Stock market falls 372 points, gold back over $900. Another ho-hum day at the government run casino

[GRG55]

Re: Stock market falls 372 points, gold back over $900. Another ho-hum day at the government run cas

...One US representative reared up on his hind legs to suggest that perhaps, just maybe, the Minister might recuse himself from these proceedings as his former employer is counted among the now very limited two item menu of investment banks remaining of a 150 year tradition of capitalism in America, Goldman Sacks and JP Morgan, all other competitors now summarily wiped out. Also, and, well, gee (and – gosh) while we're on the subject, they aren't even investment banks anymore. The Fed on Monday made the two winners of the US Investment Bank Survivor Show – presto! – into bank holding companies so that they may swallow what is left of the assets of 1,000 or so bank failures, as estimated by reliable sources, waiting in the wings.

Is that, you know, like, constitutional? ...

And now one of those two has conveniently secured $5 B of Buffett's money [at the usual healthy Berkshire premium]. Let the games begin...:p

Goldman eyes IndyMac to build bank network
By Tim Catts, FinancialWeek.com
September 23, 2008, 9:55 AM EST

Goldman Sachs may target the assets of failed banks such as IndyMac Bank as it transforms from the biggest investment bank on Wall Street into the fourth-largest bank holding company in the United States.

“We plan to build our banking business organically and by buying retail deposits and bank assets in the wholesale market, not through opening branches,” a Goldman Sachs spokesman said.

“For example, the FDIC is selling IndyMac assets and those might be the sort of thing we’d be interested in looking at.”

Fifteen banks with deposits of roughly $30 billion have failed since the beginning of 2007, according to data from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. With more than $19 billion in deposits, IndyMac was by far the largest.

The FDIC took control of the thrift after regulators shut it down in July.

With 117 more banks holding $78 billion in assets on the FDIC’s list of “problem institutions,” Goldman could have plenty of additional opportunities to snap up deposits in the months ahead.

When a bank nears failure, the FDIC typically approaches potential buyers who have told the agency they would be interested in buying the assets of troubled institutions, said spokesman David Barr.

Most of the coordination of the sale, including bidding by potential buyers, takes place before the bank goes under, typically on a Friday at the close of business. After state or federal regulators shutter the bank, it enters receivership and the FDIC transfers its assets to the buyer.

IndyMac is different because the FDIC acts as the thrift’s conservator, keeping it running while selling off its assets. Part of the mission of IndyMac Federal Bank, as the government-run company is known, is to “maximize the value of the institution for a future sale,” according to an FDIC statement.

One of the benefits of buying bank deposits from the FDIC—instead of merging with or acquiring an operational bank—is that the regulator sells “clean” assets, Mr. Barr said. When two banks merge, or when a bank buys another bank, it’s usually saddled with the target’s liabilities and debts, not to mention potentially toxic mortgage-related securities or other real estate investments that could be sitting on the balance sheet. “It’s a fairly good deal for the assuming bank, because not only do they get an instant bank, with branches and employees and deposit customers, but it’s a clean bank,” Mr. Barr said. “The receivership is like a filtering process. All the troubles and headaches that caused the bank to fail are left behind with the FDIC in receivership, so the acquiring bank gets clean assets.”

[jtabeb]

Re: Stock market falls 372 points, gold back over $900. Another ho-hum day at the government run cas

hat's off to you for the patience to keep explaining this. the usa has the most professional mil in the world. if we're going to have totalitarian state the forces have to be built from private armies from scratch. there isn't an obvious candidate in the usa today.

They (Military) are pissed too, for what is worth;) (ALL of us, based on everyone I've talked to about it.)

P.S. Please no more comments about me, a plane, GPS coordinates, and Bernanke or Paulson, I might get my TSCI revoked!

[bart]

Re: Stock market falls 372. Ho, hum.

Hi Bart. I'm sorry -- I probably should have phrased my post in more deferential terms.

I don't think I'm a particularly poor student of 20th century history. You're right that I should have been more explicit. I think you will find that militant nationalism in addition to totalitarianism is a theme common to the various alternative definitions which you cite. I don't yet detect that nationalistic character in these events, although they are doubtlessly statist.

My point about rhetoric was serious. People are so used to fascists being trotted out as the quintessence of evil that their eyes glaze over when you bring them up. Unless the specific historical correspondence to conditions prevailing in Mussolini's Italy or Hitler's Germany are obvious to the reader -- and I mean the specific features most likely to stick in the mind of the reader, viz goose-stepping, flags, xenophobia, and suchlike nationalist regalia -- they will assume you are engaging in an overwrought exageration meant to demonize, rather than making a well-informed historical point. What you want them to do is engage their brain, but use of that word at this stage is unlikely to serve that end.

Fair enough and understood, and I do believe you are and were serious.

I think the use of the word is still quite valid, especially in the context of some of the other definitions of it and also in context of today's more Orwellian world.

If someone object to it and blows it off since they're not seeing goose stepping & similar right now, I submit that (in the context of the German "experience") they are echoing or rhyming with the majority in Germany in the early to mid 1930s. Glazed over eyes and lack of brain usage were endemic during that period.

And yes of course that image and the other one were a bit over the top, but they also do represent the very real dangers and signs since prior to the Patriot Act and as also represented by items like Executive order 11004, 11051 and 11921. The majority does not see the many parallels, sad to say.

I also submit that it takes but one or two events to convert the country to the militant nationalism you noted as necessary, and also that the recent $700 billion "event" is the socialism half of national socialism.



It's not unlike inflation and money supply control, as Keynes noted (emphasis mine):
"By this means government may secretly and unobserved, confiscate the wealth of the people, and not one man in a million will detect the theft."
-- John Maynard Keynes, in his book "THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF THE PEACE" (1920). (this is in the context of speaking about the ability to control money supply)





Kipling also touched on the area:

The Gods of the Copybook Headings
by Rudyard Kipling

I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wobbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will bum,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return.

[bart]

Re: Stock market falls 372. Ho, hum.

Bart - I think you are overreacting. ASH's observation is spot on.

I also fully endorse your concern, but he's making a clear and necessary distinction. This may be the stirrings of fascism, but it is not the full article yet. ASH points out that it is risky to over-employ the term, as it really denotes the 'full bloom' article, and that the term has been very heavily overemployed as it is. We still have an electoral system that leaves multiple open doors for the populace to take back their Republic. The doors may be increasingly hidden by smoke and a bought press, but they are there, and they are manifestly open. Fascism does not display any open doors - it describes a transition which is "all sewn up". That should resolve any difficulties in the parsing of the term, which has as noted above for many years been heavily overused. In every other respect I offer full solidarity to the principles or Republican government threatened, which you are sounding the alarm for here. The process does indeed well and truly begin with the degradation of the free markets, so you point to the absolutely classic initial stirrings with your comment.

Respectfully.

Your comments greatly sadden me.

[c1ue]

Re: Stock market falls 372 points, gold back over $900. Another ho-hum day at the government run cas

I'm not saying Hitler is about to spring on us, but think of the situation this way:

Number of Iraqis killed since the invasion:

Anywhere from 50K to over 1M.

Number of US soldiers in Iraq: 200K give or take.

Is it safe to say that - on average - each soldier or platoon of American soldiers has killed a person?

Sure, these troops are carrying out the orders they were given and are actively being shot at.

But the fact is that the ability to kill in the US armed forces is already well tested.

I certainly hope there are never serious riots across this nation, but as I've said many times before: we haven't seen true suffering since the Civil War, and we just might before this is all over.

With true suffering, the rioters aren't going to be a gang of angry Watts minorities burning down their slums. That's good since it is harder to shoot otherwise decent citizens driven beyond endurance by circumstances.

But the French Revolution is a good example of just how bad things could get. And Napoleon gained power from that revolution and used it to expend almost every French male of remotely military age in attempting to conquer Europe.

[metalman]

Re: Stock market falls 372 points, gold back over $900. Another ho-hum day at the government run cas

I'm not saying Hitler is about to spring on us, but think of the situation this way:

Number of Iraqis killed since the invasion:

Anywhere from 50K to over 1M.

Number of US soldiers in Iraq: 200K give or take.

Is it safe to say that - on average - each soldier or platoon of American soldiers has killed a person?

Sure, these troops are carrying out the orders they were given and are actively being shot at.

But the fact is that the ability to kill in the US armed forces is already well tested.

I certainly hope there are never serious riots across this nation, but as I've said many times before: we haven't seen true suffering since the Civil War, and we just might before this is all over.

With true suffering, the rioters aren't going to be a gang of angry Watts minorities burning down their slums. That's good since it is harder to shoot otherwise decent citizens driven beyond endurance by circumstances.

But the French Revolution is a good example of just how bad things could get. And Napoleon gained power from that revolution and used it to expend almost every French male of remotely military age in attempting to conquer Europe.

check list to revolution...

1. no beer
2. no tv
3. no buddies to drink beer and watch tv with
4. no money to buy beer
5. no rent for place to hang with buddies to drink beer and watch tv

this person is at high risk to take part in a revolution... but!!!

fallacy: the poor 'rise up'.

no they don't. they wallow in filth and misery until they die without leadership.

[marvenger]

Re: Stock market falls 372. Ho, hum.

don't wait for the media to tell you its fascism before you decide its all 'sewn up'

[marvenger]

Re: Stock market falls 372 points, gold back over $900. Another ho-hum day at the government run cas

you scare me

[Chris]

Re: Stock market falls 372 points, gold back over $900. Another ho-hum day at the government run cas

check list to revolution...

1. no beer
2. no tv
3. no buddies to drink beer and watch tv with
4. no money to buy beer
5. no rent for place to hang with buddies to drink beer and watch tv

this person is at high risk to take part in a revolution... but!!!

fallacy: the poor 'rise up'.

no they don't. they wallow in filth and misery until they die without leadership.

Spot on. Just like socialism which claims to benefit the poor but instead enriches the intellectual class (see modern Britain for the latest incarnation), this proposed bill will introduce a new form of totalitarianism but one without the pretence of benevolence. And the poor will again get it in the neck.

Without wanting to detract from the topic of this thread too much, but weren't the Nazis a movement of the Left and therefore not strictly fascist (as it is commonly understood)?

[marvenger]

Re: Stock market falls 372 points, gold back over $900. Another ho-hum day at the government run cas

First, and foremost, the military is not a route to riches. In some societies, a job in the government -- and the security forces in particular -- is the only means of getting ahead, and the way one gets ahead is through graft and corruption. The principle draw for joining the military in such countries is the opportunity to victimize one's fellow citizens (and not be a victim oneself) -- that is most certainly not the case in the US. The second reason is that the members of the American armed forces are drawn from -- and sympathetic to -- the people. They are not from a single dominant ethnic or social class, and they are not the instruments of such a class's dominance.

That's a great point and how all government should be IMO. Limited pay and no private contracting. What the government does the government does in a non profit way. Australia's new conservative party leader is the ex chairman of goldman sachs in Australia which I find particularly scary given Hank's policies.

If hard times persist, and the government becomes the only game in town, then eventually our civil service and military might become overtly corrupt. However, that is a cultural change which would happen over time. The way I see it, people are going to get angry and start protesting long before then. Thus, if we're talking about the government's response to widespread protest now, it makes sense to talk about the securities services now.

I hope you're right. Gonna start a security services monitoring thread?

[*T*]

Re: Stock market falls 372. Ho, hum.

Ash - I choose my words carefully. Corporatism=fascism according to Mussolini.

Nonetheless, many abroad view American society as being or having become become militaristic, nationalistic and structurally racist.
How many countries deploy troops on home soil? 'Support the troops right or wrong'? Have leadership that barefacedly lies to the people? Implement kidnapping and torture? Believe in a mythological version of history that gives them special place in history? Use shock and awe (i.e. terror) tactics to accelerate change?

It is a long list, but company that I believe the US should not be keeping.

I am not saying the US is already actually fascist, just that there is a clear and present danger of a coup, i.e. a paradigm shift; a change of regime. The trends are clear and in place. There are many things I love and admire about the US, and I hate to see them destroyed. I am not usually given to hyperbole, I am just very sad and angered by what is happening. It is harmful and exploitative.

Luke - Hitler was elected. 'He was a strong leader for difficult times.'

EJ - sorry if this is a thread hijack. I suppose the fact that an economic and market forum has become political illustrates the point, though.

[jtabeb]

Re: Stock market falls 372. Ho, hum.

Ash - I choose my words carefully. Corporatism=fascism according to Mussolini.

Nonetheless, many abroad view American society as being or having become become militaristic, nationalistic and structurally racist.
How many countries deploy troops on home soil? 'Support the troops right or wrong'? Have leadership that barefacedly lies to the people? Implement kidnapping and torture? Believe in a mythological version of history that gives them special place in history? Use shock and awe (i.e. terror) tactics to accelerate change?

It is a long list, but company that I believe the US should not be keeping.

I am not saying the US is already actually fascist, just that there is a clear and present danger of a coup, i.e. a paradigm shift; a change of regime. The trends are clear and in place. There are many things I love and admire about the US, and I hate to see them destroyed. I am not usually given to hyperbole, I am just very sad and angered by what is happening. It is harmful and exploitative.

Luke - Hitler was elected. 'He was a strong leader for difficult times.'

EJ - sorry if this is a thread hijack. I suppose the fact that an economic and market forum has become political illustrates the point, though.

Worry, but people are getting it thank god. This is the most promising I've seen this country act collectively (except Bush Whitehouse save Gates, Fed and Treas). I am PROUD of the way americans have responed in the last three days. I just HOPE they keep it up.

Cautiously optimisitc? Me? That should tell you something

[t12357]

Re: Stock market falls 372 points, gold back over $900. Another ho-hum day at the government run cas

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/9/22/headlines


Army Unit to Deploy in October for Domestic Operations

Beginning in October, the Army plans to station an active unit inside the United States for the first time to serve as an on-call federal response in times of emergency. The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent thirty-five of the last sixty months in Iraq, but now the unit is training for domestic operations. The unit will soon be under the day-to-day control of US Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command. The Army Times reports this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to Northern Command. The paper says the Army unit may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control. The soldiers are learning to use so-called nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals and crowds.

[jtabeb]

Re: Stock market falls 372. Ho, hum.

[quote=*T*;49818]Ash - I choose my words carefully. Corporatism=fascism according to Mussolini.

quote]


That's the ESSENTAIL POINT, and why, given the present potential restructuring of the country, the risk of Corporatism=fascism descent is extreem.

EXTREEM vigilance is required! Don't doubt that. This is not Hyperbole, not scare tactics, and not exaggeration. The historical parallels are too prominent to ignore. Do so at your perile.

(I officially retract my previous post)

[The Outback Oracle]

Re: Stock market falls 372 points, gold back over $900. Another ho-hum day at the government run cas

I think Ash is aware of the dangers. We're basically talking about a name. I used to use the word fascist to describe some things i did not like. Then I read "The Third Reich" by Michael Burleigh. Facism as paractised was so horrible that I cannot use the word to describe any other current conspiracy.

The word 'Facism' is often used these days. I believe the common use of the word lowers the effectiveness of warnings of its actual rise.

My comments here should not be interpreted as any criticism of anyone's stance or warnings on the matter.

I do recommend 'The Third Reich' to anyone who has serious concerns. The insidious rise of facism in germany and the total horror makes it compelling reading and shakes your soul.