"The Blackfeather Convergence"

not close to the bottom

We are not even near the bottom. Retirees and their pensions are next in line. I thought 750 would be the bottom, but Bush has lied far more about everything than 50% thought.

This will go further down than I thought. But we must all feel good that the top 2% to 5% more than quadrupled their wealth! Isn't that the point of being a Republican? That is what makes Capitalism awesome. Next year even fewer, will have far more and on and on and on and on. On the other hand if you are not fucking, or mother fucking wealthy you are already sacrificed for food down the line leaving the losers to create bigger and bigger lies. I have many friends that would have looked the other way when Jews were taken if it rocked the boat.

But damn it America had its run, we were needed to create the One World Government! The corporation, created only for the love of money will link with anything else intended for the love of money... and many say this is what Jesus intended. Some say Jesus intended it to cull the love of money people into Hell.

We Pay Corporations to Fuck Us.

Why do we not find the corporations that took the aid from our government to move their manufacturing overseas and not buy from them? Why do we not take the corporations that have the massive phone rooms overseas and not buy from them? Most of these corporations were made great by this country, we gave them the advantages and the protection and they don't care. They didn't even turn to say, "Goodby Suckers!"

Not only did we pay for their move, we also gave them tax incentives to take jobs away from Americans. Where was paying them to leave in the best interests of the average American with no job and nothing to make?

Follow the money.

Are They Corrupt of Just Telling Lies

Unsevered Ties?

Regulatory filings indicate that McCain campaign chief Rick Davis remains an officer with his lobbying firm.

By Michael Isikoff | Newsweek Web Exclusive

Sep 24, 2008 | Updated: 7:18  p.m. ET Sep 24, 2008

Rick Davis, John McCain's campaign manager, has remained the treasurer and a corporate director of his lobbying firm this year, despite repeated statements by campaign officials that he had ended his relationship with the firm in 2006, according to corporate records.

The McCain campaign this week criticized news stories disclosing that, since 2006, Davis's firm has been paid a $15,000-a-month consulting fee from Freddie Mac, the troubled mortgage giant recently put under federal conservatorship. The stories, published Tuesday by NEWSWEEK, The New York Times and Roll Call, reported that the consulting fees continued until last month even though, according to two sources familiar with the arrangement, neither Davis nor anybody else at his firm did any substantial work for the payments.

A spokeswoman for the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which has taken over Freddie Mac and its sister entity Fannie Mae, confirmed Wednesday that the Davis Manafort contract is being terminated. "All lobbying activity has stopped and political consulting contracts at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are in the process of being terminated," said Stefanie Mullin. (Democratic strategist Paul Begala also was on the Freddie Mac payroll, according to sources familiar with the arrangement.)

In its initial statements to reporters this week, the McCain campaign said that the disclosure of the payments from Freddie Mac was irrelevant because Davis, who was never a registered lobbyist for the troubled housing corporation, had severed his relationship with Davis Manafort in 2006 and was no longer drawing any income from it. Jill Hazelbaker, the campaign's communications director, said in an e-mail Tuesday said that Davis "left" Davis Manafort in 2006. In a statement attacking The New York Times posted on the campaign's Web site on Wednesday, campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb said that Davis "separated from his consulting firm, Davis Manafort, in 2006." (A senior campaign official, in a e-mail statement to NEWSWEEK that was not for attribution on Tuesday night, said "Rick is no longer affiliated with the firm.")   

But those statements appear to have overstated the extent to which Davis had severed his relationship with his lobbying firm. Filings made by "Davis Manafort Partners" with the Virginia Corporation Commission as recently as April 1, 2008, show that Davis was still listed as one of only two corporate officers and directors of the firm, according to records on the commission’s Web site reviewed by NEWSWEEK. That filing records Davis as the "treas/clerk" of the firm; his business partner, Paul Manafort is listed as the president and chief executive officer.
Another filing by “Davis Manafort, Inc.” (with the same Alexandria, Va. Address and recorded on Oct. 17, 2007) also lists Davis as an officer and director of the firm, reporting his position as "T/Clerk," a reference to his formal title as corporate treasurer and clerk.

Both filings are annual reports of basic corporate information that are required by Virginia state law. There is no record of any amendments to the filings reporting that Davis's status with the firm has changed. The next annual report by "Davis Manafort Inc.", for the year 2008, isn't due to be filed until next month.

The McCain campaign Wednesday sought to clarify Davis's affiliation with his firm, but insisted that the new information contained in the corporate filings in Virginia didn't alter their basic points. "Rick Davis is functionally not affiliated with the firm," said Hazelbaker, the communications director. "That is to say that, since he left, he in fact has not done any work for Davis Manafort or its clients, and he has not taken a salary or received compensation since 2006. Furthermore, he will not receive any deferred compensation."

Hazelbaker directed all other questions about the matter to Davis Manafort. (Among those questions she said she was not in a position to answer were whether there was any documentation of Davis's changed relationship with his firm and why Davis Manafort continued to bill and accept the consulting fees if Davis wasn't performing any work for Freddie Mac.) For the second day in a row, Davis Manafort did not return phone calls about the matter.

Davis himself on a conference call with reporters on Monday said that he "had a severed leave of absence from my firm for 18 months." But if the leave is as described by campaign officials, it appears to have stopped short of the steps another senior McCain campaign official, Charlie Black, took to severe his ties to his own well-connected Washington lobbying firm, BKSH & Associates. After controversy arose over the lobbying ties of top McCain campaign officials, Black—one of Washington's most prominent lobbyists—wrote a letter on March 17, 2008, to Scott Pastrick, chief executive officer of his firm, stating: "I hereby resign my position as Chairman of BKSH, effective March 31, 2008." Pastrick confirmed Wednesday that Black has "resigned in full" from BKSH & Associates, serving as neither a corporate officer, director nor partner. 

© 2008

This will make you think

 Stupidity or Corruption

By Harold Meyerson

Thursday, September 25, 2008; Page

This past winter, when American banks were already scrambling for capital, foreign investors came to their rescue. Last November, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority put $7.5 billion into Citigroup. One month later, Merrill Lynch sold $4.4 billion worth of new stock to Temasek Holdings of Singapore, and Morgan Stanley sold a $5 billion stake to China Investment Corp. In January, Merrill Lynch issued $6.6 billion of preferred stock to Korea Investment Corp. and the Kuwait Investment Authority, among others.

This Story

These far-flung buyers had one thing in common: They aren't private concerns. Each is a sovereign wealth fund, investing its national treasury's money -- its citizens' money -- in an effort to help out the hemorrhaging banks of Wall Street.

But these were not charitable outlays. The citizens of Abu Dhabi, Singapore, China, Korea and Kuwait got something in return for their treasuries' aid packages to American finance. They got stock. They got an equity interest in those banks.

$700 billion dollar con job! Bailouts just starting

The $700 Billion Bailout Plan's Fine Print

Commentary: A reformed Wall Streeter sifts through the details of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

By Nomi Prins

September 24, 2008

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Treasury Sec. Hank Paulson's $700 billion bailout plan now has a name: the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. But even as Capitol Hill debates TARP, few seem to have noticed the proposal item that puts taxpayers on the hook for future bailouts. It's in Section 6, and the key phrase is this: "The Secretary's authority to purchase mortgage-related assets under this Act shall be limited to $700,000,000,000 outstanding at any one time."

What does "at any one time" actually mean to economists? It means that if everything we American taxpayers buy re-evaluates down to zero, we get to buy more. That's hardly taxpayer "protection." With several hundred billion dollars of write-downs already announced this year by the part of the industry compelled to post their losses, it's a safe bet that $700 billion worth of the junkiest assets in existence will be heading to zero the second they are purchased.

But that's not all the bad news. With Sunday's announcement that Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have decided to become bank holding companies, the last pretense of respect for the Glass-Steagall was dropped.

The Bank Holding Company Act of 1956 prevented bank holding companies from engaging in non-consumer oriented banking activities, like investment banking. It also prohibited such entities headquartered in one state from acquiring banks in another state. The interstate restrictions were gutted in 1994, and the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act took care of the rest.

At first this meant that commercial banks could buy investment banks and insurance companies, hence Citigroup (which is a combination of Citibank, Travelers Insurance and Salomon Brothers investment bank), and the latest incarnation waiting to post lots of losses, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch. But even with a new name, Goldman Sachs is still an investment bank, in the same way that a horse by another color is still a horse. Changing its status to bank holding company will mean access to the bailout fund, and give it the ability to buy any commercial bank out there. Which it likely will.

Nonetheless, that looming problem wasn't addressed by Congress Tuesday. Instead, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) responded to TARP with THOR (Taxpayer Protection, Housing, Oversight and Regulation) and warned, "the financial system is clogged, and if we don't react the patient will suffer a heart attack. So we must act and must act soon…"

Somewhere, Former Treasury Secretary Carter Glass, the co-author of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 that separated speculative investment banks from consumer-oriented commercial ones, is turning in his grave.

As much press as the TARP vs. THOR discussion is getting, one voice of reason deserves more attention: Sen. Byron Dorgan's. As he has said, "this proposal looks to me like a stampede in the wrong direction…to reward the very people on Wall Street who created this mess, and who pocketed more than $100 billion over the last several years making it."

In 1999, Dorgan had the foresight to vote against the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that repealed the financial protections put in place following the Great Depression. He warned then that a 'financial swamp' would result from "the casino-like prospect of merging banking with the speculative activity of real estate and securities, and that the bill will raise the likelihood of future massive taxpayer bailouts."

Dorgan was spot on. Not only are we trapped in the complex deregulated financial system that resulted, but the bailouts are just beginning.

In advocating new protections similar to the Glass-Steagall Act and the need to address this crisis not just quickly, but correctly, he's likely spot on again. If only the rest of Congress felt the same way.

Nomi Prins is an economist and Mother Jones writer

Why they make the big bucks

Bernanke: Financial crisis could hurt economy

This is actually one time the phrase, "No shit Sherlock," appears appropriate.

There was no oil shortage.

Just got this from a friend explaining why gas prices went through the roof. Not really anything to do with a "shortage", not much to do with a weak dollar but EVERYTHING to do with SPECULATION. Great for oil companies, banks and oil speculators. Keep your oil in the ground, cause a shortage, wait till prices go through the roof, sell.

Take one extra dollar from each gallon sold on earth and put it in your pocket. One Swiss company at one time controlled 11% of the oil without the  Commodity Futures Trading Commission knowledge. At least 81% of the worlds oil was in the hands of speculators these last couple years but that number will probably go much higher as the commission is forced to investigate.

But Bush and McCain had no idea this is why prices went so high? The blamed it on the Arabs. How many of you believed this was the fault of Arabs? How many more years of this shall we put up with?

Why Oil Went Through The Roof

Oil speculators drove the price up thanks to deregulation brought about by McCain's financial advisor, Phil Gramm. The housing crises, brought about by deregulation introduced by Phil Gramm. The Enron scandel? Phil's wife worked for Enron for a while, then for the US court investigating them, then back for Enron where she made a bundle then she and Phil got out at just the right time.

McCains other close friend and business associate? A man named Keating that was the major player in the Savings and Loan scandal. McCain was himself one of the Keating Five, but nothing could be proved about the Senator's involvement.

McCain calls Obama out of touch although McCain has no idea how many homes he owns. The answer is 7. The McCains own 7 homes. But he just bought another beach front residence for his children.

Why do we not want new energy?

Why are we ignoring new technology? Anyone can make hydrogen in their garage. Well no one can make hydrogen but it can be taken from water very easily. It makes a great fuel, easy to make.

The rest of the world is now making air compression engines, $1.75 cents to go 150 miles. Cost of the car? Under $10,000.

Solar panels have become more than practical. No government interest.

Wind turbines are made in every shape on earth now. But little support from our people in charge. Why?

Georgia and Russia

I appear to be the only person that watched Georgia challenge Russia and thought. This is not going to be good. I thought maybe they were better off than I thought. Evidently they were not.

Georgia makes a little incursion and thinks Russia will not over react? What is over reacting? Now McCain wants to beat his chest, hey maybe we can get another war out of this. Another war over, oil. McCain's foreign policy adviser was a foreign lobbyist for Georgia.

Hummm.