Blue Horseshoe Loves Anacot Steel

Wake up, will ya pal? If you’re not inside, you’re outside, OK? And I’m not talking a $400,000 a year working Wall Street stiff flying first class and being comfortable, I’m talking about liquid. Rich enough to have your own jet. Rich enough not to waste time. Fifty, a hundred million dollars buddy. A player, or nothing.

-Gordon Gekko

In the movie that would serve as a blueprint for the future lives of young turks shat out of the womb of 1980s Reagan eat the poor capitalism a young broker named Bud Fox (played by Charlie Sheen) engages in a bit of trickery to manipulate stock prices by invoking the magic words “Blue Horeshoe loves Anacot Steel” over the phone to players and media hacks. The movie was Oliver Stone’s Wall Street and the young Fox was in the process of selling his soul to the canny devil in suspenders who would become an iconic cultural figure. The seducer was big time corporate raider Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) whose amorality and worldview rooted in the dogma that “greed is good” would serve as the role model for the very large scale looters, charlatans, thugs, hedge fund hyenas and money grubbing sociopaths who are responsible for the global financial collapse. Through their avarice, their blood-sucking vampirism and their relentless pursuit of zero sum game, fuck you capitalism they have killed the goose that laid the golden egg, beggared millions and first built and then destroyed trillions of dollars in fairy tale wealth that never existed in the first place other than in numbers in a computer. The smart ones cashed out and put their money into real assets, gold, real estate, commodities, off-shore bank accounts that would allow the chiselers to evade taxes on their ill-gotten gains.

The reason that I invoke “Blue Horseshoe Loves Anacot Steel” is largely inspired by a very interesting and provocative website that I was informed of called Deep Capture which examines a concerted and widespread effort by Wall Street parasites and their many accomplices in the media to influence the markets by spreading disinformation and engaging in short selling to create nonexistent stock and making money by driving down share prices from which they would profit. To put it in pop culture terms that are more easily understandable to the layman than all of that four-flushing Wall Street bullshit jargon, short selling is what Billy Ray Valentine and Louis Winthorpe did to bring down Randolph and Mortimer Duke by busting their racket to corner the orange juice market at the end of the movie Trading Places. The story put forth on Deep Capture is an exposure of a grand theft perpetrated against legitimate businesses, non-connected investors and America itself by a fiendish cadre of jackals working together to suck the marrow from the bones of not only the USA but the entire interconnected global economy that is currently on the precipice of ruination and the cause of widespread unrest that will soon be coming home to roost.

Now I am certainly no expert when it comes to the high-flying world of financial chicanery which is deliberately confusing and opaque so as to discourage close scrutiny and I am not even going to attempt to get into trying to explain this crap but even to a working shmoe like myself this sets off the alarms for fraud and criminality, the effects of which actually do trickle down (unlike the horseshit ‘free market’ deregulated predatory environment) and affect the lives of millions of victims. These are the poor people who lose their homes after being duped into taking out adjustable rate mortgages by the pimps peddling the mythical America dream, they slyly and misleadingly call it the ownership society (they own your ass) and then having those mortgages sliced, diced and packaged into complex financial instruments that are derivatives. The derivatives – the one word that is taboo in discussing the entire economic fiasco (kudos to Keith Olbermann who in his March 9th show invoked the D-word close to twenty times) for the simple reason is that it would be the accelerator to the smoldering anger and resentment already working its way through the populace and threatening civil unrest over the ongoing efforts by our wonderful government to continue to pump taxpayer money into a corrupt, rotting and diseased system to just keep the game going a bit longer to let the well connected high rollers cash out.

Note the failure of the Obama administration to do what is necessary and nationalize the banks, wipe out the gamblers and fire the management to pull these leeches off of our backs, that is rooted in an ongoing occupation of Washington by insiders. The key with any sort of real rescue of the financial system is with the devil in the details, it is imperative that the bad bank or whatever other Orwellian name that is assigned to the clearinghouse where the poisonous paper of the treacherous banksters be set up so that they can launder their money and saddle the next three generations with the bill. The rush is on too because the looming cataclysm of a tidal wave of mass commercial property defaults is near and the moneychangers know this.

Now at midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do…

Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders..
…and then the kerosene

Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row

-Bob Dylan: Desolation Row

The victims of the plague of foreclosures wrought by the Ponzi schemes of mortgage backed securitization (DERIVATIVES) are despite the best efforts of the shills and payroll propaganda parrots like the usual right-wing scum along with useful idiots such as CNBC’s Rick Santelli to paint them as losers and resort to the bread and butter tactic of ‘blaming the niggers’ are growing by the day in number. The courts are clogged, there are millions being forced out of the homes that they were tricked into buying by con men and carpetbaggers bearing ‘exotic’ mortgage schemes to game the system, falsely inflate real estate prices (now dropping like a rock subject to Newton’s law of gravity) and then book their commissions and fees fully knowing that when the music stopped they would ensure that there would be a chair under their mangy asses. The music did stop when the systemic rot could no longer be spackled over and the grossly overinflated markets began to crash under the weight of their own toxic bullshit like the houses of cards that they always have been. The economic diaspora cast adrift in a sea of hopelessness filled with ravenous sharks grows in number by the day. The best efforts of the Barack Obama administration to mediate the fiasco are hamstrung from their inception since he is as his predecessors were surrounded by same gaggle of financial wizards from Goldman Sachs and the Federal Reserve who will always be first and foremost interested in self-preservation and protecting their cronies.

But I digress…

Tuesday’s massive stock rally (the Dow was up nearly 400 pts) was largely the result of the buzz that the besieged monstrosity Citigroup was according to inside info sent into the media spin machine by CEO Vikram Pandit having it’s best quarter since 2007. Now considering that Citigroup is on bailout number fucking THREE I would certainly hope that they are having improved results but the news of this was disseminated early and the desired effect, to give another shot in the arm to the crack ho markets was a rousing success. Now it should be no hidden secret that Wall Street’s interests are diametrically opposed to those of the majority of Americans, those who are generally referred to by the talking heads and political whores of the oligarchy as “Main Street” As the financial sector has risen to a level of dominance in this country opposed only by the military-security industrial complex and to these powerful interests, everyone and everything else is simply collateral damage. By the way, this week’s Citigroup inspired sucker rally is now in the third day as the get rich quick rubes are ready to roll over and pay to grab a mouthful of pillow for the inevitable ass-fucking that they will be getting after this latest pump and dumb scam plays out. The seal of approval of the latest laying of poison bait was given by judas goat Cramer on Mad Money on Thurday – This Rally is Real!

The influencing of the markets and the complicity of certain media figures in pushing the lies of Wall Street thieves has gotten some rare attention as of late with the brilliant and ongoing attack on CNBC’s Jim ‘Mad Money’ Cramer by Jon Stewart on the Daily Show. CNBC is nothing other than a FOX News style propaganda network that works for the voracious Wall Street piranhas instead of the neoNazi, fascist Republican party. Both are nothing but disinformation factories that churn out public relations pieces like link sausage made with tainted skunk meat. Cramer is a big player in the collapse and the massive fraud, he is not just some bug-eyed babbling baboon on crystal meth as he appears, the preening court jester of looter capitalism. No, what Jim Cramer is is a Harvard educated connected man, a former hedge fund manager and business associate of vitriolic neocon Marty Peretz, formerly of the DLC democrat rag The New Republic and an Israel Lobby kahuna still hung over from the orgy of blood drinking that resulted in the brutal takedown of Charles Freeman this week.

Mad Money Cramer has had increased visibility this week due to the Stewart videos that have gone viral on YouTube and appeared on websites and blogs aplenty (including this one) and his admitted complicity in rigging the markets back in 2006. Now even a former Republican congressman, Tom Davis is suggesting that Cramer be made to testify on his knowledge of the hedge fund manipulation. It is also of my personal opinion that Cramer should be hauled into court and forced to spill his guts on his role in manipulation of the markets. He is an arrogant and volatile ass clown, a fucking sociopath and a a flim flam man without peer. Dig this little nugget from the Deep Capture website entitled: Jim Cramer is a Complicated Man.

In 1994 Cramer hired Nicholas Maier as a favor to Marty Peretz, who was close with the Maier family. Maier worked for Cramer until 1998, then left and wrote a tell-all book about his years with Cramer: Trading with the Enemy: Seduction and Betrayal on Jim Cramer’s Wall Street (New York: HarperCollins, 2002) It contained detailed description of Cramer’s manic and abusive style. For example, Maier recounted the following scene after a trader at Cramer’s firm, Mark Kantor, executed a buy order at a price one-quarter point higher than what Cramer had expected, a total difference of $625:

“‘The broker fucked us, big time!’

“‘The eighth offering was fading when we called,’ Mark explained.

“Jim bit down on his lower lip as his hands clench into fists. He leaned forward to get closer to Mark, and started banging on the top of his monitors. The crown of his balding skull reddened as he yelled at the top of his lungs in a high-pitched whine.

“‘I told you they fucked us! Fucked us, fucked us, fucked us!’

“‘Listen to me.’ With piercing eyes Jim scanned our sober faces. ‘This is not some fucking joke!’ he screamed, spit flying from his mouth. ‘We are at war. We are in a foxhole.’ He flung out his hands. ‘Everyone out there is the enemy!’

“Mark nodded to show Jim that he understood. That wasn’t what Jim wanted. He started smashing his phone over and over on the desk in front of him. He lifted a monitor and heaved it like a shot put. After flying several feet, it shattered on the floor.”

Maier also described Cramer’s questionable trading ethics. One passage noted a brush with naked short selling:

Jim turns toward his head trader. “Mark, sell ten thousand Bristol Myers.”

“We never bought any Bristol Myers,” Mark replies.

“We own the calls,” Jim corrects Mark impatiently, aggravated by the delay.

“So sell it short?” Mark asks for clarification. Mark knows that according to the SEC rule book, selling stock you don’t already own (even if you do own the call options) must be marked and executed as a short sale.

“You are confusing me with someone who gives a shit. Just sell it! I said hit the fucking bid!” adds Jim, not interested in wasting time over petty semantics. Skirting the “plus tick” rule in this case won’t necessarily make us a lot of extra money, but in Jim’s eyes, the rule is still an unenforceable annoyance. “And don’t ever ask me that again!”

Even more hilarious is that Cramer claimed to be the inspiration for Charlie Sheen’s Bud Fox character, I shit you not. It’s like that other egotistical horses ass NFL agent Drew Rosenhaus claiming that he was the inspiration for Jerry Maguire. These guys have no fucking shame at all.

In the coming days Cramer willl be a source of much amusement, that much is as certain. In his much hyped Godzilla vs. King Kong steel cage death match with Jon Stewart last night the consensus is that Cramer got his ass handed to him, and justifiably so. Hey, what this guy is a part of is racketeering and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, the man is a con artist and the only real difference between him and those predators who fleece grandma and grandpa out of their retirement money by high pressure selling them to buy into shitty time share scams on the Okeefenokee Swamp is that he has a propaganda network behind him. He belongs on some late night cable television infomercial selling the newest version of the juicemaster or hawking penis enlargement devices.

Since his career as some kind of oracle of instant wealth is now on the downside he had best avoid the latter gig…..his future cellmate may be a customer.

Bush in New Orleans: A Shameless Sham

The King’s triumphal resurgence in front of a national television audience on Thursday night had all of the typical hallmarks of a Karl Rove bullshit epic: the extensive attention to detail in the staging, lighting and angles that allowed Bush to be shown at the podium with the perfectly illuminated Jackson Square in the background as well as the absence of any extemporaneous activity or pesky reporters or audience members that could provide a distraction from the great and mighty leader. This was yet another meticulously crafted public relations achievement by a White House propaganda machine stocked with those highly influenced by the work of Leni Riefenstahl and given the fact that they had to truck in their own lights and generators to pull off the big con of putting the bloom back on the rose, polishing the turd or otherwise putting lipstick on the pig that any documentary footage could be transformed into a modern masterpiece that would totally blow away Triumph of The Will. Dan Froomkin’s most recent Whitehouse Briefing blog has an excellent bit on just how bogus that it all was but you will need to register in order to view it.

It’s a good thing that the reopening of the French Quarter and its legendary drinking establishments are the first and foremost priority in the plans for the rejuvenation of the Crescent City because you would have to be pretty fucking snockered to place any credibility at all in Thursday night’s shameless horseshit disbursement ceremony. In the speech itself there was the obligatory linking to terrorism and 9/11 although it was much more subtle than the fear mongering of the past. More predictably and perhaps more alarmingly there was a super sized helping of the usual red meat that is thrown to the radical ‘christian’ crusaders that comprise the majority of Bush’s base and the holy warriors can expect even more as Rove orders the government to spend like drunken sailors which is certain to alienate the fence sitting fiscal conservatives who are growing more nervous by the day at the profligate in chief maxes the national credit cards for present gain. The speech if anything was well put together, Rove’s screenwriters did a great job as is typical, especially the historical references which are rare for an administration determined to keep the public as ignorant of the past as humanly possible. I have absolutely no doubt that a good percentage of simple minded Americans have are thoroughly convinced that their divinely annoited emperor actually penned it himself with talent on loan from God, a real miracle from a man whose literary skills were most recently displayed while scribbling slips seeking permission to go potty, and he didn’t even use a crayon.

After playing the God and Terror cards, Bush’s dissertation also contained stunning promises of massive government largesse and the ensuing piling on of even more debt to an already unseemly deficit that is groaning under the burden of frivolous tax cuts (Bush later absolutely ruled out tax increases to finance the grand rebuilding plans put forth), an extremely costly foreign war (that for the time being much to Rove’s delight has been forgotten the mainstream media and consequently by the general public who are focused on New Orleans) and the government sanctioned graft machine that has become so overtly prevalent during the past four and a half years of Rove’s agenda and the unscrupulous reign of Tom DeLay. The massive expansion of federal government this time is sanctioned by traditionally anti-big gov’t ideological think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and underwritten by radical special interest groups who only hate government spending of goliath proportions when they don’t control the politicians who control the purse stings.

When examining the transcript of the speech keep in mind the following excerpt from a recent Wall Street Journal story:

“Congressional Republicans, backed by the White House, say they are using relief measures for the hurricane-ravaged Gulf coast to achieve a broad range of conservative economic and social policies, both in the storm zone and beyond.

“Some new measures are already taking shape. In the past week, the Bush administration has suspended some union-friendly rules that require federal contractors pay prevailing wages, moved to ease tariffs on Canadian lumber, and allowed more foreign sugar imports to calm rising sugar prices. Just yesterday, it waived some affirmative-action rules for employers with federal contracts in the Gulf region.

“Now, Republicans are working on legislation that would limit victims’ right to sue, offer vouchers for displaced school children, lift some environment restrictions on new refineries and create tax-advantaged enterprise zones to maximize private-sector participation in recovery and reconstruction.”

Surprise, surprise, the radical right is seeking to use the reconstruction efforts to further their own agenda, no wonder why their Republican prostitutes in congress are so disinterested in pursuing an independent inquiry over Katrina.

Bush’s earlier contrition and weasel word ‘apology’ is nothing but more of the same spin, if you need any convincing of this you only need reference the September 14th New York Times story by Elisabeth Bumiller and Richard W. Stevenson that states:

“Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush’s chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort, which reaches across many agencies of government and includes the direct involvement of Alphonso R. Jackson, secretary of housing and urban development.”

Karl Rove? Isn’t it just wonderful to be living in a country where yet another political hack albeit the king of all fixers is placed in charge of the reconstruction of a major American city that has been destroyed. ‘Brownie’ ended up as chum tossed overboard to attract the sharks and Michael Chertoff is poised to walk the plank for his gross ineptitude and clueless mismanagement if it comes down to it, despite rumors to the contrary there is no honor among thieves especially when a human sacrifice is required to protect the asses of those further up the food chain. The Bushies are desperately in need of a miracle right now but if Karl Rove has any credentials for the serious type of work that is needed to rebuild New Orleans then I should be nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for this blog.

Not that the immersion of the public in the whirling typhoon of administration spin on Thursday is the final product, advance teams led by longtime Bush lackey Karen Hughes had already been laying the groundwork and broke through the line following the lead block of damage control queen Condi Rice, a woman so close to Dubya that he apparently even seeks her approval to take a leak as the earlier link demonstrates.

According to a September 9th Washington Post story by Dana Milbank:

Hughes picked up the theme. “We have to offer a positive vision of hope,” she began. As if preparing troops for combat, she described her plans for improving world opinion of the United States: a “rapid-response unit,” a plan to “forward-deploy regional SWAT teams” and create “a dual-headed DAS for public diplomacy.”

And if the involvement of longtime Texas crony and top operative Hughes isn’t bad enough, Rove himself told the audience at a North Carolina fundraiser that the full story of the disaster would be told : translated this means that the White House propanda operatives are now working overtime to not only take the blame game to the next level but to obfuscate and distort the truth to the extent that in short order ‘television lobotomized’ Americans will not be pointing the finger at godless liberal tree huggers in general and most likely traditional bogeyman Bill Clinton in specific for destroying the functional ability of FEMA and the storm itself will be renamed Hurricane Hillary.

Strangely enough the devastation wrought by Katrina as well as the indifferent initial response of the Bush administration, the GOP Congress and the Federal Government offered Americans a real life look at the true face of this country, the ugliness that is hidden behind the fantasy façade of consumerism and mass marketing, of television and advertising glamour. This drawing back of the curtain revealed the ugly little uber capitalist trolls pulling the levers of power and briefly exposing the true ugliness of the festering wound on the nation’s soul that was opened by the ‘Reagan Revolution’ and has worsened by over 20 years of the neglect of the poor and the shrinking middle class whose terrible plight has been held away as far from the public eye as technologically possible so as to allow the illicit transfer of wealth to the richest of all.

Excuse me but where is the honor or dignity in using yet another national tragedy to further a radical and corrupt political agenda? Then again, these are the same rat bastards who were using the agonizing deaths and suffering of the victims of 9/11 to advance their agenda before the first bodies were pulled from the rubble at Ground Zero and the smell of rotting flesh was freshly hanging in the Manhattan air. Ghouls exploit death and exploit it both callously and without regard to the long term moral implications that their pathological buzzard-like traits to elicit profit from the wreckage of the lives of the innocent represent. The stench of decomposing bodies was still heavy in the dank and fetid Louisiana air on Thursday, mingling with the malodorous bullshit scent of the same ole, same ole from Rove and his crew of crackerjack production experts in propping up the most pathetic excuse for a leader in American history yet again for the ever present cameras all while a large portion of the city was still underwater and the unrecovered dead lacking both the dignity and compassion that a truly humble god fearing man would marshall all forces within his power to provide.

This is the accountability moment America, do you seize this rare and maybe final opportunity to stop this insane dismantling of the social contract, of progressive government, of civil liberties, of our American legacy itself…or do you rub your eyes, change the channel and immerse yourselves in a comfortable world of familiar fantasy once again?

You decide….if two plus two equals four than everything else is a given but the moment that you allow yourselves to be duped into believing that two plus two equals five then you have already sold your soul to the company store.

ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING!