MFin' DRIVERS!
Former Goldman Sachs CEO and New Jersey Senator Jon Corzine has stepped down as chief executive of Mother Fucker Global (MFGLQ.) As the Governor of the Garden State he is best remembered for slamming into a guardrail at 90 miles per hour, and for standing by as the state's economy metaphorically did the same. Now the world is rubbernecking at the scene of the mangled wreckage of MF Global and the search for the $600 million in missing funds that was apparently lost in the accident.
The U.S. Congress has successfully resisted President Obama's unstrenuous attempts at steering Wall Street towards reform –– it has been 15 months since he signed the Dodd-Franks bill, which frankly looked dodd on arrival. The Republican troopers likely see the MF Global crack-up, which was largely due to the failure of brakes on the brokerage, as reaffirming the need to let the markets run their course –– even if it's over the maimed bodies of investors. Corzine set the corporate GPS to Bet on Bad Debt, this time of the Euro variety, and it took him just a couple of years to reach his destination.
Global finance arteries are looking increasingly hazardous. Why did the Rolls-Royce, Maybach and Citroën economies of Europe allowed the drachma-laden oxcart of Greece onto the Eurozone Autobahn in the first place? Wasn't the slow lane, clogged with Polish Honkers, Italian Fiats, and Spanish Ibizas, poky enough already?
PM George Papandreou caused a stock market pileup when he precipitously announced that Greece's citizens would vote in a referendum on whether or not to embrace the draconian measures of the EU's bailout plan. It's understandable that global markets would be shocked and dismayed that the birthplace of democracy would stoop to asking its commoners to decide on their own economic fates. Papandreou sensibly called off the vote, and moved to the very back of the EU bus, perilously close to the emergency exit. He and we must learn the lesson that only the Gods of Capital may navigate the economic superhighway, whether it be to glory or ruin.
11/4/11
CAIN SUGARS
Republican frontrunner Herman Cain's campaign has been manhandled by charges of sexual harassment that date back to his days as president of the National Restaurant Association. Though an average voter might be more shocked by the fact that he is the Republican frontrunner, or that the NRA that he led, was not the National Rifle Association, Cain has been left groping for answers to the accusations. He sought to massage Fox's Greta Van Susteren with this explanation:
"But here's the one incident that I recall as the day has gone on. She was in my office one day, and I made a gesture saying, Oh -- and I was standing close to her. And I made a gesture, You're the same height as my wife, and brought my hand -- didn't touch her -- up to my chin and said, You're the same height of my wife because my wife comes up to my chin, my wife of 43 years.
And that was put in there as something that made her uncomfortable as part of the sexual harassment charge."
He later recounted the same story about the "height of my wife" to a group of male reporters with a subtle repositioning of his hands and a wicked smile on his face.
Cain is not without his distaff defenders including the reliably colorblind Ann Coulter who parried with Joy Behar over the relative merits of "our" blacks and "their" blacks. After extolling "her" blacks like Cain and Michael Steele, she lit into "theirs", most specificaly Rep. Maxine Waters, of whom she said, "She took the side of Damion Football Williams who dropped a cinder block on Reginald Denny`s head during the L.A. riots, she went to visit him afterwards. She called L.A. riots a rebellion. She offered Damion Football Williams a job. She is heavily responsible for the entire financial crisis."
It's heartening, if a little surprising, to learn that Ms. Waters chaired the boards of AIG, Lehmann Brothers, Countrywide Financial, Bear Sterns, GMAC, and Citibank. Perhaps Ms. Coulter undercut her own brilliant argument, and "theirs" really are more impressive.
11/3/11