transcendental grunginess and nirvana

20 years of the music "that changed the world".

digression:

This quote from Cobain was placed at the scene where NYPD police
were banging on the heads of peaceful protesters,
near The Holy Grail of Wall Street.
___
Apparently, the grunge music business meant that anybody in flannel
shirts was to be signed to a contract.
My whole home town would have been in the money, in that case.

some choice clippings from an article on Nirvana

checkitout:

In search of Nirvana

Twenty years ago an album that wreaked havoc on the conventional music industry was released. Lauren Spencer, who was among the first to hear Nevermind, reminisces with the surviving band members, and returns to Seattle to hear how Kurt Cobain changed music for ever

* Lauren Spencer

* The Observer, Sunday 18 September 2011

...The thing about Nirvana is that they changed the whole game," says Kurt St Thomas, a DJ at Kroq radio in Los Angeles, who was the first to play Nevermind end-to-end on WFNX in Boston. "Before that album came out there were only a handful of 'alternative' radio stations, and within two years of the record there were more than 100. It should have been a victory, finally good music was getting exposed to more kids who'd never heard stuff like Nirvana, but the radio stations were not really passionate about the music, they were passionate about making a buck, and they started playing Nirvana wanna-bes and watering it down. Once record companies jumped on the bandwagon, it just reeked of business. The image of Spencer Elden [the baby on Nevermind's cover] reaching for that dollar bill is so symbolic to me because that is exactly what it felt like."

After the overindulgence of record companies came the inevitable hangover. Musicians who had been scooped up in the sign-anything-wearing-flannel frenzy found themselves shaken off and having to choose between, as photographer Mercer observed, the blue, the green or the orange apron, signifying a job at either Starbucks, Kinkos or Home Depot.

"So much changed so quickly in the first half of the 90s," says Grohl. "People will tell me how really good that music was, and I agree – a lot of really good music became popular. There was a much more open musical environment and atmosphere. But then it ended up choking itself in a weird way. There were so many bands getting signed from garages and basements from around the country. It was like you left school and had three options: you could either go to college, backpack across the country or start a band and get a record contract – and if it didn't stick, that was when you'd have to go out and get a real job."

It seems Nirvana could have only happened then and there; a tight-knit community of local talent had been developing in Seattle for years, out of the spotlight where they had room to grow. Then a perfect storm combining record company budgets with expanding media outlets like MTV hit Seattle's musical shores, dragging more than a few bodies out to sea. Novoselic points out that, "We were the last musical phenomenon before online took hold. In 1999, Napster happened and nothing's been the same since. Now you have to pull people into the music, whereas before everything was pushed out toward the people. The playing field was levelled but now it's so vast that people have to work harder to be heard."

Wandering around the clubs to see what the Seattle kids are up to today, I was happy to find nothing sounded the least like Nirvana. There were the trance-like, Bolly-rock beats of Rose Windows, followed by Wayfinders, who sound like the thick, rich results of Uriah Heep combined with the Smashing Pumpkins. Later I happened upon Troy Nelson's band, the Young Evils, whose harmonies with Mackenzie Mercer are pop gems with an indie beat. Not once during these shows did the word grunge cross my mind. And yet they might not have been heard but for Nirvana. Nelson admits he moved to Seattle because Nirvana put it on the map, "and I'm still to this day trying to write a song as important as 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'."

"I think of it as a forest fire," says Sub Pop's Megan Jasper. "It just felt like everything went up in flames in Seattle so fast, but once it was out, time passed and there was new growth underneath. It makes room for people to come in and do new things. There was something about being in the shadows of grunge and Nirvana. There was a mindfulness because it was so close, and whatever you do, it needs to be different. I think enough time passed that it was OK to emerge and make things happen again. It's respect on one side and rebellion on the other.

"Most people in Seattle don't live in the past," Jasper continues. "Most people are more excited about the here and now. And thank god for that mindset otherwise this place would just be a ghost town." Though if you're into that kind of thing, there is a museum sitting in the shadow of downtown's Space Needle that's dedicated to preserving and sharing Seattle's musical legacy. It's the Experience Music Project, funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, and right now there's an exhibition running until April 2013 where all things Nirvana are on display. Called Nirvana: Taking Punk to the Masses, it's an ambitious collection of, according to the programme, "rare and unseen artefacts and photography from the band, their crews and families". Larry Reid, punk promoter and manager, says it feels a bit like they've "fetishised" the grunge scene, though, as Novoselic points out, it's better than seeing Cobain's guitar hanging off the wall at a Hard Rock Café while you're eating chilli fries.

ghost of grim reepings past

[ulike.net]
2008. fastforward to 2011. Too big to fail becomes too big to bail.
We all know that politicians are bought a paid for, by bankers.
Also, they think that they cannot limit their banks, lest the others take advantage,
knowing full well that banks and bankers are a zero-sum gain, or worse.
If they win, they offshore their profits.
If they lose, they repatriate their losses and make us pay for them.

so, just like in 1929, 1930, 1931, (you get the idea), we go from bad to worse.
politicians hiding their tails up their backsides, trying not to look guilty.


[just chillin', ready for some 2011 killin']

checkitout:

Ilene on zerohedge
...Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism also expressed disbelief at the response of the markets to the continuing drama being played out: “Watching reenactments of scenes from the global financial crisis is a very peculiar experience indeed. The opening by the Fed of currency swap lines to allow the ECB and other central banks to extend dollar funding to Eurobanks was seen as an extreme measure the first time around, a sign of how close to the abyss the financial system had come. This time, allegedly because the powers that be acted before things got quite so dire, bank stocks rallied impressively.

Similarly, the media treated this move as just another episode in the ongoing Perils of Pauline drama running on the other side of the Atlantic... Now narrowly, the jaundiced media response and the market bounce both make sense. The Eurodrama has gone so many chapters that it’s easy to get rescue fatigue.” (The Fed Bails Out Eurobanks Yet Again)

David Fry observed “I couldn’t say how many ‘fixes’ we’ve had over the past two years, but there have been plenty. Each has proven ephemeral, but each new effort has become more assertive. This current plan now comes with wide global support. We have to remember these governments have skin in the game for their own economies. BRIC countries have plenty of ‘stuff’ to export to a healthy euro zone so they’ll be supportive. Bernanke is also determined to be a player rumored to be adding $100 billion in aid to Europeans. Also in support were the ECB, the SNB, the BOJ and the BOE. I guess you could say; ‘it takes a village,’ eh?

little Joey Weisenthal likes roller coasters

especially golden ones that only go down.


[business insider]

more coming up

mad as hell

the pertinence of this classic rant is spooky. I'm hanging on every word today.

This guy is basically doing what the economic bloggers now do. He's telling
the cold hard facts and making conjecture about the future.
Meanwhile your mainstream media lulls you to sleep, only to wake you up
after your money's gone and the helicopters have flown off.

It's important that, unlike the fella in the video, most bloggers have a sense of
humour. Max Keiser has been known to rant, but he's ok.



Here's another brilliant summation from Karl Denninger:

[hey, Karl, don't forget Bernie Sanders of Vermont]

It's Over

Seriously.

There is persistent chatter about a Greek default over the weekend, which Greece denied, but the denier refused to be named. If it's not true, then put your damned name on the statement or be considered what you are - liars. Greece failed to place their short-term bill rollover. That's a declaration by the market that even for short-term paper the market has utterly lost confidence in Greece and the Euro.

Germany's DAX market relative to the United States just hit a five year low today.

To add to the "liar liar pants on fire" calls Germany is now reported to be working a plan to recapitalize their banks if Greece defaults. This in turn means three things:

* A Greek default is considered credible by Germany and they are taking official actions related to that possibility. So much for the denials.

* German banks (and presumably French banks and all the other big banks too) are insolvent as they are carrying these bonds at well above their actual value in the marketplace. If the bonds were carried at the claimed "loss" values, which is quoted as 50%, then there would be no need to recapitalize them would there? This is an official statement of proof that the banks are lying about asset values and are in fact insolvent.

* Remember that we were just told days ago that these banks were fine and needed no capital and in fact calls for more capital by the IMF were officially refused. The same claim has been made about our banks. You were just told officially by Germany that their claim of adequate capital just days ago was a lie as they are now planning to recapitalize the banks. Do you believe our banks are not similarly exposed and also insolvent? YOU'RE BETTING YOUR FUTURE ON THE BELIEF THAT THEY ARE, SO THIS QUESTION IS QUITE GERMANE AND TIMELY: ARE YOU SURE YOU'RE NOT BEING LIED TO EXACTLY AS WE WERE ABOUT GERMAN BANKS?

Coincident with this hitting the wires there was a massive flow of money into the Japanese Yen - and out of the Euro. A monstrous safety trade - people fleeing the European common currency for what they perceive as a "safe haven." At the same time our markets are down 300 DOW points, the S&P is down 2.5% on the day and more than forty points off the early-morning top -- and there's no sign that things are stabilizing at all.

I said the Euro was going to par, and that might be too conservative. With that our stock market will get cut in half -- or more -- from here and once again the banks, insurance companies and everyone else will start crying poor mouth.

The problem is that this time there's no money to bail them out with in the US and as a result if this outcome manifests they will fail. The embedded losses in those institutions on mortgages alone total trillions, which is several times the available debt ceiling and so far beyond the FDIC's reserves that there is no way to cover you, the average person.

Nobody - and I do mean nobody - in our political establishment from either party gives a damn about the lies and outright fraud in our financial system. Neither political party, including some very specific representatives that have railed about various problems in capital markets, the IMF and similar over the last couple of years will even open their damn mouths, say much less demand structural changes and an end to the frauds.

I have been making attempts to break through that "glass ceiling" now for four years with several representative and senatorial offices. How many speeches have you seen on this topic, or even questions directed at like people such as Bernanke under oath?

I'll answer that for you: ZERO.

The opportunity to fix these problems has been there since 2007 and I have steadfastly put forward plans that will work to resolve these issues, albeit at the cost of there being no more leverage-driven asset-stripping games. I've written over four thousand Tickers since 2007 and a couple of White Papers and distributed them to Congressional offices by postal mail and fax. In addition there are literal hundreds of staffers that access The Ticker on a regular basis along with every three-letter government agency, including the law-enforcement ones.

There can be no claim that "nobody saw this coming" because I assure you that not only did plenty of people see it coming I have repeatedly warned of the "end game" and consequences - loudly.

Nobody from either party will address this or even discuss this and the reason should be obvious - the banks own the politicians. That's fine - they can both hang on the rope of their own construction through their willful and intentional acts of malfeasance and fraud. Absolutely none of this was a mistake.

I believe the alarm has now rung. The market calls all bluffs and that's exactly what it's doing right here, right now, today. The lies have been overwhelmed by the functional facts - that you cannot make payroll or pay the light bill with imaginary money - you need real money, and there isn't any. The time has run out on the fraud pulled in 2009 by Kanjorski with his "mark to fantasy" crap game.

We are doing the same thing right here in the United States with Obama's demands for "more stimulus" with no way to pay for it, games being run by banks suppressing price discovery and hiding losses on mortgages engendered by nine trillion in residential property value loss, the asset-stripping that was performed on the citizens of Jefferson County Alabama and more. Not one damn thing has been done to fix the underlying problems and nobody has gone to jail for these acts.

You cannot solve a debt crisis with more debt any more than you can fix a drunk with a case of whiskey. Yet that is exactly what we've tried to do both in the United States and internationally. The end point of that process here is exactly the same as it is there. You're getting a preview America, and if you think that a 20% sell-off in the stock market is what we get when it happens here, you're wrong. Try a 90% loss on for size followed by the utter failure of every pension fund and insurance company that has sold annuities - including yours.

Our economic system and quite-possibly our government is finished if we allow this to occur.

The claims that "it will all be ok if we just help these people bridge the gap" is now being exposed as an outright and intentional fraud. That fraud has been perpetrated against you, the American taxpayer, by your government and central bank.

Three years into this since the 2008 collapse and not a damn thing has been addressed or fixed. You can see that proof in the employment statistics which, incidentally, are about to get much worse.

YOU have been seduced by the siren song of "Guns, Gays and God" (or "Obama's gonna pay my mortgage!" if you prefer) instead of the truth - a bunch of *******s stole your future sequentially over more than 30 years by levering up on your back, knowing full well they couldn't cover their debts. These intentional acts, which are acts of fraud -- all of them -- occurred in Washington DC and on Wall Street, and they were not limited to the United States. This is a worldwide phenomena.

We're now in the endgame. Greece, if you recall, showed up in early 2010 as a problem. Did our government take this warning and act on it, stop the frauds, prosecute the wrongdoers, close the insolvent banks, and force the recognition of the nine trillion in lost value in residential housing? Did we see bankruptcy occur for those who are in fact bankrupt?

NO.

EVERY ONE OF THE POLITICIANS ON BOTH SIDES OF THE AISLE - ALL OF THEM WITHOUT EXCEPTION - HAVE LIED, CHEATED AND STOLE FROM YOU TO PROTECT A GANG THAT HAS REPEATEDLY ABUSED LEVERAGE TO ROB YOU BLIND. NOW THE PONZI SCHEME IS COLLAPSING AS WE ARE OUT OF SUCKERS - GLOBALLY - WITH WHICH TO PERPETUATE IT.

While I write this CNBC runs claims of "we're going to show you how to protect yourself in this market." Oh really? Why didn't you just tell people to get the hell out in 2007 as I advised and sit back with a bunch of popcorn? You'd still have all your damn money and none of the heartburn. NOW, after the market is down nearly 20% off the recent highs, you want to talk about "protection"? NOW?

You have one final opportunity to choose America: Watch Dancing With the Stars or demand and enforce your demand that this crap stop right now.

Just be aware - if you choose "Dancing With The Stars" that it won't be long before you have no job, no money and perhaps no electricity with which to power your TV and no "free stuff" coming from a bankrupt government either. Yes, it can happen here, and if you think not you're dumber than a box-of-rocks and deserve exactly what is coming.

Choose now, choose here and choose wisely.

any Archdukes in town?

I got an itchy trigger finger, says the G7.

I still think that they'll cook up a false flag or a war to distract us
from the fact that they screwed up and

the buck, literally, stops with them.
Sarkozy, Merkel, Geithner, Osbourne, Lagarde

The Germans are already stirring up the Balkans,
but Greece doesn't have any royalty.

[the Archduke's skinny namesakes]

EufaCup for can-kicking

the new sport in Europe and the US.
Kicking the can down the road, debt-wise.


the championship final, held at "the end of the road",
will be called the Debt Jubilee.

That will signify the inability of the scam to go on indefinitely.
Karl Denninger, a man in the know, says that all the suckers
who still have money are keeping away from the stock markets.
That means, the prestadigitation must soon come to an end.
Governments can lie about debt, but they need the markets
to help them hoodwink the public. That's now over, and the G7 all know it.

It's gonna blow up real good!

Losers get the BuggerUp Booby prize

starvation leads to sartorial crustaceans

apparently, folks are so hungry in the US, they've taken to stuffing
food down their clothes.
That was always a college prank.



Now, it's a very serious crime.

I lost the story, but it involves seafood. I'm not sure he was starving.
I think he has high-class tastes and a low-class budget if he's stealing lobster.
why not just balony? it's easier to hide.

a germain comment from a reader:

Sarek
September 8, 2011 9:38 PM
A little song, a little dance, a little shellfish down your pants.

quo vadis? WTF Mercutio

I thought this would be a good time to discuss why I have written
over 700 stoopid articles. It's largely because I'm sick of talking about
the weather or whatever I'm supposed to. I want to tell ridiculous
stories about whatever I want.

Especially politics. Why? see the tweet message below

MMFlint Michael Moore
Great line from Midnight In Paris: "The artist's job is not to succumb to despair, but to find an antidote to the emptiness of existence"

ein klein nazi music for Peter Haller

more will follow if you're patient

A while ago, there was the story of the Goldman Sach's guy who went native
to finish off the US government oversight of the banks.
His name was Haller and he changed it to Simonyi, or the other way around.
Anyway, he mentioned that his Transylvanian ancestors were anti-nazi, which was the opposite of the truth, to put it mildly. (See the Exiled story below)

I just heard recently that the film Music Box from 1989 was about just such a story. A person had to come to terms with his Hungarian ancestors being nazis.

Therefore, a bit of klein nazi music is in order. Some Wagner
from 0:07, and intermittently:


checkitout: [massive sarc and irony alert!]
The War Nerd / August 19, 2011
The War Nerd Vs. Darrell Issa’s Goldman Sachs Staffer: A Brief History Of Hungarian Fascism Made Simple For Lying Scum
By Gary Brecher
A funny thing happened while a GOP congressional staff weasel was doing his job last week. He actually tried to use European military history to justify one of his little twists. And when I say “funny,” I mean hilarious. This guy was counting on Americans’ total, absolute ignorance of everything that happened in Europe before 1945 beyond the fact that the Nazis were bad people. That’s not a bad bet, most of the time, but this time, this particular weasel just went a lie or two too far.

The weasel in question is named—oh, but that’s the problem right there: What exactly IS this weasel’s name? Well, it used to be “Peter Simonyi.” Nice Hungarian-American name, you’d think. Nothing wrong with that. But this guy, to use the old punchline, had been getting it all dirty, doing what weasels do: Skulking around K Street moving from regulatory agencies like the SEC to bloodsucking financial giants like Goldman Sachs and back to government by landing a job with Darrell Issa, the new GOP hetman of the Congressional unit in charge of corporate crime.

Would You Buy A Hot Car from This Man?

Before Issa took the job, this group was in charge of cracking down on that sort of crime. Officially, at least. Since Issa took over, they’ve dropped the whole front, and made it official that they see themselves as facilitators for the billionaires. I’m not saying Issa’s a lifelong hood who graduated from Grand Theft Auto to locksmithing, a totally classic crime bio, then hit it big and became a rightwing thug on a whole new level. I’m not saying he even stole his Army buddy’s car, then ditched it on the freeway when he felt the heat. But then I’m not not saying it either.

Naturally, a sleaze like Issa wanted a guy like Peter Simonyi on his new crime-helping team in Congress. And little Peter wanted to be a part, a small, humble, part, of that great big racket, by helping Issa write bloodsucker-friendly legislation.

There was just one problem: It didn’t look squeaky-clean for the same Peter Simonyi who used to turn the thumbscrews for Goldman Sachs to be joining the Congressional staff who were supposed to be fighting corporate cartels.

But like Shakespeare or somebody said, what’s in a name? Money, Peter figured, easy money—but only if he came up with a new one that he hadn’t messed up yet. So just like that, Peter Simonyi officially changed his name to “Peter Haller.” But it was his tear-jerker of an explanation that really had me in the aisles.

See, this reporter Lee Fang at ThinkProgress tracked down Simonyi/Haller’s bio—the whole crawl of shame between lobbyists, congress and bloodsucking finance companies—and sweated him about why he needed an alias. And who was more entitled to ask than a guy with a standout name like “Lee Fang,” anyway? Stonewall Jackson would’ve been proud to have that for a nickname. I bet there’s a neo-Confederate bio of Jackson out with a name like that: “Stonewall Jackson: Lee’s Fang.”

Here’s what Simonyi/Haller said when they pressed him on the name change:

“My mother, whose maiden name is Theodora Maria Theresia haller-koi gr Haller (in the U.S., Dora Haller), married Imre Gabor Simonyi and took his name. Her father Alfred haller-koi gr Haller was killed in Budapest in 1944 by fascists as he attempted to prevent children from being conscripted into the military. Prior to his return to Hungary in 1944, he served under Regent Miklos Horthy, as a Hungarian diplomat stationed in England supporting the British in opposition to Germany. His last request was that if Theodora marries, her husband and children would carry on the Haller name.” [two possible reactions. you cry, or you scream "oh, come on! stop tugging on my dick"- Cos67]

There are a lot of funny bits in that little one-paragraph melodrama Peter wrote, but the funniest of all is this line: “…He served under Regent Miklos Horthy, as a Hungarian diplomat stationed in England supporting the British in opposition to Germany.” That is what is technically called a flat-out lie. One thing you can tell about Peter from this story: He thinks Americans don’t know a thing about European history. And he’s probably right, since a lot of the reader comments to this big lie called it “a touching family story.” Whoo-ee! It’s a story, all right. About as accurate as Rambo’s version of Nam.

Miklos Horthy was “Regent” of Hungary from 1919 to 1944. If he was “supporting the British,” it was a well-kept secret. If only Hitler had known that about his pal Miklos, he might not have posed with him in quite as many photo ops, where you can see the Fuhrer and the Regent shaking hands, strolling together, taking a little ride in a convertible together, just generally lovin’ up a storm, as Jerry Lee would say.

Horthy & Hitler: The 2H Love Tour

H&H: Secret “Pro-British” Handshake

I don’t even know where Peter came up with that “pro-British” lie of his. The British weren’t even a factor in that messed-up, landlocked multi-ethnic gangfight. South-Central Europe between the wars—well, it’s a lot like South-Central LA back in the day, except a whole lot bloodier and more confusing. Basically it’s pretty much the way Eastwood describes his killer past in Unforgiven: Nobody remembers much of it, they were drunk most of the time–the main ingredient for a war in those parts is slivovitz, or anything else if you can’t get that, including hair oil and wood alcohol—and they shot a lot of people. And hanged a lot of people. And raped a lot of people. Hungarians, Germans, Slovaks, Rumanians, Croats, Serbs, Ukranians, with the Jews and Gypsies hiding in the bushes trying to sell a little booze and not get lynched—Did I leave anybody out? If so, they’re lucky, because nobody was a hero in that mess. Primitive warfare with superb German or Czech weapons; you can imagine how that went. Killing everyone in the village before you leave—standard practice. Avoiding combat, torturing civilians until they tell you where their last side of bacon is—a day at the office. Raping every female before you bayonet them and go—part of the job. .

When the totally worthless, sleaze-ridden Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed after Germany surrendered, some ethnic gangs rose in the rankings and others sank. The Hungarians lost out big, because as the second-meanest and biggest gang in the Empire (after the Germans), they’d had a sort of little-brother status that allowed them to beat up all the other ethnics lower than them. By local standards, believe me, that was a good deal....
for more http://exiledonline.com/war-nerd-dc-update-transylvania-goes-to-dc-and-lies-its-head-off/

to fallen soldiers

You didn't think I was going to congratulate British soldiers for stepping
in front of an IUD, in a place where they have no business being. Didja?


I'm talking about hockey players, especially those in the barely-professional
leagues of Europe.
Almost one whole team died in a plane crash in Russia.
That's Locomotive Yaroslavl, from Metropolitan Yaroslavl.

Gone to the big rink in the sky.

DA MAFIA NOOZ

"a-right. sit down and shut-up, wiseguy."

This is the Mafia News, for the Goldmanio Family of New York
We are Fair & Balanced towards our Family's interests.

Youz all know that everybody in the family has his turf.
Nobody messes with our turf, individually, or as a totality, a-right?

So, we got Mort Zucco Zuckerman and his office space empire downtown.
He needs Citigroup to rent his space or else heads will roll.
That Schneiderman is just gettin' in the way. What to do? what to do?

Next, there's Tom Mugs Miller and his game going on with the 49 states.
We think that Schneiderman should bring his New York Fed family into
the game, even though Schneidie is not one of our boys.
He should watch his ass doesn't get kicked. We ain't coverin' for him.

you want details? read below, ya shmuck.

checkitout:

Matt Stoller: The Corrupt Establishment Begins Smearing Eric Schneiderman

By Matt Stoller, the former Senior Policy Advisor to Rep. Alan Grayson and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can reach him at stoller (at) gmail.com or follow him on Twitter at @matthewstoller

Last month we had New York Fed Board Member Kathryn Wylde whining and meddling about Eric Schneiderman’s investigation into big banks. That seriously backfired. HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan put pressure on him as well, and that didn’t go over so well. And after Tom Miller petulantly stopped allowing Schneiderman on his AG conference calls, there was a mini-media storm over the rancid character of the DOJ and bankster-owned Miller. None of the insider signals worked, so now it’s on to stage two of neutralize Schneiderman. It’s time for…. the smear campaign!

Two editorial boards are coming out and using innuendo to paint Schneiderman as a self-promoter looking to make a name for himself by unfairly tarnishing banks. It’s pretty standard – throw up rumors that have a narrative basis in the American psyche, and chip away at public faith. Here’s the Washington Post’s editorial.

... So why is the Post lying about this situation? Why the split between the news and editorial? It might have something to do with, well, money! You see, the Washington Post newspaper isn’t profitable, the company makes most of its money from its for-profit educational subsidiaries (hence the nickname “Kaplan Test Prep Daily), including its for-profit university. And guess who is investigating the shady practices of the subprime university educational racket?

Mr. Schneiderman is looking into whether the schools and their recruiters misrepresent their ability to find students jobs, the quality of instruction, the cost of attending, and their programs accreditation, among other things. Such activities could constitute deceptive trade practices or fraud.

Oops. Looks like the Washington Post has a financial interest in kneecapping the New York Attorney General. While Kaplan isn’t being investigated, the entire sector is reliant on government subsidies that are at risk should criminal charges nail a few of the schools.

Next up is the New York Daily News, a paper which has now gone after Schneiderman twice for… being an elected official. The latest hit is that Schneiderman sent out an email to his political list after getting pressure from Tom Miller and the Obama administration. The horror! A politician wants to communicate his side of the story after the President, major money center banks and the New York Fed go after him. How inappropriate! For shame!

It’s not like the regulators, banks, and Tom Miller’s office have been leaking like a sieve and lying to the press for months. Oh wait, they have. And it’s not like Tom Miller took enormous sums of money from out of state banks and then turned around to negotiate a sweetheart deal with those same banks. Oh wait, he did.

Finally, there’s Mort Zuckerman himself, the real estate billionaire who owns the New York Daily News. He wouldn’t have a financial interest in the banks, would he? Well, let’s see. In 2008, he was busted shilling for a bailout of Citigroup, because Citigroup rented more than a million square feet of space from his company. The guy went on TV and passionately advocated public policy positions that would help his bottom line, while owning major media outlets. Fascinating.

Schneiderman’s gotten on the wrong side of some very aggressive and very powerful people. It’s enjoyable to watch them flail around, at least for a little while.. They have given him hints, they have told him publicly and privately to back down, and you can hear the increasing frustration at New York cocktail parties. He should just know better, right? For now, it’s fruitless – they can’t sway him, and they can’t destroy him, and everything they try backfires. It’s not only hilarious, it’s also a window into just how these people exercise power.

protect yourself in a freefall

[who's got a boner?]

by latching onto another idiot that is also freefalling.
Why bother freefalling in the first place?
Because there's a currency war going on.
The Euro US buck and British pound are all nose-diving as a way of defaulting
on debt. So, traders have to invest in a currency. They can't just leave things be.
So, they're going for the yen, the Scando kronas, and the Cayman's Doughnut Hole.

Switzerland has just flattened its great Franc

by linking it with the Euro,
and not allowing it to go below 1.20 francs = 1 euro

So, as the Euro falls, and it will continue because they're avoiding
killing off their banks that are super-indebted.

kick-the-can becomes new national Euro sport.

By the way, the Yodlers tried this last year and fell flat on their faces, and they lost a wad of money, huh-huh-huh (Fudd voice).

hey all you snuff freaks, check this
[it is in keeping with the theme of freefalling-for-idiots. no such thing as a no-risk jump.]


checkitout:
Swiss bid to peg 'safe haven' franc to the euro stuns currency traders
Move – which effectively devalues the Swiss franc in an attempt to protect the economy – sparks fears of new currency war
* Graeme Wearden
* guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 6 September 2011 13.14 BST
Switzerland sparked fears of a new currency war on Tuesday after it pegged the Swiss franc against the euro in an attempt to protect its economy from the European debt crisis.
The Swiss National Bank in effect devalued the franc, pledging to buy "unlimited quantities" of foreign currencies to force down its value. The SNB warned that it would no longer allow one Swiss franc to be worth more than €0.83 – equivalent to SFr1.20 to the euro – having watched the two currencies move closer to parity as Switzerland became a "safe haven" from the ravages of the eurozone crisis.
The move stunned currency traders, and sent the Swiss franc tumbling against other currencies. Jeremy Cook, chief economist at currency brokers World First, said it was "intervention on a grand scale", and the start of a "new battle in the currency wars".