No, you're not. Really, I think that as a population, we have not yet begun to get angry.



This is one of the lone sane voices out there--Karl Denninger.  This 10-minute video certainly isn't long enough to explain in detail the complete and total clusterfuck that is currently occurring in our financial markets, but it's a decent abbreviation. 

The bad part?  It's probably already too late.  Fannie and Freddie sold us down the river.  Do we still have any options?  I really don't know.  What I do know is that the vultures are circling several other large banks--namely Lehman's and Washington Mutual--and WaMu all by itself has more FDIC-insured money in it's vaults than the FDIC can afford to pay out.  Guess where those tabs are going when the vulture's land?  The U.S. Treasury, just like Fannie & Freddie.  Any guesses where the Treasury gets its money?  Yeah, from us.  Would any other highly fraudulent, ultra-rich banking motherfuckers who've already cashed out millions like to stick their hands any further into my pocket?  Or how about my children's?  Alex has around $35; he's been saving up for a Thomas the Tank Engine Train-washing set, but I'm sure you need it more.

Fucking assholes.

And the just brilliant part of this whole mess?  The part that makes it all almost funny?  After the Bear Stearns bailout, the market got about a short-week bounce from renewed investor confidence.  What did the doubtlessly-into-the-trillions bailout of the FMs give us?  Not even 36 hours.  Not even 36 motherfucking hours of bounce.  If it's not now transparently obvious that we're spinning the drain here, I don't know how it could get clearer.  It is over, over, over, and we're bailing out the assholes who caused the mess.

Today the market, which according to CNN was "Set to open higher" has already lost over 100 points in the DJ.  How low can we go?  I just can't wait to find out.

Anyone got some popcorn? 

EDIT:  Dow closed down 280 points (2.4%).  AHAHAHAAAAA-headesk-headesk-headesk.

Here's a fun one I learned, thanks to theautomaticearth.com (a fiiiiirm favorite of mine).  One of the basic indexes used to gauge how well our economy is doing tracks the sales of consumer goods.  It tanked pretty badly last month--almost inexplicably, too (well, except for the possible explanation that we're all out of frickin money and credit).  But that makes for bad press.  Fortunately, indexes are nothing if not malleable, and so they retooled it slightly.  They removed one teensy-weensie sector from the tracking index, in order to get what they're calling their "core" consumer index.  What did they remove, you ask?  Cars.  Yeah, cars.  They just removed the automotive retail business from their model, and guess what?  The consumer index went back up!  Isn't that swell?! 

*headesk*

On The Automatic Earth, this was likened to how, in order to derive the "core" inflation rate, they stopped including the inflation rates for fuel and food, or, as they put it:  "It's a bit like core inflation that excludes food and fuel, also known as inflation without the inflation..."

I'll bitch & rant here!  Hey, it's my blog.

So I check out Slashfood.com pretty regularly.  There was a post about a family suing a local Starbuck's for serving their child a kid-sized hot cocoa hot that caused massive, hospital-treated burns when the child spilled it on herself while in her car seat.  Naturally, this posting spawned over 1,500 (yes, that's right, 4-digits-worth) of comments about how evil-nasty-wrong-stupid-negligent-etc. the mother must be to give her child hot cocoa while in a car seat.  Some people even suggested that the mother is abusive and is looking to make some quick money by purposely causing this injury for the lawsuit.

Okay, look people, how evil-nasty-wrong-stupid-negligent-etc. this parent may be has JACK FOR SHIT to do with the lawsuit.  It doesn't matter at all if the child had the cocoa in her car seat, or sitting in the Starbuck's cafe, or walking down the sidewalk, or while hanging upside-down from the jungle gym.  The only thing that matters is determining if Starbuck's has been serving kid drinks that can cause 2ND-3RD DEGREE BURNS--which is (a) against corporate policy, which specifies that all kid drinks must be under 120 degrees; and (b) deserves to be punished.  Was the mother a dumbass for giving hot cocoa to her child while in a car seat?  Maybe.  I don't know.  How old was the kid?  Some kids are still in car seats as old as 8-10.  How adept is the child at managing drinks while in a car seat?  The post didn't specify.  Should the mother be investigated for negligence?  Maybe, how should I, or anyone else, know?  There wasn't nearly enough info in the post to make those sorts of leaps of logic.  And frankly, I get real sick of people who, in all likelihood, do not have children themselves, getting all high-n-mighty about how bad a job other people do at raising their children.  Damnit people, raising children is HARD.  Sometimes we make bad decisions.  Sometimes our bad decisions have bad consequences.  But that parent's (possibly) bad decision to give his/her child a hot cocoa in a moving car should've resulted in a ruined outfit--not a visit to a hospital and regular plastic surgery to repair the damage.

*grumble*