Former Staffer: Obama and Biden "Financially Illiterate"...

No shit? Just figuring that out, huh?

Next year, assuming the Mayans were wrong about Armageddon, is going to be a blast for those of us who like to read. I have no doubt that there’s  fifty “Obama Insider” books already written, and ready to go, all dripping with the truth about President Marriott-Suites, his Deputy Dog of a Vice President, and the gift that keeps on giving, Our Esteemed Secretary of State, the Old Crusty Pantsuit, herself.

And every last one of them holds out the possibility of containing completely original, never-before-spoken-of examples of legendary stupidity that will, in all likelihood, shock the ever-loving shit out of every last one of us. Not because it will be unbelievable, but because we’ll finally know just how close we came to becoming a fascist dictatorship run by complete doofuses.

Think Mussolini with Down’s Syndrome.

The article is basically a rehash of some disillusioned-and-selfish dickhead’s disappointments with Biden, but it’s a weather vane, of sorts, for the kind of shit we’re likely to be seeing on bookshelves really soon. The theme is that “While I may be a complete asshole, Joe Biden is a bigger one, and here’s why….”

Make sure your Kindle is charged up, folks.

21 Ways The Rich Think Differently...

I read this earlier in the week, but had to take some time to think about the implications of this idea.

Now, the author may be on to something here, and I would think that this would suggest much more scientific research be done on the subject. If the road to wealth begins with a different mindset, or perhaps if we discovered that some people are, indeed, hard-wired to eventually become rich, we might have unlocked the secrets of true egalitarianism.

The Freedom to Be a Dumbass...

With regards to the “Occupy Wall Street” protests currently disrupting civil discourse and commerce in New York City:

One of our greatest and most precious rights as a citizen of the United States is one that is not enshrined within the Bill of Rights, or ensconced within the cannons of The Law. It is an Implied Right, something that, for lack of a better term, we might say “goes without saying”. It is a Natural Right which all people take for granted, if they even recognize it at all.

And that is the Right to Be Wrong.

Glad I Quit When I Did...

Citigroup is full of crooks.

They could have asked me in 2004, when I left for good; I would have saved everyone a great deal of trouble, and money, and none of this would have come as a great shock.

Now, as to Barack Obama and Kirsten Gillibrand;

When large corporations give large amounts of (other people's) cash to such medocrities, it's usually because the corporation simply hopes to buy the votes and support of people who are, literally, either too dumb to recognize graft when they see it, or worse, whom the corporation believes are just as corrupt as they are.

Kirsten Gillbrand is, and has been, nothing but a placeholder -- a reliable vote that backs up that other abomination, Charles Schumer, in a den of thieves (the U.S. Congress) that steals far more money from the taxpayer and it's customers than the board of Citigroup could imagine in their wildest of dreams. She needs to be a goner come November, even if that means electing whatever chimpazee someone taught to speak that ultimately runs against her.

Barack Obama is with us for at least 2 more years, unfortunately, butit behooves us to dilligently take note of who puts money in his pockets, too, if only to ensure that he doesn't pull the Full Mugabe and use his position to line his own pockets while his country slides into chaos.

Signs o' The Times...

Unfortunately, they tend to say "For Sale", "Going out of Business Sale", or are an advertisement for the local Real Estate Agent hoping to lease empty, or soon-to-be empty, space.

This past fortnight has seen a rash of small businesses, many of which had been staples of the local community, close their doors. That's terrible, especially when these business owners spent, in some cases, decades growing their businesses and their reputations in the community, and now it's all over for them. Or is it? I know a few of them, and we've been talking, and some of it is simply fascinating.

Two small businessmen of my acquaintance that have recently closed shop have told me that business was actually pretty good despite the bad economy (one ran a delicatessen, and the other a dry cleaners), and that what really caused them pull up stakes was their rising rents. One man told me that no sooner did the real estate market head south in 2008 than his landlord was already trying to renegotiate the lease he had just signed, so as to double his rent to $14,000 a month on a storefront where two generations of his family had worked for near on 30 years.

When he refused to renegotiate (he did have a signed contract, after all), the landlord took him to court over nuisance issues just to try to get him out of the building, but the Deli Owner ran the clock out, and when his lease finally expired this past spring, he finally left. Whether or not he re-opens in a different location is questionable, because the local commercial real estate situation is,as they both tell me, "absolutely crazy".

My dry cleaner friend is going to re-open elsewhere, but he informs me that the leasing situation makes this somewhat problematic; despite having more retail space added to Staten Island in the last five years before the recession than in the previous decade -- and with much of that new construction sitting empty -- some landlords are actually raising their rents, not lowering them. My buddy says that this tells him that the landlords probably financed all of that recent construction with high-interest/variable-rate loans, confident they could fill the space at high-enough rents to turn a profit. Now, they're stuck with empty space and a ballooning monthly mortgage payment, not to mention tax assessments that reflect the formerly-inflated values of the properties they own. They are so deep underwater as to be drowning. They can't afford to drop rents, and they're simply praying they find someone stupid and desperate enough to pay these inflated rates.

He's also under the impression that we're talking about a very few landlords who own the majority of the properties, doing business behind a variety of real-estate companies/concerns. That the guy who owns 123 Main Street as Mr. X Property Management, is probably the same guy who owns 678 Main Street, as Nosepicking Dimwits and Company, and you can tell two locations have the same landlord when the rents on both pretty much rise at the same rate, at the same time, despite the sticker in the window identifying the management company.

Mr.Dry Cleaner also expects to see a whole lot more"For Lease" signs at the end of the year, because many of these leases will expire on December 31st -- and no one is going to pay rates that are much higher than they are now. There's been some folks forced out of business by the bad economy, but maybe there are just as many being forced out of business by their over-mortgaged landlords, he reckons.

So, I took a look around because while there have been a lot of closings lately, there's also some new stuff opening around here, too. What's that all about? And then I started to take note of what had closed, and what was opening.

On the Closed side, we have perhaps the biggest Bridal shop on Staten Island. In fact, "shop" is probably the wrong term to use. This was a Wedding Emporium, something on the order of 6-8,000 square feet of nothing but wedding dresses and wedding crap, and if that wasn't impressive enough, the local paper which lamented it's closing reported that the recent renovations made to that building cost just over $2 million. That shop didn't go out of business because no one's getting married (although I'm fairly certain they were selling fewer-and-fewer $5,000 wedding gowns to brain-dead Schifoozas who want to wear the same dress they saw on their favorite episode of Real Housewives of Bensonhurst), they went out of business because they couldn't afford to pay for the renovations they made, which makes you wonder how they financed it tobegin with? A second mortgage on the first-and-second homes, now less-valuable then they were two years ago? Most likely.

Then there's the Yarn/Knitting/Fabric Store which never seemed to have any clientele at all, but somehow stayed open for 20+ years. When I say "no clientele", I mean that I never saw anyone go into or out of the place in two decades, that I can recall. You would think that in a recession, knitting supplies would be in demand as people start saving money by making/repairing more of their own clothing. Having the ability to knit a cardigan is about to become a skill on par with hunting caribou, or smelting iron from surface deposits in Post-Obama "Recovery" America. But there's the knitting store, Out-of-Business.

A small printer's shop has also closed, although the Dog Grooming and Antique businesses that flank it are apparently doing a decent trade. A few hair salons have closed (which is no great loss, considering there's at least 15 more within a 20 block radius), a large health food store went under, too. The Leather/Luggage shop, gone. So too was closed the Christian Gift Shop, which just goes to prove that it doesn't matter how much you pray, when it comes to money the Lord hardly ever giveth but doth taketh away faster than you can say "Glow-in-the-Dark-velvet-Jesus".

I've also noticed that just about all of the local banks have turned off/removed their "Courtesy Clocks" which give passers-by the time and temperature. When banks are belt-tightening...

But, on the Opened Side of the ledger, something weird is happening.

A new Bakery opened this past winter, just down the block from one of the more popular and revered bakers on this island. Business is such that it stays open until 9 pm, on most nights.

Two Discount Stores (Mostly household goods/children's clothes) have moved into the neighborhood, and so has a new Fresh Fruit/Vegetable shop. Last spring, a new comedy club opened up in the old Lane Theatre which had alternated between "flash-in-the-pan-flavor-of-the-week Guido Hangout" and "Abandoned" for years. A great deal of renovations were done on the building, and business looks decent on most weekends. Most of the more popular restaurants on the main drag do pretty well on weekends, although weekday nights are pretty slow. Three new restaurants (two pizzerias and a Japanese restaurant) opened up within the last 18 months, and are still here. We're about to get a new Yogurtberry opening up any day now, and a relocated Dance Studio moved in last summer, shares the same newly-renovated commercial building on the main artery. A recent report in the local paper says that one of the major Big Box stores is not only staying in it's current location, it's going to open a second location not a mile further up the road. The Day Spas and Korean Nail joints which litter the landscape are busy everyday, with a steady stream of gum-snapping Middle-class housewives running in and out for fish pedicures and European skin peels.

What to make of all this? What does this say about the economy, in general?

Damned if I know, but it appears as those who have cash on hand are doing well or holding their own, and those who lived and died by credit are up Shit's Creek without a paddle. And when you stop to consider that if there one thing that's harder to get than a blowjob in a convent, it's credit, then it's no wonder.

Of course, the Credit Crisis would have been much less severe if a) Banks that received TARP money had done what they were supposed to have done with that money -- get the bad loans off their books -- instead of what they actually did -- shore up their stock prices, buy up their weakened competitors, pay their Executives exorbitant bonuses, and b) if the Federal Government hadn't had sucked up $787 billion for a Stimulus Bill which is two lies for the price of one, but then again, "The Keeping Dangerous and Useless Democratic Party Allies Rolling in Someone Else's Money Bill" wouldn't have worked.

And now the same douchebags who took $1.5 trillion dollars off the credit markets between TARP and Stimulus -- just at the time where that money would have been useful to help with recovery -- are about to inflict a new round of "Financial Reforms" on the Nation which will involve making a Corporate Bailout next to a Constitutional Right. Citibank's ability to fuck up and be saved, and Planned Parenthood's ability to give a 13-year old a We-Won't-Tell-Your-Parents-Late-Term-Abortion is being paid for by the Print Shops, Knitting Barns, Health food stores, and Bridal Shops of Staten Islanders, and many others.

That's not Financial Reform, Mr. Obama. That's a reward for bad behavior that will guarantee a repeat performance.

A Second Great Depression....

Obama kicks Wall Street in the balls for it's part in triggering what is now a Second Great Depression.

This from the man who told us that $787 billion Stimulus Bill -- that FIRST BILL that no one read before it was signed into law -- was necessary to avoid "the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression."

This from a man who told us that nationalizing Medical Care, the SECOND BILL that no one redad before it was signed into Law (which doesn't take "full" effect until 2014 -- after the taxes are already rolling in) was necessary to aid in our swift economic recovery.

This from the same Person who asserted that Cap-and-Trade bills and Green Energy Initiatives would fundamentally change the American economy and provide millions of jobs.

This accusation comes from a man who's administration promised "six million jobs created or saved" and "transparency", but which routinely lies about job numbers, and won't tell us just by what criteria it counts a job as "created" or "saved".

This Economic Lecture comes from the Administration which in little more than a year has added $1.3 trillion to the Federal Deficit, and will add $12 trillion to the National Debt by the time it's done.

You know it's all about politics, don't you? People like Obama always need enemies, and they always need crises, because if they didn't there would be no reason to keep them in power. You'd question their motives and intentions, if it wasn't always a dire emergency.

The people of this country should be ashamed of themselves. They got so desperate that they lost faith in what this country was supposed to stand for, and for what it was and always will be, and they voted for a Socialist charlatan with no knowledge of economics or foreign affairs, who can't speak without a teleprompter, and who simply recycled Bill Clinton's mantra of "change", Jimmy Carter's economic policies, LBJ's welfare state, and FDR's expansion of government -- which was only appealing by comparison because the Other Side was offering little better -- into the highest office in the land.

This from the man who was stupid enough to pick Joe Biden to be a heartbeat away from the Oval Office. I guess that was because Obama looks positively statesman-like when compared to Joe Ding-Dong.

He hides his stupidity behind fake populism, and when he's really desperate, in accusations of racism. I thank all of you Obamatards very, very much; you couldn't have made a worse choice if someone had paid you to do so.

2010 can't come soon enough, that we might be spared the worst of this jerk's politics and policies.

Update: spelling, grammar and a few re-written sentences.

You Call This Financial Reform?

I'm not completely up on the whole new package of Obamatard Financial Reforms. I really don't plan to be, either, since wading through endless pages of financial terms and Senatorese about Sub-section 2651.V, appendix J, of United States Code... is about as rewarding as the wishful thinking that one day Arabs might actually discover their own retardation and make an effort to improve themselves has been. There are more constructive uses for my time; smoking, a vodka and tonic, and a hockey game come to mind.

But, you do have to pay attention to some aspects of this sort of thing, if only because if you don't, you miss the chance for a belly laugh and perhaps another insight into the Retards we let run our lives.

The Excuse for a new slew of Federal Regulations (i.e. Congressional and Presidential meddling in Financial Markets, in a subject they know little about, the creation of new Bureaucracies and the Strengthening of the Old and Ineffective Ones, and a smorgasbord of New Taxes) is that Wall Street Has Run Amok, and that it has Destroyed the American Free Market System, which required massive bailouts of every major financial firm on the planet. In order to Repair The Economy, and Save the Taxpayer from further abuse and grief, the government must, in the immortal words of Peter Arnett, "...destroy the village in order to save it..."

We need the government to be empowered to do things it's never been able to do before -- and give it the discretion to do it capriciously -- because the Old Way resulted in rampant fraud, crashing markets and a $700 billion bailout.

Hold yer horses there, Mr. Barack Hussein Ojerkoff!

The reason Wall Street failed (and I must admit, I'm not an expert here, just someone who watched how the Brokers and Bankers operate) , has nothing to do with regulations, or the lack of enforcement, thereof. In fact, you can trace most of the original problems directly TO regulations, or more specifically, Congressional action, and a lot of stupidity and greed on the part of people who should have known better, but who have no moral compass.

The first of these plagues was the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, a Depression-era safeguard which prohibited Banks, Brokerages, Mortgage Brokers and Insurance companies from being owned by the same entities, and their businesses intertwined. No sooner than this Law was repealed, than I saw the creation of Citigroup (where I was working at the time); it steadily acquired more and more business units, until by the time I left (2004), Citigroup contained the original Citibank and several regional/state banks (core banking services), Smith-Barney/Salomon Brothers/Nikko Securities and Schroeder's International (investment banking and securities trading -- and that's in addition to the previously-absorbed rumps of E.F. Hutton, and parts of the old Shearson-Lehman-American Express conglomerate), Traveler's Insurance (along with the Traveler's portfolio of smaller insurers), Primerica Corp. (mortgage lending and mortgage-backed securities), and approximately a dozen other, smaller operations, including several foreign (mainly Mexican) banks, or firms dedicated to more specific aspects of all-things-Financial.

The Idea was to create the Financial equivalent of a One-Stop Shopping Center, where you could walk into a Citi branch, and not only make a deposit, or get a new checkbook, but build a stock portfolio with your personal Smith-Barney financial advisor, apply for a mortgage through Primerica, get that college loan form your regional bank, buy auto or home insurance from a Traveler's Representative, all in a conveniently-located central location. And of course, all this cross-selling of services had it's benefits: if you used Citi finanical products exclusively, you got discounts, and you got other incentives mostly related to cheap promotional junk; you got free calculators, t-shirts, and other crap, all with that nifty Red Umbrella on it. If you had some scratch, you got better gifts. Eventually, Citibank grows to have it's fingers in every pie you can think of, and has money tied up in anything you can imagine. That's when it's not lending money to countries (Argentina and Russia, specifically) which default on billion-dollar loans more often than democrats make stupid statements.

The Second problem was a monetary policy promulgated by the "Genius", Alan Greenspan, who was so preoccupied by the specter of inflation, and struggling to understand an electronic revolution that overwhelmed a 70-year old's mental capacity, and who also made "Cheap Credit" his mantra. Cheap credit eventually made riskier investments easier, because cash was available at lower interest rates. That had two practical effects: it made the practice of borrowing money from the Fed at ridiculously-low interest rates, and then lending it (via mortgages and credit cards) at outrageous interest rates, very lucrative. It also helped to trap many Americans in debt. It made making riskier loans easier to hedge -- if there was a shortfall, you should be able to borrow money from the Fed to cover the losses, at practically no interest.

The practice of giving 300k mortgages to people who made less than 50k a year, at variable or higher interest rates, was a gold mine in this sort of environment. And it was safe, so long as everyone stayed gainfully employed, and managed the Minimum Monthly Payment. The practice of charging 18-25% interest on credit cards was even more lucrative, since people given access to more credit (thanks to loose interest policies and a consumer-based society hooked on the products of the Information Age) sucked the stuff up and began living via plastic instead of cash. They lost perspective on the value of money. If the suckers overextended themselves, no problem; Wall Street managed to get the bankruptcy laws changed so that no one walks away, anymore. It's all profit.

The final Nail in the Coffin was the belief that Everyone Deserves A Home of Their Own. That's a nice sentiment, but with all that easy credit and ridiculously-obtainable mortgages floating about, not to mention Congress driving the Banks to make this a reality for Low-Income people (i.e. deadbeats and minorities), or suffer the consequences, we created a certain mindset; not only do I deserve a Home of My Own, I Deserve a Home No one Else has Ever Lived in Before, Too -- and I can pay for it because there's all this Free Money flying around.

(A side note: this Homebuyer's Revolution led to another, smaller revolution; the vast array of Home-based television shows, like Dream House, or Home and Gardens TV, or those dumb shows where people renovate each other's houses based upon their own taste and such, and don't get me started on the whole A&E series of Gay Real Estate Agents and their House Flipping. They make this seem all-so-easy, and people laboring under the impression that a) money is easy to come by, and b) I can do what they just did made some of this appreciably worse).

The combination of easy mortgages, a marketplace who wanted more and unique housing, and government encouragement, the ability to pass off bad loans in as Mortgage-Backed Securities guaranteed by Freddie and Fannie at no risk, and the housing market was soon in full swing, producing New Homes like Inner-city crack whores produce illegitimate offspring; the market became saturated with houses that can only be sold so long as credit was easy to obtain..

And then, It Happened. Someone swiped half-a-Trillion dollars from the Economy on day in September 2008.

(Ed. Note: I say "someone" in the belief that the Fed, or anyone else involved, can never actually tell the truth about this event, and we will likely never know who was actually involved. If the Fed tells you it knows how it was done, and by whom, you might not like those answers, and might even begin to question why it was "they" were allowed to do what they did. If, on the other hand, the Fed should try to tell you that "it doesn't know How It Happened", that would be even worse. Either way, faith would be lost in the Federal Reserve System and the American Economy, and we'd be in an even bigger hole. I think, this, more than anything else, explains the speed and lack of debate, or even information, that preceded the $700 million Bailout. This country was either attacked economically by our enemies, either an act of economic terrorism or an attempt to weaken us in some way, or the Fed found itself the victim of a simple, and entirely-foreseeable-in-retrospect mistakes that someone probably brought to their attention, and which they failed to subsequently correct).

Citigroup (amongst others) became Too Big To Fail, because it had been allowed to become a bloated, under-capitalized frat house of extreme risk-takers driven by the promise of easy credit, which would save them from their worst mistakes. The outrageous profits to be gained by gaming the system were too heady a brew to ignore, and Financial Professionals are all about getting while the getting is good, no questions asked, no ethical or professional line that can't be blurred by fine distinctions or willing stupidity . It was a game made easier by the Federal Reserve and several Acts of Congress.

When the System Failed, the solution was to "pump" $700 billion into it in order to keep all the "Too-Big-To-Fails-Afloat". It's actual effect was to dry up all that low-interest liquidity that encouraged the bad loans and the Plastic Economy in the first place, further exacerbating the problem. The $787 billion "Stimulus" bill further reduced the amount of available credit by restricting the money supply. The subsequent printing of money to pay for this "stimulus" has lessened the value of what cash can be obtained through inflation. The Wall Street firms may have gotten colossal amounts of bailout funds -- but they got it at the expense of every other business in America. And far from clearing the "toxic assets" from their books with that money, like they were supposed to, the Big Firms simply propped up their stock prices, which allowed their Executives (the one's who presided over this mess) to profit even more, and pay back the loans quickly in some cases. The speed involved in both the formulation of the original Bailout package, and the Stimulus Program, left little details like directing Wall Street on how to best spend that money and making certain they used it for that specific purpose, completely un-discussed, let alone enacted or included in the final product.

The Housing Market, one of the foundations of the economic system, is in disarray: it's got units it can't -- and perhaps never will -- sell. It's got houses that are going into foreclosure (because the sucking up of credit by the Fed and the Government are hurting their mortgage-holder's employers), and it will lose out on these, also. Large numbers of homes (old and new) will soon be empty, and simply left to rot, because high unemployment and harder-to-get credit will ensure there are no buyers.The Banks now hold so much worthless paper that the tellers are wiping their asses with it.

AIG, General Motors, Chrysler, General Electric, Citigroup, Shearson-Lehman, Goldman Sachs, Bear-Stearns/UBS, Merril Lynch, and their finance arms, are now owned, in large part, by the federal Government (incidentally, the Obama System of Government intervention is almost exactly how things worked in Nazi Germany). Obama already has command of these institutions by virtue of the bailout; now he wants the ability to micro-manage these companies for political ends, and to beat them up in the media to keep that Class Warfare theme going.

Obama now cites all this abuse and lack of oversight as a prime reason why we need a New Set of Rules. To Ensure that This NEVER Happens again. This is now something like my fifth or sixth "recession" and I've discovered that they always happen again, and usually for the same reasons.

People get greedy. People get stupid. Congress gets even greedier and stupider (because it's full of cloistered morons who don't know what the real world is like, and who expect to be bribed), and makes the process of being Greedy and Stupid much, much easier. We don't need Better Rules; we need Better Human Beings. The problem is, you're not likely to find either in the Government or The Boardroom.

Besides, we already had a system of punishing the guilty; It was called Bankruptcy Law, and it wasn't given the chance to work. The mentality (panic, really) of the time, was that bankruptcy was a giant No-No. It shouldn't be allowed to happen because the consequences would be so hideous (like the election of B.O. hasn't been a disaster?). The government didn't even allow the system it set up to work they way it was supposed to. It would have worked, too. And this "recession" would probably be a lot shallower and eventually shorter, if it had.

Having already facilitated the corruption of the Old System, then preventing the safeguards and punishments they mandated for that System to function -- all for selfish political ends -- the government, President Obama specifically, is now arguing that because The Old System Failed, because of our willing and purposeful failure to obey it's rules, we now require a Whole New System.

And there's no politics involved in it...at all.

Well, he's already sold the notion of "free" Healthcare, a political program that consists largely of staged media events and little of substance, Himself as a "post-racial-post-partisan" healer of Divine Origin, so why shouldn't he give this one a try, too?

The sooner we get a new Congress to rein this bastard in, the better off this country will be. We already have a system of laws to punish Goldman-Sachs. Let it work the way it's intended, and reserve judgement on whether or not new rules are required until the Goldman situation has been hashed out. The speed and lack of debate with which Obama is pushing this new initiative is part of the same pattern he's used on Healthcare and Cap-and-Trade, and seems to be his preferred method of operation; get the press release, get the photo-op, screw the details.

Detroit, New York, What's the Diff?

J. Robert Smith at Pajamas Media muses upon the Post Office and a Green Detroit, and it's a cautionary tale for the rest of us.

Mr. Smith shouldn't fool himself into thinking it's only democrats that think this way. Our so-called republican (probably because it was the cheapest label to buy) Mayor of Noo Yawk, Michael Bloomberg -- Patron Saint of Virgin Spinsters and the Perpetually-Pantybunched -- was so convinced that only his divine beneficence could "save" this city from it's looming Wall-Street-induced fiscal crisis that he went out and had the goddamned election laws changed so that he could serve a third term.

And once he'd accomplished re-election -- spending $100 million bucks of his own hard earned coin. At least he had that much decency -- and then winning by a mere 4% over a democratic candidate that ran such a lackluster, torturous, tedious campaign of inanity, inertia and hot air that you would have thought he was the National Spokesperson for Constipation, did Saint Bloomberg turn his considerable talents towards helping New York navigate the current financial crisis?

No.

Did he, perhaps, set about enacting the vital reforms that are needed in this city, which is slowly having it's lifeblood sucked out of it by voracious public unions, a rising crime rate, fleeing businesses, rising unemployment rates, shrinking tax base, unchecked illegal immigration and higher levels of government spending?

Of course not.

Then what, exactly, is he doing?

Trying to pass a law restricting how much salt finds it's way into my food...

That's after, of course, he's already passed laws outlawing transfats, making certain I have all the nutritional information available on my Whopper with Cheese posted at the cash register, and eliminated the serving of sugary drinks in public schools (where they still somehow manage to serve corndogs, pizza and processed chicken nuggets, according to my nephews).

This is the Mayor who's also cordoned off sections of the city that used to be open to vehicular traffic so that now you can walk all the way up Broadway, from Times Square to Central Park on the weekends, assuming you'd want to considering there's a subway available to save you the trouble and shoe leather. It's not as if there's much scenery to enjoy between 42nd and Columbus Circle -- unless you like office towers.

It's the same Mayor who once suggested "congestion pricing" plans by which tolls charged on river crossings to enter the city from the Outer Boroughs would be adjusted by time of day and general level of traffic. The idea was a) to restrict vehicle traffic into the City and thus, clean the air and make traffic flow more smoothly, and b) raise a shitload of money while simultaneously denying the benefits and niceties of the City to those who live in the Outer Boroughs for the benefit of the transplanted Upper East Side libtards.

It's both class and economic warfare, veiled by the pledge of "it's all for the Common Good..".

The City of New York is always on the lookout for a buck; so much so that it inspects your garbage, which had better be thrown in out in clear, see-through plastic bags, and placed in the proper trash receptacle if you wish to avoid a fine greater than that given to speeders, drunk drivers or public urinators (don't ask me how I know that!).

You can no longer smoke in public, assuming you can afford cigarettes; which now average nearly $10 a pack. Michael Bloomberg has succeeded in making crack a cheaper and more attractive alternative to tobacco. In the meantime, the city's poor continue to get fatter and sicker (a steady diet of welfare-funded Twinkies and Fatback will do that to you), and the hospitals ever-more crowded with pregnant illegals with tuberculosis and AIDS, and the Union workers who run them get richer and do less work, and this is why the taxes on cigarettes had to be raised in the first place; to save the hospitals.

At least that's what they said...

The rot started under democrats (I remember the days of Abe Beam, Hugh Carey, Ed Koch and David Dinkins with something less than nostalgia, more like nausea), but then something mysterious happened: some republicans came along -- like Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg -- and they not only did their republican schtick and cut crime and spending (although Bloomberg loves raising taxes), they also carried on some of the stupidity and freedom-choking policies of their predecessors. For Rudy it was mostly about guns, but for St. Mikey it's all about his Upper East Sider friends and their "enlightened" sensibilities.

Blooomberg's fiercely-mextrosexual, self-appointed-Manhattan-elite are the new Lords of the Manor, and we're the serfs.

Now Micheal Bloomberg spends all his time, and his vast fortune, to ensure you're eating arugula and lemon grass and his friends get to walk their fancy, teacup lapdogs in Central Park, or to enjoy the boisterous Open-Air flea markets selling counterfeit goods and authentic West African food poisoning that now dominate Midtown on the weekends, all without having to encounter a taxi, an SUV, or a tourist (unless they have really neat European accents), or worse -- one of the proles from Queens or Staten Island -- while every potential employer flees the city because of crushing tax burdens, regulatory expenses and overpaid Union labor, and the State floats upon a sea of red ink.

The only thing missing from Micheal Bloomberg's New York City is a Bastille for us scum to storm.

And people wonder why nearly a decade after 9/11 there's still a great, big, gaping 19-acre hole in the ground?

In many respects, New York and Detroit are already sister cities.

And I Can't Get My Job in the Financial Industry Back?

Maybe this is why....

And that's nothing; in my days on Wall Street, the stupidity of management was always on display. In fact, they would call you into great, big meetings to proudly announce their stupidity publicly, on a regular basis. Complete with leather-stadium seating in the air-conditioned 300-seat amphitheatre, to introduce a parade of people you've never heard of to explain what's on the expensively-produced and vividly colorful overhead slides -- and once even, a really kick-ass light and music show -- complete with expensive gadgets and huge binders full of expensively-printed materials -- usually to announce that Management has stopped serving fresh fruit in the Executive Dining Room as a cost-cutting measure, or has come up with a new-and-improved Parking Spot Distribution Plan.

When I worked for Smith-Barney, they once spent $3 million dollars to install a big, red, solid-steel umbrella outside the office (Smith-Barney was then a member of Traveler's Group) embedded in concrete, right on the sidewalk. That same week, practically, they announced that executives would be expected to share limo rides in order to reduce overhead.

This guy got even less of a vetting than most Obama Administration nominees. When I apply for a job on Wall Street, they usually check my background very thoroughly -- even my credit score -- to evaluate my potential 'risk' as an employee. This process, which includes fingerprinting, photographing, and in some cases, a request to see your medical records or even a polygraph test, can kill many applicants before they barely finish the complimentary cup of coffee before the first interview. This phony not only got a tony job, he got it with false documents and barely a phone call to his former employer to ensure he was who and what he said he was (that former employer no doubt talked his virtues up -- probably because he knew this guy was as thief and was happy to be rid of him). Expect the clients of of his former employer to begin asking serious questions about whether or not their portfolio crossed paths with this douche.

You can just see the vultures...errr...lawyers circling now.

This guy walked in, and on a handshake, got a $700k loan on favorable terms?

These are supposed to be the Best and the Brightest. The Harvard, Wharton and Stanford MBA's. The Economic Experts. The Big Guns. The very cream of the crop. Your money couldn't be in better hands, right? Now you know how 'bubbles' are created and quickly burst; these guys have no common sense whatsoever, and they routinely bend or ignore the very rules they put in place to protect the shareholder (really, to protect the Firm) to torture the salaried cubicle slaves with. But not their Own Kind. Or people they think are their Own Kind. Don't worry about the idiot who gave him the money: he'll no doubt be fired, but probably land at Citibank or JPMorgan in a few weeks...with a higher salary and zippier title.

That how it works. The path to success on Wall Street is to be a fuck-up. Fuck-ups get promoted to where they can do less harm.

I would not be treated this way, for despite my former importance to the company (my work not only enabled Smith-Barney to trade securities at high speed, cheaply, and in fantastical quantity, but with the added benefit of being able to fire thousands of back-office untermenschen, to boot). My sort of work was merely considered a necessary expense, and so, I could never expect a million bucks a year, especially since I had no college education. But, it's an amazing thing that a Wall Street firm will relentlessly investigate and pry into the life of a 100k-a-year System's Programmer like me, to make sure I don't smoke pot, kick my dog, have a sterling reputation, and even then they'll record my phone calls and monitor my Internet activity, like I was some sort of criminal, and still expect me to work 70 hours a week...with a smile. But a guy who turns out to be a REAL Criminal, armed with a stack of phony documents and a talent for bullshit can be given a massive loan on very favorable terms. On his very first day?

Even if this guy wasn't a scammer, all he really is is a Federally-licenced bookie. The only difference between him and Tony the Nose at the corner Bar-and-Grill is that this guy would have handicapped stocks, bonds and commodities instead of football teams and racehorses. Tony breaks your kneecaps when you don't pay up, these guys just bleed you to death with a thousand papercuts. But I digress...

This is why Merrill Lynch, amongst others, should have been allowed to fail; people who treat other people's money (and it is Other People's Money, after all) so casually-- allegedly -- shouldn't be allowed to stay in business.

Yet Another Argument Against Outsourcing...

Citbank hacked...again. By Russian Gangsters. I wonder if this is the same bunch that hacked Citi back in November or if the two incidents are one in the same? Of course, they could just be following a great tradition of stealing electronically from a bank which seems to have a history of it going back at least 3 years.

Obviously, no system is hacker-proof. No data completely secure, ever. The nature of computing is such that complete, airtight security will almost never be possible. You need only look to your own desktop PC to see this; you're constantly bombarded with viruses, trojan horses, hijackers, phishing programs and a host of worms that you must constantly defend against with your puny anti-virus software. Only some of these things are exploited by the stereotypical geeky introvert determined to prove his intelligence and superiority over classically-trained Computer Scientists.

The vast majority of these things are created by people with malicious intent. The biggest threat comes comes from disgruntled programmers, who after often spending thankless years slaving to create software for a global conglomerate are unceremoniously dumped onto the unemployment line, usually without warning, "when the project is complete". Of course, they posses the technical expertise to exploit the very software they've created (and they use the trapdoors, landmines and shortcuts they left in the code to facilitate testing, a common programming practice), and they usually do it to merely tarnish their former employer's image. It's a bit of petty revenge.

But then there are the true criminals.

Cybercrime is one of the fastest-growing categories of crime in history. As more and more of human existence and commerce has been distilled into a series of bits and pixels, the cyber criminal has been right there to snap up the bits and pixels that fall by the wayside. Like a pilot fish to a cyber shark.

Many of these criminals work for cartels, gangs, or syndicates, or whatever euphemism you'd like to use, and some of them are also former IT workers treated badly by the industry, or co-opted by the criminals. They have the expertise, the skill, to crack any system on the planet. Because they very often built the damn things in the first place.

Since most of these gangs are overseas, in places like Russia and China, they are very often beyond the reach of U.S. Authority, or even protected by corrupt government officials in those countries. Right now, the money they stole could be financing drug deals, terrorism, slavery, and even worse, and the people who are being stolen from will have no legal recourse against Citi, and little hope of either recovering their funds or of seeing justice served.

Of course, this state of affairs was made infinitely easier by Wall Street's (and other industries) insistence on doing everything 'better, faster, cheaper', to the point where corners are cut so finely, and so routinely, that no one ever thought about cybercrime when they granted access to their systems to an unseen, anonymous, third-party 'consultant' in Moscow, Beijing, Mumbai or Abu Dhabi. All that mattered was the price tag. It's almost a given in the industry that when someone says "we'll save X", it's done with very little thought...and on as small a budget as possible.

They even work cheap to get cheaper.

I'm not saying Citibank would have been invulnerable if it was still hiring Americans to run their systems. I'm only saying that they'd have a much better degree of control over their systems and their customer's data.

Unfortunately, it's going to take some massive catastrophe for Citi, and all the other banks and brokerages, to realize that their policies regarding IT costs is going to come back bite them on the ass, big time. Probably right after a major terrorist attack in which someone discovers that some bank's systems were used aid terrorists without the bank's knowledge, or that billions have been stolen from right under their noses (like when half-a-trillion bucks disappeared in 20 minutes right in front of the Federal Reserve's cyber cops just before the last Presidential election. You wonder why they don't talk much about that, huh?).

Imagine the lawsuits that would engender?

Wall Street doesn't learn from experience. It only learns from lawsuits.

And then people like me will be able to write our own paychecks because the company was run by a bunch of short-sighted cheapskates who don't truly understand the systems they supposedly run. Just like when they fired all the COBOL programmers and then suddenly needed them again to 'fix' the Y2K problem. They all came back as 'consultants' with six-figure fees.

Sometimes, cheap turns out to be the more expensive option.

Too Big To Fail, Too Big To Play Fair...

My old employer, Citigroup, is back in the news today. Another story comes out telling you just what a bunch of malicious pricks our corporate officers are, just in case you'd forgotten the previous days' story.

You can read about the scam perpetrated on the American taxpayer by your government and Citigroup here.

Don't be surprised at how crooked and dishonest these people are. After all, these are the same folks who made a promotional video screaming about how they (Citigroup's Smith-Barney investment unit) were the only financial house to turn a profit on 9/11. It can't get much lower than that.

They can continue to deny that video exists, but I saw it...every day for a week. And I can find you hundreds, if not thousands, of other Citi employees who saw it, too.

The next time Wall Street comes begging for money, folks, tell them to go phuck themselves. These are the slimiest people this side of Congress.

Editorial Note: It's nice to know the Obama Administration is busily lowering corporate taxes so that Citi and WellsFargo and others can 'survive' without paying back the money they were given at the same time they are castigating these people as 'fat cats' on Oprah. If that wasn't bad enough, Congress threatens massive tax increases on the middle class in order to pay for both those bailouts, and this stupid Healthcare legislation -- which we apparently must have, but no one can be bothered to read or explain what's in the bill.

We are saddled with the worst political class in history. They are retarded, they are corrupt, they are a danger to this country and it's citizens. Mid-term elections cannot come soon enough.

Cyberwar...
Article in today's New York Post about North Korea's Cyber nastiness this past week. Something clicked for me upon hearing more about this yesterday, bear with me.

I remember reading a report online this past October, just as John McCain was 'suspending his campaign to focus on the economy' that the economic issue's first manifestation was in the Federal Reserve 'losing' half a trillion dollars in cash in a twenty-minute period (I have tried, but I cannot find that post anywhere) on the day the markets first began to tank. That's $500 billion electronically transferred by someone, or several someones, someplace where the Federal Reserve was unable to follow it, or get it back. Someone suddenly drew on huge reserves of cash and took it clean out of the monetary system. The next day, the Fed was looking for $700 billion; 500 to cover the losses, 200 more as a cushion. (Disclaimer: I do not know for a fact that any of this is factually true, but it fits a theory based on what I know and see. I spent 20 years in data processing in the financial industry, so bear with me).

Now, the Fed is perfectly capable of tracing that money, or at least , it should be. So far as I know, it still has not explained where that money went. There could be two reasons for it:

a) They honestly don't know.
b) You really don't want to know.

Why wouldn't you really want to know? Because what if that cash was vaporized in a cyber attack? How safe would you feel your money was? Markets are all about security, if nothing else; people have to believe the system is secure and within reasonable limits, predictable. How secure and predictable is a system where someone could electronically siphon off half a trillion dollars with no one noticing or being able to stop it?

The timing of the debacle was suspect too. An October Surprise of epic proportions. Perhaps someone was giving G.W.B a final "fuck you!" on his way out the door, and at the same time ensuring that John McCain would be fatally wounded? When one considers the speed with which the Obama Administration, and the democratic party apparatchiks have shown in insinuating itself into American industry and finance, and destroying what's left of financial confidence from within the system, the more paranoid, tin-foil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorists begin to sound.

Just a hunch, but I gather we're not being told the entire truth behaind this economic crisis, because the truth is that this country was attacked, sans bombs and airplanes, electronically with a cyber assault on the financial system. I think the government knows it, and knows who did it -- but not how it was done -- and that this helps explain some of the recent chaos.

Or, I could be talking out of my ass. Until more facts are available, your guess is as good as mine.