bailout

By Rose Pedenko and Tanya Simon

When the president alludes to his mandate the messages are delivered with the smug satisfaction that he need not explain himself nor defend the mind-boggling amount of taxpayer dollars he is throwing at every problem that comes his way, much like throwing spaghetti against the wall.  But in his case, if it sticks, we’re cooked.

His fan club, apparently so overwhelmed with his rock star “tude,” doggedly cling to the “hope” he promised.  “Hope” and “Change” were, after all, burned into his teleprompter.

What has become as dangerous as a truckload of C‑4 is that hope, by itself, is not always enough.  Those same BHO groupies are “stuck on hope” because they still subsist on the incessant superficial media coverage of President Bush’s financial blunders.

Obama’s followers have yet to understand or accept where their fearless leader has taken Americans in these first 100 days – straight down Thomas Crapper’s throne.  If they persist in their blind adoration, they’ll be enjoying their just desserts a la commode.

Former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Paul Craig Roberts, in his March 2008 article entitled The Collapse of American Power, offered this bleak assessment: “…the fact of the matter is that the U.S. is bankrupt.”  That statement was made during the Bush Administration.  What conservative Americans are learning, while liberals continue to savor the Chosen One, is that one trillion dollars of debt has morphed into several trillions, a staggering amount most humans cannot wrap their brain around.  It is turning recovery into a mathematical impossibility.

The “in the tank” media, reports every little Bear market rally as if recovery was at hand.  And whenever Ben Bernanke speaks, his presentation is reminiscent of “When E.F. Hutton talks, people listen.”  That’s the joke of course, because we all know what happened to E.F. Hutton.

And so goes Wall Street.  Not so very long ago, everyone listened to Alan Greenspan too.  And look where we are now.  “The thrill is gone” as B.B. King said, “free from the spell” of Wall Street economists.

For you recalcitrant liberals, there is the National Bankruptcy Survival Guide, in which Seth Van Brocklin explains the difficulty in quantifying the national debt.  As he states: “Once numbers start getting up into the trillions, they literally become mind-numbing.”

By way of illustration, Van Brocklin explains just how large one trillion dollars actually is:  “If you were able to earn $1 per second continuously, you would accumulate $1 Billion after 33 years.”  But, to make $1 Trillion at the rate of $1 per second, “it would take 33,000 years.”  We’re pretty sure you can now visualize twelve times that amount, which is roughly the national debt under the current Administration.

It’s difficult not to feel and sound morose at times.  The present Administration (as well as the numerous fiscal blunders and catastrophes of previous Administrations) have forced the American People to duck and dodge an unrelenting monetary meteor shower which is hitting us all left, right, and center.  Even the Administration’s indignation over Bernie Madoff seems rather comical when you step back in order to see a bigger picture, that is, the federal government now running the biggest Ponzi scheme in history.  But with a solid majority, the bad guys aren’t even getting a slap on the wrist.

The president rode into office on a wave of popularity with a promise to fix the economic mess he inherited (as we are constantly reminded).  He’s smart, but not that smart.  If he were the brainchild his followers touted he is during those nightmarish months of campaigning, he wouldn’t now be crushing the country with a spending tsunami.  And as the country is crushed, so are our lives, our livelihoods, our dreams and aspirations, and, most tragically, our children’s future.

As elected leader of the U.S., one would either have to be totally unprepared, inexperienced or ignorant to not understand the magnitude of this economic crisis.  A logical conclusion would be that this President is either too ignorant, OR fully understands and is lying to Americans -- perhaps running the economy, and thereby the nation, into the ground to realize a larger ideological agenda in the naïve belief it’s for the greater good.

The saddest part is this: even if conservatives were to reclaim the majority in Congress, slash taxes across the board, break the hold unions have on industry, resurrect manufacturing and purge entitlements to illegal immigrants, those efforts would only be a blip on the radar of history.

While the media doesn’t even try to conceal their bias anymore, they continue to squash the opposition through the denigration of patriotically concerned Americans who are now fighting back to save our Republic.  It is not a pretty picture, and there will be no honor at the end of the day for the media.

This is why the TEA party participant numbers are swelling.  No matter what kind of negative hype the media invents, citizens are on to them and there’s a new wave of optimism about to crush the Left’s favorite milieu – carefully crafted ignorance.

We know for a fact (and readily admit) that there are just as many academically intelligent people on the left as there are on the right. After all, America wasn’t conceived and built by dummies.  We, therefore, cannot understand why logical and common sense answers are being cast aside or rejected entirely—the way a demented fisherman tosses the filets of his catch into the drink and tries to sell us the innards.  Americans won’t be buying your stinking innards much longer.  Looming inflation won’t let them.

Our greatest fear is searching for, but not finding, viable solutions to reverse the trade and industry mess in which we find ourselves. The more research we find out, the more we realize it is becoming impossible to clean up after this disaster.

Americans must find a way to strike a balance between regulation, to protect against greed, but at the same time allow everyone to pursue their dreams unhindered by a parasitic socialist system designed to quash our freedoms.

The TEA party participants are looking for that balance and we will not settle for less.

H/T Tim White

Last night I pointed out that various Democrats were playing one-upsmanship in who could offer the least plausible explaination for the AIG bonus debacle.  

Well, someone from the Democratic senate caucus has broken ranks from the Obamatons about this farce, and has added a new name to the existing participants in the

The Geithner-Dodd Deception Derby

Who in the Administration pressed for the AIG bonuses?FoxNews' Trish Turner offers:Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., all but pointed the finger of blame directly at the "Obama economic team" Wednesday for allegedly stripping a provision from the stimulus package last month that would have slapped a heavy tax on bonuses like the ones doled out at AIG...Asked to whom he spoke with back in February when he was fighting to keep the item, Wyden said, "Secretary Geithner, Larry Summers, and I'll leave it at that." 

OK, Dodd blames "Treasury"  Now Geithner admits he "talked to Dodd".  Funny how this little detail wasn;t mentioned by either gentleman until late this afternoon.  Dodd says he still has confidence in Geithner. Then again he also had confidence in Fannie Mae.

Jeez, if any more people claim not to know what was going on when the Porkulus bill was drafted I'll think this guy works for Obama   

Tonight's's party line seems to be the entire senior management of the Obama adminstration knew about the bonuses, put an amendment in to protect the bonuses, and then a) failed to inform the President and b) acted surprised when the issue blew up like a Roman candle

RRRIGHT!

Well, the President says Geithner is doing "an outstanding job" Then again, while Obama may be the first sitting President on a late night talk show, I doubt he wanted to use the occasion to fire a cabinet officer.  

 Let's just hope this isn;t like the last time a President had to so frequently defend an embattled federal official

The Plot thickens.....

From the Corner:

Did Geithner Lie?   [Greg Pollowitz] 

Time: "Treasury Learned of AIG Bonuses Earlier Than Claimed

and Chris Dodd now fesses up and admits he agreed to the loophole amendment to permit grandfathered bonuses.

Wolf Blitzer said " viewers are confused".  That's only if you believed Dodd when he said yesterday "I had nothing to do with" changing the amendment. I wasn't fooled by Dodd. he's "amended his remarks" before, like on the Countrywide mortgages..

He still refuses to explain who told him to change the amendment --"I don't know their names"

Start with a "G", Chris.

Looks like the White House and Congress are busy in this competition----the bus throwing derby!.

This is the initiial reaction in the press from Dodd's duplicitious debacle

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) looks like he may be facing a fresh political firestorm.

Dodd just admitted on CNN that he inserted a loophole in the stimulus legislation that allowed million-dollar bonuses to insurance giant AIG to go forward – after previously denying any involvement in writing the controversial provision. .

“We wrote the language in the bill, the deal with bonuses, golden parachutes, excessive executive compensation that was adopted unanimously by the United States Senate in the stimulus bill,” Dodd told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer this afternoon.

“But for that language, there would have been no language to deal with this at all.”

Dodd had previously said that he played no role in writing the controversial language, and was not a part of the conference committee that inserted the language in the bill. As late as today, Dodd’s spokeswoman denied the senator’s involvement.

Only 41% of CT voters considered Dodd "honest and trustworthy" in a recent poll. This isn;t going to make the number go up.

So we have Dodd not telling the truth and Geithner not telling the truth.

Should we start a pool on who's career in Washington ends first?

Trying to keep track of all of Chris Dodd's blunders is like trying to watch the 'Cuse-UConn basketball game every night. It's tiring , time consuming and amazing to behold

Overnight we we treated to the spectacle of the Banking Committee Chairman and the Treasury Secretary throwing each other under the bus over the odious AIG bonuses that somehow were grandfathered in under federal law in the "stimulus" bill.

The Artful Doddger just returned tan rested and ready from a tropical vacation and posted this overnight. 

"The administration blames this all on what they are calling the "Dodd Amendment," the executive compensation amendment to the stimulus bill that included the loophole allowing bonus payments that had already been agreed to prior to February 11. Dodd denies he was the author of that aspect of the provision , but he won't pin it on anyone else, either. 

Dodd's original amendment did not include that exemption, and the Connecticut Senator denied inserting the provision."I can't point a finger at someone who was responsible for putting those dates in," Dodd told Fox. "I can tell you this much, when my language left the senate, it did not include it. When it came back, it did." "

So let's see . The Treasury blames Dodd for writing the clause in the Porkulus bill that protected the greedheads at AIG and then Dodd blames someone else for it, denying his own responsibility.  It's like a Sherlock Holmes mystery; the case of the stimulus amendment that not only did not bark in the night, but slobbered all over the villains.

As 1962 NY Mets manager Casey Stengel said

"Can't anyone here play this game?"

We can't expect a Senate Committee Chairman to keep track of what's in a bill that goes to the President's desk for signature, now can we?

The Senator now vents in outrage . However, the record shows a perpetual state of cluelessness about the AIG issue on Dodd's part which is astonishing in its scope.

Let's consider this exchange from the DC Examiner with Dodd's spokeswoman

Dodd, she said, “was completely unaware of these AIG bonuses,” and it is “categorically false” to suggest Dodd orchestrated the exception to allow the bonuses to be handed out

Maybe Dodd could do what Governor Palin does to stay informed. Hmm, read the paper. I'm sure the Washington Post is delivered to all of the Senator's multiple addresses.

AIG disclosed its retention-payment program more than a year ago, and the amount of the bonuses -- more than $400 million for Financial Products alone -- had been widely reported.

So Dodd's story is as the Chairman of the Banking Committee he was "completely unaware" of hundreds of millions of dollars of bonuses at a firm receiving $170 billion in federal bailout money---when the bonuses were were reported in the press a year ago. Yep. That's his story. Got a new bridge to sell, I see.   And guess what, the folks at AIG (Allies In Greed?) were asked by Geithner to decline the bonuses, but told him to pound sand. 

AIG’s new management team last year proposed that its employees give up their “retention” bonuses, or at least reduce them. The response from the 370 or so employees set to rake in $450 million in bonuses through 2010?Take a hike.  “We suggested that early on, but there are people who feel this money was due them,” a source close to the company told The Hill.  It apparently didn’t matter that taxpayers have provided $170 billion and counting to bail out AIG. “Quants,” the people who put together the computer-programmed algorithms behind the complicated hedges and trades that brought down the company, pushed back hard against any notion they should sacrifice their bonuses, the source said.   

Well, why should they. Chris Dodd was the Number #1 recipient of AIG cash through the years, and maybe he had their back. And now blames it on his own incompetence. This is what it has come to. When someone accuses Chris Dodd of being evil, his defense is he is only stupid.   It's far past time to shut down Bailout Nation. And its far past time to remove the utter incompetents "managing" the Treasury Department, the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee.

 ====UPDATE====

Now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that Tim Geithner claims he didn;t know about these bonuses, either

An administration official said that despite having engineered the first two rescues of AIG while president of the New York Fed, Mr. Geithner didn't know about the pending bonuses until last week.

So much for the Democrats being the party of intellectuals. Fire them all.

My senior senator is becoming quite the object of derision these days.  Caribou Barbie is so last year, this year's comedian's pin cushion is tunring into Chris Dodd. 

Here's Scappleface. Sadly, very few words were changed from Dodd'a actual press releases---and the campaign finance numbers are accurate

Obama, Dodd Outraged at AIG Campaign Cash

(2009-03-17) — As the furor over AIG executive bonuses threatened to bring the current economic recovery to a halt, President Barack Obama and Sen. Chris Dodd today threw fuel on the fire, announcing their “fierce outrage” upon hearing that the insurance giant had given each of their campaigns more than $100,000 last year.

“While AIG was collapsing, and her executives crawling to DC with hat in hand,” said Sen. Dodd, D-CT, “my campaign, and then-Senator Obama’s were getting what can only be termed influence bonuses from the same firm. Naturally, I knew nothing about this, and I’m now seething with anger at the injustice.”

President Obama and Sen. Dodd were the two largest recipients of campaign contributions from the beleaguered company, and the only politicians to garner six-figure amounts from AIG in 2008 — $103,100 for Sen. Dodd and $100,332 for presidential candidate Obama.

AIG, which has received $170 billion in taxpayer cash from the federal government since September, gave more than $585,000 to Congressional and presidential candidates last year, favoring Democrats 3-to-1 over Republicans.

In unrelated news, Sen. Dodd proposed legislation requiring AIG political gifts to be returned to the U.S. Treasury, “exempting only those campaign contributions made before November 4, 2008.”

The senator’s office immediately issued a statement declaring that Sen. Dodd was not aware that he had proposed such the exemption.

Powerline points out what has become common knowledge during the course of the day; that Senator Dodd's amendment intending to restrict corporate compensation of bailout recipients--tacked onto the Porkulus bill--grandfathered in the obscene bonuses being paid to the least competent executives in American business history.  

Not to be outdone in festive spirit, the NRSC has a new web ad up poking fun at Dodd and his "luck" in obtaining resort homes and sweetheart mortgages. But was'nt there a better Irish accent to be found in voiceoverworld?. Please 

If this keeps up, maybe Chris Dodd and Tim Geithner can do a lounge act on the Vegas strip, since they seem to be such funny guys of late.

From CNN:

"It's time for this waste and inefficiency to end. It's time for a government that only invests in what works," Obama said.

The president said the country must "turn the tide on an era of fiscal irresponsibility so that we can sustain our recovery, enhance accountability and avoid leaving our children a mountain of debt."

Question Number One: If "it's time for a government that only invests in what works," why does it look like AIG may be receiving yet another "investment"  of taxpayer dollars because the latest bailouts haven't worked?

Question Number Two: If we are truly going to "turn the tide on an era of fiscal irresponsibility," on what did we just spend $11.6 trillion of our children's and grandchildren's inheritance?

Question Number Three: If "it's time for this waste and inefficiency to end," why wasn't it time for waste to end as late as yesterday?

Question Number Four: If we are to "avoid leaving our children a mountain of debt," why aren't we seeing the "change" we were promised?  The only change I see is an accelerated rate of fiscal irresponsibility which may ultimately lead to financial collapse.

For those silly ones who regard government as a moral institution, an article in the business section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch 1 March 2009 may provide some problem in reconciling their delusion with reality. The article “Missouri could win in shell game” describes the Missouri legislators as a pack of con artists engaging in shell games with Federal bailout money. Republicans and Democrats are engaged in activities, which in this land of two laws, one for the politicians and another for the citizen, would be invite a visit from the FBI if the average guy tried the same con. But be not concerned. Senator Victor “Bagman” Callahan thinks there is “…enough to go around for everyone.” By everyone, of course, he means the politically connected, not the fools who actually pay taxes. Thank goodness there is $4 billion for the gang to split up. Imagine if it had only been $3 billion. Morals are cheap in the Missouri legislature but not that cheap. Missouri legislators, who are busy trying to con the con artists, seem to have let their mathematics slip. Missouri is getting $4 billion out of an $800 billion “beggar the children bill.” That is only 0.05% of the loot. But Missouri has almost 6 million folks out of an estimated 300 million Americans or almost 2% of the population. Shouldn’t there be a more equitable distribution of the swag?      The article suggests the felonies will result in a win-win for “conservative” Republicans and Democrats. What the benefit is to the taxpayer is left to the imagination. Don’t pay taxes, don’t worry. Running the government printing presses will set the classic conditions for inflation, too many dollars chasing too few goods. The “stimulus” bill will only stimulate production of taxes and money to cover the trillion dollar debts “as far as the eye can see.” Fortunately the naïve innocents of the Missouri legislature have consultants from the National Conference of State legislators to advise them on the running of scams. “It’s all a matter of appearance,” stated one consultant who had the wit unlike the Missouri legislators to go nameless – just in case someone decides to make a Federal case out of a little graft, corruption and misappropriation of Federal funds. After all didn’t Obama say if the bailout money was misused he would see that the miscreants would suffer? Perhaps the legislators are expected that Obama to expire just like so many others.   Senator Callahan shows he knows as much about economics as he does about morality. “I’m happy we’re not in South Carolina. And I hope, by the way, we get some of that moron’s money.” The senator, who is a living example of why Mark Twain thought idiot and politician were redundant terms, obviously believes pixies bring the money to Washington and unicorns bring it to the wise folk for their enjoyment. It is not “that moron’s money”; it is not Callahan’s money; it is not even Obama’s money. It is the taxpayers’ money. Jay Nixon, who apparently believes that sins of the father should be visited upon the son, has said apparently with satisfaction our children and grandchildren will be paying off the Obama debts. But that is the hope of these politicians – that the bill comes due long after they have left office. At the end of the day Missouri voters will wish their politicians had the sense that South Carolina’s does.

This is a repost of an entry I wrote for QandO a few days ago. I'm reposting it here, for a different audience to get a look at it.

It is a lengthy think piece, and it may be completely off base. But the fundamental point I think we should be looking at is this: We are, quite possibly, watching the collapse of the Post-WWII global financial system. The first collapse in the 1930s saw off the Gold Standard. This collapse will probably see off the concept of government-backed fiat currencies.

So, what happens then?

If the discussion of the range of responses to the banking crisis on This Week today is any indication, we are truly living in a topsy-turvy world.

Stephanopolous leads with a clip of President Obama addressing a question about the nationalization approach taken by Sweden to resolve a mortgage bubble driven financial crisis in 1991-1992.

Barack Obama:

Sweden has a different set of cultures in terms of how the government relates to markets. And America's different. We want to retain a strong sense of private capital fulfilling the core investment needs of this country.

Lindsey Graham:

I think if you put most of our major banks under a 'stress test,' they're going to fail...

This idea of nationalizing bank is not comfortable but I think we have got so many toxic assets spread throughout the banking and financial community throughout the world that we're going to have to do something that no one ever envisioned a year ago, no one likes.   

To me banking and housing are the root cause of this problem. Government is going to have to...I would not take off [the table] the idea of nationalizing the banks.

Chuck Schumer:

I would not be for nationalizing. I think government's not good at making these decisions as to who gets loans, how this happens...

GOP Rep. Peter King joined Sen. Graham in speaking in favor of nationalizing some banks. Only Rep. Maxine Waters remained true to form. She, of course, has no fear of a government-based solution.

Needless to say, Schumer's remarks are disingenuous in the extreme. First, no one is talking about the government running the banks long-term and making "decisions as to who get loans", etc. Nationalization is merely a mechanism for an orderly disentanglement of failed banks, not dissimilar except in scale from what the FDIC does regularly. Second, Sen Schumer as usual neglects to mention that he is wholly a creature of the New York financial services industry. Schumer's opposition to nationalization is completely self-serving since step one of nationalization would be to wipeout the shareholders (his campaign contributors) and fire the executives (his friends) of any bank found to be insolvent.

On a purely partisan basis bankrupting Schumer's financial base would be good for the GOP since Schumer's ability to bring Wall Street money to the Democratic Party is a major if under publicized reason for his party's resurgence.

As a matter of policy, I agree with Sen. Graham that some of our major banks are indeed insolvent; their liabilities exceed their assets. It is only by clinging to the fiction that the face value of their toxic assets have any bearing on reality that these institutions can present a balance sheet that is not dripping red ink. As long as they insist on carrying on with that charade they will not have real assets to lend and that will mean the American economy will lack a robust financial intermediation function.

So here we are in a topsy-turvy world where within days of passing the gargantuan stimulus bill Democrats are lining up to preserve the zombie banks and Republicans are calling however modestly at this point for their nationalization. What a world!

We all remember 9/11. We know exactly where we were when the first and second towers were attacked. But how many of us remember the particular events of 9/15? Where were you and I the morning when the American economic system was struck?

In response to consistent claims by Democrats that the Republicans caused this economic crisis, I developed a rough sequence of events which I thought lent themselves to helping us understand the bipartisan involvement in this recession. It turns out I was missing a most significant event. This event came to light in an interview between Rep Paul E. Kanjorski (D-PA) and C-SPAN's Washington Journal in which Kanjorski was explaining his support of the first bailout of Wall Street. Here's a portion of that transcript, h/t Townhall.com:

"I was there when the Secretary (of the Treasury Hank Paulson) and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve (Ben Bernanke) came those days and talked to members of Congress about what was going on. It was about Sept. 15. Here's the facts, we don't even talk about these things.

"On Thursday at about 11 o'clock in the morning, the Federal Reserve noticed a tremendous drawdown of money market accounts in the United States to the tune of $550 billion, as being drawn out in the matter of an hour or two.

"The Treasury opened up its window to help. It pumped $105 billion into the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn't be further panic out there, and that's what actually happened."

Kanjorksi continued:

"If they had not done that, their estimation was that by 2 o'clock that afternoon, $5.5 trillion would have been drawn out of the money market system of the United States, would have collapsed the entire economy system of the United States and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed.

"Now we talked at that time about what would happen if that happened. It would have been the end of our economic system and our political system as we know it. And that's why when they made the point we've got to do things quickly, we did."

Townhall's Diana West goes on to say that these are staggering revelations. Given their sudden appearance out of the blue, you have to wonder, first, could they possibly be true? If so, why weren't we the people told about this $550 billion electronic run on the banks? The Google archive has retained some news about the money market run, but it was seriously downplayed in this article from Boston.com:

The panic sweeping the world's financial system hit Boston stalwarts Putnam Investments and State Street Corp., yesterday while the mutual fund industry struggled with billions of dollars in withdrawals from money market funds by investors worried about losing their cash.

The article describes the frenzy of withdrawals, but describes the amounts much differently than Kanjorski.

"There's a crisis of confidence in the system," said Putnam chief executive Robert Reynolds.

On Wednesday, investors pulled nearly $90 billion out of money market mutual funds -among the largest single-day withdrawals - and as much as was pulled out during the entire preceding week. Analysts said most of the withdrawals were from corporations and other institutions. The sellers are trying to replace those money market fund holdings with even safer securities such as US Treasury bills, even though they are now paying interest rates as low as 0.071 percent.

While often treated like bank accounts, money market mutual funds are investment vehicles, and therefore can lose money. They also do not have the $100,000 per account FDIC insurance coverage provided to savings, checking, and so-called money market demand accounts available at banks. In addition to paying interest, money market funds attempt to keep their share prices steady at $1, so the value of the deposits remains intact.

Because of the run on money market mutual funds, the Bush administration is now proposing to provide them with FDIC-like insurance protection, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Kanjorski goes on to describe how the Fed and the Treasury dealt with this run by implementing just such an FDIC-like protection on that very day, September 15, when Paulson came to discuss the tremendous drawdown with members of Congress because they realized that was the only way to "stem the tide".

The key in Kanjorski's interview is the "electric run on the banks" to the tune of $500 Billion within an hour. If they hadn't taken action, by 2 pm that afternoon, $5.5 Trillion would have left the banks and the entire global economy would have completely collapsed. The implications of that are truly staggering.

On October 20, nearly a month later, Daniel Gross at Newsweek wrote an article called The Anatomy of Fear in which he described a panic-worthy act by James Cramer, CNBC star, ex-hedge-fund manager, mascot of the 1990s tech boom and the recent bull market, fond of saying "There's always a bull market somewhere". On October 6, 3 weeks after the run on money market accounts, Cramer admitted to the "Today" show's Ann Curry that "somewhere" was now nowhere to be found. "Whatever money you may need for the next five years, please take it out of the stock market right now, this week," he pleaded. "I do not believe that you should risk those assets in the stock markets."

We could understand Cramer's comments precipitating a run on all sorts of investements, but what exactly drove the tremendous volume of electronic transfers on September 15? I could find no documented news the week of September 15 that would prompt such a run, with the possible exception of the Lehman Brothers failure. But why the run on money market funds and not CD's, stocks, bonds or mutual funds? Rush Limbaugh discussed his theories on February 10, 2009, including the fact that Kanjorski is a Pelosi loyalist. Rush said:

It's amazing this was said on C-SPAN on Thursday, January 27th, and nobody picked up on it. We got it from a website called LiveLeak. They were rummaging through things, and they found this. Now, let's assume for a second here that elements of this are true. Let's assume that there was a $550 billion run, electronic run on the banks and money market accounts in one to two hours. The question is who was doing this? Who was withdrawing all this money? And the next question is why? That's where my mind starts exploding, and this is dangerous to have these explosions going this way. Could it have been George Soros? Could it have been a consortium of countries -- Russia, China, Venezuela -- countries that are eager to have Barack Obama elected because they know that will make it easier for them to continue their own foreign policies in the world? In the meantime, five-and-a-half billion dollars in one to two hours, that can probably be confirmed. The five-and-a-half trillion is speculation based on the rate at which money was coming out. We could check that the Fed stopped the trading windows, they closed the window. We do know they were pumping money into the system left and right. And remember when the Federal Reserve loaned elements, $2 trillion and we weren't told who got the money? And we still haven't been told who got the money.

No wonder Barack Obama says "You can't just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done." Obviously Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi don't listen to Rush Limbaugh, and they've quite possibly managed to get some astonishing things done.

I've begun to see a meme this week proposing the President's policies are fascist rather than socialist. In 1935, Mussolini wrote the following in The Doctrine of Fascism. Compare and contrast his policies to our current Administration's:

The Fascist conception of the State is all-embracing; outside of it no human or spiritual values can exist, much less have value. Thus understood, Fascism is totalitarian, and the Fascist State--a synthesis and a unit inclusive of all values--interprets, develops, and potentiates the whole life of a people. (p. 14)

The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others; it makes its action felt throughout the length and breadth of the country by means of its corporate, social, and educational institutions, and all the political, economic, and spiritual forces of the nation, organised in their respective associations, circulate within the State. (p. 41)

In 1935 Mussolini wrote the following in Fascism: Doctrine and Institutions:

The Corporate State and its Organization (p. 133)

The corporate State considers that private enterprise in the sphere of production is the most effective and usefu [sic] [typo-should be: useful] instrument in the interest of the nation. In view of the fact that private organisation of production is a function of national concern, the organiser of the enterprise is responsible to the State for the direction given to production.

State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management. (pp. 135-136)

Last but not least, here's Paul Kanjorski's interview with C-SPAN on January 26, 2008: