Steptoe and Son live on

coming soon

the whole crisis, for those with short attention spans

In cartoon from Hera is the whole stoopid shooting match.

Punch line-
Right: Is this a joke? is this America (indignation)?
Left: no this is not..... a joke.

Ron Paul catches the Grinch

the Gingrinch.

He's being ignored by the media, and they keep trying to replace
him with any number of candidates, because the Powers
don't want Ron Paul to win.

If the 'grinch wins, that'll be the end of Christmas for millions
of American kids, because evermore of their parents will be broke.
Paul is trying to stop the wholesale looting of the US economy.

checkitout: Mish Shedlock
Blatant Reporting BiasI posted more paragraphs than necessary in the above clips. I did so on purpose to prove a point. It was not until the 6th paragraph that Ron Paul even got a mention.
I also call your attention to the second-to-last paragraph. "The poll has a plus or minus 4.2 point margin of error."
Given the margin of error, and the momentum, Ron Paul has surged into a statistical tie with Gingrich.
Mike "Mish" Shedlock

score: OWS 5500 Wall St 0

coming soon

when democracy becomes an apprehended war, the sports metaphor works
best.
The more people from #OWS that are put in jail, the more visible it
is to everybody that nobody from Wall St has been put in the slammer.

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/12/14/corzine_grilled_over_mf_global_collapse

I will take you to our leader: Paul Krugman

It has been said that Paul Krugman, who hangs out at
the New York Times,
believes in military Keynesianism so much that he
spoke out in favour of their being an alien attack,
to get humans to fix their economic woes.

This was his speech at the United Nations:

Transcript-
I consider it a challenge before the whole human race
And I'd never lose
And I need to go on and on and on and on

We are the champions - my friends
And we'll keep on fightin' till the end
We are the champions
We are the champions
No time for losers
'Cause we are the champions of the world





[let's invade, using fruits and veg to destroy the flora and fauna of Mars]

the wheels on the debt go round and round

coming soon

The Wheels on the Debt Go Round and Round

The wheels on the debt go round and round
Round and round, round and round
The wheels on the debt go round and round
All across the Web.
(wave hands back and forth)

The CDOs on the debt go "Ssh, ssh, ssh,
Ssh, ssh, ssh, ssh, ssh, ssh"
The CDOs on the debt go "Ssh, ssh, ssh"
'Coz they're in the shadows.
(put your index finger over your lips, or hide behind the curtain)

The door on the bus goes open and shut
Open and shut, open and shut
The door on the bus goes open and shut
All through the town.
(Cover eyes with hands on 'shut' anduncover them on 'open')

The horn on the bus goes "Beep, beep, beep
Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep"
The horn on the bus goes "Beep, beep, beep"
All through the town.
(Pretend to honk horn)

The gas on the bus goes "Glug, glug, glug
Glug, glug, glug, glug, glug, glug"
The gas on the bus goes "Glug, glug, glug"
All through the town.
(Pretend to fill tank using pointer finger as gas nozzle)

The money on the bus goes "Clink, clink, clink,
Clink, clink, clink, clink, clink, clink"
The money on the bus goes "Clink, clink, clink"
All through the town.
(Pretend to put money in cash box on bus)

The baby on the bus says, "Wah, wah, wah!
Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah!"
The baby on the bus says, "Wah, wah, wah!"
All through the town.
(Fisted hands in front of eyesand rub them like baby crying)

The people on the bus say, "Shh, shh, shh,
Shh, shh, shh, shh, shh, shh"
The people on the bus say, "Shh, shh, shh"
All through the town.
(Put pointer finger to mouth to 'shhh')

The mommy on the bus says, "I love you,
I love you, I love you"
The daddy on the bus says, "I love you, too"
All through the town.

Shopxmas is upon us

In the never-ending battle between good and evil.
Morality and selfish bourgeouis-ism.
Love and superficial showmanship.
Bankers and the rest of us

we have a message from the oligarchs, telling us
that evil has taken hold for good.

Let's sing :
I Saw Santa pepperspraying Jesus

(to the tune of I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus)

I got that special power, too

latest graphic novel to become a movie.
Scarlett get's new mystery powers.


Who lit the match?

[loo' a' ma bu']

Scarlett always had a butt with special powers.
[Lost in her underpants. I know I am]
If you ask me, this is the only reason that Lost in Translation
was a candidate for an Oscar. That's a powerful butt.
And, just in case you think it's sexploitation, the director
was a lady: Sophia Copolla

From the dark shadows comes a banker

You thought I was going to say 'thief'. Well, I did, didn't I?

Shadow markets
derivatives, CDSs, CDOs
exist so that nobody can understand markets and thus
people remain in the dark,
not recognising when they are being cheated,
until it’s too late.

Zerohedge is changing the balance, back in favour of the public.
That’s why the Powers are crapping themselves.
As the oligarchs ratchet up the debt and tricks,
ZH and others are there, watching their every move and
they can prove what it is they’re saying. It’s not just conjecture.

That’s the knowledge. When you have the knowledge and
you know the government and media are corrupt ,
what do you want to do? Protest angrily.
Well, it seems that we are protesting in a new way as well.
We know full well that angry protest will bring the
full force of the army on our heads,
regardless of the country and its love of democracy.
So the OWS is ‘going long’ protest and
waiting for their Gandhi action to start
getting semi-powerful people of the upper 10%
(but not the top 1%) who also see the game is coming to an end,
to help change things. This is a great plan of action, and
I congratulate both parts of the protest. Even without
the media ‘megaphone’, we are all discovering the
state of the game, down to the minute.

When politicians get together to ‘calm markets’,
they’re actually trying to trick the people who still believe
that a government will be just, in a time of crisis.
Those kinds of fools have already been bitten, as have the fools
on the markets. Pretty soon the government will have
no voters and the banks will have no deposits.
Maybe then, we’ll see some change.
In the meantime, I’m enjoying the camaraderie of the 99%.
We’re gonna help one another, and build a new society
out of the ashes of the old. It will never be perfect, but anyway.


checkitout: zerohedge
Shadow Rehypothecation, Infinite Leverage, And Why Breaking The Tyranny Of Ignorance Is The Only Solution
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/10/2011 13:10 -0500

In the aftermath of the "rehypothecation" analysis exposing the quantum differences between the US and the UK, where the former at least tries to put some breaks on "fractional reserve" synthetic liquidity creation by Prime Brokers (which these days would be virtually anyone) while the latter believes that virtually boundless risk is a welcome thing, there has been a barrage of inquiries seeking further clarification of the nuances of shadow banking, a topic Zero Hedge has covered since July of 2010 (for much more see here) and which we will update on tomorrow for the latest Flow of Funds report (spoiler alert: in Q3 US shadow banking declined by at least $300 billion, a trend started at the credit bubble peak,
over $6 trillion higher).

In order to bring some clarity to the matter we present two of the seminal pieces on the topic: first, fro the IMF: "The (sizable) Role of Rehypothecation in the Shadow Banking System" and then from one of the best scholars of shadow banking, Gary Gorton, "Haircuts." We will let readers digest the wealth of information contained in these two pieces on their own, however, we will point out the two key messages: on one hand we get a definitive explanation of why not NY but London is true hub of financial engineering and infinite leverage (recall that the UK is in fact the most levered nation on a GDP basis in the world when one takes into account all outstanding debt, not just sovereign - a fact well known to S&P and explaining why the UK will be the last to be downgraded as this would bring attention to the last domino in the chain) as follows: "Mathematically, the cumulative ‘collateral creation’ can be infinite in the United Kingdom" - that's from the IMF basically telling everyone that courtesy of no rehypothecation haircuts one can achieve infinite shadow leverage. And the other one comes from Gorton who explains why haircuts are the functional equivalent of information arbitrage: "Increases in repo haircuts are withdrawals from securitized banks—that is, a bank run. When all investors act in the run and the haircuts become high enough, the securitized banking system cannot finance itself and is forced to sell assets, driving down asset prices. The assets become information-sensitive; liquidity dries up. As with the panics of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the system is insolvent."

And the punchline: "Liquidity requires symmetric information, which is easiest to achieve when everyone is ignorant. This determines the design of many securities, including the design of debt and securitization." Reread the last statement as it explains perhaps better than anything, the true functioning of modern capital markets and why they are terminally broken: in order to preserve the system, the banking cartel need to make everything of virtually infinite complexity so that no one has a clear understanding of what is going on! Which is where sites like Zero Hedge step in - to expose "shadowy" places where things are best left unseen.

Incidentally one of the catalysts of the market collapse in the Lehman aftermath was not some market scalar metric being breached, or a bunk shutting down physically, but the seminal report by Citi's Matt King "Are The Brokers Broken" from September 2008 which explained all of the above (and below) in clear and concise detail, in effect bringing the proverbial Eureka moment to every market participant, of why everything was terminally broken. Since we are now again at the same stage, we will shortly repost the same report from King to stop "everyone from being ignorant" and comprehend just how broken both the traditional and shadow banking systems are
....

Zombie Banksters of London

It's the banks, my friends. They are the living dead.
They're broke, but they're hooked up to Dr Osbourne's
Franken-banker machine and being fed our money and our
future money.



By the way, this below is not a money-making venture,
so call off your lawyers,
and sing along.


Zombies Banksters of London
writer: Cos67, with help from
ZEVON, WARREN / MARINELL, LEROY / WACHTEL, WADDY (ROBERT)

I saw a zombie bankster with a Sushi menu in his hand
Walking through the streets of the City in the rain
He was looking for a place called This Ho Fooks
Gonna get a big bowl of coke, and whore tricks

UUUUguUguuuuggggugghhhhh!
Zombie bankers of London!
UUuugughhhgHhguuuuu! (Repeat)

If you hear him howling around your front door
Better not let him in
Little old lady got expropriated late last night
Zombie banksters of London again

uuuuuughhuuughhh!
Zombie bankers of London!
uuuuuuggghhuuuughghgghhh! (Repeat)

He's the hairy-handed gent who ran amuck in Ghent
Lately he's been overheard in Canary Wharf
Better stay away from him
He'll chomp your savings, Jim
I'd like to meet his tailor

uuuuhhnhhhh! oh, my hernia.
zombie banksters of London!
hoo-ha, heh, gonna kiss myself! (Repeat)

Well, I saw Mervin King walking with the Queen
Doing the Zombie bankers of London
I saw Mervin King , Jr. walking with the Queen
Doing the zombie banksters of London
I saw a zombie bankster drinking a 12-year old scotch at Trader Vic's
And his hooker's hair was perfect

UUUuuuUUUuggghhhhuuuughhh!
zombie banksters of London!
uuuugughhhhhuuuuugghh! (Repeat)
Braaainsssss...

it's hard work being a driver

When the UK had its latest class crisis, the 2 million-strong
public sector strike , last week, we were looking for
public intellectuals to chime in with their opinion.

Was it right for public sector workers to keep their
good pension while the private sector was being
screwed royally? Well, some people see that public
sector workers should have no choice.
Every millionnaire has the right to criticise public
services, because he doesn't pay tax anyway.

So, Jeremy Clarkson said this about public workers:
"I'd take them outside and execute them in front of their families."He added: "How dare they go on strike when they've got these gilt edge pensions when the rest of us have to work for a living."
So, I'll tell you why Clarkson may have shot himself in the foot.
Now everybody is discussing his million dollar paycheck, while he
is himself a public servant, of sorts.
He 'works' (larks about) for the BBC, on the Top Gear show.
He prepares an hour-long show, with help, almost every week.
Maybe even 30 weeks a year.

To top it off, the UK makes everybody pay for the BBC, through
the Tv licence, which is a huge bureaucracy that breaks into
your home to see if you're watching tv.
In sane countries, this sort of public utility is paid for
through general taxation, so that the rich pay more than
Joe Sandwich Bag.
So, Joe is paying the same as Prince Charles so that we
can watch Jeremy Clarkson prance around, insulting everybody.

[it's backbreaking work, I tells ya]

Imagine there are no ... banks

[the wheels on the debt go round and round, so hang on tight!]
[anybody want some debt? I got too much.]

I wonder if anyone can dare to imagine the end of the banks.

Perhaps the governments will start considering it soon,
because it will be either the heads of the bankers, or their own
rolling in the streets.

Well, let's party like it's 1789. Guillotines , anyone?

Imagine no Banksters
Writer: Cos67, with help from John Lennon

Imagine there's no interest
It's easy if you rent
No bankers on us
Above us only tent
Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there's no politicians
It isn't hard to do
No one to kill or die for
And no derivatives too
Imagine all the people living life in solvency

Yoohoowooohoo may say
I'm a schemer, but I'm not a criminal
I hope some day you'll tweet us
And the world will camp as one

Imagine no repossessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or bonuses
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the land

Yooohoowoohooo may say
I'm a schemer, but I'm not the smartest one
I hope some day you'll join us
And the world will live as one

coming clean takes on a new meaning

[showers: not always used for washing, especially at Penn State]

Nowadays, crime pays. In the US and elsewhere,
bankers can do whatever they want, and live
the high life, with government protection.

Although, at some point, they'll need the
witness protection programme, even though
the only thing they might witness is their
attempted beheading by a mob of starving proles.

It's the same 'business as usual' chant that
sweeps immorality under the rug. In Pennsylvania,
that meant that boys who were looking for a
chance to escape poverty fell into the hands
of a pedophile coach at Penn State.

The powerful people in any environment will
make it so that crime pays, because nobody
dares to speak out against them.

As Sandusky has discovered, 'coming clean' does not mean
doing young boys in the showers.

checktitout: Dialy Mail
In 2002, graduate assistant coach Mike McQueary claims that he saw Sandusky raping a young boy in the team showers. He then told Mr Paterno, and Mr Paterno told Mr Curley.
This was not the first time that concerns about Sandusky had been brought to the attention of university officials- there was a complaint filed by the mother of another boy in 1998 that was investigated by campus police- but little seems to have happened.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2069497/Delusional-Jerry-Sandusky-reveals-shocking-new-details-Penn-State-sex-abuse-scandal.html#ixzz1fYtds5Wp