New Year's Headlines from Japan: As If Hardly Anything Happened in 2011

It's already January 1, 2012 in Japan, and the headlines from the Japanese MSM (online) are here for your perusal.

First and foremost pro-nuke, Yomiuri Shinbun, with zero headline on the nuclear accident:

• Aum Shinrikyo's Hirata turns himself in

• Department of Defense develops weapon against cyber-attack

• Population decrease largest ever, at 204,000

• City employees cautioned for appropriating the large-size garbage [WTF...]
  

• Traffic accident deaths worst in Aichi Prefecture, followed by Tokyo

• Government to consider an imperial household headed by a female

Next, Asahi, which has one report on the nuke industry regulatory capture:

• Aum shinrikyo's Hirata turns himself in

• Japan's nuclear industry gave total 85 million yen to the members of the Nuclear Safety Commission

• Emperor's thoughts on the new year: "Together with people affected by the disaster"

• Shuto-ko highway to charge by the distance

Mainichi, which, other than SPEEDI's news, lists inane happy new year articles with a focus on people in disaster-affected Tohoku:

• SPEEDI system temporarily stopped

• A boat lost in Iwate found in Hyogo

• Villagers return to Iitate-mura for the new year

But the second news is notable. A boat lost in the March 11 tsunami in Iwate Prefecture on the Pacific Ocean was found on the Japan Sea side of the Hyogo Prefecture, 770 kilometers southwest of Iwate. If a boat could travel there...

Scanning Japanese tweets, many net citizens didn't bother watching the usual New Year programs but instead tuned in to a several-hour-long live talk show with journalists and nuclear experts debating the Fukushima accident and its "aftermath" now that the accident is "over". They were appalled by Professor Narabayashi, one of the "Three Plutonium Brothers" and former Toshiba employee, who said "We will build a nuclear power plant of the highest quality in the world". Apparently the studio audience booed him. That's highly unusual.

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News That Disappeared Very Quickly from MSM

For the umpteenth time, news that disappeared from MSM, in no particular order of importance:

WikiLeaks' leak of the US diplomatic cables that confirmed that the US taxpayers have been paying for these elites at the State Department who were revealed as bumbling idiots;

TSA's "love pats" aka sexual assault and naked body scans: now, MSM is squawking that everyone loves it after all, and/or everyone is adjusting for the sake of "security".

Now, these two makes a good juxtaposition. Recall that WikiLeak's founder Julian Assange is accused of "rape" by Swedish authorities for having a consensual, unprotected sex. TSA agents, on the other hand, grope your genitals and puts hands inside your pants and they get away with it. I suppose they call it "consensual", because you have no way, repeat, no way, to say NO unless you want to risk getting arrested and fined $11,000. If you don't say no, it is the same as saying yes, according to the TSA logic.

Moving on...

Foreclosuregate. When it does appear in the MSM, it's the same old, same old - it's just a hiccup in the process, nothing fundamental. And nothing is further from the truth. (See the vid I created, "Foreclosuregate Explained" which is in the right-side column.)

Iran and its nuclear threats to the "West". After the computer worm Stuxnet did the work, the neocons have gone quiet. For now.

Euro sovereign debt crisis, for the umpteenth time. Until the euro core (Germany, France) shows a visible sign of strain, no one cares. Now that China has stepped up to buy the euro debt at a discount, no one cares.

QE2. Ben "Bernank" and the Inkjets are printing, often twice a day. That keeps the stock market eking out gains day after day on a pathetic volume, and every talking head on MSM and the bankster economists on Wall Street are screaming "Economic recovery!" The stock market is the economy, just like it was in late 1920's.

What Congress and the White House had done during the lame-duck session, which is mercifully ending. It has been the most disastrous lame-duck session for people who value personal liberty and freedom from government interference and regulation (more in the next post). And of course the spin by MSM and the White House is that it has been the most "productive" Congress after the mid-term election.

That's it for now. BTW, have you read about a new CIA taskforce on WikiLeaks? WTF do they have to select a name like that? People are LOL, ROTFLMAO.

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News That Disappeared Very Quickly from MSM

What was that all about?

- Heightened terror alert for Europe, particularly France and Germany, that a major terror attack was imminent.

- Printer ink cartridge bomb scare.

- "Foreclosure fraud" and "mortgage securitization fraud"

Regarding the last one, after a short burst of news (such as NY Fed and PIMCO suing Bank of America) both have gone awfully quiet. Some state attorney generals who were pushing for wider investigation of these dual frauds (particularly the first one) were booted out in the November 2 election. California's AG Jerry Brown had stopped saying anything about foreclosure fraud once his prospect of beating Meg Whitman in the gubernatorial race was secure, way before the election.

Yves Smith, of Naked Capitalism, did write an Op-Ed in the MSM of MSMs, New York Times, on October 30, 2010, a rather muted writing fit for the readers of NYTimes. But the topic has quickly disappeared from the front page of major news outlets, while foreclosures with fraudulent documentation and by parties who may have no standing to foreclose continue throughout the nation.

Instead, the news is all about politics - GOP trying to repeal this law or that, and the Obamas dancing with Indians on their extravagant tour of Asia. In other words, we are made to watch the puppet show, yet again.

Oh I almost forgot about the news that also disappeared in the lightening speed:

- The Federal Reserve embarking on the quantitative easing part 2, with $600 billion over 8 months.

Nothing to see here, except for the puppet show. Don't you dare try to find out who the puppet master is.

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What the @#$% Happened in September-November 2008: Part II

(This is my 200th post for this blog!)

Here's Part II of What the @#$% Happened in September - November 2008, for your Sunday reading. (For Part I, click here.)

Week of September 22, 2008 was all about Paulson/Bernanke's bailout plan and negotiations in Congress and at the White House. Despite telling the Congressional leaders on Thursday September 18 that there would be no market, financial system left unless they do something very quick, Paulson-Bernanke duo (some Wall St. wags called them Hanky Panky and Helicopter Ben) spent the whole week still talking to lawmakers. Paulson's 2-page bailout memo on Friday September 19 would grow to over 100 pages.

As the Congressional hearings dragged on, overwhelming majority of the US taxpayers were against the bailout plan, and many of them even bothered to write to their Representatives and Senators. People heeded the call like this one and/or they even read what was in the bill. The ratio of For and Against letters/emails received by the members of Congress were reported at anything from 10-1 to 1000-1 Against, totally unprecedented (this one, for example: 99-1 against).

With that in mind, let's go to the headlines of Investor's Business Daily front pages. As before, the indices' numbers are those of the day prior to the date; the same goes for the news headlines.

(And here's the Dow Jones Industrial Average chart during that time again, from my other blog, if you need it as a reference. The link opens a new Window.)

September 23, 2008 (Tuesday)
(S&P 500 Index 1,207, Dow Jones Industrial 11,015, Nasdaq 2,178)

• Congress Demands Conditions, Add-Ons To $700 Bil Rescue; Amid tussle, stocks sink; issues on table include exec pay, homeowner aid.
• 'Crony' Capitalism Is Root Cause of Fannie And Freddie Troubles
• Crude Oil Surges As Dollar Dives: Oct. crude vaulted $16,37 to $120.92. The dollar suffered its worst day vs the euro in 7 years amid uncertainty over the proposed gov't rescue.
• Brokerages, Regulators Rethink Leverage; Goldman and Morgan [Stanley] now commercial banks, accepting Fed's limits.
• SEC Expands List for Short Ban; 96 more companies were added to 799 companies.
• Picture of Rep. Barney Frank telling the reporters "The private sector got us into this mess. The government has to get us out of it." [Right.]

September 24, 2008 (Wednesday)
(S&P 1,188, Dow 10,854, Nasdaq 2,153)

• Paulson, Bernanke Defend Rescue Plan To Skeptical Senate, Lawmakers Want To Tinker
• Rescue Debate Rattles Stocks: The market slid for a second straight day as debate over the Wall St. rescue plan continued.
• Good Intentions Paved The Road To Subprime-Stoked Meltdown
• Buffett Takes Stake In Goldman: Berkshire Hathaway is buying a $5 bil stake in Goldman Sachs, getting warrants to purchase Goldman shares at $115 apiece.
• T-Mobile Touts 1st Google Phone [A very unfortunate debut, in the middle of financial mess. No one paid attention.]
• Obama Reins In Spending Plans: Barak Obama said the Wall St. rescue plan will likely force him to postpone or revamp some campaign promises, such as his proposed healthcare overhaul he estimated would cost up to $65 bil a year. [Now that he "won", he seems to completely forgot what he himself once said.]
• Picture of someone taking picture of the new facade of former Lehman Brothers building, now under Barclay's Capital.

September 25, 2008 (Thursday)
(S&P 1,186, Dow 10,825, Nasdaq 2,155)

• Rescue Plan Details In Play As Congress Is Pressed To Act; But $700 bil sticker price could be OK'd in pieces; other restrictions weighed
• McCain Leaves Campaign Trail To Push Rescue Plan Forward
• How A Clinton-Era Rule Rewrite Made Subprime Crisis Inevitable [1977 Community Reinvestment Act and pursuant rule change in how Fannie and Freddie's lending practices]
• Jitters Pop Up In Debt Markets: The 3-month T-bill yield sank 35 basis points to 0.46%, down from 0.96% Friday.
• N. Korea Nuclear Pact Unravels [yet again]
• FBI Targets Collapsed Lenders (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers, and AIG) for potential corporate fraud [Whatever happened to this one?]

September 26, 2008 (Friday)
(S&P 1,209, Dow 11,022, Nasdaq 2,186)

• Rescue Deal Near, Key Lawmakers Say; A Few Beg To Differ. Dodd: Major Issues Settled. But a high-profile White House meeting with congressional leaders and presidential contenders failed to reach a final agreement. Dodd told CNN the meeting was a disaster. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala said talk of a deal was premature.
• Banks' Fed Borrowing Surges: Banks borrowed a record $262.34 bil from the Fed's discount window.
• Congress Pushed Fannie, Freddie In Wrong Direction During 1990s
• New-Home Sales at 17-Year Low
• Durable Goods Order Fell 4.5%, 3-year low
• Jobless Claims Hit 7-Year Peak, to 493,000 [wish it was this low, now.]
• Picture of President Bush with congressional leaders at the White House. McCain in the near left, at the far right end is Obama.

September 29, 2008 (Monday, issued on September 27 Saturday to report events on September 26, Friday)
(S&P 1,213, Dow 11,143, Nasdaq 2,183)

• Congress Resumes Rescue Negotiations After GOP Uprising; Bush officials, lawmakers want agreement before markets reopen Monday [meaning before the Asian markets open]. "Negotiations took an unexpected turn Thursday afternoon at a contentious White House meeting in which overwhelming House Republican opposition to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's plan became evident." "With polls showing the public opposes the administration's plan by a wide margin, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to make sure that the measure has bipartisan support."
• JPMorgan Rises On WaMu Deal. Regulators seized the savings and loan, the biggest U.S. bank failure ever.
• Citi In Talks To Buy Wachovia?
• 1st Presidential Debate Goes On [Did anyone pay attention to this?]
• Money Markets Remain Tense. Central banks around the world poured billions into the banking systems to meet the demand for cash.
• Picture of House Minority Leader John Boehner warning the opponents, "If they thought they were going to roll over me, they are kidding themselves."

The most salient memory from this particular week is that of CNBC. Talking heads after talking heads paraded in front of the TV camera and told the viewers that "We have to do something", that it would be a disaster if we just let the system collapse (as if that's a given). They were all for Paulson's bailout plan of Wall Street. (Well, their livelihood kind of depends on it, doesn't it?) One female personality kept telling us to just imagine what would happen to the stock market if the bailout bill was rejected.

Taxpayers were increasingly skeptical and, I think, afraid. The amount of $700 billion scared them, because it would have to come from their pockets to save rich bankers and government officials who allowed the excess (in leverage, in lending practice) to go on. Why do they have to pick up the tab? Besides, what's in this bailout package that grew from 2 pages to over 100 pages?

I think more people outside Capitol Hill read the actual proposed bill than the members of Congress. And they didn't like what they saw (here, and here).

I skimmed through the draft bill, close to final draft, I think. I was amused by toy arrows and rums, but what I didn't like at all is mentioned in the second link above:

"The bailout bill also gives the Internal Revenue Service new authority to conduct undercover operations. It would immunize the IRS from a passel of federal laws, including permitting IRS agents to run businesses for an extended sting operation, to open their own personal bank accounts with U.S. tax dollars, and so on... That section had expired as of January 1, 2008, and would now be renewed."

and made permanent. What did it have to do with financial bailout?

But the Democrat- controlled Congress and the White House were pushing the bill forward without much debate. The showdown would be next week. That week will be covered in Part III. Stay tuned.

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What the @#$% Happened in September-November 2008: Part I

For your weekend reading pleasure.

These are the headlines and some snippets from the articles on the front pages of Investor's Business Daily in September, October and November 2008. This is Part I.

I saved the front pages of IBD newspaper which I was subscribing to at that time. Not for any particular reason, but even back then, I felt, as a lot of others did, something was irreparably, irreversibly changing in the U.S. financial market. It felt like the last days of the market, and maybe they were.

(I have a Dow Jones daily chart of September 08 in my other blog's post. It opens a new window.)

Since I'm reading off the physical newspaper pages, the indices' numbers are those of the day prior to the date; the same goes for the news headlines.

September 9, 2008 (Tuesday)
(S&P 500 Index 1,268, Dow Jones Industrial 11,511, Nasdaq 2,520)

• U.S. Takeover of Fannie, Freddie Still Doesn't End Troubled Saga
• Builders And Banks Rally Over Seizure of Freddie, Fannie
• Fannie's stock tumbled 90%, Freddie 83%
• Picture of anxious specialists on NYSE floor
• Lehman Brothers Down On Uncertainty: the stock lost 13%
• Delivery Firms Reduce Speed To Save Fuel: UPS eliminates left turn
• S&P cuts Wamu to junk
• Russian troops were still in Georgia

September 16, 2008 (Tuesday)
(S&P 1,192, Dow 10,917, Nasdaq 2,179)

• Stocks Dive On Wall St. Woes, S&P Off 4.7% to 3-Year Low (1192.70)
• Lehman Failure Tests Limits of U.S. Bailouts, "Moral hazard" seen as driving force behind credit system's excesses
• Picture of a Lehman Brother's Market Maker with her hands over her brow
• (Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy on September 15, Merrill Lynch sold to Bank of America.)
• Crude Oil Plunges Below $100: the first sub-$100 since March 4.
• The acquisition of Merrill "creates the premier financial company in the world. It was an opportunity of a lifetime." - Ken Lewis, Bank of America CEO and chairman

September 17, 2008 (Wednesday)
(S&P 1,213, Dow 11,059

• AIG Falls As Rumors About Insurer Swirl; Many Banks Climb
• AIG Falls Day and Night, Goldman Not So Golden
• Fed Keeps Interest Rate Steady at 2% After Pushing $50 Bil To Banking System
• Picture of Presidential helicopter flying over Galveston Texas, after Hurricane Ike
• "The Fed's non-action [not cutting the rate further] suggests that things might have reached a bottom," said Richard Yamarone, Argus Research's director of economic research.

September 18, 2008 (Thursday)
(S&P 1,156, Dow 10,609, Nasdaq 2,098)

• Stocks Dive Despite AIG Bailout, worldwide stock markets plunged
• Credit Default Swaps At Meltdown's Heart, Everybody's A Suspect
• Congress Consideres Ways To Aid Market And Ailing Economy
• Chart of CDR Counterparty Risk Index showing huge spike on AIG bailout
• Buyout rumors swirl around Morgan Stanley and WaMu
• Fed Maneuvers Fail to Placate World Markets: Who's Holding Toxic Assets?
• Treasury Steps In To Finance Fed: The first auction on Wed netted $40 bil. Treasury officials insisted the Fed isn't short of resources
• Market Woes Whip Up Gold, Oil: gold blasted to its biggest one-day gain ever, vaulting $70 to settle at $850.50
• SEC Clamps Down On Short Sales: new limits on naked short selling

September 19, 2008 (Friday)
(S&P 1,206, Dow 11,019, Nasdaq 2,199)

• Market Takes Heart From Talk of Fund To Hold Bad Assets [That was the beginning of TARP]
• Government May Absorb Banks' Sour Securities; S&L Crisis RTC Is the Model
• Fed Adds $105 Bil To U.S. System, another $180 bil made available to lend to banks [Discount Window]
• Congress Lies Low To Avoid Bailout Blame; Lawmakers fear wrath of voters as cost of crisis soars to $ 1 tril or more
• Gold Surges, Reverses, Crashes on Treasury plan to create RTC-like entity. Gold fell $50 in one hour.
• Shares of Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs went free-fall on Thursday, then violently reversed when the news of short sale ban in Britain reached the U.S. Morgan Stanley's share went to $11, ended the day at $22. Goldman Sachs, low $85, closed at $108.
• Putnam's Prime Money Market Fund folded, a day after Reserve Primary Fund broke a buck
• Picture of President Bush, making a statement regarding the Federal Reserve's action

September 22, 2008 (Monday) [but paper was issued on September 20, Saturday, as IBD always does)
(S&P 1,255, Dow 11,388, Nasdaq 2,273)

• Paulson announces bailout plan on Friday, gives few details
• Stocks Buy Into Rescue Plan, S&P Soars 4% as U.S. Acts. Government backs money funds ($50 billion), bans shorting financials (799 of them); big mortgage trust seen.
• Questions Abound Over Bailout; Who, What And How Much? Devil will be in the details; Dems likely to demand aid for ailing homeowners.
• "There will be ample opportunity to debate the origins of this problem. Now is the time to solve it." - President Bush
• "The federal government must implement a program to remove these illiquid assets that are weighing down our financial institutions and threatening our economy" - Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson
• "We've got to deal with the foreclosure issue. This plan must include that." - Chris Dodd, Senate Banking Committee chairman
• S&P 500 5-day chart titled "From Meltdown to Rebound" [hindsight is 20-20]

How's that for one week and a day?

The day I remember most vividly is September 18, Thursday (the news of the day under September 19, of course). The market was constantly selling off, and the selloff suddenly accelerated around 12:00pm. It was like a dark abyss opened up in front of you. Then, all of a sudden around 1:00pm, it violently reversed, paused for a while, then went crazy when the rumor of financial bailout by the government started to float in.

(I read on the net some time later that when that abyss opened up and Goldman's stock was free-falling, someone somewhere on the Goldman's floor played Star Spangled Banner on the internal broadcast system. Many traders stood up with their hand over their chest. "... and the home of the brave" - the music ended, and suddenly the market started to reverse to the wild cheers from everyone. Too good to be true, perhaps. But this is what I remembered reading.)

The next day, Friday, the market continue to go up thanks to bailout talk and ban on shorting (not just naked shorting) on financials, managed to end the week, up. I remember that day, too. The trading of SKF, double short financial ETF was suspended for several hours. When it opened, it gapped down to $87 from the previous close of $115, although it managed to end the day exactly at $100.

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