We got in to Stuart on Jan. 1 watched the new “True Grit” with Jeff Bridges on Netflicks and collapsed. New Year’s Eve had run late and we woke up very early–5 A.M.–to get a car to the Rowayton train station.
Jeff Bridges as Rooster Coburn
How do college kids get their parents to torture themselves like this for college kid schedules? Let’s blame it on the misguided values of the 1% . In our hedge fund capital of Fairfield County as well as the Bay Area’s Marin County, parts of Silicon Valley, and certainly LA, coddling kids is a way of showing how well off you are, although I suspect rich Angelos may use servants. Not sure about Dallas. Maybe Texans just say “shove it”. Rick Perry says self reliance is what make Texas successful. (The Texas Ranger in “True Grit” says he was glad to drink muddy water from a horse print in the dirt to stay alive)
This is a long way of saying that when the garbage trucks clanked outside our condo at 8 A.M. I wasn’t sure if Monday was a holiday or work day. Best way to find out is to tune in CNBC. There was no market chatter so it must be a holiday. CNBC was indeed rerunning “American Greed”, one of the long documentaries it puts up when there is no market to goose. “Greed” seemed like a fit for the start of 2012 and others must have had it on their mind too. Lynn Parramore’s column on the Huffington Post was: “Vampire Squid Watch: Four Scary Economic Trends for 2012″. The ” global financial monster is poised to steal yet more wealth and resources from the public in the coming year” she forecasts. We all remember the ” blood sucking vampire squid” story about Goldman Sachs in Rolling Stone on April 5 2009 by writer Matt Taibbi.It seems like the squid has a long run rate. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lynn-parramore/vampire-squid-watch-4-sca_b_1179339.html?ref=business). 
A related blog in the Fiscal Times follows up on the Fed’s swap program of lending dollars short term to Europe’s Central Bank as a back door bailout for Europe. Do U.S. taxpayers have any idea? Of course not says the writer. The Fed never consults the public. It has to be sued to divulge that it lent $7.7 trillion–yes that’s 12 zeros trillion –to private U.S. and European banks, even though Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke was on a campaign to improve the Fed’s public image. Ron Paul, running second to Mitt Romney in Iowa has been banging against the backdoor bailout as well. He’s been joined by a former vice chairman of the Dallas Fed Gerald O’Driscoll, who calls the swaps risky, which in turn emboldens Paul to once again call for abolishing the Fed.
Ben Explains
We’ll know the Iowa results Tuesday night. No one expects the Fed to be abolished. But it might be nice to make it account to the public in full after it extends public money under the rubric of short term emergency credit. That deserves a lot more open discussion. On the other hand, I kinda feel sorry for the John Gotti family and their tight little neighborhood of Ozone Park, Queens. Everytime the stock market closes and CNBC runs “American Greed” as a filler, the Goitti’s are treated just like the Wall Street criminals on the show and you get a lot of close-ups of the Ozone Park neighbors.
Dapper Don John
Gotti did kill a lot of mobsters and an occasional uncooperative union leader but he never did $49 trillion in global economic damage like the banks and Washington’s Fannie and Freddie did. Worse, Gotti went to and died in jail. As the Occupy folks like to point out: Not one banker from the subprime scandal even got cuffed. Wall Street immunity is heating up the political conversation today, but you won’t find it as a CNBC special. If you do, you might see values of the Fairfield County 1% changing too.
