Asshole of the month

[noddy]

well a bit of clarity is required - its not a conspiracy or traitors its the demands of the public, which is why mr p is dreaming and the republicans and democrats are much the same.

modern westerners love new rules that increase the levels of training and accreditation and they love being able to sue for any failures in the "system" and they absolutely believe that more procedure and government oversight stops bad things happening.

the also love money and protection of investment, be it educational investment or housing investment or whatever.

what we have now is absolutely the sum total of this mindset... so many barriers to entry against the established players, or alternate models, all demanded for the above reasons.

the government rules need to be applied and somewhat effective so the bigger players that can be brought into the room and negotiated with are heavily favoured and preferred by the government- you cant control the cowboy world of a proper free market with lots of small players, government rules become meaningless then.

the bribery and revolving doors are just the cherry on top.

[Tinker]

I think the American Congress is about to torpedo the world economy.

[noddy]

its stuffed anyway - structurally broken and supported on credit, better sooner than later.

all the raise the credit limit argument is so dependant on some magic new thing happening that changes the status quo... the only thing that will change the status quo is to stop pretending its working and let it crash.

[skyhook77sfg]

agreed

all the leverage on top of leverage has just begun to unwind

the leverage is what kept the ponzi phoney money scheme going

in a system totally dependent upon growth to mask its fraud


garbage in.....fake" federal" reserve

garbage out.... fake money



noddy's right

end the game

let it fail

[Mr. Perfect]

[Mr. Perfect]

[skyhook77sfg]

yes get rid of D's

but also R's

gotta be fair

they both created

this catastrophe

for the american people

[AzariLoveIran]

[skyhook77sfg]

MORE ON CANTORS SCHEME TO MAKE MONEY FOR HIMSELF BY TANKING THE US ECONOMY TOTALLY

AND SKYROCKETING THE VALUE OF HIS LEVERAGED SUPER SHORT ETF FUND



A brief explanation of the financial terms involved shows the cynicism of Cantor’s position:

• A “short option” is an inverse position for a stock. If you buy shares, you bet that the price will rise. If you short shares, you bet that the price will fall. You get a payoff if the price drops, but you lose money if the price rises.

• An “ETF” is short for an “exchange-traded fund”; it’s a type of financial instrument that can be traded like a stock.

• “Leverage” is the act of borrowing money to increase investment exposure. If I buy $1,000 of stock in Intel with my own money, I own $1,000 in shares with no leverage. If I borrow $1,000 and, combining it with my own money, buy $2,000 of stock in Intel, I won $2,000 in shares with 200 percent exposure. I just used leverage. Leverage increases risk, but, if you bet right, it increases return. A daily leveraged ETF is a type of fund that uses this effect.

• Treasury bonds are issued in different terms of maturity—the longer the term, the more volatile. Short-term bonds for three or so months are very stable. Long-term bonds of five to ten years are much more volatile. Ultra-long-term bonds of 20+ years are very, very volatile. On the ProShares website, Ultrashort ETFs are the most aggressive short ETFs offered.

Is it possible that Cantor is just using a very volatile and aggressive way to balance his portfolio? If he is, it’s a terrible strategy. Over time, leveraged ETFs suffer from two big problems: tracking errors (caused by the fact that the ETF does not perfectly mirror the underlying asset, i.e. Treasury bonds) and volatility drag (errors caused by the mathematical nature of the way volatility interacts with returns). Over time these errors compound and drag down the value of all leveraged ETFs.

If Cantor had bought moderately leveraged holdings in the broad stock market this wouldn’t be a problem; it would just mean he thought that the extra exposure justified the added costs. But he didn’t. Cantor bought massively leveraged holdings on the most speculative of transactions, and he bet downward. This isn’t the sort of bet a man would make if his adviser suggested gently lowering his exposure to Treasuries. This is the sort of a bet a man would make if he expected a sudden and sharp fall in the value of U.S. debt.

AND THIS IS THE SCHMUCK REPUBLICANS APPOINT TO NEGOTIATE THE NATIONS ECONOMIC SURVIVAL?

[Tinker]

They basically just made Bernie Madoff their chief negotiator didn't they?

[AzariLoveIran]

[skyhook77sfg]

only passing on some studies and observations


complaining like worrying is squandered energy

gotta save that for the spurt to the finish line

[skyhook77sfg]

more on the monthly winner....




Eric Cantor: The most dangerous whiner in America

Whenever economic disaster looms, you can count on the House majority leader to complain it is someone else's fault


The first time I took serious notice of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor came in late September 2008, in the immediate aftermath of the failed vote to authorize the TARP Wall Street bailout. The nation was in a state of profound crisis. Economic activity was shuddering to a halt across the globe and Wall Street financial institutions were collapsing by the day. Say what you will about the merits of TARP, but the magnitude of the stock market crash that accompanied the failed vote only increased the general sense of distress. The United States was staring directly at the greatest economic disaster since the Great Depression and our political system appeared incapable of responding.

The failed vote was a huge surprise, and naturally attention focused on the role of the House GOP leadership. Nancy Pelosi had managed to deliver most of her caucus, even though the prospect of bailing out Wall Street's biggest financial institutions made most Democrats sick to their stomachs. But 133 House Republicans had voted no. At the time, Eric Cantor was deputy minority whip -- his job was to wrangle votes. Although now he would like to pretend it never happened, he supported TARP and voted for it. So where did the train run off the tracks?

Turns out, it was all Nancy Pelosi's fault. She made a mean speech before the vote and hurt Republican feelings.

During the press conference that followed the Monday afternoon vote, Deputy Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) held up a copy of Pelosi's speech, saying, "Right here is the reason, I believe, why this vote failed, and this is Speaker Pelosi's speech that, frankly, struck the tone of partisanship that, frankly, was inappropriate in this discussion."

Whiny, playing the victim, refusing to take responsibility for his own party's behavior: Ladies and gentlemen, the great statesman Eric Cantor, during one of the darkest moments in the recent history of the United States.

And so here we are again, hurtling toward a self-inflicted wound that could be far more devastating than one bungled vote in the fall of 2008. And who do we have standing at the center of the mess, effectively blocking any progress toward a deal that would preserve the credit-worthiness of the United States? Eric Cantor, now the majority leader of the House of Representatives. As the representative of the no-compromise House GOP, Eric Cantor is now the most powerful, and dangerous, politician in America.

The New York Times' Michael Shear has a silly article up today in which he characterizes Democratic efforts to "demonize" Cantor as the new "boogeyman" as mere partisan maneuvering. No doubt, strategic partisanship is playing a role. But the Democratic position is strengthened by the fact that it just so happens to be an accurate representation of reality.

After the failure of his own attempt to strike a "grand bargain" with Obama, Speaker of the House John Boehner has been rendered silent and powerless. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is scrambling to cobble together some kind of face-saving deal that would allow Republicans to keep attacking Obama without creating an economic meltdown. But Cantor? Cantor is going out of his way to torpedo any chance of a deal. He walked out of the Biden negotiations. He blew up the Boehner-Obama rapprochment. Perhaps worst of all, as Matthew Yglesias has documented, Cantor is actively misrepresenting the state of budget negotiations to his own party.

In an earlier phase of negotiations headed by Joe Biden, the White House was prepared to entertain almost $2 trillion in cuts in exchange for Republicans agreeing to some tax increases. But Republicans rejected that, because they reject tax increases. Then later, President Obama tried to up the ante by suggesting $4 trillion in deficit reduction, again balanced between spending cuts and tax increases. But Republicans rejected that, because they reject tax increases. Now Cantor has put together a slide show based on the false premise that a bipartisan "Biden Framework" existed to do the almost $2 trillion in cuts. And his proposal is that instead of doing the $4 trillion in deficit reduction, they just implement the made-up framework.

And to top it all off, Eric Cantor is still whiny! By his own account of Wednesday's budget negotiations at the White House, the meeting broke up when President Obama "got very agitated, seemingly."

Mr. Cantor quoted the president as saying: "Eric, don't call my bluff. I'm going to the American people with this."

Then, Mr. Cantor said, "He shoved back and said, 'I'll see you tomorrow' and walked out." "I was a little taken aback," Mr. Cantor added.

Oh no! Was the president mean to you, Eric? Did he hurt your feelings? Maybe you should blow up the economy to make yourself feel better.

The Democratic version of yesterday's meeting went a little differently; according to them, Cantor kept repeatedly pushing the same short-term budget deal, which would require repeating the entire debt ceiling debacle all over again next year, that Obama had already rejected. While it isn't wise to trust any party's account as the unvarnished truth, when you consider how Cantor is telling his own caucus things that are manifestly untrue, well, maybe one man's perceived "agitation" is actually some righteous presidential fury.

Kevin Drum thinks Cantor is digging his own political grave:

Here's a prediction: when all's said and done and the debt ceiling fight is finally over, Eric Cantor is going to be a lot further away from becoming Speaker of the House than he was six months ago. Every day he's looking more and more like a petulant child playing media games and less and less like a principled statesman working in the best interests of the country. He thinks he's being clever and savvy, but the rest of the country is seeing a grasping, opportunistic politician who thinks that posturing for Fox News is more important than facing up to serious problems. He's setting his career back a decade.

We can only hope so. If Cantor's career arc goes any higher after this performance, it's going to be a long century.




http://www.salon.com/news/budget_showdo ... in_america


AND THEY DIDNT EVEN TOUCH HIS SUPER SHORT LEVERAGED ETF BET US CREDIT RATING WILL PLUMMET ...

AND HES THE REPUBLICAN DEBT CEILING NEGOTIATER

my prediction is he will be overruled by boner and that senator with no chin...

[Tinker]

Hopefully he has already risen to the level of his incompetence.

[skyhook77sfg]

HOPE MY CALL OUT WAS SOMEHOW SOMEWAY RELEVANT

LOOKS LIKE CANTOR GOT THE GONG OR THE HOOK

or did they decide to sedate him?

he sure did go away fast...

btw

Friedman even threw Cantor a brickbat


I REALIZE that I should be in Washington watching the debt drama there, but I’ve opted instead to be in Greece to observe the off-Broadway version. There are a lot of things about this global debt tragedy that you can see better from here, in miniature, starting with the raw plot, which no one has described better than the Carnegie Endowment scholar David Rothkopf: “When the cold war ended, we thought we were going to have a clash of civilizations. It turns out we’re having a clash of generations.”

Indeed, if there is one sentiment that unites the crises in Europe and America it is a powerful sense of “baby boomers behaving badly” — a powerful sense that the generation that came of age in the last 50 years, my generation, will be remembered most for the incredible bounty and freedom it received from its parents and the incredible debt burden and constraints it left on its kids.

That brings up another similarity between Greece and America: that the necessary may be impossible, that baby boomer politicians in the age of Twitter may not be up to addressing problems this big. The hole is too deep and power too fragmented. The only way out is by collective action — where ruling and opposition parties unite, share the pain and take the necessary steps. But that is not happening here or in Washington.

There are Eric Cantors everywhere — reckless baby boomer politicians for whom no crisis is too serious to set aside political ambition and ideology.


http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/opini ... .html?_r=1



LOOKS LIKE ITS A TIDAL WAVE FOR CANTOR

WHO WILL PRESENT THE ASSHOLE CUP?

SUGGEST HONOR GO TO TINKER

[skyhook77sfg]

Eric Cantor’s tea party terrorism threatens America


To the tea party terrorists who put their extremist agenda ahead of the best interests of the nation, bombastic Virginia Republican Congressman Eric Cantor is a hero of monumental proportions.

To opponents, however, Cantor is a political Osama bin Laden, a political bomb thrower who threatens send the financial skyscrapers of the nation’s economy crashing to the ground in a dust cloud of chaos and discord.

Even Republicans complain private about Cantor’s antics and leaders of the party gather in small, closed-door groups to discuss how to stop their own majority leader from destroying the party and the nation.

Democrats, meanwhile, zero in on Cantor’s extremism and use it to claim Republicans don’t give a damn about the nation, the economy and the future.But the party’s problems go far beyond Cantor and the nation’s ills go back to the 2010 elections when voters — fed up with the status quo — put too many tea party extremists into office and gave them a voice they did not deserve.

Cantor and those of his ilk represent a cancer that is spreading throughout Congress, the American political system and the nation at large — a notion that compromise is bad, cooperation is unthinkable and coalitions are evil.What’s good for America is secondary to the extremists like Cantor and those who embrace him: The only thing that matters is an extreme, right-wing agenda driven not by the the claimed “grassroots,” but by two power-mad billionaire brothers named Koch.

Cantor is their weapon of mass detraction who — like them — substitutes service to country with ego.

Cantor is a madman but he is one with a well-funded, private-agenda-driven power base that will stop at nothing to seize power and subvert what little is left of the democratic process in this country.

He — and those who follow him — represent a clear and present danger to the United States of America and they must be stopped before it is too late.

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/414 ... ent-page-1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


GOES FARTHER THAN MY TAKE

terrrorism tag not apt

ambition and ego ... yes

too much...yes

by half.

[skyhook77sfg]

cANTOR SNEERS “The debt limit vote sucks”




House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) delivered a blunt message to the Republican Conference Tuesday morning: Quit the “grumbling” and “whining” and come together to rally behind Speaker John Boehner to pass his debt ceiling plan.

Cantor’s heavy rhetoric came out in a closed session at the Capitol Hill Club as the GOP majority tried to whip up support for Boehner’s latest deficit package. Cantor summed up what he knew many Republicans were thinking as they head into another critical vote.

“The debt limit vote sucks,” he said, according to an attendee of the closed meeting. But Republicans have three options, Cantor said: risk default, pass Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) plan — which he thinks gives President Barack Obama a blank check — or “call the president’s bluff” by passing the Boehner plan, which not only cuts deeply into domestic spending but calls for a bipartisan commission to find more savings.

Cantor also announced that the House will hold a vote on a balanced budget amendment Thursday, a nod to vocal conservatives in the conference.

House Republican leaders will spend Tuesday and Wednesday cobbling together votes to pass Boehner’s plan to hike the debt ceiling by $1 trillion and cut federal spending by a greater amount. Treasury says that the nation will run out of the ability to borrow money on Aug. 2.

Boehner told reporters after the closed meeting that his proposal, which he says is the product of bipartisan negotiations, “is enough” to quell market concerns about the debt ceiling.

Cantor, who has split with Boehner during this debate, reiterated a message he delivered to colleagues Monday, saying he is behind the speaker “150 percent.”


SOME ADVICE FOR MR I WANT WHAT I WANT WHEN I WANT IT

you will get what you get when you get it

choice of orifice not quaranteed