I.O.U.S.A. - The Movie

http://www.iousathemovie.com/

Should be fairly interesting. Bankrolled by Peter Peterson and Warren Buffett, the movie talks about the increasing debt and trends towards deficit spending as the problems that we face (and will continue to face) in the United States. Ron Paul has a pretty humorous quote midway through the trailer, which can be found on YouTube, or, watch it here:

Federal Bailout Package Rejected!

Or was it?

Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve will pump an additional $630 billion into the global financial system, flooding banks with cash to alleviate the worst banking crisis since the Great Depression.

The Fed increased its existing currency swaps with foreign central banks by $330 billion to $620 billion to make more dollars available worldwide. The Term Auction Facility, the Fed’s emergency loan program, will expand by $300 billion to $450 billion. The European Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan are among the participating authorities.

Gotta love how they do whatever the fuck they want despite what our elected officials say. Pretty great.

Another one Bites the Dust (WaMu)

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Washington Mutual Inc (WM.N) was closed by the U.S. government in by far the largest failure of a U.S. bank, and its banking assets were sold to JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) for $1.9 billion.

Washington Mutual, the largest U.S. savings and loan, was closed by the federal Office of Thrift Supervision, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp was named receiver. Customers should expect business as usual on Friday, the FDIC said.

The bailout came after the thrift suffered deposit outflows of $16.7 billion since September 15, the OTS said.

‘With insufficient liquidity to meet its obligations, WaMu was in an unsafe and unsound condition to transact business,’ the OTS said.

Solid. Solid.

Nostalgia: Video Games

Sitting here at work, I’ve Googled my way into some nostalgia - specifically video games from my past. When I was young, I would spend my days logged onto a local BBS (Virtual Arcade, I think), downloading custom Doom II maps, chatting in the Telecommunications room, guessing at Trivia for free credits, but most of my time was spent playing…

Trade Wars 2002. I actually got so serious about this game that instead of using Telex to dial into the server, I pirated a copy of the specialized terminal networking program that had a front-end with a ton of shortcuts for TW2002, such as route spidering/planning, arbitrage tools, and other macros that made the game significantly easier to play.

I remember being pissed off that the balance of power was getting so lopsided with the alliances on the local BBS and desperately hoping that the sysop would rebang the game to give us a fresh start. Wow, talk about a verb I haven’t used since I was 13!

Apparently there are tons of dedicated nerds that play this game using Windows-based TW2002 server packages, but it wouldn’t be the same.

Another amazing game that I loved was…

X-Com: UFO Defense (also known as X-Com: Enemy Unknown in some markets)

This was the first turn-based strategy I had ever played, and it was just awesome - my words can do no justice. Check out these YouTube videos for gameplay action and walkthroughs. The game involved downing UFOs with your Interceptor ships, landing with your personnel shuttle, and taking out the remaining aliens while capturing their technology and researching their dead (and alive) bodies to figure out how to develop superior weapons - with the eventual goal of building a ship powerful enough to take the fight to Mars and obliterate their colony.

Unfortunately, all of the sequels to the game sucked (though Terror from the Deep was reasonable).

I know some of you people are old enough (and big enough nerds) to remember these games. Please share your favorite ones for me to distract myself with at work!

SEC Plans to Temporarily Ban Short-Selling

SEC Plans to Temporarily Ban Short-Selling

WASHINGTON — The Securities and Exchange Commission took its most aggressive assault against bearish stock bets by stating its intention to issue a temporary ban on short-selling.

SEC Chairman Christopher Cox briefed Congress late Thursday of the agency’s intention to take the extraordinary step of interfering with the market’s regular functioning. Short-selling is a trading strategy of selling borrowed stock in hopes it falls and can be repurchased at a lower price.

Well, that’s one way to prop the economy up. Can’t see anything wrong with this! Seems totally fine.

Sigh.

AIG May Get $85 Billion U.S. Loan in Return for Majority Stake

This is so beyond unacceptable, it actually infuriates me.

Sept. 16 (Bloomberg) — American International Group Inc., the biggest U.S. insurer by assets, has been offered an $85 billion U.S. loan in return for an 80 percent stake in the company, according to a person familiar with the situation.

The Federal Reserve was persuaded to offer the loan because of the risk that an AIG failure would threaten the stability of world financial markets, according to the person, who declined to be identified because negotiations were confidential. Efforts to find a private-sector solution failed because the company is too big and a long-term fix was needed, the person said.

Emphasis mine.

HERE IS THE LONG-TERM FIX, YOU RETARDS: STOP BAILING OUT COMPANIES WHO MAKE IDIOTIC HIGH-RISK BETS WITH NO CONSEQUENCES WHEN THEY FAIL.

Mark Cuban nails it on his blog. When you let companies freeroll the American taxpayer by making high-risk investments/acquisitions, everyone but the upper management loses. These companies CEO’s will walk with tens of millions of dollars of severance for making shitty business decisions. Would you take this job? Of course you fucking would.

The fact that not ONE of the posters on my Livejournal Friends List (Buff is probably sleeping, so he gets a pass) talked about this is unsettling. I just cannot understand people all up in arms about issues that ultimately have no traction (*cough* anything socially-related) in Congress, but don’t give two shits about the systematic destruction of our nation’s economy.

Lehman Brothers.

NEW YORK (AFP) - Lehman Brothers declared itself bankrupt Monday and Wall Street rival Merrill Lynch had to be taken over in a new financial earthquake that sent global markets into a slump.

I hate to say I told you so.

Actually, that’s a lie.

America’s Economy, Part 38.

By now I’m sure most of you have heard/read that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are being bought out by the federal government. You might ask, ‘What does that mean?’ - fortunately, this article has summed it up quite nicely with its first line:

WASHINGTON — Uncle Sam has just become the 800 pound gorilla in the U.S. mortgage market.

Yes, that’s right, the federal government has taken over yet another private enterprise simply because it was mismanaged and issued implicitly guaranteed loans that the taxpayers would have to protect, should the housing market tank. They believed that owning a house was some inalienable right for poor people, so they relaxed lending standards in a decent economic situation in America. Unsurprisingly, when the economy took a shit due to a combination of major deficit spending, reluctance from foreign investors, dumping money into the private sector by printing billions of dollars of increasingly worthless fiat money, and improving strength of the Euro, these propped-up organizations inevitably failed alongside a multitude of banks who irresponsibly over-leveraged their position on the subprime market.

On July 12th, I predicted that some large players would go down soon. This certainly qualifies, but I hardly think we’ve seen the last of it. See, for example, these retards making comments:

‘Effectively, the federal government has now become the nation’s mortgage lender,’ he said. ‘This takes a major financial threat off the table.’

(emphasis mine)

If by ‘takes a major threat off the table,’ you mean ‘puts it on the shoulders of the taxpayers who never wanted this,’ then yes, that is what happened.

People will talk in the upcoming elections about Obama and McCain. They will debate abortion rights, the need for ‘change’ in education/economy/drugs/whatever, the need to continue/end the war in Iraq, the need to increase/stabilize defense expenditures (no one wants to talk about decreasing the military budget), the need to expand/scale back social welfare programs, and other such tertiary issues that are ultimately meaningless, since none of it will get done. (The last major social reform was what, the Welfare Reform Act passed by the Republicans under a reluctant Bill Clinton?)

What does matter is this bullshit cronyism that is worse than widespread socialism. Liberals like to hold up the economy of today and say ‘This is what you get when the free market runs rampant! We need to keep corporate power in check!’ Two points:

1) No fucking shit, corporate power needs to be kept in check. However, it’s not because of the so-called ‘free market.’ It is because…

2) Government has expanded in size and scope under ALL presidents since World War II.

You hate deficit spending and think it’s irresponsible what the Republicans do? You can thank Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson, Civil Rights Mother-Fucking Hero to all black people. How about unbalanced and unchecked executive power? Democrat Franklin D. Mother-Fucking Polio-Afflicted Crippled-Ass Roosevelt, whom historians will tell you was our best president (or perhaps Abraham Lincoln, who nearly ruined this country).

What we have is not the free market. We have corporatism married to the government, which leads to widespread corruption. Laws cannot change this - they only increase the size and scope of what the federal government controls, which is ultimately influenced by rich lobbyists. The only way to stop the corruption is to limit what the federal government controls in our lives.

Read that, and remember it. And then ask yourself: ‘Why isn’t anyone talking about this as a solution?’

Well, that’s simple. It means less government jobs and less control for power-hungry politicians who are overwhelmingly a bunch of lawyers and rich, holier-than-thou arrogant fucks.

And no one is going to vote themselves (or their friends and family) out of a job.

Honor’s in the dollar, kid.

EIther you’re slingin’ crack rock or you have a wicked jump shot.

Truer words never spoken.

What’s New?

Lots of stuff:

• Got married.
• Flew to San Diego for my honeymoon.
• Flew to Cleveland for my reception.
• Moved into my new house in Ballard with my wife and two roommates.
• Started my job at Microsoft as a Systems Analyst working four 10-hour graveyard shifts.
• Migrated my blog (Driveline Mechanics) to the SB Nation network.
• Took on some new pitching clients.
• I’m quite out of shape.
• Been sick.
• Started playing Mass Effect. I love it.
• Began, er, analyzing the outcomes of college football.

So, all in all, life has been very busy.