Not Peanuts but Titbit

(How the 158-year-year institution came to this is a tale of hubris and overreaching"and a big dose of bad luck.
Lehman’s fall from grace was brutally fast. Until June, it had never even reported a quarterly loss as a public company.
As recently as March, Mr. Fuld was awarded a $22 million bonus for 2007"a generous pay package to be sure, but one that also reflected a year in which the bank’s net profit had risen 5% to a record $4.2 billion.
http://www.financialweek.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080915/REG/809149991 )

(Lehman Brothers employees on both sides of the Atlantic describe their shock, anger and sadness at the collapse of the bank
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/sep/15/lehmanbrothers.creditcrunch1 )
(“The credit crunch should be a crisis for parties of the right.
They were, after all, behind the campaign to demolish controls on financial markets in the final quarter of the 2oth century.
Yet there is scant evidence that either the Republicans in the US or the Tories in Britain will pay a price for the policy errors of the past.
In part, that is because in the US the whiff of a return to the soup-kitchen days of the depression brings out the interventionist streak in any administration. In part, though, it is because neither Barack Obama nor Gordon Brown seem willing to seize the social democratic moment. That's dumb politics. It means that what should be a crisis for the right has become a crisis for the left.

Larry Elliott )
Enormous amounts of public and private wealth have been lost in the last year as stock markets were forced to revalue assets that were products of monumental foolishness and outright greed. But the same people who benefited from creating and marketing these products, along with the same people who allowed this chicanery to happen, are the people who are now supposed to make things right and prevent the same things from happening in the future. What's wrong with this picture?
Washington's Moves
To Reform Wall Street
When Wall Street gamesters over-reach,
Their false promises clear to gainsayers,
And greed and cons that built Street wealth
Are revealed, stacked layer on layers;
Then anger grows and officials swear
"We will punish these gross betrayers;"
But the cure's dealt from the same old deck,
Shuffled by the same old players.

******
©2008 Michael Silverstein

Frankie and Johnny, that classic tale about a love affair gone bad, ain't nothing when it comes to going bad compared to the modern saga of Freddie and Fannie.


Freddie and Fannie
Freddie and Fannie were gen'rous
Oh how those outfits could loan
They thought that all God's children
Deserved to own a home
They dished out the cash
In ways that were rash.

Freddie told Fannie one ev'ning
Our standards are really too tight
If we take more sub-prime deals
We can set this market alight
They played just like kids
Before hitting the skids.

When hard times hurt homeowners badly
Lots of homes began getting foreclosed
And the folks who packaged this paper
Learned you reaps just what you sows
There's now no denial
That they're sinking in style.

In DC they're having conniptions
They know they can't let this pair fail
So the folks who print our money
Are preparing yet another big bail
Who'll make good this bill?
Gosh, I guess we all will.

******

©2008 Michael Silverstein

The Economist’s Song
(Sung to the tune of
"Try A LittleTenderness.")
They get derided
Economists get chided
Their predictions are so often wrong
But though misguided
Their reasoning is always strong.

They seek no favors
For errors ask no waivers
Right half the time is enough
As for those bum calls
If you lost your shirt , that’s tough.

It isn’t much to ask for
The cushy sinecures they seek
You gotta know that it ain’t easy
Crunching numbers every week.

So....
When they get tired
Or God forbid get fired
Not calling a move by the fed
Don’t laugh your butt off
Show some tenderness instead.

*********


©2008 Michael Silverstein

A friend recently told me about a financial services company that awarded its CEO a $17 million bonus the same year he fired 17,000 employees. I found the numerical linkage here instructive. And in poetry terms, inspirational......

The CEO Fight Song

I’m a rough and ready CEO,
The bottom line’s my bible.
I know that for my firm’s performance
I’m the guy who’s liable.

So I never make excuses,
Tell a tale laced with sobs.
I just desiccate our workforce.
Meet my targets? Cut their jobs!

The work once done by three or four
Is now done by just two.
And the two who bear the burden
Don’t complain"what can they do?

‘Cause they gotta pay their mortgage,
Get a college kid through school.
They’re just happy they ain’t drowned yet
In the world’s vast labor pool.

So dole out that monster bonus,
I have earned it fair and square.
Someone gotta chop the deadwood
And take home the losers’ share.

**********


©2008 Michael Silverstein

Nine states and a number of cities have minimum wage laws higher than the federal standard. It’s the federal $5.15 minimum, however, that sets a legal floor for most of this country’s workers. A floor that guarantees a full-time minimum wage earner an annual income of $10,712.

The Minimum Wage Poem
You don’t have to be a scholar or sage
To know you can’t live on the minimum wage.
When five bucks and change is your hourly pay
You ain’t getting by on an eight-hour day.

With a job such as this, there ain’t no assurance,
No work loss protection, no paid health insurance.
That old fav’rite kiss off, ‘Go take it and shove it,’
No option for you, you take it and love it.

So you work at two jobs while your spouse works a pair,
And that covers your nut and there’s something to spare,
‘Til one of you sickens, or you have a new kid,
Then your life once again takes a slippery skid.

Its never been fun getting by at the bottom,
That day-to-day struggle has always been rotten.
What’s new ‘bout this present-day low wage constriction,
For ever more folks, it’s a life-long affliction.

**********


©2008 Michael Silverstein

One guy about this nasty developments has this view.

"The capitalist system is a conjourer's trick, smoke and mirrors. Your house still stands but the wealth you thought it represented has melted like dew in the sun.

Nothing has changed.
But now you might lose your job and house while bankers who feasted on the sweat of your brow will take their bonus and retire to the yacht.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2008/sep/15/useconomy.creditcrunch

Wouldn't it be terrific if, just once when one of these Wall Street giants stumbled on its own excess, a candidate for president was able to say: "I never took their money"?

Well, not this time.

The federal government, after having helped arrange bailouts of several financial powerhouses, refused over the weekend to come through for Lehman Brothers.

But, before it crashed, Lehman Brothers came through for the candidates for president -- and a lot of other contenders.

Over the past two decades, according to the folks at the Center for Responsive Politics, Lehman Brothers's employees and their political action committee has given $9.2 million to federal candidates, the Democratc and Republican parties and political action committees.

Lehman leaned toward Democrats -- especially one who promised "change we can believe in" -- and a certain "maverick" Republican.

Fifty-four percent of Lehman-linked giving over the years, as tracked by the center, went to Democrats.

The top Lehman-tied recipients were New York Senator Hillary Clinton, who took in $410,000 and Illinois Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee for president, with $395,600. (Delaware Senator Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee for vice president, collected $33,700.)

Going down the list of Lehman recipients, you must skip over a number of Democrats (New York Senator Charles Schumer, Connecticut Senators Chris Dodd and Joe Lieberman, and Massachusetts Senator John Kerry) before you get to a Republican.

That Republican? Arizona Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee for president, who took in $145,100. (A tiny portion of McCain's Lehman-linked money, $1,000, came from a company-tied political action committee. The remainder of the money came in the form of contribution checks from Lehman employees, as did all of Obama's money.)

"This election cycle, Lehman employees have given about $1.3 million to presidential candidates," notes a new Center for Responsive Politics report. "Only fellow financial giants Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley have given more to the presidential hopefuls this election cycle. Lehman employees have made their firm one of the top contributors to both Obama and John McCain this election cycle."

Now McCain is sounding holy:

The crisis in our financial markets has taken an enormous toll on our economy and the American people -- first the decline of our housing markets followed by the collapse of Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and now Lehman Brothers. I am glad to see that the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department have said no to using taxpayer money to bailout Lehman Brothers, a position I have spoken about throughout this campaign. We are carefully monitoring the financial markets, including the duress at Lehman Brothers that is the latest reminder of ineffective regulation and management. Efforts must also be focused on ensuring that the deposits of hardworking Americans are protected.


It is essential for us to make sure that the U.S. remains the pre-eminent financial market of the world. This will be a highest priority of my Administration. In order to do this, major reform must be made in Washington and on Wall Street. We cannot tolerate a system that handicaps our markets and our banks and places at risk the savings of hard-working Americans and investors. The McCain-Palin Administration will replace the outdated and ineffective patchwork quilt of regulatory oversight in Washington and bring transparency and accountability to Wall Street. We will rebuild confidence in our markets and restore our leadership in the financial world.


Obama's sounding equally holy:

This morning we woke up to some very serious and troubling news from Wall Street.


The situation with Lehman Brothers and other financial institutions is the latest in a wave of crises that are generating enormous uncertainty about the future of our financial markets. This turmoil is a major threat to our economy and its ability to create good-paying jobs and help working Americans pay their bills, save for their future, and make their mortgage payments.

The challenges facing our financial system today are more evidence that too many folks in Washington and on Wall Street weren't minding the store. Eight years of policies that have shredded consumer protections, loosened oversight and regulation, and encouraged outsized bonuses to CEOs while ignoring middle-class Americans have brought us to the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression.

I certainly don't fault Senator McCain for these problems, but I do fault the economic philosophy he subscribes to. It's a philosophy we've had for the last eight years " one that says we should give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. It's a philosophy that says even common-sense regulations are unnecessary and unwise, and one that says we should just stick our heads in the sand and ignore economic problems until they spiral into crises.

Well now, instead of prosperity trickling down, the pain has trickled up " from the struggles of hardworking Americans on Main Street to the largest firms of Wall Street.

This country can't afford another four years of this failed philosophy. For years, I have consistently called for modernizing the rules of the road to suit a 21st century market " rules that would protect American investors and consumers. And I've called for policies that grow our economy and our middle-class together. That is the change I am calling for in this campaign, and that is the change I will bring as President.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters/360725

The epic deflation of Wall Street rolls forward like a blood-spattered steam roller, claiming more important victims.
It takes down noble old names like Merrill and Lehman Brothers, destroys the savings of large pension funds and mom-and-pop investors, throws tens of thousands of financial workers out of jobs.
But let's not dwell on the downside.
This is the process Joseph A. Schumpeter famously described as "creative destruction"--capitalism's way of clearing away debris from the past so that new flowers may bloom. In this drama, what is being swept away is the monumental arrogance of celebrated financiers, also the fraudulent gimmicks that created lots of new billionaires by selling bad paper to the world's investors.
A great bubble of wealth grew in the canyons of Wall Street--a run-up of falsified financial assets that lasted for roughly twenty-five years. Now the air is rushing out of that balloon, no way to stop it.
In the long run, the destruction of concentrated wealth and power is always good for democracy, liberating people from the heavy hand of the status quo.
Unfortunately, many innocents are slaughtered in the process.
As the US manufacturing economy was dismantled by downsizing and globalization, the learned ones (Alan Greenspan comes to mind) told everyone to breathe easy--ultimately this would be good for the workers and communities who lost the foundations of their prosperity.
Now that "creative destruction" is visiting the bankers, we now observe they are not so accepting of their own fate.
The destruction of Wall Street's girth and power is unavoidable, in any case.
To switch metaphors, Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall and not even the king's horses in Washington can put him back together again.
It would have been far better if the federal government and national politics had recognized the great deceptions of Wall Street and put a stop to them before catastrophe unfolded. Since that didn't happen, we are all now doomed to take a perilous ride--the economy, the country, the world--and hope for the best.
However, we can look forward to the new order that emerges from the wreckage.
The financial wizards who have dominated politics and economic orthodoxy for a generation are unmasked, their delusions failed.
We have an opportunity to think anew, at least to hope that governing elites in both political parties will finally come to their senses or, better yet, get out of the wayhttp://www.thenation.com/doc/20080929/greider

This thread is an admixture of politics, economics and all pervasive nonsense.
Bush had once used the words" ownership society"
One journalist had written an article about ownership society.

Disowned by the Ownership Society
By Naomi Klein - January 31st, 2008

Remember the "ownership society," fixture of major George W. Bush addresses for the first four years of his presidency? "We're creating...an ownership society in this country, where more Americans than ever will be able to open up their door where they live and say, welcome to my house, welcome to my piece of property," Bush said in October 2004. Washington think-tanker Grover Norquist predicted that the ownership society would be Bush's greatest legacy, remembered "long after people can no longer pronounce or spell Fallujah." Yet in Bush's final State of the Union address, the once-ubiquitous phrase was conspicuously absent. And little wonder: rather than its proud father, Bush has turned out to be the ownership society's undertaker.

Wall Street, meanwhile, has fallen out of love with Main Street. To avoid regulatory scrutiny, the new trend is away from publicly traded stocks and toward private equity. In November Nasdaq joined forces with several private banks, including Goldman Sachs, to form Portal Alliance, a private equity stock market open only to investors with assets upward of $100 million. In short order yesterday's ownership society has morphed into today's members-only society.

The mass eviction from the ownership society has profound political implications. According to a September Pew Research poll, 48 percent of Americans say they live in a society carved into haves and have-nots--nearly twice the number of 1988. Only 45 percent see themselves as part of the haves. In other words, we are seeing a return of the very class consciousness that the ownership society was supposed to erase. The free-market ideologues have lost an extremely potent psychological tool--and progressives have gained one. Now that John Edwards is out of the presidential race, the question is, will anyone dare to use it?
http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2008/01/disowned-ownership-society
( though published in jauary, it still has got some thoughts to ponder over..
I am sorry that I had diluted the main topic of this thread.
But I will expose the naked hypocracy of the uncontrolled corporate capitalism and keep this thread alive.

Barclays Capital analysts have estimated that if a financial institution with $2 trillion in credit-default swap trades were to fail, it might trigger between $36 billion and $47 billion in losses for institutions that traded with the firm. So the Lehman fiasco--caused in part by the use of unregulated swaps--could lead to ruin elsewhere in the economy.

Gramm is responsible for the rise of the wild and woolly $62 trillion swaps market. And he was chairman of the McCain campaign and a top economic adviser for McCain--until he dismissed Americans worried about the economy as "whiners." After that comment, McCain dumped Gramm. But was Gramm truly excommunicated from McCain land? Last month, he attended a meeting of McCain's top supporters in Aspen, Colorado. And at a dinner that day, McCain singled out Gramm for praise. Last week, failed Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul revealed that Gramm, now an exec for Swiss banking giant UBS (which also lost billions of dollars due to subprime loans and swaps), had recently called him as part of a McCain effort to win Paul's endorsement. Paul turned Gramm down. (Both Gramm and Paul are Texas Republicans.) Gramm's Paul-courting effort seems to indicate that the fellow who has done much to cause the current financial troubles (and who was once considered a possible Treasury secretary should McCain win the White House) is back in the good graces of the McCain campaign.

Shortly after McCain promised he would "clean up" Wall Street, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, his running mate, appeared at a Colorado rally on Monday morning and proclaimed that "John McCain and I will put an end to the abuses in Washington and Wall Street that have resulted in this financial crisis." She promised a McCain administration would "reform the way Wall Street does business." (She was short on details and spent more time discussing Colorado sports stars from Alaska.) What neither she nor McCain has explained is how they plan to be able to reform Wall Street when they are being assisted by 177 lobbyists and the guy who greased the way to the current crisis with a backroom legislative maneuver. If McCain and Palin are serious about never putting America "in this position again," they ought to consider seriously writing down any economic advice they get from Phil Gramm.

( this was partial text of the article and juse above think one person has this view- Rama)

"Signs of hopefulness....The Fed refused to bail out either Lehman or Merrill. They were forced to rescue Fannie and Freddie, half a trillion in mortgages and scores of countries invested therein made that necesary.

This is certainly a window into how corrupt, greedy and woefully shaky is this house of cards economy but until China refuses to loan us any more money we will get through. Our $10 Trillion/year GNP will help too.

One really good thing to come out of this mess is a probable end to Reaganomics and deregulation. We will see a lot more regulating of our financial institutions you betcha!

We see things, not as they are, but as we are.
Anais Nin
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/09/15-9

I just found this response which reflects the global views ( the link is above in my previous reply)



"Nebraska Nathan September 15th, 2008 3:12 pm

I don't think America and the future president Obama will change things as fundamentally as we would like to think (and as much as we really need). The reason I say this is that things are still not as bad as they were in the Great Depression--the last time there was REAL reform in this country.
Allthough the current economy is nothing to be happy about, it was far worse in the early 30's when FDR was swept into office. Then we had an official unemployment rate of 25% (unofficially probably closer to 40%) and those with jobs had sharply cut wages. The present housing crisis, while bad, can't compare to back then; when in New York alone 5000 families a week were being evicted. When banks were failing by the thousands. My dad was a farmer and he remembers that corn was selling for - 5 cents a bushel--you took corn to the local elevator and you had to pay them five cents to take it.

Americans are so wrapped-up in the myth of Yankee self-reliance that only something as drastic as the Great Depression makes us look at real change.

Another critical factor present back in the 30's but not present today--a strong sense of solidarity in the laboring classes. It was the fear of the laboring classes in this country finally uniting and taking over the truly frightened the ruling economic elite into allowing fundamental reforms to save themselves.

Even with all these factors on his side, FDR still faced tremendous opposition to his reforms; and even an attempted military coup to drive him from office.

So while I do feel that Obama will make some changes, I don't think he or the American people--under the present situation--are going to truly tackle the fundamental problems that need to be tackled for true reform to take place.

( Not direlctly connected with the topic of this thread)

No More Abramoffs

Who can forget Jack Abramoff?
The former Washington lobbyist, currently serving a prison term for his role in a fraudulent Florida casino boat deal, is set to be sentenced tomorrow on charges of conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion.
Abramoff's sentencing reminds us what can happen when wealthy donors and special interests wield too much power in our political system.

Let's make sure that our elected officials put the public interest ahead of the big-money interests by supporting a system of Fair Elections.
http://www.commoncause.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=4464415

(Thoush this quote is 4 years old but still i find some relevance. No progress. NOT A TRACE OF change)

"Published on Thursday, March 25, 2004 by the Associated Press
It's a Lobbyists' Paradise in Washington
by Sharon Theimer


WASHINGTON - The oil industry is throwing a fund-raiser for a Senate candidate who sits on a congressional energy panel. And the lobbying firm representing several drug makers hosted a similar event for a former federal health official now running for Congress, earning a visit from President Bush's health policy chief.

Like flowers in spring, lobbyist-staged fund-raisers are cropping up all over the nation's capital. It's a timeworn tradition that enriches lawmakers' campaigns while giving those who seek influence a chance to bend the ears of decision-makers.

"We raise money for members of Congress because they become familiar with us as individuals and when you ask for time from them they're more inclined to give it to you," said Louis Dupart, who estimates his lobbying firm will throw at least three-dozen fund-raisers this year."
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0325-10.htm

I wish not but as a rational observer I amof the opinion that there will be more bank-rupt-cy and more ordeals to endure.
The next candidate is american dollar which will die soon.

Shocked by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, investors switched to gold as a safe haven in early trading today, pushing up the price of bullion by more than 2%.

Silver also gained ground in overnight trading as anxiety over the stability of US financial markets spurred a rush toward defensive investments.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/sep/15/commodities.wallstreet

A poignant, piercing, thought-provoking text in full.

"How extraordinary it is, that representatives of the great names in global finance that have recently bitten the dust were lately paraded on television as the supreme experts on the global economy. Until today, few serious programmes on TV about the financial outlook were complete without some hireling from Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers or Merrill Lynch pontificating on what governments should do, on how to ease the tax burden, on ensuring the health of the economy, on the fundamental soundness of the system, and so on.

Free markets, the Washington consensus, liberalisation " ideas that have resounded around the world " are suddenly shredded, although the fortunes made in their benign shadow have no doubt been carefully stashed away in unreachable "havens". Where governments had been pleased to acknowledge their relative unwisdom in the presence of the superior knowledge of the markets, they are now being bidden to "step in", to re-regulate, to tame the beast they were so proud to unleash, and in the presence of whose "performance" they were only too willing to efface themselves.

It seemed to the fallen experts and discredited knowalls that government had become an obstacle to the further creation of wealth. Guilty of imposing stealth taxes, inhibiting the free play of market forces, governments were spoilsports, shackling enterprise and undermining business. Obligingly, governments sought to withdraw with becoming modesty, avowing themselves powerless in the presence of such mighty forces, in order that the financial system should work smoothly and effortlessly for the benefit of everyone, including the poorest, who would be wafted to plenty on the coat-tails of the super-rich. The daily plebiscite of free choice in the marketplace seemed a reasonable substitute for a democracy in which quarrels over how to run the economy had been laid to rest.

What a beautifully simple and plausible story it was, the rich miraculously transformed from grinder-down of the poor into their philanthropic rescuers " a metamorphosis that coincided with the rehabilitation of capitalism and its own mutation into something called "the economy". Wealth itself became the oracle, and people listened avidly to fairytales of win-win, economic miracles, market magic and the supremely precious life of geese that laid golden eggs.

Attempts to assimilate the workings of capitalism to the equivalent of a natural phenomenon have been so successful that even the words used to describe the present "downturn borrow a lustre from primeval nature: we hear of mortgage famine, credit drought, floods of bankruptcies, contagious insolvencies, epidemics of repossessions: the language evokes biblical plagues and last days. Is not nature red in tooth and claw? Or was that capitalism?

Perhaps even more telling, images are also taken from the realm of nuclear warfare " there is economic meltdown, a chain reaction of business failures, consumer confidence at a critical level, while the fallout is incalculable. It would be difficult to evoke a more apocalyptic scenario.

All this is of course, calculated to ensure that debate is securely contained within the fraying parameters of a capitalism to which no alternatives now exist. It would not do for people to become too inquisitive about the nature of a system which has been so closely identified in recent years with human nature itself. The fiction must be maintained, at all costs, that there is no other way of ordering our affairs. We are like medieval cartographers, beyond the boundaries of whose known world lay only monsters and dragons.

To forestall any such unpleasantness, the friendly first person plural is employed. This places the responsibility of what has happened on a collective that is absent when profits are being taken and the money made. It is "we" who have allowed the wheelers and dealers, the shady operators in the world of sub-prime loans, derivatives, futures and options, to get away with it. We have not held our governments to account sufficiently to curb the markets' excesses. We have been remiss. In other words, we are to blame; and if our nest-egg is annihilated and our savings are turned to dust, we were always warned in the small print that investments can go down as well as up.

This is puzzling to those who cannot read the hieroglyphs of economic discourse. We have been told that the markets know best. You can't buck the markets. You can play them, appease them, measure their sentiment, coax them out of volatility or nervousness. But all the financiers and experts, the no-nonsense acuity of the personnel of now-defunct institutions were doing was within the sacred space of what the markets would bear.

The same people (at least those who have not gone under with their venerable institution) who were soothing us with the wisdom of deregulation are now sagaciously offering up their analyses that more stringent oversight of financial transactions is required. A "rules-based" system must be observed. The operations of investment banks must once more be separated from those of high street banks, to avoid their high-risk investment with our money. Regulation, restraint and watchfulness are the new remedy. At least until the next time.

Capitalism, which had coyly hidden itself beneath the voluminous drapery of prosperity and luxury, now thrusts out itsface from the faded finery to look once more on a "real world" it has laid waste " on lives ruined, security trashed and hope trampled. A generation brought up to believe that affluence represents some existential truth about our lives will, inevitably, be disoriented and angry. If the coming impoverishment brings about an increase in violence, crime, racism and breakdown, who will bear those costs, who will bail out a bankrupt society? Certainly not the makers of fortunes whose activities we were until recently expected to admire as the acts of heroes and demi-gods.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/15/creditcrunch.economy
All the cut and pastes and quotes are couched in better English to reflect my views.
Rama

Funny
pity
and what else.
here is a funny cut and paste.

Wilbur Ross, founder of private equity firm WL Ross & Co, expects as many as a thousand U.S. bank closures in the coming months, CNBC said on its website on Monday.

The billionaire investor, who made his fortune making investments on distressed industries, said the closures will create opportunities for investors, CNBC said, adding that he is looking at picking up smaller distressed institutions.

“I do think a lot of the regional ones will (close), just as they did in the last savings and loan crisis in the 1990s,” the website quoted Mr. Ross saying.
http://www.financialweek.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080915/REG/809159983
My rational view is this.
The poor people around the globe should observe the American system and pick up a few nice things to make the local COMMUNITY( a word that is unpalatable in American election campaign) a congenial one.
SOLIDARITY is a communist slang which is not in American dictionary..
Oh God Save America and leave others to have peace.

Not a nice picture but undoubtedly a nasty picture.
Here are tow titbits but not peanuts..

a German view

“America Is In Decline”
Translated By Ron Argentati

13 September 2008



Germany - Sueddeutsche Zeitung - Original Article (German)

Sociologist Richard Sennett explains to Sueddeutsche Zeitung’s Nikolaus Piper why Americans are losing faith in capitalism and the future of their country

number two

China Times, Taiwan

U.S. Misery Index
on the Rise
By Wang Xiaobo

Almost thirty years ago, while President Jimmy Carter confronted the economic recession and rising inflation, the term misery index began to gain public attention. Now, as the presidential election is just around the corner, this almost-forgotten index has become a focal point of topic.
http://watchingamerica.com/News/
Both are the views about your country.
USE your conscience and join with US to make this world a better one.
I am appealing to the decent participants of A2k and not the professional easy chair intellectuals or couch potatoes or computer professors.

culcutta is not affected but mumbai.
Köln has not yet faced but Berlin.

Osaka is still observing like tokio.
more follows

John McCain has just demonstrated his vulnerability as a presidential candidate.
Speaking from prepared remarks at an Iowa rally today, he said that he would fire Chris Cox, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.
This outburst demonstrates McCain’s ignorance, his impetuousness and his vindictive streak.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/?hpid=opinionsbox1
If WP makes this kind of comment it is not titbit but peanuts.

Lloyds pulls HBOS out of the fire with £12bn merger
· Fears of 40,000 job cuts and branch closures
· Bailouts fail to end global panic
"It is clear to me that financial services and insurance has gotten away from its core competence and that is dangerous," said Dinallo, who compared such companies' strategies to driving a car while putting on make-up, looking at a BlackBerry and having a conversation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/sep/18/marketturmoil.hbosbusiness?%20ref=opinion
My oft repeated quote is this commercial, conservative, corporate-con trolled ststem is rotten to the core.
I am a die hard Gandhi cum c karl marx beliver.
Amen
Rama

US banking: Merrill Lynch boss to get $11m payoff after nine months' work
Merrill Lynch's newly recruited chief executive, John Thain, stands to share a $200m (£111.4m) payout with two senior lieutenants for less than a year's work which culminated this week in the bank surrendering its 94-year-old independence.

The Wall Street bank known as the "thundering herd" agreed to a $50bn takeover by Bank of America on Monday after a hasty 48 hours of negotiation. The talks were prompted by fears over banking stability arising from the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Thain, who was previously the head of the New York Stock Exchange, joined Merrill in December with a mandate to steer the bank out of financial trouble. When he arrived, he was given a $15m signing on bonus. If he leaves in Bank of America's takeover, he stands to get a further $11m in accelerated stock payouts.

Two former Goldman Sachs executives hired by Thain are likely to do even better. Merrill's head of global trading, Thomas Montag, who joined in August, has already received a $39m bonus. Together with stock options accelerated by a buyout, he could end the year with $76m. The bank's head of strategy, Peter Kraus, was given a $95m package including bonuses and stock awards to replace his generous compensation at Goldman when he joined in May, according to figures obtained by Bloomberg News.

It is yet to be determined whether any of the trio will have a role at Bank of America. Even by the standards of Wall Street payouts, the sums are unusually high for such a short period of employment.

Steven Hall, a New York-based executive remuneration expert, told the Guardian that Merrill had little choice but to honour the contracts: "At the time they were recruiting [Thain], a negotiation took place and he would have told them this is what his price was. You can't go back and change things now - it's almost a kind of buyer's remorse we may be seeing."

Thain, 53, is a leading fundraiser for the Republican presidential candidate John McCain. A doctor's son, he is an amateur beekeeper who used to keep hives in his back garden. He bought a two-bedroom apartment on New York's Park Avenue two years ago which had an asking price of $27.5m. He was hired by Merrill to steady the ship after huge losses on the credit markets which were run up under the leadership of ousted chief executive Stan O'Neal. At a press conference this week to announce the buyout by Bank of America, Thain admitted that selling Merrill was not the original plan: "This isn't necessarily the outcome I would have expected when I took the job."

He insisted that he had made progress in tidying up Merrill: "We've been consistently cleaning up the balance sheet, repairing the damage that had been done over the last two or three years."

Thain reportedly fought back tears at a meeting to brief staff on Merrill's buyout this week. Analysts say that Merrill's liabilities were greater than he could have anticipated when he joined - and some have praised his decision to sell.

Defenders of Wall Street's controversial pay packages generally argue that although bankers do well during good times, they hold insecure jobs which are vulnerable during downturns.

"What we do see is that when times get tough, people lose their jobs - and that's the ultimate in pay cuts," said Hall.

A Merrill Lynch spokesman said the bank would not comment on executive compensation beyond the statutory disclosures required in filings with regulators.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/sep/18/merrilllynch.executivesalaries?%20ref=opinion