Aaand It's Gone

Last week's South Park episode "Margaritaville" turned its harshly satirical light on the current global financial crisis as only Trey Parker and Matt Stone can. In a scene which speaks volumes, Stan goes to the bank to deposit $100 only to have the bank lose it within a few seconds:

Bank teller: We can put that check in a money market mutual fund, then we'll reinvest the earnings into foreign currency accounts with compounding interest aaand it's gone.
(long pause)
Stan: Uh, what?
Bank teller: It's gone. It's all gone.
Stan: What's all gone?
Bank teller: The money in your account - it didn't do too well, it's gone.
Stan: What do you mean? I have a hundred dollars.
Bank teller: Not anymore you don't. Poof.

And so on. In a case of life imitating art imitating life, we now have a story which should get anyone's blood boiling. When most American companies moved away from traditional pension plans, they set up 401(k) retirement plans instead and invested the money in the stock markets. 401(k) holders have thus been particularly savaged by the Wall Street plunge, but if you have an old-fashioned pension, your retirement fund is safe, guaranteed by the federal government - right?

Wrong. The Boston Globe reported yesterday that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, a federal agency tasked with insuring pension plans, made some rather unorthodox investment decisions. The PBGC has traditionally invested very conservatively in bonds, with an emphasis on long-term stability and security rather than short-term gains.

But in early 2008, as economists the world over were shouting warnings that the housing bubble was popping and that Wall Street was about to crater, the PBGC board signed off on a plan to change its investment model. The agency thus moved more than half of its $64 billion fund to more speculative ventures, including emerging foreign markets, real estate, and private equity funds.

Aaand it's gone.

The PBGC won't say just how much of the fund has vanished, but they admit that at the end of its last fiscal year, the fund was down by 6.5% and its stock investments were down by 23%. But the last fiscal year ended in September 2008, before the worst of the market carnage, and the agency has so far refused to give figures for this year. That doesn't sound good.

So who's responsible for what sure looks like a case of outright criminal negligence? Charles E.F. Millard, who headed the agency until the Obama Administration took over in January, just happens to be a former managing director of Lehman Brothers - which invested heavily in subprime mortgages and then went under last fall when the subprime market collapsed. At the time the strategy was changed, he claimed that "the new investment policy is not riskier than the old one."

Uh huh.

After the market collapsed, Millard was asked whether his strategy might have been, well, stupid. "Ask me in twenty years," he replied dismissively. "The question is whether policymakers will have the fortitude to stick with it."

Um, Chuckie, the retirees who are now broke because of your greed-fueled shortsightedness don't have twenty years. They're too busy trying to survive to "stick with it."

If there's anyone who deserves to go to jail in this whole miserable economic crisis, it's Millard and whoever else is responsible for this.

GOP Underpants Gnomes

Ever since President Obama was inaugurated back in January, the Republican Party has done nothing but say "no" to anything he has suggested. No plans, no alternatives, no nothing. It got so ludicrous that in his press conference this week, Obama chided the Republicans for their incessant carping yet never proposing anything else.

Eventually, the GOP realized they really don't want to be known as the Party of No and so loudly went before the cameras yesterday to unveil their budget. Except they didn't.

Rather, what they presented was a 17-page (19 if you count the front and back covers) pamphlet called "The Republican Road to Recovery" which contained precisely zero budget numbers. Instead, it spends all its time complaining about the president's proposed budget with a few cheap shots thrown in for effect:

According to Senator Kennedy's campaign website, the [wind farm] project [off the coast of Massachusetts] would undermine "the ecology of the Sound and will jeopardize the public interest." The Senator once remarked, "Don't you realize - that's where I sail!"

In fact, the only thing even approaching a budget number is yet another big tax cut for anyone making over $100,000 a year. Yes, another one.

In a nutshell, the pamphlet is, shall we say, light on details. For example, this is how the GOP proposes to fix the nation's housing crisis:


That's it. No details, just a feel-good graphic.

The rollout was a disaster, with media, pundits and bloggers all complaining that the supposed "big announcement" was little more than a bait-and-switch scam. Even the conservative National Review blasted the party, saying that the stunt was "a bottle full of air."

In their defense, the GOP claimed they would introduce their actual budget - with real numbers, no less! - in Congress next Wednesday.

Has anyone else noticed that next Wednesday is April Fool's Day?

This whole fiasco reminds me of the Underpants Gnomes from South Park, who also claimed to have a terrific plan:

Phase 1: Collect Underpants
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Profit!

That's the standard GOP operation right now: offer meaningless platitudes, skip whatever actual work needs to be done, and just say that everything will be fine.

And they wonder why no one trusts them.

Holy Disgusting

For years, the Catholic Church has been trying to put the horrors of the sexual abuse scandals behind them and bring the Church into something resembling the present.

And then they blow themselves all the way back to the Middle Ages.

A man from Brazil, who had been raping his two stepdaughters for years, was arrested after it was discovered that one of them was four months pregnant.

She is nine years old. Her sister, who is "only" fourteen, is physically handicapped.

Brazil has some of the world's most restrictive abortion laws, barring the procedure in all cases except those involving rape and danger to the mother's life. With both conditions having been met in spades, the procedure was performed and the the girl's life was saved. The stepfather is now in jail where he belongs, and I for one hope he never gets out.

And then Archbishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho excommunicated the mother and the girl's doctors for performing the abortion, telling a Brazilian TV network that "the law of God [is] above any human law." Attempting to show that he is not a complete jerk, the archbishop graciously did not excommunicate the rape victim herself.

With Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva condemning the Church's outrageous take on the tragedy, it was noticed that the stepfather was not excommunicated.

That was not an accident, Sobrinho said. "It is clear that he committed a very serious sin," he said as he defended the Church's actions, "but worse than this is the abortion."

Let me get this straight: a monster who rapes children and gets a nine-year-old girl pregnant is actually better than the girl's mother and the doctors who save her life?

According to the Vatican, yes. Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the head of the Roman Catholic Church's Congregation for Bishops, weighed in over the weekend. "It is a sad case," he told the Italian newspaper La Stampa, "but the real problem is that the twins conceived were two innocent persons, who had the right to live and could not be eliminated."

And the Church hierarchy wonders why Catholics are leaving in droves. It's only a matter of time before the Church's medieval outlook on life ensnares them as well.