If we're going to hell in a handbasket, we may as well learn what the hell a handbasket is, and who made it. These folks have been describing a different strand of said handbasket everyday, in a comprehensive and comprehensible way.

"We have a simple thesis," Eisman explained. "There is going to be a calamity, and whenever there is a calamity, Merrill is there." When it came time to bankrupt Orange County with bad advice, Merrill was there. When the internet went bust, Merrill was there. Way back in the 1980s, when the first bond trader was let off his leash and lost hundreds of millions of dollars, Merrill was there to take the hit. That was Eisman's logic-the logic of Wall Street's pecking order. Goldman Sachs was the big kid who ran the games in this neighborhood. Merrill Lynch was the little fat kid assigned the least pleasant roles, just happy to be a part of things. The game, as Eisman saw it, was Crack the Whip. He assumed Merrill Lynch had taken its assigned place at the end of the chain.

"Paulson said the government's $700 billion financial rescue package won't purchase troubled assets from banks as originally planned. He said that plan would have taken too much time, and that the Treasury instead will rely on buying stakes in banks and encouraging them to resume more normal lending."

Sorry to hash up an old topic, but I was perusing my old standby for analysis of current events and came across this interesting article highlighting a recent empirical analysis of political bias in American print media. I found their approach for measuring media bias to be particularly creative.

You got that a@*hole?

Let's avoid politics and focus only on economics please.

Andrew Lahde, Lahde Capital Management made a gazillion dollars off the smartest guys in the room. He thanks them profusely then calls them idiots for allowing him to happily to take money from them. Then he calls capitalism corrupt and done and finally advocates for Linux and hemp...

I haven't read them all yet... working on it and so should you!

Spooky how the trends are similar... not sure if it really means much though.

I say we offer a few billion dollars in exchange for Bjork and a few thousand attractive icelandic blondes to-be-named-later and see what they say....

What better way to celebrate a $85 Billion dollar government bailout than to take the executives and head to the spa for the week. SmokingGun has the invoice...At least they were judicious with the limo usage.

Everyone keeps invoking 1929... they should be looking at 1873.

The Economist has reprinted an editorial they printed in 1929 regarding their take (from a British perspective) on that financial crisis. A difficult read to be sure (enough commas already!), but interesting to see some of the parallels with today. An excerpt:

The other guy is an idiot.

The fate of the Bush administration's $700 billion financial bailout plan was abruptly thrown in doubt Monday as a House vote turned against the controversial measure.The NASDAQ dropped 6% and is still going. This could be a bad day all around.

They f'up, you get free services & maybe even some cash!!

Is Financial Innovation just another word for excessive and reckless leverage?

Well, I guess that answers that question!

Doom and Gloom sells and I might be buying this story. I just hope I can throw it away.

It is truly amazing to see America fall apart and NoOne cares. The Media and our so called Leaders just sit back and do NOTHING and point fingers at each other without reporting on the REAL Problems this Country is Facing.