The Reason Why

The reason why: By John Cooper-Mullin

You may think that the current McCarthy Hearings into Goldman Sach's mis, mal, and non- feasance have some purpose, beyond letting the most ignorant of yahoos vent their lungs. If so, you are right!

Its purpose is to misdirect attention from the most astonishing expansion of federal power ever. 'Ever?' you say? Yes, ever. To save myself reciting obvious points, I enclose the following article, which trust me, is optimistic:

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/04/28/the-presidents-permanent-tarp

As I hope has been obvious previous to this event, I do not much care for what has become of the securities industry over the past fifteen years, and I have no sympathy whatsoever for many of my 'peers.' But this bill will guarantee that new capital flies as far away from US jurisdiction as it can get. To be blunt, there will be nothing at all left to regulate, excepting a few pawn shops. The economic harm wrought by this senseless and stupid act exceeds even that offered by the recent healthcare confiscation. The threat of outright nationalization will hang heavy over e-v-e-r-y entity with even a remote relationship to banking, securities, lending, venture capital, private equity - you name it. And with that threat ever-present, de facto nationalization can proceed apace. It surprises me not in the least that major financial institutions have already knuckled under and announced their 'support' for this measure. What choice do they have? Who can dare to object, when the operation of this act will be essentially as lawless and arbitrary as a Star Chamber? Rather than oppose, all of them are rushing to pack the bill with as many permanent impediments to future competition that they can. Heck, even GOLDMAN supports it!

Lest I seem to be exaggerating the extent of the arbitrary and capricious nature of this bill, recognize that certain insurance carriers in Connecticut will be exempt from many of its provisions. Now why would that be, Senator Dodd?

It is tempting to look on this folly as just another reversible error, akin to the rest of the mess so many expect to be cleaned up come November. Think again. jc-m

THE MAN WITHOUT A PLAN ON IRAN!

robert gates, a rare holdover from the bush admin. is a solid citizen. his memo, leaked by somebody, that we dont have much of a plan to prevent a nuclear iran or deal with a nuclear iran is one of the most important issues today

given that i believe that china will work with us on north korea, there is no greater threat to global security than iran. and the questions are; are we committed to stopping iran from having nuclear weapons or not; whatever it takes?

while obama and clinton are busy beating up on israel, what are they doing about iran. we made iran more dangerous. by allowing iraq to invade kuwait and creating the first gulf war; and electing george II who took out saddam but created chaos; iraq disappeared as a counter force to iran.

both iraq and iran where trying to acquire nuclear capability for years. we did a poor job of slowing them down.

what are we willing to do? these are not nice people. they wont stop by asking nicely. sanctions? maybe if tough and targeted. but what if not enough? will we go military or not? i dont think they will stop without military threat or action. do we have the balls? and why are we beating up israel when they are the only ones with the capability and the balls to do something?

i think america is going to be too little too late with iran and put israel a difficult position

duck and cover!

BOMB ICELAND; SAVE THE WORLD; SHORT GOLDMAN

while many of us are operating under the assumption that the cloud over europe is an annoyance that will dissipate soon, this might not be the case. first of all the volcano might just keep erupting away for 2 years! second this is a baby volcano, sometimes connected to eruptions from Katla, a big mother volcano.

what might this mean? we should all think this thru but i would be selling airline stocks. this affects our whole global system. there are flowers grown in kenya bound for london that aint going to london. food, drugs ( was thinking legal here but maybe bad for drug cartels also) anything and everything that flies in and out of europe. should lower EU growth, bad for euro versus the dollar. bad for DHL; got to be bad for some insurance companies. companies are going to invoke force majeure clauses, claiming acts of god for non- performance of contracts. its going to be a mess. maybe go long cruise line stocks. we can travel between london and new york by ship; slow the pace down a little

maybe we will look back on this a major event in history that we didnt take seriously at first.

what should we do? well i think we should nuke iceland. here we have this little pissant island that borrowed billions and gambled it away and went broke and then did a reverse haiti; it destroyed europe!

what does goldman have to do with this? nothing. other than its probably their fault. they probably created a synthetic cdo that was long europe and airline stocks and sold credit default swaps against it and figured out how to trigger the volcano.

they are the next pinata. karmic payback for a bunch a greedy motherfuckers.

JEWS AND REPUBLICANS; AN OPPORTUNITY

i think i understand why the jews in america became democrats originally. whether poor or not, jews in america were subject to anti semitism and the democrats were better than the republicans re the disadvantaged.

why jews are still democrats is completly beyond me. now they are faced with a President who doesnt give a shit about israel and is willing to jam israel into a peace process that could could get and be ugly. he forgets that israel is the only democracy in the middle east and they are the only ones with the means and motivation to deal with the real enemy, a nuclear Iran.

this is an opportunity for republicans to reach out to american jews with a strong pro israel postion.

marx said something like capitalism will manufacture and sell the rope that will hang them. well the jews are doing the same by continuing to support Obama

POLISH LOSS;LACK OF COMMON SENSE RULES

poland is one of the promising countries to come out from under the yoke of the former soviet union. the recent loss of its president and a cadre of his leadership is a human and political loss of much magnitude.

i dont know who was flying the plane but this was a major fuck up and was avoidable, in part or in whole.

first you dont put your whole administration on one airplane
two, you dont have some cowboy flying the plane

i hope poland recovers from this and doesnt get pulled back into the clutches of russia