As I write this the DOW is down nearly 400 points! Sky is falling. European Banks are in crisis. Obama needs to get a plan. Fed needs to get a plan. Super committee needs to get a plan. Wait, the French banks are the problem, they are dumping gold in scads! Hold on, the price of gold is going up. Did you notice that oil dropped below $80? Toomey on the super committee, a tea party favorite--but he wants to reform the tax code so G.E. can't get away with paying no taxes.

Actually my original intent was to ask if the pledge signed by Republicans is an act of 'treason". One definition of treason is "the betrayal of one's own country by waging war against it or by consciously or purposefully acting to aid its enemies." In the case of the Republicans in Congress, no one could ever prove "conscious". But Republicans may have given aid and comfort to China, our military competitor.

Letter to President Obama.

Sir, we have both come by "rescue" dogs recently. Yours is a Portuguese Water Dog and mine is a Chesapeake Bay Dog. I love dogs and nothing against your dog Bo but anyone can see your dog is a foreigner. The Chesapeake Bay dog was developed in America, not a socialist country which bankrupted itself.

Frank Luntz must be working overtime to re-brand the Ryan Budget.

Always the cockeyed optimist about the fortunes of Democrats, I think the Ryan Budget spells doom for Republicans in 2012-- because of Republicans' serious miscalculations about what voters expected of them and then--egads, in what is normally a Democratic style faux pas, going on record on the thing with a HR vote by 235 members.

Recent polls are very convincing that the public hates the idea of killing Medicare and substituting VOUCHERS.  OUCH!--sudden pain--what to do.

Several days ago I received a bad report on the cottages I built last summer on country property.  Seems that not enough care was taken to insulate the pipes from the deep freeze that has engulfed the Great Plains. The pipes froze and burst. Now as the frozen pipes thaw out water is leaking everywhere and is not reaching, for example, the commodes--which is probably a good thing because the commodes are cracked.

Jamie Dimon is on a public relations kick to sweep the financial crisis under the rug so that JPM and the other mega banks can continue their strangle hold on American capital.

At Davos, Dimon whined that people should stop bashing bankers.

A Presidency can be about programs and policies. A Presidency can also be a story about a man and a journey.

The writer John Gardner claimed that there are two basic story forms -- "A Stranger comes to Town" and "We go on a Journey".

Taken as story President Obama's first two years in office overlooked both basic forms.

Geithner's latest FSOC report attempts to buttress JPMorgan but unwittingly provides Progressives a road map to real reform.

Simon Johnson made mince meat of Geithner's latest report which blatently attempts to enable the, imo, Daley-Dimon plan to expand JPM.  www.economix.blog.nytimes.com/2011/20.

But thanks to Geithner, the report is the perfect bogey for Progressive bank reformers to dissect for years to come. In other words if this is the best they can do in defense of the status quo, it's a rich target.

Does Dodd-Frank's requirement that TBTF banks submit "funeral plans" open the door to dismantling the banks?

This morning I listened to the interview on Bloomberg of Jason Cave, head of the FDIC's new Office of Complex Financial Institutions. The jist of it was that the Fed and FDIC now have authority to delve into the complex structures of TBTF banks (others like Insurance,etc., to be named) and that the institutions must provide "Resolution Plans" to show how they would be broken up in the event they were judged to be in default or in imminent danger of defaulting.

"Make em beg for more, and then don't give it to them": Mama Rose's advice to Louise.

You can uh, you can uh, you can uh...uh...uh

I have been uh uh uh frustrated with the messaging from Obama, let alone what he is actually doing as President. While the Republicans have the single message of "cut taxes" Obama seems to be all over the lot in his effort to be bipartisan. Progressives are baffled and/or angry. What does the President stand for?

Democrats and Progressives may have the best platform in a generation.

I accept the President's jobs compromise deal. The main reason is that it is, with old GOP support, an end run on the Tea Party whose aim is a continuation of the poor economy which spawned it. The package on the other hand gives assurances the economy will grow and gives Democrats a good shot in 2012. Bob Greenstein of CBPP estimated the package would take a full percentage point off unemployment--and without the package the uncertainty of getting any stimulus or unemployment benefits out of the new Congress could tip the economy back into a "double dip". By my calculations, 1% off unemployment is about 1.5 million people.I think of them as particularly vulnerable hostages.

The big question in my mind is what's next. Much depends on Obama's committment to regulate the financial industry and fend off Republican budget attacks which will be designed to undo every piece of progressive legislation since the New Deal. But leave Obama out of the picture and look at the package as a tutorial. Not in the sense of what Obama might have done right or wrong but in the sense of how the package demonstrates the essential guts of how the system works.

Obama took office in the midst of an economic crisis. I leave it to others to explain how in two years he might have impacted the high unemployment numbers and poor economy enough to stave off reversal in the midterm election. The fact is he is now facing a recalcitrant HR which will be levered by the Tea Party who want to see the economy fail. Chaos and high unemployment are fertile fields for the Tea Party. It is the purpose of the Tea Party to prevent stimulus and to enact contractionary policies where possible.

When my knees were younger and the VW camper hadn't yet blown its engine for the 3rd time I made an annual trip up Rt. 395 from the bowels of L.A. to the Mammoth Mtn. area of California. The purpose was to back pack and hike in the Eastern Sierras, but the first stop was at Mono Lake. The lake is, well, other worldly. Alien features like the spikey "tufas" give it a lunar quality. T

Today was a significant day in the fight against the financial oligarchy. I'll summarize it the best I can, not being a lawyer or an insider. I have a keen interest in today's events not only as an Obama supporter but in terms of my own investment objectives and strategy.

Mr. President, you are the most intelligent and classy political figure I've seen in my lifetime.

Mr. President, if you squander this opportunity to reform the banks and Wall St. I will join in a primary challenge to your re-election.

Mr. President, you can seize an historic moment.

The populace is feeling two emotions which are related but separate. One is a sense of unfairness. The other is the gut knowledge that the system is rigged. The sense of fairness is relative: a moderately well off person thinks his taxes are unfair, but so do the poor and the wealthy.

Watching Elizabeth Warren on Maddow last night I was uplifted by the power of her demeanor and her spectacular delivery--"they lost". She showed more backbone in those two words than the whole Obama team did in two years of pontificating.