Collapse or Bush's Dying Swan Song...

...to big finance?

Conrad Lawrence

Anybody notice how these bailout payouts seem to happen on Sunday. Is collapse really imminent or is this part of the Bush Administration’s dying Swan Song to big finance?

This morning we woke to hear the now familiar cry that the government is going to give $25 bln to Citibank who just last week reported to it's employees that it financially health in order to keep it from failing. They don't give us any money figures so we can see or understand this cry of "bank failure," to understand who, besides investors, are at risks.

Given that it seems as if we have had a government that kowtows to big business I wonder what's going on. What does this matter of collapse mean. I am left with the feeling that Citi will put 53,000 people on the street and take money from you and me as taxpayers rather than tell shareholders that they will have to take a loss.

These clandestine weekend actions do nothing to alleviate these fears So what is the economic disposition of Citi? Can it service it's depositors? Can it meet it's debt obligations? I don't know and I looked. I went to Citi's web site, clicked on the link set to show their 2nd quarterly earnings and was met with an "error 404 page not found" message. If all is as they say, why would they hide this information
Available online in the Whimsical Surreality Gallery -- Click here.

We know that Citi can't keep it's shareholders happy. That's all we hear about in the news. Other than that whether or not it can cover it's depositors (main street) and debts. As a past corporate banker, I know that big banks use us (main street) for our deposits to generate capital for their loan and investment banks.

So, why can't us depositors be afforded the right of seeing the numbers ourselves?

A big picture showing of numbers would be pretty simple. What is a bank's assets vs it's liabilities, less those liabilities that are dividend payouts. As long as it can cover the accounts of depositors and loan debt, I feel it's fair to tell the shareholders to bite the bullet. After all they are the only ones entering this financial relationship realizing they were taking a risk.


When Chase took over Wamu, Washington Mutual still showed a positive asset balance of $309 billion dollars. They only problem was that their stock share value was plunging. Seems as if Chase leveraged the fear of financial crisis to implement a merger that the Treasury and Justice Departments had denied in the past as diminishing banking competitiveness.

So? What are the numbers? Why can't I find them and why as a taxpayer who will suffer the impact of this bailout, can't I be afforded the information to understand what is happening?

Flight of the Back-Clinging Monkeys

Roger Ruef

Campaign Watchdog

On the evening of January 25, 1998, at a little after 9:00pm Central Standard Time, I stood in my living room in Naperville, Illinois, a bottle of beer in one hand, a dish towel in the other, and my eyes glued to the television set. The scent of chicken-and-sausage gumbo wafted in from the kitchen, and the place was strewn with the remnants of good, hearty gathering of friends and well-wishers some of whom cared nothing about professional football but all of whom watched the television with me. Decimated mounds of snacks and cheeses filled the dining room table. Crumpled napkins, emptied soup bowls, plastic cups, and paper plates littered every horizontal surface‹all of them emblazoned with the official logo for Superbowl XXXII. (More below)
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The Denver Broncos, whom I had rooted for almost since their inception in 1960‹the days of Lou Saban, Steve Tensi, and Cookie Gilchrest‹had scored a rushing touchdown with 1:45 left in the fourth quarter and had taken a seven-point lead. The Green Bay Packers had run the ensuing kickoff back to their own 30-yard line, then marched down the field with consecutive passes of 22, 14, and 4 yards from Brett Favre to running back Dorsey Levens. After two incomplete passes, the Packers faced a do-or-die fourth-down-and-six situation at the Broncos 31 with the game on the line.

I gripped the towel like grim death. I had watched the Broncos lose Superbowls before in 1978, the miracle year with Craig Morton at quarterback, when they were embarrassed by the Dallas Cowboys and in 1987, 1988, and 1990, when they were embarrassed by the New York Giants, the Washington Redskins, and the San Francisco 49ers, each point differential greater than the last. I¹d hung on to hope as they entered the 1997 playoffs as a wildcard team and beat the Jacksonville Jaguars, the Kansas City Chiefs, and the Pittsburgh Steelers to even make it to Superbowl XXXIIŠ where they entered the game as 12-point underdogs.

It had been a back-and-forth game, and now it came down to one play. Even now, I can picture the camera angle lengthwise down the field from behind the Packers backfield. Favre took the snap and dropped back to pass the Green Bay offensive line gave him time to survey the field he spotted his target and threw the ball across the middle to tight end Mark Chmura.

All of a sudden, out of nowhere came Broncos linebacker John Mobley from the right running full tilt toward the ball. He stretched out his hand as far as he could and tipped the pass away from Chmura, where it fell incomplete to the turf.

The Broncos bench erupted with cheers. They were one kneel-down play away from winning the game.

And I envisioned the skies above the city of Denver, where I¹d grown up, filled with monkeys flying off the backs of die-hard Broncos fans. The drought was over it had finally rained in Broncoland. The Broncos won their first Superbowl.

Which brings us to last night.

There¹s no comparison in import between the events. In the end, it doesn¹t matter who wins the Superbowl life goes on. Wars don¹t start, laws don¹t get changed, judges of questionable character don¹t get nominated and placed on the federal bench and Supreme Court, religious ideologies don¹t start dominating public discourse and policy, the U.S. Justice Department doesn¹t become subverted to political aims, science doesn¹t take a backseat to ideology and cronyism in the creation and enforcement of laws

So many things don¹t depend on who wins the Superbowl and are inextricably tied to who wins the race for the White House.

Yesterday, important majorities of my fellow American citizens rejected the politics of fear and otherness and embraced the first significant tectonic shift in the geology of American politics in many decades. They banded together to elect Barack Obama as the 44th president of the U.S.

I watched the early election returns on CNN at a pizza restaurant in Aspen. When they called Ohio for Obama, I allowed myself to hope. When they called Pennsylvania, I became filled with a sense of excitement and relief. By the time the polls closed in California, my fellow political junkie and traveling companion and I were back in our room. CNN called the election for Obama we popped the cork on a bottle of champagne we had chilled just in case and toasted the new era in American politics.

I am especially proud of a few of those in my political group BCC list who supported Obama with their feet and wallets. Mark, who was one of the first to contribute to the campaign. Bonnie and Alice (who don¹t know each other), who knocked on doors, made phone calls, and generally worked their asses off in Michigan and Wisconsin, respectively. Catherine, who worked for the Obama ground game in Chicago.

There are others, I¹m sure, whose efforts I don¹t know about. I¹m grateful to them all and that gratitude won¹t dieŠ ever.

I wrote to a friend in Italy this morning that if the McCain-Palin ticket had won the day, the 232-year-old American Experiment would have been over. I truly felt that way.

What a joy it is to proclaim this morning that the Experiment lives on.