Night of the Living Dead Banks in San Francisco.
Spoke to San Francisco Monday evening 9 February (see podcast) in substitution on the Brian Sussman Show, 6-8 pm Pacific Time daypart, and was happy to bring on the
political and financial team to comment on the President's prime time press conference and the imminent speech by the Treasury Secretary Geithner re the banks. The droll investigation of the evening was if the US policy now imitates the "Zombie Banks" of Japan in the 1990s -- neither alive nor allowed to die, preying on the living economy for more than a decade.. McTague, Task, Tamny and Constable all said affirmative. A bad bank that the SU believes will attract private investment seems fantastic, but the details are in the devil of the morning.
"Night of the Living Dead Banks" Special KSFO-AM San Francisco.
600P Pacific Time Victor Davis Hanson, Hoover, re the Obama press conference, re Iran and the bailout.
612P: Jim McTague, Barron's, re the President's reference to transprency and the possible missing trillions form the bank books, to be revealed in due time.
620P: Bob Davis, Wall Street Journal, re IMF managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn declaring in Malaysia that the world is already in a depression and that massive new amounts are needed to support failed states.
635P: Margaret Hoover, FNC, re the President ignoring the argument by Amity Schlaes in "Forgotten Man," that FDR's New Deal expermentation prolonged and deepened the downturn.
647P: Bill Whalen, Hoover, re Meg Whitman announcing for California governor re what is in the stimulus bill for Arnold Schwarzenegger.
651P: Aaron Task, Yahoo Finance, re the market response to the Obama and Geithner remarks.
705P: John Tamny, RealClearMarkets.com, Simon Constable, Dow Jones News Wire, re Tim Geithner's press conference in the morning re the bad bank, or the "Zombie Bank," resembling Japan in the 1990s.
We've been moving down the road to socialism all along. The people have demanded it. We like our government handouts. It's often been said that there's not a dime's worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats, only that Democrats would take us there faster.
If the past couple weeks have taught us anything, it's that the country has morphed into a giant jet airliner. We may already have reached our destination. What's the matter with everybody? Why are we still sitting here? Why aren't we getting off? WE'RE HERE, GUYS! Time to deplane. We've arrived! You say you don't recognize the landmass? Look at your tickets. Now look out the window at the sign on the terminal. WE'RE HERE!
"Attention passengers, all return flights have been canceled. For all those of you holding round-trip tickets, you may apply for a (partial) refund at the Аэрофлот ticket counter inside terminal number four."
America and the world need a banking system, Zombie banks, AKA banks with zero value, still keep a lot of people working and add value to the economy.
Problems will be identified, chummy relationships between institutional investors and CEO's, lack of risk management, Stuffing stockholder boards and executive comp boards with athletes and celebutantes.
We saw the internet bubble lose billions of stockholder value, see AOL/Timewarner. Conniving executives lied and cheated their way to billions, and Feds and Spitzer had no time to investigate. Bernie ebbers went to jail, but few others did. Little criticism and gushing CNBC coverage of executives does little to help.
"Feds and Spitzer had no time to investigate?" !!?? I could make a very strong argument for Spitzer's unfounded and endless persecution of AIG as being the first in a long series of events that led to the stock market correction and the various Wall Street failures.
Of all the lies I hear repeated these days, the one that rings the hollowest is that this was all caused by a lack of governmental oversight. Au contraire, government oversight is turning a garden variety bank panic into a real problem.
The problem being that it's giving the Dems (who never met a crisis they didn't help to cause) an excuse to load up the pork. The good news is that once the Obama/Pelosi volcano is deemed to have swallowed up a sufficient number of sacrificial virgins, the government will permit the markets to stabilize so as to profit from their recent spate of nationalization. I bet Fidel Castro wishes he were young again, because the Democrats are teaching him tricks he never dreamed of.