Those ‘give ‘em what they want’ Methods

Markets. The restlessness on display of people, in markets. Amidst the moral hazards. With warnings of worldwide “fragility” in financial systems. With worries about the solvency of Greece involving high deficits, fake budget figures, and low growth. And now worries about Hungary. And then maybe Spain?

It should be about more than just warnings concerning the economies of the world. It is more about real people. It was ten years ago, on the eve of the new millennium, in a tradition of the 50th year (the Jubilee Year) — as quoted in Leviticus where those enslaved because of debts are freed, lands lost because of debt are returned, and community torn by inequality is restored — that Pope John Paul, Bono, Bob Geldof, Muhammad Ali, Quincy Jones, and Youssou N’dour called for debt forgiveness for Third World nations.

After five years on the job, at 6 p.m. on Friday the 13th, in September 2008, Timothy Geithner as the president of the New York Federal Reserve summoned the heads of major Wall Street firms to a meeting in Lower Manhattan to review their financial exposures to a collapse of Lehman Brothers, and to work out contingency plans over the possibility that on Monday, September 15th, the government would need to orchestrate an orderly liquidation of Lehman Brothers, and stabilize the financial markets, according to the New York Times. The journalist at the time seemed to have smelled something. The meetings which involving the top executives from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J P Morgan Chase, Citigroup and other financial companies, had continued through that weekend as Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner first proposed that corporations voluntarily step in and rescue Lehman Brothers. It was how capitalism and markets were supposed to work.

Vikas Baijaj of the The New York Times had reported that same weekend American International Group and Merrill Lynch might be in need of billions of dollars in capital to strengthen their businesses, facing a similar crisis. The world now knows of the spreading troubles and growing concern about the collapse of big financial institutions. And the systemic risk.

Too big to fail. Systemic risk when deliberately borrowing more money than someone can afford to repay. The moral hazards of credit derivatives. With warning of the potential for economic meltdown. In the late 1990s, Brooksley Born, as head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, tried to convince the country’s key economic power-brokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis. “We didn’t truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market,” said Ms. Born.

Counting the cost. Of systemic risk. The missing transparency. What is the extent of our power to regulate, in an era of aggressive expansion? After living the good life? Before the good life crashed, who was going to complain about the missing regulation? After a $38 million investigation, Judge James Perk unsealed a 2200 page report about balance sheet manipulations at Lehman Brothers which discussed the failure of Ernst & Young to abide by the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Ernst & Young seemed to have abided by the “give ‘em what they want’ method of accounting. After all, Lehman Brothers had been paying for the report.

On those moral hazards. In public service and to public policy concerns over moral hazards in private business. In big government, in bed with its sponsors. Some economists argue against debt forgiveness on the basis that debt forgiveness would motivate countries to default on debt obligations. Debt forgiveness for pretend banks instead of Third World nations — who would have ever thought. Printing up new currency and demanding reserves be held in what had become pretend banks.

As for public policy concerning the ongoing pay of chief executive officers, government has not stopped the derivatives? What had happened to the world of credit derivatives? It still was here, without reserves backing the financial vehicles? What had happened to the systemic risk? This week in testimony before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, Warren Bufffet was asked by a panel member, Brooksley Born, the former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, if the derivative market was “still a time bomb ticking away.”

“I would say so,” he said.

After all of the working groups and government-sponsored investment efforts. Of the total $30 trillion funded world-wide bailouts and stimulants, American sources had funded up to $20 trillion dollars, through markets from “direct lending and indirect backstops” with the litany of bailouts, stimulus, conduits, mortgage freezes, and foreclosure programs. According to the New1 York Times, the derivatives market in 2007 was $531 trillion, up from $106 trillion in 2002. And the same people were in charge? While global central banks and government agencies continued policy of creating credit. Cheap money. Where were interest rates set — the Federal Reserve Bank policy that was responsible for this mess? And it has been 5 months since the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission got underway. Where was our own spotlight being shed by the commission on lustration of capitalism?

Following the collapse of communism, the word was “lustrace.” Considering sanctions or penalties designed to purge former party members, or really evil informants, or all the collaborators. Those in various degree of secret service to the system. Instead of letting power stay with the same suspects. The word was LUSTRACE— following the collapse of communism, in the post Berlin Wall days of Czechoslovakia or East Germany. In nations which never had reconciled what had happened since Hitler had come to power. In the days after the Berlin Wall fell, when those in power during Soviet Administrations stayed in power. As the invisible ink became visible, buying up properties. The proponents of the laws of lustrace said that it existed to prevent members of the old regime from exploiting their old advantage in the system and regaining influence. It was an attempt at reducing systemic risk in public service.

Systemic risk with public monies. Systemic risk in public service and to public policy concerns over moral hazards. This was a larger story than the destruction done in one day on September 11, 2001.

Some economists argue against debt forgiveness on the basis that debt forgiveness would motivate countries to deliberately borrow more than they can afford, with recurrence of a default on their debts. Moral hazards and public policy concerns over ongoing pay of chief executive officers — and to their cronies, like Timothy Geithner.

In the 1990s, the key economic power-brokers of the United States “were totally opposed to it (regulation),” Brooksley Born said. “That puzzled me—what was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?”

As Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs (1998–2001), Timothy Geithner had worked for Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers. Where reportedly, Summers was his mentor, other sources called him a Rubin protégé — the key economic power-brokers of the 1990s. There was no lustrace, on Wall Street or Washington following the total collapse of the investment banking world.

Of all the bad mores. Of the financial rescue of banks. Of institutions, and not people. With little more than
just debt forgiveness for those five investment banks, but all the other financial institutions in the United States. And derivatives still are a perfect way of getting rich, while avoiding taxes and government regulations, in a volatile global market. Derivatives still remain a lucrative business, with all of the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. At Ernst and Young. Those terrorists operating within the system who affect my safety inside my own home.

After wide and “robust discussions,” G20 ministers heard this weekend French delegates strongly defending the credibility of the Euro after its recent plunge to a four-year low. In a change of tone from the document produced by G20 finance ministers six weeks ago — the concluding communiqué introduced a call on world governments to put their fiscal houses in order. With differences over how quickly to rein in public spending, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner warned at the G20 meeting that fiscal tightening won’t “succeed unless we are able to strengthen confidence in the global recovery.”

I wonder from what Geithner these days has begun “to insulate himself? With the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission underway, according to a January 2010 Bloomberg piece by Hugh Son, the Federal Reserve of New York, under the leadership of Timothy Geithner, told AIG to withhold documents and delay disclosures of details from the public about the bailed-out insurer’s payments to banks during the depths of the financial crisis, e-mails over a five month span starting in November 2008 between the company and its regulator show.

In November 2008, the New York Fed had taken over negotiations between AIG and the banks as losses on contracts tied to subprime home loans threatened to swamp AIG, weeks after its taxpayer-funded rescue. The New York Fed ordered the crippled AIG not to negotiate for discounts in settling the credit derivative swaps, crossing out the reference to discussion of a discount of up to $13 billion that tax payers funded, according to the e-mails. AIG excluded the language when an SEC filing was made public on December 24, 2008. This was the backdoor bailout of Goldman Sachs and more than a dozen banks which were owed $62.1 billion of the credit derivatives. A news account reported that a REGULATOR decided that Goldman Sachs and more than a dozen banks would be fully repaid; was this actually a New York Fed official — the New York Fed — deciding that AIG could not discount anything, all to the benefit of Goldman Sachs?

At the time, Geithner “was recused from working on issues involving specific companies, including AIG.” In a separate statement, a spin doctor said that Geithner, after his nomination for Treasury secretary on Nov. 24, 2008, “began to insulate himself weeks earlier in anticipation of his nomination.” Let me see……Former New York Federal Reserve Board member Timothy Geithner who worked at the New York Federal reserve through the Bush years. In a January 2010 statement, a spokesperson said that Geithner, after his nomination for Treasury secretary on Nov. 24, 2008,“began to insulate himself weeks earlier in anticipation of his nomination.” From the New York Federal Reserve Board.

In a world where governments levy taxes not to finance its operations, but to give value to its fiat money as sovereign credit instruments, Timothy Geithner expressed at the conclusion of this week’s G20 meeting concern over the confidence in the system. Whereas French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde said yesterday that budget consolidation is “priority No. 1” for most G-20 members. He has seen what had happened in 5 months to the currency. His own currency.

In the United Kingdom, government was actually discussing increasing taxes and cutting spending. Canada this week ACTUALLY raised interest rates. Senior Hungarian government official Peter Szijjarto said Friday the previous government had manipulated budget figures and lied about the state of the economy, leading to a new question if Hungary was June’s candidate to replace Greece in the fiscal peril of 2010.

There would be a massacre in bond markets when interest rates rise, and where there will be no safety in stocks. After all the money which has poured into the perceived safety of bonds.

The rules all changed in September 2008, with government intervention into private enterprise, which was not enough to halt the unraveling of the financial system, not back up by reserves. For the day the losses would come. The clear and present danger, when markets were no longer free. Because political leaders just quit doing what they had always done. Regulating. Detached leaders trying to get re-elected, unable to get a handle on the grieving process of loss. Unable to regulate. In denial over the global economic imbalances.

In a world still trying to deal with loss, the G20 met with noble intentions to grapple with the harsh reality of the depth of the public debt morass, with all of the communal consequences, including risk of global instability.

In once free markets, which were allowed to pursue truth in valuations, what would happen to currency? In the New World Order? To freedom? To all freedom? After the Ponzi schemes called derivatives still were supported by governments. As economies stressed, and became the cause of new wars. When the “law of force” meets the “force of law.”

Director of currency research at GFT Forex in New York, Kathy Lien, said: “You won’t see major players be blatant about increasing their gold exposure and reducing their euro exposure. But it is a trend we’ve been witnessing in the past few months.” In Russia. in Iran. And with those Euro holding in China under review.
According to data on the Russian central bank website, the central bank of Russia trimmed its currency reserves by $6.6 billion in May, increasing its gold reserves by $1.8 billion. With more signs of shifting movement lately of euros and into gold –In an unconfirmed report — an Iranian news agency reported last week that Iran had begun switching €45 billion of its foreign-currency reserves into gold and dollars.

It is all about currency. And bonds. When there was no place to hide. What makes the Dow 10,000 this month look better than the Dow in February 1996 when it was at 6500? When there was a lot less stress in the world over currencies.

It was the currency, stupid. Campaign 2012 was going to be about the currency. Anger was one response. Or actual moves made to protect a currency. Because of the injustice of the bailout. And falling currency values throughout the world. When people no longer trusted government. When confidence was lost in people who messed with the system. Because of greed and power. The greed that financed political campaigns. Of Democrats and Republicans. As most of us looked on helplessly, at the elected transparent Democrats and Republicans. Or with either contempt or disgust. With a brewing restlessness on display over the greed, and the “give ‘em what they want’ method of accounting. Whereas few of those enslaved because of debts were ever freed. And more and more became Third World Nations.

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Slumdog Millionaire, Part III

Alex Rodriguez violated the unwritten code of conduct in baseball last night in Oakland when after Robinson Cano’s foul ball down the left field line, following his own one out single, he cut across the pitching mound and touched the pitching rubber on his return to first base, infuriating the pitcher Dallas Braden.

Braden yelled at Rodriguez, telling him to get off the mound. Rodriguez characterized the confrontation as “pretty funny, honestly.” According to the New York Times, he did not remember where he was running or whether he did, in fact, step on the rubber as he returned to first. ‘It’s not really a big deal,’ he said.”

According to the New York Times, Braden said of the New York Yankees. “It’s kind of disheartening to see that not show through, or be reflected by somebody of his status. They are an extremely classy organization with guys who always tend to do the right thing every time.”

To Braden, it was big deal. After the game, Braden said: “I don’t go over there and run laps at third base. I don’t spit over there. I stay away. You guys ever see anybody run across the mound like that? He ran across the pitcher’s mound. Foot on my rubber.”

This was the A-Rod who in Toronto in 2007 as a base runner called for a pop fly, violating the unwritten code of conduct. Whether written or unwritten, this A-Rod ignores all codes of conduct. Like with steroids. It was in October 2007 when Selena Roberts wrote: “Do you like the new A-Rod who doesn’t care if he is liked?”

Nothing had really changed.

Those Tea Parties

In his book, “The Three Trillion War,” Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz and co-author Linda J. Bilmes state that the total economic impact of the Iraq War may be $4 trillion or more. And that was before the United States escalated things in Afghanistan.

Former White House economist Lawrence Lindsey was fired as economic adviser to President Bush partly because of his estimate of the dollar cost of the Iraq war. In an excerpt of his own book in Fortune magazine five years after, Lindsey wrote his projections were partly right. “My hypothetical estimate got the annual cost about right. But I misjudged an important factor: how long we would be involved.” Mr. Lindsey also stated his belief that one reasons the administration’s efforts were so unpopular was the choice not to engage in an open public discussion of the consequences of war, including its economic cost.”

Congressional Democrats had predicted the Iraq war would cost about $93 billion, not including reconstruction. Peter R. Orszag, director of the Congressional Budget Office, said, “It’s clear that operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have gone on longer and have been more expensive than the projections initially suggested,”

So far this has been a tax-free Iraq War, and not included in the Congressional Budget, as I recall a piece that was written in 2002. According to an item that ran on the MSN news page, the cost was carried over. I see little media coverage since that time indicting where the war shows up in the president’s budget.

William Nordhaus from Yale University wrote in the New York Review of Books in December 2002 in an article entitled “The Economic Consequences of War,” about the the long-term management of the economy, with the management of planning cycles. “The fabulous Nineties—with soaring stock market, falling unemployment, declining defense spending, budget surpluses, and bubbly optimism—were followed by the Bush administration which made no serious public estimate of the costs of the coming war. The public and the Congress are unable to make informed judgments about the realistic costs and benefits of the upcoming conflict when none are given. Particularly worrisome is the promise of postwar occupation, reconstruction, and nation-building in Iraq. If American taxpayers decline to pay the bills, this would leave a mountain of rubble and mobs of angry people in Iraq and the region. Closely related is a second syndrome, frequently found in past conflicts, of entering war prepared militarily but not economically. The finances of the nation have deteriorated sharply since George W. Bush took office. The annual federal budget has deteriorated by $360 billion from the spring of 2001 to the fall of 2002, and, even with a short war, budget deficits are likely to mount in coming years. The Bush administration has not prepared the public for the cost or the financing of what could prove to be an expensive venture.”

Nor has the Obama Administration. Market participants, wrote William Nordhaus in “The Story of the Bubble,” at this point do “remember how they lost $6 trillion on absurd and wildly overvalued speculations. A similar exuberance is unlikely to recur in the near future. More likely is an economy in which large federal budget deficits lead to cuts in existing civilian programs and doom critical priorities such as comprehensive health care.”

That tax-free Iraq War, as conceived by the Bush White House, was one ongoing economic consequences of war. There was now the subsequent tax-free Afghan War. These wars would soon change American history. Would you like to come over for tea?

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Valuations and Devaluations

Nicholas Cage. Pak Nam-Ki. Citibank’s former CEO. Tom Petters. Theo Epstein.

U.S. District Judge Richard H. Kyle, the judge in the Tom Petters’ trial, on sentencing Tom Petters for orchestrating a $3.7-billion Ponzi scheme, said: “You had to know.” Petters apologized to his family, friends and former employees.

In North Korean, restricting the amount that could be exchanged, the redenomination of the won on November 30, 2009, forced people to swap old banknotes for new ones at a rate of one hundred to one. On March 19, 2010, it was reported that the finance minister in North Korea was executed over too much inflation. Pak Nam-Ki was charged “with ruining the national economy deliberately as the son of a big landlord who infiltrated the ranks of revolutionaries,” Yonhap News Agency said. Pak was 77 years old when he was shot dead in the last few weeks at a military range in Pyongyang, after earlier being sacked as chief of the ruling communist party’s planning and finance department. There had been public anger at the inflation following the currency revaluation. A lot of anger. South Korea’s National Intelligence Service’s Won Sei-Hoon said the revaluation aggravated hunger, wiped out savings, and sparked riots after prices soared.

That is what happens after tinkering with currency. Or with the manipulations of systems.

At the start of his testimony, Charles “Chuck” Prince, the former Citigroup Inc chief executive, told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission “I am sorry.” His sorrow was for the problems that led Citigroup to be rescued by the government, while absolving himself of any personal responsibility for the $30 billion which eventually had to be off in collateralized-debt obligations.

In a foreclosure action for auction yesterday, bidding opened at the county courthouse in Pomona, California at $10.4 million on the property with a total of $18 million in loans, far less than the asked for price of $35 million on a property lost to foreclosure by Nicholas Cage, and in less than a minute the auction closed with no takers in the courthouse sale. Cage, who had earnings of $40 million last year according to Forbes, could not be reached for comment. In October, Cage filed suit against his former business manager, Samuel J. Levin for allegedly having “lined his pockets with several million dollars in business management fees” leading Cage down a “path toward financial ruin,” per the complaint. Levin did file his own countersuit, describing a spending binge by Cage “of epic proportions,” where by July 2008 Cage owned an island in the Bahamas, 15 palatial homes around the world, 4 yachts, a private Gulfstream jet, and millions in art and jewelry.

The Baltimore Orioles will pay just the $400,000 minimum of Julio Lugo’s $9 million salary this year, after a trade that sent him from St. Louis to Baltimore for a player to be named later. Or for cash. Lugo had come to St. Louis last summer in a trade between the Cardinals and the Boston Red Sox. It had been the Red Sox who agreed to pay $8.6 million of Lugo’s $9 million salary this year. That Red Sox general manager had set a price for all baseball in the system of arbitration by paying this salary. As the world begins to deal with the economic fallout of pretend banks, of propped up collapsed banks, of balloons in real estate, a view into the affects of bubbles on baseball salaries is worth a longer look.

There is so much sweet sorrow around today as Tiger Woods steps up to the tee in Augusta. Where is the punishment in all of this?

Now no one is all over Theo Epstein in all of this. Yet. But when the day arrives when the ticket buying public, in times more reflective of the 1960s, realizes that baseball can be watched in person only by the wealthy, maybe the spotlight might be focused on why no one in the front offices were fighting the system. No one had been watching out for the blue collar fan for some time. As the bubble in valuations in New York and Boston slowly affected the franchises throughout the nation.

Declarations of Bankruptcy

With the Wednesday anniversary of the $787-billion package of tax cuts and spending in the Recovery Act, in defense of the stimulus, President Obama said, “One year later, it is largely thanks to the Recovery Act that a second Depression is no longer a possibility.” Democratic and Republican leaders in Washington marked America’s legalized corruption by sniping at each other. Bankrupt after 8 years of the leadership of George Bush, Republican lawmakers stepped up their attacks on what was the Paulson-Bush stimulus plan, calling it wasteful and ineffective.

From an article by Simon Johnson in the Atlantic, America’s Legalized Corruption

“The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.”

From the transcript of Frontline on February 16, 2010:

“We didn’t truly know the dangers of the market, because it was a dark market,” says Brooksley Born, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission [CFTC] — an obscure federal regulatory agency — who not only warned of the potential for economic meltdown in the late 1990s, but also tried to convince the country’s key economic powerbrokers to take actions that could have helped avert the crisis.

“They were totally opposed to it,” Born says. “That puzzled me. What was it that was in this market that had to be hidden?”

They being the same people advising the current president. Then Assistant Treasury Secetary Lawrence Summers, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, as well as Alan Greespan heading up the Federal Reserve. And who did Timothy Geithner worked for through this all? As Henry Paulson got his start working in the Nixon White House; was it for Erhlichman or Haldeman? He learned under the best of hatchet men.

It had taken 40 years of the media making us all world experts, and this expertise along with the lobbyists had bankrupted American government. It was why I felt uncomfortable having my retirement accounts with Fidelity, with Merrill Lynch, with Morgan Stanley. They all had hijacked the government of the United States, through the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.

One year later, President Obama was sounding a lot like George Bush, announcing victory in Iraq. Or Henry Paulson and Ben Ben Bernanke, with their similar pronouncements all along, when the Bush Administration on July 13, 2008 rescued Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or Bear Stearns. When that second Depression “was no longer a possibility.”

The Congressional Oversight Panel, chaired by Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, warned on the same anniversary date that it remains “deeply concerned” that commercial loan losses could jeopardize the stability of many banks, particularly the nation’s mid-size and smaller banks. Highlighting yet one more hurdle for this country’s fragile economy, a wave of commercial real estate loan failures could threaten over the next few years America’s already-weakened financial system. The Congressional Oversight Panel was formed as part of oversight for the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

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Burning Bright

TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Twas the night of Thanksgiving and all through his house

Tiger came flying, chased by his spouse.

She wielded a nine iron and wasn’t real merry,

After a bimbo’s cell number was found on a Blackberry.

With a harem, he had cheated on Swede wife Elin,

As each day passed by, another floozie came squealing.

On Holly, on Jaimee, on Rachel, on Cori,

On Joselyn, and Kalika, TMZ had the story.

From the top of the world to above the fold,

Tiger Woood’s sorted tale was told.

With waitresses, VIP Services, there was lots of sex,

And when he wasn’t hosing them, he sent them hot texts.

He crashed his Caddy, but didn’t call OnStar,

Yet he played “spank me daddy” with a skanky old porn star.

He’s been so naughty that with Santa he hadn’t a chance,

Except the big lump of coal that matches the lump in his pants.

But despite all his crying and begging and pleading,

Elin went out and bought a new home in Sweden.

As I heard she’s not pouting, in fact she’s of good cheer,

Because the pre-nup made Christmas come early this year. – STOLEN, AUTHOR UNKNOWN

TIGER, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
- William Blake

Getting to the Next Party

Somewhere in the world the party was still going on? The Roaring Twenties just moved to a new neighborhood, under the brightness of a new sun?

Somewhere in the world the party was still going on? After the Crash of 2008? People living off the labor of the masses. Like the Lost Generation, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, living in Paris. As the Germans paid the French war reparations. In the Weimar Republic, where the currency was delivered by the wheel barrow.

Like on Wall Street and their salaries? Somewhere the party would keep on going on. Like In China. On September 3, 2009, Chris Oliver wrote a piece about the biggest movement in gold which might have gone little noticed by currency traders. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority, which functions as the territory’s unofficial central bank, will transfer its gold reserves stored in other vaults to the depository later this year, and the Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange had signed an agreement to use the depository for its physical settlement and storage needs.

Somewhere in the world the party was still going on? In China. What about the transparency of China? China and corrupt local political war lords, living off the backs of the laborer? The Chinese. A government that limited families to one baby each. To all those advocates of abortion and Planned Parenthood ( not to be confused with family planning decisions), how is that in the way of “choice?” How is that in the way of repression? Would I invest in China? In their currency? China and human rights. How would that be in the way of repression, when I bought into their system?

George Soros. Was it ethical to make $1 billion in one day against the British pound. When the UK, with all of its taxpayers, paid a price. Then the quest of Soros for power through funding the Democrat Party. Warren Buffet. Living off the backs of the laborer? With his growing investment income and value of Berkshire Hathaway. Which was not the same as blue collar hourly wage. These investors who were, who had, reshaped the Democratic Party.

The Democrats who chased away the blue collar worker. The Democrats who chased away the Catholic voter. All to get funding from those Warren Buffet and George Soros-types, reshaping party platform in the name of women’s rights? Or really not much different than in China? With all the transparency of China. China and corrupt local political party bosses, living off the backs of labor? The Chinese family, limited to one baby families. All those advocates of rescuing the free markets, when I bought into their system that allowed the pay scales at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, at the cost of the new blue collar worker enslaved by the technology of Bill Gates. Where workers were required to have cell phones and Black Berries and pagers. Even on vacation.

Economic collapse, with a falling currency? With little difference between the 2 political parties on issues of labor and economic policy. The only difference was based on “women Issues.”

Somewhere in the world the party was still going on, having just moved to a new neighborhood, under the brightness of a new sun? With the hyper-inflation still to come, should I buy in? In China?

Robbing Peter to Pay Paul

In January 2009, UnitedHealth based in Minnetonka, Minnesota agreed to shut down their Ingenix database and settled a lawsuit with the New York Attorney General by paying $50 million, it was reported in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal. According to an item in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal, the investigation by the New York Attorney’s General office uncovered a fraudulent and conflict-of-interest-ridden reimbursement system, which the state of New York then proceeded to replace with a not-for-profit company, FAIR Health Inc., to be headquartered at Syracuse University.

That $50 million was used to form a new, independent database at Syracuse University. After settlements with other similar companies, the New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday
a new independent database for consumer reimbursement as part of this Upstate research network in what sounds to be a reformed plan for Ingenix’s health care reimbursement database. Only this time allegedly with “transparency, accountability and fairness.” Funded by the litigation of Mr. Cuomo. Offering no defense of the operations at UnitedHealth here, public policy in New York apparently involves using the courts to transfer jobs to their state under the umbrella of the health care debate?

This new research network, reportedly funded with nearly $100 million in settlement money recovered during an investigation by Cuomo’s office into how the health-insurance industry reimburses consumers for out-of-network health care charges, “will develop a new Web site where for the first time consumers can compare prices before they choose their doctors.”

This is an innovative way for state government to create new jobs in their own state.

48 Hours

Hush money.

The Telegraph had the news of David Letterman’s revelation that he had sexual relationships with female employees of his show. Letterman said after his monologue last night on the air that he had received a demand by an alleged extortionist, according to CBS an employee of “48 Hours,” to either pay $2 million or risk his relationships being made public.

Letterman’s own production company according to the Los Angeles Times, does have a sexual harassment policy in place which does not prohibit sexual relationships between managers and employees, said a spokesman for Worldwide Pants.

After making a living off as a comic over Monica Lewinsky and Eliot Spitzer jokes, Letterman put the spin that the real story was about extortion, and the “threat” to him over his “creepy behavior.” According to Nick Allen of the The Telegraph.co.uk, during the CBS “Late Show with David Letterman,” Letterman revealed earlier that day he appeared before a grand jury about an alleged extortion attempt connected to his sexual liasons with women who worked for him which would clearly involve issues of sexual harassment in his admitted “creepy stuff…relationships.”

The Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, with a perceived timing orchestrated by Worldwide Pants, held a press conference within 14 hours to announce the specifics, revealing charges brought against CBS News producer Robert “Joe” Halderman.

Worldwide Pants. Caught without their pants on. “We have a written policy in our employee manual that covers harassment. It is circulated to every employee every year. Dave is not in violation of our policy and no one has ever raised a complaint against him.” So said the statement. Letterman’s own production company. Letterman did not believe in sexual harassment? He was an agnostic when it came to sexual harassment? What about the people who did not get the promotions that his staffers got in the Worldwide Pants world?

Thursday CBS said the “48 Hours” employee charged with attempted grand larceny was suspended from his job. Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau in a press conference revealed the charges against CBS News producer Robert “Joe”Halderman. Mr. Halderman has not gotten the same public forum to address the world that Letterman was given about his alleged wrong doing. There also was no word on how CBS was dealing with the issues of sexual harassment, if corporate policy was violated. What a time for those human resource staffers. Apparently CBS feels extortion from an entertainment star was a worse offense than sexual harassment of female staffers, or the collateral damage of sexual harassment.

Fox News New York has reported that according to a search warrant, Robert “Joe” Halderman’s girlfriend Stephanie Birkitt was one of the women that Letterman slept with. According to Fox News New York, Ms. Birkitt is Letterman’s former assistant. Fox News New York has reported that the search warrant states the package Halderman sent Letterman contained copies of parts of Stephanie Birkitt’s diary and correspondence.

Entertainment Tonight showed later featured appearances of Stephanie Birkitt over the years on “Late Show with David Letterman” from venues like the Winter Olympics.

Letterman was quoted on his show as saying: “I was worried for myself. I was worried for my family. I felt menaced by this. And I had to tell them all of the creepy things that I had done.

According to Nick Allen of the The Telegraph.co.uk, “The creepy stuff was that I have had sex with women who work for me on this show.”

Letterman described how three weeks ago he had got in his car early in the morning, found a letter within a package saying: “I know that you do some terrible, terrible things and that I can prove you do some terrible things.” The package contained the proof, Letterman said. He called his lawyer to set up a meeting with the alleged extortionist, with two subsequent meetings, the last one resulting in the delivery of the fake check. Robert “Joe” Halderman allegedly had threatened to write a screenplay and a book about him unless Halderman was given money.

According to Nick Allen, Letterman admitted on Late Night Show Thursday night to having “had sex with women who work with me on this show. My response to that is yes, I have. Would it be embarrassing if it were made public? Yes, it would. Especially for the women.”

According to Nick Allen of the The Telegraph.co.uk, after telling all to his audience Letterman lightened the mood. “I know what you’re saying. I’ll be darned – Dave had sex.”

So it was about hush money? The bizarre experience? The audience had scattered laughter throughout the confession.

Yeah. On with the show.

“It’s been a very bizarre experience. I felt like I needed to protect these people. I need to protect my family. I need to protect myself. Hope to protect my job.”

The bizarre experience! For the audience. An inappropriate place to make the revelation, by a host with an inappropriate sensibility about himself. A repeat offender. Someone who had to be making overtures. But on with the show. Before we gave it all too much thought. One-liners.

It might be a while before the president is going to be booking an appearance again.

Maybe Bill Clinton will show up next week to offer some support. Or guest Host Elliot Spitzer? What a time for those staffers trying to line up guests for next week.

The age of television. Performance enhancement egos and salaries. When the era of Rocky the Squirrel of Frostbite Falls, Minnesota was replaced by the era of Vigara sponsorship.

Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice

The summer of 2009. In Red Cloud Nebraska. This summer there was a bunch of students from New York University who were putting on a play. Paper Plane Theatre Company, a New York City based troupe of artists, presented a production of Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice to Red Cloud. Who exactly were these guys?

Spending time and money on a production. Then came the critics. People like Frank Rich. Who exactly were these guys?

Critics. And art. And politics. In the summer of 2009.

Community organizers. Who exactly were these guys?

The summer of 2009. The health care reform debated. So was the debate about health care reform or reform how health care would be paid? These pro-choice Democrats who all agreed politics did not belong in the bedroom were now suggesting they belonged in the bed when a loved one was dying?

Those Tea Parties. Who exactly were these people that showed up at town hall meetings. The ones that the community organizer seemed to be promoting. There was a certain irony in all of this. Compared to the Boston Tea Party which was a lot more than a discussion. Compared to community organizers. So thiution?s was an overhaul or a revolution?

Budgets. Spending time and money on a production. Now having to pay attention to the money. Like in Red Cloud, Nebraska. Those art critics neverr paid much attention to the accounting of the cost of a production.

Some of the accounting involved no health care benefits for the illegals. If some kind of bloodless health care bill was going to get through Congress. Yet to me, there was a real sense of irony that these same Tea Party advocates do not question fighting a war, 2 wars, across the sea. There seemed little accounting to the purpose of it all. Taxed incomes to fight wars overseas, seemingly to export democratic values, yet not extending some basic ideals to people within borders on other life and death issues..

Health care according o the elected president in campaign 2008 was a basic human right. Yet so few humans ever had had this basic human right in human history. Anywhere.

The search for identity, when the leader, as an organizer, did not know what to do after he was organized. Community organizers to much beholden to others, without quite knowing his own self. In an era when the foundation of American ideals were shaken. By his predecessor.

Immigrants. Illegals. Critics and art. And politics. In the summer of 2009. When immigration, abortion, bailouts, and accounting departments all came together. In health care reform. With deadlines.

Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice. With no intermission.

A whimsical retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus, Eurydice is the story of two lovers who strive to love each other as much as they love their ideas. Told from Eurydice’s point of view, this myth becomes real as it tracks the bittersweet passage from father to husband. From boardwalks to the Underworld, wedding receptions to houses made of string, high-rise apartments to the River of Forgetfulness, the profound humanity and sensory spectacle of Eurydice promises to carry us to new worlds. It is quite a show.

The critics seemed to have gone a bit soft, because one of the organizers was one of Nebraska’s own. A lot like Frank Rich in the summer of 2009. About promises to carry us to new worlds. Without a concern for the accounting department.