On the Police Riot in New York City

Anyone who has been trying to find out what is happening in New York City’s financial district, and has relied on their usual media sources like CNN or other mainstream news outlets might just as well give it up and go to You Tube where it is all there in amateur videos shot at the street level.

Go there and look for yourself. Use the search string “Occupy Wall Street.”

I was completely sickened at the shots of Wall Street brokers standing on a balcony overlooking the once-peaceful protest sipping champagne as New York’s “finest” went into all out riot mode.

Where this will end, is anyone’s guess.

Pete Olson Goes to Richmond

Now I have it on good authority, because I read about it here, that CD-22 congressman Pete Olson will soon be making his way to the county seat of the largest and most populous county that lies within the Texas 22nd Congressional District, the district that he represents.

He wants to hold a town hall meeting at the McDowell Jury Assembly Building at 212 Houston St, in Richmond [map]. The meeting will be on a Tuesday evening, July 12th starting at dinner time, 6:30 PM and going until 8 PM.

Yeah, dinner time. On a work day. I am wondering if they want to limit the audience to those who make it to the early bird special at Luby’s. For the rest of us who dine watching the sun set, and want to attend, I don’t know if they’ll let you in with a bucket of KFC under your arm but if they do, just remember not to leave the chicken bones on the floor.

If you go, be sure to go armed with some questions. I hear he will ask for questions. Just make sure that if you want your question asked, you ask it with your own voice. Sneaky Pete is well known for having his staffers collect index cards from the audience – he requires that his constituents write their questions down so his staffers can filter them. Nice, huh? Can you say Banana Republic?

Anyway, one question I want to hear him answer is why he voted NO on HR 5618, the Restoration of Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act. This act, passed in the House by a vote of 270 to 153, extends the filing date that families whose breadwinners cannot find work can file for federal unemployment benefits and extends the date of the program until April 2011.

And Pete Olson voted NO. He voted NO while 29 of his Republican colleagues voted YES. They voted yes for Texas families. Pete voted NO.

Clearly, Pete Olson is out of touch with his constituents. Had he looked, he would have seen that his district is hurting. From April 2008 until April 2010 the unemployment rate jumped from a low of 3.7% to the most recently recorded 8.3%. Don’t believe me? It’s here.

That’s more than double the people who were unemployed a mere two years ago.

And it shows in the neighborhoods.

Drive through any neighborhood in Fort Bend County and you see the same thing: a growing forest of “For Sale” signs on front lawns. More go up but none come down.

And then another question that might come up is why Pete Olson voted NO on HR 4173, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The measured passed the Senate (a miracle on the order of the loaves and the fishes) by 59 to 39, and sent back to the House to be reconciled in conference. That report is what Olson voted against.

Now, it is clear to anyone who hasn’t had his or her head stuck in the sand since September 2008 that it was an unregulated, greedy, and rapacious Wall Street that sold our country’s economy into the sewer, and it is also clear that the bill is nowhere near as tough in re-regulating these people as it could be, but these days you get whatever can pass the Senate and that is what we got.

And Pete Olson voted against it.

Pete Olson voted for his lobbyist friends and acquaintances on Wall Street, and against the people who live in the neighborhoods in Fort Bend County.

Now it’s not like we can do anything about it at the ballot box this year. The Democratic opponent he drew is one taco short of a combination plate, but at the very least he can be made aware of the fact that he is now on the firing line.

Literally.

Olson needs 5 years in Congress to get vested in the congressional benefits package. We can cut him off with one year shy of that in 2012 and it is now time to let him know that is going to happen.

A guy’s gotta make plans, after all.

Behold the Face of Pure Evil

I struggle to keep up with financial matters because when it comes to the complex field that finance has become, it is all pretty much Chinese Greek to me. So when I heard about the SEC complaint against Goldman Sachs, and some guy that has come to be known as “The Fabulous Fab” I knew I was doomed to ignorance.

First, how does a guy get away working in high finance calling himself “Fabulous Fab?”

Well, who knows, maybe it sells on Wall Street, but if this guy called himself Fabulous Fab and worked in the construction industry, or on oil rigs, or anywhere in Texas for that matter, he just might find himself greased up and tied naked to a flagpole in some public place.

No, I am not anti-gay. I am a straight white man living in America and I don’t have a homophobic bone in my body. Being anti-gay is to my mind being anti-women or anti-Polish. It’s just wrong. But I know my fellow working man, and in particular I know my fellow Texan man and I know for actual fact that any one of them, upon hearing that he calls himself “Fabulous Fab” are going to ask “and you thought people wouldn’t think you were gay when you address yourself in that way because . . . ”

So Fabulous Fab got his say in the US Senate today. As a named person in the SEC lawsuit he basically denied anything that the lawsuit says that he does.

So what does the SEC say that he did that was so bad? Now I could “go long” and cut and paste the operative text, but I think this time I’ll “go short” and try to explain it in my own words, simplifying as we go.

From what I can gather, Fabulous Fab but together a deal called ABACUS 2007 (appropriate, don’t you think that he called it the name of what ancient Chinese did their algebra on?) which they call a “collateralized debt obligation” (translation: a bunch of mortgages sold on the sub prime market to people who had no intention of making the mortgage payments) and presented it to Paulson and Company. Paulson took the deal only if they could cherry-pick the portfolio and then “go short” on it. That is, bet the safe bet that it would lose money. That happened but to get the deal to go, Fab went to other investors, told them that Paulson was sinking $200 million in it – a signal that they were “going long” and that they were betting that it would make money for them. They bought in, and when Paulson did end up investing, they only put in $15 million.

The deal went south when the housing market collapsed. Paulson came out of the deal with a cool $1 billion, and the guys who went long lost about the same.

The SEC says that Fabulous Fab committed fraud in misrepresenting the deal to the other investors, the ones who got the shaft.

That this deal essentially tipped our economy over into the abyss is only icing on the cake, and I really don’t think that there is a single word in the English language that adequately identifies this crime.

No jail sentence seems adequate.

But one thing is clear, if Fabulous Fab isn’t gay now, he should get used to the idea in his next place of residence.

And when his cellmates discuss the merits of “going long” with him, I don’t think that they will have their investments, or Fabulous Fab’s best interests in mind.

Does Wall Street Want Obama to Fail, Too?

A random thought crossed my mind as I was reading about the 12-year low 6763 Dow-Jones average posted today, first time below 7000 points since the Internet evolved from ARPANET (thanks to Al Gore).

I was wondering whether Wall Street players want, as Rush Limbaugh and his dittoheads want, for Barack Obama to fail.

If so, they are certainly in the driver’s seat as it is their actions that drive the stock market, and everyone’s 401K with it.

Do you think?