Enrico!

The Magic Negro has taken full control of General Motors.

Enrico has to say, he doesn’t understand this.  Enrico thought our nation had extensive legal provisions for the eventuality in which General Motors finds itself, and as far as he is aware, the legal code lacks any procedure legitimizing the Executive Branch of the Federal Government taking over a corporation.

Enrico is not a stockholder or a creditor of General Motors, but, if he were, he would be pondering legal action to challenge the Magic Negro’s blatantly illegal move.

Sportsfans, if the Magic Negro can take over General Motors, he can take over your house, or your car, or your farm.

What has happened to the rule of law?  The rule of law now is, the Magic Negro has the army, the air force and the navy, and you don’t.

Milton Friedman said in 1999 that the Euro would not survive the first economic crisis. It appears that he will be proved right, probably before the end of the 2009.  The stresses and strains which are variably affecting, say, Spain and Germany, increasingly make a single currency and all that goes with it an unbearable burden for both countries.  To understand this, think about the divergence between the economies of the American South and the industrial northeast during the period after the end of Reconstruction.  Think of the bone-crushing poverty in the American south in the early 1920s.  The economies of the regions had diverged, the burden of the US dollar made it nearly imposible for the South to get up off the canvas.

There will be civil unrest in Spain, possibly Italy, Portugal, and there is of course already civil unrest in eastern Europe.

Meanwhile, as the dollar is systematically destroyed by the power of the press, commodity-backed currencies are gestating.  Russia, China, and the UN are all pondering the roll-out of new currencies, which inevitably will be backed by something.   A single pinprick in the dam will unleash the torrent.  The UK had a failed debt auction earlier this week.  The crisis will come upon us seemingly all of a sudden.

Ok, sportsfan, here’s a completely novel scenario:  Enrico agrees with something the moronic idiot Paul Krugman wrote.  Enrico is going to have to decide whether Paul Krugman has accidently hit upon a sound notion, or whether Enrico has somehow been reduced to the intellectual level of a BAOJ columnist.

Yes, yes, I know, the market rallied big time today.  I’m selling it like a big dog.

Geithner’s plan is not going to work.  It is only delaying the inevitable.  Seize and liquidate, baby, that’s the way to go.  Take the medicine.

Capitalists of the world!  Do not do business with Tim Geithner, Chuckie Schumer and Barney Fag!  They want to play “tails I win, heads you lose.”  And they’ll be quite self-righteous whilst they’re watching a mob string your family up with piano wire.

This article in the WSJ talks about an upcoming vote by the Texas School Board on a new science curriculum, which will cast doubts on evolution.

He [Dr. McLeroy, the chairman of the Texas School Board] also wants the texts to make the case that individual cells are far too complex to have evolved by chance mutation and natural selection, an argument popular with those who believe an intelligent designer created the universe.

The textbooks will “have to say that there’s a problem with evolution — because there is,” said Dr. McLeroy, a dentist. “We need to be honest with the kids.”

The GOP, or any successor party which abandons rape of the Treasury as a fundamental plank in its platform, has to evict the Religious Right.  They are a curse, analagous to the curse on the Ratsocrats represented by the segregationist southern Democrats in the post-war era.

Here is the problem:  the Religious Right sounds stupid, bigoted and scary.  I don’t say they ARE necessarily stupid, but you just can’t help but sound stupid when you make the leap from the fact that evolution is a theory to the proposition that we should teach the Genesis story in schools as though it were a viable scientific theory.

Now, to be fair, I don’t gather from this article that the Genesis story is about to make it into the textbooks.  But, Dr. McLeroy, you are just a fucking idiot if you really believe, and claim that the scientific evidence proves, that the earth was created 10,000 years ago.

Enrico has no problem with pointing out unsolved scientific mysteries.  In fact, Enrico thinks there should be a lot more focus on the frontiers in teaching kids science.  Science instruction tends to come across as dogma, and it ought to be presented as the greatest detective story of all time.  Like, wtf is going on with the simultaneous resolution of quantum entanglement, which apparently happens at a speed greater than the speed of light?  That’s not supposed to happen.

The biggest problems imposed on the GOP by the Religious Right are the bigotry against homosexuals, and issues surrounding abortion.  Enrico really doesn’t get it, why people find the proposition of gay marriage so troubling.  Surely a political party which has personal liberty and limited government as core tenets would support equal treatment, regardless of the intended arrangement of adult consenting genitalia and orifices in private.  I wish we had a party like that.

Abortion is not so easily dismissed, hardly.  Enrico also doesn’t get people who claim to be confused about when human life is initiated.  Enrico had a conversation with an in-duh-vidual who argued that, at some point in the pregnancy, the fetus becomes human, because that’s the point where the fetus is viable outside the womb.   Enrico asked, so what happens when medical science advances to the point where an embyro is viable outside the womb seconds after fertilization?  How can a point of philosophical and ethical principal be determined by the state of medical technology?

This is obviously nonsense.  Here’s the real deal:  this is a collision between a woman’s rights and a fetus’s rights.  I could be more inflammatory and say “a baby’s rights” or less inflammatory and say “an embryo’s rights,” but these are really all semantics that mask the underlying reality.

Enrico believes that you just can’t sustain the argument on any valid philosophical, moral, ethical, or legal grounds that the woman’s rights ALWAYS weigh more than the baby’s rights, NOR that the baby’s rights ALWAYS weigh more than the woman’s rights. The problem is even more vexed by the fact that, obviously, from a legal perspective, Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided.  WTF right to privacy in the constitution?  Where are you reading that?  It should have been left to the messy democratic hodge-podge of state law.  The state has a legitimate interest in protecting gestating human beings.  Absolutism in this area is clearly the wrong answer.

Enrico doesn’t really know what to do about this.  But the GOP or any personal liberty, thrift oriented successor has to stop scaring the crap out of people by advocating a federal ban on all abortion.  Fellatio Boy had this one mostly right, abortion should be rare and safe, and there have to be conditions under which it is legal.

Where should the Religious Right go?  Frankly, I don’t think any major party can afford to rely on this group as a core constituency.  It is probably best for them, and for both parties, if they swing vote, depending on the most important issue and the match between various candidates and parties.

Tax Cheat Tim Geithner is expected to finally unveil a plan next week to auction off “toxic” assets bedeviling the balance sheets of financial institutions.

Meanwhile, Congress, particularly the notably corrupt Barney Fag and the even more notably corrupt Chuckie Rangel, have been doing their best to ensure that few will participate, and that the bids are as a low as possible.

The morons in Congress apparently don’t understand the contradiction between their efforts to restore the world’s credit system, and their efforts to use the country’s tax code to punish people working at these paralyzed institutions.

Who wants to be in a public-private partnership with a partner who is inclined to exhort the mob to strangle your family with piano wire?

There’s another shock coming, too.  Eric Holder, the Magic Negro’s Attorney General, is working 24/7 to figure out who to toss in the pokey.  Gee, I wonder how the people tax cheat Tim Geithner wants to bid on the mortgages will react when they have to start every morning perusing a list of their colleages who will be doing the perp walk that day?

Hey, RATSOCRATS!  Capital is mobile.  Slavery was abolished over a century ago.  Why can’t you idiots figure this out?

How come Congress isn’t voting to impose a 90% tax on the salaries of tax cheat Tim Geithner and Chris Dodd?  Actually, it should be imposed on everyone in Congress who didn’t read the bill that authorized the payments of the bonuses to AIG before voting on it.  I think that does actually include everyone in Congress.

Atticus Finch: There are some things that you’re not old enough to understand just yet. There’s been some high talk around town to the effect that I shouldn’t do much about defending this man.
Scout: If you shouldn’t be defending him, then why are you doing it?
Atticus Finch: For a number of reasons. The main one is that if I didn’t, I couldn’t hold my head up in town. I couldn’t even tell you or Jem not to do somethin’ again.

Enrico wishes that Madame Squeaker would read this passage from “To Kill a Mockingbird” aloud to the people’s house before they consider whatever nonsense the Senate sends back to them regarding the AIG bonuses.  Enrico has to say, that if they do this, if they retroactively penalize these people, many of whom did nothing wrong, if they abrogate the arrangements made by tax cheat Tim Geithner and Chris Dodd, if they go back on the bill that was passed, apparently without being read, by both houses, then the FedGov has no moral authority, and adherence to the rule of the law in this country is just reduced to a practical matter of weighing the consequences and risks.

Man, the Astros suck!

They are on the way to setting a record for the worst performance ever in Spring Training.  They are 1-16-3.

Enrico bought season tickets for the first time ever in 2005.  I will always remember hearing on TV in January 2005 that the Astros had signed Roger Clemens.  I immediately picked up the phone, and bought the season tickets.  That was one of the best sports purchases Enrico has ever made.  The 18 inning game against the Braves was the game of a lifetime, and I didn’t even care that the Astros got blown out by the White Sox in the series.

But the Astros have been on a multi year program of neglecting the farm system.  There is nothing, zilch, nada, zip, in the cupboard.  Sure, they’ve gotten rid of some of the dead bats they had in the line-up, but I see today that they’ve signed Pudge Rodriguez.  What is he, 97 years old?  Sure, he’s a 14 time All Star.  Yes, he’s had a great career.  HAD a great career.

Enrico will not be attending any Astros games until he sees some evidence that the team is rebuilding the farm system and is playing young players.  I don’t think there should be more than one starter older than 30 years old.

Enrico doesn’t day trade.  He plays craps occasionally, and like to play poker.

But today is the triple options expiration day, the triple witching hour.  I think it will be a volatile day, and volatility is what a day trader needs most.

There are a lot of shorts out there.  A lot of this recent rally is short covering in fear of re-instatement of the uptick rule (which Enrico has always said is a no brainer, Enrico cannot imagine what Chris Cox was thinking).  Also, inshallah Mary Schapiro actually brings cases against naked shorts.  Naked shorting is still illegal, though you would never guess it was, after what happened to Bear Stearns and Lehman.

But we’ve reached the natural rhythmic end to this rally, quite likely, and so remaning shorts are going to be sorely tempted to ride out the inevitable return to a lower low.  But they might take out insurance with options and futures.

All the volume today will be driven by fear.  There will be sellers who should have already sold the rally who will do so now, there will shorts taking out insurance, and everyone should be terrified about what insane change of rules will next be revealed by Chuckie Schumer and Barney Fag.

Everyone who trades a security whose symbol contains the letters A, B and C and who makes a profitable trade will be subject to a 90% tax!  God only knows.

Ben Bernanke announced a stealth devaluation of the dollar yesterday, with the Fed’s “stunning” announcement that it would buy $300 billion worth of Treasury securities.

Sportsfans, the minimum bid on the increase in the money supply is $3 trillion.

Inevitably, the dollar plummetted, gold, silver and oil rallied.

It is tempting to short Treasuries here, but Enrico urgently recommends against this.  There is no limit to the brazen use of the printing press.

The only long-terrm safe haven is items with tangible utility and value.  Sure, sure, it is beguiling to think of the inevitable end of fiat currencies leading straight to a reinstatement of some kind of metals-based currencies.  This could happen, Enrico is uncertain.  But Enrico has no meaningful doubt that the world’s industrialized nations are going to be FORCED to do SOMETHING to back their currencies with actual tangible items of some kind.

There was recently an internet right wing-nut kerfuffle alleging that Fellatio Girl had entered into some kind of secret protocol with the chicoms to allow them to exercise eminent domain in the US to essentially foreclose on, get this, entire towns, if necessary, in the event of a default on our debt to them.

Enrico scoffs at this story, but it is obvious that there is a kernel of truth in the underlying fear by the chicoms that we’re are purposefully and deliberating inflating away our debt.  Heck, how can there possibly be any doubt about this?

Check out this story about the Norwegian krone possibly emerging as the world’s safe haven currency. You’re going, wtf, the Norwegian krone?  The big appeal of the krone is the fact that the Norwegian government has actual tangible assets it has piled up in reaping its North Sea oil windfall over the past few decades (unlike some other North Sea nations Enrico could name which have gleefully squandered their windfalls).

Dear reader, the US equity markets have rallied.  But before you get too excited, look at the move yesterday in the dollar vs the euro, or vs gold, or versus oil, or some average of all of them, and then recalculate the move, and then tell me if you’re still excited.

Don’t be fooled by nominal value.

Enrico has come up with a particularly disgusting metaphorical tool for ridiculing the confiscating classes in re the furore over the AIG bonuses.

It is as though Chris Dodd, the Magic Negro, Chuckie Schumer, tax cheat Tim Geithner, and Barney Fag have gone to Chateau L’Turd, ordered themselves up giant bowls of turds of different kinds of animals for their luncheon, and then are outraged to discover, halfway through their lunch, oh, I don’t know, let’s say, cat turds in the bowl of turds.

“Waiter!!  There are CAT TURDS in my giant bowl of turds!”

Enrico finds this metaphorical device apt because, after ordering and buying the gigantic bowl of turds (that’s the AIG $80 billion bailout, you understand), after making sure that every swinging dick on Wall St, in the City of London, in Frankfurt, in Basel, in Hong Kong, and in Paris got his slice and had a chance to crap in the bowl, NOW this brain trust is outraged that the company is fulfilling its compensation agreements with these employees.  Which they’ve known about, by the way, since long before it was revealed that Tim Geithner is a tax cheat.

Really, that’s the only problem with Enrico’s metaphor, because fidelity to reality requires Chris Dodd and tax cheat Tim Geithner to be both diners at Chateau L’Turd, and also the waiters and the turd chefs.  Dodd and tax cheat Geithner DESIGNED the arrangement whereby these employees would get their bonuses.

Even the BAOJ is forced to acknowledge this.

Ed Liddy, the $1 per year CEO of AIG, is going up to Capitol Hill today to get his ritual tongue lashing over the bonuses.

O God, I wish Liddy would listen calmly to about 1 minute of Barney Fag’s tirade, and then say, “Senator, I am not going to continue to work for you unless you can speak to me respectfully.  You have thirty seconds to apologize and calm down–otherwise, I’ll resign and I will wish you good luck.”

The stance of the ratsocrats (well, to be fair,  all congresscritters from both parties) makes no sense.  Apparently, the FedGov wants AIG to be a going concern.  Thus, they must have employees.  Employees are not slaves.  They can quit.  These particular employees have contractual compensation agreements.  If they are not honored, surely it is more likely they will quit.  Which ones are more likely to quit?  Well, I’ll leave that as an excercise for the reader, but I don’t think it is going to be a good plan to purposely set out to retain only those employees who can’t get jobs elsewhere.

I LOVE Chuckie Schumer’s hilarious threat to impose a special tax to confiscate the bonuses.  The BAOJ has Rangel throwing cold water on this idea, and also points out the slight difficulty that many of the recipients of the bonuses are not even US taxpayers.

If there is a bigger idiot in Congress than Chuckie Schumer, I don’t know who he is.  Maybe it is Chuckie Grassley, who suggested that the AIG employees should kill themselves.

There’s no need for a special tax.  The FedGov owns 80% of AIG.  They should have stopped the bonuses before now, if they really wanted to go down that road.  We know that they didn’t, because, as I have pointed out, Dodd and tax cheat Geithner designed the whole deal.

As many, many people have pointed out, and as is completely, transparently, obvious, the outrage over the bonuses is a ruse to distract the press and the public from the fact that the Magic Negro’s administration is totally bungling the economy.  They are making it worse.