Shoes keep falling

At a Palin rally, following some acidic comments from Sarah about Obama consorting with “terrorists” someone from the crowd shouted “Kill him” (unclear if the “him” was Ayers, the one-time “terrorist” or Obama), and Sarah sailed right on, the Secret Service (seen above in their not-so-secret outfits) did not go seize the would-be assassin, and the lady continued on with her attack.  Ah, American politics are so uplifting…

Meantime on awakening, the Dow had plunged 800+ but in the last 90 minutes crawled back up 400+ and ended down 380 or so, to the “relief” of many.  This is a yo-yo with minimal up-pull, so it goes up and down, but the long term effect – entropy? – is   d  o  w  n.   Meantime global markets are similarly seizing up, so weird things are happening, such as my little stash of S. Korean won, which had lost 13% against the dollar, are now again even as they had been 6 months ago.  All in less than a week.  Go figger…

But, lest all seem grim and awful, here’s a little grace note:

Although perhaps the rabbit doesn’t think so.  Nor do the 401(k) suckers who bought into the Republican way to privatize your nest-egg.  It just got sucked out by a viper wearing pin-stripes.  Whatever, these are interesting days.

And last night, as I slept, the DOW dropped another 500+ points, despite a Fed announcement they’d drop interest rates, usually a waker-upper for stocks.  And retirement funds have lost a mere two trillion dollars in the last weeks…  Dumpster diving anyone?

And then this cynical item from the NYT on how the good guys at the trading desks in the market always have an angle to make a buck, in this case on the 700 billion alleged bail-out.  Cashing in and cashing out at the great Wall Street casino.

A week after the insurance giant, the American International Group, received an $85 billion federal bailout, its life insurance subsidiary, AIG General, held a weeklong retreat for its top sales agents at the exclusive St. Regis Resort in Monarch Beach, Calif. Expenses for the week, lawmakers were told, totaled $442,000, including $200,000 for hotel rooms, $150,000 for food and $23,000 in spa charges.

In addition, the former A.I.G. executive who led the London-based division whose implosion is largely blamed for the insurance giant’s downfall, Joseph J. Cassano, continues to receive $1 million a month from the company, on top of the $280 million he received in the last eight years.

And even after A.I.G. reported $5 billion in losses in the final quarter of 2007, its chief executive at the time, Martin J. Sullivan, argued before a compensation committee that executives should receive performance bonuses. He received $5 million.

This is the compensation these crooks – but these crooks mirror a large chunk of America, simply on a bigger scale – get for destroying their companies, and the US economy, with falsified bookkeeping, willful delusions, etc.  Exactly like President Bush and Dick Cheney, who in fact have engineered the largest tax hike ever – for your children and grandchildren….

A graph on how happy Americans are