patrick.net

Mr. Blagojevich (pronounced bluh-GOY-uh-vich), a Democrat, was arrested at his home at dawn Tuesday on charges of conspiracy and soliciting bribes. A lawyer for the governor said he denied any wrongdoing.

The corruption case extended well beyond the Senate appointment, stunned even a state that thought it had seen every brand of political corruption, created grave doubt over how or when President-elect Obama’s successor in the Senate might now be selected, and left many wondering who else might yet be implicated in Mr. Blagojevich’s brash negotiations, which were captured in phone calls recordeded by federal agents since before Election Day.

“The conduct would make Lincoln roll over in his grave,” Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said in announcing the arrest of Mr. Blagojevich and his chief of staff, John Harris.

@justme
Woa there. I could not disagree more. The end-game of a Ponzi scheme is always when the last knowledgable person hands-off the over valued assett to a bag-holder.
Many, many, many RE insiders finally saw that the end was nigh, the 'obtaned' their one last high appraisal and they dumped their property on the poorest-of-the-poor and illegal immigrants with the simple claim, "Look how much I made and the last 3 owners before me."
Of course the Fraud was just huge as well. Taking a 105% LTV on a high aprpasail then kicking back the 5% to the new 'owner' was a win-win. The owner gets his profit, the last owner gets his kick back, and the bank is left with property - in which we case we, the tax-payer have picked up the tab to the tune of something like $10t. I kid you not. The loss to 401ks and pension funds is just staggering. And most of that is based on souring MBS.

Please, please, please people do not underestimate the greed and fraud. I would place it at at least 50%. I am still shocked we are not getting more fraud show trials.

SP,

you do this directly with the mint. I mentioned here before, if you are going to put at least $250K away in physical gold, go set up a direct account with Perth Mint, you deal in wholesale price, pay no premium and enjoy the first priority in securing gold when they have inventory. Annual storage and insurance cost is 1.5% of your gold value at the time of your purchase and locked in forever. It is actually a lot easier than people think, your account can be in USD or AUD, and the whole process is just like trading stocks the old fashioned way - getting on phone with your broker or sending fax to confirm order.

It is a war of defending the reserve currency, so I will not store an ounce in this country (unless you leave no paper trail). It is impossible not to leave a paper trail with a few hundred ounces if you don't want to pay premium.

Looks like Fed thinks that the Congress is acting too slow to lift the Treasury ceiling, so it will start issuing its own debt - basically raw print, who is going to buy Fed's debt? Now Ben can have as many trillions as he wants to buy up all the CDO CDS MBA MBS in the world, problem solved.

I applaud Ben for this new thought, and I hope he gets his way.

Stupid fucking American taxpayer ain't gotten no dough.

Looks like 41 states are going to have a serious financial crisis. Deflationists got one thing wrong about the gold bugs, and I am not even one, because I am ready to jump out of gold if there are better options. People who buy gold are NOT betting on inflation, they are betting on the collapse of the USD.

So it doesn't matter whether there is inflation or deflation, if we go the route of deflation, the US government finance will be so bad that it will have to default, causing USD to collapse, if we go inflation, we keep on printing and USD will collapse too. Either way, USD ends up in the same situation, that is what gold hoarders are betting on.

Can USD come out stronger after a US government debt default? No such historical precedence ever existed.

The gates to dollar heaven are guarded by skeptics

by Jack Crooks

http://www.howestreet.com/articles/index.php?article_id=8115

kewp,

this guy forgets one important thing. US government budget cannot survive a strong USD. The deflationary will give the government extremely small tax receipt while it has to increase its expenditure several times to prevent a social meltdown from lack of jobs, and there will be no foreigners who can afford to buy our Treasury, because the Chinese and Japanese will have no dumb Americans to sell to, and they cannot print USD.

Therefore, this skeptic is not even a qualified one, what he says reminds me of the 2005 Businessweek cover article arguing why Americans aren't broke because we have lots of home equity. I still have that copy.

Duke,

Are we disagreeing about something? I have no quibble with anything you said in your last post. What was it I said that you disagreed with ?? ;-)

Oops.
So poorest of poor as victims of slick pitches on gains appealing t their greed as well as willing participants in fraud was you take. When you said "Or be priced out forever" I thought you were showing how they simply wanted a home and since 'everyone' was over paying. . .

Duke,

Ok, I see the (minor) difference now . I was portraying the migrant farmworker as an innocent last bag-holder, but you were saying that they were (at least in some fraction of the cases) in on the scam. I'll agree with that.

Yep. I also further sggest they are not that innocent in that they willingly speculated. They knew they could not make the payments. Their (unsophisticated) hope was that there was yet another buyer one-step removed from them.
I have no sympathy for people who trafficed for specualtive profit in housing as shelter IS a fundamental need. They fact that the system encouraged this is shameful. Everyone got so ground up on rising food and gas prices, but the rising cost of RE? No.
Sad.

Duke,

I agree. It is disgusting to me how people love asset inflation when it is good for them , and do not give a hoot about those who get to suffer under it. But if they have to pay $3 instead of $2 for gas, they are all up in arms.

It is disgusting to me how people love asset inflation when it is good for them , and do not give a hoot about those who get to suffer under it. But if they have to pay $3 instead of $2 for gas, they are all up in arms.

I agree!

this guy forgets one important thing. US government budget cannot survive a strong USD. The deflationary will give the government extremely small tax receipt while it has to increase its expenditure several times to prevent a social meltdown from lack of jobs, and there will be no foreigners who can afford to buy our Treasury, because the Chinese and Japanese will have no dumb Americans to sell to, and they cannot print USD.

Um, we survived a strong currency in the past, did we not? We were even a creditor nation, in fact!

A strong USD will spur both demand for U.S. treasuries and assets, as global investors look for a safe place to park their dollars. It will also create new demand for our #1 export, paper currency.

I admit it will make our debt more expensive, but I see this as a good thing. More of an incentive to pay it off rather than add to it.

Like it not that seems to be where we are going. Too much credit produces phony wealth that is not sustainable. That is what we are seeing right now, the collapse of this phony inflated wealth to real levels.

No debt?

Imagine: No savings. Banks just store cash for you. Pay no interest.

"What if we all just rented until we could pay cash?"

Patrick, you are missing something fundamental: How could 1/2 the population save to pay for a house with cash? There isn't enough cash in existence for everybody to save until they can pay with cash Not unless we want to have homes that cost no more than a few months labor. The only way this savings can happen is if the money is multiplied though lending, and redeposits. You know.... borrowing and lending in a fractional reserve system.