For the record, tonight I am writing this without the assistance of Tequila and hot sauce – I know a shame. So If I make too much sense or not enough forgive me, for I left my wallet at the shop and I am eating black olives, brie cheese and drinking blueberry/pomegranate juice (dick hard food as I like to say). But for me it is a state of Emergency, especially since folk like Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson seems to always act ex post facto and put shit in place to deal with problems but not prevent them.Now I will be the first to say I aint no investment banker nor am I an economist, but I read and don’t consider myself to be a stupid mother fucker. There are several things about the economy I want to point out. First, all of this shit has happened under the watch of republicans and all these chump bitch ass folk wanna do is put a band-aid on an amputated leg. And hate to say it, But Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers and AIG is only the beginning of what is to come. I remember recently how Paulson said that the problem that we have is because “We have an archaic financial regulatory structure that came in place a long time ago, after the Depression. It really needs to be rebuilt."
From my understanding of history, the problem during the depression was stocks. Yep stocks, for back then they were not regulated as they are today. In the current economic picture, we got to deal with some other thangs, namely hedge funds and derivatives, which are a lot more complex and no where close in resemblance to the classic stock or bond. But like in the depression era when stocks went unregulated, today derivatives and hedge funds and what they call credit default swaps, can be bought and sold and packaged without ANY federal or state regulation (yawl economist and investment genius correct this layman if I am wrong).
No regulation, nada. And we came to this like I have said in many post before, due to many folks, but one I have yet to mention is Former Senator Phil Gramm. Yea, yawl know Jones, he said that Americans were whinning over the economy. He currently is McCain’s economic advisor and I must say with him at the helm, I can only see the economy getting worse. A few post ago I wrote about how he led efforts to pass the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act in 1999, which served to reduce government regulations in that separated banking, insurance and brokerage activities that had been in place since the Great Depression. But more importantly to jones here was his role in getting the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 passed.
Now let me tell yawl about this. True, he is the VP of USB, a Swiss bank and one should expect such, but this was some sneaky and scandalous shit folk pulled mane because it made specific provisions that products offered by banking institutions would not be regulated as futures contracts – no regulations by feds or state governments, like stocks before great depression.
That’s another reason I say McCain is stupid, for picking a man who is the VP of a bank with 12 billion in losses last year as his top economic advisor and because McCain himself say he is learning economics by reading Alan Greenspan’s book – LMBAO. Not to mention Gramm aint write it but rather it was drafted by Wall Street lawyers. They do this shit via what are called structured investment vehicles and this shit aint even on the balanced sheets.
With the aforementioned and they way they keep they books, via Gramm’s help, we will never know what the actual losses are or will be. Add to that the way they cover this stuff is through another shady side bet called credit default swaps which are “expressly” deregulated via the Act mentioned above. Credit default swaps are the most widely traded form of credit derivative. They aint nothing but bets between folk on whether or not a company will default on its bonds. This is easy to do cause all the banks been doing is giving out mortgages for homes, bundling them up as securities and selling them to others
All I am saying is what we are seeing with Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and AIG is only the beginning because these are based on faulty MBS. Next its gonna be credit cards, student loans and all loans – even private equity loans (corporations). Yep the fat lady aint even started to sing yet and we the tax payer got to pay for this and get the shaft with no Vaseline because the feds will bail these folk out and let the CEOs leaves with 100 millions and even pay for big company but not folk who loose their homes.
All I am saying is handle yours because it WILL get worse. But yawl don’t hear me though, but I bet you getting your toes done, smelling the microwave pop corn and talking about what you eating and dranking at some fancy retro chic Bar. Not me mane. Not me. Like I said, the fat lady aint even started singing, so I would advise you to stuff your mattress, at least a little at a time. vote
