Smart Money

OKLAHOMA BLONDES

Two blondes living in Oklahoma were sitting on a bench talking, and one blonde says to the other,

‘Which do you think is farther away…  Florida or the moon?

The  other  blonde turns  and  says ‘Helloooooooooo, can you see Florida ?????

……….

CAR TROUBLE

A blonde pushes her BMW into a gas station. She tells the mechanic it died.  After he works on it for a few minutes, it is idling smoothly.

She says, ‘What’s the story?’

He replies, ‘Just crap in the carburetor’

She asks, ‘How often do I have to do that?’

……….

SPEEDING TICKET

A police officer stops a blonde for speeding and asks her very nicely if he could see her license.

She replied in a huff, ‘I wish you guys would get your act together.
Just yesterday you take away my license and then today you expect me to show it to you!’

……….

RIVER WALK

There’s this blonde out for a walk. She comes to a river and sees another blonde on the opposite bank ‘Yoo-hoo!’ she shouts, ‘How can I get to the other side?’

The second blonde looks up the river then down the river and shouts back, ‘You ARE on the other side.’

……….

AT THE DOCTOR’S OFFICE

A gorgeous young redhead goes into the doctor’s office and said that her body hurt wherever she touched it.

‘Impossible!’ says the doctor. ‘Show me.’

The redhead took her finger, pushed on her left shoulder and screamed, then she pushed her elbow and screamed even more. She pushed her knee and screamed; likewise she pushed her ankle and screamed. Everywhere she touched made her scream.

The doctor said, ‘You’re not really a redhead, are you?

‘Well, no’ she said, ‘I’m actually a blonde.’

‘I thought so,’ the doctor said, ‘Your finger is broken.’

……….

KNITTING

A highway patrolman pulled alongside a speeding car on the freeway. Glancing at the car, he was astounded to see that the blonde behind the wheel was knitting!

Realizing that she was oblivious to his flashing lights and siren, the trooper cranked down his window, turned on his bullhorn and yelled, ‘PULL OVER!’

‘NO!’ the blonde yelled back, ‘IT’S A SCARF!’

……….

BLONDE ON THE SUN

A Russian, an American, and a Blonde were talking one day.

The Russian said, ‘We were the first in space!’

The American said, ‘We were the first on the moon!’

The Blonde said, ‘So what? We’re going to be the first on the sun!’  The Russian and the American looked at each other and shook their heads.

‘You can’t land on the sun, you idiot! You’ll burn up!’ said the Russian.

To which the Blonde replied, ‘We’re not stupid, you know. We’re going at night!’

……….

IN A VACUUM

A blonde was playing Trivial Pursuit one night.. It was her turn. She rolled the dice and she landed on Science & Nature. Her question was, ‘If you are in a vacuum and someone calls your name, can you hear it?’ She thought for a time and then asked, ‘Is it on or off?’

……….

BLONDE JOKE TO END ALL BLONDE JOKES

A girl was visiting her blonde friend, who had acquired two new dogs, and asked her what their names were. The blonde responded by saying that one was named Rolex and one was named Timex. Her friend said, ‘Whoever heard of someone naming dogs like that?’  ‘HELLLOOOOOOO……,’ answered the blonde. ‘They’re watch dogs’

……….

Dear Reader,

Last week, the New York Times proposed “10 Questions Bank CEO’s Should Face.” Among them:

“The Treasury has proposed a $500,000 cap on executive compensation… Many of you have complained that you will lose your top talent. Are those the same people that helped lose your banks billions?”

Oh, you jokers at the NYT . Touché!

Yes, it’s “open season” on bankers. And check the new dictionary. The word ‘banker’ has become synonymous with “reptile” or “scalawag.” Drivers will soon be using it on the street. “F**** banker!” they will yell to the car that cuts them off. “Scumbag Millionaires,” the Sun called them.

English bankers got slapped around on Monday. Then, on Wednesday, it was the Americans’ turn. They were summoned to Washington by Congressman Barney Frank; be prepared for a “public flogging,” the New York Times warned them.

In Paris, meanwhile, the bankers tried to stay ahead of the lynch mob by proposing to cut their own bonuses.

Everybody wants to kick the bankers when they are on the ground. Heck, we’d do it too…but the crowd around them is so thick; we can’t get a boot in edgewise. Besides, there are bigger charlatans still standing. After all, bankers were just doing their jobs – separating fools from their money. What about those who were supposed to be protecting the fools?

But we are in a depression. And everyone has to play his part. The politicians feign moral outrage. The bankers feign contrition. The spectators feign to know what was going on and have a good time. It’s a show with a subplot, we think. In the interest of seditious mischief, here we undertake to deconstruct it.

First we begin with a critic’s remark: this is a well-rehearsed storyline. When the losers are unhorsed, they are almost always spat upon. Louis 16th’s severed head was held up and subjected to “atrocious and indecent gestures”…Mussolini was hung on a lamp post. The bankers seem to be getting off easy.

Now, a comparison: the farce of ’09 is nothing compared to the great show put on following the ’29 crash. The weakness of the present spectacle is the cast. The chief American protagonist – Barney Frank – is no match for his role model, Ferdinand Pecora. Pecora was “the most brilliant lawyer of Italian extraction in the US,” said the TIME magazine report of March 6, 1933. He “finished public schools at 12. At 18, after loping through his brother’s law books, he was managing clerk of a law firm. Even on the most complex cases (which he, tireless, likes best) he never needs notes, never forgets a word of testimony once it is on the record… At 47, his black eyes flash, his black hair bristles.”

But then, the victims are no match for Charles Edwin Mitchell either. “Billion Dollar Charlie” earned more than a million dollars in ’29, when a million dollars was still real money. Senator Carter Glass said that he “more than 50 other men is responsible for this stock crash.” But, as TIME reported, “neither the directors nor any other Manhattan banker knew anyone who, they believed, could do an equally good job of carrying the bank safely through storm and strife. That he has done the job, Ferdinand Pecora would be the last to deny. The statement of National City Bank [Mitchell’s] was, on Dec. 31, 1932, the envy of nearly every bank in the US.”

Still, the depression was on and Mitchell was damned for it. By 1933, he was out of a job. And now Jamie Dimon, Lord Stevenson, Andy Hornby, John Mack, Vikram Pandit, and Sir Fred Goodwin are in the dock.

‘Yes, we have erred and strayed like lost sheep,’ the bankers chant. “We are profoundly, and I think I would say unreservedly, sorry…” said Lord Stevenson, formerly of HBOS, on Tuesday. But “UK bankers find sorry is not enough,” judged a headline on Wednesday morning. “I want groveling,” wrote an opinionist to the LA Times . “I want show-trial sweating and stammering. I want their nine-figure bonus checks endorsed over to the rest of us…I want blood…”

Be careful not to over-act, is our advice. Viewers might catch on. In London, the Guardian announced its own 12 questions to put to the bankers, including “why should profits be private, but losses be socialized?” Uh…that is a good question, but it is put to the wrong person. Why the bankers would want to offload their mistakes is a question even a Guardian reader could answer. Why else would they humiliate themselves publicly? Why would not a one of them dare show any fight? The pols control the money now; the bankers know it.

The question is better put to the inquisitor than to his victim. Why would the government wish to take on the losses? There, the answer is fairly easy too – power. Besides, it’s not their money; it belongs to the same mouth-breathing yahoos who are enjoying the show. In fact, we have other questions we’d like to put to Barney Frank, John McFall and the rest of these sanctimonious meddlers: How many of you jackasses went short the financial sector? And if you’re so smart, why didn’t you warn the public about the housing bubble and the toxic asset meltdown? If your committees…and your armies of regulators at the SEC, FHA, FDIC, FSA or other agencies…could do nothing to prevent the crisis, what good are they? And how cometh it to be that the biggest financial fraud of all time took place right under your own employees’ noses?

So you see, dear reader, how deliciously the plot turns? In the bubble years, the bankers ripped off the public…pretending to make them rich, of course…while the regulators looked the other way. Now, the politicians create a distraction, pretending to punish the bankers, while together they pick the public’s pocket for $3 or $4 trillion more. The bankers are judged guilty; but the audience hangs.

Enjoy your weekend,

Bill Bonner
The Daily Reckoning

Dear Reader,

“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom.

What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving.

The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else.

When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation.

You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.”

~~~ The late Dr. Adrian Rogers , 1931 to 2005 ~~~