Conspiracy or State's preparing for the worst?

[Rynquald]

Bet the US would have a problem with a Chinese "surveillance" ship near their waters.

I love this too:

"and to deploy a high-pressure water hose to deter the Chinese ships."

They really should start making those warships waterproof.

[reboog]

Stock market continues rally. No bank failures last Friday.

Depression is off.

[Medios]

[quote="reboog":18psvw5t]Stock market continues rally. No bank failures last Friday.

Depression is off.[/quote:18psvw5t]

Good we can finally raise taxes then.

[Medios]

Why does San Francisco have so many homosexuals, while Washington has so many politicians?






San Francisco got first choice.

[reboog]

In 1994, George Akerlof (nobel prize winner) and Paul Romer wrote a paper called "Looting: The Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit."

It documents how financial institutions go bankrupt and then loot the public purse, using complex methods and terms to hide it.

Translation: Bailouts need to stop.

[Tap]

I'm all for bailouts being stopped..just as soon as I get mine.. still here waiting holding the bag

[*juggleblood*]

The thing that stuns me the most is how bailed out institutions are paying corporate bonuses with bailout money with the government holding its hands up saying theres nothing it can do because these guys have contracts.

Of course theres something they can do. They can refuse the money!



[quote="reboog":28e5eeur]In 1994, George Akerlof (nobel prize winner) and Paul Romer wrote a paper called "Looting: The Economic Underworld of Bankruptcy for Profit."

It documents how financial institutions go bankrupt and then loot the public purse, using complex methods and terms to hide it.

Translation: Bailouts need to stop.[/quote:28e5eeur]

[reboog]

[quote="juggleblood":sp7rk9jg]The thing that stuns me the most is how bailed out institutions are paying corporate bonuses with bailout money with the government holding its hands up saying theres nothing it can do because these guys have contracts.

Of course theres something they can do. They can refuse the money![/quote:sp7rk9jg]

Congratulations, you are now smarter than all of the administration.

The crisis is very easy to handle... just not for politicians.

On a side note, Congress' grandstanding is pretty funny. Paulson specifically wanted no restrictions to be made on the funds, and they go and pay themselves bonuses (now that bonuses are capped, they are looking at raising their base salary), and we are somehow surprised by this?

Andrew Cuomo (NY attorney general) is actually making good headway into accusing the guys at AIG for fraudulent conveyance.

I should also mention that the failure of AIG will not be the end of civilization, as the guys in the White House and AIG want you to believe.

[reboog]

Price controls may be making a comeback in certain states.

It looks like rent control has already passed the NY assembly. They're trying to get rent control in SF as well.

Super edit: Price controls may be coming back to all states except Vermont.

[Tap]

Speaking of people in the dark....



Banned hyperlinks could cost you $11,000 a day

Asher Moses
The Age
Tuesday, March 17, 2009

The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks.

Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked document containing Denmark’s list of banned websites.

The move by the Australian Communications and Media Authority comes after it threatened the host of online broadband discussion forum Whirlpool last week with a $11,000-a-day fine over a link published in its forum to another page blacklisted by ACMA - an anti-abortion website.

ACMA’s blacklist does not have a significant impact on web browsing by Australians today but sites contained on it will be blocked for everyone if the Federal Government implements its mandatory internet filtering censorship scheme.

Banned hyperlinks could cost you $11,000 a day. But even without the mandatory censorship scheme, as is evident in the Whirlpool case, ACMA can force sites hosted in Australia to remove “prohibited” pages and even links to prohibited pages.

Online civil liberties campaigners have seized on the move by ACMA as evidence of how casually the regulator adds to its list of blacklisted sites. It also confirmed fears that the scope of the Government’s censorship plan could easily be expanded to encompass sites that are not illegal.

“The first rule of censorship is that you cannot talk about censorship,” Wikileaks said on its website in response to the ACMA ban.

The site has also published Thailand’s internet censorship list and noted that, in both the Thai and Danish cases, the scope of the blacklist had been rapidly expanded from child porn to other material including political discussions.

Already, a significant portion of the 1370-site Australian blacklist - 506 sites - would be classified R18+ and X18+, which are legal to view but would be blocked for everyone under the proposal. The Government has said it was considering expanding the blacklist to 10,000 sites and beyond.

Electronic Frontiers Australia said the leak of the Danish blacklist and ACMA’s subsequent attempts to block people from viewing it showed how easy it would be for ACMA’s own blacklist - which is secret - to be leaked onto the web once it is handed to ISPs for filtering.

“We note that, not only do these incidents show that the ACMA censors are more than willing to interpret their broad guidelines to include a discussion forum and document repository, it is demonstrably inevitable that the Government’s own list is bound to be exposed itself at some point in the future,” EFA said.
“The Government would serve the country well by sparing themselves, and us, this embarrassment.”

Last week, Reporters Without Borders, in its regular report on enemies of internet freedom, placed Australia on its “watch list” of countries imposing anti-democratic internet restrictions that could open the way for abuses of power and control of information.

The main issue raised was the Government’s proposed internet censorship regime.

“This report demolished the Communications Minister’s contention that Australia is just following other comparable democracies,” Greens communications spokesman Senator Scott Ludlam said.

“We are not. The Government is embarking on a deeply unpopular and troubling experiment to fine-tune its ability to censor the internet.

“I agree with Reporters Without Borders. If you consider this kind of net censorship in the context of Australia’s anti-terror laws, it paints a disturbing picture indeed.”

EFA said the Government’s “spin is starting to wear thin” and it could no longer be denied that the ACMA blacklist targets a huge range of material that is legal and even uncontroversial.

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, has repeatedly claimed his proposed mandatory filters would target only “illegal” content - predominantly child pornography.

“As time goes on, pressure will only mount on the Government to expand the list, while money and effort are poured into an enormous black box that will neither help kids nor stem the flow of illegal material,” EFA said.

“If the minister truly believes that children are seeking out, or being bombarded with, child pornography, then there’s a dearth of both common sense and proper research in the ministerial suites.”

Already, the head of the Australian Christian Lobby, Jim Wallace, has said he hopes the sex industry will go broke as a result of the censorship scheme.

Independent Senator Nick Xenophon previous expressed his desire to have online gambling sites added to the blacklist but has since withdrawn his support for the scheme, saying it was dangerous and could be “counter-productive”.

The Greens and Opposition also oppose the scheme, meaning any legislation to implement it will be blocked.

The Opposition has obtained legal advice that “legislation of some sort will almost certainly be required”, but others have said it may be possible to implement the scheme without legislation.

Speaking at a telecommunications conference last week, Senator Conroy urged Australians to have faith in MPs to pass the right legislation.

Despite previously saying his scheme would be expanded to block “refused classification” content that includes sites depicting drug use, sex, crime, cruelty and violence, he said opponents of his plan were spreading “conspiracy theories”.

The Government’s internet censorship trials are due to begin shortly but critics have said they may not provide much useful data on the real-world implications because none of the major ISPs were chosen to take part.

[*juggleblood*]

I'd really like to know what leverage these jokers at AIG have that they can get away with collecting bonuses from bailout money, even those who left the company. These were supposedly retention bonuses.

The administration knew this would be a stink bomb. This was a known issue. The bonuses were public information. So by what logic does the administration decide to play dumb and let the bonus checks be written?

Even moreso, by what logic is AIG 'too important to fail'. They were the biggest part of the financial problem? They took a bunch of turds, wrapped them in gold wrappers and called them gold brick? er bundled high risk loans, relabeling them as triple a credit or something? By what logic
is this institution crucial to the recovery of the economy?

[reboog]

Not only is the institution important to the success of the economy, the people who drove it into the ground are fundamental as well. Without these guys, the world would end!!!!

[Weasel]

Unless AIG declare bankruptcy, they [i:1cnkmjtp]have[/i:1cnkmjtp] to pay many of these bonuses. The retention bonuses, as I understand it, are being paid out to those who have now [i:1cnkmjtp]completed[/i:1cnkmjtp] the contract term - for example: a year ago they were offered $ if they agreed to stay for another 12 months. They have now done that and are being given the bonuses that were agreed to contractually, and they are moving on, as per the contract.

AIG is still bound legally to pay, and much of this stuff in the news is just politicians grandstanding for votes and telling half-truths, along with the media (what a surprise), and putting the blame on AIG instead of their own corrupt and failed policies. Not that AIG is free of blame, but this is just ridiculous.

I don't agree with public money being used this way, but the govt knew about this beforehand. Trying to stop them will only result in those employees suing AIG, which will cost AIG twice as much, which will come out of taxpayers pockets.

This was all in place before Liddy was there, so media and politicians going bananas at him just proves this is nothing but grandstanding.

As I said, the only legal way out of paying would be to declare bankruptcy, wind everything up, and still these employees would get some if not all of their bonuses, up to whatever is left in the AIG coffers.

Again, I don't like this any more than anyone else here, but I'm not letting these a55hat politicians and media pull the wool over my eyes once again. In fact it was the politicians who voted for these bailouts, so that's where the blame lies, if you want to blame someone.

[reboog]

Actually, they're trying to get the money back by finding AIG guilty of fraudulent conveyance. In short, because the company is bankrupt, those bonus contracts are not worth the paper they're written on.

Of course, all this could've been avoided in the first place had we not bailed out AIG. Even despite that, after the bailout, the government holds ~80% of the company. It could choose to exercise its will, but it won't, because that would be... NATIONALIZATION (oh my very noes.)

I admit that I was unsure what to think of the AIG bailout when it first occurred. But now it is clear that continuing to pour money there is the exact opposite of what needs to happen. And how the politicians are allowing this, in opposition to the public outrage, is unthinkable. How blind/corrupt is this administration?

[Weasel]

[quote="reboog":v8usw6c6]Actually, they're trying to get the money back by finding AIG guilty of fraudulent conveyance. In short, because the company is bankrupt, those bonus contracts are not worth the paper they're written on.

Of course, all this could've been avoided in the first place had we not bailed out AIG. Even despite that, after the bailout, the government holds ~80% of the company. It could choose to exercise its will, but it won't, because that would be... NATIONALIZATION (oh my very noes.)

I admit that I was unsure what to think of the AIG bailout when it first occurred. But now it is clear that continuing to pour money there is the exact opposite of what needs to happen. And how the politicians are allowing this, in opposition to the public outrage, is unthinkable. How blind/corrupt is this administration?[/quote:v8usw6c6]

Yeah I realize what the govt are trying to do, but AIG have not declared bankruptcy, and until they do, they are NOT legally bankrupt, even if their balance sheet says they are technically. Therefore they cannot be found guilty of fraudulent conveyance (at least with the contractual retaining bonuses anyway) in the way you outlined the govt is trying to do.

The govt know this very well - this whole thing is just a big political show. Hauling Liddy in for a grilling in pointless, this is all to get the public on the govt side and distract the public from the outrage at the bailouts the govt are spooning out. The MSM media are totally in bed with the govt on this (yet again) - they have become little more than a propaganda mouthpiece for the govt now, it's just sickening. Unfortunately most of the population is swallowing this cr@p hook line and sinker.

Again, I'm not saying these people deserve this money, but that's not the point. They have a contractual rights to it, as much as that sucks.

The govt may force through some law to somehow get money off these AIG employees, but those people WILL get it back (and then some) in court, any lawyer can predict that one, but of course that will be old news by then and you'll never hear about it, which is exactly how the govt will try to play it. Get the public on their side, and direct the outrage somewhere else.

More likely the govt will try to tack the total amount paid in bonuses onto whatever AIG already owes the govt, that way on paper the bonuses were paid by AIG and not us (even though effectively that's a load of cr@p), because trying to recoup it from the employees is only going to cost us a lot more in the long run.

Either way, they've created a very convenient distraction from the increasing public dissatisfaction at what the govt is doing.

Have you heard about the increasing 'tea party' protests that have been going on around the US against the govt recently? Probably not, even though some of them have had 15,000+ attendances - the MSM are for the most part not covering it. They turned up to one protest apparently, focused on the lone pro-Obama counter-protester there, interviewed that person, and left. Most of the country has no idea what is being done to them. You think the patriot act was an infringement - LOL you ain't seen nothing yet.