LET US RESOLVE OUR PROBLEMS OVER DRINKS

Here at the depths of the economic depression brought on by the major financial entities who were subsequently rescued by the taxpayers, said financial entities and taxpayers met over drinks last night in a welcome attempt to discuss and resolve the economic crisis vis-a-vis the vast profits and bonuses recently accrued by those entities, who at the event paid for their champagne with IOUs against rumored equity at 0.01% non-compounding that mature in 2050 if not later, to be backed by several generations of taxpayers, who drank from plastic cups of water from a well surrounded by economic cesspools; but upon seeing the tailored silk suits, breast pockets holding million-dollar bonus checks, the Grand Cru, the crystal goblets, Cuban cigars, $500 haircuts, $2000 eyeglasses, $1000 shoes, easy laughter and waiting chauffeurs, the greasy work-clothed taxpayers took their work tools in calloused hands and charged, throwing the financiers into the cesspools, reclaimed their own money and country, then walked home.

Looks like it's already beginning...

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NY AG: Banks Paid Bonuses That Were
Substantially Greater Than Their Net Income

"...combined, these three firms earned $9.6 billion,
paid bonuses of nearly $18 billion,
and received TARP taxpayer funds worth $45 billion.

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Five Firms Hold 80% of Derivatives Risk, Fitch Report Finds

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Goldman's new 'American Socialism Manifesto'

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THE ROYAL SCAM

YO, MIDAS

Funny things happen on the way through maturity. An interesting range of new feelings awaits.

Plum greed, for example. I'm not a greedy person, by nature; I have no wish to accumulate large amounts of money or property, which, beyond bare necessities, are to life as an anvil is to a canoe. So greed is a new feeling for me. Especially as it involves plums.

Our plum tree, planted as a tiny sapling out in front of the deck shortly after we moved in 14 years ago, has never been much of a success at its job description. It is lush and green, happy as a baby in the spring breezes and enjoys full health by every measure, except that it has never been much into fruit. The few recent years in which it did bear enough plums to merit the name, their number depended apparently on insectage, weather and bird/monkey depredations.

The year it bore the most plums, a gang of monkeys got them in just a few moments, as intrepidly reported at the very scene in these base chronicles. It was just more of the same, plumwise. So as it has turned out, a close look at my detailed account books shows me that thus far I have in fact personally plucked and devoured an average of 0.9 plums per year. But it's always a good 0.9, the way exceedingly rare things are.

In the normal course of spring things, a couple days ago I went out on the deck to check the tree for this year's handful of incipient fruit and was staggered to find that the tree had fat green plums hanging all over it, about the size of large olives. Glances here and there at various arboreal characteristics confirmed to my doubting mind that this was, in fact, the same tree as last year. The gods were not playing that particular trick. I reckoned that in a few weeks, when these plums reach their peak of full savory juicy ripeness, I would have several pecks (been a long time since I used that measure) of dreamy purple plums.

And suddenly I wanted those plums. I didn't want the monkeys or the birds to have them. I wanted all the plums I could get. They were my plums. Washing over me, coursing through my body, was the strange and powerful but toxic sensation of plum greed. As I observed those bushelfuls of green orbs, in my mind picturing the fully ripened fruits bearing a rich patina, like that seen on ancient gold and silver, I joined the King Midas crowd with my sudden craving to possess more than I could possibly consume. Even now, as I observe the still green ones growing there among the green leaves like broadening coins, I can begin to taste the perfumed sweetness of soft, ripe, tartskinned freshly picked plums. It's been so long...

But after a spell of calm thought in the shade, it came as no real surprise that abruptly large quantities of plums - in distant hopes of which I myself planted the tree, and for which I have been figuratively tapping my feet for 14 years - can have strange effects upon a plum-bereft expat from a distant country where the summers of a formative life were dense with the sweetest of plums.

Under certain fruitarian circumstances, greed is a perfectly natural reaction.

Yo, Midas.

GREED PAYS.

"The bailout of AIG has exposed more than just the collapse of Casino Capitalism. It exposes the governmental system to be as much a sham as our economy has been! How is it that $85 billion can just materialize to bail out this one insurance company (insuring for the most part, opaque, enormously complicated and risky investments) without so much as a session of Congress? Where is the appropriations committee in this matter? Where were they when the Bear, Stearns/JP Morgan deal went down on a Sunday?

What has been exposed here is the complete absence of the United States Government as it is supposed to work. In its place are Treasury Sec. Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke making decisions about spending sums of money equal to the budgets of many small nations – money that will have to be paid back by the taxpayers, who have seen none of the gilded rewards. You have had no say – nor have your impotent representatives."

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And as to Lehman's collapse the day before:
"The quoted amount of OTC derivatives on Lehman's books are not notional value, but some silly mark to no market. The real number is trillions. When either party to an OTC derivative fails the value of that derivative instantaneously become the size of what was previously called notional value. With one quadrillion, one thousand one hundred and forty four trillion (BIS) in notional value, there is NO means to stop this financial cataclysm." --Jim Sinclair

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"Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." [emphases mine. RB]

What part of 'Democracy' don't they understand?

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Paulson Bailout Plan a Historic Swindle

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"The double standard is stunning:
their profits are their profits,
but their losses are our losses."