Running on Empty

I am against the Bail Out.

And I'll tell you why. If somebody asks me for $700 Billion they better be able to articulate to me why they need it, what they are going to do with it, how they are going to pay it back, and (very importantly) why they are asking ME.

I have been paying as much attention to this fiasco as any other average citizen, and I have not heard a rational explanation of why this . . . whatever it is . . . is necessary.

No explanation = no money.

What I am able to glean is that over the past several years our financial system has veered into excessive risk taking through 2 channels, i) lowering standards for evaluating borrower's creditworthiness, and ii) lenders using imprudently high leverage to increase profits. So, now that the chickens have come home to roost (ha ha), we are seeing the 2 inevitable results, i) bad borrowers defaulting on their loans, and ii) over-leveraged lenders unable to withstand rising defaults on their portfolios because of their paper thin balance sheets.

I know it's more complicated than that. But I'm not a PhD and I don't have the time, or the ability, to spend trying to educate myself now when Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke are screaming that they need this money like yesterday. The hurry! hurry! hurry! of it all reminds me of being on a sales tour at a timeshare resort. So my instinct is to keep my wallet in my pants. (That's good advice generally, btw.)

Well, I found a smart guy who has articulated my feelings on the matter, Jeffrey A. Miron, an economist at Harvard. He explains why he's against the Bail Out in a short and easily readable opinion piece HERE at CNN.com.

NO BAIL OUT!!!

Lehman's Brother - Cooper Lehman

Meanwhile, back on Main Street:

Wall Street may be out of money, but Atlanta is out of gas.

At least we all get along here

There is no gas here. All of the gas stations have plastic bags over the handles of their pumps to signal that they are empty. Why? Because Texas had a big storm. Sighhhhhhh. Put two oil geniuses in the White House and what do we get? No redundancy in our vital infrastructure. Rumor is that the Port Arthur refinery is still not working because there is no electrical power to it. Can that be true? A refinery that doesn't have it's own generators? Talk about poor defense planning.

In the category of counting the glass half full, having no gas has gotten people to stop complaining about how much it costs once they are able to find some.

Meantime,

Of course, we Georgians are still running out of drinking water, but we've suspended our fretting about that to deal with this more imminent crisis of not being able to get to the grocery store.

Lake Lanier - Atlanta's Water Supply

I can't wait for the weekend.

Random Fourth Thoughts

Happy Fourth of July!

America the Beautiful

Go ahead and play this. It won't bite.

I WANT VISION! I WANT VISION! I WANT VISION!

Thank you, St. Thomas

I really do want vision. An American Vision. The Vision Thing. Remember that?

On this Fourth of July, Independence Day, America's Birthday, what do YOU want your country to be in 100 years?

Well, presently we are diligently building more highways, more strip malls, more sprawling suburbs, and lots of gee whiz fancy weapons to kill our enemies (and collateral civilians, who apparently we needn't feel responsible for).

So, is this where YOU want to go?

What do you reckon America will look like 100 years down this path?

They're YOUR grandkids, after all.

Welllll, this is where leadership comes into play. Since we are in the process of picking our next President, how about we ask about their 100 year vision.

I know, I know. McCain tried that and is still catching flack for it. But look at what we've learned! Most of us don't really want 100 years of Americans at war in Iraq, which most of us still have trouble picking out on the map. Hey, it may seem obvious that we wouldn't pick war over peace, but it's important to know this with clarity, not to mention certainty. The other thing that we learned by Mr. McCain's blunt proposal is that apparently a good number of us, though a minority, actually do want 100 years of war. That is really the surprising part to me, and, again, important to know.

So what? Does a long term vision matter in picking our President? Or is getting the housing market and retail sales back on track asap the most important thing? Well, actually, they are both important. We can't go bankrupt while we build our country's next generation of infrastructure.

So, looking for a vision, here's a crazy sentence I ran across recently: The purpose of humankind, like that of all other creation, is to sustain that which is right. For humankind, this occurs through active participation in life and the exercise of good thoughts, words and deeds.

Lot's of people believe this kind of stuff. But it's really hard to really live that way on a day to day basis in our commercial society. And a quick note to the few folks out there who will sniffily reply, "Well, it's not hard for me," come here so I can slap you.

So, today on America's day, where do we take her from here? Give it some thought. Ask Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain what they want the country to look like in 100 years. Of course, the hard part is always getting from here to there. But this is exactly what America has excelled at in it's history. It is our extraordinary national talent to be able to put our collective (commie word alert!) shoulder to the grindstone and get things done!

Can we do it? You bet your ass we can. Americans will work hard when persuaded that it really matters.

Ironic Hint Here

In the meantime, we need to take care of the business at hand today.

Today's Challenge - Black Gold, Texas Tea

Everybody talks about oil prices like they talk about bad weather. "Wonder if they'll go down?" "Well, they always have." Well, it ain't necessarily so. Oil prices are a tsunami that can drown us if not stopped.

The problem here is how to get the oil prices back down to a sustainable level. That is the goal. It is what we need. This is our endgame. Low oil prices define victory for America.

But the Bushies don't get it. Or, gasp!, maybe they are not really on our side. Bush and his crew seem to think that the real issue is whether the market is being "manipulated."

That's not the problem! The attitude of Hairless Hank Paulson and President Bush seems to be that if these high prices are simply a market response to supply and demand, then that's just fine. Our newsies all watch dispassionately while they dutifully report the latest numbers, then segue into their next news segments on rising unemployment, the falling dollar, inflation, and the need for higher interest rates here at home. It's all so interesting to watch, isn't it?

Famous Fiddler

As Johnny Most would say, Bush is fiddling and diddling.

This is absurd. Rome is burning! That's a metaphor. Don't flip to CNN.com. It means that we are fiddling around with minor things while everything around us turns to shit and gets flushed away.

Staring into the Abyss

War and oil, War and oil,

Go together like a lance and boil,

Let me tell ya, brother,

You can't have one without the other.

War for America

When I was young, we worried about war in Europe. A third of our Army was always stationed in Germany. Now Europe is unionized. The European hot spots today are where east meets west, like the Balkans, and Turkey.

The Patsy and Pansy Strategy

Republican pussy-ass Senator Mitch McConnel recently said, talking about Iran, "Americans should be scared." What a chicken. Scared of Iran? Is he kidding? Doesn't he know what a nuclear tipped MIRV ICBM is? Well, It's about 8 atom bombs on one missile that goes into outer space and then comes back down, each bomb going to a different target. Cool, huh? The US can send these missiles to anywhere we want in the world, on about 15 minutes notice. Each American ICBM has about 8 MIRV's. Once they are launched, they are on their way, and noone can stop them. We have about 3,000 of these babies. So, 3,000 ICBM's times 8 MIRV's is about 24,000 nuclear bombs raining down from above. And that doesn't even count the nuclear bombs we can launch from our submarines, any of our 250 Navy ships equipped with the Vertical Missile Launch System (VMLS), or the plain old fashioned "silver bullet" nuclear bombs dropped from virtually any US Air Force or Navy aircraft, or any left over nuclear tipped Tomahawk cruise missiles that we don't really deploy anymore.

And guess what else? Our counterparts in Russia and China have loads of them, too.

So, as North Korea had the pleasure of learning, upon joining the nuclear bomb club, Iran will have the educational experience of realizing that it now has several hundred nuclear missiles permanently aimed at all of it's major cities and government and military facilities. Not just by the US, but by Russia and China, too. Maybe also India, England, France, and Israel as well. Congratulations on this great achievement! Do you feel more secure with your six bombs and no way to deliver them to a target? Oh, and remember not to make any of us too nervous.

Remember, the US has an official "strike first" policy now.

This is why some countries, such as Ukraine and now North Korea, have elected to become non-nuclear. It makes sense.

As for US policy, we don't need to keep every street in Baghdad free of bad guys to make the world safe for America. If we are worried about our enemies plotting to destroy us, let them ripen into a destroyable target, then go in and destroy them and come home again. This could probably be managed on a once every 3 to 5 year basis.

The current war is draining us of blood, money, military strength, and national morale. We don't need this war. This war is for the chickenshits who are afraid to deal with bad guys. Fuck the bad guys. I'm not afraid to talk to them. Go talk to them. Tell them that if we get any more of their shit, then we come back and blow their country up all over again. We owe the Iraqis nothing. For us to be paying to rebuild their country is the most stupid foreign policy I've ever heard of.

Let's rebuild New Orleans instead. Did you know that there is lots of oil in New Orleans? And they like off-shore drilling there. And they hardly ever kill American soldiers, except for the occasional bar fight.

Well, I'm about done ranting for today. I had better stuff originally, but the Google Blogger program lost it all. So this is all I have. I apologize for the tardiness in getting you a Fourth of July post.

Her are some old timey anti-war songs from the day when singers and folks weren't so afraid of losing their record deals by taking a stand. That was called "selling out" in those days. Today it seems like the only thing our talented people want is to get into a position where they can sell out and cash in.

We all need to start speaking up. If you don't like the war, start mentioning this to people. You don't need to be maniacal, just you don't see the sense in continuing it. But it is important say something. It may even be your patriotic duty.

You can play these by clicking on the pictures.

Country Joe McDonald and the Fish

Edwin Starr - War

Troops Home Now!

Is Oil A Problem Or Not?

BRENT CRUDE FUTR (USD/bbl.)
PRICE 139.830
CHANGE -0.480
%CHANGE -0.34

Have you heard the latest dramatic action that president Bush is taking to get oil prices under control?

Me neither.

The Bushes are self proclaimed "oil men" who have been sucking up to the Saudis and other oil giants for generations, so you would imagine that they would at least be able to call some kind of summit meeting for all of the big players to discuss what's happening. But nothing.

Not a word.

Perhaps I am mistaken, but I am under the impression that the tripling of oil prices is a world-wide economic catastrophe that could lead to a near global depression. Yes? No? Maybe?

Is anybody in our government paying attention? Well, apparently that task has fallen to Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. Let's see what he's doing . . .

Monitoring Market Conditions

Courtesy of Bloomberg June 24, 2008 -

Paulson also repeated his view that high oil prices are a symptom of tight supplies, rather than a trend driven by financial speculators. ``I just think it's important that when you see a fundamental issue, that you don't get diverted with an issue that is not a key driver and is not central to the problem,'' Paulson said. When asked about the role of speculators, Paulson stuck by his insistence that it is not a big factor in current market conditions. ``I've seen no evidence that it is a major factor. And I've seen a lot of evidence that there's a supply-demand issue, and inventories are becoming tighter,'' Paulson said, adding that U.S. officials will continue to monitor market conditions.

Well, OK, I guess. But should something more be happening? For some reason, I personally am way more worried about oil prices that I am about Al Quaeda blowing me up, or Iran building nuclear power plants (actually seems kind of smart), or whether Mitt Romney will get to lose another election this year, or who's doping up at the Olympics.

I've had three of my clients go out of business this year. And I don't have a lot of clients. Our economy is about to go into the tank, and it already has for a lot of people. Meanwhile, folks in Dubai are skiing indoors. That's great for them. But it seems to signal a big shift in wealth. We say good bye, they say hello. Let's make it not so big.

George should at least call a big meeting to discuss it. He's done nothing! Instead I'm only hearing about what McCain or Obama will try to do about it next year. What about this year? Will somebody please go into the oval office and slap that fool awake!

Remember all that bullshit talk justifying the Iraq War II about oil being the fuel for the "engine of democracy" and so strategically we could not allow ourselves to be blackmailed with it? Well, guess what? We're not being blackmailed. We're being robbed.

Let's get it together here. The sellers should not have this kind of pricing power. We have other cards to play here besides just stupidly bidding our dollars away. Please tell me we are smarter than this. We, meaning you and I, can start by letting own pols know that we demand some action. And we don't mean invading Iran.