Guess who is going to help fund the Countrywide bailout?

Of course...taxpayers. The middle class. Hell, let's just round up all of the bad debt from the war, the fools that tried get rich quick schemes with subprime mortgages, Wall Street executive payouts and then just send the bill to regular folks. Oh sorry, it's already happening. Naturally options for writing off losses by individuals is slightly more limited, with limits of only a few thousand dollars per year.

A $270 million annual deduction would save Bank of America something more than $100 million a year in federal and state income taxes. The long-term tax-exempt rate, which is based on Treasury rates and other things so complicated that they make my teeth hurt. The rate changes each year, Willens says, but not by much. When I asked how it's calculated, Willens, a master of tax arcana, threw up his hands. (Metaphorically, of course.) "It's like the formula for Coca-Cola," he said, "no one outside the circle knows it" and it's so complicated that, "no one else wants to find out."

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Now it's Obama's turn to suck up to homeowners who gambled and lost

Seriously, any plan to bail these people out had better include a test to prove that they were hoodwinked by their mortgage broker. Otherwise, they gambled and they lost. Lots of people bought homes and did what it took to make their payments, and did make their payments, and others opted not to buy at all until the market settled down. We should not be bailing people out for being idiots, or for trying to make a fast buck, especially when it means the rest of us will now have to pay more for OUR next home as a result of this bail out. Where's the plan to reimburse the rest of us for not being idiots? Once again, always have a plan to help the rich, the poor, or the stupid. Never a plan to help the rest of us. Read the rest of this post...

7 of the 8 warmest years on record have occurred since 2001

But there is no global warming, and Noah had dinosaurs on the Ark 6,000 years ago. This is how empires die, and take the rest of the world down with them. Read the rest of this post...

More on those "threatening" Irani boats

Be afwaid, be vewy afwaid.

The small, boxlike objects dropped in the water by Iranian boats as they approached U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf on Sunday posed no threat to the American vessels, U.S. officials said yesterday, even as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff charged that the incident reflects Iran's new tactics of asymmetric warfare....

The Pentagon released the full 36-minute video of the encounter yesterday. Additional close-ups on the footage show the Iranian speedboats zipping around the U.S. warships provocatively. None of the boats appears to have more than a four-man crew, each wearing an orange lifesaving vest. None of the boats appears to have any mounted weapons.

The USS Port Royal, an Aegis cruiser, has a crew of about 360 and carries missile launchers, torpedoes and artillery. The USS Hopper, a guided-missile destroyer, has a crew of about 350 and is armed with anti-ship cruise missiles, torpedoes and artillery. The USS Ingraham, a frigate, has a crew of about 215 and carries torpedoes, artillery and two helicopters. The video shows a U.S. helicopter flying over the Iranian boats.

After the USS Cole was attacked in 2000, there is just cause to worry about the threat posed by innocent-looking speed boats. But that's all the Navy had to say, and we'd believe. They didn't have to make stuff up. People who are telling the truth don't lie. Read the rest of this post...

Blackwater "repairs" erased evidence after deadly Iraq shooting incident

Evidence? How cute. Reuters almost imagines that there was going to be a real investigation.

Blackwater Worldwide repaired and repainted its trucks immediately after a deadly September shooting in Baghdad, making it difficult to determine whether enemy gunfire provoked the attack, according to people familiar with the government's investigation of the incident.

Damage to the vehicles in the convoy has been held up by Blackwater as proof that its security guards were defending themselves against an insurgent ambush when they fired into a busy intersection, leaving 17 Iraqi civilians dead....

The repairs essentially destroyed evidence that Justice Department investigators hoped to examine in a criminal case that has drawn worldwide attention.

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$736 million new US embassy in Baghdad may be death trap

Oops. But you have to understand, apparently "the contractor had never built an embassy." Yeah, because, you know, for our most important new embassy, costing 3/4 of a billion dollars, why would we hire someone who has actually built embassies before? I mean, none of those contractors are friends with Dick Cheney, are they, so why would we hire them? Read the rest of this post...

Insurance companies - overcharge and underpay

Who could believe such a report? Shocking. They do it because they can easily get away with such behavior.

The Consumer Federation of America’s insurance director, J. Robert Hunter, said insurance companies have enjoyed robust profits and contained losses largely by “methodically overcharging consumers, cutting back on coverage, underpaying claims and getting taxpayers to pick up some of the tab for risks the insurers should cover.”

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Saturday Morning Open Thread

Good morning. The weekend at last...and what a week it was.

What do we really need to know? Read the rest of this post...

Another poll showing economy as leading issue

The Republicans are in such trouble if the economy continues to take over as the leading concern. Their only plan is to throw around even more tax cuts. Yes, they've worked so well for the broad majority of Americans, how could anyone not be thrilled at the prospect of more? Tax cuts for the wealthiest has only helped separate the richest from the rest at rates not seen since the Great Depression. It doesn't help the GOP that the other leading issue is Iraq, as in $1.5 trillion and counting, while the US economy falters.

Churchill summed it up nicely when he said "you can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else." We've repeatedly tried tax cuts for the richest and guess what? Read the rest of this post...

The other side of the Countrywide Financial purchase

Wall Street is already talking about more Countrywide bailouts now that the almost bankrupt lender has been rescued by Bank of America, a bank with its own share of problems, though still deep pockets. Some of the details that everyone should be aware of include the payout for failed CEO Angelo Mozilo of Countrywide. The cash payout of $88 million is a pretty health start to what he's going to receive. Imagine that. He trashed the company, trashed countless other lives and he's getting a big juicy payout for his efforts. Wow, is America an amazing country or what?

More on CEO worship and the payout after the jump.

How many more deals like this are out there? When Fleet was sold to Bank of America a few years ago, I remember being disgusted when the CEO - who admittedly had done a decent enough job with Fleet - wrote in to the contract, a guaranteed job for himself (5 years) plus all of the normal benefits. Naturally that went along with a pretty nice payout. I contrasted that to my sister who had to learn her group was fired (despite previous denials by Fleet) while watching TV. Classy. Looking back, that was nothing since at least Fleet was making money.

Fast forward to recent months, where the Citigroup CEO walks with tens of millions, Merrill Lynch pays their failure $161 million and other big names on Wall Street are on their way out, such as Bears Stearns CEO Alan Schwartz. (Maybe he didn't fail enough, so his payout might not be as large as others.) At Countrywide, a company at the heart of the subprime collapse in the US, Mozilo is bracing himself for a very treacherous retirement and I can only imagine how awful it's going to be.

Aside from nearly $88 million in cash, he'll have to make do with not one but two pensions, accelerated payment of stock options, free rides on the company jet and his country club bills being paid until 2011.

Poor fellow. How's he going to do it? I wonder how the 12,000 workers he fired are doing. And the previous homeowners? And heck, let's not forget about the rest of the country, since now we all have to live with the downside of the bubble and its economic consequences. There's something fundamentally wrong with our society these days when we worship garbage like this. These people are ruining a way of life for the US and yet somehow, we just keep propping them up instead of calling them out.

We keep hearing about how boards may change, but anyone who thinks that the old boy network is going to somehow bring change is crazy. It's not going to happen. Ever. Talk of involving more people/shareholders in this decisions is worthless as well. Not going to happen. If it does, it won't matter. If the Democrats are looking for ways to fill gaps in the budget, why doesn't someone get creative and tax both the companies and the individual CEOs on their excesses. When their pay deviates from a certain average employee-to-CEO balance, start taxing them and no loopholes. The higher the deviation, the higher the tax rate. I'm sure we have enough clever people in Congress who can come up with a plan.

Will it hurt? Of course. Will it disrupt business? Probably for a while and then someone is going to figure out how to find a balance. They'll cry, moan and groan and smear everyone but I just don't care any more. Enough is enough and any CEO who thinks they're going to find enough sympathetic Americans is crazy. "Boo hoo...I only made $88 million" might not be the catch phrase that's going to help. European CEOs live pretty comfortably yet they somehow manage to live on a fraction of what American CEOs make. Their companies are doing just fine as are employees. (Yes, this too is changing via the UK CEO worship that is more prevalent.) This comes back to the issue of business monitoring itself. It can't and it never has been able to monitor itself. Something radical needs to change and soon. When the greedy few prosper during such catastrophic performances, we're ready for change.

(h/t to reader C.V.) Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Just got back from seeing the movie "The Kite Runner." Wow. One of the best movies I have ever seen. It's about a boy growing up in Afghanistan right before the Soviet invasion, and then goes on from there. Just beautifully done, interesting culturally, and sad and hopeful and all the rest. I cannot say enough about this film. If you like art-house movies, run and see this film. Read the rest of this post...