And Another Thing
Can someone please tell me how messing with FDIC in the midst of the biggest banking disaster the world has seen since 1929 can possibly be a good idea? I’ve done grunt work in the financial industry before, and I occasionally have Terminator-level Armageddon nightmares about FDIC insolvency. Does no one remember the last time we did this?
I’m really not joking about the nightmare thing – I’ve had actual nightmares about the cockamamie lending practices we’ve been engaging in for the last decade taking out FDIC and giving rise to some sort of Stygian Mad Max-meets-Waterworld dystopia. But then again, I was guilt-stricken all morning because of a fairly intense nightmare I had last night involving me having hired a contract killer to eliminate Yoda with a Kalashnikov. I think I’ve been under too much stress lately. It probably has something to do with being a public school teacher in the state ranked 43rd in dollars spent per public school student. Not that the mortgage crisis will have an effect on my work – except for the fact that school funding comes primarily from property tax revenues.
Have I mentioned that I need a drink yet today?
I think I’ll join you in that drink…
We are all (1920s-era sharecropping, no roads, hookworm, no screen doors, unpredictable access to banks and credit) Georgians now.
Drinking is about all we can do about it. The idea that anything we do will stop this train wreck now is wishful thinking. They took the money and ran and left us with nothing but a loan. We are going to be entering something resembling the Great Depression. It’s sad, but inevitable at this point.
What could possibly go wrong?
I hate to go all Paultard, but fractional reserve banking is looking like a real f’ing boneheaded idea right about now…
We are all (1920s-era sharecropping, no roads, hookworm, no screen doors, unpredictable access to banks and credit) Georgians now.
And Herman Talmadge is governor. Again.
Oh man. Please tell me you’re not in the mess currently known as the Clayton County Public School system.
You leave Yoda alone!
Oh man. Please tell me you’re not in the mess currently known as the Clayton County Public School system.
Even better.
Inner-city school in Miami.
In all honesty, I love my job to pieces. Except for the part where we’re too broke to have toilet paper in the bathrooms.
I listened to this today.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=365
Very, very, good breakdown and apparently some hero snuck something into the bill that if Obama has any principles could hammer a bunch of pain out to these folks, potentially snatch the good stuff in exchange for eating the bad stuff, all while avoiding things like all the business in America folding while the commercial paper market tells everyone to get bent because they don’t know whose going to be alive to pay their debts when they come do.
The fact is, liberals, you have been school in the laws of economics and the free market. Stop trying to enterfear with the laws of nature.
Except for the part where we’re too broke to have toilet paper in the bathrooms.
My sincerest condolences. I have teacher friends here – in what I believe is the 50th out of 50 states for per-student expenditures – and I hear this kind of thing a lot. For being such a child-worshipping state, Utah is horrible for actually supporting children.
Here’s another thing I hear a lot about education, from the majority wingnut population here – “We can’t fix education by throwing money at it.”
It always makes me want to strangle whoever says it, and I imagine you both hear that a lot and get the same reaction.
I taught in the Chicago public school system for about four months. It gave me shingles.
I’m drinking.
Jillian, I used to work on Wall Street. I was there in 1987, at the place that invented portfolio insurance (OK maybe one of them…after 1987, it was easier to claim credit, heh heh heh.)
What could possibly go wrong?
This is a good idea. It would be imprudent not to have done it. It’s not comparable to the action in the S&L crisis.
Did someone say Mad Max?
About 36 hours into the meltdown, I got kinda Zen about it.
I’m clinging to that.
Jillian…in fact, all Sadlynauts.
If you guys felt the need to take a day or two off, none of us would think the worse of you. You’ve helped keep US sane, it’s only fair you get to look to yourselves every so often.
I went to what might be Nevada’s best public school and I’m pretty sure it’d fit in there without much trouble. The glib phrases of dead fascists aside, all we seem to grow in our small towns are tweakers and teen mothers.
We’re what the rest of the country has to look forward to, even including the specter of global warming. Have fun, y’all – I’m getting the hell out while the getting is good.
The laws of economics, sensibly, suggest that it is appropriate to raise taxes during bull years and lower them – and increase spending – during bear years. Because we’ve been ruled by a class of illiterate, money-grubbing frauds, the historiographic policy norm is now to cut taxes at every possible opportunity, neglect any kind of spending that doesn’t wind up in an offshore account, and treat any amount of debt as intrinsically valuable.
The first law of economics is not to hand your fucking money to a thief, and that’s what you did when you voted for a man whose only prior business experience had been in running companies funded by his father’s money into the ground, at least one of which was almost certainly a money-laundering scheme. Would we be in this mess if you people had been anything like as suspicious of the government under Bush as under Clinton? No. But you weren’t, so we are.
I don’t put a great deal of stock in this kind of attitude, but I’m pretty shameless about not wanting to die horribly of simple infections, so you know, take it with a grain of salt.
The fundamentals might be strong, but there’s still quite a bit of splainin’ to do.
Babies make us feel better and forget our worries!
I’ll take the yoda contract.
Remember “Executive Outcomes”.
Yep. That was me.
Cut the paper and I’ll give you an EFT address in the Caymans.
I’ve made my position on this quite clear.
“We can’t fix education by throwing money at it.”
I once heard Jonathan Kozol speak at a conference, and he mentioned this same canard. His response was something along the lines of: “Well, why don’t we try it? Please, throw money at it. Please.”
Jillian: Have you not had that drink yet? I know schoolteachers who keep a bottle in their desks.
I may have said this before, but this is a time to fix money by throwing problems at it.
Here’s the thing.
You can accomplish ANYTHING with the generous application of money.
But.
The only way you get where you want to go is to give the money to people who have the same goals and aspirations as you, the source of the money.
Otherwise?
Disaster…..
mikey
Jillian: Have you not had that drink yet? I know schoolteachers who keep a bottle in their desks.
My favorite one did. She would always smile really big when I came into the class and say “How’s my favorite anarchist!”. I was 17 and big into Bakunin and Emma Goldman and she turned me onto Kropotkin and the more red anarchists.
Of course she got fired for being drunk all the time, and I’m sure this is an anecdote just waiting to get cherry-picked and turned into some anti-NEA screed. It’s still someone I probably learned more from than anyone else in a high-school setting.
“Holden Waite” does not sound like a real name to me.
Get out!
Maybe so, but is it or is it NOT the coolest name you ever heard of?
Say it out loud…
Holden Waite….
You know, as In:
“Hey babe. I’m Holden Waite. Wanna come to my place?”
HW
I knew someone called Pam Holden. Her boyfriend was Colin Dickie.
You can accomplish ANYTHING with the generous application of money.
Hey, Mikey. It’s Asshole here. Just popping in to tell you money can’t solve this financial crisis, ’cause pretty soon your currency won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on. The US Gub’ment has given the okie dokie to pay for part of the bailout package by…wait for it…PRINTING MORE MONEY. In other words, the gub’ment is debasing its own currency, printing notes that aren’t linked to anything of real worth; that aren’t backed by heightened production. Funny money, 100% government approved!
Don’t believe me? Google it: bailout+printing+money. Amid the crazies, actual financial news sites have already reported on this phenomenon.
It could have been worse — like maybe a Mad Max-meets-Ishtar nightmare.
Hmm. Looks to me like the self-described “Asshole” hasn’t got any sand in his socks.
Step up to the plate, man, and take a fucking schwing!!!
What’s become of us?
The neocons apparently haven’t learned the word “consequences” yet. Sadly, they are very overdue on paying any.
PRINTING MORE MONEY
Hey! The Pat Buchanan solution!
I’ll believe that throwing money at problems doesn’t fix things when rich people stop solving their problems by throwing money at them.
Brevity.
That’s what I keep in my underpants drawer.
Really?
‘Cause I have a big hunk of fossilized Hadrisaur Pelvis with a fossilized .375 H&H Magnum round embedded in it.
Also a couple Magnetic Monopoles.
Smut Clyde’s my agent.
Let me know if you wanna make an offer….
hang in there sister.
Bible Spice’s grampaw was shootin’ Jesus horses?
It always makes me want to strangle whoever says
One of my last couple of dates – going on five years since, now – ended when the young lady in question said that very thing about education. I told her it’d be nice if we at least handed the schools some money and we didn’t have to throw anything. ‘Course, she was a result of the State of Georgia public school system, which makes me appreciate my Mississippi education much more.
If you want a game of Magnetic Monopoly, Mikey’s your man.
Reporting for duty!
Bible Spice’s grampaw was shootin’ Jesus horses?
Well, it DO open up some mind bending questions either way, don’t it?
While I’ve learned well enough to keep my own mouth shut, there’s no explanation that’s going to work for everyone, and while I might well have my own theories, the real question is more philosophical in nature.
It’s about time. What it is, and if it’s a river or an ocean. Which way it flows, and why.
And if somebody was shooting Hadrisaurs, who are they and why are they doing it?
Dinosaurs are Jesus’s friends.
Haggling over a million dollars ($1 000 000 . 00 for education:
$4000 per student, $6000 per student, what difference would it make to you unionist jackals? It’d just impose an unfair tax burden on the homeowners and would be horrible for business, and besides the real issue is lazy parents and you-know-who invading the suburbs with their hip-rap and their rhythm and soul. Whaddaya mean, three thousand students are too many for a single school? We need the land and money for subdivisions! Besides, you can’t just solve the problem by throwing money at it – we gotta innovate. Children might be our future, buddy, but you’re living in the past.
Haggling over a hundred billion dollars ($100 000 000 000 . 00) for defense:
Whoa, hold on, Hanoi Jane. Just because the Cold War is over doesn’t mean we don’t still need more money for the Army? We’re in a global war against terror. That could go on indefinitely! And we need more nukes, more sophisticated bombers, and next-generation tank armor to make sure that Osama won’t menace us with a massive nuclear stockpile, a dozen tank divisions, or a massive radar alert system protecting the Arctic Circle. Don’t you support the troops? You want to be weak on defense? Don’t come crying back to us when Yeltsin or Olmert or whoever brings secret Stalinism back, ‘cuz we don’t have any time for defeatists. What do you mean, the government would have to? That’s statism! We’re a freedom-loving country, and that means we need to spend at least a fifth of our budget on defense and that you’re not entitled to a handout whenever you’ve made bad choices and someone invades your home. Trust us, it’s better this way for everyone.
Does a Craptain answer to a Majorrhea or does it just go directly to Lieutenant Colon-el?
I believe I recall seeing their wedding announcement in the Times.
Paul McCartney’s Comely Emmenthal Paprikash
Ingredients:
7 teaspoons pliable lemur, boundlessly buttered
1 Emmenthal, combatively dried
1 hissing Shropshire blue cheese, broiled
4 jars gazelle wing, swirled
1 pint pepper
1 bunch dill
Begin praying. Cream the lemur with a really big cheese grater. Use a food processor to combine the Shropshire blue cheese with the Emmenthal. Stuff the resulting goo into the lemur. Find some limoncino and drink it. Cream the gazelle wing, pepper, and the dill euphoniously. Smush everything together precariously. Fry in mole oil for 114 hours. Serves 12 brokenhearted individuals with pallid stomachs.
And if somebody was shooting Hadrisaurs, who are they and why are they doing it?
Hadrosaurs were the street-mimes of the Jurassic. If you were an armed time-traveller, and you found yourself surrounded by hadrosaurs doing their “invisible box” routine, wouldn’t you fire off a few rounds?
What, and put up with the “I’ve been shot through the heart” bit?
What, and put up with the “I’ve been shot through the heart” bit?
It’s much more entertaining when they’ve actually been shot. You know, the “it’s funny because it’s true” principle.
Hadrosaurs.
What was the question again?
Jillian–I’ll belly up to the bar with you.
I teach inner city, Los Angeles. Last year I had a child bring a HUGELY realistic looking automatic gun to school. It was a pellet gun, but it was still powerful enough to injure someone badly. And I teach first grade.
18th Street Gang has gotten a foothold in the neighborhood. Our VP was robbed at gunpoint in during his lunch hour, not even a block from our school.
We have lead in our drinking fountains, no tissues for students, and we are running out of toilet paper (they recently removed the dispensers that use toilet rolls. We are now back to the sheet by sheet dispenser. wheeee.)
We have no crayons, and no construction paper. We don’t teach art or music anymore. We have no time for PE. It’s ALL reading, writing and math, just so we can improve our state API scores and the federal AYP scores (the ones that are dictated by the NCLB act).
Morale is horrible. We are all stressed out of our minds and ready to crack.
So a nice big glass of booze sounds really good right now, and it sounds good for tomorrow, and for next week and the week after.
It sounds good until November 4, when (god willing) we elect Obama/Biden and we can finally get some people in our government who want to work for the PEOPLE of the USA, and not the corporations.
Remember,
When Dick Fuld was in the gym on the treadmill as Lehman Brothers went down the toilet, a weightlifter who saw the news got up, walked over and flattened the bastard unconscious. ‘Twas only a love tap compared to what he should be getting. 15-20 at Guantanamo sounds about right.
Indeed. And it was at the company gym, which makes sense.
Here’s another thing I hear a lot about education, from the majority wingnut population here – “We can’t fix education by throwing money at it.”
So (I ask people who say that to me) how come the really rich, powerful people are so gosh-darned determined to send their own personal spawn to extremely expensive schools? Even when doing so involves not only high-dollar tuition payments (on top of the taxes they still pay to the public schools that their kids could attend ‘for free’) but additional baksheesh like buying a new library or dormitory wing to guarantee a spot for their less-than-scholarship-potential offspring? You think it’s just for the prestige of being able to put a “My kid &
all my moneythis year’s trust dividend go to Phillips-Andover” bumper sticker on the Land Rover? Or because Poppy Bush thought young Dubya would look just cunning in a Harvard Business School crimson sweatshirt?Somebody may have already linked to this, but if not…
Sign on Wall Street (via Balloon Juice)
I’m not trying to sound stupid here (really, it’s effortless) but there are teachers here, and I am wondering what would happen if a school quietly chucked the NCLB curriculum. What goes first? Do they shut off the trickle of money you get? Do they turn out the lights and stop paying you? How long could you submit unfinished paperwork (not fraudulent paperwork, but blank or identical: they get what looks like information about compliance, but there’s no there there) before they catch on? I am not proposing this as a plan, but I am curious.
I kinda wish we could reanimate FDR, but that reanimation stuff never goes well.
All of these federal debts are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America. I remember the President himself saying so.
*sobs*
Mu-hu-hahahaha . . .
No, that isn’t very funny.
Ah, fuck y’all. I’ve had too much wine.
This whole fuckin thing is depressing. Can I tell you how much my retirement has lost?
Retirement. I remember…no wait, I don’t. Retirement is only what my car is going to need soon. The tread’s wearing down. They’ve lasted a while, though.
Yeah. My brakes are shot.
‘Cept the Judasour. Sold him out for 30 pieces of amber.
So her name is now Pam Holden-Dickie?
In all seriousness I knew a woman with the maiden name Brown. She had expected her whole adult life that she would be able to hyphenate her name when she got married because Brown would go with any name. She married a dude with the last name Heinie. Didn’t hyphenate, I’m sad to say.
You LIE-brals do nuthin but whine all the time, living in your big city elite squats, drinking fancy coffee and such, but you’ve never had to deal with the issues of The Heartland of the USA of America, like immense flocks of rabid pelicans darkening the skies. Or thundering herds of badgers, laying entire towns to waste in their heartbreaking path of destruction. You’ve never had to patrol the perimiters of your yard with a fully erect M1A1 Battle Rifle™, in an attempt to keep the Islamosexual threat at bay because you live in a fantasy world of Marx and Lennon rather than be Patriotic Americans who love their country not because they want to but because they’re told to, and love it all the more because of it. It’d be easier if you thought of the flag as being a bit like a ball gag, so I hear.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around this IRS rule change that seems to create a free $20 billion tax giveaway to one lender alone. Not an act of Congress, just a “rule change”.
a fossilized .375 H&H Magnum round
That would be a large hadrosaur collider.
I tell you, this weird custom of women taking their husband’s name upon marriage can make for some laff riots. Ones I can think of off-hand: Nancy Clancy, Dudley Dudley, Penny Weiss.
But Brad and Angelina chose to name their daughter Shiloh Pitt. Awesome.
[…] Sadly,No, on the coming global Depression: WereBear […]
What is it with these freakin’ collisions, you know. I’m walking here!
I have been a schoolteacher that kept a bottle in my desk, and changed it often.
So (I ask people who say that to me) how come the really rich, powerful people are so gosh-darned determined to send their own personal spawn to extremely expensive schools?
Way back in the day (late 70’s for me), it was suggested that that would be the way to improve the schools in the UK, i.e. ban private schools, so that the rich and powerful fuckers would have to improve the schools little Johnny went to. At the time (and perhaps i am kidding myself), it didn’t seem so bad a suggestion?
Completely unrelated topic: it’s a pity S,N! doesn’t have the ability to aggregate all posts by X poster. (It would be kind of hard, considering how it works.) In almost every place where that ability exists, going through posts by trolls tends to be a hilarious experience.
They’re generally repetitive, make a surprising number of specific predictions, and are never any closer to right than a well-trained monkey. Of course, the trained monkey would be less hilariously wrong and would be smeared in significantly less shit.
Can someone please tell me how messing with FDIC in the midst of the biggest banking disaster the world has seen since 1929 can possibly be a good idea?
Some fiscally conservative people who are around retirement age did not have money in the stock market. They put it all in the bank. Since they are mostly retired, this is a lot of money. To reduce the runs on the banks by those people, the FDIC cap was raised. However, it was raised without increasing the cost of the insurance to the banks.
I blame the reluctance of Democrats, any remaining sensible Republicans (if that’s not an oxymoron) and the psychiatric profession for not calling delusional, delusional.
If someone went around saying they were Attila the Hun, they’d get in trouble. If they apply his same principles to governance, they get to be a political party.
For not-exactly small, but still nowhere close to big businesses, an increase in FDIC insurance makes sense. Payroll and other expenses require some money in the bank, and no one wants people’s paychecks going bouncy bouncy or poof. So it makes sense for businesses.
For myself, I can’t imagine having that much in just one account in the bank. But I can imagine that some people, for short periods of time–like overnight until the bank opens in the morning and the person can open more accounts to deal with an inheritance or cashed-in something or other or before putting that down payment on a house–might have more than $100,000 in there. And even with housing bubbles bursting, I guess $250,000 isn’t such a bad number.
On the whole, it can make sense. And as long as regulations (ha!) require that the banks have some assets to offset the cost of going under (double ha!), they’ll never get in trouble. At least not until the next time.
But with the coming inflation (yeah! maybe we’ll be like Zimbabwe so I’ll be able to pay my student loans off in one or two paychecks!) $250K or $100K won’t make much difference.
Apparently, a number of banking execs are sufficiently miffed at the new, mild restrictions on executive compensation and retirement benefits that they’d seriously consider refusing to have their companies participate in any government-led efforts to resolve the financial crisis, but rather allow the world economy to collapse instead.
So, I propose an alternative plan that would provide some options and flexibility for all you Captains of Industry:
1) Accept, for your total annual compensation and retirement package, what your average, non-management employee would get.
2) Receive an all-expense-paid, 20-year vacation in the beautiful, exotic “Gitmo Resort”.
3) Receive a full facial treatment and hairstyling at our exclusive salon so that your head will look simply fabulous while being displayed on the end of a pike in Battery Park.
Is that better for you?! Does that sufficiently clarify the new rules of the game?
What hideous creatures.
From the WaPo Dana Milbank column RB links to:
They unfortunately haven’t learned you don’t piss off the MSM. You will go down if you do.
This is what happens when a campaign chooses an inexperienced ignoramus to do the dirty demogoguery work. Miss Alaska Runner-Up/One Heartbeat Away from the Presidency doesn’t understand that outside of Wasilla, Alaska, you don’t rouse the rabble unless you can control them.
It’s important to know your audience, too. Perhaps she still has time to fashion her pit-bull persona into something more poodle-ish for fundraisers with the totally non-elitist Rethug swells? That’d be interesting. Calling Henry Higgins!
They unfortunately haven’t learned you don’t piss off the MSM. You will go down if you do.
Oh no – they’ll stop buying doughnuts for McWorse?
That better be vegetarian lemur and gazelle. The hissing cheese, on the other hand, sounds awesome.
Sarahcuda’s smear-jobs are already paying big dividends.
But not for her team.
Apparently, millions of people worried about their jobs, mortgages & debts aren’t as eager as McNasty & Caribou-Klaus-Barbie to “turn the page on the economy” as a relevant issue. Excoriating the major media may not be so much of a genius move either (see Nixon, Richard).
The GOP must be be made up of scorpions, because regular humans would’ve run out of feet to shoot themselves in by now.
(In the second link, you can see the “break” – the goal of every pol in the endgame-phase of an election campaign – & if you’re on the wrong side of it, it’s political Armageddon: the longer it keeps splitting, the more dead in the water you are. It’s still growing & is likely to keep doing so unless Wet-Start pulls off a virtuoso performance in his next debate [LOL].)
I suspect Palin has by now received a sincere thank-you note from Obama HQ. Srsly.
jillian, hang in there. i have crazy dreams too and they are frequently related to current events…but i know you didn’t mean to harm yoda.
and thank you for doing your job. teachers work hard.
Print more money.
Well, that does help the toilet paper problem. Until they carry it out, though, there are still Regnery books, which can usually be found in large amounts in wheeled bins outside the offices of right-wing donors. If they’d only leave them blank instead of putting all that ink on the pages, they’d be even better in just about every way.