Weaver95

So, lately there has been a quiet effort to get Yahoo, Nextel, and a whole bunch of other telcom and web companies to tell the public the details of how corporations help the government spy on their customers.  Unsurprisingly, these companies object to the attempts to expose this information. Take this article for example:

Yahoo writes in its 12-page objection letter (.pdf), that if its pricing information were disclosed to Soghoian, he would use it “to ’shame’ Yahoo! and other companies — and to ’shock’ their customers.”

Wow.  Shock their customers.  And Yahoo is dead set against that information being released to the public.  They’re fighting tooth and claw to make sure that ‘we the people’ (i.e. their customers) don’t find out all the dirty details of how Yahoo sells us out to The Man.

Wait - what’s this?  Oh look! Yahoo’s internal documentation regarding how they help the government sell us out to The Man! thanks cryptome.   Head down to around pg 12 or so - there’s even a handy price list. Yahoo sells us out for $30-40 per email account.   I don’t know what’s more insulting - that yahoo has a price list for their spying, or that the prices are set so low.

Yahoo is fighing really really hard to make sure that documentation doesn’t get out to the great unwashed masses.  Anyone reading this blog might want to take a moment or two and skim that document.  Might be something there that jumps out at you, and I figure if a corporation fights to keep something secret, it’s worth reading.

sorry about the lack of updates lately, but as I’m sure you know - the holiday season can force one to be quite busy.

where to start…hmm.  well, lets go with a personal note.  I survived thanksgiving.  No relatives were harmed in the making and consumption of a turkey dinner…although there was a few moment there when I almost cried ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war.  Luckily for all concerned there was a bottle of wine within easy grasp, so that occupied me until the urge to shatter the illusion of peace finally calmed down.

On the blogger front, i’ve got a couple things backlogged.  An interview with a porn star/dominatrix (which was the unintended result of  a VERY interesting series of email exchanges), a write up on the whole ecologist/global warming email hacker document dump and of course…more goldman-sachs insanity.  i’m actually taking my time with the first two write ups.  i’m still digesting the material and doing some reading on the background before I write my article.  And no you pervs, i’m not watching porn.  I’ve been reading about the business, not the material itself.  yeesh.

However, I can slam goldman-sachs in my sleep.  Take this article for example. GS bankers are apparently all buying up hand guns and various sorts of artillery.  Now gee, why would anyone think goldman-sachs was evil?  well…there’s this little gem:

Henry Paulson, U.S. Treasury secretary during the bailout and a former Goldman Sachs CEO, let it slip during testimony to Congress last summer when he explained why it was so critical to bail out Goldman Sachs, and — oh yes — the other banks. People “were unhappy with the big discrepancies in wealth, but they at least believed in the system and in some form of market-driven capitalism. But if we had a complete meltdown, it could lead to people questioning the basis of the system.”

think about that for a second.  Consider what Paulson said there - people were ‘unhappy with the…discrepancies in wealth’.  yeah…I think that’s pretty obvious.  And while we’re talking about wealth and it being all discrepancies up, consider this news - shoppers up, sales down.  After two years of layoffs, pay cuts, bonus cuts, and 17% unemployment apparently some bright light analysts were thinking that somehow and against all reason that THIS black friday would see a massive surge in consumer spending.  And bankers wonder why nobody respects them anymore.

So now we’ve got bankers going around armed.  Apparently they’re looking at the fiscal system in this country and have decided to stock up on canned goods and shotguns while turning their mansions into fortified bunkers.  Yeah - that’s really inspiring me to trust my local banks.  thanks guys…I think i’ll head off to ebay and see how much a couple cases of MREs is gonna cost me.

And on that note - I think i’ll close this rant.

well, that’s the ‘official’ rate anyways. See here for the details.  As of last friday, we’re also up to 120 banks closed for the year…oddly enough, wall street seems to like the rising unemployment rate - the market response has been largely positive.  Personally - i’m scared shitless.  My own corportation is reporting massive losses in 4th quarter, along with a lot of other people.  I haven’t been hit with layoffs quiet yet, but it might be just a question of ‘when’ and not ‘if’ we face another round of layoffs.

*sigh*

Ok, so - 10% unemployment.  Not good.  I mean what do you say to something like that?  And if you dig into those numbers, it gets even worse…if you count all the people who got fired and then picked up 2 part time jobs to make ends meet, you find out that we have even more people in a crappy fiscal position than you might have realized.   I suppose that if you wanted someone to blame, you could try and pin this on Obama.  But he’s only been in power for a year, and this fiscal collapse is the result of several long term trends and weaknesses in the market.  He just hasn’t been there long enough to cause this collapse.

That said, Obama is in a position to shorten the duration of our economic woes…which he apparently has no plans to do. Of course, Pelosi is the one largely responsible for that, as we can see here from her ‘mistake’ with funding mechanisms, but Obama could stop her if he pushed.  Ok, supposedly not indexing the ‘tax the rich’ scheme for inflation is a mistake…but the cynical part of my mind thinks Pelosi, Obama and the Democrats are making that ‘mistake’ on purpose so that they can back door a massive tax on the middle class to fund universal health care. It’s sloppy, it’s a dirty trick…and people will fall for it because they’re fucking stupid.  Or they’ll fall for it because they want to ‘tax the rich’ out of some weird sense of ideological vengeance.

I could rant about taxes all day long, but what all of this is leading to is this: we have a LOT of people out of work.  And that number is rising.  It’s rising fast.  What nobody in government is telling the press is that with so many people unemployed (or taking lesser paying jobs to make ends meet), government income from payroll taxes has significantly declined.  The Federal government gets the majority of its daily operating income from those payroll taxes, and with everyone out of a job that’s money they aren’t collecting.

So where is this all gonna end?  I honestly don’t know.  Neither Republican or Democratic parties seem interested in addressing our dire financial situation.  In fact, the Democrats are getting ready to spend a ton of money (that we don’t have) on their health care package.  If Obama pushes through with his legislation, a mandatory cap on industrial production would essentially kill the US domestic economy.  Think about it - how are we supposed to climb out of a downturn when the Federal government is forcing energy use to cost twice more than it does now?  sure, the grass will be greener but when people can’t find work or feed their families then the plan is bad policy.  And forget about the Republicans - they don’t have a plan.  Or what plans they DO have tend to favor letting a corporation loot the public treasury and pillage whatever Obama’s tax collectors left behind.  It’s getting so bad  in D.C. that the Libertarians are looking sane.

There are days when I find myself wondering if our financial sector is taking it’s lead from parody sites like the Onion.  Take this story for example -a banker from Goldman-Sachs (of all places) giving a speech in church this past sunday.  In part, he says:

The 53-year-old head of Britain’s second-biggest bank said banks are the “backbone” of the economy. Rewarding high- performing bankers with more pay doesn’t conflict with Christian values, he said. Varley was paid 1.08 million pounds ($1.77 million) and no bonus in 2008.

So apparently exorbitant pay (often achieved via shady methods) isn’t any sort of moral hazard.  Hmm.  lets see what my rather rusty bible research skills can find on that subject:

2 Timothy 3

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

And that’s not going for the obvious thing about rich people and camels.  The article goes on to make mention of Britain’s financial situation:

City bonuses may rise by 50 percent to 6 billion pounds this year, according to the Centre for Economics & Business Research Ltd., even after the U.K. economy contracted for six consecutive quarters, driving unemployment to a 14-year high of 7.9 percent. The gap between rich and poor in the U.K. reached its widest in five decades last year, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a non-partisan research group.

So what you’ve got here is a banker (and he’s probably not the only one) who’s not ONLY seen his pay increase by 50% over the past five years but he’s getting super rich while the rest of his fellow countrymen lose their jobs at an ever faster rate.  And his justification for this?  Oh, well Jesus said it was cool to pillage.  y’know dude, I don’t think it’s gonna work out for ya.

Now i’m all for making money.  I try to do it all the time myself.  But I don’t delude myself about it - making money, especially at that level, is often a zero sum game.  In other words, when you make money someone else is losing it.  What I think is happening here is that somewhere in the banking industry there is a dim level of awareness that piling up all that money while so many people are out of work and getting more and more poor by the hour is generating a negative PR backlash of epic proportions.  Bankers like having a positive image in the press - it’s good for business after all.  So a couple of the more aware types are trying to convince us all that raping, looting and pillaging is somehow justified in the Bible.  This is the same excuse listed by child molesters like NAMBLA for their activities too by the way.  So draw your own conclusions about how Goldman-Sachs little exercise in biblical justification is going to go over with the rank and file.

I should mention that I have no respect and little trust for Goldman-Sachs.  I think they abused their connections with the Bush administration in order to survive the initial wave of investment bank collapses.  And they still have some deep connections into the financial institutions of this country, and markets around the world.  Connections that they (ab) use to maintain an artificially inflated hold on key market indicators, as well as outright manipulating the market to their advantage.  In short, I think they’re cheating.  So that’s why I don’t trust them, or anyone who works for them.  Goldman-Sachs are just bad folks all around but there ain’t nothing I (or anyone else for that matter) can do about it.

So there you go.  Goldman-Sachs thinks they’ve got a religious justification for their self serving greed on wheels.  Amazing stuff ain’t it?

It was a close vote, that’s for sure but yes - gay marriage was indeed defeated by the voters last night.

With 87 percent of precincts reporting, gay-marriage foes had 53 percent of the vote in a referendum that asked Maine voters whether they wanted to repeal a law allowing same-sex marriage that had passed the Legislature…

So basically the legislature AND the governor tried to move ahead of the voters and learned that you can’t do that in even the semi-democratic muck of a government we’ve currently got going on in this country.  Bad news for the gay rights activists, but a victory for the cause of democracy in this country.

however - that was a much closer vote than I had anticipated.  To tell you the truth, I thought for sure that ‘gay marriage’ would pass.  It had a LOT of high powered support, plus the legislature and the support of the governor.  But apparently nobody in Maine bothered to actually consult the voters themselves, and that’s where the whole thing bogged down.  Now, I’m sure the gay rights activists are disappointed.  If something I believed in so strongly ended up being defeated I’d be disappointed as well…but that’s just how things work in a democratic republic form of government - you take the good with the bad.  Today (or rather last night) you lost.  dust yourself off and come back next year to try again.

Here’s an interesting phrase I hear tossed around a lot today:

Gay marriage has now lost in every state — 31 in all — in which it has been put to a popular vote.

I honestly don’t know if that’s true or not.  I really haven’t followed the matter as closely as other bloggers have - believe it or not it’s not something I care much about.  I consider it largely a matter to be decided by the states themselves.  But if it’s true and gay marriage has been defeated in every state in which it’s come up for a vote…well that tells me something right there about the issue.  This country does not think gays have any special right to be married.  You might not want to accept that fact, but there it is - with a losing streak that long, it’s time to face reality.

Now,  you can do two things about this loss - you can scream, cry and shout about how ‘unjust’ and ‘unfair’ it is…or you can sit down and figure out how and why you’re losing.  I’ve got several theories as to the reasons for the continued losses by the gay rights movement at the ballot box, but i’m not going to cover them here.  Suffice it to say that it’s got a lot to do with the tactics used to try and get ‘gay rights’ and ‘gay marriage’ into law across the nation.  But that’s a discussion for another time and a different post.

Not that it matters of course.  I strongly suspect that the ballot vote was largely a formality.  No matter how the vote turned out on gay marriage, I’m fairly sure it’s going to end up in a court docket somewhere.  And in Maine, what the gay rights groups failed to accomplish at the ballot the might just manage to accomplish via judicial fiat.  And oh what fun THAT shall be to watch!

Rush is having a rough day today.  Right out of the gate, it was all about how Obama had failed last night, how the country was doomed, how the Republicans were doing great, blah blah.  The real surprise so far today was Rush’s comments about the NY23 race.  Apparently, the Democrats didn’t win NY23, the Republicans lost.  And they lost because it was all the fault of not having a primary race.  No, wait - it was all the fault of Dede Scozzafava.  No - wait!  it was a Tuesday!  Yeah!  geez Rush, make up your damn mind already.

The show today is oddly disconnected.  Rush is almost avoiding the election results as much as he’s paying attention to them.  My impression (and this is just my guess so bear with me) is that Rush wrote the notes on his monologue late last night and is going off those notes.  He’s just doing this show by the numbers, saying his pre-digested sound bytes and hitting his markers but not really putting any of himself into any of it.  No callers yet onto the show and I’m not sure if i’ll stick around to hear any since today is spaghetti day and I have to get to the market soon to get some supplies.  Gotta give it time to simmer down properly after all.

Now we’re talking about Obama wanting to rebuild the Berlin Wall.  Damn - I didn’t turn the radio off fast enough.  Oh, and we’ve got a caller!  lucky me.  They’re talking about NY23 and how people ‘hate sarah palin’. I think the problem with Palin is that they don’t ‘hate’ her.   They just don’t respect her.   But Rush of course is making the caller’s comments all about Rush.  He’s saying how this isn’t a big failure on his part, and that Palin is beyone reproach as well.  And now we’ve got another caller - Barbara.  Barb sounds stoned.  I don’t really care with Barb has to say, because I can’t get past the feeling that she’s either stoned out of her gourd or drunk.  well, whatever - Barb sounds pretty happy today.  I think Rush is ok with Barb’s substance abuse ’cause I swear to God I just heard him snort a line of Oxy while Barb was all moonbeams and sweetness.  Oh, and Rush was still on about some Catholic guy winning an election somewhere.  This caller is hard to follow and Rush is apparently down with the whole ‘free association’ vibe she started.

Thank GOD!  A commercial!  yeesh.  two callers, one of whom is sure that Republicans losing NY23 isn’t a big deal (despite it being a big deal last week) and one substance abuser really into free association therapy with Rush Limbaugh.  And that’s it for me.  Rush isn’t very ’snappy’ today, he seems kind of out of it actually.  A very disappointing start to the whole affair and not likely to get any better.  Radio is off and i’m going to go inventory the kitchen supplies to make sure i’ve got what I need to make a big pot o’ spaghetti sauce for later tonight.

It’s getting so that I’m afraid to read the financial news past 4pm on a friday.  Here’s the latest from the great and wonderful world of high finance. CIT is the fifth largest bankruptcy so far this year.

They’re a big pile of assets too:

In the bankruptcy filing, CIT said it had $71 billion in assets and $64.9 billion in liabilities. Only Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, Worldcom and General Motors had more in assets when they filed for protection.

Like I said - lots of assets.  To the tune of 71 billion.  that’s ‘B’, for ‘billion’.  And they declared bankruptcy.  Yeesh.

Now, I know what you’re thinking - you’re telling yourself ‘gee, that doesn’t mean anything’.  After all, something so big and important means that someone will step in and limit the damage.  Well, before you start getting comfortable with yourselves consider that this is the FIFTH LARGEST FAILURE THIS YEAR!  And we’re not done yet.  Not by a long shot.  All these failures, all that money lost…eventually we reach a point where the Fed simply cannot absorb any more damage.  Not to mention the fact that nobody in the Fed can dampen the ripple effects from this failure.  Jobs will be cut, businesses will suffer, yet MORE people will be out of work.  More people out of work means less tax revenue.  Less tax revenue means….well, you see where this is all going.

But wait!  it gets worse!  Ready?  Read this part:

Common shareholders, however, will be out of luck. CIT said all existing common and preferred stock will be cancelled upon emergence from bankruptcy protection. That would likely include preferred stock from the $2.3 billion in funding from the U.S. government’s Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) the company received in its efforts to stay afloat.

Yes, you read that correctly.  CIT is stealing $2.3 billion dollars in taxpayer money and there is nothing we can do about it.  All those drug dealers and identity theft people sitting in county jail should quit with the petty scams and learn corporate accounting.  That’s where the BIG score really is these days.  2.3 BILLION, gone in a blink of an eye and it’s entirely legal.  Wow!

yup - that’s the count of how many banks we’ve closed so far this year. Here’s the latest/greatest update so far, since last night the Fed closed nine more banks.

We’re not out of the woods yet kids, and don’t believe anyone who tells you otherwise. Even scarier is the rumor that the FDIC might be broke. I’m really hoping that rumor is false.  With all the bank closings we’ve already had, we don’t need to find out that bank deposits aren’t covered anymore.  A run on the banks would essentially destroy our economy.  well, not directly but it’d kick off a series of unfortunate events, to turn a phrase.  And that would be enough to do us in.

Of course, there are already rumors that the US dollar is on the way out as the world reserve currency of choice.  combine that with the collapse of the US economy and….well, it’s Mad Max time.  that’s a worst case scenario of course.  But there’s a lot of reasons to watch the piggy bank right now.  I’m just not sure if I should start to panic or if we’ll pull it out before we collapse.