Bumpersticker o' the year

Chrissie sent this one in.

Our hands down winner for 2008.

$28,119 for every person in the United States

How much will America go in hock? The Fool's Christopher Barker says that "$3.9 trillion was just the beginning." The real figure comes to $8.6 trillion. Or $28,119 for every each and every individual in the United States.

At some point, we must concede that the scale of these outlays calls into question the collective ability of the borrowers to repay these loans. How long will it take for a struggling economy to repay $8.6 trillion? Clearly, we just don't know. We do know that both the Federal Reserve and the Treasury are amassing debt securities as collateral that no private entity will touch right now, and we know that the Fed is refusing to disclose related details despite a pending lawsuit from Bloomberg.

The continuing indications from Washington that dollars will be hurled at this crisis in any quantity deemed necessary raises legitimate concerns about the future purchasing power of the dollars in your wallet, your CD, Treasury bonds, or other dollar-denominated instruments. Occurring in a vacuum, a deleveraging event like this one would be decidedly deflationary. In the context of these outlays, however, I believe "stagflation" and "hyperinflation" will instead be among the words historians use to describe this period.

Meanwhile, at Portfolio, Liar's Poker author Michael Lewis pens one of the great epitaphs for investment banking: "The End of Wall Street's Boom". Lewis' dissection of the house of cards constructed by Wall Street -- all on a foundation of sandy subprime debt -- is one of the most cogent you'll ever read.

And short Eisman did—then he tried to get his mind around what he’d just done so he could do it better. He’d call over to a big firm and ask for a list of mortgage bonds from all over the country. The juiciest shorts—the bonds ultimately backed by the mortgages most likely to default—had several characteristics. They’d be in what Wall Street people were now calling the sand states: Arizona, California, Florida, Nevada. The loans would have been made by one of the more dubious mortgage lenders; Long Beach Financial, wholly owned by Washington Mutual, was a great example. Long Beach Financial was moving money out the door as fast as it could, few questions asked, in loans built to self-destruct. It specialized in asking home­owners with bad credit and no proof of income to put no money down and defer interest payments for as long as possible. In Bakersfield, California, a Mexican strawberry picker with an income of $14,000 and no English was lent every penny he needed to buy a house for $720,000.

...[Eisman] draws a picture of several towers of debt. The first tower is made of the original subprime loans that had been piled together. At the top of this tower is the AAA tranche, just below it the AA tranche, and so on down to the riskiest, the BBB tranche—the bonds Eisman had shorted. But Wall Street had used these BBB tranches—the worst of the worst—to build yet another tower of bonds: a “particularly egregious” C.D.O. The reason they did this was that the rating agencies, presented with the pile of bonds backed by dubious loans, would pronounce most of them AAA. These bonds could then be sold to investors—pension funds, insurance companies—who were allowed to invest only in highly rated securities. “I cannot f***ing believe this is allowed—I must have said that a thousand times in the past two years,” Eisman says.

Mainstream print media auguring into the tarmac

Erick Schonfeld, writing at TechCrunch, highlights the death spiral of the mainstream print media ("Newspaper Death Spiral Continues; Industry Advertising Contracts $5 Billion So Far This Year"):

The newspaper industry in the U.S. continues to shrink at an alarming rate. According to the Newspaper Association of America,, total industry advertising (both print and online) in the third quarter was $8.9 billion, down 18 percent from the year before. The online portion of that was $750 million, down 3 percent. So far in the first three quarters of 2008, the industry’s total advertising revenues have shrunk by $5 billion to $27.8 billion.

Print advertising has been declining for ten straight quarters, but this marks only the second quarter that online advertising also went down. More concerning is that the overall rate of decline seems to be accelerating, a trend we noted in September. Here is the percentage change in total newspaper advertising for the past five quarters:

    3Q07: -7.4%
    4Q07: -10.3%
    1Q08: -12.85%
    2Q08: -15.11%
    3Q08: -18.11%

The fourth quarter will probably be worse.

Probably? Erick's an optimist.

One of the commenters asserts that some offline marketers remain healthy:

I work with Valpak, which mails half a billion envelopes filled with coupons to homes throughout North America, Canada and Puerto Rico and business is better than ever. I am seeing lots of local businesses cut newspaper, magazine display, etc… but actually increasing their spending on trackable media like direct mail coupons and search engine marketing. It’s hard for a business owner to cut a profitable ad in an economy like this when they know how much monthly traffic they would lose if they did. Newspapers can’t show a hard return like that justifies the budget dollars they’re asking for and that’s why (aside from steadily declining readership) they’re losing their shirts in this economy….imho.

Put two and two together and you arrive at this: Google is trading at fire-sale prices if your investment horizon is five years or more.

Linked by: Cancel the Bee. Thanks!

"Cap-and-Trade": the largest tax increase in U.S. history

What would you say to your Congressional representative if they told you they were going to raise taxes on gasoline by $0.53 a gallon?

Yeah, I know. It's not printable on a family blog.

Earlier this year Democrats marketed a bill -- "The Climate Security Act" (also known as "Cap-and-Trade") -- which will do precisely that while sinking the economy even deeper into the hole as surely as night follows day.

The Lieberman-Warner bill (America's Climate Security Act) represents the largest tax increase in U.S. history and the biggest pork bill ever contemplated with trillions of dollars in giveaways. Well-heeled lobbyists are already plotting how to divide up the federal largesse... The federal Energy Information Administration says the bill would result in a 9.5% drop in manufacturing output and higher energy costs.

Senator George Voinovich said that the bill "could result in the most massive bureaucratic intrusion into the lives of Americans since the creation of the Internal Revenue Service."

Liberal blogger Matt Stoller ("The Cap-and-Trade Scam") notes that such a system is already used in Europe... to ill effect.

Given these numerous drawbacks, cap-and-trade’s principal justification appears to its political feasibility. Many environmental activists assume that a global cap-and-trade program is more achievable politically than global carbon taxes, because most of the world agreed to Kyoto and most people resist higher taxes. On close analysis, the Kyoto agreement is too weak to signify a meaningful consensus for an effective cap-and-trade system. As we will see, numerous analyses of Kyoto have found that it would have very little effect on climate change even over a 60-year period; and the first effort to apply it in an enforceable way, the European Emissions Trading Scheme, is expected to have virtually no effect on emissions.

Furthermore, the bill ignores the real polluters and instead penalizes the U.S., which is already among the cleanest of all countries on a per-capita basis.


Satellite data indicates that Beijing, China is the "air pollution capital of the world."


The World Bank has warned China is home to 16 of the Earth's 20 most air-polluted cities.


The World Resources Institute reports that, "air pollution in some Chinese cities is among the highest ever recorded, averaging more than ten times the standard proposed by the World Health Organization... In Beijing, 40 percent of autos surveyed and 70 percent of taxis failed to meet the most basic emission standards."


USA Today reports that, "[d]ecades of... pollution have allowed industrial poisons to leach into groundwater, contaminating drinking supplies and leading to a rash of cancers, residents say. In this village, where the air has a distinctive sour odor, the rate of cancer is more than 18 times the national average. In nearby Liukuaizhuang, it's 30 times the national figure..."


AFP discovered that an internal Chinese government report found that nearly half a million persons die per year from pollution. Experts believe that, "China's rapid industrialization is leading to increasing environmental damage, with air pollution likely to rise five-fold in 15 years at the current rate."


Iran is another interesting case. Its pollution problems are visible throughout the capital city of Tehran.


In a single year, 10,000 people have died from pollution-related causes in that city alone.

It begs the question: why "Cap-and-Trade"? Consider the beneficiaries of this massive new tax.

Ms. Boxer expects to scoop up auction revenues of some $3.32 trillion by 2050. Yes, that's trillion. Her friends in Congress are already salivating over this new pot of gold. The way Congress works, the most vicious floor fights won't be over whether this is a useful tax to create, but over who gets what portion of the spoils. In a conference call with reporters last Thursday, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry explained that he was disturbed by the effects of global warming on "crustaceans" and so would be pursuing changes to ensure that New England lobsters benefit from some of the loot.

...$802 billion would go for "relief" for low-income taxpayers... There's also $190 billion to fund training for "green-collar jobs," which are supposed to replace the jobs that will be lost in carbon-emitting industries. Another $288 billion would go to "wildlife adaptation," whatever that means, and another $237 billion to the states for the same goal. Some $342 billion would be spent on international aid, $171 billion for mass transit, and untold billions for alternative energy and research – and we're just starting.

Ms. Boxer would only auction about half of the carbon allowances; she reserves the rest for politically favored supplicants. These groups might be Indian tribes (big campaign donors!), or states rewarded for "taking the lead" on emissions reductions like Ms. Boxer's California. Those lucky winners would be able to sell those allowances for cash. The Senator estimates that the value of the handouts totals $3.42 trillion. For those keeping track, that's more than $6.7 trillion in revenue handouts so far.

The bill also tries to buy off businesses that might otherwise try to defeat the legislation. Thus carbon-heavy manufacturers like steel and cement will get $213 billion "to help them adjust," while fossil-fuel utilities will get $307 billion in "transition assistance." No less than $34 billion is headed to oil refiners. Given that all of these folks have powerful Senate friends, they will probably extract a larger ransom if cap and trade ever does become law.

In these turbulent economic times, Democrats and Barack Obama will propose to increase the price of gas, outsource millions of jobs to overseas providers, and create a massive new bureaucracy funded by your (additional) tax dollars.

The American Consumer summarizes the fatally flawed "Cap-and-Trade" approach.

By creating tradable financial assets worth tens of billions of dollars for governments to distribute among their industries and plants and then monitor, a global cap-and-trade program also introduces powerful incentives to cheat by corrupt and radical governments. Corrupt governments will almost certainly distribute permits in ways that favor their business supporters and understate their actual energy use and emissions.

Meanwhile, the world's worst polluters continue choking the atmosphere with toxic fumes and poisons.

"Cap-and-Trade" is sheer lunacy.

Update: The UK's Telegraph doesn't say cap-and-trade is lunacy, it simply calls it "economic suicide":

...Obama floats off still further from reality when he proposes spending $15 billion a year to encourage "clean energy" sources, such as thousands more wind turbines. He is clearly unaware that wind energy is so hopelessly ineffective that the 10,000 turbines America already has, representing "18 gigawatts of installed capacity", only generate 4.5GW of power, less than that supplied by a single giant coal-fired power station.

He talks blithely of allowing only "clean" coal-fired power plants, using "carbon capture" - burying the CO2 in holes in the ground - which would double the price of electricity, but the technology for which hasn't even yet been developed. He then babbles on about "generating five million new green jobs". This will presumably consist of hiring millions of Americans to generate power by running around on treadmills, to replace all those "dirty" coal-fired power stations which currently supply the US with half its electricity.

If this sounds like an elaborate economic suicide note, for what is still the earth's richest nation, it is still not enough for many environmentalists. Positively foaming at the mouth in The Guardian last week, George Monbiot claimed that the plight of the planet is now so grave that even "sensible programmes of the kind Obama proposes are now irrelevant". The only way to avert the "collapse of human civilisation", according to the Great Moonbat, would be "the complete decarbonisation of the global economy soon after 2050".

I would call Monbiot a moron, but that would unfairly tar all morons.

Oops! We may not be running out of oil after all!

LiveScience's Robert Roy Britt describes the discovery of an exceedingly important fungus ("Oil Creation Theory Challenged by Fuel-Making Fungus").

A newfound fungus living in rainforest trees makes biofuel more efficiently than any other known method, researchers say.

In fact, it's so good at turning plant matter into fuel that researchers say their discovery calls into question the whole theory of how crude oil was made by nature in the first place.

..."The accepted theory is that crude oil, which is used to make diesel, is formed from the remains of dead plants and animals that have been exposed to heat and pressure for millions of years," Strobel said. "If fungi like this are producing myco-diesel all over the rainforest, they may have contributed to the formation of fossil fuels."

So oil may not, in fact, be running out. And carbon dioxide (which we exhale and plants inhale) is not, in fact, a pollutant. Perhaps someone could alert our beloved Democratic leaders.

Why some men have dogs and not wives

Ben sent this one in.

Why some men have dogs and not wives
1. The later you are, the more excited your dogs are to see you.

2. Dogs don't notice if you call them by another dog's name.

3. Dogs like it if you leave a lot of things on the floor.

4. A dog's parents never visit.

5. Dogs agree that you have to raise your voice to get your point across.

6. You never have to wait for a dog; they're ready to go 24 hours a day.

7. Dogs find you amusing when you're drunk.

8. Dogs like to go hunting and fishing.

9. A dog will not wake you up at night to ask, "If I died, would you get another dog?"

10. If a dog has babies, you can put an ad in the paper and give them away.

11. A dog will let you put a studded collar on it without calling you a pervert.

12. If a dog smells another dog on you, they don't get mad. They just think it's interesting.

13. Dogs like to ride in the back of a pickup truck.

And last, but not least:

14. If a dog leaves, it won't take half of your stuff.

Six Easy Steps to President Hillary in 2012

Step 1: Hillary accepts the Secretary of State position offered by President-Elect Obama.

Step 2: New York Governor David A. Paterson names Bill Clinton as Senator from New York, filling Hillary's seat. This keeps the Governorship safe for Paterson as those infighting for the position can't assert that they are more qualified or more experienced than the former President.

Step 3: After several Obama policy blunders and disputes, Hillary publicly and vociferously disagrees with the President. Hillary proves her point and reinforces her strong ethical backbone by resigning her "powerful" Cabinet position.

Step 4: While Bill Clinton retains his Senate seat and does his best to undermine Obama's agenda, Hillary takes a very visible role with a think-tank and is a regular guest on every network and cable news outlet (including Fox News). She spends all of her time picking Obama and his Congressional supporters to pieces. A few Clintonistas resign in solidarity but most remain to continue undermining the Lightworker from the inside.

Step 5: As the economy continues to melt down, Obama's ties to ACORN, subprime mortgages, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the like are exposed by Hillary's friends in the mainstream media. Obama is, quite publicly, blamed for much of the mess and his ineffectual stewardship of the economy (card check, mass unionization, carbon caps, lack of drilling) is pilloried by the Clintonistas, the Blue Dogs and the GOP.

Step 6: All of this occurs before the Midterm elections. In 2010, the GOP enjoys big gains in the Senate, swinging six seats, and regaining control. Hillary announces that she must run to save the party in 2011. After ripping the DNC to shreds over the much-abused Caucus process, the Clinton machine is able to methodically dismantle the Obama camp piece by piece.

Voila! Hillary Clinton is sworn in as the 45th President of the United States in January 2013! Oh, and Bill is back in power, too!

Original Idea: Larwyn (interesting thought process, eh?). Linked by: American Digest and Dustbury ("Machiavelli was seen taking notes"). Thanks!