The Los Angeles Times has been on a roll lately reporting on the Outrageous Bell, California government salaries and spending, the salaries of public officials across the state and now they are looking into what is going on in one of the worst schools districts in the United States, Los Angeles Unified. The Los Angeles Times has gotten to what is really at the bottom of so many American kids performing at incredibly low levels and that is what parents that have been paying attention to the kind of K-12 education their kids have been getting which is….
“The fifth-graders at Broadous Elementary School come from the same world — the poorest corner of the San Fernando Valley, a Pacoima neighborhood framed by two freeways where some have lost friends to the stray bullets of rival gangs.
Many are the sons and daughters of Latino immigrants who never finished high school, hard-working parents who keep a respectful distance and trust educators to do what’s best.
Yet year after year, one fifth-grade class learns far more than the other down the hall. The difference has almost nothing to do with the size of the class, the students or their parents.
It’s their teachers.
With Miguel Aguilar, students consistently have made striking gains on state standardized tests, many of them vaulting from the bottom third of students in Los Angeles schools to well above average, according to a Times analysis. John Smith’s pupils next door have started out slightly ahead of Aguilar’s but by the end of the year have been far behind.
In Los Angeles and across the country, education officials have long known of the often huge disparities among teachers. They’ve seen the indelible effects, for good and ill, on children. But rather than analyze and address these disparities, they have opted mostly to ignore them.”
Of course Government and Education officials opt to “ignore” test scores and the differences between the performance of kids that are in classrooms that are sitting right next to each other in the same school because the real bottom line is that the Teachers Unions and the Educational Establishment in the United States…
DON’T REALLY GIVE A DAMN ABOUT THE KIDS!
What these people do care about is more money, more benefits and more job security for teachers and they lobby for those things EVEN IF THE KIDS WILL SUFFER!
Got that? Good. The LA Times continues…..
“Most districts act as though one teacher is about as good as another. As a result, the most effective teachers often go unrecognized, the keys to their success rarely studied. Ineffective teachers often face no consequences and get no extra help.
Which teacher a child gets is usually an accident of fate, in which the progress of some students is hindered while others just steps away thrive.
Though the government spends billions of dollars every year on education, relatively little of the money has gone to figuring out which teachers are effective and why.
Seeking to shed light on the problem, The Times obtained seven years of math and English test scores from the Los Angeles Unified School District and used the information to estimate the effectiveness of L.A. teachers — something the district could do but has not.
The Times used a statistical approach known as value-added analysis, which rates teachers based on their students’ progress on standardized tests from year to year. Each student’s performance is compared with his or her own in past years, which largely controls for outside influences often blamed for academic failure: poverty, prior learning and other factors.
Though controversial among teachers and others, the method has been increasingly embraced by education leaders and policymakers across the country, including the Obama administration.”
The last line in the paragraph above is a possible light at the end of the tunnel though because it is the Obama Administration and US Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan that is actually talking about and doing things that will HOLD TEACHERS ACCOUNTABLE FOR HOW THEY TEACH!
What a novel idea! Actually holding people responsible for their actions and if there is any group of people in the United States that needs to be held accountable for their performance it is the teachers of our children because right now America is turning out of high school each year HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF KIDS that are not only functionally illiterate but don’t know UP FROM DOWN!.
Kudos to the Los Angeles Times again for going after one of the more important issues in our country, this time the real performance of teachers in our schools which IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUES facing America right now.
The Grand Pooh-Bahs of High Finance, the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee, led by Uncle Ben Bernanke and a cast of hundreds that for the vast majority of them have never worked a day in their lives off of a college campus or in the government, delivered their latest diagnosis and “plan” for the US Economy and they believe with all their heart that the unwashed masses out here in America (That would be you and us!) should just fall to our knees and kiss their asses!
NOT!
One of the Greatest Entrepreneurs (Entrepreneurs = Someone that actually works in the REAL WORLD and not on a college campus or in government!) Henry Ford once said that…..
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”
Oh, Henry, you nailed that one my friend! The American People clearly do not understand what all of these college professors and generally clueless economists are doing all day long, but the American People can spot a load of crapola when they see it and these clowns at the Federal Reserve and in government are clearly tossing out more crapola than a farmer on a pig ranch!
Let’s go over some basics here….
The Federal Reserve
Led by the Federal Reserve Chairman, Uncle Ben Bernanke
The US Congress
The US Treasury
The US $1 Dollar Bill
Notice the “Federal Reserve Note” at the top of the $1 Dollar Bill? Good. That means that the Federal Reserve prints the US currency that is in your pocket and they also are charged with managing the money supply, keeping a check on inflation and holding down unemployment. Oh, those are all important jobs, but the Federal Reserve is filled with all sorts of ambitious people these days that really believe they can manage and manipulate a $15 Trillion Dollar Economy with absolute nonsense…. Before we get to that, let’s see how our “Elected Leaders” use the Fed’s power to print money to spend a lot more money than we have today or will ever have in the future.
You see, the SOBs on Capitol Hill and all of our recent US Presidents don’t really give a Damn about how much money they spend because they have had Alan Greenspan and Uncle Ben Bernanke over at the Fed that were more than willing to cash any check that is presented to them. Here is how that works…
So the US Treasury must issue debt to be sold to the public, banks, foreign countries, etc. to fund the massive deficits that our “Elected Leaders” are running up and during this process of issuing all of this US debt the Federal Reserve is sitting over on the side concerned about the level of interest rates and the general health of the economy and the Fed then moves into and out of these debt offerings and the bond market and buys US Treasury securities for “its” account. Where does the Federal Reserve get the money to buy US Treasury Securities you ask? It prints it, or rather some lackey over at the Fed pushes a button on a computer to create money (don’t we all wish we had such a computer) and he then sends the money he just “printed” to the US Treasury and the US Treasury sends the bonds (all digitally of course) over to the Federal Reserve. In the normal course of business, back when the Federal Reserve was run by competent folks (before Alan Greenspan and Uncle Ben Bernanke arrived on the scene and started creating massive financial bubbles in the US Economy), the Fed used its buying and selling of US Treasury Securities in a prudent way and didn’t overtly try to massively manipulate the bond markets. Oh, those were the days.
In the here and now under the “leadership” of Uncle Ben Bernanke (and his “mentor’ in bubble making” Alan Greenspan) the Federal Reserve has become a wholly owned unit of Wall Street (that wants lots of cheap money to gamble with and doesn’t really want to be regulated by the Fed in any meaningful way) and the US Congress (that wants to spend lots of money that the country does not have). The Federal Reserve is more than happy to “print” up lots of new money for the Wall Street Bastards, to inflate bubbles so the Wall Street Bastards can gamble all day ripping off lots of Americans in the process, or for the Congress, so they can spend money the country doesn’t have, and the Fed does this because the Federal Reserve is staffed by clueless fools that an 8-year old could take a lollipop from.
Are you getting the idea now? The Federal Reserve is the Bubble Machine for the Wall Street Bastards and the Printing Press for the US Congress and US Presidents who rather like getting re-elected and both groups don’t give a Damn if they take down the American Republic in the insatiable greed and their complete selfishness.
Now, in recent years during the “Crash of 2008”….
……(which actually was just a handful of banks on Wall Street that had made foolish bets and were about to go under and to save those handful of Wall Street banks that made stupid decisions in all their gambling the then US Treasury Secretary decided he needed to scared the Hell out of the Congress so they would bail out the Sorry Excuses for Human Beings on Wall Street which ended up leading to a complete meltdown of the US Economy and millions of Americans losing their jobs….all so a handful of banks (really unregulated casinos as they still are today) could get bailed out!) and since the Federal Reserve has gone far beyond just buying US Treasury Securities but has “purchased” with all of their “printed” money over a TRILLION DOLLARS worth of mortgage securities from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and from the Sorry Excuses for Human Beings on Wall Street that were more than happy to offload a bunch of absolute mortgage debt crapola on the clueless fools at the Federal Reserve.
Here is where it starts to get very stupid. The Federal Reserve “purchases” mortgage securities from….
….Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both of which are wards of the US Government (and no one from the leadership of either Fannie or Freddie has gone to prison which is an OUTRAGE!) and since Fannie and Freddie are wholly owned by the US Government (or really the US Taxpayer since the American People OWN the US Government) the US Treasury pays the interest on the Fannie and Freddie bonds to the people that hold those bonds and the Federal Reserve is one of the biggest holders of these securities.
Did you catch that? No…Well, let’s go through this very slowly, because this is a sham that Bernie Madoff wouldn’t have even tried…
The Federal Reserve “prints” money….
The Federal Reserve “purchases” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage debt and sends the money for those securities to those entities, which is actually the US Government since they owned Fannie and Freddie.
Since Fannie and Freddie cannot exist on their own the US Treasury must make up any shortfalls in the interest on the Fannie and Freddie debt which is then paid out and sent to the bondholders and since one of the biggest holders of this debt is the Federal Reserve the Fed and Uncle Ben Bernanke get this interest and then actually make the claim that the money they printed, which buys the bonds, which is sent from the US Treasury to the Fed is “income or profit” (Oh, that’s rich!) which the Fed then sends back to the US Treasury….
Are you starting to see why Henry Ford thought the US financial system was a lot of bunk? Good!
It gets better!
The Federal Reserve announced earlier this week that the Fed is going to “reinvest” all the money it gets from the US Government in the forms of interest and other payments on mortgage securities (backed up wholly by the American People) back into US Treasury Securities so that…….now this is where it gets very murky because there is no one with a working brain that can understand what the Hell the Fed thinks it will accomplish by buying even more US Treasury Securities when interest rates are already at record lows….
In fact, the Federal Reserve can accomplish NOTHING to really help the US Economy nor to create Real Jobs in the Real World because the folks at the Federal Reserve have so completely abandoned their primary duties to serve the Wall Street Bastards and Useless Idiots on Capitol Hill that the Fed is no longer anything but a bunch of Clueless Fools that is filled with people that have never worked a day in their lives in the Real World and thus have no understanding of why an entrepreneur would start a company or why a business owner would hire a new employee.
Very simply… The Federal Reserve has BECOME A COMPLETE AND UTTER JOKE because over the past two decades under the leadership of Alan “The Bubble Man” Greenspan and Uncle Ben “I Love the Sound of a Printing Press in the Morning” Bernanke the Fed has created one financial bubble after another all in the name of serving the Sorry Excuses for Human Beings on Wall Street (The Wall Street Bastards) that gamble and make bets all day long hoping they can rip someone off before the markets close and the Huge Buffoons on Capitol Hill that spend money that the country does not have and who have piled up a National Debt that our country will not only never be able to every pay off, but the interest alone on all that debt will destroy out country.
Oh, you thought Uncle Ben Bernanke knows Up from Down? NO…..Ben Bernanke has proved in the past that he doesn’t Have a Clue:
Do you understand now why Henry Ford knew the US Financial System was nothing but a lot of Unadulterated Bullshit? Good.
Now go out and vote against every incumbent whether they are Republican or Democrat because it doesn’t matter who you vote for, just that the current group of “Elected Leaders” in Washington DC are some of the Stupidest People on the face of the Earth and if a ground squirrel is on the ballot running against an incumbent…you should vote for the ground squirrel!
What exactly does the downfall of a great nation look like, this time the United States of America you ask? Well, since everyone that is alive on planet Earth today was not around when the Roman Empire brought itself down with incredible stupidity and greed it is us Americans that are getting to see up close and personal what it is like for a group of Absolute Buffoons at the top of the US Government on all levels, Corporate America and Wall Street bring down a country in the U.S. that had a great run until the Idiots showed up on the scene.
Consider these new stories just from the last few days….
Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd has to resign over filing false expense reports and going out the door HP hands him a $50 MILLION DOLLAR severance payout. No, we are not making this up! A CEO files false expense reports around some kind of relationship with a woman and the Idiots on the HP board send the clown packing with a $50 MILLION DOLLARS PAYOUT!
“In the conference call following the shocking ousting of HP CEO Mark Hurd, it was revealed that the real reason he was forced out (can we just say “fired,” please?) was because he filed false expense reports to hide the affair he was having.
We have also, of course, learned that Mark Hurd will be getting a $50 million severance payout. This is on top of the $10 billion of market value that HP shareholders have lost so far as a result of his sudden departure.
Now, last time we checked, filing false expense reports was a form of fraud (and also usually a form of embezzlement, although we don’t have enough details to know if that was the case here). According to HP’s general counsel, Hurd filed the fake reports to deceive the company. Even if he didn’t steal any money, therefore, he certainly committed the act of dishonesty that almost every employment contract contains as a condition on which an executive may be fired “for cause.”
Generally, things like golden parachutes are dependent on executives not being dismissed for cause, and defrauding your company is certainly “cause.”
So, on behalf of HP shareholders, we have a question for HP: Why is Mark Hurd getting a $50 million severance payout if he filed bogus expense reports? And why was he allowed to “resign.” Why wasn’t he fired for cause?””
Damn Good Question Henry! And these Sorry Excuses for Humans running Corporate America and Wall Street wonder why the American People are pissed off? Hell, now former CEO Mark Hurd has made TENS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS in the five years he has been on the job and now that he has been found to have falsified expense reports he gets another 50 MILLION? What the Hell?
Here’s a Fact: If 99.99 percent of the American People had done what Mark Hurd has been accused of doing by HP not only would be sent packing without a penny, the police would probably be investigating our rear-end as well right now.
Yes, the American People are pissed off and they should be! There is one set of rules for the Elites in the United States, who can like the Wall Street Bastards (with an assist from the Incredible Collection of Buffoons in Washington DC) run the US economy in the ditch and throw millions of Americans out of their jobs and not only don’t get investigated and tossed in jail, but they get bailed out with taxpayer money and celebrated by the same Buffoons in the Government and Media that were involved in or not covering all the outrageous behavior in the first place. Yes, this all makes perfect sense!
The above is why the American People are pissed off and they should be pissed off because the Mark Hurd’s of the world, the Wall Street Bastards and folks across Corporate America and in Government are sending the United States of America over a cliff and they are looting the US Treasury in the process!
Here is another couple of stories out of Bell, California that just keeps on giving as we continue to learn about the outrageous actions of the government officials in Bell that are seemingly trying to put to shame the Roman government officials that brought down that Empire.
The Los Angeles Times is on the story and in the last couple of weeks the Times is starting to figure out again that when it actually works for and serves the People of Los Angeles and the world it just might find a way to survive into the future as a going business concern.
“The city of Bell, already under fire for paying unusually high salaries to three top administrators, acknowledged Friday that two more officials were earning over $400,000.
The city’s director of administrative services, Lourdes Garcia, was earning $422,707, and the director of general services, Eric Eggena, earned $421,402, officials said. Those amounts include salary, deferred compensation and some benefits, which city officials did not fully detail.
In addition, Bell’s director of community services, Annette Peretz, earned $273,542, a deputy city engineer earned $247,573, the business development coordinator earned $295,627, a police captain earned $238,075 and a police lieutenant earned $229,992. Their names were not immediately released.”
Oh, that’s just perfect! Not only were the top people in the city government of Bell, California ripping off the people of the city, we now learn that there are lots of evil people here that were making outrageous salaries that are nothing less than outright theft from the folks in Bell and the state of California. (More on the California angle in a moment).
The LA Times continues:
“The city’s acting administrator released the compensation numbers at a raucous afternoon news conference that was interrupted several times by furious community activists. Los Angeles County prosecutors said they would add the salaries to their existing investigation into the city.
Documents obtained Friday by The Times also revealed that both Garcia and Bell’s former assistant city manager, Angela Spaccia, had received additional payments of at least $100,000 beyond their salaries. The payments to Spaccia appear to have been a loan. The documents do not make clear whether Garcia was required to repay the money she received.
At the press conference, acting city administrator Pedro Carrillo said the city plans to launch a study of salaries to “make sure they are commensurate with experience” and job responsibilities. “We will take some very firm and bold moves,” Carrillo added. “It could mean termination or reduction.”
The city has been the focus of national attention ever since The Times revealed that City Manager Robert Rizzo was being paid $787,637 a year, Police Chief Randy Adams’ salary was $457,000 and assistant city manager Spaccia’s was $376,000. All three resigned amid public uproar.
For several weeks, Bell officials have refused to provide documents requested by The Times under the state Public Records Act, by community activists and by a sitting member of the city council.”
Now, if the above does not get your blood boiling…..NOTHING WILL! We have news for everyone though, the kinds of things that have been going on in Bell, California are happening throughout the state of California with government employees of all stripes making OUTRAGEOUS AMOUNTS OF MONEY for jobs that would pay two or three times less in the REAL WORLD or otherwise known as the private sector.
The problems in Bell, California affect the entire state as well because the Los Angeles Times also had a story earlier this week that related that the state pension system for California, CalPERS, knew about and even granted a waiver for the OUTRAGEOUS salaries for the Bell, California officials.
“Officials at California’s state pension fund learned about exorbitant pay raises being given to administrators in Bell four years ago and did nothing to stop them, according to an internal memo obtained by The Times.
The memo, which pension staff sent board members Tuesday, shows that the California Public Employees’ Retirement System was asked in 2006 to grant an exemption to its rules so the Bell city manager could get a 47% pay hike and still receive a full pension on his salary.
The pension system learned of the salary hike during an audit and informed Bell officials that an exemption could be needed.
When officials of the pension system learned that several of the city’s administrators were getting similar pay hikes, they decided that an exemption was not needed.
“At the time, the city represented that the city manager was part of the top management group or class, and all of the employees in this group or class received similarly large increases,” said the memo, written by Lori McGartland, head of the pensions fund’s employer services division.
“Based upon those representations, CalPERS granted a one-time approval of the city manager’s 2005 increase.”
Just last week, CalPERS officials expressed surprise at the hefty increases granted the former city administrator, Robert Rizzo, and two other top officials; it ordered a freeze on their pension benefits pending completion of an investigation by California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown. The three Bell managers have resigned but have not applied to receive retirement benefits from CalPERS.”
Again…that’s just perfect. We have documented the incredible mismanagement at CalPERS many times here at Mad As Hell And…, where a monkey pressing a button could do better investing the retirement and pension money of California than the Clueless Morons at CalPERS and that these Idiots at CalPERS knew about these OUTRAGEOUS salaries in Bell and did not tell anyone else goes to the heart of what is wrong in the Broken State. The folks in government on all levels in California are either one of two things: “In on the Con” or Stupid. If they are “In on the Con” they just work to keep the money from the taxpayers to the largesse of California government flowing all the while knowing that there will be a revolution if all of their OUTRAGEUS BEHAVIOR comes out and then there are the Stupid people. The Stupid people are just plain Stupid and most of the Stupid People are the ones with two or more degrees that have a lot of “education” but not a lick of common sense.
You can read further on the mismanagement and the Stupid People at CalPERS in another LA Times story:
Yes, these are VERY STUPID PEOPLE AT CalPERS and if you don’t believe that just read the above news article because at the end of it you will think that one monkey could replace EVERYONE at CalPERS and no one would notice a difference, except the monkey could do a lot better investing the state’s pension money!
If you want to put a nice little bow on the Bell, California story the LA Times is still on the beat with a story on Saturday morning reporting….
“The small and cash-strapped city of Bell is on the hook for a $35-million bond debt that voters didn’t approve — and that the city can’t afford to pay off, The Times has learned.
The debt, which Bell took on three years ago to buy land near the 710 Freeway, is more than twice the size of Bell’s annual operating budget. Come November, the city could lose the land to foreclosure. The city’s hope to profit from the purchase fell apart in 2008 after city officials failed to conduct basic environmental reviews.
The looming debt raises new questions about how city affairs were run under Robert Rizzo, who resigned as Bell’s city manager after The Times revealed he was earning nearly $800,000 a year. Rizzo and Mayor Oscar Hernandez defended his salary at the time, saying his management of the city’s finances warranted the high compensation.”
Again….this makes perfect sense because in the Bizarro-World of California of course Bell, California would have bond debt double its annual budget that it has no chance of paying off! That is California perfectly for all of you that have not experienced the Greatest Destroyers of a state in human history.
The Coup de Grace of this past week though was when the city of Los Angeles posted the salaries of all of its employees. Yes indeed, this is great reading all of these salaries, but it is also history because as you scroll through the salaries of the LA City employees you should be thinking to yourself that you are looking at meaningful history as it unfolds in real time….the history that will be told about the destruction of the United States of America by other people centuries from now.
You see, in the last couple of decades Government on all levels in the United States has not been about providing essential and necessary services to The People of the country, but rather has become little more than an Employment Agency, driven by the Public Employee Unions. The Unions clearly were not satisfied with bankrupting the US auto sector in the last 30 years (with an assist by some Absolute Idiots that were running the US auto companies) and so they turned their attention to expanding Public Employee Union jobs on governments at all levels and if the American Republic has to go down because of all these salaries, benefits and pensions then so be it!
Go to the above story and looking through the Los Angeles City salary database and see what kind of Outrageous salaries are being paid to government workers on all levels of L.A. City government and don’t forget that all of these people will be eligible for pensions for 30+ years (when they retire their 50s) of that will be very close to what they make in their last years on the job.
Yes, look through the above salary database and try to imagine the future for your children and grandchildren when BILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF THEIR MONEY will be diverted to pay for people sitting around on their asses doing nothing for 30 + plus years.
Yes, think about that for a moment….. Are you Mad? Good, then you are a Human Being now go out and vote out every incumbent in the next election.
Are you not mad enough yet? Here’s another story to get your blood boiling because whether you live in Los Angeles or not this is coming to your city and state soon….
“The cost of retirement benefits for Los Angeles city employees will grow by $800 million over the next five years, dramatically eroding the amount of money available for public services to taxpayers, according to a report issued Tuesday.
In a bleak assessment delivered to members of the City Council, City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana said pensions and health benefits for current and future retirees would jump from $1.4 billion next year to at least $2.2 billion in 2015.”
Those costs remain a fraction of the city’s overall annual budget, which is currently $18.8 billion. But more troubling is the fact that retirement costs are consuming an increasingly large portion of the general fund, which pays for basic services such as parks and public safety.
By 2015, nearly 20% of the city’s general fund budget is expected to go toward the retirement costs of police officers and firefighters, who now have an average retirement age of 51. The figure was 8% last year.
Once civilian employees are factored in, nearly a third of the city’s general fund could be consumed by retirement costs by 2015, Santana said.
“For every dollar you’re paying into your pension systems, you’re not paying into libraries, parks and various other city services,” Santana told the council.”
No Damn Kidding! Yes, we have no doubt about it now, if you are a Human Being, if you are an American, you are Mad…..
Thanks to the Los Angeles Times for getting on and staying on the beat in Bell, California and beyond….
In the last couple of decades as the hapless, confused and buffoonish “Elected Leaders” of the United States of America have abdicated their real job of working for the People of America, corporate America and the Wall Street Bastards have been running wild putting the lives of Americans in danger and ripping off anyone and everyone that fell into their field of vision.
The Wall Street Bastards in particular, who never had a strong sense of right and wrong forget about morals or common decency, have been allowed by both Democrats and Republicans to pillage and steal from the American People on a daily basis while the morons over at the Securities and Exchange Commission can’t track down the biggest Ponzi scheme in history even when it is dropped in their laps. Yes, the SEC can regulate Wall Street…..Please, if you can’t identify the $20 Billion Dollar Ponzi Scheme of Bernie Madoff when a highly qualified person leads you right to his door then you don’t have any chance to deal with the Wall Street Bastards that will pick your pocket if you get within 5 feet of them in southern Manhattan.
Probably some of the most Incredibly Outrageous things that the Wall Street Bastards have pulled off in recent years have been its “work” with counties and cities around the United States when it was “helping” them raise debt in the capital markets. Yes, there was a time when Wall Street Banks actually viewed the cities and counties that they worked for around the US as clients or even partners with themselves and others on Wall Street that helped public entities raise money to fund schools and municipal projects. Sadly, that client based relationship between the Wall Street Bastards and municipalities ended long ago and the SOBs in southern Manhattan have come to view cities and counties as just someone else they can rip off and since most people working in government and sitting on school boards don’t know up from down they have been very easy pray for the Wall Street Bastards.
The goings on in Jefferson County, Alabama where the Wall Street Bastards roped that county and its Idiots “Elected Leaders” into a series of “auction rate” securities is but one example of how the Wall Street Bastards rip off the American People which was brilliantly chronicled by Rolling Stone writer Matt Taibbi in his article: Looting Main Street. Yes, read that article and if you are not pissed off at everyone from the Wall Street Bastards to the Clueless Idiots in Washington DC that are supposed to be watching these thieves then you are not an American.
The New York Times is out with a similar story on Friday, this time the Wall Street Bastards have been doing their handiwork in the city of Denver and can you believe it…. Against the Denver Public School System and schoolchildren! Yes, these Wall Street Bastards will steal from everyone, even children and schools, and on the trading floors of Wall Street as the Bastards steal from Americans they are high-fiving each other and laughing at what a bunch of Buffoons the American People are and how we elect Morons to Washington DC Getting pissed off yet? Good. Prepare to get really pissed off now…
“In the spring of 2008, the Denver public school system needed to plug a $400 million hole in its pension fund. Bankers at JPMorgan Chase offered what seemed to be a perfect solution.
The bankers said that the school system could raise $750 million in an exotic transaction that would eliminate the pension gap and save tens of millions of dollars annually in debt costs — money that could be plowed back into Denver’s classrooms, starved in recent years for funds.
To members of the Denver Board of Education, it sounded ideal. It was complex, involving several different financial institutions and transactions. But Michael F. Bennet, now a United States senator from Colorado who was superintendent of the school system at the time, and Thomas Boasberg, then the system’s chief operating officer, persuaded the seven-person board of the deal’s advantages, according to interviews with its members.
Rather than issue a plain-vanilla bond with a fixed interest rate, Denver followed its bankers’ suggestions and issued so-called pension certificates with a derivative attached; the debt carried a lower rate but it could also fluctuate if economic conditions changed.
The Denver schools essentially made the same choice some homeowners make: opting for a variable-rate mortgage that offered lower monthly payments, with the risk that they could rise, instead of a conventional, fixed-rate mortgage that offered larger, but unchanging, monthly payments.
The Denver school board unanimously approved the JPMorgan deal and it closed in April 2008, just weeks after a major investment bank, Bear Stearns, failed. In short order, the transaction went awry because of stress in the credit markets, problems with the bond insurer and plummeting interest rates.”
Now if your IQ is over room temperature do you believe that it makes any sense at all for the Denver Public Schools to be doing exotic transactions that they don’t understand with the Wall Street Bastards? If you just said that municipalities should be driving a hard bargain with the banks that WORK FOR THEM to raise money via the debt markets and that the goal when issuing debt is to ALWAYS go for low interest fixed-interest rate debt that has a steady repayment schedule then you win the prize….but clearly these Idiots with the Denver Public Schools don’t understand one basic fact…
The Wall Street Bastards are THIEVES, CROOKS, PICK POCKETS, and about any other negative term you can come up with that denotes someone that wakes up every morning thinking about how they are going to steal money from someone else. No, the Wall Street Bastards did not view the Denver Public Schools as a client that was to be “served” but rather as a bunch of Boobs that could ripped off and which would conveniently generate millions of dollars in fees that will of course flow to the Wall Street Bastards and then to their fleets of cars, multiple homes around the world and other places where these Useless Excuses for Human Beings waste their money.
The New York Times continues…
“Since it struck the deal, the school system has paid $115 million in interest and other fees, at least $25 million more than it originally anticipated.
To avoid mounting expenses, the Denver schools are looking to renegotiate the deal. But to unwind it all, the schools would have to pay the banks $81 million in termination fees, or about 19 percent of its $420 million payroll.
John MacPherson, a former interim executive director of the Denver Public Schools Retirement System, predicts that the 2008 deal will generate big costs to the school system down the road. “There is no happy ending to this,” Mr. MacPherson said. “Hindsight being 20-20, the pension certificates issuance is something that should never have happened.”
- – - – -
Joseph S. Fichera, chief executive of Saber Partners, a financial advisory firm that specializes in structured finance, said that the type of transaction pursued by the Denver schools was a false solution for what the issuers want to achieve — lower long-term costs — because the banks selling the deals rarely quantified all of the potential risks involved.
“The issuer made a simple financing highly complex and took on substantial risk without knowing how large its downside could be,” he said, referring to the Denver deal. “The advisers and bankers may have disclosed that there were risks, but apparently did not help the issuer truly understand them. They typically present economic outcomes to the issuer only on projected savings and assume away any chance of the risks happening.””
Thank goodness that Joseph S. Fichera has the guts to tell the truth about this Outrageous Transaction that was proposed by the Wall Street Bastards and agreed to by the Clueless members of the Denver Public Schools Board of Education. Clearly, the Clueless members of the Board of Education in Denver didn’t quite understand who they were dealing with in the Wall Street Bastards but we will let everyone know so that anyone reading this blog will know just what is going on here.
The Wall Street Bastards have no ethics, morals, nor common decency, no understanding of right from wrong and they wake up every day of the week and sit in front of computer screens and try to steal money from other people though “exotic” transactions and if they rip off a bunch of schoolchildren in Denver and put millions of dollars in their pockets that is just an average day for them as their reign of terror on the American People continues. That is who the Wall Street Bastards really are….
….and anyone that does business with the Wall Street Bastards should realize going in that these Bastards are going to work like Hell to rip your butt off and the rear-ends of anyone that you might be representing as well. If you are in a position where you must do business with the Wall Street Bastards then here is what you should tell them when they sit down across from you in their $4,000 dollar suits and their pompous ass smiles:
“Listen up you son of a bitch. If you want to do business with me and my company/city/county/organization then you are WORKING FOR ME, not the other way around and I am assuming right from the start that you and your buddies back at the office are going to try and rip me and my people off for every nickel possible. Now, we can enter into an agreement and some transactions that you will make some money on but we are going to negotiate the terms of the deal upfront and I am going to bust your balls if you cross me on the deal that we eventually work out and then I will sue your ass from one end of the United States to the other and I will also do everything in my power to see you lose as much business as possible. Now, do you want to WORK FOR ME AND MY PEOPLE AND SERVE US or do you want to play your stupid little games with the sorry SOBs back at your office that wouldn’t know an honest days work on the best day of their lives?”
If the Wall Street Bastard flinches just send his Sorry Ass packing because like most the Wall Street Bastards that have weaseled out of service in the US military and don’t give a Damn if they bring down the American Republic with the financial chicanery you more than likely will be dealing with a Sorry Excuse for a Human Being if he is from Wall Street. (Side Note: Does anyone really think that 99 percent of these Bastards on Wall Street would last 2 seconds in the US military? Please, the Wall Street Bastards are mostly Ivy League Candy Asses that would be Yellow-Bellied Cowards if they ever had to get into a real combat situation which makes all their crowing about “Being a man” look very, very stupid, but then when Americans go to war we don’t go to Wall Street to find Real Man because there is not a Real Man working on Wall Street. That’s right, Candy Asses up and down the line and sitting in front of computers all day dreaming of ways to rip people off!)
Yes, if you dealing with a Wall Street Bastard go ahead and assume you are dealing with Gordon Gekko. Gordon Gekko’s character in the movie Wall Street was a Sorry Excuse for a Human Being and all of these Wall Street Bastards are just little Gekkos running around thinking of ways to rip people off all day long!
As for the problem that the Denver Public Schools are having with the Wall Street Bastards and the debt they issued we would recommend that they tell those Wall Street SOBs that unless the Bastards reissue new fixed-rate debt to replace those “exotic” securities (really just BS securities) and waive all the fees associated with doing that then the Wall Street Bastards can GO POUND SAND!
Here’s one for you: How do you know when a Wall Street Bastard is telling the truth? Oh, that’s easy, a Wall Street Bastard wouldn’t know the truth if it hit him in the butt because most of them have been raised by wolves and were educated by leftist buffoons in college that they made fun of all day. Telling the truth? Please, the Wall Street Bastards lives are such a web of lies there is no chance they could ever find there way back to the real truth in this life.
Is there any chance we could get the Wall Street Bastards working for their clients and customers again instead of working all day long trying to figure out how to rip off the American People? Not very likely, unless the US Government starting throwing these Sorry Excuses for Human Beings into jail when they pulled the kind of Bullshit they pulled on the schoolchildren of Denver, Colorado. Yes, throw a few of these Bastards in jail, and we mean the CEOs of these Wall Street Casinos (banks) and maybe just maybe they would get the message…..
Nah….right behind the Wall Street Bastard CEOs are more Sorry Excuses of Human Beings that have spent their whole lives thinking of ways to rip people off so unless we are going to throw 25,000 people in jail…..Hey, there’s an idea….dozens of Federal Grand Juries in New York City investigating these Sorry Bastards and indicting their Sorry Asses on all the Crapola they have been pulling for years while the Buffoons in Washington DC have been asleep at the switch… Yes, that would get their Damn attention, but little else will and that means…
Don’t do business with the Wall Street Bastards unless you must and then don’t trust them with a pencil unless they pay for it first!
In the Bizarro-World that is the state of California, the Republican candidate for Governor Meg Whitman seems likes she will say or do anything and spend any amount of money to become Governor of the Broken State. Whitman ran to the right in the Republican primary spouting all kinds of things that the conservative right loved and now in the beginnings of the general election she is all over the lot seemingly straddled on both sides of lots of the key issues including: Immigration, Global Warming, the Budget….
We here at Mad As Hell And.. can only wonder if Meg Whitman stands for anything at all or maybe she just stands for everything and everyone! With Whitman talking out of both sides, make that every side of her mouth on every issue, in the Bizarro-State of California we actually have a situation developing where the Democrat nominee for Governor, Jerry Brown may be the sane and honest candidate in the race!
Yes, Jerry Brown is a crazy, wacko liberal but at least Jerry Brown is honest in where he stands on the issues. Case in point, Meg Whitman went on the John and Ken Radio show in Los Angeles on Wednesday and when she wasn’t making a fool of herself she was twisting herself into such a frenzy that she had to leave the studio looking like pretzel! Only a week ago Jerry Brown called into the show and repeated the stands he has held on many of the key issues for years even though that was different than the hosts of the show! Jerry Brown is the one with principles here? Oh, California is NUTS!
Here’s a link to the Meg Whitman, “Nutmeg” audio on the John and Ken show: Audio Link
The Los Angeles Times is all over this story as well…
“Meg Whitman’s 54th birthday Wednesday featured a rough time on the campaign trail because of what critics on both the left and the right view as the GOP gubernatorial nominee’s shifting tone on illegal immigration.
Continuing her aggressive courtship of Latino voters, Whitman opened a campaign office in East Los Angeles and announced new Spanish-language advertisements aimed at this vital voter group. But her words were interrupted by a raucous crowd of protesters outside.
“There has not been a Republican candidate for governor that has had an office in East L.A. for 30 years. So we are going to fight for every vote,” she said as protesters picketed, chanted and banged drums outside the strip-mall venue.
The interruption was unusual for a Whitman campaign event; her appearances are usually highly scripted and tightly controlled. The candidate seemed rattled, occasionally stumbled over her words and kept her remarks short.”
Well, since Meg Whitman’s campaign is filled with every Republican Hack consultant that can chew gum and talk at the same time, it’s not really a surprise to us that there would be nonsense and gibberish coming out of “Nutmeg’s” mouth because the national Republican Party has become nothing more than a stalking horse for the Fortune 500 and Wall Street with a dose of some crazy wackos that want to take us back to the buggy-whip days of America.
The LA Times continues on “Nutmeg’s” appearance on the John and Ken radio show:
“After the event, Whitman headed to the conservative “John and Ken” show on KFI-AM (640). The influential hosts for weeks have been hammering the candidate for pivoting on illegal immigration.
The interview was combative and tense. Whitman danced around many of the hosts’ questions, such as why geography and size make Arizona’s crackdown on illegal immigration unworkable in California, or why she is running ads about Latino children but not those of other ethnicities.
“Why don’t you make all your positions clear in all languages? That’s all we’re asking,” said co-host John Kobylt, adding that she should translate her billboards into English. “Put those in English-speaking Orange County,” he said”
Yes, that about sums up Meg “Nutmeg” Whitman. This women will clearly say or do anything to get elected and if she has to find another dozen Republican consultants and pay them millions of dollars to get her on the both sides of every Damn issue we have no doubt “Nutmeg” will write those checks! John Seiler at Cal Watchdog also has a great write-up of the disaster that was Meg Whitman’s appearance on the John and Ken Show: Meg Crashes on John & Ken
Oh the Madness of the State of California where the average man or woman that gets up every morning and works hard, sends his kids to school, raises his family and basically just hopes that the Stupid SOBs in Sacramento will just do their job and leave him and his family alone is faced with voting for Jerry Brown or Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown seems like the most honest candidate?
Yes, we have officially hit THE BOTTOM in the Broken State!
If we didn’t have to work for a living those of us here at Mad As Hell And… could sit in front of the computer all day and write about Absolutely Outrageous things that are happening all across America today. Yes, the Mad As Hell beat is never ending with all the idiots and buffoons running around and thus we are back on the beat…
It’s not enough for the Democrat Party of California, otherwise known as the Greatest Job Killing Machine in the History of Man and the Destroyer of the State of California, to attack the People and Businesses of California with massive amounts of regulations and rules, because they are back at it again wanting even more tax increases!
Are these Democrats stupid or just plain dumb? Good question.
“The legislative budget conference committee approved the Democrats’ controversial tax plan today on a majority vote, although some lawmakers acknowledged that the analysis is incomplete.
Democrats officially unveiled their plan Tuesday to raise taxes on income and vehicles but cut sales taxes. They asserted that the proposal would save taxpayers overall, but Republicans and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Department of Finance provided separate analysis showing that the plan would increase taxes on the middle class taxpayers.”
Yes, that makes perfect sense. Come up with some kind of crazy tax dodge with the California Democrats wanting to raise some taxes and lower some others all which makes about as much sense as having people in power that don’t know up from down forget about how the Real World and Business works….Oh, that’s 99 percent of Democrats in Sacramento! Great!
How about this nonsense from the same story…
“Michael Cohen, deputy legislative analyst with the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, said he could not yet conclude whether the plan would result in higher or lower taxes for Californians. He said it was clear that some households would fare better and some worse, but his office is still reviewing the proposal.
Cohen said the plan would make California’s tax system more volatile, but he was not sure how much more so. The problem, he said, was that the personal income tax is a more unpredictable revenue source than sales taxes.”
Can you say that these “Elected Leaders” in Sacramento are some of the stupidest people on Planet Earth? Why, YES WE CAN!
If the goal of the Democrat Party of California is to obliterate jobs, drive business out of the state, to gut and undermine the educational system, to destroy families and communities, to make the lives of California miserable and more tougher everyday and to eventually send the Golden Broken State into insolvency then…they are succeeding and on the verge of accomplishing their goal!
Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez points out that the Madness of the “public servants” in Bell, California may have a silver lining after all. Concerned citizens of California and across the United States have been watching in shock for years now of the growing promises that have been made by local and state governments, and maybe it will take something like the outrageous salaries and now probably pensions of these Sorry Excuses for Humans in Bell, California who seemed to get a thrill out of sticking it to the citizens they were supposed to be serving.
“And so we are, with the fiasco in the city of Bell hammering home that point after a Times expose on a city administrator making nearly $800,000. Robert “Ratso” Rizzo’s pension could hit $700,000 a year, while residents of low-income Bell pay the second highest property tax rate in L.A. County to foot the excesses of city leaders.
But we’ve got public pension trouble across the deficit-ridden state, even where retirement payouts aren’t nearly as obscene. The crashed economy, along with corruption scandals and boneheaded investments by the state’s public pension system, CalPERS, means taxpayers have had to fork over an extra $600 million for pensions this year. According to Fritz, thousands of retired public employees in California collect $100,000 a year or more, often with medical benefits too.
I don’t have a problem with safety nets in retirement. But do they have to be spun from gold?”
That’s what sticks in our craw here at Mad As Hell And…, that any “Elected Leader” or government worker would think that $100K Plus annual pensions is appropriate under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES! We can certainly see that people that have worked for 25 plus years in a government job would expect a pension, but Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars a year PLUS free health care? No way in Hell!
Steve Lopez continues…
“I’m tired of hearing about plumbers, cops, firefighters, electricians and street sweepers hanging it up in their 50s at nearly full pay and sometimes collecting Social Security to boot. Taxpayers are covering a part of the cost while seeing their own jobs disappear, their salaries shrink and their 401(k)s take a beating.
Pensions? They went “poof” in the private sector years ago. And the argument that public servants deserve better retirement benefits because they work at lower pay than the rest of us doesn’t hold up in this economy.
So how did we get into this mess, with Fritz and others predicting calamity if we don’t get more of the kinds of reforms Gov. Schwarzenegger has worked out with half a dozen state employee labor unions? When Fritz got home from that trip to Tahoe and did some research, she discovered that the seeds of the current disaster were sown in 1999.
That year, with the economy fat and public officials happy, the state banked on an endless run of milk and honey. Gov. Gray Davis and the Legislature — with nearly unanimous bipartisan support — raised pensions for state workers to nation-leading levels under SB 400. Many cities, counties and other public entities joined the party, and smiling union leaders could tell their members they had gotten a spectacular return on years of faithful campaign donations.”
Yes, in 1999 former California Governor Gray Davis and the ever-compliant California legislature were all too happy to pass along Outrageous Pension Promises to Government Workers (Read…Public Union Workers that stuffed the pockets of the Sorry Excuse for “Public Servants” that put California on a path to assured insolvency!), because the stock market would go up forever and all would be right in the Fantasyland! NOT! Check out the 9,000 Plus Retired Government Workers in California that are already getting $100K Plus pensions, and there are thousands more coming in the next decade!
Steve Lopez concludes, accurately so in our minds…
“Fritz said cops and firefighters now retire, on average, at 54, while other government employees retire at 59. If each group worked five years longer, she said, the public cost would be cut in half. She’d also require all employees to contribute to their own pensions and drastically lower the formulas for figuring retirement pay.
In Bell, where the staggering salaries of top executives are under investigation and they were forced to resign, the pension formula is one of the more generous in the state. In the case of Rizzo, it’s 2.7% of his $787,637 salary multiplied by three decades in three public jobs, with the gravy train starting at his current age of 55. That puts him between $600,000 and $700,000 a year in pension pay.
Maybe we should thank the dirty rat. His greed and arrogance were so monumental, he’s shocked the entire state, and that just might send the whole gravy train right off the tracks.”
Now is there anyone on Planet Earth that believes that any Government Worker, including former Presidents of the United States, should be hauling down Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars a year while in retirement, in their 50s no less? Please, if you think that is right you are indeed a Complete and Utter Moron and it is YOU that will be responsible for the destruction of the American Republic.
Why are We The American People Mad As Hell? If you aren’t Mad As Hell after reading Steve Lopez’s column then you are beyond help and don’t really give a Damn about your country because whether you realize it or not OUR political leaders have the United States of America on a path to the biggest fall since the Roman Empire fell to pieces about 1500 years ago.
Let’s home the Los Angeles Times stays on the beat of serving The People of LA, California and United States because for far too long the LA Times and other big city newspapers have been on the side of the Elites in Government that look at the “unwashed masses” as something to be tolerated at times and to be dismissed eventually as little more than serfs that have to be pandered to ever 2 or 4 years.
Sorry you Bastards, dismiss The American People at your own peril because when The American People ROAR we will be heard….
There is so much nonsense emanating from Washington DC these days that is hard to keep up with all of the BS coming out of our “Elected Leaders” as both political parties play their silly games.
The entire “Bush Tax Cuts” debate on whether the “Bush Tax Cuts” should be allowed to expire thus raising the tax rate of a very small amount of Americas by 3 percent per year or whether Congress should extend the “Bush Tax Cuts” is yet another example of the Idiocy of these Morons that are supposed to be representing the People of the United States.
The “Bush Tax Cuts” debate really is just fodder for the political elites that divide themselves along ideological lines and argue with each other all day long and then at night have dinner and drinks in restaurants, bars and the parlors of Washington DC laughing about the unwashed masses “Out there” that think these Bastards in OUR Nation’s Capital are working against each other. Hah! What a joke that is, because anyone with a working brain knows that ALL of these Bastards in Washington DC, whether they be conservative or liberal, are always working towards expanding their power, influence and own wealth ALWAYS at the expense of the American People.
Getting back to the “Bush Tax Cuts” debate ALL of these Bastards in Washington DC know that it is a fact that the entire US Tax Code is the greatest job killer in the history of Man on Planet Earth, but since these SOBs get their pockets stuffed with lots of $$$$$$$ to make sure the Tax Code STAYS COMPLICATED they don’t give a Damn what kind of havoc are of their Absolute Stupidity wreaks in the country. No, the problem isn’t raising the marginal tax rate by a few percentage points, but that the entire US Tax Code is in fact killing the American Republic by strangling the People with its complexity and stupidity.
The “Bush Tax Cuts” debate is great for the political elite because it shrouds the ugly secret that the US Tax Code is put together to benefit the very wealthiest American and large corporations that because of their use of lawyers and accountants are able to take advantage of the massive amount of loopholes that are put into the US Tax Code FOR THEIR USE so they can avoid paying taxes on all the money they haul in each year. For all of the talk you hear from conservatives about “lowering tax rates” or other such nonsense, these Bastards (just like their rich Democrat friends) only goal is to keep the US Tax Code as complicated and loophole filled as possible so that what All Americans are really paying in Income and Payroll taxes is hidden from the American People……because if and when the American People find out how about our “Elected Leaders” have been bought off like whores to do things that benefit their rich benefactors thousands of politicians across the country might just find themselves in prison which is where people that take bribes to do things should end up.
David Stockman, the former Office of Management & Budget Director in the early Reagan Administration addresses some of these issues in a New York Times Op-Ed piece where he talks about the absurdity of some of these Republicans that talk about one thing but do something else entirely.
“IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.
More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes.
This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. More specifically, the new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one.”
Amen to that David Stockman, but don’t count on any of these Republican Bastards to do anything different because the leaders of the Republican Party are little more than street whores that have sold their souls to Rich Americans and Corporate America just like the leaders of the Democrat Party have sold out to Trial Lawyers the Unions. If were thinking that these Bastards in Washington DC that are purporting to be “Public Servants” give street whores a bad name then you would be right because almost every damn one of them would sell the United States of America down the river if their “bosses” (that would be the people that give them $$$$$$ and lead them around like puppets) told them to do so.
David Stockman continues, and quite right on target we would add…
“The second unhappy change in the American economy has been the extraordinary growth of our public debt. In 1970 it was just 40 percent of gross domestic product, or about $425 billion. When it reaches $18 trillion, it will be 40 times greater than in 1970. This debt explosion has resulted not from big spending by the Democrats, but instead the Republican Party’s embrace, about three decades ago, of the insidious doctrine that deficits don’t matter if they result from tax cuts.
In 1981, traditional Republicans supported tax cuts, matched by spending cuts, to offset the way inflation was pushing many taxpayers into higher brackets and to spur investment. The Reagan administration’s hastily prepared fiscal blueprint, however, was no match for the primordial forces — the welfare state and the warfare state — that drive the federal spending machine.
Soon, the neocons were pushing the military budget skyward. And the Republicans on Capitol Hill who were supposed to cut spending exempted from the knife most of the domestic budget — entitlements, farm subsidies, education, water projects. But in the end it was a new cadre of ideological tax-cutters who killed the Republicans’ fiscal religion.”
Double Amen to that David Stockman! These Republicans that talk about fiscal restraint and deficits are just incredibly hypocrites because they feed at the trough of government spending for their “bosses” (the people that give them money and expect A LOT in return) and don’t give two rips if the country goes bankrupt or not. Hell, most of these Bastards don’t give two rips if their children and grandchildren’s lives are destroyed, just as long as they can stay in power and keep spending money and sending OUR MONEY to their benefactors!
David Stockman is really getting warmed up when he turns to the most insidious development in the history of the American Republic: The growth of the financial sector or as we refer to it here at Mad As Hell And…, the Wall Street Bastards takeover of the United States of America….
“The third ominous change in the American economy has been the vast, unproductive expansion of our financial sector. Here, Republicans have been oblivious to the grave danger of flooding financial markets with freely printed money and, at the same time, removing traditional restrictions on leverage and speculation. As a result, the combined assets of conventional banks and the so-called shadow banking system (including investment banks and finance companies) grew from a mere $500 billion in 1970 to $30 trillion by September 2008.
But the trillion-dollar conglomerates that inhabit this new financial world are not free enterprises. They are rather wards of the state, extracting billions from the economy with a lot of pointless speculation in stocks, bonds, commodities and derivatives. They could never have survived, much less thrived, if their deposits had not been government-guaranteed and if they hadn’t been able to obtain virtually free money from the Fed’s discount window to cover their bad bets.”
Triple Amen to that David Stockman and the man is dead on target here. The Wall Street Bastards are with the complete help and support of the US Treasury Department and Federal Reserve running an Unregulated Wall Street Casino that’s only purpose is to make a very small amount of people VERY RICH! There was a time when Wall Street was a place where American Business could come to raise money to start or expand legitimate business that would make real products or provide real services that would employ REAL AMERICANS, but now Wall Street is just flat-out a bunch of Ivy League flunkies sitting in front of computer screens trading digital paper trying to get one over or rip-off each other.
That’s right, “Wall Street” is nothing but a BIG LAS VEGAS CASINO that is funded and kept alive BY THE FULL FAITH AND CREDIT OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE!
And these Wall Street Bastards wonder why they are so unpopular? Please, any American or CEO of any corporation stupid enough to trust their money or their company’s money with these Wall Street Bastards is a FOOL OF A HIGH ORDER! Not that we don’t have some very stupid people running Fortune 500 companies that get ripped off by the Wall Street Bastards every day of the week, but just keep asking for more! Never underestimate the power of a $2,000 dollar suit to get people to hand their money over to people that most Americans wouldn’t trust to watch their dog, forget about their money!
David Stockman finishes as only someone that has seen the inside of both Washington and Wall Street could…
“The fourth destructive change has been the hollowing out of the larger American economy. Having lived beyond our means for decades by borrowing heavily from abroad, we have steadily sent jobs and production offshore. In the past decade, the number of high-value jobs in goods production and in service categories like trade, transportation, information technology and the professions has shrunk by 12 percent, to 68 million from 77 million. The only reason we have not experienced a severe reduction in nonfarm payrolls since 2000 is that there has been a gain in low-paying, often part-time positions in places like bars, hotels and nursing homes.
It is not surprising, then, that during the last bubble (from 2002 to 2006) the top 1 percent of Americans — paid mainly from the Wall Street casino — received two-thirds of the gain in national income, while the bottom 90 percent — mainly dependent on Main Street’s shrinking economy — got only 12 percent. This growing wealth gap is not the market’s fault. It’s the decaying fruit of bad economic policy.”
What is it now….Quadruple Amen to that David Stockman! What else can we say, but David Stockman has nailed these Sorry Excuses for “Public Servants” in DC and these Sorry Excuses for Human Beings on Wall Street.
Here’s a Fact: Most of these “Public Servants” in Washington DC and ALL of these Bastards on Wall Street don’t give TWO RIPS about anything but making themselves and their friends as RICH AS POSSIBLE on the Dime of the American People. The “Public Servants” figured out in the last couple of decades that Alan “I wouldn’t know an honest day’s work if it hit me in the butt” Greenspan and Uncle Ben “Printing Presses, I need more Printing Presses!” Bernanke will cash any check that they send to them know matter how large or how much danger it puts the Republic in. The Wall Street Bastards figured out that if they get “Too Big To Fail” they can take any Damn risk that pops into their minds and if they come up with someone like a Credit Default Swap or Collateralized Debt Obligation and make it sound like legitimate finance they can make TRILIONS OF DOLLARS IN BETS between each other and not worry about the consequences because they have “people” in high places that will make sure their SORRY ASSSES always get bailed out.
We, The American People that is, have some news for all of you Bastards in Washington DC and on Wall Street. The days of all of you ripping us off to make your friends and benefactors rich are coming to an end and when the dust settle a lot of you, including many that think right now that they “got away” with Absolute Nonsense in recent years, are going to find yourselves in prison and we are not talking about Country Club prison. No, no, we are talking about Hard Time for committing crimes against The American People.
The American People are just getting cranked up and when they find out what all of you Bastards have really been up to in recent years we may indeed have a Second American Revolution, but this time OUR Constitution will allow The American People to conduct this Revolution at the ballot box and then in the courts of OUR COUNTRY and where that all goes the Bastards that have been up to no good for the past couple of decades better start worrying about….
Hey you Wall Street Bastards sitting in those corner offices with those big homes in The Hamptons…. That especially means you!
From “The Wall Street Bastards Own the US Government” Department we have this story from Charlie Gasparino of Fox Business on Goldman Sachs and its new “approach” to “Financial Regulation.”
“Goldman Sachs (GS: 147.09 ,0.00 ,0.00%) has figured out a novel approach to getting around the Volcker Rule’s restrictions on trading: it’s remaking its risk-taking traders into asset managers, and the rest of Wall Street may soon follow, FOX Business Network has learned.
The big Wall Street firm has moved about half of its “proprietary” stock-trading operations — which had made market bets using the firm’s own capital — into its asset management division, where these traders can talk to Goldman clients and then place their market bets.
The move is designed to exploit a loophole in the Volker Rule, part of the recently signed financial-reform legislation named after presidential economic adviser and former Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker. The Volcker Rule is supposed to scale back on Wall Street risk taking by ending what’s known as proprietary trading, where firms use their own ideas and capital to make market bets.
But by having the traders work in asset management, where they will take market positions while dealing with clients, Goldman believes it can meet the rule’s mandates, avoid large-scale layoffs and preserve some of the same risk taking that has earned it enormous profits, people close to the firm say.”
Oh….what a BIG SURPRISE! Here’s is what you need to know about the Wall Street Bastards…
They could care less what anyone in Washington DC does or doesn’t do because the Wall Street Bastards are going to do…
WHATEVER THE HELL THEY WANT TO DO!
The Wall Street Bastards will do WHATEVER THE HELL THEY WANT TO DO and not give a thought to what the Fools and Buffoons in OUR Nation’s Capital are up to, because they have bought off (the good ‘ole campaign contributions) anyone and everyone that matters in Washington DC.
Here’s a Fact: If the Wall Street Bastards call down to Washington DC and tell all of the people they have bought off to strip off all their clothes, to head down to the Washington Monument and then have everyone hold hands and sing Kumbaya….
There would be thousands of Elected and Appointed Leaders, Lobbyists, Media Members and lots of other people in the Washington “Elite” stripping naked, heading down to the Washington Monument, holding hands and singing Kumbaya.
Here’s the REAL REALITY OF “Financial Regulation”
The Wall Street Bastards could care less what the Buffoons in Washington DC do about anything and if anyone in OUR Nation’s Capital believes that anyone on Wall Street is fearful of the recently passed “Financial Regulation” then OUR Elected Leaders are dumber than we thought they were!
There is only one question that must be asked about whether the recently “Financial Regulation” is legitimate or not (The Warren Buffett proposed plan for Wall Street):
If one of the “Banks” (actually just unregulated Las Vegas Casinos) has to get government support in the future will the CEO of that “Bank” have his (and his family’s) entire net worth wiped out and will the top 1000 executives in that “Bank” have their family’s net worth be wiped out as well?
The answer to the above question is a BIG FAT NO!
Then the so-called “Financial Regulation” is BOGUS!
Charlie Gasparino continues with the Absolute Absurdity of these Buffoons in Washington DC thinking that anything that they do matters at all…
“Goldman’s move also underscores the weakness in the Volcker Rule, which was designed to reduce the same type of risk-taking activities that led to the 2008 financial meltdown. Simply by labeling a trade “customer related” the firm can still make large market bets, and thus engage in some of the same risk taking the rule was designed to eliminate.
A spokesman for the firm had no comment, but people close to Goldman say Goldman will now be weighing other similar moves — taking traders out of the firm’s brokerage division and moving them to other areas of the firm where they can deal with clients and circumvent the rule.
Other Wall Street firms are watching Goldman’s moves closely and are considering similar measures. “If these traders become more client focused they can survive,” said a senior executive at one of the big banks.”
And the Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round, Round and Round, Round and Round, the Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round, All Day Long!
Here’s a little Factoid for you to consider: Wall Street used to be a place where American Business would go to raise capital to start or expand their companies but it has been taken over by traders at the “Banks” (Just Las Vegas Casinos in Manhattan) that don’t give two rips about anything but working like Hell to find out ways to Rip Off American Business, The American People and even their own Clients and Customers. The Wall Street Bastards could care less about anything BUT lining their pockets with as much $$$$$$$ as possible and if getting to that $$$$$$$$ they have to take down the American Republic these Bastards would take down the country every time.
We ask again would you trust any of these Bastards to watch your dog?
If you would then you are a Complete and Utter Moron!
From the “At Least Half of Official Washington Will be in Prison” by the summer of 2012 if a third-party candidate is elected to the Presidency of the United States, we have this story from the Associated Press on government agencies, the Homeland Security Department in this case, having political appointees deciding on which Freedom of Information (FOIA) requests to approve. No, we are not making this up!
It seems more and more that as the Stupidity of past decisions by Government Leaders continues to pile up and that there have been lots of people stealing BILLIONS OF DOLLARS from the American People (No, we have forgotten the “Great Wall Street Train Robbery of 2008” where the Wall Street Bastards stole BILLIONS from the American People with the FULL COOPERATION of the US Government!), one can only wonder if these Government Folks have been studying the techniques of Hitler and Stalin….
Here’s a Newsflash for the Bastards that are WORKING FOR US in Government on all levels in the United States:
WE THE PEOPLE own the AMERICAN REPUBLIC and you Bastards WORK FOR US! If the Associated Press or any other American sends a FOIA request to anyone in the US Government then that FOIA request better be acted on quickly because remember…
YOU BASTARDS WORK FOR US!
Ted Bridis of the Associated Press has this OUTRAGEOUS story:
“For at least a year, the Homeland Security Department detoured requests for federal records to senior political advisers for highly unusual scrutiny, probing for information about the requesters and delaying disclosures deemed too politically sensitive, according to nearly 1,000 pages of internal e-mails obtained by The Associated Press.
The department abandoned the practice after AP investigated. Inspectors from the department’s Office of Inspector General quietly conducted interviews last week to determine whether political advisers acted improperly.
The Freedom of Information Act, the main tool forcing the government to be more open, is designed to be insulated from political considerations. Anyone who seeks information through the law is supposed to get it unless disclosure would hurt national security, violate personal privacy or expose confidential decision-making in certain areas.
But in July 2009, Homeland Security introduced a directive requiring a wide range of information to be vetted by political appointees for “awareness purposes,” no matter who requested it.”
“Awareness purposes?” That sounds something in Hitler’s government would have written and remember Barack Obama promised the most open government in US history!
We have a Newsflash for Barack Obama: Your Administration is the most private in US history and that is because the people around you are more interested in limiting “political damage” and getting you re-elected rather than doing what is right or legal even….
The AP continues…
“Career employees were ordered to provide Secretary Janet Napolitano’s political staff with information about the people who asked for records — such as where they lived, whether they were private citizens or reporters — and about the organizations where they worked.
If a member of Congress sought such documents, employees were told to specify Democrat or Republican.
This, despite President Barack Obama’s statement that federal workers should “act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation” under FOIA, and Attorney General Eric Holder’s assertion: “Unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles have no place in the new era of open government.””
Oh, that “Unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles have no place in the new era of open government” is RICH! Can you say….NOT!
First these Bastards have run up Trillions in Debt that we will never be able to pay back under any scenario and now when the AP makes FOIA requests for information about OUR GOVERNMENT the Homeland Security Department is determining if the information will be released based up “political” considerations….. Now, if that doesn’t Piss You Off…Nothing Will!
Again….YOU BASTARDS AND SOBs WORK FOR US….
….not the other way around! One can only wonder…where the Hell is today’s Teddy Roosevelt when we really need him?
