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Is this the same Howard Kunstler that reporters stated:
"Howard Kunstler is really a smart guy who is amazingly blinded by his far left ideology."
While the guy has some good points, he does come from a really far left ideology, so his writings and viewpoints are not without bias.
I have never claimed to agree with a lot of Kunstler's politics. That said, I think his observations about America's increasingly non-sustainable energy policies and the ultimate futility of its suburban/auto-dependent lifestyle are quite lucid and well worth hearing. He also understands quite well the perils of an economy based more and more on non-productive speculation rather than the creation of real, true wealth. Nor is he alone in either group of observations. I happen to be a pretty strident fiscal conservative, and the current course America is heading down scares the hell out of me.
Looks like Asia has already come to their senses...they've given back most of the ridiculous Fannie-Freddie bump only 24 hours later. Apparently they teach math there after all...
And regarding Kunstler, at least he's brave enough to stand up to the stampeding sheeple and say out loud that something is very, very wrong.
Another term for "oxygen thief" is one of my own personal favorites, the proverbial "waste of gravity." And speaking of gravity, and relativity and all that...it's too bad CERN's about-to-be-commissioned new Large Hadron Collider can't use the US Congress for a high-energy particle beam target...they might discover a new basic particle to accompany the "quark" and "gluon," as hundreds of "morons" go shooting in every direction out of the place...
Just wanted to say I appreciate the posted links to various articles and so forth. Not that I need to see "proof" for people's statements, but I do want to delve further. I think.
To keep from throwing the baby out with the bathwater when reading James Howard Kunstler, look beyond his pervasive pessimism, hopelessness, and know-it-all arrogance. I'm inclined to admire the guy becasue he speaks his mind and tells it the way he sees it. Even though I don't much care for his know-it-all style of writing, he makes some good arguments that would be foolish to ignore. The main thing I took away from reading The Long Emergency is that cheap oil was a short term opportunity to move civilization forward, and that we have essentially squandered the opportunity by creating an unsustainable lifestyle. I imagine that even a blind person could sense the truth of that statement, without even seeing the environmental destruction that cheap oil has brought about. While I found myself in agreement with many of his assessments, throughout the book, I was unable to shake the feeling that this guy is stuck in a box of his own making. His perceptions within the box seem quite accurrate, but he cannot or will not look outside the box. I think his inability to make this leap is the root cause of his pessimissism and hopelessness. Admittedly, I have no idea myself what lies outside of this box, but I sense it is there and that feeds my sense of hopefulness. Wether that is foolish or wise remains to be seen.
In mid August, Treasury Secretary Paulson says they have no plans to bail out the GSEs (Fannie/Freddie), and on Sep 5th they're rolling out a plan. And even as the RNC is underway, with a platform that includes opposition to taxpayer funded bailouts, the sitting republican administration is now rolling out the mother of all bailouts. ....
Here's a "PART 2" to the story... the almost totally collapsed value of Fannie and Freddie common stock threatens to take down MANY banks that owned shares in the GSEs .... now those banks are asking the Govt to make THEM whole. Story at: washingtonpost.com
World Upside Down crowd really goes at it again....
Okay, first the important stuff:
"Oxygen Thief" - be sure and search the term at Uncyclopedia.org for some good laughs.
But we still need Bideshi to chime in please with what he meant. Like BrightDogLover, I was thinking more along the lines of someone in Katmandu stealing mountaineers' oxygen bottles for a quick buck or something....
Now on to Fannie/Freddie debacle:
Anyone notice how the MSM depicted the government takeover of Fannie/Freddie as some wonderful, "great news" event, complete with photo's of a proud, smiling Sec. Paulson acting like he just won a gold medal at the Olympics or something!?!? Gimme a million breaks!
The New York Times had an article today about how the gov't takeover this past weekend has triggered the "largest credit default credit swap event" in history (and no that was not a typo).
I hope BobOfFormerlyDownSouthNowCSprings or some other resident CD genius can help explain what this apparent 'mother of all credit default swaps' is all about but, but as I read it, the swaps were all just "called" because in the CDO contracts if the Feds step in that equates to default and therefore the swaps/payouts are triggered.
So the MSM and the White House and LBear and whoever else can try and act like this is just more "bad news that's really good news, yeah that's the ticket, yeah yeah", but on Wall Street I guess a stinky rotten pig is still just a stinky rotten pig.
The wave of credit default swaps that were triggered by the Fannie/Freddie takeover are likely much ado about not much.
A CDS is for all intents and purposes, default insurance. Just like your insurance policy, there are a set of defined circumstances that force a swap...the CDS issuer pays full par value for the security, and the security owner in return trades the securities for the payment.
In a true default scenario, the securities are worthless or close to it, meaning the CDS issuer is paying par value for (used) toilet paper. That's the nightmare train-wreck scenario for CDS issuers. But in this case, gov't takeover is one of those defined triggers for a CDS...but the security itself (Fannie/Freddie bond debt) is still worth close to par value, so all that happens is it forces a change in ownership of the bonds. What the CDS issuer is paying is close to their actual value, so there little real loss occurring. It can still be painful if the securities have a prolonged period of illiquidity, i.e. nobody wants to buy them, as with auction rate bonds these days, but that's a far less painful situation (unless you have to have the $$ now and are forced to sell at a big discount when nobody's buying).
Now Fannie/Freddie stock is something entirely different. That is approaching the value of used TP, and it smells about as nice, too. There are a large number of banks with sizeable holdings in GSE equity, and they're now set up to take it square in the shorts, on top of all the other troubles that reckless poor risk management brings.
The Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac debacle is a national disgrace, and ultimately it looks like the taxpayer will end up as the principal bagholder while the greedy pigmen take the $$trillions they have robbed to the Caymans and Switzerland. But they'll bring a little taste of that ill-gotten booty to Vail, I'm sure...
But they'll bring a little taste of that ill-gotten booty to Vail, I'm sure...
Bob, you failed to mention that the rest of us will reap the benefit of those high paying service economy jobs, while servicing them during their visit to Vail. All of Colorado will benefit. You can be assurred that their ill-gotten wealth will trickle down to the rest of us....one penny at a time.
But they'll bring a little taste of that ill-gotten booty to Vail, I'm sure...
Bob, you failed to mention that the rest of us will reap the benefit of those high paying service economy jobs, while servicing them during their visit to Vail. All of Colorado will benefit. You can be assurred that their ill-gotten wealth will trickle down to the rest of us....one penny at a time.
How many of us do you estimate the "Great Gatsbys" of the coming Greater Depression can keep employed catering to their whims?
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World Upside Down crowd really goes at it again....
