Chris Dodd

Politicians are all corrupt; those few who do initially join to "help the people" either soon get corrupted, or are mulched out of the system.  None are more corrupt than those who are at the very top of American politics; the so-called "survivors."  Some politicians made the mistake of admitting their own wrong-doings, and others have "whistleblow"-ed on the corrupt nature of American politics. 

Few of us understand patient gradualism.  We live and have our being within a few years and mostly in an unconscious automated state of mind.  But people in power are long-term planners.  They absolutely understand human nature and how to channel it to the evolution and refinement of the authoritarian state.  The goal is perfect docility and perfect harmony with authoritarianism (economic, social and spiritual).  Until the people accept collectivism under some pretext, they are not docile and completely subdued.  Once they do, rebellion and confrontation are impossible.  This is the ultimate goal of the globalists, and the American system is nearing this state. 

Gen. Wesley Clark has been a busy man since retiring from public service with a plan to make $40 million.  In addition to chairing notorious investment bank Rodman & Renshaw, the former NATO allied commander and one-time Presidential hopeful has thrown his face and fame behind a plethora of OTC-listed companies, Bloomberg reports.  From grilled cheese sandwich trucks to hydroponic lettuce companies run by the real-life Bud Fox, Clark's name has become so synonymous with doomed penny stocks that one fund manager calls his very appearance on a company board "a red flag." 

The massive consolidation of wealth, combined with the removal of any limits on money in campaigns, has allowed for the purchase of our government.  Americans know that something is wrong, deeply wrong.  They see signs of the problem everywhere: income inequality, growing concentration and power of mega corporations, political donations/corruption, the absence of jobs with decent salaries, the explosion of the US prison population, healthcare costs, student loan debt, homelessness, etc.  etc.  However, the true causes and benefactors behind these problems are purposely hidden from view.  What Americans see is Kabuki Theater of a functioning form of capitalism and democracy, but beyond this veneer our country has devolved into the exact opposite. 

If you listen carefully, you can hear the stampede of politicians distancing themselves from their once best-friend - Hotel magnate Sant Singh Chatwal - as AP reports, he plead guilty Thursday to charges he secretly funneled more than $180,000 in illegal campaign contributions to three unnamed candidates and coached someone to lie about it.  Without the contributions "nobody will even talk to you," Chatwal said. " That's the only way to buy them, get into the system."  Welcome to the ugly truth of American politik. 

...the pushback from Wall Street was intense and multi-pronged.  The Blob oozed through the halls of government, seeking, through its glutinous embrace, to immobilize the legislative and regulatory apparatus, thereby preserving the status quo.  The executive jets of the Wall Street air force flew sortie after sortie, transporting high-ranking emissaries from new York to Washington to meet with the SEC, [Senator Chris] Dodd and [Senator Richard] Shelby staff, and the staff of other senators on the Banking Committee.  Some of the executives, no doubt less enthusiastically, even met with Josh and me.  The research companies and market experts Wall Street employs also raised their voices against us.  At times it got ugly.  Ted was called a crackpot and dangerously uninformed.  He was accused of “politicizing” market regulation (a strange notion considering he wasn’t running for election).  It seemed as if Wall Street, which wasn’t used to someone on Capitol Hill asking in-depth questions about arcane issues, wished to silence or marginalize its critics.  Industry people would always ask me, “What got Kaufman so interested in this stuff?”  Used to politicians whose top priorities were to please their home-state business interests and raise money, they had trouble fathoming that Ted was so interested because it was the right thing to do.  He believed in fair markets.  And because he was genuinely concerned about emerging issues that threatened the stock market, where half of all Americans keep a sizable portion of their retirement savings. 

The FDIC decided to wait with its dose of pre-holiday humor until after the Barclays fixing for today's market close turned out to be spot on.  And by that we mean that official release of the US banks' "living will" statements, which as far as we know is about the most worthless exercise ever conducted, and about the dumbest thing to be conceived by that very undynamic duo of Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.  Because last we checked, the treatment of living wills in bankruptcy court, where all these firms will end up eventually anyway, is... non-existent.  But the real fun is when one actually reads this indicative statement from Citigroup: "Citi is today a fundamentally different institution than it was before the crisis."  And that's where we stopped.  Because it is banks wasting their time (and taxpayer bailout money) on gibberish like this instead of analyzing the risk inherent in their prop positions that guarantees the next CIO-like blow up will not be just $5 billion but far, far more, and will certainly prove that living wills when one has to equitize tens of billions in unsecured debt are worth exactly didely squat. 

Nearly two years after his catastrophic foray into Op-Ed writing, here is Tim Geithner's latest, this time making the hypocritical case to "not forget the lesson from the financial crisis"... which he himself ushered on America as head of the New York Fed.  Frankly we are quite sure it is not even worth reading this drivel: the unemployed man walking has been a total disaster during his entire tenure (at both the New York Fed where he supervised all the banks that subsequently fell, and the Treasury), and we are fairly confident that reading anything written by this pathological failure will cost collective IQs to drop by 10 points at a minimum.  Hey Tim: is there a risk the US can get downgraded?  Any risk? 

Gleacher's head of rates submits: "Last Thursday I walked from Town Hall in N.Y.C to Wall St. wearing my navy blue pin-stripped suit, asking for directions to the NYSE from PROTESTERS and ORGANIZERS.  You should have seen the look on their faces.  Kill em with kindness and a smile.  Everyone was there.  SEIU, ACORN, Longshoremen and other organizers, faceless, unemployed, faceless employed, moms, dads, and lost souls.  I felt like a lost soul during a slow motion walk near frozen in time.  There were almost more press corps than protestors but they achieved one of their goals, virtually shutting down a major grid of commerce in one of the most travelled corners of the nation, Wall Street.  Ironically, I was on my way to a conduit in support of affordable housing goals aided by a bunch of bankers in the iconic figment of capitalism, the NYSE.  It was a surreal walk accentuated by Contrast and Conflict, my own and others For me there was a conflict of the realization of a mis-understood marriage and divorce of catalyst Congressional public policy initiatives and government sponsored support, in which I was in route meeting, and with private partner capitalist mandates of mortgage finance, me.  I’ve been asked often in my own community recently, “What is Occupy Wall St.?”  I sense the answer is different for different people.  A dis-organized expression for many.  But a highly organized expression for others from the likes of quotes from organizers above.  Caroline Baum asked demonstrators AND HERSELF the question recently.  Just as I side-stepped the blitz with a silhouette of a Bull in the distance.  An organizer?!$!$% I ask what is a banker?  Who are these evil people?  Is it loan officer?  FX trader, teller, IG trader, taxable fixed income salesperson, middle office operations employee?" 

When just under a year ago, Tim Geithner penned "Welcome to the Recovery" he top ticked the zenith of the business cycle to the day if not the hour, with the economy finding itself in a straight line contraction ever since then, blissfully delayed by a 9 month QE2 detour.  Now that the QE2 is no longer a factor, we are already seeing economists everywhere cut their Q2 GDP forecasts to sub 2%, an effective stall speed for the economy in real terms, and reducing their full year economic forecasts.  Which is why we were delighted to learn that today Geithner has just released his latest iteration of a top-ticking missive, this one titled inappropriately enough "Dodd-Frank Has Made Our Banks Stronger" which is supremely ironic because not only has Dodd-Frank not made anything stronger as it has not even been remotely implemented, but as Bank of America, Goldman and Citi's Q2 results have just confirmed, the US bank sector is now the weakest it has been in years.  Thus, when accentuated with a Geithner adminition to not panic our only advice is to do precisely the opposite.  Oh yes, it took precisely 25 days between Geithner's heartfelt appeal to America's idiot class last year and Bernanke's Jackson Hole appearance.  We wonder if this year it will be shorter.