by cameron | Apr 1, 2010 | banksters
The very financial product that triggered the GFC – subprime mortgages, aka banks making home loans to people who can’t afford them – is apparently the hot new thing on Wall Street – again.
“Subprime-mortgage securities are rising at an accelerating pace as the U.S. begins to encourage reductions to homeowners’ balances, which may lead to fewer foreclosures and a quicker end to the housing slump….Senior-ranked bonds tied to borrowers with poor credit will mostly benefit after the Treasury Department said for the first time it would seek to cut the size of mortgages, reducing the likelihood that loan modifications will fail, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley and Barclays Plc. (Bloomberg)
According to the Smirking Chimp:
This is how it works: The new program offers incentives to banks and other deep-pocketed investors (in mortgage-backed securities) to slash the principal on underwater mortgages which keeps people from strategic default or foreclosure. Sounds good, right? But here’s the catch: When the mortgage is refinanced, it’s converted into a FHA-backed loan which provides an explicit gov-guarantee. So, for a slight loss on the face-value of the MBS, the investors (ie–investment banks, hedgies, etc) are able to resuscitate their moribund securitizations (MBS) and reap hefty gains. It’s like taking Fido’s steaming pile on the front lawn and turning it into the Hope Diamond. Abracadabra!
Geithner has figured out how to put together a bailout that will cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars without any money actually exchanging hands. The value of the putrid mortgage-paper will soar because of the gov-underwriting, and the ginormous losses won’t be realized until the mortgages start blowing up sometime in the future. That’s when FHA will be put-to-pasture along with fellow-homicide victims, Fannie and Freddie. Pretty clever, eh?
So, the cutthroat speculators and bunko artists who fleeced us all with their dogshit subprimes, have returned for another dip at the public trough. That means taxpayers will get scalped on the same investments a second time. Hey, it’s a double-whammy!
I’m currently reading “The Creature From Jekyll Island” and “Whoops!“, two books about how the U.S. Federal Reserve, Congress, The White House and Wall Street have been working together for nearly a century (The Fed was created in 1910) to fleece the American public. The thing most people don’t understand is that The System is designed to encourage stupid risks which deliver massive profits to a small group of bankers for a decade, then collapse, only to be bailed out by the American public. It’s been going on for a century and isn’t about to stop anytime soon, because Congress and The White House are all on the payroll.
by cameron | Mar 31, 2010 | climate change, Podcast, religion
Tonight we try something we haven’t done in a long time – Chrissy joins me on the podcast. We lit up a Perdomo Lot 23, sat outside on our deck, and talked about a lot of things including:
– Why comics are like classical music (I recommend reading DMZ and KICK-ASS) and admire the work of Aussie Ben Templesmith
– The head of Australia’s Reserve Bank is ANOTHER crazy Christian running the country
– The rise of Dominionism in Australia
– More evidence that evil oil companies are paying a small handful of scientists to oppose climate change
– The very small list of scientists who actually oppose climate change
– The very LARGE list of scientists who support climate change
If you enjoyed this show, you can stay in touch by following Chrissy and Cameron on Twitter or by joining our Facebook page.
by cameron | Mar 26, 2010 | Melbourne, technology
I’m posting this because finding out how to do this was bloody hard and took WAY too long. It’s taken me HOURS AND HOURS AND HOURS to work out how to do this – but I worked it out and now I come down from the mountain to share this information with you.
How To Set Up Multiple Domain Aliases For Google Apps using Apple Mail or another IMAP Client
If you are using Google Apps for your businesses and you have multiple domains that you have set up as domain aliases in Google Apps and you want to use an IMAP client such as Apple Mail to be able to send from each of those domain aliases – here is how you do it.
First you have to set up the domain aliases under Google Apps itself (Mail > Settings > Accounts > Add another email address you own), completed the MX record re-direction, etc. That’s the easy part (although, depending on how moronic your domain hosting provider is – such as Melbourne IT – it could take days to work out).
Now… Inside your IMAP client, where you fill out your account name and email address, just type in all of the email addresses you want to use, separated by commas. Click on the image to expand and see what I mean. Just use the main domain’s IMAP and SMTP gateway. These domain alias addresses will then appear in the FROM drop-down when you are composing a new message. EASY. But this took me HOURS and HOURS and HOURS to find an answer to. Hope it helps someone out there.
If you want to do the same thing on your iPhone, it’s even trickier because for some reason there is no comma on the keyboard when you are typing in the FROM address! You have to do it like this:
In the iPhone create an IMAP account, not a google account as it limits the fields you have access to. So this means use the “OTHER” option when setting up the new account. Set it up for your main email address (the address you us to sign-in with). Make sure that is working and that you can send e-mails properly.
Now, go into notepad on the iPhone and type in the emails that you want to use separated by commas. Be sure to start the list with the comma as well
i.e. ,me@maindomain.com, user@alias.com, user@alias2.com
Highlight everything and copy to the clipboard.
Now go back to your e-mail config and replace the contents of the address field with the info from the clipboard.
(source)
by cameron | Mar 25, 2010 | geopolitics
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been thinking about how the film The Godfather is actually a brilliant and accurate allegory for United States foreign policy. I just sat down to write a blog post about it – and found out someone beat me to it. Read this, it’s brilliant.
I just want to add that we should have seen this all along. After all, what is the first line of the film?
by cameron | Mar 25, 2010 | Podcast
On today’s show: my thoughts on Nicaragua (including a quick history of the oppression of the Nicaraguan people by Spain and the USA), why cigars are awesome and a few words on Obamacare.
