US Financial System a Joke; Sadly World in No Position to Laugh

Hello out there! It has been a while. I am going to try and put together a post this evening for once. It has been hectic at work, at home, and generally very busy. It is not easy to put together a good post, and I refuse to bore you with crap or just a list of links.

As an aside, I love car engines. The engine in the new car, the VQ35HR, is as well engineered as I have ever seen. If cutting edge technology is your game take a look at some of the high tech on this baby:
http://www.vq35hr.com/tech.shtml
Sweet stuff.

Also I have an early tennis match Saturday morning so I am going to practice tomorrow night. This means it will be Saturday night rock blogging instead of Friday! You are warned Watchtower!

Extreme Home Makeover Do Over?
When I read this story I had to actually get up and take a short walk to keep myself from doing something physically nasty to the computer:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080728/ap_en_tv/tv_extreme_makeover_foreclosure

This story is a few days old, and you can find the particulars on the web. I am sick and f#ing tired of tales like this. Which ever bank loaned this family of fools any money is a short to ZERO, did you get that SEC, a SHORT TO ZERO! I am so glad the new housing bill may allow us the taxpayer to forestall foreclosure for these guys, which brings me to....

72 Senators Deserve to Be Removed from Office
The blasphemous, anti taxpayer, disgusting housing bill passed the senate by a whopping vote of 72-13. I have few words for the collection of retards that voted for this thing. There is nothing I can say that their vote does not already.

Here is what I am doing, you may copy, or at least pass it around. In September I am going to get the best polls I can find for any of the 72 incumbent senators who are up for reelection. If they have an opponent that is withing 5% of them in a good poll (Rasmussem, Zogby) I will donate $50 to the opponent. Money talks and hopefully a few of these a$$holes will walk. Republican, democrat, independent, green, rainbow coalition I don't care. Any one that voted for this bill MUST SIMPLY BE REMOVED from office. I will donate money to the cause. Will you? If not, at least try to spread this idea around. It can work, witness Tom Daschle's removal from his seat a while back, his opponent mainly helped by out of state money.

US Financial System a Joke; Sadly World in No Position to Laugh
-The housing bill is as bad a deal as can be. Fannie and Freddie are essentially backed no matter what, and the taxpayer can expect this to come back on them sooner rather than later.

-The FDIC has little cash to take over failing banks, and yet we are just starting to see bank failures. Where is the FDIC insurance going to come from?

-The new FASB reporting rules are now delayed indefinitely, because they would render the financial world insolvent instantly. Better to pretend I guess.

-The alphabet soup of FED lending has been made basically permanent (nobody saw that coming right?) so the debt ceiling must be raised.

-The economy is for all PRACTICAL purposes in recession and going to get worse.

That is a bunch of bad. Big time bad.

What to make of it all? The FED is playing for more time in an effort to bounce banks higher so they can raise cash through stock sales. They have bumped, but nowhere near a place were cash is going to be easy. The markets have been trying to rally, but nothing solid can take place, while at the same time a real down run cannot occur either due to intervention and manipulation.

In a nutshell, the entire financial system of the US right now is a joke. From short selling prohibitions, to cooked books, to outright lying (see MER and their two step this month), to government officials saying silly things daily we know this has gone one step beyond.

The rub is the world at large cannot laugh. They have no leverage, they do, but the bad kind as they are holding all our debt which is not going to get paid back. HAHAHA. Kind of funny I guess.

As a play, I am looking for SKF and the like to move lower another 2% from here, and then I am in. Another round of pummeling is coming up for the financials this fall and you will want to be in on it. That is if shorting is going to be allowed.

Government Workers Must Go
The news is out that California Governor Schwarzenegger is using an executive order to slash jobs and pay in an effort to fix the budget. The New York governor raised warnings about the same kind of thing yesterday. The two biggest economic states are clearly hurting. Rightly so, the public teat swilling state worker should be the first to go/get a pay cut. I really do not expect much to come of this at first, it will be overruled by the legislature, but in the long run there is one clear fundamental problem for all levels of government:

THERE ARE TOO MANY PEOPLE WORKING FOR THE GOVERNMENT

It is that simple. See GM and Ford for a long term idea where overpaid, overprotected, and unproductive workers gets a company. Yup, that bad.

Have a good night.