Fourth turning update

The entertaining Jim Quinn has put up the third in his series of "Trying to Stay Sane in an Insane World." Quinn works at Wharton and his website is either one of the cleverest honeypots around, or Wharton — a bastion of, let's face it, Wall Street think — actually allows some free speech.

However, here's my response to the Austrians who say — who chant — "Government bad! Government bad!" — and, "Free markets good! Free markets good!"

Feudalism bad! The Middle Ages were based on a system of highly concentrated ownership of the means of production, which at that time was mostly land. You had your lords and your serfs. With the assistance of rapidly improving technology are getting closer and closer to a new age of feudalism.

The Crisis still looks to peak after 2020. Buckle up.

Comment on the S&P downgrade

Could we have a more obvious example of a rating agency serving its oligarchic Wall Street masters more servilely? 

S&P participated in the massive frauds of the real estate boom, certifying junk as AAA, and enabling Wall Street to dispossess many Americans of their homes at taxpayer expense after having profited from the pump-and-dump (and short, in some vile cases), so why shouldn’t they enable their masters to further enhance their relative social and financial position by sending the remains of the American middle class into old-age serfdom?  www.angrybear.com has the best data on Social Security, and it says the system if funded for decades to come if Treasury obligations are honored.  Moreover, relatively small changes to the payroll tax, like taking the ceiling off, would render the system solvent indefinitely, if I am not mistaken.

Obama should strike back, and take S&P to court for fraudulent activities during the real estate fraud boom.  It’s time to put the rating agencies completely out of business.

S&P should have downgraded the entire Bretton Woods II monetary system.

Gulf of Tonkin redux?

The machine requires feeding?  The torpedo that allegedly sank the South Korean ship was available for sale internationally:

Via:  msnbc.com

Torpedo fragments found on the seabed "perfectly match" the schematics of a North Korean-made torpedo Pyongyang has tried to sell abroad, chief investigator Yoon Duk-yong said. A serial number on one piece is consistent with markings from a North Korean torpedo that Seoul obtained years earlier, he said.

"The evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that the torpedo was fired by a North Korean submarine," he said. "There is no other plausible explanation."

Pak, the North Korean military official, dismissed it as faked evidence.

"If there were indications that the sinking was our doing, then the whole thing is an act — theatrics by the South Koreans to implicate us," he said.

Why should I believe the North Koreans did this, when the miserable war of my youth was started on a false pretext that looked just like this?

William Black on our corrupt regulators

This is much-watch, especially if you’ve been seduced into drinking some of Obama’s financial reform Kool-Aid.  Obomba has proven himself a spineless cut-out for the military-industrial-financial Establishment many times over.  He may have good intentions, he may face a fecally-impacted Washington, he may face death threats every day, he may be doing all he thinks he can do given the cards he’s been dealt, but the fact remains that no significant reform of a broken America is taking place. 

Bill Black lays the blame where it belongs, on the industry-captive (industry-whore) regulators who had the power to preclude and then to clean up the mess all along:  Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, and so on ad nauseum. 

Is it real or politics as usual?

Goldman sacked? – Washington’s blog has a nice collection of links