A very good overview of the crazy repubs like Palin trying to takeover the Repub party.

Palin defied rational analysis by making a primal connection with the subterranean resentments of white middle America, which is apparently so pissed off now at the rest of the planet for not coddling its hurt feelings in the multicultural age that it is willing to embrace any politician who validates its insane sense of fucked-overness.

There’s always room for Goldman Sachs (at the SEC)

The Securities and Exchange Commission hired a 29-year-old former employee in Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s business intelligence unit as the first chief operating officer in the agency’s enforcement division, according to people familiar with the decision.

via SEC unit hires ex-Goldman Sachs worker as chief operating officer — latimes.com.

Could life get any better? Really, aren’t things just about as good as they can possibly get at this point?

Oh, man. This is so great. This guy Grayson is a lawyer's lawyer. He makes the other guy - the General Counsel of the Fed no less - squirm and wish he were somewhere else. Anywhere else.

I think the accusation he is making - "front running" - is that somewhere down the line the Fed executes trades through retail brokers. And these retail brokers, just before they push the Fed's order through, execute an order of their own so they benefit from the Fed's trade. They trade "in front" of the Fed order. This is insider trading of the highest order - and Grayson wants the right to audit these transactions.

Fascinating. And read Taibb's complete post for an entertaining story about his own encounter with Grayson.

Fascinating, in-depth piece by Matt Taibbi from Rolling Stone. How Goldman has been manipulating markets and contributing, if not causing, the current housing bubble along with the oil surge of '08.

In a nutshell, Goldman's been taking crap investments, bundling them together, securing high ratings for these packages, then selling them to the unknowing. To make matters worse, they often then go back and short these pieces of shit, increasing their profit even more.

Last summer's rise and subsequent fall in gas prices pissed me off to no end. It made no sense. There was no great discovery of  oil that would cause a fall after the rise, it was clearly manufactured for profit. Goldman Sachs was the guilty party.

Of course, Goldman has now fired back with the "conspiracy theory" argument. But Taibbi points out how their extended alumni network hold an astounding number of power positions (including many govn't posts), each standing to make exorbitant profit from Goldman's manipulations.

Pick up the magazine and read the full article if you can. Unfortunately the link is just an excerpt but it does give a good sense of the scope of Goldman's influence.

UPDATE: Actually received some insults for posting this on Twitter. Now by posting I'm not saying everything Taibbi's writes is true but do I believe that Goldman Sachs is manipulating the economy and taking advantage of the ordinary joe? You bet your ass I do.