Macro Man’s remake of an A.E. Houseman’s To An Athlete Dying Young is this week’s poem of the week.
Poem of the Week: 9/21/08-9/27/08
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Author Archives: the editor
Rant of the Week: 9/21/08-9/27/08
Naked Capitalism rails against Hank Paulson’s bailout plan. That outrage should be shared by every American regardless of their political ideals. Sadly, the plan will probably be passes by a bi-partisan vote. Such are the wages of fear.
Essay of the Week: 9/21/08-9/27/08
In this week’s essay, Ape Man makes a prediction that seemed more daring last week when it was supposed to run then it does this week. Such are the fortunes of life.
Around the World….
While we have been primarily focused on the problems in the US we have been ignoring things that have been going on around the world.
Here is a list of some of the things we have been ignoring.
The fact that the giant Large Hadron Collider broke down the first time they tried to use it.
The contaminated milk scandal in China.
The huge truck bomb that went off in Islamabad.
Thabo Mbeki is resigning under pressure from the fans of Jacob Zuma. Mbeki has his problems, but Zuma is a thug.
Ehud Olmert is finally leaving office. In the short term he is being succeeded by Tzipi Livni who’s claim to fame is that she used to be Mossad agent.
NASA is going to have a press conference on the Sun. Seems that solar winds are at a 50 year low in addition to the fact that there have been few solar flares.
Fear Rules the Day
As Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, put it Friday morning on the ABC program “Good Morning America,” the congressional leaders were told “that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally.”
Mr. Schumer added, “History was sort of hanging over it, like this was a moment.”
Read the whole thing. They sound really scared. People who are really scared do stupid things.
When Mr. Schumer described the meeting as “somber,” Mr. Dodd cut in. “Somber doesn’t begin to justify the words,” he said. “We have never heard language like this.”
“What you heard last evening,” he added, “is one of those rare moments, certainly rare in my experience here, is Democrats and Republicans deciding we need to work together quickly.”
Although Mr. Schumer, Mr. Dodd and other participants declined to repeat precisely what they were told by Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Paulson, they said the two men described the financial system as effectively bound in a knot that was being pulled tighter and tighter by the day.
US Taxpayers will soon own all the bad debt in the US
Congressional leaders said after meeting Thursday evening with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke that as much as $1 trillion could be needed to avoid an imminent meltdown of the U.S. financial system.
Paulson announced plans Friday morning for a “bold approach” that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars. At a news conference at Treasury headquarters, he called for a “temporary asset relief program” to take bad mortgages off the books of the nation’s financial institutions. Congressional leaders had left Washington on Friday, but Paulson planned to confer with them over the weekend.
“We’re talking hundreds of billions,” Paulson told reporters. “This needs to be big enough to make a real difference and get to the heart of the problem.”
They Don't Make Them Like They Use To
From the Bayou Renaissance Man…..
In that street there’s an elderly couple in a small cottage. Their neighbors on either side evacuated North, but this couple have ridden out Heaven knows how many storms together, and decided they’d stay put. After Gustav blew through, they got together with some other, equally elderly folks nearby to form a temporary ad-hoc watch group, just as we did. They include veterans from the Second World War and Korean War. (Vietnam vets and those from later conflicts are regarded with tolerant affection as “youngsters”.) So far their tally is up to seven looters and/or scumbags and/or wannabe “contractors” and/or others nailed on general suspicion, as in “Ya sure don’t look like ya belong around here, boy!” (The term “boy” is generic – anyone younger than 60 [including yours truly] qualifies, irrespective of race, creed, etc.)
(Hint to wannabe looters: “ghetto”-style gangbanger clothing isn’t normally encountered on our streets – or not for long, anyway!)
Grandpa’s leading the charge with his trusty Winchester .30-30, which dates back to 1923! It was his father’s before him. The blueing’s long since worn off, leaving only silvery metal behind, and the stock and fore-end are dinged and dented, but he’s maxed out his deer limit every year since Noah with that darn rifle. I’d hate to have him shooting at me with it! Grandma and the other ladies back up the good ol’ boys with copious amounts of coffee and soup. Grandma dishes it up hot and strong several times each night, kept company by her “old faithful” Stevens double-barrel 16ga. shotgun, also worn silver, and the victor of many contests with ducks and other feathered things.
(I asked her, just yesterday, “Why a 16ga.?” She informed me, with a gentle smile, that a 12ga. “wasn’t considered ladylike when I was growing up”, while a 20ga. wasn’t big enough for ducks. That made a 16ga. “just right for a lady.” Hey, who am I to argue?)
Lehman's pulled a fast one
Two managers and one division head of the German state lending bank KfW were suspended Thursday after an emergency meeting of the administrative board in Berlin, amid uproar over a suspicious €300 million ($426 million) transfer made by the bank to Lehman Brothers on Monday — just as the New York financial institution collapsed.
No End In Sight
Were the financial crisis to end today, the costs would be painful but manageable, roughly equivalent to the cost of another year in Iraq. Unfortunately, however, the financial crisis is far from over, and it is hard to imagine how the US government is going to succeed in creating a firewall against further contagion without spending five to 10 times more than it has already, that is, an amount closer to $1,000bn to $2,000bn.
An important difference to keep in mind
Before you pull your cash out of your money market fund, you need to understand what you own. There is a big difference between money market mutual funds and the money market deposit accounts at a bank (and banks sometimes sell both).
Money market funds are essentially mutual funds that invest in securities that, until this week, were deemed relatively low risk. Those include government securities, certificates of deposit, asset-backed commercial paper and other highly liquid securities.
The Primary Fund got in trouble because some of its investments were in Lehman Brothers’ debt. To stop what is in essence a run on the fund, the Primary Fund has stopped all redemptions for up to seven days.
A money market deposit account, on the other hand, is entirely different. It is an interest-bearing bank account that is insured — up to $100,000 per account and up to $250,000 for some retirement accounts — by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Joint accounts are insured for $100,000 per account holder.
If you had been putting your money into a money market account because you wanted to avoid all risk, then you should consider the money market deposit accounts and other accounts insured by the F.D.I.C., like certificates of deposit and regular checking and savings accounts.