Goats, Bread, and Circuses

"You have two goats. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four goats back, with a tax exemption for five goats. The milk rights of the six goats are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven goats back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight goats, with an option on one more. You sell one goat to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine goats. No balance sheet is provided with the release. The public then buys your bull.

* * * * *

"First of all, here's what made all this such a surprise. For years, when we've wanted to fund Head Start, children's healthcare, higher education, job training programs, or infrastructure maintenance, we've heard endless arguments in Congress concerning the scarcity of funds to pay for these things. We don't even have money for disaster relief, one of the basic services for which taxpayers in any country expect a return on their investment in their government.

"So here we thought we hardly had any goats left, let alone enough for everyone to have milk and cheese and cabrito, and we were all going to have to learn to live much more austerely. Then we discovered that we did have goats, but only very briefly.

"We have, or had, as it turns out, 700 billion goats that we did not know about. We never would have known of the existence of this veritable windfall of goats except that the financial sector in this country wanted them. They demanded them, in fact, claiming a complex and dire emergency in which a cataclysmic economic meltdown would occur if we did not turn them over, immediately and without question."

More here.

"'Bread and circuses' (or Bread and games) (from Latin: panem et circenses) is an ancient Roman metaphor for people choosing food and fun over freedom. It often appears in commentary that accuses people of giving up their civic duty and following whichever political leader offers to satisfy their decadent desires." -- Wikipedia.

Translation: Goats = our hard-earned dollars. Circuses = the corporate media, including sports, Brittany, etc. Bread = what they're now making the mistake of taking away from us.

Ponies & Unicorns for All

(Notice, all the little black dots are looking at you? {click on image to enlarge.})

Those Who Cannot Remember the Past are Condemned to What, Again?

“ . . . to repeat it.” — George Santayana, Life of Reason, Reason in Common Sense, Scribner's, 1905, p. 284. (Can you believe that's not in Bartlett's? Seems like hardly anything is, anymore.)



Per the person who posted this, "Richard Whitney, President of the New York Stock Exchange (emphasis supplied), warns of the risks both to country and to capitalism posed by government regulation in the form of the the National Securities Exchange Act. This [was] four full years before he was sent to Sing Sing Prison for embezzlement."

The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 provided in part,

"It shall be unlawful for any person . . . [t]o use or employ, in connection with the purchase or sale of any security . . . or any securities-based swap agreement . . . , any manipulative or deceptive device or contrivance in contravention of such rules and regulations as the Commission may prescribe as necessary or appropriate in the public interest or for the protection of investors."

15 U.S.C. § 78j(b), Sec. 10(b). See also Wikipedia on the Glass-Steagall Act, another law passed in the wake of the crash of '29, esp. the section, "Repeal of the Act."

For historical perspective, see the "Timeline" section at Wikipedia on the '29 crash. However, some commentators think the current situation has more in common with the 1873 crash.

Marriage

Digital Conversion PSA

(Thanks, Ben!)

Optimist: "The age of Reaganism is over,"

Per Jeffrey Sachs, special adviser to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and director of the Earth Institute at New York's Columbia University, as reported by Reuters. "'The no-regulation, low-taxes (philosophy) has broken the back of our economy. We now have to get serious about reconstructing normal government that pays its way and a normal financial sector that's properly regulated.'"

I hope to h*ll he's right; but there are a lot of obstacles.

Too fun:

costume contacts. They've got lots of others.

World Bank Under CyberSIEGE Since April

World Bank Under Cyber Siege in ‘Unprecedented Crisis'
By Richard Behar.

"The World Bank Group’s computer network — one of the largest repositories of sensitive data about the economies of every nation — has been raided repeatedly by outsiders for more than a year, FOX News has learned.

"It is still not known how much information was stolen. But sources inside the bank confirm that servers in the institution’s highly-restricted treasury unit were deeply penetrated with spy software last April. Invaders also had full access to the rest of the bank’s network for nearly a month in June and July.

"In total, at least six major intrusions — two of them using the same group of IP addresses originating from China — have been detected at the World Bank since the summer of 2007, with the most recent breach occurring just last month.

"In a frantic midnight e-mail to colleagues, the bank’s senior technology manager referred to the situation as an 'unprecedented crisis.' In fact, it may be the worst security breach ever at a global financial institution. And it has left bank officials scrambling to try to understand the nature of the year-long cyber-assault, while also trying to keep the news from leaking to the public."

More at the Media Channel -- and by the way, the Media Channel is fighting to stay alive right now; pls consider donating!