“If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.” – George Eliot
Open Thread: Squirrel Edition
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Sure, they are mere rodents with fleas, but I love squirrrrels.
P.S. Does anyone have a good tatoo artist in SB they can recommend with many sparkly stars?
Kathy-
Recommending a tattoo artist is about as personal as it gets and I will take a chance and recommend Ken Knox at http://805ink.com/.
I have not had him paint me but I had a conversation with him about 1 month ago and really liked him.
I have only 1 tattoo which was done in Austin, TX.
I will have Ken do my 2nd.
The only issue I have with tattooing is that I have to wait 2 weeks before I go in the water and swim and during this heat that is more important than getting my next ‘too.
I’ll probably wait till autumn or winter before I get that cobra on my right shoulder.
Good luck.
I know this is about squirrels, but I felt I just had to mention that the election has been moved up to this week. The Democrats must not be muscled into voting for this bailout atrocity. I know it’s a pipe-dream to hope that they will have the wherewithal to work for the American people rather than their corporate owners, but it’s worth at least one last push. Call your Senators and your Representative, if you have the stomach for it, and ask that they flush this bailout down the toilet. If the majority, I know thin but still majority, Democrats can’t handle this thing when the Republican’s whole world-view has been exposed to be completely false, there is no hope. It won’t matter if Obama wins in November because the government will be a hollow, burned-out shell. Stop the bailout.
Here’s an especially prescient clip from George Carlin about what is really going on here.
I second.
Treasury Secretary Paulson this weekend said “[I]t pains me tremendously to put this on the American taxpayer. But it is better than the alternative.”
He is entitled to his view, and he deserves credit for acting on it. But just keep in mind, he and every other economist agrees that this mess is a result of mortgages going bad. Paulson believes the solution must be for the taxpayer to buy up all this bad paper, and then the government can foreclose on homeowners in an orderly fashion and collect the pennies on the dollar that these securities might be worth. Meanwhile, the executives of these financial companies and their shareholders get to keep the benefits of all the “profits” of the last few years, while shoring up their balance sheets for the future. After shoring up the books of these institutions, the homeowner/taxpayer still of course is to be foreclosed on. It is classic “privatize the profits and socialize the losses,” and we should not be surprised to see this come out of Bush and his crew. (And it is of course just “coincidence” that Paulson’s firm, Goldman Sachs, is likely the only investment bank left standing, shored up this weekend by executive fiat permitting it to become and FDIC insured deposit institution.)
As I said, Paulson’s approach is just one view. Here’s another:
Instead of buying up the securities representing the bad mortgages at taxpayer expense, and then foreclosing on those same taxpayers, would it really be such a bad alternative to:
1) Let the financial companies and banks take the hit, and save taxpayer powder to shore up the FDIC. (I have not heard any reputable economist suggest that 1.3 Trillion would be needed to shore up the FDIC to make good on deposits likely to be jeopardized by this. Estimates I’ve seen are not even a fraction of that.)
2) To the extent there will be any “bailout”, create a fund to buy homeowners out of their mortgages and refinance those directly at reasonable rates and terms. This way, the actual taxpayers in trouble can regain their footing and get back to work cleaning up this mess.
3) Meanwhile, let the shareholders of these financial companies sue the executives who made these incredibly poor decisions and illusory profits to recover the ill gotten gains they put in their pockets.
For example, Angelo Mozillo of Countrywide put over $300 million dollars into his own pocket in the few years preceding Countrywide’s collapse.
I wonder how much Secretary Paulson made as a result of Goldman’s “profits” over the past few years.
Were the taxpayer not to insulate these companies from the losses these executives caused, my guess is there is a very large pool of money sitting in the executives’ pockets which could go to make shareholders closer to whole.
As always in the American system, the question comes down to who pays?
Call your Congresspeople TODAY and tell them NO on the fat cat bailout.
This is Obama’s first test as President.
According to Thom Hartmann this morning, Paulson was paid $17 million by Goldman Sachs in the six months before leaving to become Treasury Secretary.
This is shades of Dick Cheney being paid $25 million cash by Halliburton to quit as CEO and run for VP. We know how that turned out.
Is this crisis real? Yes. But Paulson’s response to it may well turn out to be like Cheney answering 9-11 by attacking Iraq. Halliburton did very well, but the problem supposedly being solved was only made worse.