The Day After The Day After Boxing Day, Thoughts From England

OS has enjoyed his quiet days here in a university town in England. There is nothing like looking at different real estate and faces to help calm the mind and give some perspective. OS, being on vacation, has no dramatic insights to offer, but he has been impressed by scenes, anecdotes, vignettes, and shares them here.

1. If there's a recession on, it's hard to tell by the Christmas shopping. The stores have been packed here, and the reports from London about the shoppers on the 27th tell of eye-watering sales figures. Now, granted, a university town is more prosperous than many other places, but the majority of the people I encountered on the streets are only indirectly attached to the university--faculty, staff and students have all bugged out on holiday.

2. It's uncanny to observe how American popular culture and mores have penetrated the UK over the years. OS and his sainted bride were serenaded while standing in queue for a concert by a choir singing 'Rudolf', 'Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire', and 'Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas', all three songs amongst the most-played songs in American history. OS also walked the streets and heard buskers playing dixieland music, and one gent singing Hank Williams songs.

3. Inspirational moment of the year was an episode of 'The Choir', following Gareth Malone as he forms a choir made up of the wives of British servicemen on deployment in Afghanistan. They learn to sing, begin to bond, and Gareth gains their trust enough for them to share the letters they write and receive to/from their husbands. From this, he consults with a composer to create an anthem for them to sing to the Queen in Royal Albert Hall. Anyone not in utter tears from viewing this has no soul.

It is the number-one single on the UK pop charts. Wonder if the purveyors of that aural pornography known as rap will take notice? This is where the culture is, people returning to the marketplace to buy records that move them.

Moh, latuh, ya'll. Traveling to other parts of the island today for lunch with friends.

This is a great place, a great people. The headlines, per usual, don't begin to tell the story.

Christmas 2011, An Interlude

OldSouth is on extended holiday, as it is referred to here in the UK. He is here to visit family and friends, to walk the streets of a university town, to eat, drink, read, spend time with the sainted Mrs. OldSouth, to slow down and reflect on a momentous year.

He is about to head out the door to walk the streets of that university town, and looks forward to services today and tomorrow in churches that sing the Christmas carols in full voice. He arrived two days ago, to end the day at one of those services with over 2,000 others, singing in full voice. It's quite a sound, full of hope and cheer, and it struck OS once again that the carols were written for us to sing, not for pop artists to mutilate and sell to us.

So, OS wishes all who are kind enough to visit and read his scribble a most Merry Christmas. He may or may not write over this holiday, because, well, he's on holiday.

It is a dark world, run by idiots and crazies, always has been, and now more so than ever. Our hope is not here, but he did break in upon us in that birth, and in his life and death, The idiots and crazies killed him stone dead, and he defeated death in the process.

Merry Christmas.

Vaclav Havel, The Playwright Who Led 1989's 'Velvet Revolution,' dies at 75

For those of us alive in 1989 and paying attention, witnessing the unraveling of the Soviet Empire was heady stuff. After all, we born into a world where the long barrier that cut Europe in twain, in order to keep the East enslaved and the West on constant alert, was just a fact of life.

Then, suddenly, it disintegrated, that barrier. And along with it, the regimes that held that part of the world under their collectivist thumb. And Havel was one of the people who brought it about.

Those of us who remember 1969 remember the terrible fate that befell Alexander Dubcek, who had attempted much the same, only to see the Soviet tanks roll in to Prague to crush all hope. We feared for Havel, and cheered when the citizenry flooded the streets, and freedom won the day.
A few months later, he stood before a joint session of Congress, attempting to explain what had occurred, admitting he was at a loss for words himself.

But the words he chose were pithy, and eloquent for our day:

The communist type of totalitarian system has left both our nations, Czechs and Slovaks, as it has all the nations of the Soviet Union and the other countries the Soviet Union subjugated in its time, a legacy of countless dead, an infinite spectrum of human suffering, profound economic decline and, above all, enormous human humiliation. It has brought us horrors that fortunately you have not known.

It has given us something positive, a special capacity to look from time to time somewhat further than someone who has not undergone this bitter experience. A person who cannot move and lead a somewhat normal life because he is pinned under a boulder has more time to think about his hopes than someone who is not trapped that way.

What I'm trying to say is this: we must all learn many things from you, from how to educate our offspring, how to elect our representatives, all the way to how to organize our economic life so that it will lead to prosperity and not to poverty. But it doesn't have to be merely assistance from the well-educated, powerful and wealthy to someone who has nothing and therefore has nothing to offer in return.

We, too, can offer something to you: our experience and the knowledge that has come from it.

OS hopes we take his words to heart.

Crossing The Rubicon: A Must Read Post From Jesse--Pay Close Attention

The unwitting customers of MF Global, if they held gold and silver in their accounts, will now have their hard assets seized from them, liquidated, and thrown into the pool of settlement cash.

Not the stockholders of MF Global--the customers of MF Global.

Which eventually means, of course, that under the right circumstances of breathtaking fraud, no asset is safe unless it is stowed out of sight, location known only to the owner. Gold coins buried in the back forty, and the farmer armed at all times. Now that's how a nation builds a vital economy--destroy all trust between parties in a transaction!

We've always believed it could never happen here, that we live under the Rule of Law.

Dem daze iz gawn, brethrun. Today, it's MF Global. Next year, it may be the community bank down the street.

The final line of the article Jesse reprints is especially charming, recalling the Red Chinese tradition of summary execution, in which the authorities bill the deceased's family for the ammunition expended to murder their loved one.

Sweeeet....

JDA Says It Best: Why Didn't We Untangle Ourselves From Europe THREE YEARS AGO?'

OS' favorite potty-mouth economist sez it all. No comment necessary.

The Crooks And The Cops Lock Arms: The SEC Plans To Appeal Judge Krakoff's Ruling In The Citigroup Case

Time was, when the crooks, in this case Citigroup (who ripped off everyone in sight, including every taxpayer in the US for generations), got caught and lost their case in court, they appealed their conviction/loss, proclaiming that they were the real victims, etc. etc., and that theft isn't theft because it was done with computers by white people in suits, not black people holding up liquor stores with guns--you know, real criminals, the kind you put in jail, to keep white folk like us safe on the way to the country club...

Them daze iz over, ya'll. Merry Christmas!

OS's readers may remember a couple of earlier posts, here and here, in which he recounts how one federal Judge Rakoff had decided he had had enough, and that he would not rubber-stamp one more sweetheart deal between the SEC Enforcement Division and the banks they were supposed to be, well, enforcing the rules on. His intent, obviously, was for the SEC to go back, and extract real penalties from Citigroup for having blatantly ripped the world off for some 700 million dollars, and come back to him.

To quote John Belushi: 'But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooo......'


The SE frigging C plan to lock arms with the crooks, and appeal the judge's ruling!!!

They have no intention of (a) ceasing to make sweetheart deals with crooks, and (b) exposing the inner workings of the machine that makes these sweetheart deals by actually litigating them, because that would open them up to adversarial process, which includes (drumroll please) Discovery!

So, instead of spending their energies enforcing the law, they'll spend their energies arguing that they shouldn't have to enforce the law, even though that's what they were instituted to do, and are paid to do, and (by innocent souls like OS) expected to do.

This is Alice Through The Looking Glass, pure and simple.

It is maddening, but no longer surprising to read of it. We're at the point where the cops don't even need to pretend to uphold the law.

By the way, if anyone thinks those MF Global clients, including all those farmers who didn't even know they were MR Global clients, have a prayer of getting their money back, this should disabuse them.

The cops now protect the crooks--it's the Chicago Way--the world of Al Capone, Eric Holder, Tim Geithner...

Complete Incompetence Department: 'Could We Pretty-Please Have Our Drone Back?'

Horrifying? Yes.

Surprising? Not at all.

From ABC News, who no longer even attempts to pretend TheOne has a shred of credibility:

The Obama administration has delivered a formal request to Iran for the return of a U.S. surveillance drone captured by Iranian armed forces, but said it is not hopeful that Iran will comply.

President Barack Obama said Monday that the U.S. wants the top-secret aircraft back. "We have asked for it back. We'll see how the Iranians respond," Obama said during a White House news conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Monday.
In an interview broadcast live Monday night on Venezuelan state television, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said nothing to suggest his country would grant the U.S. request.

"The Americans have perhaps decided to give us this spy plane," Ahmadinejad said. "We now have control of this plane."

Speaking through an interpreter, Ahmadinejad said: "There are people here who have been able to control this spy plane, who can surely analyze this plane's system also. ... In any case, now we have this spy plane."

He added, "Very soon, they're going to learn more about the abilities and possibilities of our country."

At this point, mounting a raid to retrieve it, or attempting to destroy it would be futile, as it has certainly been disassembled, and is now being gone over piece-by-piece by the Chinese.

Perhaps it really doesn't matter to Himself that the worst people on the planet now possess one of our most sophisticated pieces of military technology, delivered to their doorstep.

Maybe he's decided that they're on the winning side in this generation, and has decided to just go with the flow of history.

Maybe he really does sympathize with the Islamists, and although not intending to turn this over to them, saw an opportunity to help his brethren in the situation?

How to explain this inexplicable behavior?

Why does Hilary Clinton remain at State one more day? Her resignation would blow the Obama Administration sky-high. Same for Leon Panetta at Defense. Why does he remain, since this occurred on his watch, and his Commander-in-Chief just sold every person in uniform down the river?


Nothing explains this incident.

Ronnie and Margaret, we miss you.

That Worked Well...NOT! BofE QE Achieves Almost Nothing...No One Surprised, Except The People Operating The Presses

HT Adam Smith Institute...

The BoE claimed that the £200 billion it printed in 2009 onwards, resulted in the yields on five and ten years gilts being 100 basis points lower than they would otherwise have been.  It claimed that growth was boosted by between 1.5 and 2%.  On the basis of this, it enthusiastically decided to print another £75 billion this October.

Not so, says the highly authoritative (and not personally interested) Bank for International Settlements in its latest quarterly report.  The real effect was about a quarter of what the BoE claims.  Yields were on average 27 points lower.

The BIS also doesn’t agree with the BoE’s belief that new stimulus will have a similar effect.  “It may be harder to achieve the same degree of effectiveness as with the initial programmes once the surprise or novelty element wanes”, it states in its conclusion.  This basically means that financial movers realise that the money printing results in inflation, and that they therefore add that future inflation into their behaviour.

Canada Bids Kyoto Accord Farewell

They're admitting the obvious: It's bogus, unenforceable, and detrimental to their interests.

'The whole affair is complete theatre, of course.': Detlev Schlichter

This article has been making the rounds, and deserves to be shared. Schlichter cuts through the verbiage, the grandstanding, and the blatant falsehoods, and succinctly tells us the truth.

The problems around the world are essentially the same. After decades of ongoing and generous expansion of the fiat money supply, of artificially low interest rates and cheap credit, banks are hopelessly overextended, asset markets are distorted, and sovereign states are bust. I sometimes get pushback on the last point. Are they really bust? – Yes, most of them are. They have acquired debt loads and spending habits – now very deep-rooted and practically impossible to eradicate – that require constant new borrowing at fairly low interest rates – cheap credit forever. Obviously, that is not going to happen. The end of the forty-year credit boom has arrived. The private sector is no longer playing ball.

Remember OS's meme about culture shaping economy? We have a culture that assumes that we all will have unlimited access--it's our right--to all good things of life, and somebody else somewhere sometime will foot the bill. Thus, our present conundrum.

That being said, 'nuff said.

This is unsustainable. Math is math, and TheGreatAndGood refuse to acknowledge it, believing themselves to be immune from its inexorable consequences.

Thus, either there is a God in charge, whose providential will is in the process of being worked out via this human folly, or there isn't. OS thinks we are on the verge of finding out, one way or t'other. He's not predicting TheEndOfTheWorld, but we are in for a very rough slog here in the West, and for his part, plans to work for its preservation in a healthy form, for the restoration of Christendom.

In the meantime, he has work to do, much travel ahead, and a long-anticipated Christmas to enjoy. He hopes his readers do the same.  A few entries in the next few days, and then likely silence over the holidays.

OS suspects there will be much to discuss in the New Year.

Ya'll take care of yohselves, and love on yer luved onez reaaaallll good.

Merry Christmas To The Thugs Who Run North Korea

HT Outside The Beltway-Steven Taylor

From the BBC, droll as always:

North Korea has warned South Korea of "unexpected consequences" if it lights up a Christmas tree-shaped tower near their tense border. The North's state-run Uriminjokkiri website said it would amount to a form of "psychological warfare".

Seoul's annual tradition of lighting up a Christmas tree tower was suspended in 2003 following a warming of ties. However, the South lit a tower last year as relations deteriorated between the neighbours.

The Associated Press quotes a defence ministry official as saying the South has agreed to allow Christian groups to light a further two towers this year.

Only frightened thugs react in this manner to a Christmas tree. That being the case, OS proposes the South Koreans and the US proceed to put the afterburners to the Christmas spirit:

We've got every square inch of North Korea mapped--every hill, hamlet, fishing village and farm. Let's put up Christmas trees and mongo-sized creches within sight of any and all on the border, and on the SK-controlled islands as well. Then, let's turn those lights on, and play Christmas carols from dusk til dawn. Don't have to fire a shot--Christmas trees are a lot cheaper than artillery shells and choppers. Let's spread some hope and cheer, and cut the legs out from under those criminals in Pyongyang.

It sounds like the NKs have an incipient Christianity problem--strange how the gospel manages to take root in those dark corners, and little churches spring up like weeds under the feet of the despots.

Reminds one of the story of a baby born in a barn all those years ago, right under the noses of the Romans...

They also have a grinding and obvious poverty problem...this is a satellite shot of the region, taken at night a few years back. That's Japan on the right, Manchuria and China at the top and, South Korea at bottom left, and that black hole in the middle is, well, North Korea--Worker's Paradise.

NLRB Drops Its Bogus BS Case Against Boeing Plant In SC

Finally, although with much humphing and grumphing in order to save face.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Labor Relations Board on Friday officially dropped its high-profile case challenging Boeing's decision to open a nonunion aircraft manufacturing plant in South Carolina.

The board acted after the Machinists union approved a 4-year contract extension with Boeing earlier this week and agreed to withdraw its charge that the company violated federal labor laws.
Lafe Solomon, the board's acting general counsel, said he had always preferreOrd a settlement. The agency settles about 90 percent of its cases.

Under the deal, Boeing promised to build the new version of its 737 airplane in Washington state. The Machinists also agreed to drop allegations that Boeing opened the South Carolina plant in retaliation for past union strikes.

Both Solomon and the agency had come under intense criticism from Republican lawmakers and South Carolina officials for bringing the case. Republicans and business groups claimed the agency was setting a dangerous precedent by interfering with a legitimate business decision about where to locate workers.

But Solomon said he was simply following the law and might do it again if faced with similar facts.

Or, alternatively, The NLRB and the Obama Administration were caught in the act of extorting Boeing, and decided, with 2012 on the horizon, that they might not wish to have this particular outrage linger into the New Year.

In any case, congrats to Boeing and South Carolina. In 2013, it will be time to put the NLRB on the list of 'agencies consigned to Oblivion'.

Bank Of England Breaks Out The Firehoses

Courtesy of Paul Twigg, who is adept at noticing these things.

The BofE, having decided that the Euro is toast, has announced it will break out the liquidity firehoses to do what it can to protect UK banks when the European kitchen fire begins in earnest. 

Of course, as always, they say things much more politely...


In a crowded neighborhood, when fire breaks out, some fire crews spend their energies on putting out the blaze, and others on spraying water on the roofs of the neighboring buildings. In the US west, when a brush fire breaks out, they bulldoze firelines to clear brush, and keep close watch on the wind as they set backfires to consume the fuel in the fire's path. In short, the effort is to save what they can, and let the fire burn itself out. The art and craft of it all is to stay ahead of the path of the flames...

OS wishes the BofE well.

Watergate Hearings Redux: Corzine Will Claim He Doesn't Know Where 700 Million Of His Customers' Money Is...

OS's best guess? In private accounts, accessible from wherever his Gulfstream will eventually carry him.

The claim will be--Geez, I dunno where it all went!

This man is one of the minor deities of Wall Street. He took Goldman-Sachs public. He was governor of New Jersey. He was a US Senator. He spent his lifetime knowing where da' munny iz, hunny!!

Why does this man still possess a passport? And access to a Gulfstream?

Bernie Madoff must be belly-laughing today! Maybe he'll decide to start talking to the Feds about Jon.

Jon S. Corzine's statement to the House Agriculture Committee

MF Global Quote Of The Day: Amy Klobuchar (D) Minnesota

 The MF Global scandal will eventually take its place beside Lehman, Enron, Merrill-Lynch, GM, Goldman-Sachs and the rest. Its tentacles reach far beyond Wall Street and City of London. It is landing, like an enormous cow-pie, into the lives of farmers on the American prairie.

There are legitimate participants in the commodities markets, doing legitimate business for good reasons. One reason is to stabilize feed costs for livestock producers.

From the Minnesota Star-Tribune:

Dennis Magnuson is a farmer, not a gambler. He trades in the commodity futures markets hoping to stabilize the cost of feed for the pigs he sells. The Austin, Minn., resident said he would never put his money into bonds issued by European countries flirting with economic collapse.

But the now-collapsed MF Global Holdings Ltd. may have done that for him.

Magnuson is among more than 100 Minnesota farmers estimated to have assets frozen as a result of MF Global's bankruptcy filing and an estimated $1.2 billion in missing customer funds. Most of the farmers didn't choose to do business with the huge brokerage house that has become one of the biggest financial failures in U.S. history. They invested through brokers or financial advisers who eventually used MF Global to clear trades.

On Thursday, members of the Senate agriculture committee, including Minnesota Democrat Amy Klobuchar, grilled the heads of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over apparent loopholes in rules that allowed farmers' commodity trades to end up in risky European bonds.

What??!!!???

The article is horrifying to read, but OS hopes you read it. The final paragraph is out quote of the day:


"I don't have a scandal meter," she said. "I just think it's another example of why we just can't let these financial firms run roughshod over people on Main Street or people who are doing nothing but growing crops or raising pigs. They should not have to know every in and out of the regulatory system to protect their money."

 Ya'll--if Corzine and company don't go to jail for the rest of their lives, then Bernie Madoff is owed an apology. This is just the front end of the woes to befall this country from MF Global.

Remember who Corzine is, and who his HomeBoy in the White House is. Less than a year to go until we get to register our opinions at the ballot. OS just hopes someone can staunch the financial blood loss sufficiently until then.

Before this is over, Corzine will have loaded up the Gulfstream and high-tailed it to somewhere like Paraguay. He still has his passport, and access to all sorts of cash and assets everywhere.

Heaven help us.

After 27 Years, The Exoneration Of An Innocent Man, Thomas Haynesworth.

HT Doug Mataconis, a voice of reason in a world of flame-throwers.

Imagine, a the age of eighteen, walking into the local grocery purchase bread and sweet potatoes for dinner, being arrested for heinous crimes you never committed, and spending the next twenty-seven years in the Kafka-esque world of a southern state criminal justice system. Oh, by the way, you are black...

This is exactly what happened to one Thomas Haynesworth in 1984 in Virginia. Yesterday, the state reluctantly concluded, that yes, this man was innocent of the crimes he committed, and it would be a good idea to issue him a writ of actual innocence, wipe his slate clean, and let him get on with his life--now that he's forty-six years of age!

Even with overwhelming evidence of his innocence, four of the ten appeals judges thought he should rot in prison anyway--

“The victims have not recanted, no one has confessed, and there is no direct evidence that Haynesworth did not commit these crimes,” Judges Larry G. Elder and William G. Petty wrote in a dissenting opinion. “The Attorney General has merely expressed his opinion that Haynesworth is innocent.”

Therefore, even though Virginia's case against the man was proved a complete web of lies, it's up to the guy rotting in state prison to provide direct evidence of his own innocence from 1984.

Kafka lives in Richmond, ya'll.

Blessedly, Haynesworth finally is a free man. How many more like him, however? OS suspects many, many more. There is a chilling quote from a Virginia AG in the 1990's, Mary Sue Terry, buried in the article: “Evidence of innocence is irrelevant.”

Contemplate this, ya'll...

“Evidence of innocence is irrelevant.”

“Evidence of innocence is irrelevant.”

“Evidence of innocence is irrelevant.”


The only things that stand between prosecutors, cops and judges who would gladly send innocent people to prison and death row are juries and state legislatures that insist that truth matters. The situation in Tennessee is egregious, with some 3,000 complaints in the system against judges, all handled in secret, by other judges. They were indignant that the legislature (now controlled by the GOP) would dare break in on their comfortable way of doing business.

Using Tennessee’s Open Records Act, Tennessee Watchdog found only 23 public actions – reprimands, censures, suspensions or agreed orders – by the COJ against Tennessee judges forthe last 10 calendar years. That total represents less than one percent of the almost 3,000 complaints lodged against judges in the last decade.

OS reminds his readers--vote, and communicate with your state reps and senators. Vote in that local DA election. Do jury duty when called, if you possibly can. Play possum with the prosecutor during the voir dire. Then, if you even smell a hint of a lie from the cops and prosecution (who cheerily suborn perjury daily), hang that jury. Remember, the defendant will be crushed under the wheels of the state unless one juror stands tall.

And you, or your eighteen-year-old kid, could well be next. For them, truth matters not a moment, only the collecting of scalps in the pursuit of the judge's robes, or that partnership in the high-powered firm, or that governorship, or all of the above.

You are just a piece of meat to grind along the way.

“Evidence of innocence is irrelevant.”

“Evidence of innocence is irrelevant.”

“Evidence of innocence is irrelevant.”

How Wars Begin: Argentina Begins To Turn The Screws On The Falklands

The UK doesn't have the resources to defend their islands.

They sold their Harriers to the US Marines.

Obama and Hilary will side with Argentina (and Chavez's Venezuela, by the way).

We miss you, Mrs. Thatcher and Mr. Reagan.

It’s My Birthday, And I’ll Blog If I Want To

OldSouth celebrates a birthday this week; today, as a matter of fact. This is not urgent news, as it appears to be an annual event for every soul on the planet. 

The bad news is that OS realizes he is one year older, and feels mortality breathing down his neck, especially as he sees those born in his year (and even those younger) called to their reward. The good news, of course, is that he is alive and healthy and alert enough to experience these moments of neurotic self-absorption, and hopefully in good enough mental frame to have the presence of mind to laugh at his own navel-gazing. 

To have been born in 1955 is a real privilege. OS remembers a childhood those even ten years younger cannot remember, before the assassinations, the upheaval of the late 1960's, TheWar(that one in Indochina, not the Middle East), Johnson's grandiosity, Nixon's paranoia, Ford's well-meaning attempts to right the ship, Carter's ineptitude--before drug use became a major problem, before the single-parent family became commonplace; before, before, before, before the wheels began to come off the culture. 

To his own children, 1955-1965 may well as well be 1890-1900, so removed is their experience from that of their father. OS and his sainted bride did all they could to form a home life that replicated that sweet and safe time, centered around books, friends, music, church, home-cooking, small-town bucolic life. The little county in which they settled is, in many ways, a time warp back to 1957, and it has been (with its many failings) a wonderful haven in which to raise the kids, both of whom now prosper wonderfully as young adults. Still, with all that, they spent formative years with the television discussing the odd sexual proclivities of a sitting president, his intern, and his cigar. It couldn't be completely banished, nor would it have been wise to do so. The world is what it is, and they had to be equipped to live effectively in it. They learned that no outrage is sufficient to merit removal from a place of responsibility, as long as one has power to share, favors to trade, money to shower in the correct directions. (Think Bernie Madoff, Jon Corzine...) They learned that virtue is indeed its own reward, but that given the choice between virtue and power, power wins the day for most people. And that the pursuit of virtue is the only sane course to chart in life. OS is unspeakably proud of them both.

In this Anno Domini of 2011, OS has felt keenly that the cultural ground has shifted under our feet, perhaps in some ominous direction. His friends report that same experience from different corners of the world. He notices that he spends less time writing in this blog, perhaps wishing to spend his energies more directly and face-to-face with family, colleagues, students, and friends. He has become rather less diplomatic of late, sensing that time is short, and he best say what he means while still he can. 

All is not darkness, and this not a day to despair; unless of course we believe that this Vale of Tears is all there is to life, that we don't live in the context of Eternity, that if there is a God he walked away from his creation. Those folks are not only mistaken, they are doomed to hopelessness, and thence to madness and cruelty.

OS once heard a grizzled old Calvinist preacher drive home three points during a dark year of these past fifty-six. It still keeps him going, all these years later.

1. God's in charge.

2. He always finishes what he begins.

3. He never leaves himself without a witness.

That being said, OS has a birthday gift for his readers--the story of a boy from El Salvador who refused to die, refused to quit, and extraordinary people who came alongside him in his fight for his life and his future.

  

OS hopes his readers take a moment to read this account of tragedy, love, perseverance, generosity and ingenuity, and take the time to share it with their circle of family and friends. Hopefully, we'll each have opportunity to participate in just such an inspiring life during the time remaining to us.

What The Heck, Let's Just Flood The World With These Fresh Dollars We Conjured Up. What Could Go Wrong?

OS didn't check the news til late afternoon--DJIA up 500 points in one freaking day.

And we thought we were all in deep doo-doo, what with most of the Western World in debt to the tune of trillions of dollars, which of course will be mathematically impossible to repay.

So, solution: Just print up some more, throw it at the stock market. That will make everything just a-o-k!

Why didn't we think of this earlier?

Well, actually, Virginia; look up 'Weimar Republic' to see what occurs from massive money printing....eventually they ended up with a little guy with a funny mustache and a messianic belief in himself.  That worked out, ok, didn't it?

Well, didn't it?

Judge Rakoff Tells The SEC and Citigroup He's Had Enough, Refuses To Approve One More Slap On the Wrist

As OS noted last month, the judge seems to have located his huevos.

Today's new's comes as confirmation that, indeed, he has.


From the New York Times, this evening:

Taking a broad swipe at the Securities and Exchange Commission’s practice of allowing companies to settle cases without admitting that they had done anything wrong, a federal judge on Monday rejected a $285 million settlement between Citigroup and the agency. 

The judge, Jed S. Rakoff of United States District Court in Manhattan, said that he could not determine whether the agency’s settlement with Citigroup was “fair, reasonable, adequate and in the public interest,” as required by law, because the agency had claimed, but had not proved, that Citigroup committed fraud. 

As it has in recent cases involving Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, UBS and others, the agency proposed to settle the case by levying a fine on Citigroup and allowing it to neither admit nor deny the agency’s findings. Such settlements require approval by a federal judge. 

While other judges are not obligated to follow Judge Rakoff’s opinion, the 15-page ruling could severely undermine the agency’s enforcement efforts if it eventually blocks the agency from settling cases in which the defendant does not admit the charges. 

The agency contends that it must settle most of the cases it brings because it does not have the money or the staff to battle deep-pocketed Wall Street firms in court. Wall Street firms will rarely admit wrongdoing, the agency says, because that can be used against them in investor lawsuits.

'Well, Duh!' to quote Snookie.  Beside, the lawyers at the SEC, who sheltered Bernie Madoff all those years, were too busy with their online porn to actually check to see if Citigroup were engaging in massive fraud. That would resemble...well...work! Besides, if you want a job at Citigroup or J.P. Morgan after your exhausting five years at the SEC, you best not piss those bankers off by actually doing your job.

In his decision, Judge Rakoff called Citigroup “a recidivist,” or repeat offender, for having previously settled other fraud cases with the agency where it neither admitted nor denied the allegations but agreed never to violate the law in the future.


Citigroup and other repeat offenders can agree to those terms, the judge said, because they know that the commission has not monitored compliance, failing to bring contempt charges for repeat violations in at least 10 years.

Ten years, at least ten years. No attempt to monitor compliance of known fraud artists. Billions lost, businesses and neighborhoods in ruins. Words fail.

It's time for the lawsuits and indictments, ya'll. Somebody needs to go to jail, or we need to apologize to Bernie Madoff and let him go home to Ruth and get back into business. Why the hell not? Either we prosecute massive frauds or we don't. At least, let's be honest and admit that we don't, if we don't intend to.

Here's hoping his ruling stands, and that he doesn't waken one morning with the decapitated head of a horse on the foot of his bed, left as a friendly warning about what happens to uppity judges.

So, Where Does One Go To Sell Worthless Loans On To Unsuspecting Buyers

Seems the word has gotten out about the European banks--desperate for cash, with boatloads of worthless paper for sale.

Does anyone out there really believe the Euro was a good idea?

It's going to be an interesting week and month to year's end...

Lincoln's Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, 1863

It took an extraordinary soul to pen these words, three weeks after the dedication of the military cemetery at Gettysburg. 


October 3, 1863

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften the heart which is habitually insensible to the everwatchful providence of almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and provoke their aggressions, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict; while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the most high God, who while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people. I do, therefore, invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that, while offering up the ascriptions justly due to him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.

In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the seal of the United Stated States to be affixed.

Why Would Anyone, Anywhere Think The EU Is Remotely Good Idea?

From the same minds that brought us the Euro, and insist it live, and freedom die:

EU officials concluded that, following a three-year investigation, there was no evidence to prove the previously undisputed fact (that water consumption prevents dehydration).

Producers of bottled water are now forbidden by law from making the claim and will face a two-year jail sentence if they defy the edict, which comes into force in the UK next month.

Last night, critics claimed the EU was at odds with both science and common sense. Conservative MEP Roger Helmer said: “This is stupidity writ large.

“The euro is burning, the EU is falling apart and yet here they are: highly-paid, highly-pensioned officials worrying about the obvious qualities of water and trying to deny us the right to say what is patently true.

“If ever there were an episode which demonstrates the folly of the great European project then this is it.”

OS asks his British cousins: Why do you not absolutely make your MP's life a living perdition until such time as Parliament votes to withdraw from the EU--immediately?

Why did your parents' and grandparents' (and great-grandparents') generation make such frightful sacrifices?

For this? Life under the thumb of Brussels and the banksters?

Really?

Creepy Charlie Gilmour Gets Out Of Jail Free, Four Months Of Sixteen Served

Peter Hitchens tells the sad tale in his Sunday article--all of which, as always, is well worth reading.

Quote Of The Day: James Koutoulas On MF Global

HT Jesse.

James Koutoulas is CEO of Typhon Capital Management and recently founded the Commodity Customer Coalition (CCC), comprised of over 7000 customers of MF Global. As an attorney and spokesperson for the CCC, Koutoulas has an inside persective on the legal maelstrom that has erupted in the wake of the MF Global bankruptcy scandal -- he's leading the charge for the commodities trading community.

I want to show the American people that no matter how connected you are, no matter if you were the Governor of New Jersey, no matter if you were a senator, if you break the law you should go to jail. And quite frankly, I think it's a disgrace that no one went to jail over the crisis in 2008.

All the people who gave triple-A credit ratings to essentially junk securities, none of them went to jail, none of the people who sold those went to jail, none of the people who committed mortgage fraud went to jail - I think it's ridiculous. If [Corzine] did commit a crime, I want to see him behind bars."

OS perhaps dwells on this too much--but--this crime strikes at the heart of the culture. If Corzine and company skate on this, then eventually nothing will prevent TheBankerDownTheStreet from stealing customer assets, except that he knows many of those customers know who he is, where he lives, and own guns. Even that may not be enough to overcome temptation, if he knows he'll never even face a court appearance for his crimes.

Nigel Farage: 'We Now Live In A German-Dominated Europe' (And That's Just The Polite Part Of His Speech!)

Farage lets fly, and the cameras record the smirks of the targets of his words. Their shamelessness and amusement say as much as he does about our situation. They as much as admit that Farage speaks the truth, but what does truth matter when one has accumulated that sort of power? It reminds OS of Nancy Pelosi's dismissiveness toward any who dared object to the Obama spending orgy of 2009, or the health care debacle of 2010. It reminds OS of George Bush's slimy deal with Teddy Kennedy to ram through a huge immigration bill in the dead of night just before Memorial Day 2007, voters be damned, all those people who voted for him, contributed to him, worked for him, endured abuse for him--screw 'em all.

Power trumps truth. Mammon reigns.



Cranmer adds his thoughts to this speech, which may be a watershed moment.

It was encouraging to hear other delegates cheer Farage on, in contrast to the calm smirks of the New Lords Of Europe.

'We Need A Christ'--Archbishop Fulton Sheen, 1958

OS spotted this posted on Ms. Barnhardt's page, a few posts before today.

Well worth reading:

It may very well be that the Communists, who are so anti-Christ, are closer to Him than those who see Him as a sentimentalist and vague moral reformer. The Communists have at least decided that if He wins, they lose; the others are afraid to consider Him either as winning or losing, because they are not prepared to meet the moral demands which this victory would make on their souls.

If He is what He claimed to be, a Savior, a Redeemer, then we have a virile Christ and a leader worth following in these terrible times; One Who will step into the breach of death, crushing sin, gloom and despair; a leader to Whom we can make totalitarian sacrifice without losing, but gaining freedom, and Whom we can love even unto death.

We need a Christ today Who will make cords and drive the buyers and sellers from our new temples; Who will blast the unfruitful fig-trees; Who will talk of crosses and sacrifices and Whose voice will be like the voice of the raging sea. But He will not allow us to pick and choose among His words, discarding the hard ones, and accepting the ones that please our fancy. We need a Christ Who will restore moral indignation, Who will make us hate evil with a passionate intensity, and love goodness to a point where we can drink death like water.


-Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen 
"Life of Christ", AD 1958

Ann Barnhardt, Cattle And Grain Futures Broker, Keeps Her Soul And Walks Away From Her Business

It's gotta hurt, after years spent building a successful business, based on integrity and and ethic of service.

In the wake of the MF Global scandal, Ms. Barnhardt concluded that she could not look her clients in the eye and suggest they invest their funds into a rigged market. The market has risks enough, run on a fair and competent basis. But if the dice are loaded, the cards marked, if the fix is in--then it is time to go home.

Today, Ms. Barnhardt sent this message to her clients (OS quotes in part--and urges his readers to read it all.)

Dear Clients, Industry Colleagues and Friends of Barnhardt Capital Management,

It is with regret and unflinching moral certainty that I announce that Barnhardt Capital Management has ceased operations. After six years of operating as an independent introducing brokerage, and eight years of employment as a broker before that, I found myself, this morning, for the first time since I was 20 years old, watching the futures and options markets open not as a participant, but as a mere spectator.

The reason for my decision to pull the plug was excruciatingly simple: I could no longer tell my clients that their monies and positions were safe in the futures and options markets – because they are not. And this goes not just for my clients, but for every futures and options account in the United States. The entire system has been utterly destroyed by the MF Global collapse. Given this sad reality, I could not in good conscience take one more step as a commodity broker, soliciting trades that I knew were unsafe or holding funds that I knew to be in jeopardy.

This isn't like shutting down a mom-and-pop retail store, when MomAndPop have decided they've had enough. People like Ms. Barnhardt love their line of work, know that only a handful of people are good at it, and know if conducted properly, customers benefit from her work. And, it's lucrative!

That is hard to walk away from, turn out the lights, close the door, close all positions and hand the money back to the clients. It's walking away from a life's work, a goal achieved, a dream come true. And, yet, she did, and informed her clients as to her reasoning.

Everything changed just a few short weeks ago. A firm, led by a crony of the Obama regime, stole all of the non-margined cash held by customers of his firm. Let’s not sugar-coat this or make this crime seem “complex” and “abstract” by drowning ourselves in six-dollar words and uber-technical jargon. Jon Corzine STOLE the customer cash at MF Global. Knowing Jon Corzine, and knowing the abject lawlessness and contempt for humanity of the Marxist Obama regime and its cronies, this is not really a surprise. What was a surprise was the reaction of the exchanges and regulators. Their reaction has been to take a bad situation and make it orders of magnitude worse. Specifically, they froze customers out of their accounts WHILE THE MARKETS CONTINUED TO TRADE, refusing to even allow them to liquidate. This is unfathomable. The risk exposure precedent that has been set is completely intolerable and has destroyed the entire industry paradigm. No informed person can continue to engage these markets, and no moral person can continue to broker or facilitate customer engagement in what is now a massive game of Russian Roulette.

The lady is unashamedly Christian, and decided to heed the words of the Master who admonished: What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and yet lose his soul?

Her entire blog page is fascinating to read...OS leaves it to his readers to explore.

OS understands, although does not compare himself to her. There was a time, though, when he had to walk away from a business he had always dreamed of building and owning, because it had turned evil. He knew it would fall of its own weight once he stepped away, and it did. It hurt--a lot. The memory is still tender to the touch.

But, upon turning away, the real adventure began.

Here's wishing Ms. Barnhardt well, and hoping her tribe increases.

Jon Corzine On Public Integrity: 'Hold Me Accountable'

Sometimes, life just just throws us a hanging curve ball. Jon Corzine, Obama's man on Wall Street, former governor of New Jersey, blows up a major commodities brokerage, and a whole-bunch-a-munney-hunney is missing from the customer accounts.

Let's listen in on Mr. Corzine's conference call...

Oooh, now where did that 700 million dollars go? I had it just here...silly me, after all that stress and strain screwing over serving New Jersey, I seem to have lost it.  Now, Barry, really; you're not going to get upset over mere 700 million in customers' funds are you? All you have to do is hand that sum over from the Treasury and all will be well. Besides your campaign could certainly use an infusion from those accounts in Costa Rica, right?

Then, let's contrast that with his inaugural speech in 2006...

Across this state, across our nation and around the world, New Jersey sets a high bar. We are proud that Supreme Court Justices, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Cabinet officers, Chief Executives, singers, rappers, writers, scientists, and entrepreneurs all hail from New Jersey. Our children graduate from our schools at higher rates than anywhere else in the nation, and our income and education levels are among the very best. In their own lives and in their own hopes for their children, our people do not settle for less than excellence.


Today -- I pledge to you that as your governor, I will never settle for less than excellence. 

****
(It gets better...)


Public integrity is not just about reputation or principles, as important as each of those is. What's at stake is social justice and fiscal responsibility. Every dollar squandered in violation of the public trust is a book not bought for a classroom, a prescription drug with a higher co-pay, meals-on-wheels not delivered, a road or science lab not built. With a multi-billion dollar structural deficit, mismanagement and misappropriation cannot and will not be tolerated.


To earn the public trust, we must act, but we also must trust the people with the truth. We cannot build a financial future on the crumbling, papered-over foundation of a recurring fiscal crisis. Too often, for too long, under both parties, fiscal gimmicks have been invented, recycled, and reapplied to mask fiscal realities. As Governor Codey said in November, thanks, his transition report can be summed up simply: "the state is pretty much broke." 

The games are over. New Jersey must put its fiscal house in order. The time of one-shot budget fixes is past. It's time to balance the books. 

(And, finally, he ended this classic speech by saying....drumroll please....)


And, in turn, I ask you -- the citizens of New Jersey, hold me accountable. 

Thank you. 

Is that the sound of a Gulfstream warming up on the tarmac?

OS has yet to hear of any judge demanding Mr. Corzine turn in his passport.

The Broker At The Local Diner And DanHan Both Come To The Same Conclusion

OS recently treated The Sainted Mrs. OS to Saturday brunch at the local diner on Main Street, and they passed part of their time in conversation with a local broker who has strong family ties in Europe.

OldSamTheBroker told us, 'Europe is headed for a dictatorship, it's inevitable.' There was no joy in his voice.

Daniel Hannan comes to the same conclusion in today's Telegraph.

No joy in his voice, either.

Merkel's campaign for a 'New Europe' echoes much the same propoganda employed in the 1930's and '40's. She's not a crazed messianic little guy with a mustache, to be certain, and there's no intent to equate her with him.

However,  the temptation to reassemble a Greater Europe seems to never lie far from the door. 

By the way, this can only end in tears, math being what it is.

Finally, A Judge Locates His Huevos, And Asks The Obvious Question

'If Citibank steals some 700 million dollars, why does it only have to pay 160 million back?'


Well, hot-damn, ya'll!  If that's the case, under the Citibank Rule, OS should give up his honest attempts at labor, and start sticking up local convenience stores, liquor stores, and jewelry shops! He gets to keep everything, except for 23%! Such a deal!! He doesn't even have to admit to any wrongdoing, and he always walks out to make it home by dark.

So, what's wrong with this logic?

(HT Mish)

OS at Midweek 9 November

Other and better minds than OS are covering the comic opera of Europe in breathless detail. In summation, though, the consensus is: They're screwed. We're screwed, maybe, as well.

It reminds of OS of those ensemble scenes in Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, where everyone simultaneously sings to the audience while the orchestra grinds away, each proclaiming his/her own side of the story; but not one of the characters will actually bother to tell one another the truth of who they are and what they're attempting to accomplish.

Chaos ensues, comic chaos in Mozart's opera, something less amusing in real life today.

It isn't like this obvious sort of unraveling wasn't something unexpected. After all, if government debt is 120% of GDP (Italy referenced here), and yields climb above 7%, well then, you're screwed. The students can riot in the streets, the unions can strike, the religious fanatics can preach, the politicians can speechify forever. The math is the math is the math--it is inexorable.

They're screwed.

Enough about that. We now get to witness the proverbial other shoe drop in our generation, and wonder what will arise to take hold of the situation. And how much of the bill we here on Main Street will foot for the great welfare state experiment of post-1945 Europe.

Closer to home, this has been one of those weeks, one in which OS notices that it has become increasingly laborious to get simple stuff of life done. The firms he has encountered this week, in different industries, all seem to suffer from 'too much work/too few employees' syndrome, or 'internal conflicts of interest' syndrome, or 'failure to think ahead' syndrome, or 'failure to think pragmatically' syndrome.

It's been frustrating. Yesterday afternoon, OS just had to take a break and go for a walk, to calm down. He called a couple of friends who helped restore perspective. It's good to have friends.

Today, he's back in harness, pulling his load into the stiff headwind of the culture of the United States.

No great insights to lend, no news to report, no scandals to incite. OS is simply tired.

One bright spot however, comes from BBC Radio 3 this week. The Choral Evensong from Ely Cathedral was glorious this morning. The broadcast repeats Sunday afternoon, and then in podcast for a week after that. 

Papandreou Resigns: Gulfstream Warming Up On The Tarmac

Having won a vote of confidence, he finally admits that things have spun out of control, and he's getting of Dodge while he can, before anyone notices the missing bullion stowed in his luggage.

A quick stop-off in Zurich to lighten the luggage, and thence to the manse in Scotland, away from prying eyes.

Remember, ya'll. ThePeopleInChargeOfSuchThings have been assuring us allllll along that they have the situation firmly in hand.

Nothing to see here, move along. Ball games to enjoy, Dancing With The Stars to follow.

What's All This Bother About A Geek Referendum?!! Geeks Don't Deserve A Referendum! They Don't Have Lives, And They Hoard All The Good Grades From The Rest Of Us!

Never mind...

Wish it were actually a funny situation.

The Herman Cain Dust-Up: A Couple Of Additional Questions

ABC News asks a cogent question: Who, exactly, are Cain's accusers?

Another good one is: Where are they? After all, if we are to be about the business of tarnishing the reputation of a public person, seems that going public would be the thing to do. A good rule of thumb would be: If'n yew don't wantcher pictcher in the paper or alllllll over the internet, don't deliberately say and do stuff that creates media interest. Sorta' like, don't cover yerrself in hunney and walk into a big anthill.

So, here we are, with the wheels coming off Europe, riots ginning up in California, the professors of Southern Illinois University on strike (Really, ya'll! Why do folks with tenure go on strike?), another trading firm gone tits-up with 700 million of the clients' dollars missing, run by one of Obama's ardent supporters (Jon Corzine, former senator, former governor of New Jersey), large swaths of the Middle East in chaos, Iran working on a nuke--so let's spend our time obsessing about....drumroll please/the envelope please....what Herman Cain did or didn't do in the 1990's (the age of, ummm, Bill Clinton).

Hmmm....

So, OS has another question or two as he scratches hiz ole' grey head in puzzlement: Let's assume, fer the sake of argumint, that all those tarrrible thangs they sayin' 'bout Herman iz true! Does it disqualify him from running or taking office? Really?

Remember the stock phrases about Bill Clinton?

It's not about character, all that matters are his policies.

This does not rise to the level of an impeachable offence.

It's his business what he does with that cigar and that intern, none of ours.

He wasn't lying when he denied 'having sex with that woman, Miss Lewinsky', now was he? All that stuff they were engaging in in that bathroom off the Oval Office, that wasn't really sex, you know.

So, Bill is lionized, with all his actual misbehavior documented in detail.  Herman is vilified, based upon anonymous allegations.

Which leads to another question:

Is there one set of rules for white Democrats, and another for black Republicans? 
(Remember the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings? This all feels soooooo familiar to those of us alive to have witnessed that dog-n-pony show.) It was a replay of the Robert Bork debacle, only with the hoods and burning crosses on display for good measure.

Which leads to another question, which OS refers to as the 'Homer Simpson Question':

Is there anyone alive, who has really engaged the world, attempted to get stuff done, worked with all manner of people, who hasn't had a few Homer Simpson moments along the way? 

 OS can certainly look back to more than a few moments of 'Dooooh!'. He actually owns up to a 'Decade of Doooooh!' He works diligently to not create more of them, to put another day of distance between him and them with every day that passes. But he, like everyone else alive, is not immune. It doesn't mean he doesn't go out and engage the world today.

Herman deserves the same consideration, in the humble of opinion of a life member of the 'Dooooh!' fraternity. Last time OS checked, Herman only smokes his cigars, and didn't illegally take 700 million of his clients' funds and lose them on the roulette wheel of the European sovereign debt casino.

That, ya'll, is an actual 'Dooooooh!' event.

Who Sez President Obama Doesn't Plan For The Future?

After, he'll need a hobby to keep him occupied after January 20, 2013...

The Wheels On The Greek Bus Are Coming Off...

As always, there's the bad news at the lead of the article, and the really grim stuff is saved for the final few paragraphs.

Merkel, Sarkozy and company chased David Cameron off, and struck a deal to 'solve' the GreeceProblem. Problem is, they didn't check in with the Greeks...

When a country that's lived on credit cards for decades gets news that the bank wants at least part of its money back, well, folks gits all upset, and they may decide to tell the bankers and the rest of Europe to go hang. Bankers and Northern European politicians just hate dealing with uppity Southern Europeans, 'cuz no matter how you try, they just won't sit still and play nice. Why they ever decided to issue national credit cards to Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and let's not forget the Irish, OS will never know. The Euro is a Fig Newton of the central bankers' imaginations, the proverbial round peg in the square hole of each nation's culture.

This droll read of the situation from BBC's Paul Mason is worth a read.

He is cynic enough to suggest that the entire exercise of late has been designed to encourage the Greeks to leave, and hopefully not have the door hit them in the keister on the way out. Of course, since any true effort to do more than paper over the mess has been a kick-the-can-down-the-road exercise, Greece's departure will be exceedingly ugly. Actually the ugly has already begun:

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the Greek elite are buying up property in London just as fast as they can find berths in Poole for their yachts. They are voting with their spinnakers, on the basis that the game is up. In any future Greece on offer, they will have to start paying taxes and they do not want to.

One banker told me the Greek super-rich have mostly left.

The one thing governments have that investment banks do not is intelligence services with the power to wiretap people. If you ever wonder why serving politicians go grey so quickly, it is in part because they see the intelligence. So Mr Papandreou may have looked at the file and said, I can't sell this to my party, nor to my voters, and the business elite are emigrating en masse, so throw the dice.


Last week's market euphoria (nice Greek word, that) has stalled. As the world runs back to the dollar, the US markets will sink again, because the entire rally since 2009 has been fueled by devaluation of the dollar.


Oops.

At October's End, 2011

The hardwood forests that cover most of Tennessee beam with color, especially as the sun's light slants in at dawn and dusk. Contrasted against the bright blue of the skies, they are a glory unto themselves. The walk on the golf course is more about the visual than the sporting during these days,and it is hard to focus on the little white ball with such beauty pressing in from all sides.

This week, OS hopes he remembers to enjoy these days. The work load and schedule, the responsibilities (for which he is grateful, in the main) will ramp up shortly.

The silliness, craziness and venom of the 2012 elections is upon us already. It arrives now sooner with each cycle. Remember when things really didn't get underway in earnest until Labor Day before Election Day? What has happened to us? The free-floating anger is palpable, and shows up in the strangest places--at a jazz concert OS attended this weekend, in pulpits (not too surprising there), everywhere. At least the golf course is exempt in the main. Hard to hit the little white ball whilst obsessing on the latest news.

This week, OS hopes he can set that aside, and recover another day wasted in his mis-spent youth, instead of wasting another of the depleting inventory of days he has left.

Have a good week, ya'll.

Oakland Police Throw Flash Grenade At Protestors Attempting To Aid An Injured Colleague

For those of us old enough to remember the murder of students at Kent State University in 1970, this is disturbing. Very disturbing. The violence and thuggery emanate from the people with the badges.



Does OS agree with the OWS movement? Nope.

Should the kids have gone home that night instead of occupying the streets? Yep, because that much adrenaline freely roaming the streets creates a hazard for everyone.

But this is The United States, governed by a Constitution that guarantees free assemble for the redress of grievances, and prohibits the police from also serving as judge, jury, and executioner. This is the country where the same law that governs us governs the police. Otherwise, we have a Police State.

This will not end well. A threshold has now been crossed, blood has been drawn, and to quote Nixon's old advisor, 'You can't put the toothpaste back in the tube.'

Now, to see if the rule of law applies to law enforcement in California, and in the United States.

Joe The Plumber Announces His Run For Congress in 2012

Now, wouldn't that just be a kick in the ol' huevos for Obama, to see Joe The Plumber elected to Congress on the same day the country sends TheOne packing?

Joe made the mistake of confronting Himself during the 2008 campaign, and Oprah'sBoyChild did not appreciate actually having to have a conversation with an informed citizen. The Left and its shills in the press made Joe's life a living hell in the days that followed, even to the present day. His visit to Madison Wisconsin earlier this year was cut short by death threats from the union types.

Here's hoping Joe gets his revenge, in the old-fashioned way: Served cold, and at a distance. Here's hoping he and his family stay safe until that day.

OS will keep an eye out for Joe's campaign site, and that little ol' 'Donate' button.
It'll feel good to send money Joe's way, and serve up a little of that cold/distant souffle from Tennessee.

'Shirtloads Of Money': Clarke And Dawe Strike Again

Another moment of black humor from Down Under. About 2:30, and very funny because very true...




Especially apropo to the week, in which additional 'shirtloads of money' are being created to paper over the results of our collective follies.

Laffer WSJ Essay On Cain's 9-9-9 Plan

OS in the midst of a long season of grinding work on little details--these seasons come and go. It is so good to look at them in retrospect, however, rather like the author who declares' 'I love to have written.'

In the meantime, OS will try to keep sharing tidbits of insight from better minds than his, in this case, Arthur Laffer's WSJ essay in support of the Cain 9-9-9 plan.

Laffer was a key advisor to President Reagan, and architect of the economic revival that finally took hold in the 1980's. For those who lived through 1980, we remember just how grim it was, and all of it-all of it--a direct result of governmental venality and ineptitude. This article is worth the read.

One of the grinding tasks of these weeks has been the family tax return. It is complex, laborious, depressing work. At the bottom of the form 1040, the summation of all the other forms, is the signature line. It states that the taxpayer, under penalty of perjury under the federal tax code, certifies that the return is accurate. OS and Mrs. OS signed, and we both sleep well at night over the declaration, but there is really no way to know whether the return is inside or outside the lines of the law. It's too complex, and the numbers can be sliced any number of ways. The productive time robbed from the family in compliance with the tax code is galling.

All this to say: OS loves his country, and is grateful to pay taxes to it. Even if 9-9-9 increases his tax bill, if it reduces the administrative burden as advertised, it is a wonderful trade-off.

Please, take 9-9-9 for the privilege of citizenship. Otherwise, leave OS alone, and let him go make more money to extract 9-9-9 from.

If You Think The Europeans Are Going To Sort Their Problems Out By Wednesday...

...you believe in the Great Pumpkin.

Chin-straps on, ya'll. This could get eventful.

Robert Peston provides a more droll summation of the conundrum:

The maths goes like this. After a recently approved expansion, the EFSF has €440bn to disburse. But €133bn of this has already been allocated to propping up Greece, Ireland and Portugal. And as I mentioned yesterday, yet more EFSF money may have to go to Greece to prevent it defaulting.
Turn away now

So right now there is just under €290bn left in the EFSF kitty. Which could go down to less than €250bn if Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy draw on it to recapitalise their respective banks.

If you don't want to be scared, turn away now.

Italy needs to borrow €250bn next year just to refinance its existing debts that are coming due for repayment - and not including the new money it will need to borrow.

Or to put it another way, if Italy is shut out of markets - which is not impossible - then the EFSF in its current form will not have even enough money to tide Italy over, let alone keep alive any other eurozone governments that run into difficulties.

Which is why it is so vitally important, as I've been banging on about, for the resources of the EFSF to be massively increased.

And that is why the failure of eurozone governments, and Germany and France in particular, to agree on how to expand the EFSF is so troubling.

So as you can presumably now see, a full-scale eurozone financial crisis can't be averted by any individual initiative but requires a whole package of remedial measures, of which strengthening the banks and enlarging the bailout fund are the two most crucial.

It requires, in other words, a level of cooperation that would be difficult to achieve amongst nations ruled by saints.

And Now, A Word From Our Friendly Despot To The South, Mourning Ghaddafi's 'Martyrdom'

The chaotic images, with glimpses of the bloodied and dazed old man, sensing that he has run through his last ally, in the hands of those who despise him, and with just minutes to live, have flashed across the screens of the world repeatedly. It was a real-world re-enactment of the final minutes of Richard the Third, with the defeated king pleading for a horse to escape the inevitable: 'A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!' As if, by that point, he had a kingdom to grant.

Not everyone, naturally, welcomes such news. The Russians bleated a protest about the illegality of it all. They were stone silent in 1988 when Mohamar sent his agent to blow up a PanAm flight with hundreds of innocents aboard, but OS digresses...

On a hunch, OS looked up references in the Venuezuelan press to the week's events, and he was not disappointed. Chavez, Ghaddafi's home-boy, issued a vigorous condemnation of his buddy's demise, translated below by Google.

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez said on Thursday, counter to the majority of opinions around the world, Muammar Gaddafi's death was an "outrage" to life and said the ousted leader will be remembered as a Libyan "martyr. "

Gaddafi was killed by Libyan fighters he called "rats" for injuries suffered, some apparently after his capture at the Battle of Sirte, his hometown and last bastion of support.

Chavez, who on Thursday claimed to have overcome cancer that was detected four months ago, maintained a friendly relationship with the Libyan leader characterized by his military background, leftist economic ideas, antagonistic relations with the United States and membership in OPEC.

"A Gaddafi was murdered, is an outrage is more to life (...) remember him as a fighter, a revolutionary and good, as a martyr," Chavez said in the western state of Tachira, where he went to thank a picture of Christ for his speedy recovery.

"This story is just beginning in Libya because there's a village, no dignity, rule yankee (United States) can not dominate this world," said the president.

Gaddafi was overthrown by rebel forces on 23 August, a week before the 42 th anniversary of the coup that brought him to power in 1969.

Gaddafi's death itself became perhaps the most dramatic since the riots of spring that have toppled Arab rulers in neighboring Tunisia and Egypt and threatening to the leaders of Syria and Yemen.

One has to wonder how well Hugo is sleeping these days, as he contemplates these images. He can keep the Gulfstream fueled, but there are fewer places to land with his buddy Muammar no longer available.

Please, Rick Perry, Go Back To Texas And Leave Us Alone

OS has played the night owl tonight--too much coffee, too much writing and the mind still buzzes. CNN is carrying the debate from Las Vegas.

Rick Perry has no business outside of Texas. Shrill, arrogant, angry, insufferable, bickering, alternately going for the jugular and running for cover, taking his venom out on Romney, mainly.

In other words, a horse's ass. Not anyone who should be allowed near the White House.

Go home, Rick.

Stay home.

Take Michelle Bachmann with you...holy cow...

Why OS Misses Margaret Thatcher, In Less Than Ninety Seconds

This gem from PMQ's--in which The Iron Lady slays Labour--declaring 'they have no competence on money', and battling against any encroachment of the EU upon British sovereignity.

Her words were prophetic. Had she been heeded, we would not be witnessing Europe coming apart at the economic seams.

Where is her successor? Cameron is a failure and a fraud, and we need a strong Great Britain as never before.

Daniel Hannan, step forward. Please.

Herman Cain's 9-9-9: Denninger Does Math, OS Does Brunch

There is an increasing public conversation about Herman Cain's proposal for a radical restructuring of the US Tax Code, known as 9-9-9: 9% personal rate and corporate rate, 9% capital gains rate, 9% national sales tax.

The reaction to Cain ranges from the dismissive to the hysterical, but Denninger discusses the math.
To be sure, this gent gets wound up about everything, but get past that, and he makes sense, because he does know how to do math.

OS thinks this approach holds much promise, if coupled with dramatic reductions in government expenditure.

And, on a visceral level: OS loves his country, and knows that it takes money to run it. That's why we should levy taxes--to raise money to run the country. The present tax code is so completely Byzantine that when OS signs on the line above the phrase 'Under penalty of perjury, etc.', he honestly does not know with complete certainty whether the return is truly correct or no. All he can do is make his best effort and hope. It eats up days of productive time each year, and creates huges worries.

President Cain could sign 9-9-9 into law, and OS would cheer. Every time OS has money arrive, he can multiply the income by .9, and send that much in to Uncle Sam.
A one page tax-return is all that would be required.

If 9-9-9 isn't enough, make it 10-10-10, or 12-12-12. Just take our money, spend it wisely, and leave us alone otherwise. We'll all prosper thereby, as OS was relating to his young friend the RestaurantOwner, over brunch this morning...

RestaurantOwner employs twelve people, and has other business interests as well. The Federal gubbmint is beating him around the ears financially, while proclaiming 'it's all about job creation, yadda-yadda-yadda.' RestaurantOwner is attracted to Cain as well, because it will allow him to work and expand his business, and have time for his wife and family.

Increasingly, OS thinks Cain laps the field of the other candidates. His ideas are long overdue. We're headed over the cliff unless we change direction.

US Boots On The Ground In Uganda: Isn't This How Vietnam Got Going?

W. T. F.???

Obama is committing troops to chasing down a war-lord in the interior of Africa. But, don't worry, it's just 100 'advisors', no worries.

President Barack Obama is sending about 100 U.S. troops to Africa to help hunt down the leaders of the notoriously violent Lord's Resistance Army in and around Uganda.

"I have authorized a small number of combat-equipped U.S. forces to deploy to central Africa to provide assistance to regional forces that are working toward the removal of Joseph Kony from the battlefield," Obama said in letter sent Friday to House Speaker John Boehner and Daniel Inouye, the president pro tempore of the Senate. Kony is the head of the Lord's Resistance Army.

U.S. military personnel advising regional forces working to target Kony and other senior leaders will not engage Kony's forces "unless necessary for self-defense," Obama said.

"I believe that deploying these U.S. armed forces furthers U.S. national security interests and foreign policy and will be a significant contribution toward counter-LRA efforts in central Africa."

One hundred troops on the ground in Central Africa requires naval support, air support, signals support, intelligence support, resupply by helicopter, vehicles, medical team, on and on it goes--just to keep the one hundred fed, protected, and able to do some sort of work in pursuance of a mission hundreds of miles from anywhere.

Isn't Uganda a former British colony? Isn't this their bailiwick, since they would know the country, the culture, the terrain, the people much better than a hundred SEALS or Rangers dropped in by chopper?

Where did this nonsense come from? This sort of move has to be planned ahead, which probably means we've had boots on the ground, in secret, for some months now.

Yes, the warlord in question is a brutal, horrible, bad actor. Does this justify us putting troops into Uganda? Saddam Hussein was a small-time Stalin, and OS remembers The Left howling that this did not justify our involvement.

Will the streets now fill with indignant peace marchers over the opening of yet another war by TheWinnerOfTheNobelPeacePrize?

Anyone got an answer?

(Sound of crickets chirping...)

Uncertain As To Which Percentile I Belong To

A blog by a thirteen-year old has attracted a lot of attention, and the responses have been varied, from vitriol to adulation.

She creates her own responses to the Occupy Wall Street folks, writes them on a legal pad, posts them, and waits for the fur to fly. And it does.

OS emailed her as well, but in the interests of time, publishes his thoughts here.

I’m not certain which percentile I belong to, the 1% or the 99% or the 53%. I do not like crowds, so I’m not a candidate for attendance at anyone’s rally.

I don’t think I can ‘let the hatred flow’, although I do understand your sentiments. It is frustrating to work as hard as you do, and see people marching, demanding that your earnings be seized from your family and given to them. It may be time to think your response through just a bit. When you're thirteen, everything is concrete, nothing is nuanced. Believe me, these lessons will come later. In the meantime, a few thoughts to share with you.

I am so grateful to live here, in America. On its worst days it beats places like Zimbabwe and Poland, Venezuela and Cuba (on their best days) to pieces.
I have been poor here, and prosperous, and prosperous is better. It’s a potty little life, but my dear bride and I love it, even though it feels like all we do is work in order to have it. Only in America (and a few other places still) is this possible, and America is the best of the lot, still.

I am so grateful for my family, my church, my little town, my state, my friends, my work, my health, my hobbies, all of them imperfect and very modest. We drive old cars, and are grateful for our mechanic. I am grateful for the books and music and mutts and kitties that grace our little house. I am grateful we live in a society that allows people to gather in places like Wall Street, bang drums and act silly without fear of being put in a train to a camp far away. I am grateful we have a Constitution, and work to keep it in place with my votes and contributions, even though it means silly stuff happens from time to time.

I have seen friends struggle, and friends of our children struggle as well, and it is difficult to watch. None of them are hippies, I assure you. They did not create the lunacy that brought everything crashing down. I can’t call them names because they got caught in the downdraft.

Perhaps you should rethink doing this as well, just saying.

God bless.

Happy Birthday, Margaret Thatcher!

Classy, courageous, patriotic, fearless, eloquent.

Oh that we had fifty more of her for our time.

Hank Williams 'Keep The Change': An Object Lesson For TheGreatAndGood

...that lesson being, 'Don't screw with someone like Hank Jr., who has a large and loyal audience, deep pockets, a good business team, the ability to write good songs quickly, and access to recording studios. He'll kick you in the behonkus. Every time.'

Far from harming Paris, Tennessee's most famous citizen, the brouhaha stirred up by Fox News and ESPN has put Hank's career on afterburners.

Whew, lawdy--do not tick this man off!

October 12, 2011--Little Shortages Here, Firesale Prices There...

OS is in the midst of several deadlines, so he hasn't had time to think, much less write, anything he feels is worth any of his loyal readers.

But, anecdotes here and there are instructive regarding where we seem to be just now.

A routine visit to the mechanic yesterday, oil change and service for Mrs. OS's auto. The mechanic (CamShaftBob) is a small-shop guy, has cared for the fleet for years, old-school. OS drove his pickup truck over for the transport of the second driver home, and was chatting with CamShatBob, who spotted the old truck with its recently installed set of tires and mused--'I hope those tires last you a long time on that truck, the last set ran 60,000 miles, and I can't get any more for you. They stopped making them.'

Late last week, listening in on an NPR program discussing shortages of medicines reported by hospitals, including some chemotherapy treatments.

Earlier this year, chatting with the vet about arthritis treatment for OS's venerable old dog, and was told the pharmaceutical that has worked so well is now out of manufacture. OS bought up the practice's entire inventory on the spot. The vet reported that his staff spends more time each month attempting to keep medicines stocked than ever before.

Don't know if it's a huge pattern, but shortages seem to be appearing here and there, in unexpected places. And some prices are beginning to spike, like milk, bottled water, bread.

On the other hand, merchandise shows up at Marshall's, a secondary retailer of last year's LatestAndGreatest that OS would never expect to see, at prices that are profoundly discounted. Coldwater Creek and Chico's are pushing merch on sale to Mrs. OS at deep-deep-deep discount, free shipping, and not last season's items, either.

It's like the hands reaching across the table of the market are having a hard time locating one another...

Again, not a 'global view', but something seems afoot.