The U.S. once again seeking the Iranian-backed Iraqi Shiíte Army´s assistance to quell a Saudi-backed Sunni uprising … OUCH!
And some MoAers still doubt my frequently voiced predictions of a U.S.-Iran rapprochement?

Posted by: Parviz | Mar 30 2009 7:29 utc | 3

Obama holds “very pleasant” meeting with top US bankers
Bank CEO’s emerge satisfied that Obama understands his mission; give the meeting 4 1/2 stars:

While no transcript of the discussions has been released (nor will there be), the bankers emerged very pleased. Their post-meeting comments included:
* Ken Lewis, CEO of Bank of America: “We’re just in this together. There’s still some hard work to do, but a pleasant meeting.” On executive bonuses, Lewis added, “I got the impression, both from [Obama] and from some of the things that are going on behind the scenes that cooler heads will prevail and nothing will be done that is that punitive.”
* Vikram Pandit of Citigroup: “We all have a common goal for building momentum for a recovery. It was good constructive meeting with a lot of open dialogue.”
* Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan: On the question of AIG bonuses, Obama “is very clear that he is not against wealth…. I think he would like to see an awful lot of self-restraint,” as opposed to government regulation.
* Robert Kelly of New York Mellon Corp, on the toxic asset program detailed by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner earlier this week: “We don’t know all the details…but we think it’s a really encouraging first step to get the plan out there…. I think there’s going to be a lot of interest in it…. I think that we are very much aligned with the administration.”
* John Koskinen of Freddie Mac: “No one in that room gave any indication at all that they were anything other than enthusiastic about supporting the president and this program.”
* John Mack of Morgan Stanley: “There was no tension. It was all about cooperation…It was all about getting the economy going and the banks taking a crucial role in making sure that happens…It was all about working together and was very encouraging.”
* Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs: “Everybody was on the same page, one of cooperation. What we really wanted the president to understand, which of course he does understand, was that we recognize our interests are aligned, that we only do well if the economy does well.”
For his part, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that Obama was “very pleased” with the outcome and that he hoped to keep the lines of communication open with the bankers.
Top Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, who participated in the meeting with the bankers, said Thursday, “We’re reliant upon them to help rebuild our economy. It would be very unnatural if we didn’t engage them and have a direct opportunity to pick their brains and look to the future.”

Clinical, methodical, and Goddamn, systemic…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 30 2009 9:05 utc | 5

Nice piece: My Manhattan Project – How I helped build the bomb that blew up Wall Street

When I asked Leszek what the busy group did that sat next to us, he told me they created mortgage-backed securities. It was an instrument, he claimed, designed to keep programmers employed. Having started to overcome my aversion to the overpaid life—I had recently bought a suit at Barneys, the old one on Seventh Avenue—I asked him how the bonds worked.
“You put chicken into the grinder”—he laughed with that infectious Wall Street black humor—“and out comes sirloin.”

Posted by: b | Mar 30 2009 10:30 utc | 7

Bank walkaways – Banks declining to take possession at end of foreclosure process

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Mercy James thought she had lost her rental property here to foreclosure. A date for a sheriff’s sale had been set, and notices about the foreclosure process were piling up in her mailbox.
After Ms. James had her tenants move out, vandals hit the home. It is set for demolition, but the title is still in her name.
Ms. James had the tenants move out, and soon her white house at the corner of Thomas and Maple Streets fell into the hands of looters and vandals, and then, into disrepair. Dejected and broke, Ms. James said she salvaged but a lesson from her loss.
So imagine her surprise when the City of South Bend contacted her recently, demanding that she resume maintenance on the property. The sheriff’s sale had been canceled at the last minute, leaving the property title — and a world of trouble — in her name.
“I thought, ‘What kind of game is this?’ ” Ms. James, 41, said while picking at trash at the house, now so worthless the city plans to demolish it — another bill for which she will be liable.
City officials and housing advocates here and in cities as varied as Buffalo, Kansas City, Mo., and Jacksonville, Fla., say they are seeing an unsettling development: Banks are quietly declining to take possession of properties at the end of the foreclosure process, most often because the cost of the ordeal — from legal fees to maintenance — exceeds the diminishing value of the real estate.

This is fucking insanity…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 30 2009 11:47 utc | 9

U$-
The ghost in the machine and I agree completely with you on this (again) 🙂
Does the bank “own” the property? Or does the former owner?
I imagine this is gonna be the norm soon. We’ll lose ownership of anything but debt and problems…
The flip side of this could mean some serious squatter’s rights movements springing up… possession being 9/10ths the law.
If this happens I have my eye on a couple of 8,000 sqft snowmass village homes where I used to poach the hot tub ’cause no one was ever home… There are plenty to be had in and around aspen and in teluride an entire lost civilization! where you could put down some roots.

Posted by: d.13 | Mar 30 2009 14:01 utc | 11

Club Orlov lulz: Bullets from the Drug War
“This is an inter-US conflict, because Americans are the most avid consumers, sellers, and prosecutors of drugs … Life in the USA gives everyone a pain that is for many people simply not survivable without drugs: either alcohol, pharmaceuticals or illegal drugs”

Posted by: Cloud | Mar 30 2009 15:18 utc | 13

U$, I think this fits with your “clinical, methodical, systemic” story @5:
Michael Hudson at Counterpunch: Financing the Empire

Strange as it may seem – and irrational as it would be in a more logical system of world diplomacy – the “dollar glut” is what finances America’s global military build-up. It forces foreign central banks to bear the costs of America’s expanding military empire – effective “taxation without representation.” Keeping international reserves in “dollars” means recycling their dollar inflows to buy U.S. Treasury bills – U.S. government debt issued largely to finance the military.

Posted by: catlady | Mar 30 2009 18:19 utc | 15

Raw Story has this gem about how the Bush administration moved 64 billion in pension funds from the bond market to the stock market just before the collapse. TPM’s Davis Kurtz speculates as to why;

Notes Talking Points Memo’s David Kurtz: “A finance professor who had previously advised the agency not to make the switch away from bonds compared the move to an insurance company writing policies to cover hurricane damage and then investing the premiums in beachfront property.”
TPM’s Josh Marshall, meanwhile, sees the move not as incompetence but possibly as part of a more general move by the Bush Administration to push more money into the stock market (a la their failed Social Security ‘private accounts’ bid).
“The [Fund] decided to put most of its $64 billion of reserves into stocks,” Marshall notes. “And already by September 2008, i.e., before the bottom really fell out on Wall Street, the stock portfolio had already lost 23%. That percentage must be much higher today.
“One of the big drives behind Social Security privatization was the desire to find more money — in the case of Social Security, a lot more money — to keep the fires burning on Wall Street,” he adds. “Not just more fees for the people handling the money, but more money to keep pushing asset values higher. This looks like the same thing just using slightly different means.”

This seems about right, and explains why the Bush administration so forcefully pushed the politically DOA notion that SS should be privatized. The street became starved for cash in order for the ponzi to continue, otherwise they realized that the whole thing would collapse. This is yet more evidence confirming that all the big players knew well in advance that what had been created was indeed a ponzi scheme on the verge of collapse – and that the wall street/government CONSPIRED together to loot the public treasury.

Posted by: anna missed | Mar 30 2009 19:10 utc | 17

am
their utter criminality leaves me cold
i suppose it’s my reading of wm reich – but the body language of tyrants whether they be bush berlusconi, le pen, blair , sarkozy – is one of open hatred of people – theyè don’t hide it & on the contrary in the evangilical tradition – there are those who make a virtue of that hatred – kenneth copeland, hagee come immediately to mind. they are sneering, coleric, irritated people who hate to share their time & ‘ideas’ with the people – even if those people are ‘represented’ by the most haigiographic of whores in the press
one look at madoff & you know he thinks we have less value than a goat

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 30 2009 19:39 utc | 19

once the world was truly tragic in the sense of a dante, a cervantes, a goethe or a shakespeare
now it is simply a rerun of a very bad movie with doris day & james stewart

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 30 2009 20:37 utc | 21

genius.

Posted by: Anonymous | Mar 30 2009 21:17 utc | 23

Ex-Saudi envoy Prince Bandar ‘disappears’

Ex-Saudi envoy Prince Bandar ‘disappears’ , father seriously ill
Keys to the kingdom: Inside Saudi Arabia’s royal family
The crown prince is seriously ill, and Saudi Arabia’s normally secretive royal family is openly clashing over who will take the throne, reports Hugh Miles
The Independent on Sunday
A dispute over Saudi Arabia’s royal succession burst into the open yesterday, revealing a power struggle in which one of the most senior princes in the oil-rich kingdom is reported to have disappeared. The prospect of instability in a country that is not only the world’s largest oil exporter but also a key Western ally at the heart of the Middle East will cause serious concern in Washington, London and beyond.
Rumours are rife over the position of Prince Bandar bin Sultan, 60, son of the heir to the Saudi throne, who has not been seen in public for weeks. Prince Bandar is better known abroad than almost any other member of the Saudi royal family, not only for his extravagant lifestyle, but because of his daring foreign policy initiatives during 22 years as the Saudi ambassador in Washington, where he played an important role after 9/11 and during two Gulf wars. His absence from public life comes at a sensitive time in Saudi Arabia: his father, Crown Prince Sultan, is gravely ill with cancer, throwing the succession to King Abdullah into question.
One theory in political circles in Riyadh is that Prince Bandar was seeking to oust King Abdullah before Prince Sultan dies, thus placing his father on the throne. Other rumours claim that Prince Bandar is ill, or that he angered King Abdullah by dabbling in Syrian politics without authorisation. The Saudi embassy in London could not be contacted for comment last week, but this weekend political tensions in the kingdom came dramatically to the surface.
On Friday night King Abdullah unexpectedly announced the appointment of one of his half-brothers, Prince Nayef, the 76-year-old interior minister, to the post of second deputy prime minister, which had been left vacant. This was immediately taken as an indication that he would become crown prince when Prince Sultan dies or becomes king. But yesterday Prince Talal, another senior figure, publicly demanded that the king confirm that the appointment did not mean Prince Nayef would automatically become the next crown prince. Such public disagreement among senior Saudi royals is highly unusual.

As, said elsewhere, “If anything could shake up world politics and the existing power structures of the world right now, this would be it.”
Better hold on tight, the shit is getting ready to pop..

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 31 2009 0:09 utc | 25