Hari Kari, Tora Tora Tora
Posted on 01/21/2008 7:12:51 PM PST by B-Chan
[CAUTION: CONTAINS VULGAR LANGUAGE]
Knees knocked last week from sea to shining sea as the shape-shifting monster of economic reality cut a swathe of destruction through the markets and financial ranks. The exact nature of this giant beast still remained largely concealed in a fog of accounting gambits, policy blusters, and reporting dodges, but a few intrepid scouts who glimpsed the behemoth up close said it looked like Godzilla with Herbert Hoover's face.
George W. Bush tried to appease the beast by offering each American adult the dollar equivalent of half a month's mortgage payment -- with the exhortation to drive forthwith to the nearest WalMart and blow it on salad shooters and plasma TV's -- but Hooverzilla just laughed at the offering and pounded the equity markets further into the dust of loss, while the "bank-like" guardians of wealth lay in the drainage ditches bleeding from their ears and eyes.
My favorite moment was seeing Treasury Secretary Paulson and one of his fellow shaved-head deputies at a press conference rostrum frantically trying to calm the news media rabble like a couple of extraplanetary high priests from a Star Trek episode -- the batteries having run down in their laser wands, and their incantations ("liquidity! liquidity!) veering into mystifying glossolalia.
I resort to such admitted extreme hyperbole because it may be the only language that an infotainment-drunk society can still process in the face of an epochal calamity that will transform the lush terms of everyday life as we've known it into something like a bleak surrealist landscape in the manner of Tanguy. That crashing sound out there is the armature of confidence needed to support an economy based on faith that borrowed money will be paid back. It's as simple as that. (Doesn't seem so exciting now, does it?)
The United States is so broke, its people at every level from the Federal Reserve on down don't know whether to shit or go blind. The homeowners cringing in the media rooms of their 5000-square-foot personal family resorts don't know how long they can stay put microwaving pepperoni hot pockets with the default clock ticking. The mortgage "servicers" don't know how they will persuade interested parties like, say, the Illinois State Cafeteria Workers' Pension Fund (holder of X-amount of mortgage-backed securities underwritten by, say, Merrill Lynch or Deutsche Bank) to foreclose on properties scattered everywhere from Key West to Bainbridge Island -- or if there is actually any legal mechanism known to man that would make it possible to "work out" the sliced-and-diced collateral. The millions of maxed-out credit card holders and the issuers of their plastic are stuck together paddling a leaky tub in a sea of troubles every bit as wide, deep, and polluted as the one the mortgage junkies and their enablers are sinking in. The developers of malls, office parks, and power centers are weeping into their filing cabinets as the harsh daylight of insolvency stops the orgy of "consumption" and the retail tenants pack up their unsellable goodies for the liquidators, and the rent checks stop arriving in the mail, and the notes on this mall and that mall enter the eerie realm of "non-performance." And, of course, there are the genius wonder boyz and Wall Street playerz whose algorithms and turpitudes underwrote the script of this horror show -- for all I know they'll end up laughing into sugary skull drinks on a beach in the Cayman Islands, or doing Chinese fire drills in federal prison (or simply ass-fucked on the granite countertops of their Tribecca aeries by mobs of angry, repossessed, swindled former American dreamers pouring into Manhattan from the tract house dormitories of New Jersey and Long Island).
There's a lot to be concerned about out there. I don't mean to be too cute about it. But, as the master once said, nothing is funnier than unhappiness.
A whole closet full of "other shoes" is now waiting to be dropped. Surely the biggest clodhoppers in the closet belong to the hedge funds, representing trillions and trillions of dollar-denominated "positions" which, however hallucinatory, had previously yielded enough real "money" year-by-year to keep all the realtors and Humvee dealers in the Hamptons goose-stepping to Goldman Sachs's drumbeat. These "positions" can't help now from moving into counterparty crisis territory, especially as the bond insurers such as MBIA and Ambac go up in a vapor, and if that happens the damage could be so colossal globally that Stephen Hawking might have to be brought in to run the Federal Reserve.
This is going to be a rough week. Fastening your seat belts may not be enough for this ride. Better superglue yourselves to the floorboards and pray for God's mercy.
He’s enroute now
BTTT
MUMBAI, India — Trading was halted in Indian stock markets Tuesday as shares dived on opening with the benchmark index plummeting 9.5 percent.
The 30-company benchmark index of the Bombay Stock Exchange, the Sensex, fell 1,716 points, or 9.5 percent, to 15,888 points seconds after the market opened.
On the rival National Stock Exchange, the 50-share S&P Nifty index was down 630 points, or 12 percent, at 4,578 points.
Markets fell to 10 percent mark and were shut down for an hour.
It worked very well in '92 and seems to be working this year. Only people should be careful of what they wish for they just might get it. A world wide recession would be the bane of many political parties and nations.
It’s going to be an interesting day...
The Rats had better remember that when times are hard it is not possible to tax a people into prosperity.
Hari Kari, Tora Tora Tora
This is all Pelosi’s fault. W announced $800 checks for every man, woman and child, and she dicked around and caused this.
Get this and get this well: You haven’t lost any money unless you sell your interest(s). Just leave it there, and stop fretting. This is a natural January on calendar, unfortunately, there’s a war in OUR country going on. We don’t need bullets in our war, just words and deeds.
I can’t wait until gold gets to about $1500 an ounce. I’ll just sell it, and make the money the foolish people are putting into that commodity and scaring this Country.
Damn gold bugs.
Dow futures down 650 points overnight as I type this.
I agree with you on Fred Thompson, but even if the Beastie wins, four years will not kill us.
Methinks a lot of people looking for entertainment in tomorrow’s market are going to be disappointed. Armani clad brokers won’t be raining down on Wall Street. There won’t be panic in the streets. America won’t plunge into a vast wasteland of lawlessness where roving gangs cruise around the empty interstates in really cool looking cars.
I dont think it will be as bad here....I think big money will buy up shares after a couple of hours.
With the RATs it is always the party first before the people or the nation. Hummmmmm kind of sounds like the time soviets.
IF “global markets” are falling, it’s their own fault for listening to CNN, believing that a demonRAT is going to win the election (Hillary’s “cures” for the “bad” economy scared me too, I must admit...), OR doing their part to artificially hold up the value of the Euro (can you say ‘argentina’?).
As for myself? I think they will recover, just as ours will, although I don’t believe they will ever be as healthy as we are. Call it nativism if you will...
For those who made bad mortgage loans to those they KNEW couldn’t pay- learn to enjoy this kick in your greedy little pants. Perhaps you will learn from it. Everything has an up side.
Another good way to go. Or just pay off your home.
I’m sounding like “Let them eat cake.” Please excuse me. There are too many people out there that need their government to make up their minds. Use your own brain that God gaveth to you.
The camera did a back shot of the candidates as they were speaking.
As my deceased dad used to say, Hillary’s butt is at least a couple of tree hugging Axe handles wide.
Hillary has to be the cause of poor old Willy Jeff's heart failure.
Can you imagine the amount of heart rendering psychological energy expended trying to mount that old fat butted arrogant better than thou babe. Yuk...spitooy
Her and Obama remind me of the old saying:
Jack Obama Sprat could eat no fat and Biliary could eat no lean.
Those three prove without a doubt that the Democrats have got to be the largest group of asinine ignorant lying anal brains ever assembled in a political party.
Look out fly over America, the liberals are a fixin to give you an enema of Salz and Castor oil that will last for at 4 years of living by socialist rules in their cesspool. Just the lowly red state wannabe opinion of a Democrat debate watcher on CNNP.
(Pssst ..Lord Humongus is at the gate ax’ing for ya)
I think you’re right.
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