My last post referred to a story that suggested that many — perhaps even the majority — of mortgages were invalid due to failing to properly transfer ownership during securitization. However, Calculated Risk has a guest post up that calls the story “sensationalist swill” and gives much more context than originally provided. As I noted previously, I am very naive about this topic, so...

Just in the historian geek category. Today and tomorrow, the 28th and 29th, mark the 80th anniversary of the Great Crash. While things are certainly tight for a lot of us, perhaps a time for reflection on how much worse it was back then.

I predict that the “public option” in healthcare reform will be a completely useless Rube Goldberg concoction in order to please and displease everyone simultaneously. However no one on the left or right should fear it because it will never come into existence even if it written and passed into law. The public plan that will emerge from the joint conference committee between representatives of the U.S....

Democrats and the Administration are test-flying all sorts of behind the scenes tax increases to pay for healthcare reforms. Or else they claim that proposed Medicare savings will pay for expanding coverage to uninsured people and increasing patient rights on existing health insurance policies. After 30 years of bipartisan tax cuts and bipartisan spending increases, I don’t take either party seriously with...

Naked Capitalism has a very interesting post up about the consequences of lazy mortgage securitization. A Federal judge has thrown out a mortgage that was challenged during a foreclosure hearing. Yes, he didn’t just throw out the foreclosure, but the mortgage itself, giving the owner the house free and clear. While this is the first case of that happening, more and more judges are throwing out foreclosures...

Are the nation’s fiscal, economic, military, political and social challenges setting us up for a Military Coup? Will the U.S. Military Industrial Complex, acting through our Joint Chiefs of Staff or some other high-level corps of U.S. Military officers, and supported by a variety of angry business leaders and extreme conservatives be so resentful of any changes to our national priorities that they would encourage...

The public option is dead. Long live the public option. That’s the situation now prevailing on a key sticking point in health care reform. GOPers hate the public option because they say it would symbolize the Obama administration’s encroachment into the private sector and be a huge step into socialized medicine. Democrats are split, with some progressives nearly making support of the public option...

Goldman Sachs bonus pool estimated at $725,000 per employee This week, business reporters told us that Goldman Sachs 2009 third quarter profits swelled, compared with 2008, to an estimated $3.19 billion. The bonus pool stands at $16.7 billion, and, by the end of the year, it could hit $23 billion, according to reports. However, Goldman reported first quarter profits (net earnings) of $1.81 billion; second quarter,...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly told the press that she has the votes for a robust public option — but a report in The Politico contends she has now run into trouble: Speaker Nancy Pelosi counted votes Thursday night and determined she could not pass a “robust public option” — the most aggressive of the three forms of a public option House Democrats have been considering as part of a national...

The newest critique against the Federal Government limiting executive salaries in companies that it has essentially saved from liquidation or in which it holds a major ownership interest, is that it will cause a brain drain of the best people to other companies. I have one response to such a meritless argument: Bullshit. Some of our private sector oligarchs are so narcissistic, greedy and arrogant that they...

A movement is stirring both here and in Britain to roll back commercial banks to the post-Depression era, when they were barred from gambling on markets with depositors’ money by the Glass-Steagall Act. Today Paul Volcker, the former Fed chairman who heads the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board but is overshadowed by ex-Wall Streeters Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers, goes public with...

You wonder what bet the odds makers in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s home state of Nevada are placing on his re-election, given his sagging poll numbers and unflattering political news such as this: Thirteen Democrats joined all 40 Republicans to block a permanent repeal of Medicare’s payment formula for doctors, with lawmakers concluding the legislation’s $247 billion 10-year price...

I don’t have anything to add to Yves Smith’s comment about the “pay czar” decision to cut executive pay for a few select companies. It is merely a distraction from real reform.

The silly fabricated spat between the Obama Administration and FOX News is just that. For many years, most Americans have understood that Fox was the Republican mouthpiece. The Democrats need to wrestle complete control over NBC, CBS or ABC news and move on with their own dedicated mouthpiece. Some may argue that either MSNBC or PBS is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the DNC, but with each having about 1 or...

The House Judiciary Committee Wednesday voted 20-9 to remove federal antitrust exemptions the health insurance industry has enjoyed since the 1940s. Majority leader Harry Reid said a companion bill will be voted on soon in the Senate. Finally the Democrats in Congress have showed some spunk. If the final bill is signed by President Barack Obama, the nation’s insurers would be liable for certain antitrust...

You may have heard that the major Wall Street firms are going to see record bonuses this year but what you might not have realized is that they are doing it for the good of the whole. Read this and you’ll learn how. They say the key to happiness in life is to learn a new thing every day. Hopefully this will satisfy that requirement for today if something else doesn’t and lead you to be happy.

House Democrats reportedly continue to fine-tune the pricetag.

I’m pretty sick and tired of seeing and hearing President Obama every day. His words become more meaningless with each passing week. I already agree with half of his policies and the other half I’m willing to judge later after they are tested in the real world. I am even willing to give him an another award certifying that he is the most inspiring speaker of the 21st Century despite having 90 years left...

Lovely:

This, folks, is why Thomas Franks called them the wrecking crew:

In my mind, there are four primary catalysts behind the causes of our financial woes. The first is governmental monetary and tax policy that provides way too much liquidity and encourages ever rising asset values. The second are the major banks that took advantage of deregulation (particularly Glass-Steagall) to create monstrous speculative enterprises backed by government supported deposits (Yves Smith has...

For critics claiming we cannot afford health care reform for our own people in which 45,000 uninsured die annually — a report I admit may be high — consider these apples. It costs about $400 a gallon to deliver fuel to our troops in Afghanistan. The Pentagon reports it costs about $1 billion for ever 1,000 troops in that land-locked nation which has an infrastructure worse than the poorest barrio...

I was a big fan of Obama and felt he would be very good for the country, but I am one of the few supporters that hasn’t been surprised at his lack of reforms thus far. It was obvious he was going to defend the status quo and attempt to address the country’s problems through the existing political lenses. I have always thought that this would fail and at that point his “real presidency”...

If you drive a car in virtually any city or town in this country you probably think the parking ticket situation couldn’t be worse. Silly you. It’s actually much worse in other parts of the world, and nowhere worse than in the U.K. There are so many god-awful parking tales coming out of the U.K. these days they appear in its media almost as often as local weather reports. Perhaps the worst abuses...

In many parts of India you can see people enjoying bhang/hashish (or cannabis/marijuana) by the roadside without attracting a look of surprise or disapproval. It is only when the Western world began to raise hue and cry that people in the urban areas began to smoke/drink it discreetly at the occasional activation of the dormant laws. In nearly 80 per cent of India it is still openly consumed (generally in...