They Only Talk To Each Other

Little Karen Tumulty Wants Your Attention. Again.

I just heard Karen Tumulty, five years old, say on PBS's Washington Week that the results of the Ohio vote this week regarding SB5 "were such a mixed bag", and painting it as a muddled set of signals, at best.

After all, the people who voted against it, she implied, were doing so for lots of different reasons; no cohesion in the message being sent to the local Tea Partei.

The final vote in Ohio was: Yes: 37% --- No: %63

Lil' Karen -- who, I must admit, has one heckuva [as they say in Texas] large lower jaw -- also said (and I was typing as fast as I could while she did):

The fact is, the campaign this coming year will be negative. The democrats are saying, 'This year isn't a referendum; it's a choice'. And you get that by painting your opponent [as negative], and the Democrats are going to say, 'The Republicans are [negative].

Karen Tumulty is like nearly every 'journalist' and 'analyst' and 'commentator' in Washington: The conversation around the teevee table isn't really for the Rubes tuning in. It's a televised Kool Kidz Club meeting.

These people have national soapboxes -- the chance to deliver honest observation, real news analysis. Instead, they talk to each other; they believe their own press releases. What they say is a better gauge of what the Washington elite are thinking, their take on an event, than an accurate review and a conclusion based on facts.

Their chatter is of the Washington elite, by the Washington elite, for the Washington elite, and their assumption is that it's true because they've said it.

To paraphrase Neil Young: Karen Tumulty's pissin' in the wind / She don't know it / But she is.

There; now you can go back to whatever you were doing before this Tumulty interruption.

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All In

It's Always Been About Saving The Banks And Their Shareholders

There's been a lot of quick-take summing-up about the way in which Our Great Leaders all around the globe have chosen to deal with the titanic amount of toxic debt created by America's financial whorehouse and casino community, giving the rest of the world so many more reasons to love us and want us to be carpet-bombed have soft lives and treats.

Krug Man did it the other day. He said what has happened in the current European debt situation, "it turns out, is that by going on the Euro, Spain and Italy in effect reduced themselves to the status of third-world countries that have to borrow in someone else’s currency, with all the loss of flexibility that implies."

The Euro represents not just a currency, but also, too, the idea of A United Europe. If the Euro dissolves, everyone goes back to a multi-currency system. There will be chaos in the international markets -- how do you value shares of Grosser Hund Am Tisch GMBH™ In Neues Duetschmarks? In Francs? In Dollars? In the Japanese and Chinese Yen? What are the relative values of all the new (old) currencies? Tourists, on vacation abroad; what are all their British and Irish Pounds worth in Drachmas, or Thai Bhat?

Even more important, what are all those U.S. and Greek and Italian Treasuries worth in this newly-valued world? Ones the Chinese and the Saudis and the Japanese have (in the case of U.S. Treasuries) been buying like crazy for twenty years? What about all the major currencies each country's central bank has purchased; suddenly, what's it all worth? What happens in companies large and small, from Lisbon to Warsaw, who all have contracts with buyers and suppliers, in Euros?

Well, the European Union headquarters in Brussels would remain open ... for a while, before it's sold to Rupert Murdoch; because the political European Union will effectively be broken, and Konrad Adenauer will roll over in his grave.

Therefore, the major players in Europe have gone All In, staking everything (including their own political futures) on the fate of the Euro.

And that is why the Austerity demands, which accompany loans to Greece, and now Italy, and who knows who's next, must be accepted. If the populations in Europe just submit to having the quality of their lives reduced for more than a decade to save rotten-to-the-core financial institutions (and The lucky One-Per-Centers) -- then what Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy and the international Bankster Brigade are doing might work. We'll all be living in yurts, watching our children play with toys made of dried animal dung.

If the people don't submit, and instead complain and protest, and riot, and eventually vote out the governments who are in favor of saving rotten-to-the-core financial institutions -- then the Euro is toast; the global financial structure goes all higgledy-piggeldy; and we will all be living in yurts watching our children play with toys made of dried animal dung.

A lot of people, such as The Krugster, see what all this is about, and have summed it up pretty succinctly -- it's all about saving the banks, their shareholders, and bondholders.

So, too, also The Great Curmudgeon:

Consensus

Well the consensus seems to be we need to just install bankers as the leaders of all the countries, and the only way any of us can survive is if all the richest countries of the world are turned into 3rd world hellholes after the middle class gives all of their money to rich people.

The frustrating thing is that we could just give free money to rich people. Every time banksters light a pile of money on fire, the ECB and the BOE and the Fed can just say, oh, no worries chap, here's another pile. At least try to get down to the dog track this week instead of just having a bonfire with thousand dollar bills. This isn't my preferred option, but it's a better option than making poor and middle class people suffer just because.

by Atrios at 09:00
42 Comments

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El Testa Di Cazzo Di Tutta l'Europa Berlusconi Resigns

Rome Greets Announcement With More Austerity

New Reaches Rome Of The Poco Pene's Resignation

As Italy's people steady themselves to withstand the rigors of Austerity which the EU demands as price for saving the Euro lending German and French banks, really Italy money -- the selfsame Italian people took Winston Churchill's advice on V-E day, and "allowed ourselves a brief period of celebration".

Silvio Berlusconi resigned today as Prime Minister of the Republic Of Italy, after nearly two decades of playing factions within Italy's political parties off against each other, in order to deliver a (sometimes) working coalition in the country's Parliament. This was the real reason he hadn't been gotten rid of earlier, not some indispensable personal ability or sage leadership. He was canny -- what the Germans refer to as Schlau -- but ultimately, not possessed of high intelligence.

He also used his position as Prime Minister to make some deals -- he is a Billionaire, and as a member of the planet's Oligarch class, saw nothing wrong with it. In that connection, Berlusconi was accused of money laundering and witness tampering and bribery, trying to evade the charges by having a law passed through the Parliament, giving the Italian Prime Minister immunity from prosecution for any crime -- only to have it repealed.

He also treated the international public to a flamboyant peep-show of his private life; it was the women he dallied with who passed on details to an ever-hungry Tabloid press. And it was in that connection which made him beloved to a superinteligent parakeet and the four other readers of Before Nine.

Obligatory Photo Of Superintelligent Parakeet In Middle Of Blog Rant

So, as he slinks back to his palatial estates and can return to manipulating the Italian people through what issues from the media empire he owns -- here are a few links to our Roll Of Shame for Silvio! -- Chief Clown Prince Of Europe!

May, 2009: See Naples And Divorce

June, 2009: Comedy Relief: Arrogance So Large It Has Its Own Postal Code

September, 2009: He Thinks With Little Silvio, Which Isn't That Bright. Come To
Think Of It, Big Silvio's Stupid, Too.

October, 2009: Meanwhile, In Downtown Italy

December, 2009: Berlusconi Attacked By Cathedral

March, 2010: Wearing Purple, Seeing Red

December, 2010: Salvato! Silvio Salvato Per Avere il sesso con più ragazze adolescenti!

February, 2011: Oh God; Not Again

Now, Italy will go forward, bravely keeping the Banksters and the rich warm, and safe, and with many treats. Just as our Tea Partei and GOP, and many Democrats, want to do right here in the Good Old Eusa.

Silvio Berlusconi: Auf Nicht Wiedersehen, you Nutter.

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Not That It Matters

All Aboard The Failboat

"R.A." is a writer for The Economist, legendary pro-business and fairly conservative publication based in the UK. R.A. published an article, "Finito?" on Wednesday, which describes the trap the EU and the Eurozone finds itself in pretty succinctly (paragraphing added for clarity):

I have been examining and re-examining the situation, trying to find the potential happy ending. It isn't there. The euro zone is in a death spiral.

Markets are abandoning the periphery, including Italy, which is the world's eighth largest economy and third largest bond market. This is triggering margin calls and leading banks to pull credit from the European market. This, in turn, is damaging the European economy, which is already being squeezed by the austerity programmes adopted in every large euro-zone economy. A weakening economy will damage revenues, undermining efforts at fiscal consolidation, further driving away investors and potentially triggering more austerity. The cycle will continue until something breaks.

Eventually, one economy or another will face a true bank run and severe capital flight and will be forced to adopt capital controls. At that point, it will effectively be out of the euro area. What happens next isn't clear, but it's unlikely to be pretty...

I hate to get this pessimistic about the situation. It feels panicky and overwrought. I can't believe that Europe would allow so damaging an outcome as a financial collapse and break-up to occur. And I still don't understand why, if this is all as obvious as it seems to me, equities aren't down 20% now, rather than 2% or 3%.

But the window within which something could be done to prevent it is closing, and fast. I hope to be proven astoundingly wrong in my assessment, but I'm struggling to see alternative outcomes.

It seems obvious to so many professional economists and analysts that Austerity is not the medicine for the Made-In-USA financial crisis -- that reductions in the spending by governments will only continue to reduce growth, maintain high unemployment, and lead to who knows what potential political upheavals.

A commenter, "LexHumana", to R.A.'s post summed up the "centrist" and "reasonable" opinions of a large number of people:

Not to say that the Kubler-Ross model is applicable in all such cases, but I am continuingly amazed at how this Eurozone crisis (and the comparable U.S. financial crisis) nicely follows the five stages of grief. Europe began with denial ("there is no problem, everything is normal"), then moved to anger ("damn those profligate Greeks"), then to bargaining (which still has not been successfully concluded with Greece), and are now entering the stage of depression ("oh my god, we are doomed").

Eventually, Europe will reach "acceptance", and realize that there is no bloodless way of solving this problem -- the Greeks will accept that the days of wine and roses are officially over and go back to the way Greece was in the 1950s, the bondholders will accept the fact that you can't get blood from a turnip and write-off much of the debt as uncollectable, and the rest of the European citizenry will (via their central banks) accept that in order to avoid a financial collapse by the bondholders some degree of bailout will be required and they will be the ones to foot the bill.

An extraordinary amount of pain needs to be shared among the parties, and this is going to push Europe into a recession, but it is survivable.... as long as they get to "acceptance" sooner rather than later.

The problem is, this argument depends upon the premise that the European citizenry will... accept that in order to to avoid a financial collapse... some degree of bailout will be required and they will be the ones to foot the bill.

Why? the "European citizenry" are already asking why they should have to pay to bail out their own versions of TBTF banks. Unlike the Americans, they found their voices on this subject pretty quickly -- footage of Greeks facing off against riot police in Athens, or in Italy, Spain, and the U.K., proves that. Rather than agree to support a rotten system, they're refusing. They want changes made that benefit the majority.

(The way Europeans are saying "no" reminds me, in spirit, of a scene in James Cameron's Aliens: Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) says the Marines should simply nuke the nest of alien creatures; it's the only way to solve the problem and ensure the safety of everyone. The corporate Yuppie slimeball, Burke (Paul Reiser) says, "Whoa, whoa, whoa; You can't do that. This area has a significant dollar value, and represents a significant investment to the company" [Too Big To Fail, in other words?]. "Well, they can bill me," Ripley snorts.)

Why, Europeans ask, should they assist the same people who created this problem? Why should they do with less, see their children go hungry, to subsidize the lifestyles of the wealthy?

It could be argued that Europeans have a longer history of "knowing their place", and dealing with the whims and excesses of aristocrats and nouveau parvenus, and so can 'take it'. It could also be argued that Europe has a tradition of not taking it. And under the grinding, enforced poverty of The New Austerity (so obvious an arrangement to benefit bad banks, bad actors and bad governments), Europe's Communist political parties could become resurgent. Who knows; they might get it right the second time around.

But we don't have to go there. The current dilemma is all avoidable. But we're still going to be forced to go there anyway, to save the banks and the rich and the hurt fee-fees of The Masters Of The Universe.

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MEHR: The Krug Man explains the entire crisis in one sentence.

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European Debt Crisis, Episode Five: The Empire Strikes Back

More Jenga

The Big Picture provided two very nice infographics by Scott Barber at Reuter's, putting the musical question "Why Italy Matters" into sharp relief:



It's easy to see just who is most exposed in the pending implosion of the Republic Of Bunga-Bunga, and that a total of $400 Billion-plus in "Non-Bank Private" debt is most at risk if Italy defaults. Primarily French Non-Bank -- Alors!

So, as the West slowly sinks into the steaming pile of a Made-In-Good-Ole-USA financial meltdown, others are ready to pick up our fallen standard of civilization -- their standard might be made of a toxic plastic, and not as pretty as the one we had, and it might have been made by convict slave labor -- but, who cares? The East Is Red / The East Is Red / The Bank Of China Comes Out In The East...

Hey, thanks, Lil' Boots! Thanks Larry Summers! And Thanks Little Angelo Mozilo, and "Tiny" Dick Fuld, and Lil' Lloyd Blankfein, and all the other Masters Of The Universe! Thank you, brave members of Congress! And thanks to all of America's One-tenth Of One Percent -- who never allowed ethical or moral considerations to stand in the way of More for themselves and their clans, and Issue! You're all so awesome and wonderful.

I'm sure you'll understand if all of us down here hope you end up in a basement in Ekaterinburg! Buh-Bye!

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Living In The Immaterial World

Falling Cain


Over the past two weeks, it was revealed that Herman Cain -- Right Wing Nut Job former CEO of a pizza company without any prior political experience and candidate for the GOP presidential nomination -- has been the focus of up to four sexual harassment complaints.

One of Cain's accusers (whose complaint, filed while Cain was president of the National Restaurant Association in Washington, D.C.) was paid an entire years' salary by the Association in an out-of-court settlement. Her attorney called a press conference last week to say the woman would not reveal her identity or make any public statement except to affirm that her charges of being sexually harassed by Cain were true. Cain responded by denying a "settlement" had ever taken place, which sounded like a denial of the truth of any harassment charges.

Yesterday, Sharon Bialek, who had also accused Cain while heading the Restaurant Association of "unwanted sexual contact", made public her identity and details about Canin's groping of her.

Today, Cain held a press conference against a backdrop of American flags (see above) and said that her accusations "simply did not happen".

As I sat in my hotel room [Cain said about watching Bialek's press conference] ... my first response in my mind, and reaction was, ‘I don’t even know who this woman is.’ Secondly, I didn’t recognize [her] name at all... I tried to remember if I recognized her, and I didn’t. I tried to remember if I remembered that name, and I didn’t. The charges, and the accusations, I absolutely reject. They simply didn’t happen. They simply did not happen.

Cain then walked back his earlier denial that an accusation of harassment while president of the NRA had led to a settlement, saying it was an "agreement" -- in law, a different outcome than a "settlement".

Finally, Cain blamed "the Democrat machine" for providing information about the sexual harassment cases to the press (disingenuous or not, the media has hinted that campaign staff of Le Gouvernour Placard, Rick Perry of the failed state of Texas, was the source): "“The fact is, these anonymous allegations are false, and now the Democrat machine in America has brought forth a troubled woman to make false accusations, statements... There will probably be others — not because I am aware of any, but because the machine to keep a businessman out of the White House is going to be relentless. And if they continue to come, I will continue to respond.”

Shorter Cain: Charges false. Dirty hippies are behind it -- and even if another twenty women say I touched them, they are big fat liars. Because they are. Move Along; nothing to see.

Cain's stance since the charges were revealed in the press, and have developed since, has been to deny everything. He claims things have not happened. Period. And in one of the cases, rested his denial on a semantical difference between 'settlement' and 'agreement'. He says he does not recognize Sharon Bialek, and that her accusations... simply never happened.

I continue to be astonished when Right-wing Freaks are caught in their lies -- and they do lie; consistently, with terrible consequences ("Lil' Boots" Bush, and the population of Iraq; No?). They lie about the legitimacy of climate change; they lie about their motives in any reduction of America's debt situation. They lie about having affairs, and about their own sexual orientation. They lie about themselves. They have no credibility.

This isn't to suggest that liberals or Democratic politicians haven't lied, or aren't lying right now. But, if you add up all the facts, the Truth, that stands against statements politicians and public figures on the Right have made... it's not only shocking. It's almost unbelievable how huge the lies are.

But, consider: They either do so because they know that they're lying, and believe manipulation of others is acceptable (in fact, it's a show of contempt) -- or they truly live in some place where 'magical thinking' works; where the principal delusion is that with enough repetition, something will simply become true. Remember Fat Karl Rove's 2003 comment to a New York Times journalist that the resurgent Right, in power, "made new realities", by force of will? This is the kind of delusion I'm referring to.

In our new crop of Rightists, that kind of Crazy can be fueled by religion (as with Messr. Le Gouvenour Perry, or Grand TurtleBear Bachmann), or by illogic (Ron Paul), or out of pure cynicism (President Boner).

Herman, like his fellow Crazies, know what he's done. But he believes he can make, by sheer force of his personal will, two and two make five. Just because he really really says so. And if we are good little boys and girls, we should not pay attention to the bad stories and place all our faith in a dime-store Huckster who will eventually have to say he's sorry, kinda, that so many people got sick eating the pizza he passed out -- but that will be the fault of dirty, hippie haters of Teh Freedom™.

And this is why we need to move heaven and earth to ensure he, and no one like him on the Right, or the Left (because there are BlueDog delusions and cynicism, and 'pragmatic' 'centrist' delusions on the Left, too) continue to run the show and rig the game.

I have very low expectations we can make that happen, but...

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Got That Right

Nostalgia

Just a random thought here, but was reminiscing about the good old days back when this blog was not quite as sucky as it is now. It's hard to comprehend now, but there was really something controversial and subversive about the idea that you could just write stuff on the internets and people might read it. There were a few proto-bloggers before cheap-to-free hosting and blogging software, but those two things lowered the entry bar just enough to make it easy for everybody.

by Atrios at 11:23
229 Comments

Before Nine, Proudly Serving You Cheap Food Since 2008, has received precisely 28 comments in 450-plus posts.

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Michele Bachmann Weiterhin Die Berufung Des Cthulhu Hören

Michele Bachmann Continues To Hear The Call Of Chtulu


TPM:

In an interview with ABC News, Rep. Michele Bachmann was asked for her thoughts on who should be the fifth president on Mount Rushmore. After giving the obligatory nod to Reagan, the Minnesota Congresswoman went off into somewhat more unusual territory.

First, she began angling up to answer James Garfield, apparently on the grounds that he was the last president to move to the oval office from the House of Representatives. However, just before concluding there, she switched horses to Calvin Coolidge on the grounds that “he got the country’s budget back on track.”

“He was a taking-care-of-business kind of guy,” she concluded.

Do people like this even live in the same country we do? Ich Denke Es War nicht so..

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All About Me

Too Stupid To Breathe (European Version)


Italian Home Secretary Roberto Maroni, Left; A Horndog, Center; Italian Minister of Federal Reforms Umberto Bossi At Right (Alessandro Di Meo / European Pressphoto)

And as the world holds its breath, waiting for the beginning of Armageddon in the Middle East or Ragnarok in the financial world through collapse of the Euro, the Paper Of Record © reported this morning that the Clown King of Bunga-Bunga Land views the economic crisis about to break upon Italy in, uh, "personal" terms:

After denying reports about his imminent resignation, Mr. Berlusconi said he would face a vote on a state financing bill on Tuesday that could potentially take down his government, and in coming days would call for a confidence vote on austerity measures meant to quell market concerns about Italy.

“I want to look at those who want to betray me in the face,” he said.

With high debts, vast underground economies, low birth rates and more pensioners than workers, there is no doubt that Greece and Italy need structural changes to survive. But with deeply entrenched political patronage societies, governments in both countries have been unwilling or unable to carry out such changes, which would require striking the heart of their own constituencies.

"With deeply entrenched political patronage societies"... leaders "unwilling or unable [to strike at] the heart of their... constituencies" -- Gosh, does this remind you of any other country we might know?

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MEHR: NYT: "Cornered by the European debt crisis, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy offered a conditional resignation on Tuesday, agreeing to step down but only after Parliament passes an austerity package demanded by the European Union, a move that could bring the country closer to early elections."

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You Can't Make This Stuff Up

They Certainly Will. How Many, Of Course, Is Up To The DOJ.

This advertisement ran in a number of American east coast print publications this past Saturday (courtesy of Barry Ritholtz's The Big Picture).

A bit like posting an ad to book passage on the return leg of the Titanic. I'm guessing this was already scheduled and paid for by MF Global through whomever handles their public relations -- and, given the recent Brouhaha (you know; bankruptcy, federal investigations; that missing $600 million in client funds), their attention was, uh, 'elsewhere' and they probably just overlooked cancelling them.

I'm also surprised just how 'Seventies' this ad appears. If you look at graphics design journals or Adweek during that period, they were using the same manner of layout, typefaces; even the African-American business professional -- holding a standard pushbutton telephone handset, please note, not even a cell phone -- could have stepped out of 1978.

(Oddly, the man's shirtcollar and knot of his tie (usually on a center line with the Adam's apple of the throat and the middle of a man's face) doesn't match the position of his head, unless he has a ridiculously long neck. They skimped when they hired the graphic artist -- and how did an art director ever let this slip by?)

Still, if this popped up in a film or a novel, it would strike a tinny, off-kilter note: Hey; c'mon! Stuff like this never happens!

Of course not. And Europe's austerity measures will be proven to stimulate economic growth, and winged monkeys will fly out of Herman Cain's -- oh, wait; that already happened.

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MEHR: William D. Cohan (no, not that Cohan) writes about a key element in MF Global's collapse in Bloomberg-o-vision:

How could Wall Street powerhouses such as Bear Stearns Cos., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Merrill Lynch & Co. disappear virtually overnight? How could MF Global Holdings Ltd. be here one day and gone the next?...

...Before the recent financial crisis reached its most acute stages, beginning in March 2008, the dirty secret of securities firms was that without the ongoing financial support of their short-term lenders they couldn’t stay in business. In effect, the short-term lenders to firms such as Bear Stearns and Lehman had a free option -- every night -- about whether to continue doing business with them...

... Bear Stearns borrowed about $70 billion a day in the short-term -- so-called repo -- secured financing market. The cost was low, and the risks seemingly negligible. Who wouldn’t keep lending to Bear Stearns, especially with a secured interest in the financial assets -- such as Treasuries or mortgage-backed debt -- on the borrower’s balance sheet?

Or so the logic went before March 2008, when we discovered that without the $70 billion from the overnight lenders -- which was suddenly withheld -- Bear Stearns couldn’t continue as a going concern, even though it had $18 billion in cash on hand.

Admittedly, before Bear Stearns collapsed over the Ides of March more than three years ago, very few financial executives had any appreciation for this subtle funding dynamic. Yet nothing is more fundamental to most banks’ operational strategies than the ability to borrow short and lend long. Such backroom plumbing was thought best left to the firm’s repo desk and its treasurer, all blessed with a little oversight from the chief financial officer and other top executives.

Basically, the Masters Of The Universe can do anything they want with money. Absolutely anything. Screw the SEC, to hell with the regulators; It's The Freeee Market, Baby!!! Yeah!!!

Do you see any proof to the contrary?

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