Tuesday marked another huge major downleg in the markets -- all markets except the US dollar, curiously (Jim Willie postulates that dollars are needed for payment as the US economy is
liquidated, and that the rise in the dollar is not a sign of good health.)
Wednesday was shocking. Just unbelievable to see in action. The reek of fear is as strong as it was after 9/11, worse maybe. No-one knows how this will all play out. The Bush Regime is floundering, with new policies replacing other policies that are only days old. The TARP bailout -- the $750 bailout
law Congress passed? Paulson has announced that ZERO troubled assets would be purchased and the money would continue to flow to rich corporations.
So it was all a con, a scam, flim-flammery. Complete, utter, total bullsh*t crammed down Congress's throat just like the Iraq War authorization, the first PATRIOT Act, etc. "No time to read this law, just vote yes or the world will end!"
But now it looks like the government has guaranteed things they don't understand, with potentially unlimited losses depending on how things play out. Therefore the idea is floating around that the bailout guarantees for things like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and AIG might be reneged -- we shall
Excerpt: Congress bleats that it is "surprised" that Treasury has given money to banks to make acquisitions and fund bonus pools, but the Treasury Secretary threatened a Presidential Veto of the bill if there were constraints put on the funds' use when the measure was first handed to Congress, if you believe the statements made in the media by the Congresspeople who were there.
In addition, Treasury said there would be an immediate banking system collapse and a Depression if they did not immediately buy "distressed mortgage-backed securities", and yet not one single dollar of said distressed assets have been purchased to date, while $310 billion has been spent or committed so banks can make acquisitions and fund bonus pools, with said acquisitions happening at 60% discounts to claimed balance sheet values just days prior.
Has the banking system collapsed? Has your ATM card stopped working? No, but Goldman and Morgan, along with others, have $70 billion in bonus pool money to pay to their employees, compliments of the US Taxpayer.
see, but if the losses continue to grow by hundreds of billions every week, at a certain point an end will be called to the Bush-Paulson plan... because this sh*t won't fly, it ain't working, and all that's happening is that the US is going broke even faster!
Tell me if I'm being too simplistic, but it looks to me like everything's collapsing quicker than expected. The scale of the collapse is effectively 'total', and that's not really surprising, the collapse was expected. You could see it coming a mile away. Hell, I saw it coming and what the hell do I know? So of course Bernanke and Paulson knew it was coming.
But the Bush-Cheney cohorts didn't expect the collapse to begin until after the election, and instead the collapse came early, and as McCain's cluelessness became obvious it pretty much gave Obama the landslide he needed to win by a few points.
On the bright side (from the criminals' perspective) they were able to use the first wave of collapse to game the system for $700-billion, then trillions, and that was supposed to stave off the collapse until Obama was sworn in, so it could all be blamed on him... But instead the collapse keeps collapsing -- gravity is a bitch -- and the collapse is so catastrophic there's just no pretending that anyone in the current administration has a clue what to do beyond looting the Treasury and cooking the books.
Like that article you sent says, these doofs are just spinning plates, and they think the plates are shatterproof but they're not. The article's wrap-up: "If we discover that in fact Bernanke has attempted to monetize or simply has run out of credit in the "global money system" the Depression we will experience is the direct responsibility of Henry Paulson, Ben Bernanke and George W. Bush, with secondary responsibility resting with Congress through its refusal to put a stop to the stupidity in time and The Press, including and most especially CNBC, Larry Kudlow and Jim Cramer who have been cheerleading policies since last summer that have in fact shoved us right down the hole."
Right. And it looks like "bad money drives out good" is happening... the government intervention money is driving away private saviors, and those who would have been expected to fight for survival like cornered rats are not taking effective steps because they expect a bailout, like American Express and General Electric -- GE supposedly has a AAA credit rating, one of 5 such companies, but now they and AXP are lazy welfare queens. And the total tab now is FIVE trillion...
It is a black hole sucking in everything. It is going to have to stop, but it probably won't until there is a collapse of the dollar and a really huge jump in interest rates (demanded by foreign creditors). When the dollar drops 25% in a day and interest rates on the Federal debt double in a week, then Obama/Pelosi/et al will maybe receive the information and do something to stop the financial blood spurting from the Treasury. It will mean military withdrawal for the US from most everywhere, except those host countries who pay us as mercenaries.
(Curiously, universal healthcare is only $75 billion a year and they always said the money wasn't there, but now we see that anytime the government wanted they could have done it -- so again, it was total, utter, complete bullsh*t ... a scam, flim-flammery to rip off the citizens.)
