Hugh Conway

Alas, they did not have the Henry Paulson that AIG does.

Amusingly they made money hand over fist selling things that people wanted but our free marketers now think that this was a "bad" thing and no government help is necessary. Of course the banks who made money hand over fist selling things that people wanted now deserve a bailout.

kevbone your pecker is the Maytag man of penises

I'm still waiting for more "we need the $700 billion bailout because" excuses. Those have been joyous to read.

An't that the truth. if you took your head out of your ass you might have a better time with the doorknob.... and life

I'd tell you but then I'd have to kill you

And once they realize there's a problem they force a poorly constructed solution through with no oversight in record time

Seems arbitrary? IT WAS ARBITRAY!

So why the 700 billion - we pulled that number out of our ass because it sounded big - bank bailout?

Washington. DC. Beyotch

I flew Jet from DEL-SXR - prime example of the new India, cheap, great service, excellent. On the return I flew Air Sahara. That was a debacle..... No, I didn't do enough exploring would like to go back in a different season with different plans. This was a lark and it's damn hard to get information in India

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article5141745.ece Pirates caught redhanded by one of Her Majesty’s warships after trying to hijack a cargo ship off Somalia made the grave mistake of opening fire on two Royal Navy assault craft packed with commandos armed with machineguns and SA80 rifles. In the ensuing gunfight, two Somali pirates in a Yemeni-registered fishing dhow were killed, and a third pirate, believed to be a Yemeni, suffered injuries and subsequently died. It was the first time the Royal Navy had been engaged in a fatal shoot-out on the high seas in living memory.

How much will the US spend to bailout Wall Street when the Big Three default triggering the CDS outstanding? $10 billion? $25 billion? $100 billion? Anyone else think this amount will be larger than the initial bailout?

Trip: Gulmarg, Kashmir - Various Date: 1/25/2008 Trip Report: Here's a brief rehash TR from my trip to Gulmarg, Kashmir last year. Always remember Rule #5 Gulmarg has been a ski center for 80 years, first under the British and later under India. For years there were several small crappy chairlifts until Government of India decided to build a big Gondola. It's a nice big gondola, running from left to just left of the summit. The Gondola broke the day I arrived. Except for one bowl lookers right of the chairlift there is fantastic powder, no avalanche control and no ski patrol The living accommodations are luxurious - free Bollywood and live entertainment as they change the stove pipe with fire in the stove. With a broken gondola it was skinning: skiing: and lunching: with occaisonal monkey encounters. Beware, if they are in the tree the little fuckers will shake snow on you Gear Notes: Hookah supplied at resort, beware the Kashmir Alpine den of sen Approach Notes: Plane to BKK, to DEL, to SXR, taxi to the resort

Our very own Troy Hurtubise? I guess tvash confused bears again. Love to see the looks in the rest of the bath house when he shows up in his armour looking for bears.

I know because I had a pair fucking in my larges intestine last trip to the sub continent. The pain was nothing compared to reading a kevbone post

only when I walk through a door sideways

"love song by a different name" - Jimmy Buffet

you just need to head to Bangkok for your surgery

I've been searching long and hard for major policy decisions made and enacted <2 weeks in modern history that haven't sucked ass.

After 8 years you still need to be convinced? Please describe what principles are being used to disburse the bailout. Go ahead, I dare you. They didn't need a wheel, they had their cronies calling them.

Given the people who owned the assets didn't know how to value them methinks Helicopter Ben Bernanke and Hank God from Goldman Paulson got conned or were conning us. Occam's razor suggests we gave JPMorganChase $25billion to remake the banking industry, no more, no less. Yes there's pain involved, as there will be for Detroit. Why not give the big 3 $25 billion to buyoff the union 'tards and be done with it? "I don't care how dumb it is" is the order of the day. The inability of any commentator to offer up a non-apocalyptic rationale for a bailout that is looking less apocalyptic by the day is proof - as if we needed more proof that any legislation passed through in a couple weeks under Bush is a steaming pile of shit designed to screw all parties.

It's much better to shift state resources to support failing companies so they can then use state resources to acquire successful companies as we are currently doing in the banking sector? Seems like most successful banks are more likely to be the ones doing the acquiring, from the news that I've been following. Perhaps Countrywide and WAMU constitute a "success" in some frame of reference. Again, so why did we give JPMorgan Chase $25 billion to buy more banks?

We've spent $350 billion to bailout Wall Street and have yet to buy a mortgage backed security. I'll quote JPMorgan Chase: Please, please explain to me why those poor bankers taking home >$1 million are more valuable than the Union smuck making $50k

eh, boring slog but nice view. Llanberis scares me.