Speculators, Cartels and Myths of Scarcity: How War Pushes up the Price of Oil

Oil Wars/Wikimedia image

Dean Henderson
Global Research

Last week, as if to justify his Libyan crusade, President Obama echoed the prevailing “peak oil” myth, stating that “we must accept the new reality that from here on out, demand for oil will always exceed supply”.  It was music to the ears of the Rockefeller/Rothschild energy cartel and tax-dodger oil traders in Zug, Switzerland alike.  Both know full well that oil companies pay around $18/barrel to get crude out of the ground.

Big Oil rings up its usual quarterly record profit, speculators led by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley tack on another $50/barrel and people get gouged at the gas pump.  Governments “tighten their belts”, economies contract and the myth of scarcity (root word: scare) encourages a race to the bottom for the global masses, alongside an historical concentration of power and wealth by the well-fed and fueled global elite.

A day after Obama’s endorsement of concentrated corporate power and casino capitalism, the US Department of Energy reported that the main US oil stage depot at Cushing, Oklahoma was holding 41.9 million barrels of crude oil, very near its capacity of 44 million barrels.  In other words, the US is awash in crude oil.
Here in South Dakota, the USDA announced that farmers plan to plant an additional 850,000 acres of corn- the most since 1931.  According to a March 10 bulletin from USDA, Brazil’s corn crop is 2 million tons higher than last year.  Yet corn futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange trade at record prices.


According to the same USDA report, “U.S. wheat ending stocks for 2010/11 are projected higher this month on reduced export prospects. Projected exports are lowered 25 million bushels with increased world supplies of high quality wheat, particularly in Australia, and a slower-than-expected pace of U.S. shipments heading into the final quarter of the wheat marketing year.”  Yet wheat futures hover near record highs.

There is nothing alarming in the report about supplies of beef, poultry, eggs, milk, sugar or rice either.  Yet food prices continue to skyrocket.

The global elite know that both food and energy are paramount to life. Control over these two most basic needs means control over people.

After the 2008 acquisitions of Swift, Smithfield and National Beef Packers by Brazilian meat-packer JBS, there are three conglomerates that control over 80% of beef-packing in the US – Tyson, Cargill and JBS.  These same companies control most of the burgeoning cattle feedlot industry centered in SW Kansas and SE Colorado.  They also dominate the pork, chicken and turkey industries.  Cargill is the largest grain processor on the planet, handling a full one-half of global grain supplies.
  
Four giant companies are making a play to own not just all the oil, but virtually all energy sources on the planet.  In my book, Big Oil & Their Bankers…I dub them the Four Horsemen – Royal Dutch/Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco and BP Amoco.
  
These companies control crude oil from the Saudi well-head to the American gas pump and profit from every step of processing, shipping and marketing in between.  While reactionary Republicans blame environmentalists for the lack of US oil production, it was these oil giants who capped permitted wells in Texas and Louisiana and moved production to the Middle East – where Bangladeshi, Filipino and Yemeni workers are paid $1/day to work the oil rigs.
  
Royal Dutch/Shell and Exxon Mobil are the heaviest and most vertically integrated of the Four Horsemen. These behemoths have led the charge towards horizontal integration within the energy industry, investing heavily in natural gas, coal and uranium resources.

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Are Lehman's Auditors Above The Law?

Dees Illustration

Jeff McCord

Activist Post 

Many wonder why the Securities and Exchange Commission and U.S. Department of Justice are seemingly unable to prosecute Lehman Brothers and its auditor Ernst & Young for the massive over-valuations of the investment bank’s sub-prime mortgage-backed “assets” and other misleading (and, possibly, fraudulent) information published in financial statements in the years and quarters leading to the systemic financial meltdown that Lehman’s own bankruptcy helped fuel.  Are Lehman’s auditors above the law?  Regrettably, for a number of reasons, auditors are becoming increasingly immune from challenge by prosecutors, regulators and investors. 

The first reason is that money talks in Washington.  Although most citizens know of the overwhelming donations to federal political candidates by banks and other financial services firms, it may surprise some that accountants are also a very generous source of funding for both Republican and Democratic candidates.  In the election cycle of 2009-2010, alone, the “big four” accounting firms and their association contributed more than $8 million to federal candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.  In the same period, fraud defendant Ernst & Young contributed in excess of $1.6 million to politicians. 

“When the Rich Break Laws, Prosecutors Find Themselves on Trial”

Certainly, it is not unknown for Members of Congress to make their views known when favored companies or industries are under investigation.  In a recent column applauding the documentary Inside Job, Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate in economics, provided just one of many examples of recent political intrusion into prosecutors’ work:

The . .  . proposed [legal] settlement between state attorneys general and the mortgage servicing industry . . . is a 'shakedown',” says Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama. The money banks would be required to allot to mortgage modification would be 'extorted,' declares The Wall Street Journal. And the bankers themselves warn that any action against them would place economic recovery at risk.  All of which goes to confirm that the rich are different from you and me: when they break the law, it’s the prosecutors who find themselves on trial. Source

Why Can’t SEC Pursue Big White Collar Criminals?

Aside from Congressional interference with prosecutors, why can’t the SEC bring big accountants and banks to heel? Again, Congress runs interference.  With the new majority in the House of Representatives now cutting millions from the SEC’s budget at the same time the Commission’s responsibilities have ballooned, the agency must place on-hold desperately needed technology up-grades and new hires. For years, experts have warned that regulators could not and cannot keep up with the explosive growth in securities markets and the new exotic computer-driven financial instruments that played a starring role in the 2008 financial meltdown. 

Consider these comments by regulatory authorities: 

– "State regulators and the SEC filed numerous cases against corporations and secondary actors [the lawyers, accountants, investment bankers and other advisers that enable complex modern frauds] in the recent decade.  However, many more cases of fraud were not pursued by regulators due to their limited resources."  -- September 17, 2009 Testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on crime and drugs by Tanya Solov, Director, Illinois Securities Department on behalf of the North American Securities Administrators Association, the representative organization of the regulators within each of the 50 states. The state administrators testified in favor restoring private liability for fraud aiders and abettors. 

– “Quite frankly, our enforcement and examination resources have been seriously constrained in recent years,”  -- Mary Schapiro, Chairman, Securities and Exchange Commission, in speech to the Council of Institutional Investors, April 6, 2009. 

– “Investors’ rights of private action have been seriously eroded in the past decade.  Investors should not have to suffer the type of conduct that contributed to Enron and other scandals.  And the SEC does not, and will not have the resources to enforce the securities laws in all instances.”  -- Mr. Lynn Turner, CPA and former SEC Chief Accountant in March 10, 2009 testimony before Senate Banking Committee hearing. 

Can Investors Take Action Against Auditors? 

Aside from their seeming immunity from serious criminal or government civil actions, the auditors upon whom investors and the public rely when researching a company have also won near immunity from private investor actions -- a major deterrent to accounting fraud and other wrongdoing -- thanks to a pro-fraud defendant law Congress enacted in 1995 over President Clinton’s veto and radical decisions by an increasingly politicized Supreme Court (which Congress is unwilling to override). 

As explained by Philadelphia attorney and Roosevelt Institute “Braintruster” Daniel Berger, accountant-driven securities “reform” legislation in 1995 and two Supreme Court decisions (Central Bank in 1994 and Stoneridge in 2008) eliminated accountability to investors for those who knowingly aid and abet securities fraud, such as the accountants who allegedly helped Lehman “cook the books”:

Bi-partisan legislation in the 1990s [during the de-regulatory binge] and two major Supreme Court decisions in 1994 and 2008 have effectively eliminated liability for aiding and abetting securities fraud. [In a column, economist Robert] Kuttner noted that 'You can be sure if this right were still available, Ernst and Young would have thought twice about giving Lehman a clean bill of health.' Source

In January, 2010, testimony before the United States Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission,  Denise Voigt Crawford, the president of the North American Securities Administrators Association and Commissioner of Texas State Securities Board explained how investors’ ability to pursue private actions, a major deterrent to Wall Street and corporate accounting fraud and other wrongdoing, have been limited:  

[O]ver the last 15 years, Congressional actions and Supreme Court decisions have restricted the ability of private plaintiffs to seek redress in court for securities fraud.  These restrictions have not only reduced the compensation available to those who have been the victims of securities fraud, they have also weakened a powerful deterrent against misconduct in our financial markets. (See Commissioner Crawford’s full testimony.)

Will Auditors Remain Above the Law? 

The climate might be changing in Washington and in Europe. The Washington Post recently reported that the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board is asking why auditors didn’t warn the public and investors about the shaky condition of America’s financial services industry before the 2008 meltdown:  

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board is conducting investigations that may lead to disciplinary action against audit firms or individual auditors, board chairman James Doty said in a statement he prepared for a meeting [March16]Source

Regulatory authorities in Europe and the United Kingdom are also investigating the role of auditors in the worldwide financial meltdown made in the USA, according to Reuters. 

With continued media scrutiny of the causes of the great financial debacle, and Wall Street spawned recession that followed it, public opinion might trump campaign contributions and lead Congress to restore to U.S. citizens lost legal rights, fully fund regulators and law enforcement agencies and even butt out of state and federal prosecutions. And, regulatory and possible criminal actions by the less conflicted European Union might also help shame U.S. law makers into taking action.  

Some day soon, auditors may again become subject to the same laws as us little people.

More articles by Jeff McCord about investors and securities fraud and the need to improve investor protection can be read at The Investor Advocate.

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CAUGHT ON TAPE: Former SEIU Official Reveals Secret Plan To Destroy JP Morgan, Crash The Stock Market, And Redistribute Wealth In America

Stephen Lerner, formerly of SEIU.

Editor's Note:  The "Corporate Media" will not waste anytime before they label Mr. Lerner a domestic terrorist.

BUSINESS INSIDER-A former official of one of the country's most-powerful unions, SEIU, has a secret plan to "destabilize" the country.

The plan is designed to destroy JP Morgan, nuke the stock market, and weaken Wall Street's grip on power, thus creating the conditions necessary for a redistribution of wealth and a change in government.

The former SEIU official, Stephen Lerner, spoke in a closed session at a Pace University forum last weekend.

The Blaze procured what appears to be a tape of Lerner's remarks. Many Americans will undoubtely sympathize with and support them. Still, the "destabilization" plan is startling in its specificity, especially coming so close on the heels of the financial crisis.

Lerner said that unions and community organizations are, for all intents and purposes, dead. The only way to achieve their goals, therefore--the redistribution of wealth and the return of "$17 trillion" stolen from the middle class by Wall Street--is to "destabilize the country."

Lerner's plan is to organize a mass, coordinated "strike" on mortgage, student loan, and local government debt payments--thus bringing the banks to the edge of insolvency and forcing them to renegotiate the terms of the loans.  This destabilization and turmoil, Lerner hopes, will also crash the stock market, isolating the banking class and allowing for a transfer of power.

Lerner's plan starts by attacking JP Morgan Chase in early May, with demonstrations on Wall Street, protests at the annual shareholder meeting, and then calls for a coordinated mortgage strike.

Lerner also says explicitly that, although the attack will benefit labor unions, it cannot be seen as being organized by them. It must therefore be run by community organizations.

Lerner was ousted from SEIU last November, reportedly for spending millions of the union's dollars trying to pursue a plan like the one he details here.  It is not clear what, if any, power and influence he currently wields. His main message--that Wall Street won the financial crisis, that inequality in this country is hitting record levels, and that there appears to be no other way to stop the trend--will almost certainly resonate.

A transcript of Lerner's full reported remarks is below, courtesy of The Blaze. We have heard the tape, but we have not independently verified that the voice is Lerner's.  You can listen to the tape here.

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Ratigan EXPOSES the Bankster Con on America (Video)

Youtube

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Aaron Barr, Asshole

U.S. Chamber of Commerce Thugs Used 'Terror Tools' for Disinfo Scheme Targeting Me, My Family and Other Progressives
And why the Chamber's hired goons are highly likely to get away with it.

by Brad Friedman

As I learned late last Thursday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the most powerful Rightwing lobbying group in the country, was revealed to have been working with their law firm and a number of private cyber security and intelligence firms to target progressive organizations, journalists and citizens who they felt were in opposition to their political activism, tactics and points of view. Continue reading.

----------------------------------------------
Hopefully, this will awaken progressives to the fact that dirty tricks and conspiracy comprise the modus operandi of the business class in America. Despite massive.....evidence.....to the contrary, progressives tend to regard conspiracy theories as strictly the purview of right-wing whack jobs and dope-smoking slactivists. And while there are definitely many conspiracy theories that are straight out of whackaloon territory, one conspiracy theory for which there is insurmountable evidence is the one that asserts that the American business community is hell bent on the notion of turning America -- and the world -- into a corporate feudal state.

More here.

UPDATE: A special message from Anonymous to HB Gary and its clients.

UPDATE II: Aaron Barr, douche.

UPDATE III: Operation Ratfuck interactive map.

The Return of Despair.

When Bush won re-election in 2004, I did serious research into moving to Canada. They have a point system for immigration, and I came up a few points short, according to my calculation. Today, I feel about a million times more despondent than I did then. Any Canadian, Australian or New Zealand women out there who would like to marry an American malcontent who's really a nice guy beneath the gruff exterior? I'm good at cooking, chopping firewood and cunnilingus.

Liberals Piss Me Off

Yeah, you read that right.

Liberals.

Piss me off.

I've written before about how moderates piss me off, but these days, liberals are becoming almost indistinguishable from moderates. Just by standing still, I've moved to the radical Left. It is gratifying, therefore, to see that at least one other person feels the way I do.

After too many mornings waking up feeling guilty about mean things I've said, sometimes drunkenly, to dipshits who deserved it, and despite the fact that I'm probably the least religious person on the planet, I've made an effort to take this bit of Buddhist wisdom to heart:

The origin of suffering is attachment to transient things.

If ever something was transient, it's this infestation of early 21st century politics by spineless, cheerleading, pseudo liberal shitheads who have made it their life's work to achieve Wall Street's objectives by adopting formerly right-wing policies.

Of course, if I were truly taking that bit of Buddhist wisdom to heart, I wouldn't even be posting this, but it helps me to (sometimes) remember to say my piece and move on, rather than stewing over something.

Call it a catharsis.

Ten Days That Changed Capitalism

From The Wall Street Journal:

Officials Improvised To Rescue Markets; Will It Be Enough?

March 27, 2008; Page A1
David Wessel
The past 10 days will be remembered as the time the U.S. government discarded a half-century of rules to save American financial capitalism from collapse.
On the Richter scale of government activism, the government's recent actions don't (yet) register at FDR levels. They are shrouded in technicalities and buried in a pile of new acronyms.
But something big just happened. It happened without an explicit vote by Congress. And, though the Treasury hasn't cut any checks for housing or Wall Street rescues, billions of dollars of taxpayer money were put at risk. A Republican administration, not eager to be viewed as the second coming of the Hoover administration, showed it no longer believes the market can sort out the mess.

"The Government of Last Resort is working with the Lender of Last Resort to shore up the housing and credit markets to avoid Great Depression II," economist Ed Yardeni wrote to clients.

First, over St. Patrick's Day weekend, the Fed (aka the Lender of Last Resort) and the Treasury forced the sale of Bear Stearns, the fifth-largest U.S. investment bank, to J.P. Morgan Chase at a price so low that a shareholder rebellion prompted J.P. Morgan to raise the price. To induce J.P. Morgan to do the deal, the Fed agreed to take losses or gains, if any, on up to $29 billion of securities in Bear Stearns's portfolio. The outcome will influence the sum the Fed turns over to the Treasury, so this is taxpayer money; that's why the Fed sought Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's OK.
Then the Fed lent directly to Wall Street securities firms for the first time. Until now, the Fed has lent directly only to Main Street banks, those that take deposits from ordinary folks. That's because banks were viewed as playing a unique economic role and, supposedly, were more closely regulated than other types of lenders. In the first three days of this new era, securities firms borrowed an average of $31.3 billion a day from the Fed. That's not small change, and it's why Mr. Paulson, after the fact, is endorsing changes to give the Fed more access to these firms' books.
Increased Leverage
In the days that followed, the Republican Treasury secretary leaned on two shareholder-owned, though government-chartered, companies -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- to raise capital that their boards didn't want to raise. In exchange, their government regulator allowed them to increase their leverage so they can buy about $200 billion more in mortgage-backed securities.
So Fannie and Freddie will get bigger, a welcome development when mortgage markets are in trouble. Already, they have regained lost market share. They accounted for 76% of new mortgages in the fourth quarter of last year, up from 46% in the second quarter, Mr. Paulson said Wednesday. But everyone knows that if Fannie or Freddie stumble, taxpayers will get stuck with the tab.
And then, the federal regulator of the low-profile Federal Home Loan Banks, which are even less well capitalized than Fannie and Freddie, said they could buy twice as many Fannie and Freddie-blessed mortgage-backed securities as previously permitted -- more than $100 billion worth.
Was this necessary? It's messy, uncomfortable and undoubtedly flawed in many details. Like firefighters rushing to a five-alarm fire, policy makers are making mistakes that will be apparent only in retrospect.
Too Great to IgnoreBut, regardless of how we got here, the clear and present danger that the virus in the housing, mortgage and credit markets is infecting the overall economy is too great to ignore. The Great Depression was worsened because the initial government reaction was wrong-headed. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke spent an academic career learning how to avoid repeating those mistakes.
Is it working? It is helping. One key measure is the gap between interest rates on mortgages and safe Treasury securities. A wide gap means high mortgage rates, which hurt an already sickly housing market. A lot of recent activity, including Wednesday's previously planned auction in which the Fed is trading Treasurys for mortgage-backed securities, is aimed at increasing demand for those securities to drive down mortgage rates.
The gap remains enormous by historical standards, but has narrowed. On March 6, according to FTN Financial, 30-year fixed-rate mortgages were trading at 2.92 percentage points above the relevant Treasury rates; Wednesday the gap was down to 2.22. Normal is about 1.5 percentage points. Money markets are still under stress, as banks and others hoard cash and super-safe short-term Treasurys.
Is it enough? Probably not. Although it's hard to know, the downward tug on the overall economy from falling house prices persists. The next step, if one proves necessary, is almost sure to require the explicit use of taxpayer money.
Cushion the Blow
The case for doing more is twofold. One is to cushion the blow to families and communities, even if some are culpable. The other is to disrupt a dangerous downward spiral in which falling prices of houses and mortgage-backed securities lead lenders to pull back, hurting the economy and dragging asset prices down further, and so on.
In ordinary times, a capitalist economy lets prices -- such as those of homes, mortgage-backed securities and stocks -- fall to the point where the big-bucks crowd rushes in, hoping to make a killing. But if the big money remains on the sidelines, unpersuaded that a bottom is near, the wait for bargain hunters to take the plunge could be very long and very painful.So the next step, no matter how it is dressed up, is likely to involve the government's moving in ways that put a floor under prices, hoping that will limit the downside risks enough so more Americans are willing to buy homes and deeper-pocketed investors are willing, in effect, to lend them the money to do so.

Of Hookers & Hypocrites

from Global Research:

Hallmarks of a "hit job" ordered from the very top: Forget Spitzer, fire Bernanke
by Chan Akya
Global Research, March 14, 2008
Asia Times Online

There must be something about men achieving power that exposes them to frequent misuses of authority. In particular, infidelity seems a particular curse for the powerful across the world. This week's events involving the governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, may however have helped to hide a more egregious misuse of authority, namely that of Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke and his central banking cohorts around the world. In another one of those nice coincidences that seem to happen whenever Wall Street is down and out, the unpopular governor of New York was found consorting with prostitutes through a Federal investigation that has all the hallmarks of a "hit job" ordered from the very top. Spitzer was deeply unpopular in the corridors of power, and especially with the current Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, for daring to take various Wall Street firms down a few notches earlier this decade.
After also hitting other sacred cows such as large insurance companies, Spitzer was readying ammunition to strike at the heart of the current subprime crisis by attacking the monoline insurers and rating agencies. It is almost too convenient that the disclosures of his extracurricular activities came this week. Still, let us take everything said at face value and not attempt to conjecture any conspiracy behind all this. People in Europe and Asia always find curious the preoccupation of Americans with sex, especially as the country appears to look askance at acts of immeasurable violence. This has been the formula for Hollywood - nary a nipple in sight but more than a few torsos getting blown to smithereens. Be that as it may, the focus of the Spitzer case on two separate legal areas, namely using a prostitute and secondly for potential money laundering, both appear strangely exaggerated in the rest of the world. So the guy was having sex with a hooker; that's essentially a problem between the married couple rather than being subject of intense public debate. Spitzer is said to have been neither crooked nor incompetent. If anything, his personal use of prostitutes may have contradicted his public crusade against brothels and pimps. In essence, Spitzer had to resign because he was a hypocrite. Reading that line, perhaps a few of you would wonder as I did about the implications of other politicians around the world being asked to resign for being hypocritical. Nope, I couldn't think of anyone who'd survive that either. Sleight of handThe sorry story of the governor and his extramarital affair though helped to achieve something much more important, namely to hide a brewing problem in the securities industry. On Monday, when the Federal Reserve announced a new facility to help banks finance themselves by posting previously unacceptable collateral, stock and credit markets jumped for joy. That is, until someone started asking slightly cute questions on the lines of just who was in so much trouble that the Fed had to rush through an ill-prepared intervention. As with the Sherlock Holmes dictum of "who benefits from the crime", it is clear that this week's moves were intended to help beleaguered brokers. While it is perhaps impossible to speculate just which company is in most trouble because of poor disclosure and the use of opaque valuation techniques, the most important brokers whose failure would have systemic implications include the likes of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley. Coming as it does so close to the expected announcement of first-quarter earnings (most brokers close their financial year in November, hence their first quarter ends February), the fear being expressed on the street was that it had to be one of the bigger firms as otherwise the Fed would not have bothered. Brokers hold billions of dollars in the very securities that are suddenly eligible for refinancing with the Fed, such as mortgages and other securities that have proven well nigh impossible to sell to investors for the past few months. This has spilt over into the rest of the financial system, hurting various cities and towns across the US as they try to refinance themselves. That in turn must have gotten the government and its central bank all hot under the collar. At this stage perhaps readers will be wondering why I implied a crime had taken place on Wall Street when all that seems to have happened is that a central banker has tried to quietly save one of the large financial firms in its backyard. The answer is a little more complicated than that, and touches upon the curiously ignored principles of central banking. Walter Bagehot, the patron saint of central bankers, suggested the following basic principles for central banks to help the banks under their supervision to avoid liquidity runs. A. Only lend against good collateral to avoid losses for taxpayers at a later date.B. Lend at extremely high interest rates to avoid the facility being used willy-nilly by greedy bankers.C. Make public the availability of such facilities, so as to prevent doubts and suspicions in the minds of depositors and other creditors. This week's announcement by the Fed violates EVERY one of those principles. Firstly, the collateral being accepted by the Fed is tainted as the market’s complete lack of appetite (at any price) for the securities shows. By providing the ability to liquefy these securities, the Fed has effectively signaled that it would accept just about any junk. Secondly, the cost of borrowing is not punitive; indeed it is agreeably low for anyone who cares to fill out a couple of forms. Thirdly, this facility was not used previously; therefore the market has been in some doubt about really how useful it could be. In essence, this is a US$200 billion facility that is being misapplied to rescue a specific part of the financial system at a preferential rate, and without any disclosure required on usage. Given all this, it is impossible for anyone to expect that the ultimate cost of this facility will not be borne by US taxpayers. In my last article on Europe (Euro-trash, Asia Times Online, March 11, 2008) I pointed to the failures of the European Central Bank, which similarly violated the Bagehot principles when widening the range of acceptable collateral and lowering the discount rate made available to banks at the refinancing window. The Fed has entered into an arrangement that is eerily similar to that of the European Central Bank, whose actions have resulted in parts of the European financial system essentially becoming "zombie" companies, ie dead but still walking around. From where I sit, it appears that Bernanke has opened a whole new can of worms in his efforts at maintaining the structural integrity of the US financial system. The financial means used are clearly at odds with what Americans have preached to the rest of the world, including Asia following its 1997 crisis. To that extent, it is clear that Bernanke suffers from a similar complex to Spitzer, ie that rules do not apply to them because of magical exclusions that are self-derived. Once we decide that both have committed acts that are essentially illegal, it then becomes a question of gauging just who committed the worse crime. Spitzer through his actions hurt his family and a small band of friends very badly. That however pales in comparison to the wide-ranging systemic damage being wrought by Bernanke through his ill-considered actions. The wrong government official resigned this week.

Big Daddy says: You can't take on these guys & these guys & these guys & expect no retaliation. Spitzer should've known he had a target on his back & kept his tool in his trousers. I mean, duh.

UPDATE: Greg Palast has more.

Spun

With Edwards & Kucinich out and Paul fading, it might be a good idea to take another look at this.

Let George Carlin Set You Straight

What's Wrong with this Picture?

DaimlerChrysler just sold 80 percent of its interest in Chrysler to a private equity company called Cerberus Capital Management. That's right, the company that now controls Chrysler is named after the three-headed dog that guards the opening to Hades. But when you see who runs Cerberus, it's easy to see why they chose that name. Who says them Wall Street types don't have a sense of humor?