digg is open.

The difficulty for most of us who do have investments is that we must rely on regulatory bodies to do what we cannot do ourselves, in addition to internal and external auditors.

None of them did what they were supposed to do; there’s no way that the auditors did their job properly if AIG was so badly under-reserved, and the government especially the SEC and DOJ did not do their jobs at all. Those of us with investments pay for the auditors — who stiffed us. ALL of us pay for the SEC and DOJ — and they stiffed us ALL.

In the same interview, Soros called out a figure would up in credit default swaps — $45 trillion.

Between the size of the numbers, the fact that evidently the Fed is still using Mark-to-Market (which I associate with Enron), the fact that I’ve still yet to hear a good explanation of the funkiness of Navier-Stokes equations and the phase-change issues they represent, and the offshore banking that has to play into all this, I think no one has figured out how to describe that we’re in really, really deep sh*t.

One of the many things that I admire about Soros (apart from the fact that he values trying to accurately discern reality) is his sense of how flawed we humans are — and Cramer is a superb example of Soros’s ‘Theory of Reflexivity’ in action: we see what we see based on what we believe we will see, which is shaped by what we’re told and the social cues we are given.

They knew it was coming, and if they didn’t they should have been fired.

That assumes they work for us, or for our benefit. They don’t.

Anything said to the contrary is just the farmers keeping the animals calm so they produce more.

But from that point, it seems to be something of a rock > scissors > paper dynamic. Corporations control governments, which make laws that control accounting rules and market rules, which then — in the hands of manipulators like Cramer — are manipulated in order to take down some perfectly good companies.

Corporations answer only to their shareholders, which has obviously become a huge, unmanageable problem.
But they can be destroyed by stock manipulation and corrupt trade practices.

Not sure how this will all play out but nice to see Stewart call bullshit.

I sat in on a conf. call hosted by Steve Clemons; Soros said at that point he expected 5 million foreclosures over a 2-year window.

He elaborated further in an interview with Judy Woodruff on Bloomberg TV the next day, republished as a transcript in New York Review of Books 15-MAY-08 edition. Soros said:

The authorities, the regulators — the Federal Reserve and the Treasury — really failed to see what was happening. On Fed governor, Edward Gramlich, warned of a coming crisis in subprime mortgages in a speech published in 2004 and a book published in 2007, among other statements. So a number of people could see it coming. And somehow, the authorities didn’t want to see it coming. So it came as a surprise.

Woodruff:

The chairman,of the Fed, Mr. Bernanke? His predecessor, Mr. Greenspan?

Soros:

All of the above. [snip]

In the same interview, Soros called out a figure would up in credit default swaps — $45 trillion.

They knew it was coming, and if they didn’t they should have been fired.

Not only did folks like Roubini, Krugman, Atrios, Tanta, et al know and say it was coming (how many years now has Atrios talked about Big Shitpile?), but so did Bernanke and company — in fact, as Krugman explained today on his blog, they were trying to prepare for it at the Fed by gaming out all the possible scenarios therefor.

Keep in the back of your mind that GE owns NBC because Karl Rove sold “Neutron Jack” Welch on having a media mouth piece to promote tax legislation to the benefit of GE.

From the beginning it was really about benefits to GE’s bottom line and not in terms of profit — and most definitely not about “Must-See TV.”