Stirrings on Ledge of the Cliff

19 Comments

1. 

   japa21 on December 31, 2012 at 1:11 pm

   Based upon prior reporting history, I am not going to assume anything has been agreed upon.  

2. 

   Oui on December 31, 2012 at 1:22 pm

   .
   Does that mean kicking the can down the road? The Bush tax cuts will survive the sunset except for a minor change for the rich at 400/450k threshold. What is the leverage for bargaining entitlements and the debt ceiling? Congress couldn’t even get the Agricultural Bill to the floor. An emergency bill to prevent milk price to rise to $7 per gallon tomorrow.

   Wall Street ending higher

   • 

     Arthur Gilroy on December 31, 2012 at 3:38 pm

     Does that mean kicking the can down the road?

     Of course.

     Some kind of deal is already in place.

     Evidence?

     As you posted:

     Wall Street ending higher

     Duh.

     PermaGov done got its New Year’s gift.

     What kind of deal, exactly?

     Well, as I posted to a previous Booman article regarding what’s up here:

     I am “hearing” that Obama and the Dems have either been:

     1-Given permission by the corporate masters of both parties to essentially put the Ratpubs out of business…a two-party fix system that is so blatantly populated on one side by a group of people who are headed for the tarpits cannot by sustained past a certain point of tarpitting, and it appears to me that said point has just about been reached. In 4 more years the already scrofulous-looking population of the Republican national convention will look appear on television to be the geriatric ward of a whites-only country hospital.

     Or…

     2-The Dems have been instructed to fade a little so that the Ratpubs can be re-populated over the next several years by a media-based equality game of some sort. The true centrist act. You know…”Both parties are at fault here!!!”

     We’ll see. Very soon.

     If the Dems get to the edge of the so-called fiscal cliff and cop out at the last minute “for the good of the country” then it’s #2 and the attempt to continue the present alternating fix scheme will continue.

     If they don’t cop out then they are going for the Ratpub jugular and the PermaGov plan for 2014 (2016 at the latest) is to have Dem majorities in both houses and a Dem preznit as well. Would that mean one-party rule? So nu? If the American public is so media-hypnotized that they will swallow anything…chemical-laden Subway sandwiches as “healthy food,” stupid, violent movies as heroic fare or people like McCain and Romney as serious contenders, all the same kind of necromancing/mediatrancing…then they will swallow a de facto dictatorship as well.

     Watch.

     Any way it goes the PermaGov will win in its own fairly short-term manner. As long as it controls the media and the media remain in control of the minds, bodies and emotions of the vast majority of Americans, whatever it wants to do will get done.

     A naked preznit?

     Hans Christian Anderson understood way back in 1837.

     

     Yes he did.

     Long term?

     Them chickens is gonna come home to roost some day. It’s just a matter of when.

     Bet on it.

     

     Bet on it.

     AG

     We will see…those of us who are not wearing “Eyes Wide Shut” glasses will see, anyway…over the next couple of weeks.

     Watch.

     One thing for sure, though. It won’t be the corporate classes bearing the brunt of whatever goes down. Not really, no matter what or how much propaganda is spewed. Threatened wealth will just go elsewhere, and it will be given ample time and many gaping loopholes to do so as well. Meanwhile, the cracks in  the societal wall through which upward classist/financial movement has historically been achieved in the U.S.? Those cracks are being mortared and pestled right into nonexistence. (See this for more on that idea. The Financial War Against the Economy at Large – Right on the money. Read it.)

     Watch.

     Ross Perot pinned the general direction of things in 1992.

     Here’s what he said.

     To those of you in the audience who are business people, pretty simple: If you’re paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, hire young — let’s assume you’ve been in business for a long time and you’ve got a mature work force — pay a dollar an hour for your labor, have no health care — that’s the most expensive single element in making a car — have no environmental controls, no pollution controls and no retirement, and you don’t care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south.

     So we — if the people send me to Washington the first thing I’ll do is study that 2,000-page agreement and make sure it’s a two-way street. One last part here — I decided i was dumb and didn’t understand it so I called the Who’s Who of the folks who’ve been around it and I said, “Why won’t everybody go South?” They say, “It’d be disruptive.” I said, “For how long?” I finally got them up from 12 to 15 years. And I said, “well, how does it stop being disruptive?” And that is when their jobs come up from a dollar an hour to six dollars an hour, and ours go down to six dollars an hour, and then it’s leveled again. But in the meantime, you’ve wrecked the country with these kinds of deals. We’ve got to cut it out.

     Ross Perot, 3-way debate w/Clinton and Bush, 1992

     Been a hell of a two decades, ain’t it?

     One hell of a two decades.

     The way things are and have been headed…a constant accerlation, actually…how much would you bet on our surviving another decade?

     Your life?

     ‘Cuz that’s what’s in the balance.

     Seen the classic Terry Gilliam movie Brazil?

     Y’oughta.

     You’re about to be living in it.

     Happy New Year.

     2013.

     Like the movie Groundhog Day only longer.

     Much longer.

     Later…

     AG

     P.S. Or is it more like P. D. Ouspensky’s The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin?

     UH oh!!!

     Let us pray.

     • 

       TarheelDem on December 31, 2012 at 4:05 pm

       Wall Street relative to bad news sell on the rumor.  Buy on the news.

       For good news, buy on the rumor, sell on the news.

       Now which one of those is going on?

       Hint: it takes both buyers and sellers to make a trade.  And most of those buyers and sellers these days are computers tracking the movement of numbers made by other computers.

       The market indexes as a barometer of political event ended a generation ago with the 1987 crash.

       • 

         Arthur Gilroy on January 1, 2013 at 3:32 am

         Ya think?

         Pre-9/11 Put Options on Companies Hurt by Attack Indicates Foreknowledge

         Financial transactions in the days before the attack suggest that certain individuals used foreknowledge of the attack to reap huge profits. 1   The evidence of insider trading includes:

         Huge surges in purchases of put options on stocks of the two airlines used in the attack — United Airlines and American Airlines

         Surges in purchases of put options on stocks of reinsurance companies expected to pay out billions to cover losses from the attack — Munich Re and the AXA Group

         Surges in purchases of put options on stocks of financial services companies hurt by the attack — Merrill Lynch & Co., and Morgan Stanley and Bank of America

         Huge surge in purchases of call options of stock of a weapons manufacturer expected to gain from the attack — Raytheon
         Huge surges in purchases of 5-Year US Treasury Notes

         In each case, the anomalous purchases translated into large profits as soon as the stock market opened a week after the attack: put options were used on stocks that would be hurt by the attack, and call options were used on stocks that would benefit.

         Put and call options are contracts that allow their holders to sell and buy assets, respectively, at specified prices by a certain date. Put options allow their holders to profit from declines in stock values because they allow stocks to be bought at market price and sold for the higher option price. The ratio of the volume of put option contracts to call option contracts is called the put/call ratio. The ratio is usually less than one, with a value of around 0.8 considered normal. 2

         —snip—

          

         Unless of course you think that it was computers that ran that game. Which is an even more frightening thought.

         Ain’t it.

         Read the rest.

         Very interesting.

         

         Very interesting indeed.

         AG

         • 

           Oui on January 1, 2013 at 3:53 am

           .
           Why now 11 years later, it’s hardly news anymore. Same for the Bush/Cheney deals made with Wall Street and Telecom companies. I for one do think the US administration
           and Israel had sufficient warning signs and intelligence of an impending attack by AQ of plane hijacking. Flying planes into buildings is another issue.

3. 

   existenz on December 31, 2012 at 1:26 pm

   This deal sounds awful as reported. Dems give up huge chunks of tax increases for what? Extension of unemployment benefits? Give me a break.

   • 

     Davis X Machina on December 31, 2012 at 3:00 pm

     I’m guessing you’re not unemployed. My brother is. The last direct deposit into his account happens today. After that, he loses the house.

4. 

   BooMan on December 31, 2012 at 1:45 pm

   The president is unleashing his secret weapon: ordinary citizens.  

   • 

     jwb on December 31, 2012 at 2:36 pm

     I must say I find the reasoning as reported by Sargent baffling and if the leaks from the WH are accurate, it suggests that the Dems are really in almost as much disarray as the GOP.  It is almost certain that ordinary people won’t show up in a couple of months, if they end up passing the half measures here.

5. 

   WaterGirl on December 31, 2012 at 1:58 pm

   I hate everything I’m hearing about the details of a possible deal.  When you named the people going into Reid’s chambers, I was hopeful that they woulld be twisting arms against the deal as it’s currently being discussed.

   I cannot believe that the deal would be as bad as it sounds; I see no reason the democrats and the president would give away all that and get so little in return.  So for now, I am choosing to believe that either no deal has been reached or that it’s not as crappy as it appears.

6. 

   ishmael on December 31, 2012 at 2:18 pm

   I’m more worried about the coming debt ceiling mess. What leverage will the Dems have to mitigate the damage Republicans will want to do to safety nets and government institutions?

   I’ll wait for the spin regarding the huge victory Obama won over the Republicans.

   • 

     TarheelDem on December 31, 2012 at 2:32 pm

     The so-called upcoming debt ceiling mess will be with a new Congress and likely a new speaker of the House.  All predictions about anything (except that New Year’s Rocking Eve will split screen with Congress) are blowing smoke until around the time of the President’s budget release in February.  By then we will know (1) who the Speaker of the House is and (2) what the rules of the Senate are.  Both of those affect the attitudes in the chambers of Congress.

7. 

   rover27 on December 31, 2012 at 2:23 pm

   Obama couldn’t negotiate himself out of a paper bag. WORST NEGOTIATOR EVER!

   • 

     japa21 on December 31, 2012 at 2:29 pm

     Which is why, of course, that the GOP has gotten next to nothing our of his prior negotiations, and the Dems have gotten a lot.  Looks like the same thing this time, based upon GOP reaction to his presser.

   • 

     TarheelDem on December 31, 2012 at 2:33 pm

     What has he actually given up yet?  So far the GOP has proven unwilling to say Yes to anything.

8. 

   Oui on December 31, 2012 at 2:33 pm

   .
   In deal, Congress will let the Bush tax cuts expire so the House will not vote to increase taxes on the rich. On January 1 2013, House will return to “cut” taxes. Cartoonists have all the fun.

   ‘Fiscal Cliff’: Biden, McConnell Close In on Last-Minute Deal

   (ABC News) – Both sides also seem willing to delay by three months automatic spending cuts to defense and domestic programs, the sources said, setting the stage for continued fiscal debate in the next few months tied to the debt ceiling. They are trying to broker an elusive compromise on taxes and spending that can win the support of bipartisan majorities in the Senate and House.

   CNBC: Obama Says Agreement on Taxes ‘in Sight’

   • 

     The Voice In The Wilderness on December 31, 2012 at 2:43 pm

     bi-partisan = getting screwed on both ends

   • 

     Indianadem on December 31, 2012 at 8:37 pm

     As for me, I’m extremely grateful not to be employed by the income tax software industry this season. The last minute coding tasks will be vicious.