Oh, wait, criminal charges may be filed against BP, but the crooks and liars from Wall Street are just fine. Is it me or do you see the supreme hypocrisy around this whole situation? BP is doing everything under the sun to correct its wrong, I know, it is not enough, but nevertheless they are paying people who lost their livelihood, paying for the cleanup and doing everything in their power to stop the flow of crude from the well and they may face civil and criminal charges. However, the banks, ratings agencies and other related crooks who bilked trillions in bailouts from governments, i.e. the taxpayer, that is you and I, on fraudulent loans and bonds are getting bonuses.
What is going on? What is the difference between BP and Goldman Sachs? Well, for one thing it is the money. Wall Street, collectively, gave Obama $23M in campaign contributions in 2008, the most out of any candidate running in the series that year. Compare that towards the oil and gas industry and it really just does not compare at all, Wall Street has the cash and if you think that has nothing to do with it you are naïve or blind to the hard facts of life. I am not saying BP, which as of yesterday I am a shareholder of, did nothing wrong, but they hardly blew up the financial system and drove millions out of jobs, their homes, blew up retirement plans and the list goes on, but Wall Street did all of that.
Where are the kangaroo trials for Wall Street? Where is that change I can believe in? I do not see it. I see the green lobby getting their kangaroo trials, but not the American people who lost trillions. We got Bernie Madoff which is not exactly a shining example of government efficiency as a whistle blower tried to turn him in 10 years ago, but other than that we got nothing other than an exploding deficit. The bankers got their bonuses last year, actually, if you think about it, they got their bonuses in 2008 as well and were really not impacted at all by the financial crisis in the least. Sure, some lost their jobs, lower level people, but not the main players who made it happen and they are still making millions a year.
The ratings agencies are still doing what they always do, rating paper on fantasyland assumptions which are far from reality and there is zero reform going on there. Goldman is going whatever Goldman does, perfect trading days for all of 2010, how does that happen? Citi is getting right back into the game of packaging and selling CLO’s again, more garbage to go into your mutual fund, how exciting! Yet, Chuck Prince still has his millions, John Mack still has his millions, all the executives at Lehman are still wealthy, same at Bear Sterns, but what about their bond holders and shareholders? What about Repo 105?
Give us 1 freaking show trial! Instead we are getting BP under investigation, great. I am sure the granola kids will love that show trial, but for those of us who actually pay taxes, work and actually show up to vote, well, we are mad and want some Wall Street heads on a platter still. Preferably Lloyd’s, but I will take John Mack’s just the same, I am not picky.
Here we are on the eve of the Presidents ‘State of the Union’ address, which should prove mind numbing as I will explain later, along with a host of other exciting events on Capitol Hill. We will see testimony from a few important figures from 2008 regarding the credit crisis, how they cannot figure out the cause is really beyond me as my 9 year old can recite the causes, but that is your government at work. While I fully expect to hear, during the Congressional hearings, ‘we did everything right and we would do it again ,‘ like they would admit that they screwed up. The President will give the usual speech tonight, the state of the union is strong, but we need to do work, a complete contradiction of reality I can assure you.
We will also hear the President talk about fiscal responsibility, which is a complete joke, as he talks about the massive $250B 10 year spending freeze in government, after he increased spending in those same departments 40% last year. Basically, the President is saying we will save $250B over 10 years, but those spending increases from last year will cost $1.3T, or so. With numbers like those I can assure you the media will not talk about the total hypocrisy of the spending freeze. I am sure we will hear about how well things have ‘improved’ from last year when he inherited this mess, the public is getting tired of that line Mr. President, and keep this in mind, ‘improved’ is a relative term and more politically correct than true for the average American.
A twist will be the indication that Mr. Obama ‘heard’ the public with the MA Brown victory, but he is still not listening. Like him or hate him there is one fact that cannot be ignored, Obama is tone deaf to the public and his arrogance is overwhelming, dare I say more than Bush’s? The point is that he may have ‘heard’ Americans, but he still will not listen to them which will cost him in the upcoming elections. Let’s face the facts, Obama campaigned for 3 Democrats and all 3 Democrats lost and he thinks it is not a repudiation of his policies? Sorry Mr. President, but 3 strikes and you are out. Like most Americans I like Obama on a personal level, but that is not the same thing as endorsing his policies or being blind to the fact that his policies are not working. Hell, Ted Bundy by all accounts was a likeable guy, but few people would want to be roommates with the guy.
No matter what the rhetoric is from tonight’s speech I can assure you that it is going to be meaningless and tone deaf to what is really needed for the country. What is also clear, to me at least, is that fiscal responsibility does not exist and the only things to cut are social programs, labeled ‘entitlement programs.’ It is only a matter of time that Social Security and Medicare benefits are reduced or altered, it needs to be done, but I do have a problem with that. The thing about entitlement programs is that every time you get paid a piece of your money goes into those entitlement programs. In other words, you already paid for these programs through years of work.
The irony is this, we know that these programs were not funded properly and they are broke, even though we put such a large portion of our checks into them every week, but Obama seems to think national or single payer health care is viable. How can any single payer or national health care be viable is Medicare and Social Security are bust and why would any trust the government after 2 large examples of, essentially, failed programs? I am not saying get rid of the 2 programs, the opposite is true, as these programs helped millions of Americans survive, literally, retirement. What I am saying is that these two programs are broke and if these programs, which pays benefits out to those 60 and older, cannot support that segment of the population how in the world can over 300M people get insurance from the government and not have that program blow up? It is not possible, sorry.
Regardless, the President is showing zero sign of fiscal responsibility as his $1.35T budget shows. What I found interesting is that the CBO came out with a damning report on the deficits which got a little air time, but not as much as it should have. However, even the CBO has the projects rosier than what is likely to happen. They actually predict that the deficits will shrink as the Bush tax cuts expire, this is true, for year 1 after the cuts expire. However, we know from history that as taxes go up revenues go down because the ‘wealthy,’ who are the enemy of the state now, decide to earn less because it will eventually be equally as profitable for them to earn less so they can keep more, this is why tax hikes never work long-term. However, that logic is lost on people who care to ignore both history and economics.
The good news is that real tax hikes will not take place until this fall, after the mid-term elections. Now, as far as the whole repayment of TARP tax proposed by Obama, that is a joke because TARP was paid back by most major banks. However, Detroit will likely never payback what they owe, how can they when unions now have board seats? Unions are the ones who killed Detroit to begin with, that is another argument though. The fact is that TARP, a Bush solution, worked, as much as I hate it, and if Obama stuck with only banks receiving it then it would have been profitable. However, now banks have to pay for Detroit which is about par for the administration, blame everyone else but themselves and make others pay for their pet project failures.
I am not sure how the President can claim everything is fine when all the economic data, bad data I mean, is coming home to roost. Unemployment is going to move higher as initial claims increase and the GDP figures, minus government transfers, will show horrible organic growth. We are not out of the woods yet, but everyone is acting like we are.
According to Mr., and I use that term loosely, Olbermann, if you are a pickup truck owner, like trucks, against bigger governments or, apparently, a white guy you are a racist. Hey, don’t yell at me, he said it and makes the suggestion and I just tell you about it since his audience consists of me and 2 other people locked in a basement somewhere. In fact, MSNBC has been playing the race card for the past year now asking how race relations have changed over the past year.
The irony is that I rarely if ever think about race of individuals at all and I don’t think most people do except those baiting for a fight, MSNBC in this case. I never even hear Fox make much reference to race, but MSNBC brings it up all the time, why? How in the world can race be more important than a person’s beliefs or policies? You see, that is what I pay attention to, what people say and do, not what color they are. I simply do not care what color people are, but apparently the progressive, liberal, MSNBC does and yet I am supposed to be the racists. No, I do not own a pickup truck, but I am a white guy and I detest big government, uh oh!
I am only boosting Keith’s ratings tonight because I want to see his face if/when Brown wins, he called brown a racists, homophobe (spelling??), bigot, sexist, and on and on while completely ignoring Coakley’s willingness to let a pedophile go free because of political ties. Of course, all Democrats seem to ignore things like this, don’t worry Republicans seem to ignore the tax cheats and corruptness of their friends to, but at least they are not touching little kids, except for Foley, even then the kid wasn’t 2. Regardless, the hypocrisy of the Democrats is, in my opinion, so much worse than the Republicans in 2006.
I recently wrote a liberal and asked if he knew why Obama received $23M from Wall Street, more than most other candidates, he did not know. I told him it is because most Democrats are too stupid to understand how Wall Street works and that is why the likes of Goldman give the Democrats more money than Republicans. Of course, the media and Democrats say Republicans are for Wall Street, but that is simply a lie. Proof of this is no further than Freddie and Fannie who gave massive amounts of money to, guess who? Democrats. Guess which party blocked attempts to regulate the GSE’s? Exactly.
Anyhow, I guess if you believe in the Tea Party movement, what a dumb name anyhow, you are a racist. That may come as a surprise to many of the black people I saw at the rallies, on TV, not in person. I just cannot get over the fact that these idiots on TV sit there and called protestors in 2004 patriots then, but now they are racist “tea baggers,” which by the way is a crude term for when a man sticks his you know what’s in someone else’s mouth, now you know and now you know the intellectual level of MSNBC hosts. What these idiots on TV do not get is that people are hurting, broke and see the level of corruption and spending in Washington from the people who were supposed to be “on their side” and all that spending and corruption never trickled down to the people, just to unions and, well we really don’t know where now, do we?
What Keith and the other idiots on MSNBC also do not realize is that is that Democrats had control of Congress since 2006 and only increased their margin of control in 2008. Knowing that fact, who do you think really owns the financial crisis? Sure, Bush owns a big chunk of it, but the Democrats own way more than they will ever admit to. Those are the little facts that the talking heads and Democrats want you to forget about, but how could anyone really forget that? I guess if you say it was the other guys fault enough times people will, but in time people will remember.
In the meantime, brown is kicking the snot out of Coakley and it looks like Ted’s seat is going to a Republican, he must be mortified wherever he is. I am willing to bet the market rallies tomorrow, but this is not good news for the market because this means spending is going to be reigned in, to a degree. I would not be a buyer tomorrow, but this makes me like utilities more and biotech along with other select healthcare stocks. If Coakley wins, I am buying insurers.
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