Green is in the Air, Everywhere I Look Around!

Happy days are here again, gentle readers! Gather round and draw near. For Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are set to pay out the biggest bonuses ever. Can you feel it?
In the case of Goldman, these bonuses translate into an average of $700k per employee. Hooray!
But don't get mad. Get glad! Because Goldman, in true Walmart fashion, will donate $200 million -- or six days of its earnings -- to charity.
Shag us, baby!
And Goldman Sachs claims it "stands on its own two feet." That the government (which means YOU) is not guaranteeing its debt, in other words.
Except, umm, Goldman, can you say "10-K"?
While it is true I somewhat defended last year's AIG bonuses, my aim was to present both sides of the argument, as well as illuminate the frightening aspects of an unthinking lynch-mob mentality.
But, err, the bonuses announced last week by the big-bank, bailed-out boys seem indefensible.
"Now wait just a minute," some will say. The taxpayers benefit when these bailed-out institutions remain viable, staffed by well-paid Wall Street fat cats. We have to pay these employees big money, so goes the argument, or they will jump ship and go elsewhere.
To places like, umm, Antarctica or a deserted hedge fund in Iceland, leaving the rest of us high and dry.
Other people, like Elizabeth Warren, not surprisingly, have a different view. Rather than paraphrase her, check out the video below.
(In a completely irrelevant aside, Warren, with her melodic voice and smooth bob, reminds me of a liberal Peggy Noonan. They're both mesmerizing. And soothing. They'll make you feel good as you fall asleep.)
As you watch Warren, don't forget the big Obama cram-down forced on automobile bondholders like Chrysler. Those guys got like, maybe 20 cents on their dollar.
Goldman and JP's bondholders, on the other hand, and their creditors . . . and their stockholders . . . and their employees? Lost not a penny. Accordingly, they're happier than pigs in sh-t, wallowing in record profits. Please accept in advance my apology for this crude but true metaphor, unoriginal but so apt.
And don't forget that the government take-over of AIG ensured that every AIG derivative pseudo-insurance policy that Goldman held paid Goldman 100% on the dollar. There was not a single loss. Nice.
If the video is too dense for you, fast-forward to 4:04 and go from there.

So let's do a quick review. Recall that Obama's Treasury flat-out refuses to say where the $700 billion it took from us, the taxpayers, has gone. This fact clearly troubles Warren.
Yet you'll see her in a clumsy pivot on the subject, blaming the mysterious TARP black hole on the "system" already in place when Obama took over.
Sorry, but this argument I'm not buying. At all. She's far too clever to make it and we're far too smart to take it.
The reason Treasury doesn't want us to follow the money is because if we did, we'd lose confidence in the very stress-tested "banks" it now claims are so well capitalized. Here, feel better. Take a look at Timmy's red phone roster and the banks that are speed-dial programmed into it.
And with the FDIC completely in the red (i.e., flat BROKE, probably through 2012 -- the 99th bank was closed last week), the last thing the government needs is a run on the banks. So much better that we have a run on our currency, right? Who needs the dollar anyway.
However Warren did throw us a few good bones. For instance, her unflowery historical recounting of our government's traditional view of the middle class, as opposed to what it is now ("middle class? what middle class?") is interesting, if not infuriating.
But it's more than infuriating. It's completely debilitating to our country's morale. The Obama Administration's policy of increasing our nation's indebtedness makes it impossible for small businesses to borrow, hire, expand, much less stay afloat (a/k/a the "crowding out" theory). This insane, let's-go-into-debt-to-get-rid-of-our-debt policy decapitates our economic engine. Are there any grown-ups left in DC?
Of course we haven't seen any change. If anything, it's been change for the worse. But before you call me a nutty Limbaugh protege' let me point out that the liberal Mighty Mo has taken on the Smooth-Talking Nobel O.
Hells bells! And now even the far-left-leaning Nation is calling him the Whiner-in-Chief!
And yes, I'm whining too, damn it, while I worry with the best of 'em. Change? What change? 'Cause there ain't no change jangling in my pocket.
The 2010 mid-terms will bring about change alright. But it won't be the change Dems envision.
The change I'm imagining will be wrought by the never-ending increases in unemployment numbers . . . the steadily rising foreclosure notices (1 in 10 homeowners are in default), the food stamp statistics (more than 1 in 9 of us are on them), and, well, on and on it goes.
(Even worse, all this gloom and doom comes before the commercial real estate dam has broken. That shoe has yet to drop. Quick, somebody pour me a drink).
The other day, my beloved Maria and I were solving the world's problems. In the face of Obama's apparently anguished, Thirty-Something vacillation, the Mexicans, she said, would say "put some pants on." The English counterpart would be, "Man up, already!"
Alrighty then. I'd better stop before I really get started. Because God forbid my urgent cry come off like some TV dad who cries "boy in balloon!"

Labels: Random