The latest

McCain Sounded tired... you can't run this kind of schedule and hope to come out strong!

Anyway both candidates missed the point in this final debate. They were trying to tell voters that things will be better and tried to appeal to Nostalgia. A friend of mine said Nostalgia is a terrible driving tool. It's like using your rear view mirror to figure out where you're going. The last time I checked, this only works if you are going backwards or trying to park on a road to nowhere.

I found this troubling 2007 4 part report from Fox news ( not that I usually would call their reporting very useful) that investigated a failed 1997- 2001 multi-layered LA/Miami/Las Vegas/ Canada/ Egypt/ Israel drug ring investigation. It seemed that the criminals using inside info from two compromised Israeli firms were able to wiretap authorities and knew what the Secret Service, CIA, DEA, FBI, LA Police and a whole series of GVMT agencies were up to and used that info to send them on wild goose chases probably on a fleet of well stacked G IVs . How easy was it? Scary! One firm (Am-Docs) had the phone data of every member of every agency, cells, home , office, cottage, kids etc. The other firm (Comverse) had all the wiretap info with back doors that anybody could access and listen to all the recordings. How perfect is that for a criminal? You know when , where and who is wiretapping you. You can listen to what the cops heard and you can plant anything you want or erase compromising info held on the data banks.

So much for solving inter-agencies turf wars with Homeland Security! It seems the turf wars made sure that no one except the crooks had a complete picture. Many agencies complained but because the firm was heavily lobbied in Washington, Congress continued funding and forcing agencies to used the compromised equipment. It took FIVE years for the process to STOP. The scariest part of the video is it keeps getting jewish anti-defamation leagues constantly telling Google to remove it from Youtube and others. I read the letter that Fox News got as JADL tried to make its case.

Trying to suppress the story because Jewish based companies were involved rather than to air the stories so that more people demand that the problems get fixed is like a car manufacturer suppressing crash information from the NHTSA to prevent car sales decline in order to save jobs.

You do learn that the US system is all about turf wars between 2 dozen agencies, thousand of field offices,and a bunch of fat civil servants waiting for a pension while not risking thier necks on much.

The US, once a world standard for the concept of economic unions, is now spending way too much money ( it doesn’t have) on services it can’t afford, making most Americans poorer with a worse quality of life to show for it. Now mind you, American Baby Boomers have been living high on the hog since the GI bill and moved into the 1960s with Other people’s money with the repeal of the Gold standard. General de Gaulle, that shrewd Frenchman, always wanted to convert his Yankee dollars back to nice shiny gold bars. Nixon had to put a stop to that!

Now today as the world savers have lost several trillions of their savings, the lending to America is gone and no amount of government printing of fiat dollars will keep the whole pie from getting smaller. SO America, don't listen to those candidates, they won't give you back what was never yours in the first place. It was BORROWED time in the form of material possessions. Learn to eat frugal, drive down, eat less animal protein and learn to live responsibly not always wearing two baseball mits and always asking for stuff to fall into your open hands.

With either running candidate and a totally corrupt congress, millions of civil servants, government sub-contractors will continue to abuse the system because they first tell you they will give YOU stuff when in fact they will take for themselves 100x times more stuff.

NEVER seen a poor guy stay that way once elected and moving to Washington. If the Executive branch tries to change anything, the agenda grinds to a halt. Because once elected to Washington you are there for 4 or 6 years minimum. When your re-election come up a couple of pork barrels deal and there you go again... Very low turn-over there!

My four point solution:

1) US Tax code goes from 125,000 pages to 25

2) Tort Reform. Every person who plans on exercising as an injury lawyer has to serve 5 years in a combat unit just to get a limited license. Awards are limited to Quebec numbers. http://www.justicecontresaaq.com/ ( after you read this you gonna leave your practice all together)

3) US Defense is set at a % of 5 year trailing GDP

4) If you are a member of congress and the budget isn’t balanced over your first term, you cannot come back for another term to pork barrel your buddies!

Give that a spin Washington!

By the way WHEN you balance all of :

your balance of payment deficit

your trade deficit

your federal government deficit

WHEN HELL FREEZES OVER OR THE LEAFS WIN THE CUP,

You American crybabies , can then feel altruistic and go and ask if YOUR GOVERNMENT has the money and the Will to start offering coverage to your 38MM fellow Americans currently without any form of health insurance always at risk of total bankruptcy should an emergency arise.

FInally, $308BB have just been washed off Citi's books... nice jobs captains of Finance! we salute thee!

By my calculations, there were 106 trillion dollars of fake bets created with derivatives as nasty as my personal idea of Armageddon: the Credit Default Swap. It only takes ANOTHER 344 write-offs like this one and we will finally say goodbye to this nasty leverage of awful bad bets.

Well Until the new new finance guys come in with the proverbial: " well this time this is foolproof "!

Hopefully I will be in Curmudgeon heaven when that happens.

Cheers

P.