Light Reading From The International Monetary Fund
As referenced in this story, here is the IMF's April, 2011 World Economic and Financial Survey, subtitled "Shifting Gears, Tackling Challenges on the Road to Fiscal Adjustment".
That subtitle is clearly a euphemism along the lines of "you will feel some pressure and a mild pinching sensation".
Now turn your head and cough.
posted by Concerned American | 3:03 AM
2 Comments:
Love the way bureaucrats give their reports a professional appearance, so as to disguise the hideous news. It's a foreign language and code to almost everyone outside their priesthood, and not only do they like it that way, it makes it perfect for putting the bag on all their victims. If you can't dazzle em' with brilliance, baffle em' with bullshit.
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/04/13/historical-first-loo.html
Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi continues his excellent, infuriating coverage of the Wall Street bailout with analysis of the newly released data on the no-recourse, low-interest loans the Fed made (these are tax-funded loans that don't have to be repaid, offered at an interest rate that's so low you could simply stick the money in the bank and come out ahead). The depth of corruption in these loans is breathtaking -- $35 billion to a Bahraini bank whose majority shareholder is Muammar Qaddafi's Central Bank of Libya; $2.2 billion to the Korea Development Bank whose mandate is investment in South Korea and only South Korea; and a pair of $2 trillion loans to Citibank and Morgan Stanley.
But Taibbi really goes to town on the $220 million loan made to the wives of two Morgan Stanley execs, who had no visible investment experience. These millionaires were given another $220 million of tax-payer money, at rock-bottom interest rates, without any requirement to pay it back. They used it to buy up securities that the Fed had bought from Morgan Stanley (the pricing for these transactions remains a secret, as the Fed refuses to disclose it). These securities -- mortgages, student loans and so on -- have paid out handsomely for their new owners, but they have still not repaid $150 million of the tax money they were given to buy them.
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