Upon reaching the swamp near Lake Lerna, where the Hydra dwelt, Heracles covered his mouth and nose with a cloth to protect himself from the poisonous fumes. He fired flaming arrows into its lair, the spring of Amymone, a deep cave that it only came out of to terrorize neighboring villages.[4] He then confronted it, wielding a harvesting sickle (according to some early vase-paintings) or a sword. Ruck and Staples (1994: 170) have pointed out that the chthonic creature's reaction was botanical: upon cutting off each of its heads he found that two grew back, an expression of the hopelessness of such a struggle for any but the hero, Heracles. The weakness of the Hydra was that only one of its heads was immortal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lernaean_Hydra

You see, it is the poisonous fumes that Heracles must protect himself from before taking on the monstrous Hydra for his second of twelve labors.

Different traditions demonstrate different descriptions of this legend. But we are to know that the monster had many heads, scores of heads...even a hundred heads. And Heracles would cut off one head and two would grow back. In the myth of the second labor, as wiki indicates here, he needed to find the one head. Cut off the magic head, the immortal head, the primary head and the monster would die.

Like Aesop's Fables, these myths are referred to oft times in the ancient scripts to prove some point or other. There is a moral to the story. In 'real life' one wonders whether there is any moral at all to the chaotic events that surround us every day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4INoYmVvgGs

But there are patterns to be found, sometimes. In the previous half of this sermon I discussed some recent history including the perceived sins of Delay and Abramoff and John Ensign. The sins might all be dismissed as misdemeanors compared to what Madoff managed to in a couple of decades.

Abramoff did steal that 88 million from the Indian tribes. That is more than just a tidy sum. But he ended up being the fall guy for scores of repubs who put millions upon millions into their campaign coffers as a result of the bribery and extortion run through his office.

Delay was involved in maybe a million dollars worth of hijinks between his junkets and his intrafamilial employment agency.

And Ensign is just another sick CStreet joke.  Bribery in the amount of a hundred grand or so?  Some bj's on the side. Initially the repubs would forgive him and even welcome Vitter back with applause because it appeared that there was no homosexuality involved; no real sins against God & Country so to speak.

Delay got the legislation through. He got the richest rich their trillion dollar plus tax rebates. Bridges were built in districts represented by those who played ball.

Capitalists were promised monies from the public coffers in exchange for some tithing to the powers that be like Abramoff and Delay and Ensign.

This type of tithing was not much different from the tithing that would have been considered normal during wars fought hundreds and thousands of years ago. Pillaging (raping of course did not turn any gold over to marauders, but the act helped to soothe the savage beasts as it were) provided the pay to the professional soldier needed for him to keep on keeping on. And there was organization put in place for what would seem to be chaotic theft of local residents,  so that Alexander and Caesar and Charlemagne made out all right.

There is a war going on out there on the streets everyday. Oh we are civilized as far as this type of warfare compared to the olden days. The banks come and take the homes away, seemingly one at a time until millions are homeless and rootless just as the villagers found themselves in times past. But it is a war we are talking about, not croquet.  Those who would seek to find a piece of the pie without the proper contacts end up in a prison system that is surely one of the greatest marvels of our times.

Madoff is of interest here, because payments have to be made to the correct people in order to swindle 60 billion dollars. For some individual or corporation to make off with this kind of money, there has to be a system put in place.

Maybe that is why I kind of admire Madoff. I mean Halliburton and its illegitimate children needed a former Secretary of Defense and former WH Chief of Staff to be fortuitously elected Vice President of the United States per an illegal decision of the United States Supreme Court to make off with a couple hundred billion dollars in illegal wars.

Madoff did not have a former official of such high rank to appoint as titular head of his enterprises. Two thousand years ago a man like Madoff would have been worshipped as a god within a few years of his execution.

March 10 (Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc., the most profitable securities firm in Wall Street history, has made $55.7 million from the sale of $36.4 billion of Build America Bonds, about a third of the fees it earned from its municipal business, it said in response to queries from Iowa Senator Charles Grassley.

The effort to underwrite the federally subsidized municipal bonds is "highly competitive" with "over 10 major firms" vying for the business, Goldman Chairman Lloyd Blankfein wrote in a letter dated March 1 to the top Republican on the U.S. Senate Finance Committee. Grassley said in a letter to Blankfein last month that he is "concerned that American taxpayers are subsidizing larger underwriting fees for Wall Street investment banks."

Congress created the Build America Bond program last year as part of the $862 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in an effort to revive the $2.8 trillion municipal bond market. The U.S. Treasury pays 35 percent of the interest cost if states and local governments sell the taxable securities for their capital projects instead of tax-exempt debt.  http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-10/goldman-sachs-got-55-7-million-from-build-america-update1-.html

We bail out the UNBREAKABLES and then pay them this kind of money to procure loans to fund the monies we had to pay them in the bailout. It looks like the previous sentence is a typo but think about it.

Who thinks this shite up, anyway? And don't you find it quaint that Grassley might be 'concerned' about this. Grassley in on the SENATE FINANCE COMMITTEE FOR CHRISSAKES. Grassley wrote the frickin law.

So we move on.

Just by way of contrast:

Marcelas Owens, an 11-year-old from Seattle, headlined a press conference with Senate Democratic leadership on Thursday, telling a packed room of reporters that he wanted the president and Congress to come together and pass health insurance reform.

"I am here because of my mom," said Owens. "My mom was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension in 2006. She missed so much work she lost her job. And when my mom lost her job, she lost her health care. And losing her health care ended up costing her her life."

He continued, "I don't want any other kids to go through the pain that our family has gone through. My grandma and I want Barack Obama and Congress and everybody to come together and to help get the health care bill passed."   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/11/marcelas-owens-11-year-ol_n_495207.html

If you look real carefully, if you seek the right sites, there is an answer to the plea of this 11-year-old:

On the March 12 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy reported on a Newsweek column by "very brilliant" veterinarian Karen Oberthaler entitled "Treat People Like Dogs" which suggested that the health care system should resemble the veterinary one. Doocy said the idea "makes a lot of sense," because "we're on the hook" for our pet's medical costs. Doocy said: "[T]here's only 3 percent of Americans who have pet insurance and so we're on the hook for the charges. So, if Americans were on the hook for all the tests and stuff, it would be a lot different." Citing Oberthaler's column, Doocy added: "if you've got a golden retriever...and you know that the dog has got cancer and it's -- you know, there really is no getting any better, would you order a bunch of tests that are going to be costly and right out of your pocket because chances are you don't have the insurance...it also has to do with, you know,  putting the dog through pain at the end of the road."  http://mediamatters.org/research/201003120033

Remember the discussions held in the WH where Congressional Leaders met with our President to discuss health care reform? Remember our friend repub Eric Cantor from Virginia?  He claimed that we could all just read emails about personal health problems and it would mean nothing.

LIMBAUGH: You know I'm getting so many people -- this Louise Slaughter comment on the dentures? I'm getting so many people -- this is big, I mean, that gets a one-time mention for a laugh, but there are people out there that think this is huge because it's so stupid. I mean, for example, well, what's wrong with using a dead person's teeth? Aren't the Democrats big into recycling? Save the planet? And so what? So if you don't have any teeth, so what? What's applesauce for? Isn't that why they make applesauce?

Beck sidekick uses baby voice to mock letters Obama receives. On Beck's February 25 radio show, co-host Steve "Stu" Burguiere stated that Obama "gets 10 letters, Glenn, every night." Co-host Pat Gray asked, "From 2-year-old girls?" Then, one of the co-hosts started speaking in a baby's voice: "I have no health care, Mr. Pwesident, and I have no feet and no tonsils because doctors took 'em out."

Conservative blogger Pamela Geller linked to an audio clip of the segment, which she wrote was "[d]a best! the funniest thang evuh!" http://mediamatters.org/research/201003120033

NYT presented a neat graphic to review from 18 months or so ago taking a look at the loss of capitalization in 29 'financial services firms.'  It attempts to give the plebian some grasp of what took place between Oct 2007 and September 2008.  

In an article headlined "Banks Are Likely to Hold Tight to Bailout Money," the New York Times reported Friday that Citigroup's $13.2 billion in charges and Merrill Lynch's $5.15 billion in write-downs brought the total losses of the major banks since the credit crisis erupted in mid-2007 to $323 billion, surpassing the $305 billion taken in from early 2004 to mid-2007 by Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Washington Mutual and Wachovia.

"For every dollar the banks earned during the industry's most prosperous years," the Times noted, "they have now wiped out $1.06."   http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct2008/comm-o18.shtml

You know how I see all this? There is one component missing. A shareholder is out his bucks and more.

But members of management paid themselves the entire period. They pay nothing back to anyone. They are free and clear. Oh some lost in bonuses given them by way of stock certificates. But as soon as the Feds bailed them out, the stock was worth something again.

Now the corporation was originally set up so that investors could be off the hook for everything EXCEPT WHAT THEY INVESTED. That was the poker game.  Table stakes.

To give some idea of sums involved, John Thain, the head of Merrill Lynch and, according to the Associated Press, the best-paid CEO, took in $83 million in 2007. His bank averted collapse last month by agreeing to be bought by Bank of America. Merrill's write-downs from mid-2007 through the third quarter of 2008 total close to $55 billion, or 254 percent of the bank's profits from 2004 through the first half of 2007.

Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs (formerly headed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson), received $68 million in 2007.

John Mack, the head of Morgan Stanley, received $41.8 million in compensation last year, and his 2007 holdings in Morgan Stanley stock were worth $220 million. Morgan Stanley has written off about $15 billion in bad assets, equal to 70 percent of its boom-time profits.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon's total 2008 compensation, according to Forbes magazine, is $27,797,000. His bank has written off some $23 billion over the past 20 months.

At the height of the profit boom, in December of 2006, Wall Street awarded Christmas bonuses totaling more than $100 billion. This sum was more than twice the annual budget of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and nearly twice the US Department of Education budget. It was five times what Washington spent on foreign aid to the entire world, and twice the budget of the City of New York, which employed 250,000 people.  http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct2008/comm-o18.shtml

These are xmas bonuses people. This is not salary. This is not even percentage payola. These are gifts under Santa's Tree.

And these represented one time bonuses in one year. You can see how Madoff's schemes were one thing and certainly can be tied to a 'system' gone awry.

These xmas bonuses WERE THE FRICKIN SYSTEM. See?

If just the bonuses had been withheld, the 383 billion in losses noted above for 2008 would have been easily covered. Just go back five or six years.

And if something were done to prevent this corporate and tax payer looting, some would say that we would lose the best and the brightest.

Oh yeah? WHERE IN THE HELL ARE THEY GOING TO GO?

To Costa Rica with rush?

From the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA): Delinquencies Continue to Climb, Foreclosures Flat in Latest MBA National Delinquency Survey

The delinquency rate for mortgage loans on one-to-four-unit residential properties rose to a seasonally adjusted rate of 9.24 percent of all loans outstanding as of the end of the second quarter of 2009, up 12 basis points from the first quarter of 2009, and up 283 basis points from one year ago, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA) National Delinquency Survey.
...
The delinquency rate breaks the record set last quarter. The records are based on MBA data dating back to 1972.

The delinquency rate includes loans that are at least one payment past due but does not include loans somewhere in the process of foreclosure. The percentage of loans in the foreclosure process at the end of the second quarter was 4.30 percent, an increase of 45 basis points from the first quarter of 2009 and 155 basis points from one year ago. The combined percentage of loans in foreclosure and at least one payment past due was 13.16 percent on a non-seasonally adjusted basis, the highest ever recorded in the MBA delinquency survey.
...
"While the rate of new foreclosures started was essentially unchanged from last quarter's record high, there was a major drop in foreclosures on subprime ARM loans. The drop, however, was offset by increases in the foreclosure rates on the other types of loans, with prime fixed-rate loans having the biggest increase. As a sign that mortgage performance is once again being driven by unemployment, prime fixed-rate loans now account for one in three foreclosure starts. A year ago they accounted for one in five...." said Jay Brinkmann, MBA's Chief Economist. http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/08/mba-record-132-percent-of-mortgage.html

This was written in August of last year.   What I found was that the foreclosure rate was very high in 2005, 2006, 2007 when the oligarchy was paying itself all these huge bonuses. THIS THING DID NOT START IN LATE 2008.  It is just that the foreclosure rate along with the delinquency rate got worse. But both rates had been bad for several years prior to the bust which is the reason for the bust in the first place.

Look, I am not compiling a study here. But I am attempting to underline a pattern of conduct where the system allows for employees of companies that are not doing that well, to achieve 'earnings' far in excess of the earnings of mortal men.  These obscene earnings come as a direct result of tragedy.

The reason for that, the report notes, was to lower Lehman's leverage -- a critical component of the firm's credit rating.

In 2007‐08, Lehman knew that net leverage numbers were critical to the rating agencies and to counterparty confidence. Its ability to deleverage by selling assets was severely limited by the illiquidity and depressed prices of the assets it had accumulated.

Against this backdrop, Lehman turned to Repo 105 transactions to temporarily remove $50 billion of assets from its balance sheet at first and second quarter ends in 2008 so that it could report significantly lower net leverage numbers than reality.

Lehman did so despite its understanding that none of its peers used similar accounting at that time to arrive at their leverage numbers, to which Lehman would be compared...

Lehman's failure to disclose the use of an accounting device to significantly and temporarily lower leverage, at the same time that it affirmatively represented those "low" leverage numbers to investors as positive news, created a misleading portrayal of Lehman's true financial health.

Colorable claims exist against the senior officers who were responsible for balance sheet management and financial disclosure, who signed and certified Lehman's financial statements and who failed to disclose Lehman's use and extent of Repo 105 transactions to manage its balance sheet.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/11/lehman-bankruptcy-report_n_495668.html

This is an article dealing with a court ordered report disclosed yesterday. As far as I am concerned it is a lie to simply point to 2007. This had been going on for years. The fall guy in this report is again, an auditor. Where have we heard that before?  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron_scandal

And in the Enron scandal, they threw the auditors under the bus. How many life sentences for the auditing corporations? None. They just fined the auditors. And sent a few big guys to jail for a few years.

This post is already too long. But one thing to glean from the Huffpo article is this neat paragraph:

The business decisions that brought Lehman to its crisis of confidence may have been in error but were largely within the business judgment rule.

But the decision not to disclose the effects of those judgments does give rise to colorable claims against the senior officers who oversaw and certified misleading financial statements -- Lehman's CEO Richard S. Fuld, Jr., and its CFOs Christopher O'Meara, Erin M. Callan and Ian T. Lowitt

Ordinarily it seems, the actions taken by these CFO's would be categorized as poor judgment. Like when someone drinks a fifth of whiskey, gets in his car, and runs over a group of children walking in the crosswalk. Poor judgment can get that fellow life in prison. The business judgment rule prevents us from judging the biggest group of crooks the world has ever seen. It's just business. It's just China Town. And this should remind you of another report:

While the probe is sharply critical of the legal reasoning used to justify waterboarding and other "enhanced" interrogation techniques, NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did the final review of the report softened an earlier OPR finding. Previously, the report concluded that two key authors--Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor--violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed "poor judgment," say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/archive/2010/01/29/holder-under-fire.aspx

And attorneys who advise government officials to use enhanced torture techniques are guilty of poor judgment. And millionaire attorneys who advise CFO's to use every trick in the book to obfuscate and lie and erase hard drives are guilty of poor judgment.

Every time you point to some billionaire, some repub prick will say he got where he got because of the risk.

Risk. Where was the risk for Yoo or Bybee really? Where was the risk for Fuld, O'Meara, Callan and Lowitt?

THERE IS NO FRICKIN RISK. Luck has nothing to do with any of this. The deck is stacked.

I have overstayed my welcome already and so I shall have to add a Chapter 3 to this drivel.