American Meat Is Even Grosser Than You Thought Alternet (hat tip reader John D)
One in eight to cut cable and satellite TV in 2010 CNNMoney
Greek Wealth Is Everywhere but Tax Forms New York Times (hat tip reader Crocodile Chuck)
Currencies: Carried away Gillian Tett and Peter Garnham, Financial Times
Repaying Taxpayers With Their Own Cash Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times
Goldman’s London bankers paid average of $1m each Times Online
Did Goldman’s Ex-Mortgage Guru Lie Under Oath? Andy Kroll, Mother Jones (hat tip Richard Smith)
The Euro Zone Needs New Rules Peter Bofinger Der Spiegel (hat tip reader Swedish Lex)
Small Business: Bad But Less Bad DoctoRx
Tipping Point David Korowicz, The Oil Drum (hat tip Swedish Lex)
Retraining and Rehabilitation of Financial Sector Employees May Be a Daunting Task Jesse
Who Knew Bankruptcy Paid So Well? New York Times
What A Difference A Day Made! Edward Hugh
Lloyd Blankfein’s AAA Bridge He Wants to Sell You FireDogLake. How can a head of a US securities firm say he does not know that some investors can only buy AAA securities?
Antidote du jour:
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Repaying Taxpayers With Their Own Cash Gretchen Morgenson, New York Times
Grassley’s idea of a penalty for the US Treasury’s Timothy Geithner together with General Motors obfuscating the truth about the ins and outs of taxpayer money is kinda cute: ‘egg on their face’ for being outed.
liar, liar, hair on fire.
Re Greek tax evasion:
The fact that even as the Greek government proposes the complete economic liquidation of the people via this austerity assault (in order to be bailed out to pay the debts it owes to German banks and other rentiers), it proposes to only try to collect $1.6 billion of the $30+ billion in taxes the Greek rich are evading, says it all about this government’s kleptocratic priorities.
I expand on this in today’s blog post:
http://attempter.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/bailout-war-new-theater-the-assault-on-greece/
RE: Gross American meat containing copper:
Strangely, there is an EPA limit to copper in water supplies but none in food. Heavy metals, and specifically copper, are under suspicion in connection with alzheimer’s:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi156.html
Lloyd Blankfein’s AAA Bridge He Wants to Sell You FireDogLake. How can a head of a US securities firm say he does not know that some investors can only buy AAA securities?
Its a little like repeating myself but when it comes to lying, we the people seem to be getting the full Goldman Sachs treatment on the TV show trials -uh, congressional hearings.
Remember the training at Goldman: ‘look them in the eye –and lie.’
We’re getting the full treatment. This is their ‘genius.’ This is why every little twerp in London is being paid $1million; to keep them loyal and lying. How much talent does it take to destroy an economy?
Don’t forget the lady wonder at Goldman who earned them $300,000,000, that’s three hundred million dollars for her Greek CDO transaction. And our tax money is still at risk to shore up that culture?
These investment bank fellas are affecting the same results here in the US they’ve accomplished in Greece and all over the world. This is not a Ponzi scheme; its money laundering.
The money goes from the productive side of the real economy, gets leveraged into ruinous infinity and slurped up in the form of fees, insurance, lawyer’s fees, interest payments and commissions, stock options (don’t forget the stock options) and bonuses by the 40% of the US economy in the usury and leveraging your money business.
It is anything but complicated. Capture of our government by bankers is not complicated. The attitude we see that leaves us breathless is because they own our government. Simple. They control the law making process. They insert the loopholes and they have eliminated laws intended to protect consumers.
Tens of millions in the US have been fired over the last 25 years, stripping the country of professionals and knowledge. TPTB couldn’t have done a better job of it if they had done it the old fashioned way –taken the intelligentsia and educated professionals out back with a shot in the head and buried them in secret mass graves.
The silence from these corporate mass firings is eery, coincident as it is with the destruction of journalism by the same corporate interests arranged with investment banking leverage.
It was essential for one generation to get rid of the older generation to strip away a legal system designed for fiduciary responsibility to have their way with those pension funds now looted of $trillions by these same forces.
Oh, almost forgot the simultaneous ongoing bubble in psycho pharmaceuticals and associated therapies, road rage and crazy religions.
Firings have occurred with no plans for rehiring in one of the greatest wealth machines in the history of the world at the same time the IMF is demanding austerity from the poor and working people of Greece. The idea being that the people who got the money and still have it deserve to be left undisturbed to enjoy their boats and swimming pools.
If the culture of Greece is well known not to pay their taxes, was Goldman Sachs in the dark on this detail when they structured the deals they sold to the Greek government that the IMF is now demanding Greek workers pay for? Austerity indeed. So now former civil service employees can lose their worker communities (not an insignificant personal horror BTW) but be available to wash down yachts and tend yards for the rich at cheaper rates and no benefits.
This is money laundering by another name, any other name on a grand scale. The Greek financial deals were as bound to fail as the liar loans in SECURITIZED residential mortgages that were bundled, rated falsely to appeal to municipalities constrained by taxpayers to invest only in conservatively rated, safe bonds, and sold by the investment banking crooks still sucking on the US taxpayer teat.
The role of government in this endeavor is beside the point. Its the finance guys who corrupt Congress with blackmail, money and lobbyist remancing. Only 1 guy in jail –Abramoff? And he was flashy –asking to be caught.
The public is helpless. If we voted everyone of these guys and gals out of office this mid term, their replacements would be equally corruptible and worse, the ex-congress people would be rewarded in the private sector.
Now is the time for reform. The opportunity is now while the civilized world is still in crises.
While Greece is still in a fighting mood its the right time for the Greek people to demand that all personal assets over $500,000 or $1,000,000 be taxed, a tax collection agency established and well funded by the IMF for oversight of this new agency; an opportunity for Greece to create a modern streamlined computerized IRS specifically to pay off IMF bailout debts. And it will create jobs.
The BANKERS have to be stopped.
The new Greek IRS/IMF supported agency can collect from even those Greeks who have fled the country. With any determination those financial assets can be found and easily taxed.
Most of the profits from these bubbles have gone to the established rich and the newly rich.
They got the dough; they pay the bailout.
I hope to see more reporting and debate in plain language from the point of view of the people affected by all of this. Without bread lines we have no evidence and no reporting on the suffering here and across the world caused by out-of-control bankers who are the very people whose entitlements continue.
LeeAnne; We have reached sink or swim time. The conservative elite have nearly reached what I call the “Economic Singularity”. In their short sighted view nothing matters except their personal comforts and security. They view this time as the endgame for humanity and civilization. They have tired of waiting and planning for the realization of Marx’s “Capitalist Collapse”. The entire financial mess has been engineered with the intention of creating a global dictatorship. Sadly, the rest of us have played along with them in our much more limited visions.
We have surrendered all hope of a future. We have repudiated and perhaps even renounced any possibility that there may be something greater than us. We have even given up the thought that humans can be more than we are now.
However, I find one slim hope for the common people.
To the chagrin and horror of the parasitic elite, the human animal may be evolving.
Great advances in the human condition have often come from the most unlikely sources. So it is with the internet, spawned as a means to transmit information to bind together a military control structure, it has become the main research tool and information source for millions of humans. Rather than a method for secret transmission of control and security data, the internet has become the primary source of knowledge dissemination and communication for humans.
The day of the politician and the oligarch are threatened. The interconnectivity between real humans has makes them irrelevant. There is a growing realization that all forms of government are inherently evil. Governments are comprised of those individuals and groups who seek power, for whatever reason and purpose. Even with the noblest of intentions, once an individual or group has achieved a position of governing power, the only goals can be to maintain and enhance the controlling position they enjoy. This position of power/office also is an asset which has measurable value in relation to the exercise and implementation of laws and regulations. Therefore people in office will always be tempted to conflicts of interest.
Thank you LeeAnne, quite a cogent synopsis.
I can’t help it, if I’m lucky.
-Jolly B. Banker, CFA, CPA, MBA, PhD, LLC, LLD, JD, LTD, LP, PC, CCCP, CCC-, AA, BYOB
Tipping Point? Why are some people so devoted to the idea that we are at some “peak” in oil production. Who cares? There are obviously vast alternative sources. Coal, natgas, nuclear, tidal flows, ocean currents (solar and wind are for the time being losers).
We are at peak oil in the North American region though. The oil spill off LA will accelerate the trend (driven by Texas population growth and the demand for beach front property) to ban oil drilling in the gulf. This is the Santa Barbara oil spill of this generation.
“Who cares? There are obviously vast alternative sources.”
The question is whether we’ll adopt those alternate sources before the price of oil goes through the roof and destroys the world economy.
Think $4/gal gas was bad? Try several times that, and remember that petroleum is needed in agriculture, plastics production, shipping, etc., etc., etc.
I’m not an alarmist, I’m basically a technology optimist, and I detest post-apocalyptic nonsense ala James Kunstler (who’s real interest is small town nostalgia and urban planning, and who’s only latched onto peak oil as a rationalization for his “vision”). Nevertheless failure to plan and transition could lead to a very rocky road – far worse than the Great Recession.
The alternative sources will be adopted as the price of gas rises substantially. High gas prices will knock the greens off their solar/wind hobby horse and enable the development of realistic and reliable alternatives. And just for insurance, now that gulf oil is off the table, we can offer statehood to Alberta and Saskatchewan. Who cares about Canada away.
“The alternative sources will be adopted as the price of gas rises substantially.”
That will work smoothly only if the price of oil rises slowly enough and predictably enough to allow for new technological and capital investments to be made without great short/medium term pain. The history of oil supply problems suggests that isn’t likely.
“I’m not an alarmist”
Actually, you are.
Care to elaborate?
Technoboy:
I’m not an alarmist, I’m basically a technology optimist, and I detest post-apocalyptic nonsense ala James Kunstler (who’s real interest is small town nostalgia and urban planning, and who’s only latched onto peak oil as a rationalization for his “vision”). Nevertheless failure to plan and transition could lead to a very rocky road – far worse than the Great Recession.
The reply:
“I’m not an alarmist”
Actually, you are.
Indeed, Alex – we’ll see how sustainable and well-planned your craven “pragmatism” is while all the “detestable” people stake out real positions based on real principle.
As for techno-optimism, the overwhelming evidence of how technology’s very inertia runs amok to destroy both the environment and human freedom certainly never penetrates, especially to a double-bagger combo of techno-teabaggery and liberal teabaggery.
I won’t bother repeating for the thousandth time the simple lesson of EROEI and how nothing can replace cheap oil to run an economy at anywhere remotely near this level.
“while all the ‘detestable’ people stake out real positions based on real principle”
Who mentioned ‘detestable people’?
More importantly, what exactly are ‘real positions based on real principle’, and when have they ever trumped self-interest?
“the overwhelming evidence of how technology’s very inertia runs amok to destroy both the environment and human freedom certainly never penetrates”
Ok, you win. Let’s return to a pre-industrial society. Hope you like tilling the fields 12 hours/day, rarely traveling more than a few miles from your home, living without electric light, central heat, modern medicine or sanitation, or any machine or implement more sophisticated than the local blacksmith can make.
BTW, if you’re so convinced that technology destroys human freedom, what are you doing on the Internet?
“I won’t bother repeating for the thousandth time the simple lesson of EROEI and how nothing can replace cheap oil to run an economy at anywhere remotely near this level.”
EROEI says that when oil extraction becomes too difficult, you can no longer view oil as an effective source of energy. Where does it say there are no other sources of energy? Are you worried about the sun, wind or tides disappearing any time soon? The issue will be capital costs of a transition, making a transition in time, and transportation fuel (though you don’t need oil for electric trains).
If you’d been in England centuries ago when the forests were being overused for fuel, would you have assumed there was no alternative to wood?
Alex,
would you have assumed there was no alternative to wood?
They probably would have. Techno-illiteracy is already very widespread. And it is expanding. In my opinion this is because of the amount of money handed over to the NEA and Lower Education.
You pegged Kunstler pretty well. He appeals to a post-modern quasi religion that’s taken deep root among non-hard skilled urbanite papershufflers with liberal arts degrees. As far as I can tell premier articles of faith of this cult include:
1. A faux environmentalism that responds in knee jerk fashion to the fatwas of accepted shamans.
2. A deep belief in an imminent Peak Oil Armageddon.
3. The later syncretistic addition of Global Warming. This was necessary to justify keeping the coal safely buried. Otherwise the narrative story falls apart.
There is absolutely no shortage of coal, peat or biomass to use in Fischer-Tropsch type fuel synthesis processes. Or of reactor fuel for that matter.
You teabaggers just don’t get it. Nothing about any of this is about what any of we precious little Americans “want”. Reality doesn’t care what we want. It’s what reality is going to impose.
Today there is no alternative to wood. The highest energy anthracite coal has been used up. That’s why they’ve moved on to the lower-energy types.
The very fact that you techno-teabaggers are even talking about pipe dreams like liquid coal proves how you’ve been forced by reality to move on from from cheap oil (which just a few years ago you were all saying was infinite). You’ll be forced to move on from the rest as well, however much you scream and stomp and hold your breath.
BTW, if you’re so convinced that technology destroys human freedom, what are you doing on the Internet?
Umm, because that’s the main communication medium for the relatively non-rich in Western countries?
It’s certainly not voluntary for anyone who wants to communicate. Is that too over your head?
The rest of my response is below.
Technophobic (Non) “Attempter”,
I looked at your blog. I understand your anger. To you Alex and I are blasphemers, heretics, unbelievers, infidels, pagans, heathens, evil incarnate.
According to you the world is ending in a great Peak Oil Global Warming apocalyptic armageddon of unimaginable horror. I confess, I am a total atheist with respect to your particular beliefs. And I am doing my level best to frustrate your most anticipated moments.
Personally I look at West Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and the California high desert as prime farmland. Along with the entire Sahara Desert and all of the Australian outback. The more arid and warmer the better. I can easily see vast hydroponics farms operated by very low cost ($2500 each) robots, all busily growing sunflowers for both bio-diesel fuel and animal feed. And many other plants. And all powered with on-site solar and wind power.
Yours Truly,
Liet Kynes
Planetary Ecologist of Arrakis
My problem with the piece is the over use of Tainter. There are a number of people who have worked within the area of societal collapse and its various causes and effects. Tainter seems to appeal to the engineering-technocratic crowd because of the “energy” language he uses. But it comes pretty close to unsupported psycho-babble at times.
Jack Goldstone has written a number of articles and books on pre-modern revolutionary England and France that I find much more useful than hashing over the very incomplete records of Ancient Rome, or nearly non-records of the Maya, or Southwest Native Americans.
He also avoids the trap of falling so much in love with his theories that he views them as the end-all be-all answer to all societal problems.
Goldstone would probably say something to the effect that the problems noted in the piece are the problems of too many people out pacing the resources available (growth of people has become greater than economic growth).
Yup, you lunatics have been claiming that this renewable cornucopia is at hand since the early 60s, when it might actually have been politically possible. So what went wrong?
And after the shocks of the 70s, surely America would have learned its lesson then? What went wrong?
And the booming 90s? With that bountiful peace dividend from the end of the Cold War (what happened to that?) – surely the resources and will were there for the buildout then! What went wrong?
And those were all the times where the necessary fossil fuel platform, only upon which any mass renewable buildout can be built, still existed. Today that platform no longer exists. It’s no longer even physically possible to do it. Today we’re at Peak Oil, and the political struggle over how resources will be used will become more fierce by the day. And that will only exacerbate the impetus toward fascism we see in every other realm of life.
That’s how we can recognize the evil of green cornucopians like you. The main point isn’t how ignorant you are about what’s physically possible (we didn’t even get into the peaking of the metals required), but how you still claim to believe it could ever be politically possible to do these public interest things America never found the political will to do back when the pie was expanding.
And now you pretend to believe America will do it when the economy is contracting and everything truly does become a zero sum game. Is that how you really see things going politically in every other area? Techno-teabaggery.
What you’re really doing is telling yet another corporate lie, trying to prop up faith in the zombie system. You’re lying to pretend that any aspect of today’s energy RD&D will ever be undertaken for the benefit of the people, when of course it would be only for the criminal elite.
No sane person thinks that under this system renewable energy, for example, be used to feed the poor rather than try to maintain the luxury and power of the rich.
You know that damn well.
Alex,
plastics production
I feel the need to help your techno-optimism along. Let’s take polystyrene since this is one of the most common bulk plastics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Styrene
We’ll can note the alternate production method using methanol alcohol as a feedstock. So if we’re lacking ethylbenzene (and refuse to use coal and sulfuric acid to produce benzene and ethylene)…
Well, we can make methanol the old fashioned way starting with natural gas to make synthesis gas (carbon monoxide and molecular hydrogen). We can note the rising estimates of recoverable natural gas due to horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing.
Very small portable methanol plants are already very popular to make use of “stranded” natural gas deposits located in remote regions.
Or we can start with waste “biomass” and gasify this biomass in an oxygen blown gasifier to produce synthesis gas. And then make methanol.
Or we could use coal to make synthesis gas to make…
Personally I prefer polycarbonate plastic. It’s a near engineering grade plastic and is perfect for recycling into lots of useful items. This includes parts for hydroponics systems. I just mention hydroponics because I want to preempt the peak fresh water cultists. As an agricultural system it raises per acre yields 4x – 6x, uses vastly less fresh water and doesn’t runoff agricultural chemicals.
Yves, I was barely able to find your book at Borders at Columbus Circle, I took the last book and it was on the very top shelf, I did not even noticed it at first. I was expacting it would be visible upfront among other business books. May be your agent should check the selling points and start from there. Just a suggestion.
One in eight to cut cable and satellite TV in 2010 CNNMoney
“One in eight consumers will eliminate or scale back their cable, satellite or other pay-TV service this year, according to a new study released this week by Yankee Group”
I’m proud to say I am part of the group who is starting to cut the cord. I am not someone who thinks TV is of absolutely no value – CSPAN, weather, some sports, FOX animation are what I occasionally look at. But the value proposition is ridiculous – you have to buy the buffet for 120$ when you just want to eat one cupcake.
A person’s brain is like a trash can; you have to empty it often to let new (and hopefully higher quality trash) get in.
To stop filling it with more of the same old trash is certainly a nice first step.
More power to you. CSPAN is available on the internet. I don’t know about alternatives for sports. But hulu.com is a good nexus for cable TV programs delivered via internet streaming. The ad breaks are much shorter, too. Win-win.
r.e. Greece
While surfing the coverage I started laughing while reading this AP article:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100502/ap_on_bi_ge/eu_greece_financial_crisis
Highlights include:
The measures aim to cut the deficit to below 3 percent of gross domestic product, within EU limits, by 2014. The deficit currently stands at 13.6 percent.
…
Papaconstantinou said savings worth euro30 billion through 2012 would be achieved through public service and pension pay cuts, higher taxes and streamlining government.
Assume Merkel can sell this in the Bundestag and at the Bundesverfassungsgericht. The EU’s so-called statesmen will have succeeded in placing the euro’s fate completely into the hands of what is arguably the most corrupt and troglodyte political elite in the EU. Future success will be determined entirely by the outcome of political jostling between tax dodging Greek billionaires, public employee unions controlled by ancient Communist dinosaurs and university anarchists. And with the most coup prone national military in Europe in the background being gutted by budget cuts.
Re: Food
If there is one piece of evidence that clearly show how screwed up our legislative system of the “written rule”, this is it!
I mean, do we have to write each and every goddamn act that is prohibited to obtain compliance? And the corporations want to complain about the regulatory burden?
No shit Sherlock!!
And BTW, isn’t it unfcukingbelievably convenient for the big shots to have such a system? Contest everything you don’t like, go on appeal, lobby, cheat (Massey Energy or ADM anyone?) and you are pretty much guaranteed to get away with it 99% of the time.
A principle-based regulatory system would circumvent this shameless BS: If it can end up in the final product sold to consumers, you just can’t do it…asshole!
End of rant!