I’m not certain where else to put this, but given the recent crap by cheneybush and the auto companies and the sleezy financial shenaigans by their BFFs I thought this might be of interest.

“Andrew Ross Sorkin, in his latest DealBook column, examines a mysterious $138 billion loan the Federal Reserve extended to Lehman Brothers shortly after the investment bank went under.

While that recently released documents on the Fed’s decision say the loan was made to help unwind Lehman in an orderly fashion, Mr. Sorkin notes that the argument made by the Fed and the Treasury for letting Lehman collapse was that they didn’t have the authority to lend any money to the bank.

So why, Mr. Sorkin asks, did the Fed agree to do after Lehman collapsed what it refused to do before Lehman went bankruptcy, sending shockwaves through the financial markets?”

I linked to this through the NYT and it’s quite sordid!

This level of depravity is horrific.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aatlky_cH.tY&refer=home

But the real question to ask about the return of the Old Ones is, “Who will get eaten first?” Rove has always reminded me of the Deep Ones from “The Shadow Over Innsmouth”. Disgusting.

Forget Lovecraft? Nooo. Never, I just didn’t think anyone one here would have read him.

You guys are skipping over the master of American Horror between Poe and King. I think the current situation is well described as “Ultimate Chaos” ruled over by a “mad, blind, demon sultan.”

I always thought the idea of Azathoth was more chilling than that of Cthulu (and by extension IT).

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96950757

Not King, but good point. With the amount of synthetic hormones going into the water supply every day, it’s only a matter of time.

mespo,

Nice selection. Very apropos.

I vote “Needful Things.”

I’d say that’s pretty bad.

Look for Stephen King comparisons in days to come. I just can’t decide if it’s going to be “The Stand” or “‘Salem’s Lot”.

Loved the tarp! Cronyism on the way up. Cronyism on the way down.

One commenter stated: “the very definition of a TARP is to cover something up!”

“But in a striking admission, Paulson said that buying up mortgage assets “is not the most effective way” to use government funding.

Purchasing these so-called “toxic” assets was once the cornerstone of the rescue plan for financial markets and was almost the entire focus of Congress when the package was being debated before its enactment.

But almost as soon as Treasury received the money, it decided that giving capital to banks in return for preferred stock was a better use of the funds.”

Source: WSJ

“…But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince’s own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the “Red Death.”"

The story ends with the party-goers not as well protected from the danger as they thought and with Poe intoning: “And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”

There were buffoons indeed–then and now.

U.S. and overseas banks are the windfall profiteers of the recent $150 billion bailout of AIG.

Now, U.S. banks are increasing their banking customers’ fees for the very taxpayers who are bailing them out! With more banking mergers likely, fees will further increase past these record levels.

Catch-22 financial “rescue”….

Mike, I thought you wrote a very good analysis of the “welfare kings” philosophy of entitlement. FFLEO, I don’t know why there isn’t more screaming, not to mention forthcoming indictments about this either!

Treasury Not Planning to Buy Bad Loans, Assets

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122650321703420903.html#articleTabs%3Darticle

If nothing else, this is a cogent overview of the transformational “financial-rescue” package, or what I would prefer to call a financial ‘pig-in-a-poke’.

Given that large organizations reward political adeptness, with its concomitant necessary large egos, the organization is run as the CEO’s and/or Board Chairman’s kingdom. complete with royal perogatives and executive courtiers. The lifestyle becomes addictive and its excesses are rationalized as simply the way business is done. These leaders are clearly unable to see how some of their actions would be viewed from outside the organization and 30 years of faux conservative governance has only reinforced this tunnel vision. Hence AIG, vaguely sensed that they needed to be circumspect, but were unable to stifle their impulse to continue their “royal” lifestyle.

There is also a second salient parameter that has worked hand in hand with this notion of executive “royalty.” Those that responsibly run a business, or an organization are invested in the notion that their stewardship’s purpose is to continue the growth of the organization in a positive manner and to ensure that the organization will exist beyond their own tenure. When executives began to be primarily compensated by stock options, this sense of stewardship broke down and was replaced by naked greed. Reagan years anyone? The executive’s wealth began to be determined by the stock market price of their shares. If in the short run firng thousands of employees, thereby improving short term profits, caused the stock market to run up the share value these men became infinitely richer. That this might have a long-term deleterious effect on the organization became immaterial to these egomaniac’s because they were being vaulted into the upper echelons of the elite through the windfall of their stock options.

Clearly, as others have stated, AIG doesn’t have a clue. I can only assume that years of living within “royal” entitlement has blinded them to common sense business practice. To me this has played a major role in the decline of American business and our current fiscal crisis. I’m anything but an economist, but I regularly read Dean Baker, Paul Krugman, Robert Reich and Ravi Batra. They have been expressing like thoughts for years, my only small contribution to their impressive prescience is to try to round out the psychological basis.

Unless they put this money back into the company they should pay back every penny they have gotten from US taxpayers. Along with Buddha I think prison is warrented for fraud.

Maybe some intrepid people can make guerrilla signs to help save money at all their events: AIG-King of Fraud. AIG–bringing sleezy management to the World! etc.

Hank Greenberg would never have been so foolish as to play this game thinking that nobody would notice.

Soon.

Not a country club either.

General population.

For a long time.

What’s wrong with renting the big hall at the Holiday Inn and making employees share double bed rooms (not beds, just rooms)?
Now that would be cost effective. But for some reason AIG thinks it’s not good enough for them.