Open Thread - 11 December 2010

Comments

[Fred]

So will the tea party support the 'compromise' that will add $600 Billion to the national debt? Anyone think that SS 'tax holiday' is not going to be described as a tax hike when it 'expires' just like the Bush tax cuts?

[Norbert M. Salamon]

Interesting approx 1 hour long documentary on wickileaks:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27039.htm

[Charles I]

There will be QE 3 & 4 before 2012. We're in for another protracted period of commodity speculation and manipulation.

Apparently monetary policy is seen as an unsustainable tactic that nonetheless serves some end. Perhaps a bankrupt country and the destruction of the currency, the usual fin de siecle suspects in many national conflagrations. There's a fellow on your news, probably more than one, vowing to burn his home rather than surrender it to the. . . authorities.

Fire sales and bankruptcy seem the cheapest way to acquire valuable assets, unless you're positioned to steal 'em outright with impunity.

The housing bubble, hardly processed yet, was the mere froth on top of the as of yet indeterminate, contractually private pile of bullshit that was the derivatives trade. The stock market has been artificially re inflated in a jobless recovery to attract investors with liquid lolly, ala GM's historic IPO. What a difference a year makes for a corporation, as opposed to a citizen.

There is something terrible latent in your governance and polity that I fear the usual reactive swing of the socio-political pendulum will not correct, because a gigantic spanner has been tossed into the works that democracies cannot really exist without.

Its very troubling. I try and divine the future desired from Bohner's rheumy visage or Palin's crazed yet Stepford Wives gleam of eye, and the affect they manifest, never mind the gibberish they spout, and no heartening prospect is revealed, let alone inconvenient truth acknowledged. Aside from a Titanicesque steadfastness in their vacuity which apparently has the intellectual and moral force of a politico-emotional black hole, the future is missing.

The Democrats, well, I can't imagine what its like being a supporter, actually having voted for change, won a majority, and then be served up this mind boggling capitulation to wealth and irrationality.

Business as usual. With no usual business practices.

[Charles I]

A moment for the mostly U.S soldiers killed returning from peacekeeping in the Sinai 20 years ago at Gander Nfld.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_Air_Flight_1285

[Charles I]

A Secretive Banking Elite Rules Trading in Derivatives

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/business/12advantage.html?src=me&ref=general

You'll see. It ain't over yet

[Fred]

Can't catch bin Laden but then an catch 12 year olds in the UK.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/12/12/boy-of-12-hauled-out-of-class-by-police-over-david-cameron-facebook-protest-115875-22778944/#ixzz17wVP1KC5

[Fred]

Neocons at it again/still:
http://www.hudson-ny.org/1714/iran-missiles-in-venezuela