Economy is going to hell, so buy liquor instead of candy for Valentine’s Day
Saturday, February 14th, 2009
Here’s creative marketing!
Because candy won’t do it in this economy…
Archive for February, 2009
Madoff suicide
Saturday, February 14th, 2009
A retired British army major killed himself after losing his life savings in the alleged fraud perpetrated by U.S. financier Bernard Madoff, his son said Friday.
Willard Foxton told The Associated Press that, at first, he felt so angry after his father William Foxton’s death he wanted to attend Madoff’s possible trial in the United States to fling the veteran’s medals in his face. Now he just wants Madoff to know what happened to his father.
“I’m sure Mr. Madoff thinks it was just a con got out of hand. He thinks it’s all about money — I’m sure that’s what he feels,” Foxton said in a telephone interview. “I want him to see that people have died as a result of what he’s done.”
Sadly, it wasn’t defending his country that killed Mr. Willard, it was the sickening greed of Bernie Madoff.
Here is a history of the bungled SEC investigations into Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. One reason the SEC never successfully figured out the Madoff crimes? Perhaps they were socializing with the Madoffs? Or were intimidated by Ruth and Bernie’s apparent success?
Meanwhile, (suspiciously??)
Big question: Why isn’t Madoff offing himself?
Because the same factor that got him into this epic fraud is the same one that is keeping him alive: hubris and narcissism. He won’t kill himself, because he loves himself too much. His greed affects everyone but him, since he still gets to live in his luxurious New York City home! He is negotiating to save his family from being included in criminal charges. He has no sense of the crippling life-altering pain he has caused his investors.
Here is his Palm Beach home:
Here is the mailbox to his French Riviera apartment:
Here he is, accused of mailing $1 million worth of jewelry to family and friends before his arrest.
Meanwhile, victims like William Foxton feel so afraid of their own new-found poverty that that they kill themselves.
Here’s another way to look at it, if you are suffering in this terrible economic time:
- You are experiencing EPIC world-chaging contractions.
- Its not just YOU, you are one of too many to count.
- You’re not stupid, you’ve been entrapped by a criminal mastermind
- Everyone else is feeling some aspect of what you are feeling.
- Do NOT take your own life, its not worth it, your family and loved ones want you here.
- Instead, stand tall, voice your anger on the internet, become part of the angry mob that puts this man and all of his accomplices away for the rest of his life.
- Find a way to help investors get back the $15 million that his wife withdrew
- Find ways to band together with others who have suffered what you are suffering.
This is a chance to re-shape how we view profit and responsibility. This retired British army major should not only have suicide as an option, especially when his abuser, Bernie Madoff, is too much of a preening peacock
to off himself after the damage he’s done.
Congressional Stimulus Conference? ALL MEN.
Thursday, February 12th, 2009
Today, Congress announced the House and Senate lawmakers who will be serving as conferees to work out the final version of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Missing from this list? Women lawmakers.
Remember my post about all the white guys of a certain age who are currently being GRILLED at Congressional Hearings for leading our economy over the cliff? (notice that Congress never noticed they were only grilling mostly white men!)
Look, I have nothing against WHITE MEN, but
- if Wall Street is dominated by white men, and they gleefully, greedily profited,
- if the banking industry is dominated by white men, and they gleefully, greedily profited
- if the auto industry is dominated by white men, and they refused to change their business practices to protect their businesses,
- if the shadow banking industry is dominated by white men and they gleefully, greedily profited,
- if all these white guys are still flying private jets and taking super-high salaries and going to luxury resorts for spa-meetings,
- THEN PERHAPS A BUNCH OF CONGRESSIONAL GUYS SHOULD NOT BE ALONE IN ANALYZING THE PROBLEM!
Seriously, where are the women? Where are the non-wealthy?
There is no ‘voice of america’ in this conference… These guys have lifetime health insurance coverage. Their wives raise their kids, usually back in their districts (which translates to single parenting?) They do not take public transportation around their own states, they do not understand what its like to be broke and wonder how to keep your house.
Again, these guys were on duty when this economic debacle unfolded. Why do they suddenly think that they can solve what they never regulated or objected to?
Under their watch, the rich got richer and the poor did NOT.
And its not like they are economists. So they bring their own high-level life experiences into the discussion of how to stimulate the economy. If they don’t experience what middle class Americans do, then how can they possibly know what to prioritize?
These conferees are the chairman and ranking members of the relevant committees, and just happen to be men. But it underscores how important it is for these lawmakers to be extra vigilant in making sure that programs benefiting women and children don’t face the brunt of the cuts. Already, as ThinkProgress has previously reported, such provisions have been the first to go:
– The Senate bill put together by the so-called “Gang of Moderates” disproportionately cut programs that target women and children, including Head Start, Violence Against Women, school improvement, and food stamps.
We’d be better off with monkeys throwing darts.
Backlash after Octuplet mom asks for donations to raise her 14 kids
Thursday, February 12th, 2009
TMZ.com Exclusive
In an EXCLUSIVE, TMZ.com shows a photo of Octuplet mom, Nadya Suleman’s pregnant belly.
In my previous post, I suggested that Nadya Suleman might have mental health issues that no one is talking about. Calling her ‘crazy’ and a ‘nutjob’ doesn’t solve anything. She was aided and abetted by a fertility doctor, is now aided and abetted by a Public Relations firm, The Killeen, Furtney Group. Meanwhile 8 teeny babies are receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars of care each week they are in the hospital, all paid for inadvertently by California and US taxpayers.
AOL had a poll today and by 12 noon PST nearly 300,000 people voted, here are the results:
And AOL asked if readers would consider donating to Suleman:
There is a strong backlash, especially since Suleman admits to taking Food Stamps and State Disability payments for several of her other 6 children.
So again, the question is whether or not she is mentally stable. Two of her children have already been judged by the State to be disabled. These 8 babies have a long, expensive road ahead of them. I know that courts work to keep children with their natural parents and/or families, but what is a solution to the financial morass Nadya Suleman has created and who will speak for the children?
Hopefully, not this public relations firm, hired by Nadya Suleman to tell her story in the ‘best light’…
Oh yes, Nadya is different and she has made a splash. Now lets see some family and/or community mental health assistance to her, not financial assistance.
Stimulus didn’t give Wall Street a bounce today. Who cares?
Thursday, February 12th, 2009Wall Street did not bounce upwards today. The Stimulus Package was passed but there was no joy on the Street.
Why?
Because the mess they made will take longer to repair than ONE DAY.
Here is Obama’s Senior Advisor, David Axelrod answering questions from Washinton Post’s Lois Romano:
Classic dry humor: Wall Street did bounce up when TARP passed, AND LOOK HOW THAT WENT!
Lisa Romano asks again, but One Day Frenzies can impact the White House, right? and Axelrod says ‘maybe A White House, but not THIS White House. The Obama White House is in for the long haul on recovery, not going to be bullied by Wall Street’s desire to win a hand at the casino called the stock market.
This economic stimulus plan is not about Wall Street.
Its about stabilizing the United States economy and its citizens.
Notice something similar in all these pictures of Congressional Hearings?
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009Congress has been having a lot of publicized hearings.
Notice something similar in all these photos of people being GRILLED about their contribution to the current economic crisis?
Can you see it? Its hard to see, at first. But I wonder if its ‘why’ we’re in the financial muck we are in, that all these guys are so similar…
They all seem to live the same high-income life, because of the similarity…
Octuplet’s mom had plastic surgery to look like Angelina Jolie?
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
Most photos come from RadarOnline.
One of the saddest stories the media is hyping now is the story of a single mom of six kids who just birthed 8 babies, all 14 children from IVF.
She should have had the 8 babies a few years ago when the Republican Evangelicals were in charge, because they would perhaps have held her up as an example of saintliness, a young woman so open to life.
But the truth is slowly revealing itself. Nadia Suleman lives with her parents, who already lost one house in the financial aftermath of raising Nadia’s six children.
She’s hired a publicist but not a nanny to help her parents.
Nadia has been living off of $165,000 insurance settlement she got for injuries sustained ‘during a riot at a mental institution she worked at’. $165,000 over five years, I believe. That’s $30,000+ a year. But her parents have covered many of the costs of raising Nadia’s 6 children.
The biological father, who donated the sperm, is apparently soooooo freaked out at Nadia’s decision to have so many children with his sperm, without him, that he’s not coming forward to help raise them.
So who will raise these 14 kids, in a post-Republican world? We will! Taxpayers!
The real question is whether or not Nadia is emotionally capable of raising 14 children, and that’s where the tragedy lies.
If she used the proceeds of her insurance settlement to have plastic surgery to get a nose job and plump up her lips beyond recognition, is that just one sign of a narcissistic personality disorder? She looks so much like humanitarian Angelina Jolie, and she tempers her voice like Jolie and she now beat Jolie in family size, but she does not have Jolie’s career, Jolie’s cash or Jolie’s life partner to help her raise her kids.
She has her parents, whom she has already bankrupted once, and who are vocal about being overwhelmed. Even though grandparents across America are stepping up and raising their grandchildren when their own kids cannot, because of incarceration, drug abuse or poverty, these grandparents are already sacrificing to raise Nadia’s first 6 children.
Nadia has no job and is a student, but believes a future job will ensure her children’s financial safety. She hasn’t worked, has made choices that bankrupted herself and her children and is now soon going home with 8 babies even though she is not raising her other 6 children.
I know that there are investigations into the propriety of the IVF doctor, for implanting so many babies. Should there also be an investigation into Nadia’s mental health?
Nadia told NBC that she does not intend to go on welfare, though her publicist confirmed Monday that Suleman already receives food stamps and child disability payments to help feed and care for her six other children.
Suleman’s publicist Mike Furtney said she receives $490 a month in food stamps. Furtney said Suleman did not want to disclose the nature of her children’s disabilities or the nature of those payments.
In her view these are just payments made for people with legitimate needs and are not, in her view, welfare,” Furtney said. “She just believes that there are programs for people with needs and she and her children qualify for some of them.”
Why Analysts Keep Telling Investors to Buy and why Americans keep looking for a Daddy to tell them what to do
Monday, February 9th, 2009 
Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times“Analysts completely missed the boat again with the subprime and credit crises,” said Jacob Zamansky, a securities lawyer.
There’s an understatement!
The New York Times today asks why Analysts are biased to BUY/HOLD and cannot for the life of themselves change their advice to SELL, SELL, SELL, QUICKLY BEFORE YOU LOSE EVERYTHING!
Even now, with the recession deepening and markets on edge, Wall Street analysts say it is a good time to buy.
Still.
At the top of the market, they urged investors to buy or hold onto stocks about 95 percent of the time. When stocks stumbled, they stayed optimistic. Even in November, when credit froze, the economy stalled and financial markets tumbled to their lowest levels in a decade, analysts as a group rarely said sell.
And last month, as the Dow and Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index suffered their worst January ever, analysts put a sell rating on a mere 5.9 percent of stocks, according to Bloomberg data. Many companies have taken such a beating in the downturn, analysts argue, that their shares are bound to bounce back.
Maybe. But after so many bad calls on so many companies, why should investors believe them this time?
When Internet stocks imploded in 2000 and 2001, Wall Street analysts were widely scorned for fanning a frenzy that had inflated dot-com shares to unsustainable heights. But this time around, credit rating agencies, mortgage companies and Wall Street bankers have shouldered much of the blame for the Crash of 2008, and few have publicly questioned the analysts who urged investors to buy all the way down.
“Analysts completely missed the boat again with the subprime and credit crises,” said Jacob Zamansky, a securities lawyer who represents investors. “They should’ve given some early warning signs to investors to bail out, or at least lighten up their portfolios. That warning never came.”
Instead, many recommendations urged investors to hold on to their shares, or double down, as the bloodletting worsened.
On Oct. 8, as Congress and the Treasury Department frantically tried to calm the plummeting markets, a Citigroup analyst upgraded Bank of America to buy. Since then, Bank of America shares have fallen 77 percent.
What is it about Americans that we give all our power to supposed ‘experts’? Why do we trust the institutions that so relentlessly prove to be our weakest links?
I think its because our world is too complex. There’s pork everywhere, untrustworthy people are loading pork into every aspect of our lives because they see these moments as their best chance to further their own agenda.
Barry Ritholtz points out:
Why is any of this still a surprise? Given the inherent conflict of interest between underwriting/syndicate and investing, it shouldn’t be.
The iBanks do not want to risk offending potential banking deals, M&A clients, or other corporate advisory.
We do not have a country-wide agenda. We give our money up to banks and investment companies and, like Bernie Madoff’s clients, are happy when they make us feel ‘special’. But ‘special’ we are not. We are hard working, tax paying, community involved citizens who are not getting our dollars worth in terms of advice and protection from those to whom we pass our power.
Obama was voted in on a nationwide desire for real, deep change. Not ‘a new face’, but real change. Yet we continue to hear stories like this one, that analysts only say ‘SELL’ 5.9% of the time, even when confronted with the worst percentage slide ever in asset value, and looking straight into another few years of writeoffs.
Change will come, and it needs to be the kind that purifies, burns out the old, broken systems that we trust but are not trust-worthy.
For your weekend pleasure, Discovery Channel’s I LOVE THE WORLD commercial
Friday, February 6th, 2009Why $500,000 a year is just NOT ENOUGH, y’all
Friday, February 6th, 2009
Wall Street is freaked out at Obama’s suggestion that salaries of companies receiving exceptional assistance/bailouts cap their executives at $500,000 a year.
Note several exceptions: $500,000 cap on salary, not bonuses and all the other sneaky ways companies pass money to their executives (kids, can you say ‘private use of the corporate jet’, country club memberships, life insurance, cars and drivers?)
Note: $500,000 cap only applies to companies receiving ‘exceptional assistance’, as in tons and tons of money. Companies that receive tons of bailout money can still overpay their executives.
Note: this $500,000 cap is symbolic, which is why Execs are FREAKED OUT. They don’t want to take the blame for the downfall of capitalism. According to Robert Reich, these executives don’t think in terms of ‘bailout’, they think the middle class is just ‘inserting liquidity’ into a tight credit market.
But we haven’t had capitalism for a while, in my opinion. We’ve had oligarchy. We snub our noses at Russian oligarchs who have taken so many billions out of their country and spend it around the world on lavish lifestyles. Wait, doesn’t that sound like good old American billionaires like Henry Kravis and his many homes, his $51,369 salary PER HOUR?
Wall Street insists they need to pay salaries at higher annual rates than $500,000 to, WAIT FOR IT, attract and keep high quality executives.
SO, Wall Street, HOW IS THAT GOING FOR YOU, so far?
The US is in a depression, the whole world is having related economic heart attacks, and the brainiacs who caused this mess, the ones who earned millions of dollars a year siphoning profits out of corporations as they laid off thousands of employees and decimated towns and cities all across America, these brainiacs think they are such high quality bosses that they need to be paid more than $500,000.
These executives have raked in mega-millions but they, like the middle class Americans they mock, are living beyond their means and can’t suddenly take a drastic pay cut. How would they live without the household staff? Without the day and night nannies? Without the personal chef? What if their kids had to go to public school? Their wives are already cutting back on luxuries like unlimited charge accounts at Barney’s NY. How can they be expected to shop, with a limit?
These guys were fine taking all the profit, but they cannot be asked to sacrifice with the little people.
Exactly why are they still in their positions?
With US taxpayers as corporate owners (and why isn’t that still capitalism, just on a larger scale: instead of owning a share of a bank, you own a % of the bank), we should cut salaries and fire at will.
Because its not as if there is a UNION for executives, right?
