#bankers and bailouts

[workersolidarity]

Three, four years ago I could have told you, and did tell people, that inflation would start steadily going up, and I said even then that it would likely be stubborn, meaning it wasn't going to be an easy fix.

I knew this back then because it was obvious, even years ago, that the BRICS countries, along with many African and South Asian countries and elsewhere were looking for ways to get around using the US Dollar for trade.

They were making moves to expand trade relations outside US dollar transactions and were for many years planning and building the infrastructure for a future Multipolar world.

And that process began rapidly picking up pace three or four years ago.

I began to say then, what I'm still saying now, as that process goes on and trade outside the US Dollar system grows exponentially year-on-year, that's going to begin to have an effect on inflation.

Why? Well, Imperialism really. Because the US for decades has depended on the steady demand for US Dollars to hold down inflation, allowing the US to use debt spending to finance wars, military bases and imperialistic ventures like Syria.

Remember, it was the US in its massively dominant position after WWII that built the Bretton Woods System that made the US Dollar the world reserve currency pegged to gold, and it was the US that unilaterally abandoned Bretton Woods 1 and took the dollar off Gold, allowing for the US to finance wars through debt spending, and created the Petro-Dollar with Saudi Arabia in the 1970's.

This debt spending is essentially the surplus value from the Global South and other poorer countries that must buy US Dollars to fund infrastructure projects, energy consumption, food and medicine imports, etc since it's the world reserve currency and if you wish to use the US Financial System at all, such as the World Bank, or SWIFT messaging system, well you have to use US Dollars.

Basically, it's the sucking of the wealth out of poorer countries to finance their own economic oppression.

But as these countries catch on and with new rising global powers like Russia, China and Iran building the infrastructure for an alternative system, the US Dollar is being abandoned faster than ever.

In 2000, more than 70% of Foreign Exchange Reserves were held in US Dollars. By 2020, that figure had dropped considerably to 59%. And the rate at which it's dropping is only increasing.

Knowing this, I said back in 2019 and 2020 that inflation was likely to become a problem. And if it did become a problem, then we knew exactly what the Fed would do as a result: dramatically increase benchmark Interest rates.

This didn't take any particularly specialized or secretive sources to figure out. It's been obvious for years to anyone seriously interested in economics and geopolitics.

And what happens when interest rates go up? The value of the bonds bought under lower interest rates suddenly go way down, while debts become more expensive. It's like gravity in economics.

So with all that being said, why then did all these banks (Signature Bank, First Republic Bank, and Silicon Valley Bank) continue buying troubled assets and Treasury bonds if they're so smart and educated and knew all this?

I mean, these guys are supposed to be the best of the best corporate bankers, right? On the cutting edge of investment banking, right? That's what everyone said even just months before Silicon Valley Bank failed. (CNBC host and moron of the year Jim Cramer literally praised Silicon Valley Bank less than a month before its failure)

So one of two things must be true here and neither one is good for YOU the average worker.

Either these bankers are idiots; complete morons who have little to no understanding of basic economics, geopolitics, and monetary policy, something that should be of concern to all of us.

I mean, I'm just a dude working for a small retailer in New Orleans and even I knew this inflation and higher interest rates were coming.

So why exactly are these people paid such exorbitant salaries? If I can understand the basics of their job better than they can, why am I a retailer, and he, a millionaire banker???

So that's one possibility, one I'm virtually certain is actually true, that our ruling Elite isn't particularly smart or well educated in reality, anymore than ordinary people I meet everyday, and any one of us could easily do their jobs just as well or better than they do given the opportunities afforded to them.

But even if in this case, that's not what happened. That these weren't idiots. Well then the alternative is something that should also be deeply disturbing to you: that these bankers knew they would be facing this situation, that they were well aware of the coming inflationary pressures and equally aware what the Feds response would be, interest rate hikes.

And instead of using the last couple of years to shed possibly dangerous assets and shore up the money the banks kept on hand, they continued to do what was personally making them so much profit, at the expense of tax payers, because they were absolutely certain that the government these bankers spend so much money on campaigns for, would swoop in regardless of the recklessness of their behavior, and bail them out no matter what.

These are not the signs of a healthy political, economic or banking system.

[liberalsarecool]

Until bankers go to prison, the bailouts will get bigger and bigger.

[castielcommunism]

on the topic of spn using the supernatural to explain historical events, I actually like the idea of bankers selling their souls to crossroads demons for financial bailouts, which is how crowley is introduced. like the idea that what they’re doing is so profane and so despicable that the financial market can only be maintained by people who have, both literally and figuratively, sold their souls to hell in exchange for power

[mariacallous]

At first glance, the Silicon Valley Bank debacle seems to be a cut-and-dried financial caper. The executives running the 16th-largest bank in the US made the wrong choices in handling what seemed a fortuitous situation—a roster of clients, flush with venture capital funding, handing over billions of dollars of cash for storage in the institution's coffers. But the bank’s leaders misjudged the risks of higher interest rates and inflation. Pair that with a mini tech downturn, and the bank’s spreadsheets began turning colors. When word of its perilous situation got out, panicky depositors pulled their money. After a government takeover, everyone’s money was safe. 

But although no depositor lost money, the saga looks like a traumatic event whose consequences will linger for months, or even years. Things happened that we can’t unsee. The SVB saga reminds me of what my wife, a true-crime reporter, says when people ask why she finds murder stories so interesting. A killing, she’d say, reveals the previously private, shrouded actions that define the way people live. In the course of investigating the crime, lives that looked ideal from the outside are exposed as unmade beds of secrets and lies. 

Start with the bank. As has been widely reported—only now with a critical eye—Silicon Valley Bank was not only the bank of choice among Silicon Valley companies, but an ingratiating cheerleader for startup culture. The VCs and angels funding new companies would routinely send entrepreneurs to the bank, which often handled both company accounts and the personal finances of founders and executives. SVB would party with tech people—and vintners, another sector they were deep into. Some bankers had wine fridges in their offices. Salud!

Normally, you’d have to hold my family hostage before I became a banker—I picture the buttoned-up prig who hired Mary Poppins. But I might think differently if banking were a world of parties, high-end Cabernets, and elbow-rubbing with universe-denting geniuses who keep millions in the bank and take out mega-mortgages. By all accounts, SVB shared and perhaps amplified the freewheeling vibe of the swashbucklers it served. This is not what you necessarily want from a fiduciary. And as we learned this week, SVB’s CEO reportedly indulged in one of the worst things a founder can do—selling off stock when trouble lies ahead. 

 When that trouble arrived, we also learned a lot about the investment lords of the Valley who give founders the millions they need to move fast and make things. As word began to leak of SVB’s weaknesses, VCs who style themselves as tech’s smartest people had a choice: help bolster the financial partner holding the industry’s assets or pull funds immediately. The latter course would trigger a panic that would assure disaster for the startup ecosystem—but not you, because you were first in line. 

Despite years of talk about how companies in the tech world are united in a beneficial joint mission, some of the biggest players went into self-preservation mode, essentially firing the starting pistol for a bank run. One notable bailout leader was Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, which got an early sense of SVB’s troubles and advised all its companies to get out ASAP. As word spread, a classic bank run took shape, with other VC firms urging pullouts, until it was impossible to connect online with SVB to move funds. By the time a group of VCs came together to pledge support for SVB, its virtual doors were shut. In the mad rush to the lifeboats, hundreds of companies were stranded on deck. When the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) took over Silicon Valley Bank last Friday, with all activity frozen, those whose holdings in the bank far exceeded the $250,000 limit on insured accounts truly faced the abyss.

I get it—saving one’s own skin is human nature. But in the future, let’s go easy on hyping the camaraderie of tech. 

And what did the Valley’s rugged individuals do when oblivion loomed? They begged for a government rescue, of course. It’s hard not to empathize with some of the rank and file tech workers, many of them far from California, who wouldn’t be able to meet their bills. And indeed, there were some acts of generosity, as investors extended loans to their portfolio companies. But the loudest voices urging bailouts didn’t seem to be those most in jeopardy, but super-rich investors and speculators likeself-described angel investor Jason Calacanis, PayPal mafia billionaire David Sacks, and Machiavellian hedge fund magnate Bill Ackman, bombing Twitter with over-the-top pleas to rescue depositors.

Their case was that if depositors didn’t have immediate access to their funds, SVB’s woes might be “contagious,” setting off a wider bank panic. A reasonable concern. But it’s unlikely these pundits would have made the same arguments if the institution in question were some regional bank of similar size in the Midwest. Some people arguing for a federal bailout had previously opined that the government should keep its tentacles away from the innovative geniuses of the Valley.

The spectacle is particularly ironic because a huge part of startup lore is not just accepting risk but embracing it. We hear endlessly of the bravery of entrepreneurs who step into the breach and put millions of dollars in jeopardy, hoping to buck the dismal odds of creating a difference-making company that, by the way, makes its founders ludicrously wealthy. It’s part of the game to lose your investor’s money and a couple of years of your life because you felt that a $400 juice machine would be the next iPhone. 

Now those noble risk-takers were demanding retroactive protection—because tech-company money was unavailable due to a totally avoidable risk. Any idiot knows that FDIC covers only $250,000. So why did so many firms store all their assets in uninsured accounts in a single bank? You might give a pass to naive founders who blindly accepted the recommendation of their funders to use Silicon Valley Bank. (Though maybe not to big companies like Roku, which had $487 million on deposit in SVB.) But what’s the excuse of those who did the recommending? Did they notice that SVB executives actively lobbied to avoid stringent regulation? Or that for eight months, SVB failed to replace its retired chief risk officer? Did they understand that an entire startup monoculture patronizing one bank made a huge industry dependent on a single point of failure?

Meanwhile, less verbose investors and VCs quietly worked behind the scenes on convincing the FDIC to guarantee all deposits. One of the Valley’s top seed investors, Ron Conway, reportedly even got Vice President Kamala Harris on the phone to hear his plea for a depositor bailout. The case they made for protecting funds from a maximum $250,000 to, well, infinity, was a more refined version of what the Twitter panics-spreaders were saying: It would stem a collapse in the tech sector and calm people all over the country who were suddenly worried about their own banks’ stability. (It would also mean that from this point forward, holding to the limit is indefensible.) It’s not clear whether the lobbying affected the actual decision. But the attempts were unseemly, an unattractive display of the power of this massive industry. 

So what has been uncovered in the week since we learned that Silicon Valley Bank was no more trustworthy than a crypto spam text? A startup culture once considered the gem of the economy has been exposed as careless with its money, clueless in its judgment of character, hypocritical in its ideology, and ruthless in exercising its political clout as a powerful special interest. Meanwhile, the financial world is still jittery, with other banks failing and just about everyone wondering what comes next. And from here on, the concept of a cap on FDIC insurance is at risk. But at least the SVB credit cards are working again. And VCs can take a victory lap as they brag about how they saved the day.

[captainsupernoodle]

the beantown bailout job is just. the commentary is just talking about how great portland is and how much of a family the team is. nate is having an identity crisis. parker is a nun and eliot doesn't question it at all. parker is eating cereal with soda in it. the babyest of baby relationship development with pardison. "people are like locks." the camera crew almost got locked in the vault. "nate will never have control of his kitchen again." introduction of the bar. "we should steal something." the goon who gets his nose broken like three times. eliot using the baseball bat. the fridge full of orange soda. the 80s jacket. the absolute wreck of a kitchen. four people loudly wondering how to solve their problems with a control freak they're trying to bait in the room. the four of them have been hanging out for less than twenty-four hours and they're all physically mirroring each other and carefully not looking at nate too hard unless he's talking at them, at which time they stare at him like a beloved teacher. "this con needs......five." the air quotes. sophie and eliot dynamic. sophie beaning nate with a cookie pan. annie kroy. the cupboard full of coffee. eliot cracking up when he sets off the explosive putty and scares the banker. "nate ford is a wolf who hunts other wolves." saint bridgette is the patron saint of wanderers. parker in suits. the first evil speech of evil. eliot's face when sophie "shoots" him. NATE'S face when sophie shoots eliot. "parker finds a way to put people down without people getting mad at her" re: the beginning of parker's love affair with tazers. "ketchup packets." introduction of bonanno. "actually, you moved into my house" "hi i'm old nate and i live here too!" eliot busting through the wall. "the family's back together! *said while dragging nate in by the scruff*"

[edwordsmyth]

"The underlying reason why the failure of a medium-sized bank in California created so much angst worldwide is that international capitalism has never been able to get back on its feet after 2008.

In more detail: Central banks (the FED, the ECB, etc.) have one basic tool – the interest rate. When they want to put a brake on economic activity to keep inflation in check, they raise the interest rate, and vice-versa. But, in addition to price stability, central banks have two other goals: the stability of the banking system, and the balancing of liquidity with investment. The interest rate chosen by the central bank is one. That same number (e.g. 3%) must achieve three objectives simultaneously: price stability, banking system stability, and balancing between liquidity and investment.

And herein lies the reason why I argue that, after 2008, capitalism cannot recover: There is no longer one interest rate that can achieve all three of these objectives simultaneously. This is the tragedy of central bankers: If they want to tame inflation (at a high enough interest rate), they trigger a banking crisis and, as a result, they are forced to bail out the oligarchs who, despite being bailed out, drive investments below liquidity. If, on the other hand, they impose a lower interest rate to avoid triggering a banking crisis, then inflation gets out of control – with the result that businesses expect interest rates to rise, which discourages them from investing. And so on and so forth.

Back to 2008, then?

No, for two reasons. First, the problem for US banks today is not that their assets are junk (e.g. structured derivatives based on red loans) as they were in 2008, but that they own government bonds which they are simply forced to sell at a discount. Second, the Fed bailout announced yesterday is different from the one in 2008 – today it is the banks and depositors who are being bailed out, but not the bank owners-shareholders. These two reasons explain why bank stocks are falling but there is no total collapse of stock markets.

The fact that there is no total collapse of the stock markets does not, of course, mean that the crisis of capitalism – which has been developing continuously since 2008 – is not deepening. It simply does not have the characteristics of an instantaneous, heavy-handed fall.

What should have been done?

Since 2008, governments and central banks have been trying to prop up the banks through a combination of socialism for the banks, and austerity for everyone else. The result is what we see today: The metastasis of the crisis from one “organ” of capitalism to another, with the magnitude of the crisis increasing with each such metastasis.

What could be done as an alternative? The exact opposite: austerity for the banks, with nationalisation of those who cannot survive. And socialism for workers – a basic income for all, a return to collective bargaining and, further out, new forms of participatory ownership of high- and low-tech companies. In other words, nothing short of a political revolution.

To those who fear the idea of a political revolution, my message is simple: Prepare to pay the price of the escalating crisis of a capitalism determined to take us all to its grave."

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from Grist:

An unexpected constituency is sounding the alarm on climate change: U.S. mortgage bankers.

Their predictions are dire: As climate change worsens and natural disasters wreak havoc on America’s housing stock, homeowners increasingly default on their mortgages. The ballooning financial losses force lenders to ratchet up interest rates. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the massive government-backed companies charged with supporting affordable housing, continue issuing loans in risky areas, subsidizing homes in harm’s way. Private sector investors in the housing market back away from communities facing severe climate risks, like rising sea levels, repeated flooding, and more severe wildfires. The economic losses, which could easily number in the billions of dollars, are shouldered by the federal government — and ultimately taxpayers.

That’s all according to a new report by the Research Institute for Housing America, a think tank founded by the Mortgage Bankers Association, a trade group representing the real estate finance industry.

“Climate change will impact all governments, industries, and individuals,” the report notes. “Housing and housing finance will not be spared.”

The U.S. housing market consists of a vast panoply of stakeholders, including homeowners, renters, lenders, insurers, government-backed entities, loan servicers, and the federal government itself. As climate-fueled disasters continue to wreak havoc, each group faces different risks and consequences, according to the report. Homeowners in the path of hurricanes and other climate disasters may see their home values plummet. If homeowners weathering ever more severe flooding and wildfires increasingly default on their mortgages, it will ricochet through the entire financial ecosystem. Both lenders and investors could see major losses as a result. The federal government stands in the middle of it all: It runs the National Flood Insurance Program, which is responsible for 5.1 million residential flood insurance policies nationwide, and backstops Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The specter of massive bailouts looms large. 

[eelhound]

"The main reason for the explosion in billionaire wealth over the course of the pandemic has been the asset-purchasing programs undertaken by central banks. In the wake of the financial crisis, and following in the footsteps of the Bank of Japan after its crisis a decade earlier, central banks set about creating new money to purchase long-dated government bonds and some other assets in order to reduce yields (previously, they had primarily dealt in short-dated bonds as a way to influence interest rates).

The idea behind what is now commonly known as quantitative easing (QE) was that pushing down yields on long-dated government bonds would encourage investors to purchase other assets, like equities [i.e. stock shares]. Some argue that this was simply a measure designed to increase lending and investment; others argue that central banks were actively attempting to increase asset prices, enriching the wealthy based on the assumption that that wealth would 'trickle down' to everyone else.

Whatever the original intentions, central bank asset purchases have unquestionably led to significant asset price inflation and increased wealth inequality. If that trend was not obvious in the run-up to the COVID-19 pandemic — US equities had undergone their longest bull run in history and many observers were pointing to a bubble in high-yield corporate debt — then it is certainly obvious today.

Saying that central bank asset purchases have increased wealth inequality is another way of saying that the state has intervened directly in order to increase the wealth of those at the very top. In this context, the idea that billionaire wealth simply represents a reward for effort and innovation — the size of which is determined by the 'market' — is clearly absurd. These billionaires didn’t earn the massive increases in their wealth seen over the last year — they were effectively handed this wealth by the state.

And QE is not the only form of upward redistribution promoted by capitalist states today. Even before the pandemic, the United States had a massive problem with so-called corporate welfare. Special interest groups — from oil to agriculture to aviation — received huge direct handouts from the US state in the form of tax breaks and subsidies.

The response to the global financial crisis could itself be considered a form of corporate welfare. Some of the largest banks, insurance companies, and other financial institutions received massive direct or indirect bailouts for undertaking activities that many of their senior executives were aware were incredibly risky.

These bankers no doubt knew that their organizations were 'too big to fail': they knew that their collapse could bring down the world economy. The trump card held by these large organizations is a form of structural power inherent to the functioning of capitalism: as long as a small number of people control most of the world’s resources, they’ll be able to blackmail even the most progressive governments.

The pandemic has seen a massive revival of corporate welfare — only this time, rather than bailing out their financial sectors, governments are bailing out the entire capitalist class. On top of the $9 trillion worth of QE that’s been undertaken since the pandemic began, governments all around the world have spent trillions on loans and subsidies to big businesses, financiers, and landlords. Most have also provided some support for workers; yet without breaks on debt, rent, and bills, much of this has ended up in the pockets of the wealthy too.

These are only the indirect channels through which capitalist states support the global billionaire class. Oxfam identified in 2015 that a third of billionaire wealth comes directly from crony connections to the state or monopolies. Whether through outsourcing, subsidies, or privatization, state policy has created many billionaires over the years — as should be clear from the fact that state-capitalist China created the most new billionaires this year.

It is not an exaggeration to say that the dramatic increase in the wealth of those at the very top of society would have been impossible without the direct intervention of capitalist states all over the world. Those who attempt to justify the extraordinary levels of inequality on the basis that they are the natural result of the operation of the free market would do well to remember this.

But so would those on the Left who see state intervention as the answer to all of capitalism’s problems. More often than not, capitalist states undertake policy in the interests of capital. This is not because states are mere instruments of the ruling class; it is because the balance of power between capital and labor has shifted decisively in favor of the former in recent years, which has influenced the class struggle taking place within state institutions.

It may be possible to imagine a world in which public power is used to support the interests of labor over capital, but there is no way this can be achieved without class struggle within and — crucially — outside of the capitalist state."

- Grace Blakeley, from "Corporate Welfare Props Up the Billionaire Class." Jacobin, 13 June 2021.

[according-to-the-laura]

StackedNatural Day 60: 5x10, 6x09, 9x07

StackedNatural Masterpost: [x]

November 19, 2009

NOTE: I’m putting the finale in it’s own post that will follow this one shortly. I think that the psychic damage it will deal me to watch it again deserves it’s own place.

5x10: Abandon All Hope...

Written by: Ben Edlund

Directed by: Phil Sgriccia

Original air date: November 19, 2009

Plot Synopsis:

Dean and Sam get to know the whereabouts of Lucifer and want to hunt him down. But Lucifer is well prepared and is working his own plans.

Features:

Crowley has the best character intro ever filmed, the best hard zoom ever filmed, retrieving the colt, Cas drinks with the girls, family portrait, Meg and her hellhounds, the devil’s deteriorating vessel, Jo and Ellen’s sacrifice, shooting the devil in the head, raising death,

My Thoughts:

I watched the cold open 3 times while watching this episode because it made us laugh so hard. GOT HIM.

I love Crowley so much, he’s been a fruity little crossroads demon since the beginning and we owe Mark Sheppard everything. He didn’t have to go so hard with the eyes and the face before he kissed that sleezy banker, but he did that for us. He gave us not one but TWO gay kisses in this role. A hero.

The scene when the boys meet him and they’re so baffled by him… I love them. They’re so stupid.

Lucifer is still an actually scary villain in this season, he has a ton of gravitas and control and I forgot how much I loved that until I saw it contrasting so sharply with, for example, Inherit the Earth, where he was mostly whined and said “cuck”. The colouring and the aesthetic of this episode also fuck extremely hard, especially when Cas is walking among the reapers and then standing in the ring of holy fire all lit from below, doing the same hand turn that he does in On The Head of a Pin. And they still use Cas’ wings to great effect this early into the series as well.

Bonus points for Deangirls and hellers this episode. Dean says, I’d like to die for a cause (do NOT think about the finale in this context), and then he gives Jo the same “last night on Earth” speech that he gave to Cas in Free to Be You and Me.

Cas is making friends with Jo and Ellen, which makes it even sadder that they die in this episode. I love them so much, Jo especially, but I do like that she got to go out a hero and that she and Ellen got their emotional moment at the end.

Cas and Lucifer are great foils for each other in this episode. They both rebelled and were cast out, but for opposite reasons. One for hatred of humanity, one for love of it. @meg3point0 pointed out that Lucifer, even through rebelling, is playing the role that his Father has been writing for all of existence. One brother has to fight the other, Lucifer vs Michael, Cain vs Abel, Sam vs Dean. This is God’s book, and it needs conflict.

Cas looks sooo pretty in this episode, and while I don’t personally ship Megstiel, this episode makes me see the appeal. They have chemistry, hot damn.

Notable Lines:

“Your choice. You can cling to six decades of deep-seated homophobia, or give it up and get a complete bailout for your bank's ridiculous incompetence.”

“To him, we're just servants. Cannon fodder. If Lucifer manages to exterminate humankind, we're next. So, help me, huh? Let's all go back to simpler, better times, back to when we could all follow our natures.”

“Sam Winchester, having trust issues with a demon. Well, better late than never.”

“What a peculiar thing you are.”

“I rebelled, I was cast out. You rebelled, you were cast out. Almost all of heaven wants to see me dead, and if they succeed, guess what? You're their new public enemy number one. We're on the same side, like it or not, so why not just serve your own best interests? Which in this case just happen to be mine?”

“Oh, I don't know, Sam. I think it will. I think it'll happen soon. Within six months. And I think it'll happen in Detroit.”

“I was a son. A brother, like you, a younger brother, and I had an older brother who I loved. Idolized, in fact. And one day I went to him and I begged him to stand with me, and Michael—Michael turned on me. Called me a freak. A monster. And then he beat me down. All because I was different. Because I had a mind of my own. Tell me something, Sam. Any of this sound familiar?”

“Lucifer is the father of our race. Our creator. Your god may be a deadbeat. Mine—mine walks the earth.”

Laura’s (completely subjective) Episode Rating: 9.5

IMdB Rating: 9.3

6x09: Clap Your Hands If You Believe...

Written by: Ben Edlund

Directed by: John F. Showalter

Original air date: November 19, 2010

Plot Synopsis:

The brothers investigate a series of abductions attributed to aliens. However, when Dean disappears and then reappears, they realise that the culprits are fairies and that only someone taken to the fairy realm can see them.

Features:

The quintessential soulless Sam episode, Dean gets abducted, having a soul equals suffering, little glowing hot naked lady with nipples, fairy deals, counting grains of salt.

My Thoughts:

When I think of Soulless Sam, this is the episode that I think of. He has tons of funny lines (thanks, Bedlund), and it’s Jarpad’s best soulless acting (perhaps because he doesn’t need to emote). The use of Ground Control to Major Tom is very funny. I like to see big men hold little teacups. Also, the lighting in the prison scene is really good. Sam dumping out the salt is a fun way to bring it back to classic fairy lore.

I'm not a fan of the off-putting homophobic jokes, but in the grand scheme of things they're not the worst.

Also, they mentioned brownies, so I spent a fair amount of time watching this episode daydreaming about DTA instead of paying attention, sorry.

Notable Lines:

“Close encounter! What kind? First? Second? [...] Third kind already? You better run, man. I think the fourth kind is a butt thing.”

“t’s fine. I mean, I’ve had time to adjust.” “Did it happen when you were kids?” “No, like, half an hour ago. “

“So, say you got a soul and you’re on a case, and your brother gets abducted by aliens— [...] what about when there are no more leads for the night? Are you supposed to just sit there in the dark and suffer, even when there’s nothing that can be done at that moment? [...] But couldn’t I just do all that and have sex with the hippie chick?”

“Nipples?”

“Dean? Did you service Oberon, King of the Fairies?”

“You’re missing a certain piece, right in the center, ain’t you?”

Laura’s (completely subjective) Episode Rating: 7.8

IMdB Rating: 8.5

9x07: Bad Boys

Written by: Adam Glass

Directed by: Kevin Parks

Original air date: November 19, 2013

Plot Synopsis:

Dean and Sam visit Dean's old boy's home that's now being haunted by a ghost.

Features:

John was a liar, D-Dawg, Dean’s troubled adolescence, Sonny’s home for boys, John Winchester’s A+ parenting, Dean’s first girlfriend, protection from beyond the grave.

My Thoughts:

In this house, we hate John Winchester.

I mean, in a meta sense I love him because I thrive on conflict and Dean is such an interesting character because of his relationship with John, but in reality I am just frothing with rage at a dad who would say his son can rot in jail because he was stealing food to feed his younger brother. And then he lied to Sam to make it seem like it was Dean’s choice to leave him and that he ran away. And Dean still defends his choices to Sam all these years later!

Dylan Everett is so great as young Dean, he honestly nails all the classic Dean Winchester expressions and mannerisms. And he makes me so desperately sad that I want to claw at my own face, so.

The first time I ever saw this episode, I assumed that there was going to have been a case when Dean was a teenager and that’s how Sonny knew about the family business, but there wasn’t. Dean just got to be a teenager for a couple months, and he kept in contact with Sonny all that time and felt close enough to him to tell him what the business was so that Sonny could call him if he ever had trouble. I am actively soliciting fic recs for a fic exploring Sonny and Dean’s relationship over the years. Sonny said he was proud of him, and ten years later he knew that his dad was possessed because he said that he was proud of him.

Dean is so good with kids, it’s tragic that Jack never de-aged for an episode so we could watch him be a dad to a toddler. It’s what we deserve. I just kept thinking about the line, “Hunters are never children. I never was.” I’m sad! His benchmark for good is “no one sexually assaulted me or burned me with cigarettes”! He didn’t actually like being a hunter! He wanted to be a mechanic.

I also really like that even though this episode is centered around Dean, we got a little bit of Sam character stuff as well. He understood the orphan who lost his mom in a fire. He got to see a side of his brother that he had never seen before. And because he’s the parallel to Timmy, we get to see Dean as the parallel to the ghostly mother, protecting her son to the point of causing harm, or in Dean’s case allowing a violation of his bodily autonomy to keep him alive.

Love the parallel with Drag Me Away (From You), with John as the mysterious shadow in the front seat, not the father welcoming home his child.

Notable Lines:

“It was Dad's idea. And then it just – you know, the story became the story.”

“He found me. He found me quick. But he left me here 'cause I lost our money.”

“Well, his old man called. Once he found out what happened, he said `let him rot in jail’.”

“Cars are freaking cool as hell. Fixing them is like … a puzzle, and the best part is when you're done, they leave, and you're not responsible for them anymore.”

“Sometimes you got to do what's best for you, even if it's gonna hurt the ones you love.”

“I mean, here I was thinking this was the worst part of your life, and it turns out it was the best.”

Laura’s (completely subjective) Episode Rating: 9.6

IMdB Rating: 8.4

In Conclusion: This Stacked was going SO WELL and now I have to watch Carry On.

<< Previous Day | Next Day >>

[workersolidarity]

Biden offers assurances after major US banks collapse | Business and Economy News | Al Jazeera

What can even be said at this point?

Both the second and third largest bank failures in the history of the United States occurred over the weekend.

This really shouldn't be surprising. Thanks largely to the sanctions regimes placed on Russia and China over the last year have caused stubbornly high inflation across the West.

The US banker-run Fed has responded to the inflation with ever increasing interest rates, raising borrowing costs for Banks that have, once again, been mainly focused on short-term profit seeking over stable investments.

Unlike the banking regulations put into effect after the Great Depression, Dodd-Frank, enacted shortly after 2008 bank failures, was purposely over-complicated, full of loopholes, and only partially enacted and enforced.

It should come as no surprise then that banks like SVB and Signature Bank held an inordinate amount of risky investments that lost value since the Feds interest rate hikes, and because of obvious loopholes in the Law, these banks didn't have to report the degradation in value of these investments until they went to sell them, when suddenly their customers realized just how much money their bank had lost, leading to a traditional bank-run.

And of course, the Biden Administration runs to the rescue, securing depositors of ALL amounts at these banks, once again making it crystal clear to the rich that there will be no consequences to any of their actions EVER.

The point is, the Capitalist Class at the helm can't even make decisions based on their own long-term stability, let alone for the economic stability of the people.

From idiotic sanctions, pointless wars, endless aid to Ukraine, bailouts of rich depositors, endless increases in the Defense Budget, these people can't even defend their own interests because they're so hyperfocused on short-term political and economic gain.

I mean do people even realize this inflation is basically the result of just two things, sanctions and endless war spending???

[antoine-roquentin]

On December 23, 2020, the campaign season for Mexico’s 2021 midterm elections officially kicked off with the announcement that the three major opposition parties — the PRI, the PAN, and the PRD — will be joining together in a common front against the ruling party, MORENA. The coalition, Va por México (“Go for Mexico”), will field candidates in eleven of the fifteen gubernatorial races and around 180 of the 300 single-member electoral districts for the Cámara de Diputados (“House of Deputies”) in an attempt to seize a majority in the lower house and bring the program of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) to a standstill.

In response, MORENA launched an ad that was censured by the National Electoral Institute for supposedly violating campaign rules, causing it to go viral on social media. It is worth quoting in full:

For years, the PRI, PAN, and its allies have had a pact that has damaged Mexico. In 1995, they raised IVA [Value-Added Tax] from 10 percent to 15 percent. In 1998, they approved the bailout of their friends’ and bankers’ businesses with FOBAPROA. In 2006, the PRI helped the PAN orchestrate its electoral fraud. In 2012, many members of the PAN called for a vote for Enrique Peña Nieto, including Vicente Fox. Then, the PRI, PAN, and PRD signed the Pact for Mexico and approved the reforms that affected the entire country. In 2017, they approved the new gasoline taxes and the Interior Security Law. In 2018, they did all they could to prevent the change that Mexico needed. Following their defeat, in 2019 and 2020 they have opposed the advance of the “fourth transformation,” and the reforms that guarantee the right to a pension, scholarships, and the elimination of the fuero [immunity from prosecution for officeholders]. Today, the PRI, PAN, and PRD are finally removing the mask and are joining together in a perverse electoral alliance, demonstrating that they are the same and represent the same interests. We will not allow them to once again betray the people. Let’s remove the tumor of corruption.

Dangerous as it may seem, the “perverse alliance” is in fact a political gift to AMLO. In one fell swoop, it has borne out the accusation he has made year after year, in speech after speech and spot after spot, that the PRI and the PAN have long since morphed into the PRIAN: a two-headed, narco-infiltrated, right-wing entity devoted to spectacular and, at times, bizarre levels of corruption; stratospheric personal enrichment; the for-profit dismemberment of the Mexican state; lethal suppression of protest; and the taking of turns in power in order to maintain the appearance of democracy. And since 2012, the PRIAN has been joined by the sinking remains of the PRD — the once-proud party of the center-left — in a flailing attempt to remain above the 3-percent vote threshold needed to receive public financing.                          

The formation of this whiff-of-desperation alliance caps two years in which Mexico’s newly minted opposition has, to put it mildly, failed to shine. Arrogant, reactive, unreconciled to its role, and rabidly indignant at being displaced from power, the nation’s collective opposition — from its media pundits to its hapless, anonymous party leaders — has focused most of its scattered fire on the figure of AMLO instead of delineating any kind of alternative program to address the crises of its own making or engage in the remotest self-critique. On social media, the president is referred to as “El cacas” (“caca” in Spanish being the infantile term for a bodily excretion), or simply “López,” to tar him for having a last name that sounds too common.

One of the opposition’s up-and-coming young lights, Senator Samuel García of the state of Nuevo León, has provoked widespread derision for a series of gaffes, including telling his wife that she was “showing too much leg” on a livestream, lamenting that his father would withhold his allowance as an adolescent unless he played a full eighteen holes of golf, and commending the valuable people who manage to get by on salaries of $40–50,000 pesos (US$2,000–2,500) per month; the median salary in Mexico is around a tenth of that.

In its most concerted rebellion to date, a group of would-be protestors, under the leadership of the erratic businessman Gilberto Lozano, marched to the Zócalo of Mexico City this past fall with the grandiose intention of camping out until AMLO resigned. Citing health problems, however, Lozano quickly begged off, and most of his followers soon did the same, leading to the spectacle of a plaza full of empty tents which, in the winds of October, began careening through the sky in a gusty homage to absentee activism. The “encampment” was lifted a few weeks later, despite AMLO’s offer to hang out hammocks for those who remained. And in one of the coalition’s first forays into public relations, it decided to run an ad on agricultural supports with a stock photo of a white farmer from Turkey instead of one of the millions of possible photos of Mexican campesinos.

Behind the disarray, however, lurk interests that are much more organized. The two key organizers of the coalition are Gustavo Hoyos, leader of the Employers’ Confederation of Mexico, and Claudio X. González, son of the longtime director of Kimberly Clark Mexico who helped sabotage AMLO’s first presidential candidacy in 2006. A decade later, in 2017, father and son were profiled in an adulatory front-page splash in the New York Times. Penned by Mexico bureau chief Azam Ahmed, the piece breathlessly refers to González père as “a corporate chairman revered in Mexico” and “one of Mexico’s most venerated — and wealthiest — figures in the business world,” and portrays González fils as a heroic anti-corruption crusader. (The family has recently made headlines again thanks to a lavish mid-pandemic wedding featuring guests fraternizing and dancing without face masks.)

With Hoyos and González, fueled by millions from their shadowy network of financiers, running the show behind the scenes, we can expect a reedition of the fake news and smear ops against AMLO — such as 2018’s “Operation Berlin,” which sought to tie to him to Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, or anything or anywhere that would stick. According to the El Universal columnist Salvador García Soto, the González network will give opposition candidates in districts considered winnable $5 million pesos each (US$250,000), an amount more than triple the legal spending limit. One wonders, if this is indeed the case, whether the National Electoral Institute (INE) will do anything to sanction it, or if the New York Times will bother to report it.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Goldman CEO gets $17.5m reward for $4.5b fraud

In 1997, Fair Wayne Bryan was convicted of stealing a pair of hedge-clippers. He was given a life-sentence because of other minor thefts. He was paroled from Angola prison in late 2020.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/black-man-serving-life-sentence-stealing-hedge-clippers-granted-parole-n1243757

In 2015, a conspiracy involving the Malaysian "tabloid party boy" Jho Low and a clutch of Goldman Sachs bankers stole and laundered $4.5b from the country's 1Malaysia Development Berhad fund (1MDB).

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/former-goldman-sachs-bankers-charged-multibillion-dollar-money-laundering-scandal-n929916

The multibillion dollar crime toppled the Malaysian government, but Goldman Sachs maintained that this was the result of a couple of rogue elements, despite evidence that the rot went all the way to the top.

https://www.thestar.com.my/business/business-news/2018/12/18/goldman-sachs-fires-back-after-malaysia-charges-bank-in-1mdb-probe/

Goldman Sachs is a repeat offender. It played a key role in the mass financial fraud that triggered 2008's Great Financial Crisis, then used bailout money to pay giant bonuses to the top execs that presided over the fraud.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman_Sachs_controversies

The company has a long history of manipulating stock prices with bribes and kickbacks. Its frauds led to the collapse of the Greek economy. It underwrote California state bonds, advised its clients to short those same bonds, and made a fortune.

Goldman's CEO since 2018 has been David Solomon. His base compensation (which only accounts for a fraction of his total take-home) is $27.5m.

This week, the board cut Solomon's base pay to $17.5m.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/26/business/goldman-sachs-ceo-david-solomon-pay-cut/index.html

The cut was triggered by a $3b fine over 1MDB. Solomon's "leadership" was part of a string of multibillion-dollar thefts and frauds that cost his employe $3b and his punishment is a $17.5m payday.

Fair Wayne Bryan served 23 years in a federal pen for stealing a pair of hedge clippers. He is still a convicted felon, on parole for his life sentence.

Goldman Sachs is still in business and its C-suite have been punished with multimillion-dollar payouts.

[mariacallous]

There is no real public enthusiasm for Tory economics. Sure, the heart of a thinktanker dwelling in London’s Tufton Street may flutter a little faster when they hear the words “shrink the state”. But ask the average Brit in Wolverhampton, the Rhondda valley or Dunfermline whether they support reducing the tax bill of the rich, or slashing public services, or flogging off utilities to provide a steady stream of dividends to shareholders, and they’re unlikely to start gleefully punching the air.

Instead, an economic agenda that has produced weak growth and stagnant living standards for a generation, while shovelling apparently endless amounts of wealth into a few bank accounts, has depended on something else: public acquiescence or resignation. “I believe people accept there’s no alternative,” said Margaret Thatcher of her profoundly unpopular economic policies in 1980. If citizens believe that a harmful economic programme is bitter tasting but necessary medicine, they will reluctantly accept it.

As Rishi Sunak prepares for yet another round of ideologically charged spending cuts, he will be counting on public consent to once more be manufactured. And much of Britain’s media stands ready to offer assistance. On the day Sunak became prime minister, a BBC correspondent declared: “The economic backdrop has changed: Mr Sunak is going to have to agree to spending cuts, and to tax rises.” No honest person could possibly conclude this was anything other than a violation of the corporation’s neutrality.

The correspondent was framing austerity measures as the unavoidable consequence of Britain’s economic situation, rather than a political choice. With some encouragement from yours truly, more than 2,000 people complained to Auntie Beeb. The BBC’s astonishing response was instructive: “At no point did our reporters imply what the government should or shouldn’t be doing.” You can judge for yourself.

This is a perennial failing by our media when it comes to framing economic policy. Research by Cardiff University found that during coverage of the 2008 financial crisis, 35% of interviews on the BBC’s flagship Today programme were with voices from the City – more than any other category. During the subsequent bank bailouts, “opinion was almost completely dominated by stockbrokers, investment bankers, hedge fund managers and other City voices”, while dissenting voices critiquing the size of the finance sector were very rarely featured.

Rather than being interrogated as instigators of the crisis, financial types were presented as impartial witnesses. The Tories were then able to transform a crisis of market economics into a crisis of public spending, even though George Osborne had backed every penny of Labour’s investment.

Research focusing on BBC News at Ten coverage in 2009 found that it “reproduced a very limited range of opinions on the implications and potential strategies for deficit reduction. The view that Britain was in danger of being abandoned by its international creditors with serious economic consequences was unchallenged and repeatedly endorsed by journalists.”

This framing clearly advanced the partisan interests of the Tories, placing Labour on the defensive back foot on its own record and presenting government cuts as the necessary antidote to a deficit crisis. That the cost of borrowing was low, allowing for extensive public spending, was simply airbrushed out of existence: instead, the supposedly apocalyptic scenario of Britain’s credit rating being slashed was constantly dangled. Yet when that actually happened and didn’t cause any spike in the cost of public borrowing – it continued to fall – the narrative didn’t change.

It seems clear that many of those responsible for setting the tone of the BBC’s coverage are wedded to establishment economics. The former business editor, Kamal Ahmed, was recruited from the Sunday Telegraph, where he denounced the “mostly negative coverage of the business world” and regretted how the crash had left the west besmirching the “hunt for profit”.

That’s not to say all the BBC coverage defers to Tory economic ideology: Newsnight’s Ben Chu did a good explainer showing that the supposed £50bn “fiscal black hole” wasn’t an objective measure, but dependent on the fiscal rules and debt targets that are set. But while we expect the rightwing-dominated newspaper industry to parrot the underlying rationales of Tory government, for the BBC to do so helps to manufacture a consensus.

During the financial crisis, the Tories – as the party that most fetishises market economics – understood they were potentially exposed. Aided and abetted by the media, they ingeniously deflected responsibility on to Labour. This time, their own culpability is even more obvious – in the toxic combination of Brexit and the turmoil unleashed by Liz Truss’s mini-budget – but the Tories will once again present themselves as taking necessary tough decisions, and challenging Labour to do the same. It is not the BBC’s job to aid them in this partisan endeavour. This time, the media must ensure that the Tories’ slash-and-burn cuts are presented as what they are: political choices.

[revelation19]

The number one rule of investments is don’t invest what you aren’t willing to lose. So... that raises the question, why would a hedge fund take a risk that, if played wrong, would result in them losing absolutely everything? Because Wall Street and big business knows that, in the age of government bailouts, no risk is too great. There is only money to be made and any losses will be compensated for in the form of corporate welfare and banker bailouts. This Gamestop situation is really just the tip of the iceberg. These hedge funds and investment firms have been deforming the market like this for years... here’s hoping that their chickens are finally coming home to roost.

[popwasabi]

“The Other Guys” wants cops to go after the real criminals

Before director/writer Adam McKay pivoted into populist screed’s against capitalism and political corruption in films like “Vice” and “The Big Short” he was largely known as one of the many “dumb comedy” directors working in Hollywood.

In fact, with major productions such as “Anchorman,” “Talladega Nights,” and “Step Brothers” he could almost be billed as THE dumb comedy director or certainly THE Will Ferrell director at least.

(To a certain extent, THE John C. Reilly director too.)

Those movies are certainly divisive amongst some filmgoers, as you either fall into the “turn your brain off and laugh” category or the “this is pure nonsense” crowd. I’m somewhat in the middle on all of it but one McKay/Ferrell vehicle provided a bridge between the “dumb comedy” years and his more serious satires of American politics and that movie was 2010’s “The Other Guys.”

Billed as just another parody of buddy cop flicks, “The Other Guys” is a comedy that still holds up pretty well by today’s standards. Mark Wahlberg in many ways plays an unhinged caricature of every tough guy persona he has ever played in detective Hoitz and perhaps more brilliantly Ferrell, as detective Gamble, is allowed to be the straight man of the duo for change, finding humor in a more subdued performance. Together they form a kinetic duo that play hilariously well off each other in a film that is rarely dull from start to finish.

(Flawless logic here in the famous Tuna vs Lion debate)

“The Other Guys” takes some decent shots at the violent nature of cop culture from excessive police overreach in the film’s hilarious opening scene to cops’ shoot first ask questions later approach with detective Hoitz backstory involving shooting Dereck Jeter during game 7 of the World Series. In between more typical Ferrell comedy flare involving hot wives and ex-wives, hobo sexy orgies, and TLC references there’s a lot of pointed, tongue-in-cheek humor at the police that one can find great humor in.

It’s a descent satire of the cop movie and the culture around law enforcement on this alone but McKay’s real target isn’t the police so much as it is who the police aren’t going after.

(For the record, peacocks and cops, for that matter, don’t fly.)

2008 probably feels like eons ago to many of you at this point but it was the year I personally came of age. I had graduated high school, The Lakers were good again, “The Dark Knight” and “Iron Man” had just come out, I had hopes and dreams as I entered college at San Jose State and oh…the Great Recession had just started!

I’m not going to go into extreme detail here but our economy had it’s worse collapse since the Great Depression caused by the subprime mortgage crisis due to vast widespread failures in financial regulation, breakdowns in corporate governance, vast trading and over borrowing, housing bubbles bursting, and heads of businesses just vastly ill-equipped to handle their hubris in that moment.

Major businesses and banks were on the verge of collapsing and then at the last minute the US government passed a $700 billion, with a capital B, bailout to put them all back in the green.

Corporations like Bank of America, Citi Group, Morgan Stanley etc received between $10-$25 billion each for their struggles and were able to stay alive in the country’s ever worsening state. This was great, except 2.6 million average working-class people lost their jobs during this period, including my father.

By the way, a guy like Joseph Casano, an executive at AIG, got a $34 million bonus for helping lead companies such as his into the recession.

This is McKay’s real target in “The Other Guys.” The satirical cop humor is largely window dressing to draw audiences in to the theaters so that he can show all of them who the real criminals of this country are.

As the plot of the story starts to kick into full gear the more obvious culprits of a typical Hollywood cop movie are dismissed. Though Hoitz is convinced it’s more the usual cop movie style villains of “sex and drug traffickers” at first, Gamble slowly pieces together a plot of dastardly insider trading. What it ends up being is that the bad guy is really just a doofus hedge fund manager named David Ershon played comically by Steve Coogan who made one too many bad investments to bad people.

Ershon has put his people and the people he owes money to deeper into the red, not at all unlike the wealthy CEOs and bankers who messed up the country during the 2008 recession, and it has led him to take desperate action to get everyone’s money back. Ershon, of course, tries to get Hoitz and Gamble off his tale by bribing them in a variety of hilarious ways (one of the funnier sequences of the film) but eventually gets caught up with the SEC and those who prosecute white collar crime (who are unsurprisingly also in bed with the people he owes money to).

(Somehow, I don’t think this is far off from reality...)

Hoitz and Gamble continue on the case but find that taking on white collar crime is…complicated to say the least but most importantly ineffectual as detailed in this scene.

(Again, probably not far off from reality...)

The 2008 recession, wiped out millions of jobs, with rural parts of the country getting hit the hardest and in many ways still feeling the effects today. If you were a POC you were even more unlikely to not recover from the crash. Property values plummeted, student high education success rates dropped, opiod overdoses from “unemployment deaths” and many more awful things happened during this period of great economic distress.

And what happened to the folks largely responsible for causing this mess? They got a fat fucking payday and a dismissive finger wag largely by our own government.

“The Other Guys,” more or less, ends the same way. Despite putting away Ershon, the company he was swindling, who gambled their people’s money, was still bailed out by the US government. A real “happy ending” that is played as a dark, matter of fact, joke before the credits roll.

(Again, we laugh but how far off from reality is this really?...)

I graduated from college in 2013, tens of thousands in debt from student loans and trying to navigate a largely bereft job market where wages had largely not changed in as many years. In 2008 average rent cost about $850 a month, by 2013 it was $953, today in 2020 it’s $1,097. The average entry level salary (for a clerical/ office professional) between 2008 and 2018 went from $46,886 to $45,882 showing a decrease in value.

In 2008 the richest man in the world, Warren Buffet, was worth $64 billion. The richest man in 2020, Jeff Bezos, is worth $200 billion.

If the fact that Jeff Bezos is worth more than some countries on this planet doesn’t make you infuriated alone I don’t know what will.

Btw Buffet’s net worth increased as well to $79 billion himself, in case you think it’s “unfair” to compare him to Bezos.

Sometimes I think the reason people aren’t angrier about this worldwide is 1) a bunch of us think we are all one hard working day away from being filthy fucking rich ourselves, one of the many great lies of capitalism and 2) many of us don’t actually know just how big a BILLION dollars is, so here let me help you all out:

With COVID in 2020 we’re seeing it all happen again, just as it did in 2008. Record unemployment rates, small businesses closing, evictions skyrocketing because no one can pay rent and all we got for it was a $1,200 band-aid (assuming you did get yours). Meanwhile billionaire slugs like Bezos and Elon Musk saw their net worth rise sharply during this period, hell even the fucking Lakers got a $4.6 million dollar “small business” loan (though they did return it…only after getting caught…).

The highest sum of cash ever stolen from a bank was $18.1 million (equivalent to roughly $30.1 million now) in 1997. These are the people cops and other “loose cannons” in popular actions movies are usually running up against. If you think stealing $30.1 million is a lot of money worth sending the cops over then $700 billion of our own tax dollars given to people who ruined the lives of millions of Americans should make you fucking furious. The only real difference here is one was made legal by our own elected government.

Adam McKay’s “The Other Guys” may be on its surface just another “dumb comedy” that mostly satirizes cops, but its villains are very real and unfortunately as American as apple pie. Under capitalism our labor only continues to get devalued every year (even the skilled positions), while the richest 1% of the human race only get fatter with their wealth. Things are only getting more expensive and the working man is getting priced out of more and more daily luxuries and even essentials. This way of life is not sustainable, especially for our environment which these dragons continue to plunder, and eventually we will need to actually hold our overlords accountable for letting it get this far.

If we don’t, they will continue to steal every penny in our pocket and bleed us dry until the next disposable drone can fill our place. If law enforcement won’t take this on, sooner or later we might have to…

Remember, pimps don’t cry...