"You should be more conscious when you are sleeping"
-Isabella Hatkoff (June 2010) on the breaking a pinky promise by her dad who was a sleeping
"You can't solve a problem with the same kind of thinking that created it." -Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
"Give a dog a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a dog to fish, feed him for a lifetime."
- Walter the Farting Dog
"Wouldn't it make more sense to read the legislation before approve you it?It's like asking the architect to design the house after it is already built."
-Paris Hilton
Coming Soon
COMING SOON
STICKMAN VIDEO COMPETITION
We're looking for good voices. Email us if your interested:
David Buckner Couldn't Handle His Own On-Air Analysis Of Financial Crisis
Passing Out or Just Passing Gas?
New Financial Anthem : "I'm As Sick as Hell and I'm Passin' Out!"
Fox's Glenn Beck Interview Pushes Santelli's "Rant of the Year" into Second Place; Howard Beale's Network (it's fiction to begin with) moves to third place
The new and undisputed #1 video rant of the financial crisis (at least to date) belongs squarely to David Buckner who is about to become really famous!!!!!!
Howard Beale eat your heart out. You've been eclipsed! I never like to traffic in someone else's tragedy but this Fox Network clip frames the econolypse perfectly . Egged on by Glen Beck, "financial expert" David Buckner whips himself into a such a an apocalyptic frenzy he faints live on TV (seems to have recovered at least physically) and passes out in slo-mo.
Here is the orginal Howard Beale rant "I'm mad as hell..." that now drops to third place.
Here is the Rick Santelli "Rant of the Year" now bumped down to second place:
Don't miss Saturday Night Live this weekend. They'll be having a field day. Set your Tivo's now!!!!!
What Kind of Financial Quarterback Will Timmy Turn Out To Be? Future of the Country Can Be Deconstructed Through the Lens of NBC's Friday Night Lights
Is Geitner QB1, QB2, QB12 or the Next Doug (Hail Mary) Flutie?
John (not to be confused with Hank) Paulson-- known as JP to his friends-- made a fortune shorting subprime mortgages. I am still not buying Tim Geitner's stock but I have less conviction about shorting Geitner than JP did about shorting the subprime index. I love nothing better than to be proven wrong . Happens all the time. Makes my day. To have misjudged a person's talent, character or potential. To miss a golden opportunity that in hindsight was so obvious. It makes me smile. It complete's me while re-affirming my own limitations and fallibilities. Never thought I sold any stock too early or bought it to late. A while back I bought some Apple at its near-low of $13; it just felt too cheap. I couldn't help myself. There was no compelling reason, no proven ipod or iphone-- just ideas-- but I bought the damn Apple srtock figuring Steve Jobs was a smart guy, they had $12 a share in cash on the balance sheet and the brand had to be worth a buck a share. Sold it at $24 and still feel like a genius despite the stocks current price of $120 a share plus or minus.
So what's all this got to do with Tim Geitner whose stock had been beat up pretty badly but seems to be experiencing a rally of sorts lately? Like it or not the world's future is very much tied to Tim Geitner's performance. Obama isn't dumping Geitner. I can't get fully comfortable with him but can't explain why I am so uncomfortable every time I hear him speak. For those of you who watch NBC's hit series Friday Night Lights, the following analyisis may help make sense of the "Geitner Problem". He is the quarterback but we don't know what kind of quarterback he will turn out to be.
I have become unexpectedly obsessed with FNL and my own Lights went off in an episode where the shows three quarterbacks (the Past, the Present and the Future) all appeared int he same episode. The QB Past: Jason Street (known as QB1), the country's most promising football star gets permnanently paralyzed in the first episode making a game saving tackle. He is confined to a wheelchair, loses his stunning girlfriend Lyla Garrity to his best friend Tim Riggins. Next up is QB Present (Matt Saracen) known as QB2. Totally unprepared, no confidence, but with an arm like a rocket launcher, Matt steps up and becomes a temporary hero replacing Street, gets Coach Taylor's hot daughter Julie along the way as a door prize until (to be continued)
Senator Blutarski Where Are You When We Need You ?
This clip from our friends at "Funny or Die" contextualizes the wrath of American taxpayers at the financialy irrelant but symbolically insurmountable disgust at the TARPETS who didn't quite get while that people with no jobs, cell phones, twitter and youtube can destroy a brand in a nanasecond. Their rage wasn't because they weren't invited to party.
As newspaper all accross the country are failing at an alarming rate, it always irks me when journalists' online articles fail to embed youtube links or at least hyperlink the text. This may be an legal issue but it didn't stop you tube or apple from becoming the disruptive innovators. The WSJ ran an article by Michael Phillips on the youtube sensation-of-the-nanaosecond (embedded below) an ode to- Paul Krugman- by Jonathan Mann but what caught my attention is that Phillips failed to embed the video in the WSJ online edition or even link to youtube but rather the singing jester's own website. This is a world of instantaneous digital gratification. Don't make readers work. Each click loses half the traffic. Like the price of Newscorp stock. Use the tools or lose the fools.
March 26, 2009, 6:37 PM ET
Singing the Recession Blues
Michael M. Phillips reports on the financial crisis.
Internet balladeer Jonathan Mann aims to become the Woody Guthrie of the Great Recession.
Mann, an obscure 26-year-old songwriter from Berkeley, Calif., has begun to make his mark with a series of short, wry, folk-rock songs about the economic downturn, from “I’m Drunk Because The Economy Sucks” (written while he was indeed drunk, he says) to “Come On, Nouriel Roubini,” a paean to the famously pessimistic New York University economist. In “Black Monday,” he addresses himself to the Wall Street “fat cats:”
“Black Monday and our debt is unpaid Is it my debt or your debt? Who do we owe anyway? We missed all the symptoms now we’re in the disease Start looking south and start learning Chinese.”
Much as his hero, Guthrie, hit the road with the Okies in the 1930s, Mann came to protest music when his freelance music-and-video business dried up with the national economy. “Like anybody else, I didn’t give two thoughts about the economy,” he says. “I didn’t pay attention to the Treasury secretary before September or October. Since then, I can’t get enough of it. The more I learn, the more freaked out I am.”
So he decided to write, sing and publish a song a day on his Web site, starting Jan. 1. He shoots the videos in the house he shares with his blogger girlfriend. Many are unrelated to the recession.
But a number of his tunes deal with the financial crisis and the bureaucrats and economists trying to resolve it. His biggest hit so far, “Hey Paul Krugman,” is a plea for the Nobel laureate economist to turn his newspaper critiques into policy. A television station played Mann’s video for Krugman when he appeared on a news program.
The Krugman video has logged more than 130,000 hits on YouTube – not a smash but a start down the road to internet fame.
“Hey, Paul Krugman Why aren’t you in the administration? Is there some kind of politicking That I don’t understand? Timothy Geithner is like a little weasel. Wasn’t he in a position of power When all of this[expletive] went down in the first place? When I listen to you, things seem to make sense. When I listen to him, all I hear is, ‘Blah, blah, blah.’”
Mann’s girlfriend, Ivory King, says the song-a-day format is “a good new direction” for him. “The more current events commentary is where he’s going to shine,” says King.
One of Mann’s most recent gigs was performing musical video game reviews.
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Star Traxx Documents: First to the Nth Degree Defaults: WTF?
Good Luck Putting This Humpty-Dumpty Back Together
Wonder if Bill Gates knows what his trust is up to in the arcane world of credit default swaps? While the foundation administers vaccination for infectious diseases her may need a heavy dose of antibiotics for his credit default swap infection.
Also attached is an 80 page pdf of a credit default swap document. How many members of Congress has ever tried to read one of these documents. Good luck. Greek majors only.
Just read this press release from the ISDA for global outstanding derivative products. Not that you will have the time or inclination to read the entire document but want to get ill? Read the pdf file of the latest Bretton Woods wannabee conference on Derivatives Documents from the ISDA (international Swap Dealer Association )
Lehman's Fast But Chaotic Unwind in Chapter 11: 900,000 Derivative Contracts Cancelled (even in-the-money), Liquidated, Settled, Offset, Disaffirmed, Cross-Defaulted... Hike!!!!
In Most Cases When There's a Fire in the Theater Popcorn Sales Are Like to Decline: Incremental Losses from Fire Sale Estimated at $75 billion.
Here's a little gem of an article from the WSJ online that snuck by most people toward the waning days of 2008, the "Anus Bankus Horribilus", while most remaining Masters of the Universe were working on their tans in St. Barts or yodeling on the slopes; the early returns from of the post-Lehman derivatives Armageddon show that the firesale liquidation rather than an more orderly Chapter 11 proceeding cost S-O-O-L Lehman stakeholders a C-O-O-L $75 billion. Oh! Did I mention the Federal Reserve got back 100 cents on the dollar on their $63 billion in loans to the the defrocked firm.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009 at 12:13AM 
Howard Beale eat your heart out. You've been eclipsed! I never like to traffic in someone else's tragedy but this Fox Network clip frames the econolypse perfectly . Egged on by Glen Beck, "financial expert" David Buckner whips himself into a such a an apocalyptic frenzy he faints live on TV (seems to have recovered at least physically) and passes out in slo-mo.
