April 29, 2010 archive

Senator Levin got testy with Goldman execs for peddling, in their own words, what they knew to be “shitty deals.”  Of course, when you collapse the global financial system, it stands to reason that more than a few “shitty deals” by more than one shitty organization were involved.  

When 93% or more of 2006 vintage AAA-rated subprime mortgage-backed securities are now rated as junk, that’s an impressively high rate of “shitty deals going bad.”

Not to be out-done on crafting “shitty deals,” 99% of Goldman’s ABACUS deal CDOs are now junk.

At failures rates approaching 100%, the SEC and credit rating firms had to be cutting “some pretty shitty deals” themselves to fail to see the rising risk in mortgage products.  

There was and continues to be a “shitload” of collateral damage to the rest of us from “Wall Street’s shitty deals” which will be with us for a long time, as we have 103 months (8.6 years) to clear housing inventory at the current rate.  That’s a lot of “shitty deals hitting the fan” for “a long, shit-flinging time.”

There is, I suppose, a remote possibility that Obama and the democrats might finally wake up and realize they need the independent and liberal votes they’ve thrown away since inauguration day last year, and that all the corporate donations in the world aren’t going to save them without those votes, and start producing some useful progressive legislation and pass it in time for the midterms.

They could have independents and liberals all across the country rewarding them for results instead of turning their backs on empty promises and the largest landslides in history this November with just a few simple moves.

Creating and passing a universal single payer health care bill for example might do it all by itself, for example.

Although they could probably sew it right up it for themselves by also starting torture and war crimes trials for Bush and Cheney, while withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan and breaking up the big Wall Street investment banks and doing Ken Lay numbers on Goldman Sachs‘s Lloyd Blankfein and Magnetar‘s Alec Litowitz, while firing Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke, and Rahm Emanuel.

They’ve got 4 whole months, after all.

They’re smart people, right? They should be at least half as smart as all those independent and progressives who won’t vote for them unless they do those things, right?

I mean, Obama and the democrats can’t possibly be stupid enough to actually believe that independents and liberals are stupid enough to vote to continue being screwed by them, can they?

Open Thread

God said a fire, not a flood next time.

A “Controlled” Burn of giant oil slick in Gulf of Mexico begins by our Coast Guard, to attempt to prevent landfall of the unprocessed crude oil gushing out of the destroyed BP Deepwater Horizon rig’s wellhead for a week.   In spite of having four remotely operated submarines working nearly a mile underwater,  trying to jigger the automatic shut off valves, the well continues to blow out at least 42,000 gallons of crude a day.

“They lit it with a little float that has a fuel source on it that floats into the oil and ignites,” Petty Officer Cory Mendenhall told AFP. “It did successfully ignite.”

The first burn was lit at around 4.45pm local time (7.45am AEST) and officials said any fires would have to be extinguished by nightfall. Sunset is at 7.27pm local time.