Wall Street Gets Blue Balls

HOLD ON TO YOUR TOUPEES! This has been a wild ride.

I honestly wonder how necessary Bush's first economics speech was. The situation was that much worse than it was 6 months ago. Did someone just lean over and tell him that for the first time? I wonder if part of the sharp fall is because of him panicking the markets.

Fuld gets punched in the face and AIG execs party at taxpayer expense. Here's the receipt. Oh yeah, and they're now getting even more taxpayer money. When will the criminal prosecutions and asset forfeiture proceedings start?

For some historical perspective, here's an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education focusing on the Panic of 1873. Probably a lot more applicable to today's crisis than the Great Depression.

Oyster runs us through some numbers. Speaking of numbers, what would it take to close the markets?

UPDATE- Now that I've bitch-smacked delicious into working, I'll post a few more links.

The Candidates Own Questionable Real Estate Deals. From McCain and Keating to Obama and Rezko and also the Veeps, crooked real estate deals have infected the system.

Bethany McLean, author of "The Smartest Guys in the Room" takes on the crisis. She basically said that all the wonderful post-Enron reforms suggested were never acted upon, prime among them were shareholder rights and revamping corporate board composition. I read that book and was just floored about how blatantly evil those guys were. Fucking granny in the ass, the death star, the list goes on and on. Also, had it not been for one incident when Bush was running for Governor in Texas, Ken Lay would probably be our Secretary of Treasury right now.

Alan Greenspan bets the system's stability on traders not being greedy. Dumb fuck. I want a refund on your book. The whole book talks about the joy of the free market and about how he had to bailout the free market when it got out of control. He's half Adam Smith, half Karl Marx.

International take on the bailout. After the US went around forcing other countries to implement "shock therapy" responses to economic crises, the US does the exact opposite.

The national debt clock runs out of digits. They've got a new board on order, but until then, the $ sign is replaced by a 1.

----
*Title Also, who knew the bronze Wall Street bull was anatomically correct?