Tidbits and Food For Though

Now you know why we haven't caught Bin Laden.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html?src=me&ref=homepage

This is just further illustrates that US forces will be occupying Afghanistan for for the next twenty years. I can just imagine hearing Obama justify extending the deadline for pullout indefinitely. "We have to stay in Afghanistan!, there is untapped trillions that we can steal to justify the trillions already spend." Watch for more no bid contract wins from the likes of Halliburton and Blackwater. I know Blackwater changed their name to XE, but their stripes have not. This will leave the left more infuriated while the right will continue to hammer Obama because that is the only way they know how to operate. US officials have tried to parlay this information as a huge positive, it may still be a huge find but it further illustrates how far beyond broken our political system has become.

Funny.....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100615/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan_bin_laden_hunter

At least someone is interested in finding and catching Bin Laden.

Wall Street back door bailout continues.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=an_hcY9YaJas

Does the American Taxpayer know they are financing Part 2 of the great Wall Street bonus machine? Part 1 was AIG.

When the Treasury gave Fannie/Freddie 2 years of unlimited funding on Christmas Eve, it was the greatest Christmas present to Wall Street since Greenspan. First the Fed expanded its balance sheet with the purchase of $1.25T in mortgage paper. Then the banks used Fannie/Freddie as a dumping ground for the garbage they couldn't sell the Fed. Does the word "Dumping Ground" sound familiar? AIG was the dumping ground for all of the subprime CDO risk on Wall Street. The dumping continued until AIG could no longer smell the stench of all those toxic CDO's. When will the Taxpayer start to smell the stench? I am thinking sometime in mid 2011. Where is the oversight? Where is the leadership? Why isn't Fannie/Freddie obligations part of the federal budget? Why are Fannie/Freddie still doing business? Why is there not a plan to wind down these entities? Why are we continuing to fund these morbidly obese housing structures that have become legal toxic dumping grounds? The answers are quite simple. The only reason these two structures are around is that the lobbyists and various Wall Street interests want them to be around. How else can they funnel there garbage at par? There is still some trillion bad mortgage bets on and off bank balance sheets. The Taxpayer is on the hook for this and Wall Street is laughing in the rear view mirror.

The banks have padded their books to this effect. On top of the fact that there is not one once of honest accounting left in the banking sector. 

http://tradersutra.blogspot.com/2010/04/living-dream.html

We have not even broached the subject of European Banks and sovereign debt. All of this sovereign debt is sitting on balance sheets that are insolvent. What we have is the US Banking sector is worthless mortgage paper that the taxpayer is custodian for. Even with this the banks are insolvent. How in the world can Treasury/Fed bail out these institutions once again? The ECB can't possibly bailout all European banks without totally destroying the Euro. They will not do this because the Europeans won't allow it.

We have to let debts be restructured. We have to let housing do its own thing and go down another 10-15%. We have to allow the orderly liquidation of bad companies. We have to make the banks accountable for the mess that THEY created.

http://tradersutra.blogspot.com/2010/05/capitalisms-kryptonite.html