Vanity Fair article on Goldman Sachs about the Finacial Collapse:

The Bank Job

One of the biggest disconnects on Wall Street today is between the way Goldman Sachs sees itself (they’re the smartest) and the way everyone else sees Goldman (they’re the smartest, greediest, and most dangerous). Questioning C.E.O. Lloyd Blankfein, C.O.O. Gary Cohn, and C.F.O. David Viniar, among others, the author explores how their firm navigated the collapse of September 2008, why it has already set aside $16.7 billion for compensation this year, and which lines it’s accused of crossing....

Back from Wedding/Vacation :-)

The news cycle was pretty slow while I was in Hawaii, the Senate is still making sausage with the Health Care Bill, so no real news on that bill until it gets to the conference committee. Look for the bill to be split in two and be made a "Budget Reconciliation Bill" meaning it will only need 50 votes for passage. The current debate is little more than theater for Television. Bush did the same thing with the Tax Cuts for the wealthy Americans, I expect Obama will do the same with the Health care bill. The Republicans now seem to think the mess in Afghanistan is so bad all business in Congress should stop and deal with Afghanistan. WTF, where were the Republicans the last 8 years when Bush was doing nothing in Afghanistan?

Willy Bova

Palin Tricked By Comedian Again, Says Canada Should Drop Public Health Care (VIDEO)

At a recent stop on her "Going Rogue" book tour, Sarah Palin told Canadian comedian Mary Walsh that Canada should get rid of its public health care system.

Walsh is the co-creator and star of This Hour Has 22 Minutes -- a nightly news parody show in the same vein as The Daily Show -- and she arrived in character, as the conservative Marg Delahunty, to the Borders where Palin (the "Alaskan Aphrodite") was signing books.

Robin Williams Takes On Sarah Palin (VIDEO)

Robin Williams stopped by the "Late Show" this week to promote his new movie "Old Dogs" and ended up trying out some Palin material.

"It's wonderful, I went looking for her book and I found it in the fantasy aisle. With Sarah you get the feeling she was voted least likely to write a book and most likely to burn one. You look at her and wonder 'Where did they find her, Project Running Mate?'"
Always a fan of Palin humor, Dave sat back and laughed while Williams went on to mock Palin for not reading and doing impressions of her skeet shooting..

Taking the Plunge in Hawaii,

Willy Bova getting married to Pauline Heaton (Watervisions.com) 11-19-2009

 

"What a Long Strange Trip it's Been..."

"Curb Your Enthusiasm" Finale Includes New "Seinfeld" Episode (VIDEO)

SPOILERS AHEAD*: It took over a decade, but "Seinfeld"-less fans finally received a new episode. Sort of. This season's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" followed Larry as he put together a reunion in an attempt win back Cheryl, and last night the results were finally unveiled.

For any "Seinfeld" fan, the season has been a dream come true. Not only were the characters reunited, but we finally saw them interact with Larry, the neurotic man who put it all together. Especially hilarious was Larry's ongoing feud with Jason Alexander, who given the character he made famous, can be considered the "Bizarro Larry." The tip at lunch, the borrowed pen, and even last night's competition for Chery's affection - it was all glorious.

Throughout the series, Larry has worn his connection to George as a badge of honor, taking offense when anyone referred to the character as a "yutz" or "schmuck." His pride reached new heights last night as he got the chance to play the character himself when Jason Alexander threatened to quit.....

SNL: Palin 2012 presidential disaster movie

Global destruction breaks out as Sarah Palin is elected president in 2012, in a new mashup presented on Saturday Night Live. News coverage purportedly revealing a Sarah Palin presidential victory and cataclysmic scenes from the new Roland Emmerich film draw familiar fake tears from new Vice President Glenn Beck on Fox News.....

Tina Fey Does Sarah Palin At Ad Council Dinner (VIDEO)

hile hosting the Ad Council Annual Dinner Wednesday night, "30 Rock" creator Tina Fey brought back her famous impersonation of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

"Mrs. Palin and I continue to have so much in common," she said. "They recently made a porn movie about Sarah and then this same porn actress, Lisa Ann, played me in a parody of '30 Rock' ... And weirdly of the three of us, Lisa Ann knows the most about foreign policy."

"I feel like Sarah Palin right now," she said later, gesturing at her teleprompters. "It's not that hard." She went into her Palin voice, saying, "We'll begin with an issue that's so critical to the future opportunity ..." When the audience laughed, she added, "I'm gonna be doing that 'till I'm dead." ....

Hell Freezes Over, Fox "New's" Sean Hannity

Apologizes to Daily Show's Jon Stewart

Fox News' Sean Hannity apologized last night for using footage of a much bigger 9/12 rally during a segment about Rep. Michele Bachmann's tea party rally at the Capitol last week -- apparently in an attempt to make the tea party look much bigger than it actually was. Jon Stewart called Hannity out on the video snafu on The Daily Show earlier this week.

Hannity's apology came at the end of his show.

"Although it pains me to say this, Jon Stewart, Comedy Central, he was right."

Hawaii Now Available in Google Street View

Google Street View has been expanding to more and more countries and locations, but it has just now finally finished with the US having included the final state, Hawaii. Fittingly, the 50th US state became the 50th to be featured in the service. And to mark the occasion, Google has also launched an online gallery with some of the most interesting imagery in Street View...

iPhone For Verizon In 2010

(AT&T Stock to Drop in 2010?)

Apple will release a new iPhone next summer that works on Verizon Wireless as well as all global networks, a report claims, citing sources in the Taiwan supply chain. The report, via AppleInsider, also says that the new iPhone will be smaller than the current iPhone, including a smaller screen. And that it will be manufactured for Apple by a different supplier, a subsidiary of netbook-maker Asustek....

The Weird Russian Mind-Control Research Behind a DHS Contract

The future of U.S. anti-terrorism technology could lie near the end of a Moscow subway line in a circular dungeon-like room with a single door and no windows. Here, at the Psychotechnology Research Institute, human subjects submit to experiments aimed at manipulating their subconscious minds. Elena Rusalkina, the silver-haired woman who runs the institute, gestured to the center of the claustrophobic room, where what looked like a dentist's chair sits in front of a glowing computer monitor. "We've had volunteers, a lot of them," she said, the thick concrete walls muffling the noise from the college campus outside. "We worked out a program with (a psychiatric facility) to study criminals. There's no way to falsify the results. There's no subjectivism."....

Air Force: ‘Overwhelm Enemy Cognitive Abilities’ with Bioscience

The Air Force is looking to harness advances in bio-science so they can “degrade enemy performance and artificially overwhelm enemy cognitive abilities.” It’s all part of a $49 million dollar bio-research effort unveiled last month by the Air Force Research Lab’s “Human Effectiveness Directorate,” and it’s the latest in a series of out-there military ideas to mess with adversaries’ heads.

For years, armed forces and intelligence community researchers have toyed with ways of manipulating minds. During the Cold War, the CIA and the military allegedly plied the unwitting with acid, weed, and dozens of psychoactive drugs, in a series of zany (and sometimes dangerous) mind-control experiments. In the 1970s and 80s, a small group of special operations soldiers at Ft. Bragg supposedly tried to teach themselves how to kill with psychic power - the basis for the upcoming movie The Men Who Stare at Goats. In 1994, one Air Force researcher proposed spraying enemies with “strong aphrodisiacs [which] caused homosexual behavior.” Last year, the National Research Council and Defense Intelligence Agency pushed for pharma-based tactics to weaken enemy forces...

Electronic Dissolution of Memory (EDOM)

This is a very disturbing article regarding the development of technologies to change or destroy part or all of a humans memory. This obviously has very frightening possibilities for the Cabal to mind control the population. I have a feeling we will see this kind of technology operationally deployed very soon... problem is, we might not remember it...

Applications of microwave technology in espionage were available for over 25 years. In a meeting in Berkeley of the American Association for the Advancement of Science as early as 1965, Professor J. Anthony Deutsch of New York University, provided an important segment of research in the field of memory control. In layman terms, Professor Deutsch indicated that the mind is a transmitter and if too much information is received, like too many vehicles on a crowded freeway, the brain ceases to transmit. The Professor indicated that an excess of acetyl choline in the brain can interfere with the memory process and control. He indicated excess amounts of acetyl choline can be artificially produced, through both the administration of drugs or through the use of radio waves. The process is called Electronic Dissolution of Memory (EDOM). The memory transmission can be stopped for as long as the radio signal continues....

Smart spectacles aid translation

Spectacles that can provide subtitles have been created by hi-tech firm NEC.
Resembling glasses but lacking lenses, the headset uses a tiny projector to display images on a user's retina.
NEC said it planned a version that used real-time translation to provide subtitles for a conversation between people lacking a common language....

Pigs Can Fly, House Passes Health Care Bill 220-215

The House of Representatives has passed a bill calling for comprehensive reforms to the American health care system and universal insurance coverage, marking a major milestone in the battle for health care reform. It's the first time in the nation's history a chamber of Congress has gotten this far as the House passed the Affordable Health Care for America Act by a vote of 220-215. The vote came after President Obama made a last-minute appeal to his party during the House Democratic Caucus, asking them to "answer the call" of history.....

Stewart spoofs Beck, weeps for his appendix

Keith Olbermann's recent quip in which he told Fox News host Glenn Beck to "go to hell" was only the beginning.

In an amusing segment Thursday night, the Daily Show's Jon Stewart announced the 11/3 project to commemorate the date of Glenn Beck appendicitis.

"There's a larger more serious point to be made here," warned Stewart. "You may remember that 18 months ago Glenn Beck was hospitalized after botched hemorrhoid surgery. This appendix thing is not an isolated incident," Stewart said, using his best Beck impersonation.

"You certainly won't hear about it in the mainstream media. There's a war going on. The stakes are nothing less than Glenn Beck's internal organs," said Stewart.

He continued, "Apparently the medicine that was good enough for our founding fathers is now considered politcally or medically incorrect," mocking an idea often repeated by Glenn Beck. "I'm not saying this is a plot by Hitler to steal Glenn Beck from all of us internal organ by internal organ by internal organ and then reprogram him to use as a weapon. But isn't it fascinating that I'm the only one with the courage to ask these questions?"...

How Goldman secretly bet on the U.S. housing crash (Video)

In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting. Goldman's sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled the nation's premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies.

Only later did investors discover that what Goldman had promoted as triple-A rated investments were closer to junk.

Now, pension funds, insurance companies, labor unions and foreign financial institutions that bought those dicey mortgage securities are facing large losses, and a five-month McClatchy investigation has found that Goldman's failure to disclose that it made secret, exotic bets on an imminent housing crash may have violated securities laws......

Goldman takes on new role: taking away people's homes

When California wildfires ruined their jewelry business, Tony Becker and his wife fell months behind on their mortgage payments and experienced firsthand the perils of subprime mortgages. The couple wound up in a desperate, six-year fight to keep their modest, 1,500-square-foot San Jose home, a struggle that pushed them into bankruptcy.The lender with whom they sparred, however, wasn't the one that had written their loans. It was an obscure subsidiary of Wall Street colossus Goldman Sachs Group.

Goldman spent years buying hundreds of thousands of subprime mortgages, many of them from some of the more unsavory lenders in the business, and packaging them into high-yield bonds. Now that the bottom has fallen out of that market, Goldman finds itself in a different role: as the big banker that takes homes away from folks such as the Beckers.

The couple alleges that Goldman declined for three years to confirm their suspicions that it had bought their mortgages from a subprime lender, even after they wrote to Goldman's then-Chief Executive Henry Paulson — later U.S. Treasury secretary — in 2003.....

Another View At Goldman's Trading Perfection And Statistical Improbabilities

When a firm's trading performance challenges not only all preconceptions of realistic trading, but also of statistical distributions, one can merely stand back and watch in awe. Attached is a graphic of what a rigged, backstopped and manipulated market is all about. The chart demonstrates Goldman's YTD trading track record: out of 194 trading days in 2009, the firm has made over $100 million on 116 occasions! This alone accounts for $11.6 billion in revenue (and is likely much more as Goldman could have easily had a $1 billion trading day in the rightmost bracket as it is open ended). Assuming midline averages for any given bucket and multiplying by the amount of days that the firm traded within these, Goldman Sachs has made $15 billion courtesy of the skewed and very highly improbable (but not impossible, thank you taxpayers and Ben Bernanke) chart....

 

William Shatner Reads Levi Johnston's Tweets (VIDEO)

Last July, William Shatner appeared on the "Tonight Show," turning Sarah Palin's oft-nutty tweets into poetry. Well, last night he returned to Conan's side (along with his beatnik band) to give the words of Levi "I'm Famous For Having Pre-Marital Sex" Johnston the same treatment. Now, Sarah's tweets were bad, don't get us wrong, but Levi's take things to a whole new level...

Jon Stewart: Election losers do their best to ‘polish that turd' (Video)

 

Following Tuesday's elections, Comedy Central's Jon Stewart focused on the efforts of the losers to "polish that turd" by portraying themselves as having won no matter what the outcome. Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine insisted that even though incumbent New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine lost to his Republican challenger, he "was down by 15 points essentially in the middle of the summer and came within an eyelash of winning that all back."

"He lost by four percent," Stewart commented. "Those are some thick fucking eyelashes."...

Jon Stewart on Cheney: ‘Is our Dick going soft?’

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart finds it "very sad" that former Vice President Dick Cheney seems to be suffering from signs of premature senility. When Cheney was interviewed by the FBI in 2004 about his role in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame, he responded 72 different times that he could not recall details of events a year earlier.

"We've all grown accustomed to thinking of ex-Vice President Dick Cheney as a villain," Stewart stated soberly. "But did you know he's also an old man?"

Stewart then introduced a new segment -- "Is Our Dick Going Soft?" -- in which he noted several things Cheney professed to be unable to remember during the FBI interview, such as "the time his press secretary Cathie Martin first told him and Scooter Libby that Valerie Plame ... worked for the CIA."

Cheney's most outrageous lapse of memory...

Goldman Sachs Vrs Canadian Media Giant CanWest (Round Two)

A little-known numbered company inside CanWest Global Communications Corp. is now at the heart of a major legal battle between Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and the powerful bondholders controlling the media company.

Goldman is attacking the distressed funds that control Canada's largest media company and asking the courts to rebuild barriers that separate CanWest's profitable specialty television from its parent.

The Wall Street investment bank is attempting to undo what it calls a “fraudulent” and “abusive” move to rework the internal operation of CanWest in the days before it filed for creditor protection. According to court filings Monday, the distressed debt funds shut down a numbered company within CanWest that was set up three years ago, at Goldman's request, to separate the Winnipeg-based parent from its stable of 13 lucrative specialty channels – which include Showcase and History Television.....

Could the US Dollar be about to rebound Quickly?

Read this article from the Finacial Times, it makes sense..

Since March there has been a massive rally in all sorts of risky assets – equities, oil, energy and commodity prices – a narrowing of high-yield and high-grade credit spreads, and an even bigger rally in emerging market asset classes (their stocks, bonds and currencies). At the same time, the dollar has weakened sharply , while government bond yields have gently increased but stayed low and stable.

This recovery in risky assets is in part driven by better economic fundamentals. We avoided a near depression and financial sector meltdown with a massive monetary, fiscal stimulus and bank bail-outs. Whether the recovery is V-shaped, as consensus believes, or U-shaped and anaemic as I have argued, asset prices should be moving gradually higher.

But while the US and global economy have begun a modest recovery, asset prices have gone through the roof since March in a major and synchronised rally. While asset prices were falling sharply in 2008, when the dollar was rallying, they have recovered sharply since March while the dollar is tanking. Risky asset prices have risen too much, too soon and too fast compared with macroeconomic fundamentals.

So what is behind this massive rally? Certainly it has been helped by a wave of liquidity from near-zero interest rates and quantitative easing. But a more important factor fuelling this asset bubble is the weakness of the US dollar, driven by the mother of all carry trades....

 

Unemployed Former McCain Adviser Needs Health Insurance, Once touted Current Health Insurance. However he has a "Pre-Exisiting Condition" ......

I wonder how that's working for him?

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a senior policy adviser to Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential campaign, “remains unemployed — and his COBRA health coverage is running out,” the Washington Post reports. “Irony of ironies, it gets worse. Holtz-Eakin, who is about to start shopping for insurance on the individual market, is 51. And he has one of those pesky ‘preexisting conditions’ that insurance companies often cite in denying coverage”:

Holtz-Eakin said he’s been paying about $1,000 a month to extend the private health insurance he received on McCain’s campaign through the government’s COBRA program, but that will expire in a few months. This is the first time in his life he has not had employer-provided health coverage. “I worry about where I go next in the way many Americans do,” he said.

During the campaign, Holtiz-Eakin fervently defended McCain’s proposal to shift more Americans out of their employer-sponsored coverage and into the individual health insurance market. “The key to real reform is to restore control over our health-care system to the patients themselves,” Holtz-Eakin said in August. “Instead of only getting it in the employer market, you would get it regardless of your source of insurance. And you get the same amount whether you’re rich or poor, $5,000 for every working family."

Poor People in America do not live as long as Rich People. Poor People in Canada, where all health care is equal, live as long as rich people.... Maybe it's the Health care System?

Should the United States implement a more inclusive, publicly funded health care system? That's a big debate throughout the country. But even as it rages, most Americans are unaware that the United States is the only country in the developed world that doesn't already have a fundamentally public--that is, tax-supported--health care system.

That means that the United States has been the unwitting control subject in a 30-year, worldwide experiment comparing the merits of private versus public health care funding. For the people living in the United States, the results of this experiment with privately funded health care have been grim. The United States now has the most expensive health care system on earth and, despite remarkable technology, the general health of the U.S. population is lower than in most industrialized countries. Worse, Americans' mortality rates--both general and infant--are shockingly high...

"This article is amazing. It shows just how pathetic the Amercian Health Industrial Complex has become." Willy Bova

22 Things Dick Cheney Can't Recall About the Plame Case

Notes from former Vice President Dick Cheney's interview with the FBI about the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's covert CIA identity were finally released on Friday afternoon after a lengthy legal battle. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sued the Justice Department last year to obtain the interview notes; a judge finally ordered their release on October 1. In the interview, Cheney demonstrated a behavior common among Bush administration officials under investigation: he couldn't remember much of anything. Here's a non-comprehensive list of 22 things Dick Cheney claimed he couldn't recall about the Plame case, in the order they appear in the FBI's notes:...

‘Wealth advisers’ upset at new IRS unit design to target super-rich

Offshore tax shelter? Check. Income hidden from tax authorities? Check. New IRS unit specifically set up to target taxpayers with tens of millions of dollars? Check. IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman told the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants Monday that the agency has set up a unit specifically to deal with rich Americans who are hiding assets....

The Full Story Of How Tim Geithner Secretly Bailed Out Wall Street And Screwed The Taxpayer Last Fall

When the historians finally finish sorting through the appalling decisions that have been made in the past two years, this one will probably be at the top of the heap.

Last fall, as AIG began to realize how screwed it was, it started negotiating with the counterparties to all the credit default swaps it had written. One of the AIG's goals was to persuade these counterparties--including Goldman Sachs--to accept buyouts discounts of as much as $0.40 cents on the dollar....

Henry Blodget: Tim Geithner Is Screwing You Again (Video)

You remember GMAC. Bored by the mundane world of vehicle financing, they plunged into mortgage originations only to get stomped. They've already received $12.5 billion via TARP since December 2008 (because TARP was designed to help auto loans, remember?...or was it the toxic muffler market?), and now Tim Geithner is preparing to offload another $5 billion to the strategically important entity.

Are you kidding me? We can't get 1 billion for updates to air-traffic control infrastructure that relies on 1950s technology, but we got $18 billion for GMAC.

That's $18 billion of borrowed bamboozle being shoveled down a rat hole...

Fox admits only nine hours a day of programming is ‘news,’ Daily Show notes (Video)

he Daily Show's Jon Stewart tore into Fox News Channel Thursday, highlighting the extent to which he believes it serves as a communications arm for the Republican Party, and alleging that the line between Fox's "opinion" programming and "news" programming aren't as disparate as the channel claims.

"According to Fox, the weekday news programming -- and this is according to Fox -- runs from 9:00 to 4:00 p.m. and from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. for a total of nine newsy hours a day," Stewart notes. "Let me, for the audience here, help you out.

"The three hours you spend in the morning with Fox and Friends, not news," Stewart continues. "Your 4:00 to 5:00 post tea Neil Cavuto break, not news. The 5:00 and 6:00 emotional whirlwind and therapy session that is Glenn Beck, not even close to news. O'Reilly, Hannity and then van Social Security tern, not news.

"This is according to Fox News," Stewart adds. "Those people, the ones featured in promos about how fair and balanced Fox News is are not news. These people, otherwise known as the only people you ever think of when you think about Fox News, are not news...

Wait A Minute--The Public Option's Premiums Would Be Higher On Average?

Health care reformers have a number of arguments for the public option, but the main one is this: that by injecting fairness and competition into the market the public option will lower premiums for everybody, including those paying for private plans. Unfortunately, a new CBO study finds that it may not have that effect at all.

The theory behind the public option is that, by injecting a major non-profit insurer into the marketplace, it will force private competitors to cut down on administrative waste, and, therefore, drive premiums down for everybody. Last week, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was on the verge of losing the fight for a muscular public option, she said "There's no philosophical difference between a robust public option and negotiated rates. It's just a difference in money."

But is that true?.....

Look Who's Really Writing The Healthcare Bill -- It's Big Pharma &

The Insurance Lobby (Video)

Who is actually writing the healthcare reform bill? Lobbyists for Big Pharma and the insurance industry, of course. What could possibly go wrong? The last time we saw massive healthcare legislation on Capitol Hill, it was for Medicare Part D, the prescription drug benefit. As a result of this legislation, Medicare is unable to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. David Walker called it the single most fiscally irresponsible bill in the last 50 years of Congress. And Walker is not prone to hyperbole.....

 

Elizabeth Warren Speaks With Michael Moore (VIDEO): Exclusive Footage

The House Financial Services Committee passed a watered-down version of the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency Thursday morning. In the words of Financial Services chairman Barney Frank: "We have restricted the CFPA from what the administration proposed." The CFPA is largely the idea of Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard law professor who serves as the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for the TARP program, and who has long advocated for stronger consumer protections.

The Huffington Post has been given exclusive video of a candid interview Warren gave to Michael Moore for his documentary "Capitalism: A Love Story," much of which never made it into the film. In it, she expresses her disappointment at the lack of accountability that has come with the massive bailout of Wall Street, and explains why the need for a strong Consumer Financial Protection Agency is so urgent....

Jon Stewart: Kerry ‘water-bored’ Karzai into accepting runoff election (Video)

A few years ago late night host Conan O'Brien said, "Senator John Kerry is in trouble for making a joke about soldiers being uneducated. As a result, Kerry promised to stop making jokes and stick to boring people." Of course, that wasn't the first time a comic mocked Kerry for his "long-winded senatorial" speaking style. And it sure wasn't the last. Tuesday night, Comedy Central's Jon Stewart offered his theories on how Sen. John Kerry talked Afghan President Hamid Karzai into accepting a runoff election.

Referring to the one-time Democratic presidential candidate as "Slow-tongue McWindsurfington," Stewart noted that Kerry "spent 20 hours straight with the Afghan leader; well that must be the controversial practice known as waterboring."

Stewart lost it and screamed "fine, we'll do a fucking recount," just please "shut up" after listening to Kerry drone on about the talks....