah, not me. But I've seen it happen.

We used to call Christmas parties at one place "Spinning the Wheel of Employment".

noob goldberg wrote:

Assholishness is an expensive personality trait.

I got a minor degree in dealing with those. The OR suite/hospitals can be exceptionally instructive.

Juvenal Delinquent wrote:

The most dangerous dance for the distaffs

was the distance between his hands and his wife's glare

Oh, he was a perfect asshole.

John Bircher
Pre-Neo-Con
Dale Carnegie believing
Wife beating
Check Kiting
Failure

UFC 86*, live from the octo gone (Section 8?)

Maul Street v Pain Street

*$44.95 PPV

Funny stuff reading this mark-to-market hearing from February. Abbot and Costello got nothing on these clowns.

(Herz is Chairman of the FASB)
Mr. HERZ. I believe that, and again this is part of the frustration also on our part because the fair value measurement approach has within it an ability to do cash flow modeling rather than just take prices in the market that might have been fire sales, that you do not really know. We have told people repeatedly it is not a last trade model, particularly in these kinds of markets. Yet, for some reason, we are told that that keeps on happening.
Mr. PRICE. Why do you believe that keeps happening?
Mr. HERZ. Well, we are told that there are kind of institutional and cultural aspects in the system. One is that from the bank point of view, the preparer point of view, unfortunately, many of these institutions do not have the internal expertise to do the cash flow modeling of some of these complex items. And, unfortunately, because there was no market infrastructure set up around these things and periodic reporting, like we have for corporate bonds and corporate stocks, there is not standardized information always readily available.
Mr. PRICE. So the examiners are more strict than they otherwise need to be?
Mr. HERZ. No, I do not think it is the examiners. I think the preparers do not necessarily have the expertise and may not want to have to pay for an outside valuation person.
Mr. PRICE. Well, the word that we get from back home is that the examiners are remarkably strict and want absolutely every ‘‘I’’
dotted and ‘‘t’’ crossed. And, consequently, I believe that guidance ought to be more specific for the institutions that you are looking at so they know what the rules are. Right now, they do not know what the rules are.
Mr. HERZ. Well, I think the rules are pretty clear, but we are going to have to give them some more examples, for example.

Really, does no one else find this amusing?
Congressman: Your mark-to-market standards suck and because everyone is valuing items on the last-trade-model it's killing companies and restricting lending, and doom, gloom, doom!
FASB: We keep telling banks it's not a last trade model, yet they don't know how to do any other model, nor do they want to pay for someone else to model it for them.
Congressman: Well, that's not what the banks are telling us. They are telling us its your fault!

G'damn I think he's the last Congressman to speak but Rep. Grayson lays some smack down here!

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Gentlemen, there seems to be a clamoring for changing the mark-to-market rules that seems to come largely from institutions that may be insolvent, and that is the pattern that I am seeing. And I am wondering if we should try to apply this to other situations in everyday life. I will give you two examples, if you want. I am 6’4.’’ It is pretty un-comfortable for me to sit in airplane seats, and sometimes, to be honest, I bump my head when I am going through a tight door pas-sage. I am wondering if we should eliminate mark-to-market rules and also make inches larger so that I would only be 5’8.’’ We have a lot of traffic on the Beltway, I got a suggestion from Freddie Mac recently that if we could just change the ratio of circumference to diameter, pi, if we could just change that ratio, that would move the beltway further away. So Freddie Mac says to me that it wants to eliminate mark-to-market rules and increase pi to four to alleviate the beltway traffic. I got another suggestion from AIG. The suggestion is that since the Wizards loss to New Orleans this week by a score of 109 to 98, they want to eliminate the mark-to-market rules, and they also want to make sure that 98 is more than 109 in the future so that the Wizards will have won that game. Gentlemen, does it make any sense to kill the messenger when mark-to-market tells you that an institution is insolvent? Let’s start with Mr. Kroeker?

More from Denninger, but at least he's aiming his 42pt. bold-faced cannon at

WASHINGTON — In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.

"The Securities and Exchange Commission should be very interested in any financial company that secretly decides a financial product is a loser and then goes out and actively markets that product or very similar products to unsuspecting customers without disclosing its true opinion," said Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economics professor who's proposed a massive overhaul of the nation's banks. "This is fraud and should be prosecuted."

U.K.: Breaking up Lloyds and RBS