It’s all about the flags.. 25 November 2008
Posted by marisacat in Inconvenient Voice of the Voter.trackback
President-elect Barack Obama on Monday in Chicago with three new members of his economic team, from left, Timothy F. Geithner, Christina D. Romer and Lawrence H. Summers. [Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press]
The Noon roll out today… More flags (8) than noms (4) on the stage with Ob and Knob. Should go well. But… Shouldn’t they all be wearing lapel flags? The health and safety of the nation is at risk, I think they should.
We are told to be reassured that the fellas are working together. hmm.
Other than that, a wag in the threads at Clusterfuck, I mean Clusterstock, asked if we know the status of the Citi corporate jet(s)… do we??? And why are they allowed to keep their management ??? A few weeks ago we were told they were fine, fine enough to be considered a buyer/protector of Wachovia (whew! Thank God, Wells Fargo won that round!)…
Numbers give me a headache, but it seems at a quick glance we gave, lent, whatever! Citi far more than it is worth. Nor, from what I read, did it rally today in any measurable way. Bob? Bob? Bob Rubin? Care to step out of the room and cease and desist? Might be the decent thing to do, but then he has friends on the inside. Inside the government, incoming we know and surely in the Paulson inner cabal. GM cut Tiger Woods loose as an endorser… maybe time for Bob to GO. As I am typing this, Pearlstein is on with Rose saying Rubin goaded Citi to race harder, faster to match in profits Goldman Sachs.
Following Pearlstein is Vernon Jordan, painting himself as having been all but a preacher man, all his long life. He reads the times. If it is not one scam (leveraging games) it is another (affinity to the collection plate). Probably has a new self serving book out… (you have to laugh!).
What a sick joke it all is. And the joke, like a giant on-coming sneeze we cannot escape, is on us. I am thinking of a rather sad elephant out at the SF Zoo when I was a child. Right, called Sneezy.
Marisacat 
Mike Whitney has a new piece up at Counterpunch.
LOL try not to be too too shocked at all the gambling in Casablanca.
Bailout costs
It’s not a bailout, it’s a looting.
Watch this space…
http://www.dryships.com/index.cfm?get=report
What is this? It’s the Baltic Dry Index, an obscure, little-discussed number that happens to be one of the world’s leading economic indicators. It measures supply and demand for commodities and how they are flowing through the world’s shipping systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Dry_Index
When the number gets lower, less commodities (iron ore, building materials, oil, grain) are on the high seas.
The index took a precipitous plunge during the month of October from 11,793 to an all-time low of 815, a loss of 93%.
Today, it is at 804, a new low.
Why is it so low? Mainly because the world commodities markets ar are beginning to feel the impact of the credit freeze (shippers with commodities arriving at ports cannot find buyers whose banks will issue them letters of credit, so they don’t get paid, so they have stopped shipping).
What does this mean? Hard to say, but if the number remains this low, it could mean growing shortages of goods and food in import-dependent markets, like the U.S. Some people think we’ll start seeing this in maybe 3 months.
I’m posting this because you aren’t likely to see this index discussed on the evening news, or monitored by most financial experts.
3. (Correction: the BDI does not measure supply and demand for commodities, so much as it measures supply and demand for ships of various types. However, this is linked to the supply/demand for commodities.)
A reader just popped me this… gah. Morgan Stanley may need more than Citi got.
Apparently Ob sill speak again on Wednesday.
Good Tuesday morning. A little bird asks us to tell you that the president-elect tomorrow (Thanksgiving getaway day) will hold his THIRD NEWS CONFERENCE ON THE ECONOMY IN THREE DAYS.
— from the Mike Allen email.
LOL hey media, too fucking late to complain!
Ben Smith:
Get a clue… questions are far less scripted and even bland follow up, less scripted. I did nto see today’s but at yesterday’s he even read from a list of reporters. Aside from having to read every lousy word in his commentary…. Can’t call it a speech.
Via The Page:
Busy bees, next will be craft classes.
meanwhile over at Democracy NOW!
Amy had Naomi K, Kuttner and Michael Hudson on…
#7 Well it’s just my opinion but…the way I see it, he don’t got enough flags. More flags and this little problem with the economy would be solved. And what is with “the office of the president elect” shit. Yeah, right. With no big ole seal of office, LOL, SURE we’re buying that crap.
#9 Like anyone can get off that email list. (God have I tried and I never signed up for it.) Spam central. LOL. Christ my parents lectured me less. 🙂
I wonder when the “O” team will figure out that are that big productions, huge crowds, fawning press, royal staging and screaming groupies, ain’t all needed to fix this little CF.
#4 Golly ya mean the 120 billion the Central Bank dumped into North Korea, Mexico, Brazil and Singapore didn’t solve the LOC problem. Well I’ll be damn. Who counda known. 😉
Ya know, we really are fucked here. LOL.
LOL
Christ my parents lectured me less.
Slightly less bad times he might be able to the run that “classroom, teacher” scheisse… but as things worsen, which sadly they will, it may reach a choking point.
Hard to say.
Greider has a good one up…. Not a very reassuring assessment of Geithner.
Had to laugh at the following that appeared in my Gmail box…
http://www.Obama-Bling.com ?
I’m going to do a little experiment. On Inauguration Day, I’m not going to turn on my TV set. I won’t need to. I theorize that the massive waves of History will zoom out from the Capitol at the speed of light, hitting my house (700 miles away) within mere seconds. I’m going to hook up a seismograph. And an orgasmograph, if I can borrow one.
#11 Got as far as…
“Let us stipulate that these are all honorable people, ” Giggle, Snort, Choke…Gasp… Oh, let us all “stipulate” that.
Geithner is one of the boys. He will take direction… More flags, more crowds, more selectively and well lit gravitis …hey, hey can’t you get that young girl to gasp and cry on cue..
Throwing more debt at this sucker won’t do shit. Moniterin (oversight) and dampimg/governing (regulation) would be a step in the right direction.
But that ain’t gonna happen. When Congress passed that 700 billion dollar clusterfuck they, once again, abdicated their oversight and fiduciary responsiblity to the executive branch. They turned it into another, one of many, political chewtoy. It won the Dems the Executive branch and Congress. Now they’re stuck.
Clicking those rudy slippers and hoping for change just ain’t gonna do it.
But more flags and a seal of office might distract the rubes for a bit. 😉
#12 “And an orgasmograph, if I can borrow one”
Check with Ioz. He may let you borrow his.
Whitney .. linked to uptop… says Geithner was at some point mentored by Kissinger.
Brennan his withdrawn his name for CIA First Read
Reporters and others were asking questions about what role Brennan played in the decision to “torture” high value targets.
NBC News admits they are printing money. Earlier they used trickery iwth numbers but now we are down to the nitty gritty. Print the stuff up and disperse it.
FOr some reason Brian Williams ended up calling the reports good news.
We are certifiably nuts.
LOL Remembering when… it was Argentina I think was printing it so fast they jsut printed one side.
certifiably nuts
Dat’s a fack!
I say we need a variety of flags to indicate current status of the great American ship of state.
More semiotics in the semaphore, please!
FYI for folks in different time zones – Anthony Bourdain’s episode tonight visits the Tex-Mex border – IMO, it’s a good ‘un.
test
Bit of semaphore modded out – sorry!
Gracias.
🙂
FOr some reason Brian Williams ended up calling the reports good news.
Moron.
Maddow: Why Won’t Obama Pursue War Crimes Investigations?
OMG, it’s Sodom on the bay!
RFLMAO!!!!
Something to champion…
Can I jsut emphasise “31 year old law”… becuase while Sully is happy over this (I found it at his site) he and others (Lessig for another) have this idea that gays in CA should follow the ballot route and not the CA SC route. AFAICT, it is the court route that heads all of this to the SCOTUS. Where it belongs.
Oh, I can’t resist, Mcat. It’s The Flags.
You’re piece is spot on. And the joke, like a giant on-coming sneeze we cannot escape, is on us.- Mcat
More like a barf, kiddo. Whether it’s that tiresome old head blowing chunks on his wind bag, then giving a plug {work it, baby!} to Bow Wower shnauzering up dismay, there def is a parting on the Demi-Left – [Surprise!-} not summoned by Black Moses.
Speaking of Flags, all about the Flags, I’ve waited to point this out—dunno if anyone spotted it before…
How often is there a Flag just natur’lly in the foreground at the gym?
Poseur.
Yeh, it’s from the recent Time piece but I figured a link to BigBagofNothing was more appropo.
Obama’s set designers have a penchant for this crap. Like the cliched Hole in the Shoe Pic,.
the Obama patriotic Jock Cockey pic is bad Muscular Riff , also very bad form to turn one’s back on the Duke and Duchess of Windsor Mid Air…
Aren’t we in Luv and all that…
What pose is next? FDR I suppose. ~ the wheelchair.
Whoops. Double clutched.
”What pose is next? FDR I suppose. ~ the wheelchair”. — BHHM
(and sorry you got snagged in Moderation)
Well Newsweek did him as FDR, the shot of him in the open car, looking bad, hat on head, cigarette in a holder. Of course a managed photograph, to shield the shriveled legs.
I found ti nothing short of creepy.. like the slobberation of a piece TNR did months ago on MO, with pictorials inside of her in the Dallas, November 22, 1963 pink pill box hat.
Geesh. Try not hoping so hard… is all I can say. The rot of the grave hangs heavy in the air.
gnu thred………………
LINK
……. 😯 …….