Let it rock!

let it roll

es!

Eureka!
Hope the wing is tolerable

Hey, ES, how’s the arm?

Digg it!

Let it roll

Good evening all… pretty sore tonight… better than a couple of days ago.

es!

es,
Hey FireDog! Hope you are warm.

Left you a last note downstairs.

Staying up to watch the Madoff hearing on rerun C-Span. Daymn! talk about good fun…..that Makopolos dude is way cool.

Hope it gets better quick. Still have ice or is it gone?

We got our electricity back today… on the ninth day without.

So good to be home.

He’s my new love. Off to read your comment.

and seeing kanjorski kicking SEC ass is a ball!

Only on the north slopes… not to bad. Looks like a weeks worth of spring weather ahead. I can almost smell grape hyacinths now.

Intrusive personal questions – feel free to ignore.

How’d it go at the docs?
Power status at home?

Left one for you also.

Catch up with y’all later……the committee’s gettin’ ready to par-boil them some critters from the SEC. *GGG*

Peanut pie! Sounds like a winner. Nuts are really nuts. They don’t get enough respect.

Loved one of the late questions for Markospolos……who’s playing you in the movie?

In the mid-Hudson, we have not yet had a mid-winter thaw. It’s getting pretty tiresome. And this from someone who grew up in Buffalo, when (in the old days) you never saw the ground between December and March. Global warming is addictive.

I left you a response re: selecting TVs in the previous thread.

He suggested using a “small nail” which would enter the top of my shoulder down through 70 plus percent of my arm.. working as something everything could mend around.

I laughed out loud as I realized the “small nail” would have to be a foot long.

Or he said we could try it with a strange new type of clamp, which is what I have now.

That was the BEST.

I didn’t hear the introduction, but a friend told me she thought that Madoff was paid by Goldman Sachs, an hypothesis she has because they are one of the firms that refused to use Madoff. (Disclosure: she & I met when we were both working at GS several decades ago.) Did they mention who paid him to do his work?

Got epu’d in an earlier thread with this, but it’s a perfect hoot for LLN:

Ben & Jerry have created a new flavor, known as “Yes Pecan!” for Obama.

For George W. they asked for suggestions from the public.

Here are some of their favorite responses:

Grape Depression
The Housing Crunch
Abu Grape
Cluster Fudge
Nut’n Accomplished
Good Riddance You Lousy Motherfu***r… Swirl
Iraqi Road
Chock ‘n Awe
WireTapioca
Impeach Cobbler
Guantanamallow
ImPeachMint
Heck of a Job, Brownie!
Neocon-Politan
RockyRoad to Fascism
The Reese’s-cession
Cookie D’oh!
Nougalar Proliferation
Death by Chocolate…and Torture
Freedom Vanilla Ice Cream
Chocolate Chip On My Shoulder
Credit Crunch
Mission Pecanplished
Country Pumpkin
Chunky Monkey-in-Chief
WMDelicious
Chocolate Chimp
Bloody Sundae
Caramel Preemptive Stripe
I broke the law and am responsible for the deaths of thousands …with nuts

Woooo! Prolly didn’t take long to make that decision.

MsCE lives on East 79th, and she has fled to VA to Colonial Williamsburg for the week. Great conference for collecting.

ROFLMAO!

Not at all. *s*

Good for him.

Unfortunately my dear friend who was a collector died on Xmas eve. We went to Williamsburg a couple of years ago in October. Neither of us had been there for about 3 decades. It was a very nice trip. Didn’t know they had a conference on collecting in the off season, but it makes perfect sense.

It sounds like the better choice …

ok, Emiliana Torrini is very nice

thanks, Cujo. I read it.

i’m so glad you are not in one of those external pin contraptions. they always remind me of something outta a horror film with those rods piercing the skin, holding the bones in place (shrudder)

ES!~~!
Love the music. Glad you’re here, and that you have power.

Oh, my goodness gracious…Ackerman is ripping a few new bodily openings in these SEC people! Daymn, talk about entertainment! bbl

Oh, that is very sad, and I’m sorry.

Gary Ackerman for whatever office he wants! He is killing on C-Span!

Her band is what I like most. This song by her is pretty cool. Since it’s about guns I skipped highlighting it… but the music is great.

Oh I didn’t even consider whether or not it was internal external. Ouch!

Thanks Margot…)

Thanks. There have been several deaths in my life that have passed without much of a deal, and others that have had a lasting influence. He’s in the latter category. We didn’t communicate more than 5-6 times/year, which usually included a couple visits to my house and an historic preservation trip, but he was always there. He was a traditional conservative who was forced to vote for Ds starting with Clinton because the Rs just became so bizarre. He was a great sounding board for my more liberal ideas because he was thoughtful. His mother died at age 96, and he was only 83, so I thought he would live forever. I’ll miss him for the rest of my life.

Ackerman rocked today.

ES, I have never broken a bone in my body, but I did slip on ice once and hit my head on concrete, got a concussion. It’s dangerous stuff and it can happen to anyone.

Best wishes for your recovery.

Mark. said he had worked for a competitor but, iirc, he also said he had not been paid for any of the research work he’d done on madoff.

SEC acting Gen Counsel Andy Vollmer is citing Exec Priv, putting on a classic Bushian filibuster! Someone is going to jail.
JFC

Best TV I’ve seen in a very long time. *G*

Truly weird……..I caught just a few minutes of this part on sat radio while running errands today and it’s nice to hear it fleshed out.

Hmmm. We’ll see. He certainly hit all my hot buttons.

Not at all. Obama is firmly resolved to look ahead!

in the words of one much wiser that i, blergh

I thought there was some sort of hold on new claims of executive privilege?

Link? I haven’t seen anything like that but would love to know if there was.

By whom?

I don’t know if Vollmer’s claim is included in this vid, but it will be all over the place by tomorrow.
Ackerman just killing these fools.

Nevermind. This is what I was thinking of. That only applies to FOIA and ex-Presidents.

“Complaints have to be triaged.” WTF? Apparently those complaints never make it to the emergency room….they’re left to die in the hallway. :-(

Righto. Saw that. Hard to keep track.

They are treading in very dangerous waters. Simply refusing to answer questions, and this committee is going to subpoena Cox, and that asshole will have to take five.

A bloodbath a’comin. And Holder will do this one, if there is any Justice Department left.

Gentle folk, in the frozen north we have a thing called ice – Bit of a novelty in more temperate climes.
Now, down in the Delta, I’ve heard it pronounced ‘ass’, yet everyone knows y’all can’t lose your grip on a piece of…Well. You know.

;>)

Get well soon , ES – Can’t hang tonight, gotta pull the plow come the dawn.

Are they talking about Madoff? The SEC sat on that case for nine years. If that’s the subject, the ass-ripping is well-deserved.

A bloodbath a’comin. And Holder will do this one, if there is any Justice Department left.

Hope you’re not holding your breath.

ewww – thanks for the vision *g*

Thanks darkblack.

That was a thing of beauty to behold.

The next 5 minutes is even better. Ackerman gets Vollmer to admit to claiming Exec Priv.

Indeed.

What is that intertubes term? Fuckery. Fuckery pure and simple.

I know you are skeptical of all things Obama-Holder, etc…
But what suggests to you what DOJ would and would not prosecute?
Is it a general distaste, or is there something specific about the SEC that makes you confident that Holder will not act?

There are reasons I will never be in charge of a government agency. My response to Ackerman’s questions would be “Over the last decade and a half, you guys have defunded this agency to the point where it’s gutted. Now we’re ineffective. What did you expect?”

Of course, I wouldn’t have been there, because I would have quit at least one Presidential Administration ago, and maybe earlier.

I’m out of the loop. Is Ackerman the whistleblower who laid out the case for the SEC years ago? If so, I read his *very damning* materials online. The guy is a brilliant pit bull.

Who defunded? Bushco? Did Ackermann have anything to do with defunding the agency? Just wondering. Are they all guilty?

“ChimpCo screwed us. Now we’re screwing you y’all. In your face, Congressman”
I don’t think so, unless they feel OK screwing their future sugar-daddies.

Ackerman is the CongressCritter who damn near popped an vein trying to get answers out of these folks.

It started during the Clinton era. I’m quite sure the neglect continued, if it didn’t accelerate, under Bush. That link provides some background. As for Ackerman, I don’t know how he voted. I certainly understand his frustration with not getting any straight answers, but I also recognize Congress’s part on all of this. They’re in charge of funding, and they passed the weakened laws governing the financial system that helped make the Madoff thing so easy to do.

Thanks. That makes more sense.. Have they heard from the whistle blower who laid it out so clearly?

Also Enron, Tyco, etc. I wrote this article during the general election last year to try to put the debate over regulation and recovery in perspective.

Yes, he testified earlier in the day. Snippets have been all over the news today. He just plain destroys these folks.

Markopolos is the whistleblower……absolutely one of the very best testimonies I’ve ever seen in hearings. He don’t do too bad in the snark department either. *G*

Well, original skepticism came when I heard Obama’s BFF, Cass Sunstein, answer my Q about holding people accountable with: Let’s not criminalize policy differences. That was at the Netroots Nation confernce in July, 2008, and has become an Obama mantra subsequently. In the interim, I have seen nothing to disillusion me from that hypothesis, but I’m open to evidence, especially to the contrary.

Heh. But they never made that arguement. Said that only wonderful dedicated people worked for regulators. With that as the record …

Yes, I’ll believe it when it happens. I expect that the Obama Administration will conduct itself honestly, but I don’t look for them to do any serious investigating of past crimes by the Bush Administration.

Yes, I’ll believe it when it happens. I expect that the Obama Administration will conduct itself honestly, but I don’t look for them to do any serious investigating of past crimes by the Bush Administration.

but….but you cannot look away from crime and be considered honest.

One of Markopolos’ contentions is that there are too many lawyers and too few old “grey”/”bald” “foxes” who have actually worked in the financial industry with the background knowledge of what they should be looking. Makes you question whether part of the SEC problem is that they’re allocating the resources they *do* have in the wrong way. yymv

My guess is that all the people who were dedicated to finding serious fraud left long ago. My assumption is that these folks who were testifying were leftovers from the Bush Administration.

I expect that the Obama Administration will conduct itself honestly

Evidence for that proposition?

Markopolis (SEC whistleblower) opening statement and testimony

One trouble is that when you lose the old grey foxes like that, they tend not to come back. They retire, find other work, or do something else with their lives.

Yep. I actually sent an email to Josh on tje subject of tracking down those who had left and documenting their stories.

Mostly what’s happened since they started. Reversing much of the overreach of the Bush Administration, for starters. They also have mostly picked quality people to run the departments.

It’s an expectation, subject to change.

I think that would be an interesting case study, actually. I’d hope some business management or systems types would be interested in looking at the phenomenon. It’s not the first time this has happened. The end of the Apollo program at NASA comes to mind. The nuke drawdown in the late 80s was another one. (Clearly, I pay more attention to engineering and science programs.) I’ve seen it on a small scale on things I’ve worked on in the past.

The dog that didn’t bark.

Thanks. Clearly I can’t have a life and keep up with these turkeys.

Must have been some show!

Not that I had a life while away for the better part of a week, but I was just thinking. it’s amazing how far behind I fell in such a short amount of time.

Having been laid off a couple of times, I can tell you it changes your perspective. It doesn’t even matter if you’re expecting it, I think (in at least one case, I was). The reality is that the thing you’ve been doing for so long isn’t permanent, and you have to go learn a new position, with different skills. Going to a different place, either in government or industry, is like that. Different organizations do the same thing different ways, and usually you’re doing different things anyway. It just heightens the feeling that you can’t really count on anything about employment. For some people, it tends to make one less committed to the next thing you’re involved with.

And even if you do go back (I did once) it’s not the same.

Thanks. Just what I wanted.

No, that isn’t where Mark. was going…..he was talking about hiring retired people who had worked in the financial industry (not the SEC) who know where to look for buried dirt as opposed to hiring young kids straight out of college. One of the people from the SEC was bragging about the people with various level college degrees they had working for them (even mentioned how some of those people teach college courses)…….that could be a large part of the problem……if the SEC is staffed with mostly people with book-larnin’ [sic], they don’t have the pactical hands-on knowledge needed to find fraud under the rocks. Hope that makes sense.

Even so, one of the places they could have looked is people who had been let go or left for various reasons who were good at auditing and financial investigation. Folks who worked in the financial industry could have been helpful, too, for similar reasons.

Managed to stay awake long enough to catch all the hearing……off to z-land.

Y’all go well.

Yes, it’s time for me to depart, as well. Goodnight all.

Folks who worked in the financial industry could have been helpful, too, for similar reasons.

That’s specifically who Mark. said was needed. Oh, and he was rabid on the subject of nuking pretty much *anybody* who’s currently working at the SEC……top clear through to the bottom. And after what I saw of that panel of high-level people from the SEC, he is bloody well spot-on!

I’m turning in myself

good night firedogs.

nite eureka
me too

nite all.
Thanks for the catch up.

nite ES

*yawns* just trudging in the door from work … it’s good to see ES back! And it is always uplifting for me to read the comments and know that all y’all are keeping on. To quote busted, “g’thud”

Attaturk is upstairs!
Andy Card – Hall Monitor

“The SEC is … captive to the industry it regulates and is afraid” to bring big cases against prominent individuals, Markopolos asserted. The agency “roars like a lion and bites like a flea” and “is busy protecting the big financial predators from investors,” he said. “

” While the SEC is incompetent, the securities industry’s self-policing organization, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, is “very corrupt,” Markopolos charged. That organization was headed until December by Mary Schapiro, President Barack Obama’s new SEC chief. “

” Markopolos disclosed that he anonymously conveyed a package of documents on Madoff to former New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer, but noted Spitzer took no action. Spitzer’s family trust was among the victims that lost money investing with Madoff. “

http://www.latimes.com/busines…..4347.story

” A Journal reporter in Washington, John Wilke, became a “friend” and was given the scoop, and wanted to pursue the case, but was never allowed by Journal editors, Markopolos claimed. “

” Calls to former Journal editors Paul Steiger and Marcus Brauchli were not immediately returned. “

http://www.editorandpublisher……1003938136