fuzzypuzzle

Banks Come Out of the Woodwork For a Piece of the Sweet Bailout Action

From the NY times.

At least 15 new banks have signed up for the government’s offer of a cash injection, in addition to the 9 that joined the program initially. The injections are a bid to revive the sector, which has suffered since lending has dried up and many loans have gone bad.

The Treasury Department plans to provide funds for 20 to 22 lenders in the current round of a $250 billion bank recapitalization program.

Nine of the largest banks, including JPMorgan Chase & Company and Citigroup, received the first $125 billion of capital infusions two weeks ago.

The additional 14 banks that have announced they will use the government funds includes: PNC Financial Services Group, $7.7 billion; the Capital One Financial Corporation, $3.55 billion; the Regions Financial Corporation, $3.5 billion; SunTrust Banks, $3.5 billion; Fifth Third Bancorp, $3.4 billion; KeyCorp, $2.5 billion; Comerica, $2.25 billion; the State Street Corporation, $2.0 billion; the Northern Trust Corporation, $1.5 billion; Huntington Bancshares, $1.4 billion; the First Horizon National Corporation, $866 million; the City National Corporation, $395 million; Valley National Bancorp, $330 million; Washington Federal, $200 million; and First Niagara Financial Group, $186 million.

I really cannot believe that this is the way it's going to go down (?!) Capital One is on this list. You know Capital One right? The company that is constantly bombarding you with multi-million dollar television commercials, advertising their product. The company that charges you 14% for the privilege of using their wonderful card. Yeah them. They're taking 3.5 billion of your tax dollars on top of that. You're cool with that, right? Because "whatevs", there's plenty to go around. This is America after all.

These Retarded Americans Will Be Voting, So You Probably Should Too

Google Phone, Don't Believe the Hype

David "the Dork" Pogue's review in the Times makes the Google phone sound like it kind of sucks (compared to the iPhone). Having been a T-Mobile customer, I KNOW the network sucks (in the U.S.).

Ron Paul Says No to the Bailout

For more details and links to contact your representative visit the Campaign For Liberty. UPDATE: Links to senators Clinton and Schumer are currently "busy and unable to connect" Democracy in action! (insert screeching eagle of Liberty SFX)

Quotes On the Bailout

"I'm not going to fire you; you can still be called Congress. But you don't have any power."

      — Jon Macey, Yale Law School professor and deputy dean, providing an allegory for Secretary Paulson's proposal

*

"As of now we [journalists] are, as a group, behaving just as we did the
last two times the administration sought to rush through a hastily
thought out, ill-conceived plan. Why in the world are we being so
gullible and naive?"

      — Former New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston

*

"What the proposal actually did...was explicitly rule out any oversight, plus grant immunity from future review... [I]f Paulson can't be honest about what he himself sent to Congress... there is no reason to trust him on anything related to his bailout plan."

      — Paul Krugman

*

"If you think the Bailout of All Bailouts...won't saddle American taxpayers with billions, if not trillions, of risky obligations, you don't know politics... Never before in the history of American capitalism has so much been asked of so many for...so few."

      — Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor

*

"We are talking about ten thousand dollars per household, and that money
cannot simply go into a black hole of bad debt."

      — John McCain

*

"Americans can no longer trust the economic information they are getting from this Administration... Secretary Paulson's market predictions have been consistently wrong in the last year."

      — Republican Senator Jim DeMint

*

"This is scare tactics to try to do something that's in the private but not the public interest. It's terrible."

      — Allan Meltzer, former economic adviser to President Reagan
and Carnegie Mellon professor of political economy, quoted in the New York Times

*

"Watching Washington rush to throw taxpayer money at Wall Street has been sobering and a little frightening."

      — Newt Gingrich

*

"Many economists argue that taxpayers ought to get more than avoidance of the apocalypse for their dollars: they ought to get an ownership stake in the companies on the receiving end."

      — New York Times front-page analysis by reporter Peter S. Goodman

*

"Seriously, is there anybody out there willing to write George Bush a blank check?"

      — Democratic Activist Christine Pelosi

I'm MAD AS HELL, and I'm Not Going To Take It Anymore!!

Obama '08.

So is the Government Going to Bail Me Out?

This will come as no surprise to anyone, but according to Lee Pickard (former director, SEC trading and markets division) the SEC allowed "special exemptions" (ie. insane and irresponsible deregulation) for the five big brokerage firms. Goldman, Merrill, Lehman, Bear Stearns, and Morgan Stanley. 

The events of the past year are not accidental, but rather the result of an SEC decision to allow these firms to legally violate existing net capital rules that, in the past 30 years, had limited broker dealers debt-to-net capital ratio to 12-to-1. Instead, the 2004 exemption -- given only to 5 firms -- allowed them to lever up 30 and even 40 to 1.

Large Hadron Colider Goes Online - World Not Sucked Into Black Hole ... Yet

 

After 14 years of labor, scientists at the CERN laboratory outside Geneva successfully activated the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest, most powerful particle collider and, at $8 billion, the most expensive scientific experiment to date.

At 4:28 a.m., Eastern time, the scientists announced that a beam of protons had completed its first circuit around the collider’s 17-mile-long racetrack, 300 feet underneath the Swiss-French border. They then sent the beam around several more times.

Eventually, the collider is expected to accelerate protons to energies of seven trillion electron volts and then smash them together, recreating conditions in the primordial fireball only a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Scientists hope the machine will be a sort of Hubble Space Telescope of inner space, allowing them to detect new subatomic particles and forces of nature.

Some worried about speculation that a black hole could emerge from the proton collisions, referring to it a doomsday machine, to the dismay of CERN physicists who can point to a variety of studies and reports that say that this fear is nothing but science fiction.

The only thing physicists agree on is that they do not know what will happen — what laws and particles will prevail — when the collisions reach the energies just after the Big Bang.

“That there are many theories means we don’t have a clue,” said Dr. Oddone. “That’s what makes it so exciting.”

Many physicists hope to materialize a hypothetical particle called the Higgs boson, which according to theory endows other particles with mass. They also hope to identify the nature of the invisible dark matter that makes up 25 percent of the universe and provides the scaffolding for galaxies. Some dream of revealing new dimensions of space-time.

But those discoveries are in the future. If the new collider were a car, then what physicists did Wednesday was turn on an engine that will now warm up for a couple of months before anyone drives it anywhere. The first meaningful collisions, at an energy of five trillion electron volts, will not happen until late fall.

Portal to Xibalba, Mythical Mayan Underworld Found in Mexico

 I think I saw this movie? It was called The Descent.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican archeologists have discovered a maze of stone temples in underground caves, some submerged in water and containing human bones, which ancient Mayans believed was a portal where dead souls entered the underworld.

Clad in scuba gear and edging through narrow tunnels, researchers discovered the stone ruins of eleven sacred temples and what could be the remains of human sacrifices at the site in the Yucatan Peninsula.

Archeologists say Mayans believed the underground complex of water-filled caves leading into dry chambers -- including an underground road stretching some 330 feet -- was the path to a mythical underworld, known as Xibalba.

According to an ancient Mayan scripture, the Popol Vuh, the route was filled with obstacles, including rivers filled with scorpions, blood and pus and houses shrouded in darkness or swarming with shrieking bats, Guillermo de Anda, one of the lead investigators at the site, said on Thursday.

The souls of the dead followed a mythical dog who could see at night, de Anda said.

Excavations over the past five months in the Yucatan caves revealed stone carvings and pottery left for the dead.

"They believed that this place was the entrance to Xibalba. That is why we have found the offerings there," de Anda said.

The Mayans built soaring pyramids and elaborate palaces in Central America and southern Mexico before mysteriously abandoning their cities around 900 A.D. More.

Beaked Monster Washes Up On Montauk Beach

GAWKER, the epitome of scientific veracity, reports that some type of beaked monster has washed ashore on a beach in Montauk. This thing is clearly one of the many nightmarish creatures prowling the dark undergoround labyrinths of the Montauk Project. Hey, I think I just invented a video game franchise!