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With apologies for the post title to national treasure Yogi Berra, those interested in the specific mechanics of what might well be this year’s world financial meltdown might want to take the time to read this lengthy Zero Hedge piece by Reggie Middleton on the coming collapse [and inevitable bailout!] of Too Biggest of them All to Fail, Bank of America, and its, you know, larger effects. I’ll just clue you in a bit… Reggie points out a little known change made to the bankrupcty law in 2005 [the better known change, of course, screwed individual debtors by making it...

What if they had a protest that was getting world-wide attention literally across the street from your office building… and, by and large… you mostly thought you didn’t care too much…? Until lately, that is. Thus goes “Occupy Wall Street” in Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan. Ezra comments on it… but I don’t find much value-added there. Ezra seizes on a few protestors who lament that they have incurred massive student loan debt (conveniently non-dischargeable in bankruptcy) and nothing much to show for it (including and especially a job.) This is interesting… no, who am I kidding… this isn’t that...

I can’t sing the praises of Charles Hugh Smith and his “Of Two Minds” blog enough. Case in point is this piece entitled Bleeding the Patient: Modern Economics and the Symbolic Economy, in which Smith ties together why nothing in our modern world seems to be working anymore, specifically, because our “unifying model,” the ersatz “science” of economics, is as wedded to the reality of the actual behavior of economic “bodies” as, say, medical “science” was wedded to the reality of the human body, circa, say, the year 1500 or 1600. Or, as I heard recently in another context, if...

It would probably be this blog, the talking dog, which, while no one was looking, “celebrated” the tenth anniversary of its existence… yesterday, 19 September 2011, when your talking dog himself was engaged in his other past-time, running and finishing his 31st marathon (albeit unofficially, given the brazenly violated official 5-hour limit) the 86th Yonkers Marathon, in this, the month of milestones (where I have also already celebrated a quarter century of legal practice, and in just over a week, 20 years of marital bliss with Mrs. TD.) Over this blog’s course, we’ve gone from the immediate crisis-ridden post 9-11...

It’s been ten years since that date in September offered by assholes as a stand-in for the sort of mindset that represented a principled (albeit flawed) nation that wasn’t, at least affirmatively, richly deserving of the title “World’s Biggest Asshole Nation.” We’re that now, of course. Regular readers know that this blog, which sprang into existence itself a week after the events of 9-11, when I personally witnessed events from 100 yards North of the WTC, is almost wholly devoted to “September 10th Thinking.” My coverage of matters GTMO (that includes my dozens of exclusive interviews with lawyers, soldiers, detainees,...

I think at a personal level, I rather like Professor Krugman, and this piece, called “The Fatal Distraction,” kind of shows why: it’s witty, it is chockful of useful facts presented in appropriate context, and really advances the “left/right” thing in useful context. The only problem, of course, is that in seeing the world as a macro-economic nail in need of a Keynesian hammer, it makes something of a category error. I’m beginning to think that maybe FDR shouldn’t have bothered saving capitalism back in the day… Because, of course, capitalism was ultimately doomed by the simple limitations of nature....

We’ll note that Bloomberg is reporting that amidst the last financial crisis, Wall Street’s financial elite received over $1.2 trillion in sweetheart loans (ultimately backed by the taxpayer) via the Federal Reserve. That’s around the face amount of all of the “bad” loans then held, btw. Just part of the “back story” going into the current financial crisis– presaged by last week’s nearly thousand-point drop in the DJIA, and various announcements of probable insolvency among European banks that will presuably slam American banks as the “sovereign debt crisis” rolls along. Anyway, back to the $1.2 trillion thing. This, of course...

Once again, just about the only voice of reason coming out of Congress in the face of the present debt ceiling kerfuffle… a clearly manufactured kabuki crisis designed to create desperate conditions during which terrible legislation damaging to the nation can be passed… is Michele Bachmann, she noting that the debt ceiling crisis just isn’t a real crisis. Of course, her remedy is that she’s going to vote against any raising of the debt ceiling. To paraphrase Otter (or is it Boon)… Michele is right. Psychotic. But right. The kabuki rolls on. Hold on to your social security checks, folks…...

I would give some cognizance to former Senator Judd Gregg’s statement that a weekend (or two?) without Social Security checks going out will be necessary before the House Republicans yield on raising that old debt ceiling, not because of his old job (Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee) but because of his new one… senior advisor to Goldman Sachs. I agree with Gregg’s assessment– better than 50-50 there will not be a “debt ceiling deal” by August 2nd; we are up to July 21 now, with no particular end of this “crisis” apparent. He believes that a few days of...

S&P, it seems, has concluded there is risk of U.S. sovereign default even if the debt ceiling is raised by Congressional action. Of course, on the debt ceiling issue, most people, according to polls, blame the Republicans. What does any of this mean? Damned if I know. Precious metals… probably. Canned goods, bottled water, secure farm land, useful social relationships, bicycle parts… for sure. Ammunition? Maybe we’ve come that far. Let’s hope not. Anyway. We appear to have a political process that has become a suicide watch… and, because we have a media that is itself dominated by a criminal...