Friday, April 10, 2009

This is scary to me

Reuters reports that today (Friday, 4/10) Obama is holding a meeting to see whaddup with the recent "stress tests" of the major banks that we've poured our billions into. These tests, I understand, are to determine to what extent the banks are viable commercial entities, worthy of our continued bailout. But look at who's in the meeting: Summers, Geithner, Bernanke--the ususal suspects. My fear about whether Obama is getting the "rest of the story," as Paul Harvey used to say, is buttressed by Obama's admission, during a 60-Minutes interview, that he'd had to forego much outside reading lately, relying chiefly of his staffs' "briefing books."

I think he'd be better served reading Newsweek or Common Dreams, or Truthout--any place that presents a different view: that the traditional banks, having so depleted themselves by immersion in fantasy debt instruments, are valueless and that it's time to admit it and deal with it by tearing them into viable commercial banks, holding depositors' deposits and investing them prudently. In other words, Obama, be a man, take a stand. It's no longer business as usual in the business of money-changing. It's time to throw the money-changers out of the temple and get on with truthful earning and responsible, fair and decent investing.

Thursday, April 09, 2009

A hanging offense

No, better yet: For Halliburton's KBR--electrocution.

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Long, but to the point

An astute, devastating analysis of the world economic downturn by Simon Johnson in the Atlantic, not for the faint of heart, but for the revolutionary, really good stuff.

Monday, April 06, 2009