I used to hold an annual meeting at my firm where I laid out ALL of this, in detail, on the whiteboard.

Nobody that worked for me more than a year was unaware of it.

I may have to do a presentation at our next LO meeting. I think my partners might think me a little batty though.

It becomes pretty damn obvious when you start comparing your after-tax'n'bennies hourly rate to what it would cost to contract out the position.

Sometimes it's downright depressing.

Karl

Great reporting on Gramm and McCain.

Speaking of McCain, wasn't he one of the so-called Keating Five? Wasn't Greenspan hired by some S&L in the mid 1980s to lobby Congress to change banking laws and Congress eventually did?

I hope the Ministry of Truth hasn't changed history. The problem is I recall S&L's went broke, but I can't recall if anyone ever went to prison for that whole mess.

Re: Gramm, according to MSNBC (from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24844889):

Quote:

Gramm joined the bank in 2002 and had registered as a lobbyist by 2004. UBS filed paperwork deregistering Gramm on April 18 of this year. Gramm continues to serve as a UBS vice chairman.

He's still a vice-chairman at UBS. The ****ing pig.

I found a prophetic letter from a Swiss organization protesting Gramm's appointment as a UBS Vice-Chairman dated March 17, 2003:

http://www.evb.ch/en/p25002047.html

UBS and Enron: Letter to UBS (17.03.03)

Marcel Ospel
UBS
Bahnhofstrasse 45
CH-8001 Zurich, Switzerland


Dear Mr Ospel,

We are troubled by the recent appointment of former U.S. senator Phil Gramm as a Vice Chairman of UBS. Mr. Gramm’s professional and personal connections to Enron have disgraced his reputation. We believe that UBS’s association with Gramm seriously undermines your company’s professed commitment to corporate responsibility. At a time when investors and the general public need reassurance that our financial institutions are scrupulous, we ask UBS to place Mr. Gramm on leave until all criminal and civil investigations into Enron’s wrongdoing are complete.

During his tenure in Congress and as a member of the Senate Banking Committee, Senator Gramm was the most vocal advocate for Enron, pushing legislation that removed government regulatory authority over the company and exposing it to negligence and fraud:

Enron gave over $100,000 to Gramm’s campaigns from 1989 to 2001, making the senator the second-largest recipient of Enron campaign contributions in all of Congress.


Disregarding the recommendations of the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, Gramm forced a bill through Congress in December 2000 that deregulated energy commodity trading. The legislation, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, was lobbied primarily by Enron. We have a copy of a letter from Enron CEO Ken Lay to Gramm on this subject.


This law played an integral part in allowing Enron to wield enormous market power in California, enabling the company to withhold supply to intentionally drive up wholesale energy prices. These actions helped cause dozens of severe power outages and cost ratepayers tens of billions of dollars.


Senator Gramm’s wife, Dr. Wendy Gramm, served on Enron’s Audit Committee from 1993 to June 6, 2002. In that capacity, Dr. Gramm had knowledge of and agreed to many of the off-the-books partnerships that hid debt from shareholders. The Gramms had financial incentives which compromised Dr. Gramm’s ability to be an independent board member. In addition to Enron’s financial support of Senator Gramm’s elections, Dr. Gramm recieved between $915,000 and $1.8 million in salary, director’s fees and Enron stock during her nine-year tenure on the board of directors. Furthermore, Dr. Gramm has been cited by business ethicists for accepting a $50,000 grant from Enron to Dr. Gramm’s Mercatus Center while she served on the board of directors.


After acquiring Enron’s trading operations in January 2002, UBS paid $120,000 to the Washington, D.C. firm Sullivan & Cromwell to lobby Congress (and presumably Gramm) and federal regulators on the “regulation of energy derivative contracts” and “oversight of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.” Gramm was the principal author of the law, which repealed the Depression-era Glass Steagall Act separating investment banking from commercial banks. Passage in 1999 paved the way for UBS to acquire the brokerage PaineWebber shortly thereafter.


Together, the Gramms facilitated Enron’s misdeeds, which victimized thousands of U.S. consumers. Ethical leadership was clearly lacking as well in that company. Especially in these economically beleaguered times, UBS has a duty to both promote and demonstrate corporate ethics—to truly make, as Mr. Ospel says on the UBS website, “corporate responsibility part of our culture and part of our identity.” As consumer advocates, civil society groups, and unions, we urge UBS to disassociate itself with the corporate deceit which Phil Gramm represented in Congress. We urge you, Mr. Ospel and Mr. Wuffli, to renew your company’s commitment to corporate integrity by removing Mr. Gramm from his position as Vice Chairman until he is cleared of any involvement in Enron’s transgressions.

Sincerely,
Andreas Missbach, Erklärung von Bern
Public Citizen, Citizen Works, Transparency Switzerland, Greenpeace Schweiz, Stiftung für Konsumentenschutz, Schweizerisches Arbeiterhilfswerk SAH, Aktion Finanzplatz Schweiz, Solifonds

CC: Peter A. Wuffli

1) spelling bitch: it's "Liechtenstein" not "Lichenstein" which makes me think of a tiny kingdom of primitive plants that one tragic day got eaten by a reindeer :)

2) taxes. other than raising them, and collecting from (and punishing, severely, e.g. federal pound-you-in-the-ass prison) rich tax evaders, what besides the obvious (cutting federal spending) can we do to reduce the federal debt besides tick the debt-reduction box on our tax returns? I hate taxes as much as anyone else, but I've yet to see a rational solution to our crushing debt that your grandkids* are gonna inherit.

* none for me, unless you count whatever whelps my $50-a-squirt conceived when I was a starving college student making regular deposits at the spooge bank. getting paid to snap one off? oh HELL yes.

My sister in law is a Army Captain in DC. She just got back from 3 years in Iraq. She and her husband just bought a 500k+ house in VA, and will be concluding their military careers in the next 2-5 years. They did not get a VA loan. I asked her why and she informed me that there is a ceiling on the mortgage amounts for VA loans of 400k or so. Perhaps this had caused more and more servicemen to look for alternative loans during the last few years as house prices exploded. I am only referencing those who know they will not be moving in 2 years......otherwise it is still nonsense

KD, with all respect, and knowing that I will be banned, again, how can you support Obama when he campaigns in favor of the bill that your petitions aim to kill?

Great Ticker KD. All points well taken and well written as usual.

It did leave me sorta uncomfortable though. I hope people don't conclude 1)that all military personnel are dupes that can be led around by RE and mortgage professionals and that 2)all people moving money abroad are rich and/or evading US taxes.

I also hate the insinuation that occasionally runs around the Forums that those receiving or anticipating receiving Medicare and social security are somehow leaches. Self-employed folk paid the whole 13% in themselves (me) some of which went to pay benefits to the retired of the time. The rest was supposed to be saved and invested to pay out for future retirees. Reneging on the pledges inherent in the system, whether you agree with it or not, is reprehensible, about like Enron defaulting on the retirement benefits of their employees after decimating the value of their small stock holdings. My organization's pension plan was structured to supplement SS and thus, removing SS and Medicare, even with my savings, would put me below the poverty line.

I perfectly understand and agree that ALL the transaction costs in housing (or any other asset) are bundled up in the selling/buying price. That's why people FSBO. They want to sell at the higher price and pocket the realtor's alleged commission. Greed. There are complications of course...they want to list it too high and a listing agent won't waste time and money trying to extract over market price. Or, they are underwater on the house(lots of it these days) and they hope to curtail some losses by doing the work themselves and saving the commissions. (Ex realtor here.)

My summary 2 cents worth for the evening.

Quote:

I also hate the insinuation that occasionally runs around the Forums that those receiving or anticipating receiving Medicare and social security are somehow leaches. Self-employed folk paid the whole 13% in themselves (me) some of which went to pay benefits to the retired of the time. The rest was supposed to be saved and invested to pay out for future retirees. Reneging on the pledges inherent in the system, whether you agree with it or not, is reprehensible, about like Enron defaulting on the retirement benefits of their employees after decimating the value of their small stock holdings. My organization's pension plan was structured to supplement SS and thus, removing SS and Medicare, even with my savings, would put me below the poverty line.

It doesn't matter - the money isn't there.

Go read the Fisher speech I posted in BREAKING.

$100 trillion is the bill.

Now tell me we're going to be able to pay it.

It is over $300,000 for every man, woman and child in this country, or about $1.3 million per family of four.

KD,

I Love the forum and I have learned a great deal. For clarification, I've been on active duty for 22 years and most tours are three to four years with the exception of combat. There are other exceptions such as isolated duty, OCONUS, afloat, and Command. Senior staff officers at the rank of of O-7 and up are usually two years, but those folks are not the problem. But, Your ticker is right on the mark! I saw the madness at my last duty station in the Norfolk, VA area.

Yes, the tours are 3 or 4 years, but around here virtually everyone PCSs every two. You MIGHT not but you better plan for exactly that. I can't count how many of my kid's friends have PCSd out on her in the six years she's been in school thus far.

Mortgage,

I know all about top talent and how they wag the dog, I said screw that years ago.

The truth is top producers usually get loans from referal sources, in times like these they dry up faster than a geriatric *****.

I'd do just what you did and tell them oh by the way go play bk hopscotch as the companies fold around you and don't pay your ass.

Then I'd cut his pay.

The problem with "warnings" is, people here them over and over and since it's a future event, the calamity doesn't actually happen yet and they become desensitized to the news and stop listening. I've been hearing "Social Security is broke" for at least 20 years yet we continue to muddle along.

I'm afraid that warnings about abstract events don't sink in. It took the attack on Pearl Harbor to get the U.S. into World War II. It's going to take a Depression here to change our ways.

Mark my words.