Yale economists stress need for more US govt. spending.  

Why?

They talk about “stimulus,” “infrastructure,” “shovel-ready jobs,” spurring inflation,” “loan forgiveness,” tax cuts, and so on.  

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Do they even know what the problem is that they are trying to address?   Or are they just yammering out of habit?

For example:

Have the banks’ assets been valued through mark-to-market accounting?  No.

Do the economists know if the banks are even solvent?  No.

Do they know the counterparty risk between banks worldwide?  No.

Considering everyone may be insolvent, do they know if the govt has any money to spend?  No.

And yet, they make strenuous recommendations, many less-than-strenuous based on potential possibilities.  I am neither Austrian nor Keynesian, whoever the fuck they are.  If I were an economist, I’d want the facts, up front, before I delivered opinions or made recommendations.  

Many heedless, antero-grade amnesiacs say, “More better Democrats are needed!”

Woof.

In case anyone missed it:

I keep telling you guys, what I know about economics you could write on the back of an envelope and still have room for a tediously long and grievous lamentation for an old buddy.  Even so, as I divine the sweet breads, the numbers seem impossibly large.  The yew that nets my dreamless head is this table showing debt ratings’ downgrades in the past 10 days:

Of course, “downgraded” doesn’t mean “worthless.”  Who knows?  It could be worth 100%, 75%, 50%, 25%, or 0%.  Who really knows? But $7.3 trillion is a metric assload of debt to be downgraded in 10 days during a “recovery,” which WTF are they talking about anyway?  U6 unemployment is at 22%.  These data are from Martin Weiss, who has more to say, but the short version is “dominoes all the way down.”   Soon.

Want to see Blankfein’s head on a metaphorical pike?  Want accountability?  Justice?

It’s called “mark-to-market” accounting.

Listen to Ilargi:  

It’s perfectly defensible for a government to lend money to a bank in trouble that is important to its economy, in order to try and save. However, it borders on criminal negligence, if it isn’t outright criminal behavior, to lend that money without being perfectly aware of what assets that bank holds.

A bank could have 100 times more debt than it receives in bail-out money. But we wouldn’t know about that today, we’re not allowed to know. Both the US (FASB 157) and the European Union (IFRS 9) have accounting (non-)principles in place that say it’s perfectly alright for a financial institution to hold assets in its books at 100 cents on the dollar that have a market value of 70% of that, or 50%, or even 5%. It has therefore no obligation to reveal even to its shareholders what its true financial situation is.

Fraudulent accounting is why banks pass stress tests with flying colors then implode weeks later.  We’re dumping money into black holes.  If the banks want to take our money, they have to mark all their assets to market value.  Mark-to-fantasy accounting is, as Ilargi says, “criminal.”  And a total waste of taxpayer funded bailout money, a never-ending money pit.

Mark-to-market is instant karma.

…a bank should never ever be allowed to sit on its debt and mark it to fantasy and then also receive funding from our governments, whether in bail-outs, hand-outs, loans, special facilities’ windows at our central banks, or any other sort of funding, nothing of the kind.

We need to tell our politicians that they can no longer give even one single penny of ours to any institution that hasn’t marked all of its assets to market. No exceptions.

Let the sun shine on these blood-sucking freaks.  It couldn’t happen to nicer people.

Read all about it from Charlie Davis.  Also, see Jeralyn on how Obama shatters campaign promises.

I’d like to point out that the cannabinoid  receptor is amoral, at best, and physiologically essential, at least.

In recent years, it has been strongly implicated in the canonical fast inhibitory feedback of the HPA (hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal) axis.  

In English, when you become stressed, your brain pumps out stress messengers to alert your kidney-associated glands to produce a massive stress response on demand.  The powerful, powerful molecule produced (compound F, in humans, also known as cortisone (Kendall’s compound E)), goes straight to the brain, and makes animals do crazy, crazy shit if left over-pumped and unchecked (See for yourself: it’s coming to theatre near you soon!).  

Fortunately, the endocrine system is designed to shut itself off (under normal stress conditions; again, coming to a theatre of the mind near you!).  It’s like a box with a button:  When you push the button, a hand comes out in order to push the button to retract the hand and close the lid again.  

No, wait, evolution is not that stupid.  A lot of crazy and worthwhile shit happens in between button-pushings.  Unlike politics, apparently, button-pushing is NOT the main goal of the endocrine system.  However, it’s important to turn the system OFF, lest it run in undesirable directions (see your theatre’s listings!).  The cannabinoid receptor is the fast shut-off switch, quite literally, for the stress system, and probably the political system, as well.

I could write a fucking book on the subject.  Oh, wait: I fucking DID!

A more-intelligent-than-me brother-like person, who, unlike Richard Feynman, somehow failed to inherit my genes for smoking and drinking and bongos, etc., last night expressed to me his utter contempt for the Obama administration’s  (and government-in-general’s) effrontery in fiddling with people where it has no fucking business, much less knowledge.  Technocrats my ass.  These people are fucking stupid.

GET OFF ME!  And enforce some actual meaningful fucking laws!  Can Eric Holder fog a fucking mirror?  We more or less concluded.  We are the 99%.

We concluded that the administration were either protecting Pharma’s patents on synthetic cannabinoids or protecting the banks’ drug cartel money laundering.  We all know who Obama is, at this point.  Not just the 99%, but the whole 100% know who Obama is.  We are the knowledgeable, and we are watching every fucking move.

Perhaps the Constitutional-Interpreter-in-Chief whose non-existent scholarly writings can only be interpreted through his apparently fuck-all knowledge of post-Dark Age scholarship on “human freedoms” should shut the fuck up about the doctor-prescribed and self-administered medicine in primates, on whom (dare we say?) I could also write a fucking book.  

Politics: It’s a pervasive for-profit industry.

I think I said it best, somewhere.  Look it up.

Then gotterdammerung put forth a similar feeling to the appropriate music:

Cute.  In discussing Obama’s death panel, his actual American assassination panel council, not the rhetorical one of the culture “wars,” Sean Paul Kelley wonders:

Think how this power will be abused by a Republican like Rick Perry, or even Mitt Romney?

Wonder no more.  This is like asking, “What would happen if Costa Rica were a military giant having nukes and went to war with Japan?”  You already know the answer, little boy.

Obama is already killing Americans without due process, i.e., based on his slander alone.

I’m getting more than a little irritated at the lack of principles shown by so-called liberals since Mr. Peace Prize took office.  The latest offensive behavior is either praising and defending Obama’s “targeted assassinations” (well, one “targeted” and the other, uh, “un-targeted”), or not even addressing the subject, pretending it doesn’t even exist, as if they wouldn’t have been boiling with rage if Dick Cheney had otherwise whacked, rubbed out, iced, bumped off, slaughtered or shipped an American without due process, based purely on the President’s slanderous say so.  I actually learned the acronymn IOKIYAR (it’s okay [to do something heinous] if you are Republican) from Democrats.  Irony won’t die an easy death, will it?

But it sure looks like Team Obama dusted Awlaki.  Blew him away.  Murdered him.

Sadly, one of my favorite bloggers has weighed in with the “We killed Dillinger” defense.

Or, as we would describe it today, the United States government has assassinated a US citizen without due process.

– snip –

This fantasy that the United States government has never killed a bad guy who was a US citizen “without due process” is very strange.

This is such a collapse of moral reasoning on several counts.  My initial response was:

this is an odious comparison. Dillinger had long, long record; charges, convictions, jail-time; due process! he was charged with murder; he was armed and in flight when he was killed; some sources say he pulled his gun.

In contrast, all we have is friggin’ hearsay against awlaki. The White House still refuses to provide any evidence; they refused him representation by legal counsel.

Like, I said. Odious.

So many liberals owe Dick Cheney apologies these days.

Even if Dillinger were gunned down in cold blood, should we use such historical precedents to, say, bring back slavery?  Prolly not.

In addition, I’m pretty sure driftglass knows something about the perils of

The Unitary Executive Demigodhood, once thought of as a sprawling cancerous blot on the normal functioning of checks and balances of a non-financial variety.

Sick of it, Liberals.  Act your age.

whut’s this?  A momentarily functioning press corpse?

America’s largest “left-leaning” political website has goose eggs, “00,” nothing on the murder of Anwar al Awlaki via Nobel Peace Prize drone strike.

I hear they are going to have some thotful Front Page essays on Sunday.

Yeah.  I realize they’re operating under the conditions of complete moral, economic, and legal collapse of the empire,

but

whereas booman is the new David Brooks, they are the new NYT.

At least I didn’t call them “assholes.”

Fucking stupidest thing I ever heard irritates the fuck out of me. Makes me want to shove someone (Democrat?) off the sidewalk into traffic.  Clue to DKos users: Anyone speaking this stupidly must be talking their own book.

With respect to Axelrod’s campaigneering confession that Obama has “played too nice” with Republicans, Kos sez:

It took them long enough to figure it out, but apparently, they finally have.

They finally figgered it!  Democraps more generally, too:

However, that’s [Obama’s squandering his historic election and Democratic majorities] water under the bridge. Nothing we can do about that now except hope that Democrats learned their lessons. And it seems like might have.

Markos Moulitsas is the stupidest fucking guy on the planet.  Water under bridge.  Nothing to do but “hope” Democrats learned a lesson.  Somebody, pull his pathetic fucking plug.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

That is literally the stupidest thing ever said in the 14-billion-trillion-gazillion mega-light-year history of the universe.  Send flowers to his bereaved loved ones, ’cause I’m sure he died of shame.  Fucking Toon Town ass-weasel.