As I’ve been so vocal and adamant against all the forms of corporate welfare (you can call it “bailouts” if you want), I’ve gotten one question over and over as these two real quotes from my blog comments asked:

“What should we do about it?”

“What are you, we, going to do about all this?”

So many people write to me saying they feel that, now more than ever, they don’t have a voice as Congress and the Republicans/Democrats ignore the overwhelmingly unanimous wishes of the body politic. Fact is though, I’ve long noted that Internet enables us to prove Orwell wrong — that it can and should be Little Brother Watching You…watching Big Brother.

It starts now — http://www.SpokeUp.com

You can read up on what politically- and socially-active people are reading, watch videos from YouTube that they’re watching and surf the site to get a sense of what people are really thinking about the times we’re living in. Or you can sign up for free to become part of the community and Speak Up yourself.

Here’s just one example of what people are speaking up about on SpokeUp.com that you can read and join in on:

Chicago FED Says Take Interest Rates Below 0 and Monetize Debt

You can visit my home page, where I feature funny financial or political videos and talk about things like my FBN feature, “Where’s My Money?!” — http://spokeup.com/pg/profile/cody

You can also check out the fan club pages for Happy Hour, Cavuto, America’s Nightly Scoreboard, or the Dave Ramsey Show.

The upshot is we wanna affect some positive change. Let’s be heard indeed.

PS. Full disclosure: I’m the founder of the company that built SpokeUp.com.

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From RevolutioNewsletter’s marketing materials:

I sit down and talk to Fortune 500 CEOs from all facets of the economy, with Senators and Congressmen, and the biggest and brightest economic, markets, and political thinkers of our time. Every day. And as the system of finance, banking and even monetary control itself has shifted during the collapse of the last few years, it’s become increasingly clear to me that everything we thought we knew about making money (and, every bit as important, then keeping the money you make) in investing and trading has changed too.

The good news is that these tumultuous times create money-making investment opportunities that we’ll likely never see again in our lifetimes. The bad news is that navigating these brave new worlds that our leaders, both corporate and political, have taken us to, is going to be wraught with danger and difficulty.

There are already a few long-term RevolutioNewsletter stock picks trading at levels to cash flow and net cash that remind me of the kind of bottom-picking opportunities that prompted me to launch a technology-centric hedge fund at the very bottom of The Great Tech Depression in October 2002. Many of those original investments were up several hundred percent over the next few years — though to be sure, the ride was anything but steady. And any investor’s going to need to stay vigilant and on top of their investments and trades in this day and age if ever.

I’ve spent twelve years on Wall Street and I’ve never seen a time that requires common sense thinking and analysis as now. Sign up for The RevolutioNewsletter today and I’ll send you the first month’s newsletter for free today.

Rock on,

Cody Willard

Subscribers to the RevolutioNewsletter get:

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Freedom, lord what a funny word,
We search for it just like some kind of fool,
Woman leaving home, man sits there all alone,
Little child is paying all the dues — The Allman Brothers

I know most pundits and politicians and the company executives they cater too are all convinced that going into the markets and borrowing hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars that are then going to be to give huge contracts to huge corporations that have made huge donations to the politicians who are doling out that hundreds of billions of dollars is going to be bullish and good for our economy.

They’re idiots.  They’re wrong.   The socialist Republican/Democrat/Obama’s Stimulus Package is actually the single largest pork bill ever proposed in this country.

“It will be a two-year, nationwide effort to jump-start job creation,” Obama said of the plan. “We’ll put people back to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, modernizing schools that are failing our children, and building wind farms and solar panels.”

That’s a nice thought…but the funding for such things can only come from excess profits in the system.  And in case you guys didn’t notice, there are only excess losses in the system right now.

Keynes went broke because he was an idiot and didn’t understand the very broader economic cycles he purportedly conceptualized.  Gimme a break.  Keynesian economics uses force to redistribute the value of savings (profits) to those most connected politically.   That’s it.  You can put up all the fancy equations and layer all the trickle down magic on top of the principle that you want.  But the fundamental politicization of any “stimulus/pork” contract is the most fundamental principle of Keynesian economics.  And politicization of contracts doesn’t create as much profits as profitization of contracts.

I hate the use of force to redistribute wealth.  Keynesian economics purports using force to redistribute wealth.  Therefore I hate Keynesian economics.

“We are not going to simply write a bunch of checks and let them be spent without some very clear criteria as to how this money is going to benefit the overall economy and put people back to work. We’re not going to be making decisions on projects simply based on politics and — and lobbying,” Obama said.

How else does a politician decide anything — but on politics and lobbying?  By definition, politics are decided by politics.

It ain’t good for our obviously corrupt government to amp up its sucking of money that would otherwise be invested in private, profit-seeking markets.

Survive this economic revolution at http://RevolutioNewsletter.com
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Homegrown
Rock to the rhythm and bop to the beat of the radio
You ain’t got the slang but you’ve got the face to play the roll
You can play with me — “Fans” by Kings of Leon

Here’s what will be eating away at my brain all weekend –

* Do I even have to comment on this one?

I mean, you guys know how I feel about incredibly rich, well-connected sports team owners who beg the public for money and below-market-rate loans on the working class taxpayers’ backs. But this one is oh, so, much worse…juicier…infuriating…This is the son of the single most powerful, well-connected person on the planet - Hank Putin, nay, Paulson, himself — and he’s begging taxpayers to provide below market loans in hopes that they might someday make it back in tax revenue that might somehow trickle down from this billionaire’s son back to the local government which then would supposedly do right be the working class taxpayers’ back and give projects and employment back to the taxpayer’s neighbor. Oh, it gets better. Hank owns 20% of the company doing the begging!

I repeat — HANK PAULSON’S COMPANY IS BEGGING WORKING CLASS TAXPAYERS FOR AT LEAST $85 MILLION IN LOANS DURING THE VERY DOWNTURN THAT HE SAYS WILL BE SO BAD THAT HE NEEDED ABSOLUTE CONTROL OF OUR MONETARY AND BANKING SYSTEMS.

Feeling better about the outlook for economy and the credit crisis now? No, not so much?

I can’t stop my leg from shaking as I type this. My hands too. I can’t fathom that Hank Paulson’s got the nerve to do this. I must have something wrong here, right? Right?! Hello, is this thing working???

-

* Nice rally today. Hope you took off the shorts and or are just on the sidelines for now. Wait for the next fat pitch of a huge rally or huge sell off. More pitches to come, that’s for sure.

-

* Though I’ve heard of ‘em I’d never heard of a song by Kings of Leon until I discovered the Kings of Leon this week on an iPod lent to me by an Icelandic friend. I’m addicted to the song “Fans“. Listened to it twenty times this week. The crossed guitars and thumping baseline remind me of another most-played song on my iPod — “Why Can’t I Touch It?” by the Buzzcocks.

Listening to this song now as I type this paragraph and I’m not so upset at the fact that Hank Paulson’s company is begging taxpayers in Portland for tens of millions right now for a stadium for him and his little son, Merritt, who is so cutely named after his grandfather. Okay, I’m shaking again. Breath.

Those rainy days they ain’t so bad when you’re the King, the King they wanna see

-

* I showed up way understated and low-key at this incredible Dogcatemy award ceremony last night for North Shore Animal Shelter. Lobo and I took a stroll down the red carpet, and oh, man he was terrific. Watching just my hand signals as I “worked the cameras” (ha! I was just trying to be the two most important words in life “be cool”), he stood up on “two legs” on command, he leaped high into the air as I said, “Superman” and he also just sat there for about two minutes for the cameras as they flashed after I’d told him “Sit. Stay.”

What a terrific dog I have.

So listen up! Guys, Lobo’s brother, Hula, is still up for adoption, all these months after he was there when I got the best blessing of my life in NYC thus far, my best friend and confidant, Lobo, the city cattle dog. Somebody for the sake of all that’s humane in this world, rescue Lobo’s brother, Hula!

Wonder if any part of the “$40 million in family money” that Merritt Paulson’s daddy gave him was going to go towards rescuing a dog to become a mascot in for his little professional soccer team that would be worth tens of millions of dollars to him and his daddy if only it could get taxpayer-subsidized.

I’m shaking again.

You wired me awake and hit me with a hand of broken nails
You tied my lead and pulled my chain to watch my blood begin to boil
But I’m gonna break, I’m gonna break my, I’m gonna break my rusty cage and run - Soundgarden (which is the greatest name for a band ever)

* Remember the trading playbook here. I’ve been saying that we’re likely range-bound between 7000 and 9500 for weeks, months, quarters and perhaps years ahead. Tough as it is right now to do with stocks up 13% in the last few days, I think you gotta be selling this rally at DJIA 9300. I’ve been saying the right approach is to sell extreme rallies, especially when they get close to the 9500 area — and indeed a 13% pop in a few days’ time to take us to 9300 is just about exactly that set up. So, follow the playbook and sell/short this rally.

=

* Oil’s down 35% in October. Down by more than that since my friend, Donald Trump Jr, bet me his inheritance against mine on Happy Hour that oil would see $150 before it’d see $50. He even gave me 1 to 1 odds since oil had been in that straight up groove to $120 something when we made the bet. I still say oil’s likely to be below $50 a barrel by the end of 2010. Not there yet though. And heck, you gotta figure it’ll squeeze up in volatile action along the way down anyway.

=

*Porsche’s Volkswagen Stake Sparks Call for Disclosure (Update2)

So the dudes at Porsche, which is worth tens of billions for shareholders, figured out how to game the German stock market system by using options and options derivatives to take control of Volkswagen, which is worth hundreds of billions for its shareholders. Think of it this way - It’d be like RealNetworks bought up options to control Google.

Nobody’s selling any more cars or getting higher margins or creating anything of value here. But the financial markets are in such utter disarray and full of so many unintended loop holes from the recent destruction of our financial system by the richest guys on the planet who don’t want to deal with the losses that their business models created for themselves, their shareholders and their customers…well, you’re gonna see a lot more weird, inexplicable financial game playing.

Somehow I think the largest firms, which are already receiving direct taxpayer aid, are also going to be able to manipulate the game to shift huge volumes of private capital into their own pockets. Just like Porsche just did with this Volkswagen game that makes no sense.

Feeling better about the outlook for economy and the credit crisis now? No, not so much?

=

Fed opens swap lines with Brazil, SKorea, Singapore, Mexico

This is constitutional?! Please Supreme Court, step up and do your damn job of checking the out of control power from the Republicans and Democrats who have recently waaaay overstepped the redistribution of wealth and power to themselves and the largest companies and richest people. And now, even redistributing our wealth to other countries without you and me even having had one say about it.

=

* Economist Fleming Says FDIC Plan May Stem Foreclosures

Okay, so no more houses are created, no more value is created, no more anything is created, but we allow some bureaucrats at the FDIC to print and/or move a bunch of money from those who created value and services to build their net worth. And somehow we’re supposed to believe that’s going to be virtuous for those of us who created value and services and that shifting of money from the savers and the renters to those who can’t afford the homes they live in is going to “stem foreclosures”. And if it does stabilize the housing market for the homeowner off the renter’s back, then does the renter to participate in any upside to the value of the house? Or are those profits immediately re-privatized for the homeowner such that the ownership class of this country always gets to keep the profits and push off the losses?

I’ve got a proposal for the FDIC and Treasury and Fed to consider that follows the same line of logic. I think we should have all national TV news anchors should get a $10 million credit line at 5% interest from the government, which can and should tax all the cameramen and assistant producers and mailroom employees and secretaries and cafeteria workers and the cleaning crew to raise that $10 million.

I promise all you cameramen and producers and mailroom employees and secretaries and cafeteria workers and the cleaning crew that if you don’t do this immediately that TV as we know it will cease to exist. We’re staring down a TV abyss. And the best part of my TV Anchor Relief Plan (TVARP, as its known in shorthand among those in the know in DC), is that it’ll pay for itself.

Yeah, seriously, most analysts will explain to you, Ms. Immigrant from Poland who diligently cleans my office at 1211 Sixth Avenue (but who just isn’t as educated as the analysts are and therefore if we can just “educate you” a little better about economics just like the politicians who voted the original TARP deal through used to tell us all the time then you’d feel a lot better about giving your money to me for your own good) is that we’re going to [hopefully] turn that $10 million into $15 million.

Oh, you guys in the mail room who gave your money to the politicians to give to me in this TVARP won’t actually get that $5 million of profit or your original $10 million loan back — no, the politicians will know much better how that money should be allocated for your own good than you do, even after they’ve “educated” you.

=

It might be funny if were talking about $10 million. We’re talking about trillions that they’ve already taken from all you cameramen and cafeteria workers and given to the biggest companies on the planet, the guys on Wall Street and their many rich cronies and now apparently other country’s citizens too.

Feeling better about the outlook for economy and the credit crisis now? No, not so much?

It’s a random kind of thing
Came upon a delicate flower
I can’t believe a machine gun sings
Driveby, driveby  — Neil Young

I’ll do my usual Weekend Vittles piece tomorrow, but in the meantime, here’s a random collection of random thoughts -

* We definitely need to bail her out, asap.

Maid-Turned-Realtor Masterminded Las Vegas Mortgage Scam, Prosecutors Say

How else can we possibly save this economy if people like this poor maid are turned out of their jobs. Oh, wait, only executives and politicians get away with create mortgage scams (we even send them free taxpayer money when the scam goes wrong). Well, them and anyone who’s taken on a mortgage they can’t now payback.

* So we can’t afford to pick up the citizenry’s garbage with tax dollars anymore, but we can afford $2 trillion for Wall Street?

Chicago May Make Deep Trash-Collection Cuts: Sun-Times Link

* I thought the whole premise for giving the car companies billions of your tax dollars was because otherwise tens of thousands of people would lose their jobs. How many hundreds of thousands of people have to lose their jobs as the current shareholders fleece the US taxpayer to avoid recapitalizing the current shareholder? Classic Flip It - Jobs won’t come back to Detroit until the Big 3 are allowed to fail:

GM-Chrysler deal to mean big Michigan job cuts

And on that note, do I have to change the name of my Big 3 on Happy Hour to Big 2 if Chrysler merges with GM?

* You actually see anything all that wrong with this trend? Fewer people making huge dollars by moving the working citizen’s money around and instead creating value through servicing people’s alcohol desires is probably a bullish thing in the long run:

Wall Street’s Jobless Go Back to B-School, This Time to Mix Purple Hooters

* Wonder if there’s anything meaningful to extrapolate out of the fact that twice as many people are Googling “Obama” as are Googling “McCain”.

* And finally, you know you’re in a bear market when these words are actually printed in the WSJ and not just said ironically on a fake news TV show or something:

“But so far, investors have rewarded him and, in the process, upended Las Vegas’s established financial order. Though Wynn Resorts’ stock price has fallen 76% since last October, it has held up better than its peers.”

UPI/Newscom

“Investors have rewarded him”?! Because his stock is ONLY DOWN 76% in the last twelve months???

Maybe we’re closer to a bottom than I realize. Probably not though. This is gonna still get uglier before it gets prettier IMHO.

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I’m sick and tired of waking up so sick of waking up sick and tired” — Merle Haggard

I’m sick of ranting about this $2.25 trillion bail out package that we just sent to the the Wall Street and other biggest banks in this country. But not quite as sick of ranting as I am by the fear-mongering cronies, their politicians and the rich elite pundits all of whom directly benefit from the bailout package that directly hurts renters and savers.

And so here’s my sick and disgusted thought of the day. A dude from Goldman Sachs named Paulson and an academic who’s never traded a stock in his life have convinced the Republicans and Democrats that the world is coming to an end unless they are given unlimited funds to prop up their old friends from Wall Street. As if these guys would know. They’re idiots just like any of us are idiots. But just because these particular idiots have a bigger platform than the same prescient shortsellers like David Einhorn who were victimized for rightly warning these same politicians, bureaucrats and their cronies that they were too levered up at the wrong time, and since Paulson could clearly see that most of his friends, who had taken on way too much leverage at exactly the wrong time, were going to lose everything — well, you see the results in the New World Order of financial collusion all around you.

You realize that the best case scenario is that the same idiots and system-gaming slicksters from Goldman Sachs can somehow “fix” the system with all this money and power?  So yeah, let’s assume that these guys aren’t at all corrupt and are going to do their very best to make the taxpayer money and get the financial system back to normal.

Somebody explain to me why we’d entrust guys from Goldman Sachs, the same firm that was investing billions of dollars of their own money (not taxpayer money, but their own shareholders money) in their own stock back when it was double what it is today?

Goldman’s One Bad Investment: Its Own Stock

Goldman Sachs Group’s financial wizardry apparently doesn’t extend to the one investment it should know best.

Goldman used its bulging coffers to buy back nearly $9 billion of its own stock last year, the firm disclosed in its earnings news release today. (The firm yet again posted record results that were better than analysts expected.) Goldman bought back 41.2 million shares at $217.29 apiece in the 12 months ended last month. In the fourth quarter alone, it bought back 11.6 million shares at an average of $230.65 each.

With Goldman’s shares closing at $208.63 yesterday, the firm lost about $350 million on the investment. Contrast that with the killing it made betting against subprime mortgage-related bonds — nearly $4 billion according to this Wall Street Journal piece last week. Goldman stock is still the best performer among all its securities-firm peers this year, up almost 5%. All the other stocks are down.

And Goldman is undaunted. Its board just Monday authorized the repurchase of another 60 million shares. Given that betting against the firm’s brain trust has rarely been profitable in the past, Goldman’s paper losses on its own stock may be shortlived.

Yeah, Goldman’s guys were so “prescient” that they were loading up spending tens of billions of dollars buying Goldman Sachs stock because they thought the outlook for the company was so great at the top in late 2007. For all we know, these idiots from Goldman at the Treasury were panicking about the “financial abyss” just as it was about to improve again anyway. If they were wrong at the top, why would we be so sure they can do anything right at the bottom?

I mean, after buying tens of billions of dollars of Goldman Sachs stock when it was above $200 a share, the company had to go beg Warren Buffett for a measly $5 billion at a 10% interest rate and lots of dilution to their shareholders just eight short months later with the stock below $120 a share.

I’m sure that at the time, Goldman Sachs was sure that allocating tens of billions of dollars of their own capital into their own stock was a great idea. Just like they’re sure that allocating trillions of dollars of my own capital into their stock today is a great idea.

The big difference is that last time they were supposedly just risking their own money. Now they’re explicitly risking mine.

I hope the results from Goldman’s best and brightest is better when it’s not their own money but your money on the line. Somehow though, I’m skeptical.

I suppose it’s important in the midst of all this economic and socialist meltdown engulfing our country and our world that we should still remember that other things are important too. Like blowing off a little steam and having some fun sometimes.

So a couple friends of mine and I were supposed to have some steaks and wine Thursday night, but one of the dudes ends up with a last minute invite to the…wait for it…. Sex and the City Movie DVD Release Party at the NY City Public Library. Ah, the irony that after all my anti-SATC rants that I ended up at a party with the ladies from the show and all the girls who love them and/or want to be their characters.

And on that note, I got quite a kick of the fact that EVERY girl, lady or woman at the party — without exception — was wearing no less than three-inch stiletto heels. At least they were wearing them at a glamorous party and all (rather than wearing them around the city as they apartment hunt or shop for more stilettos), but I still say that the stiletto topped when the movie came out. You also have to feel bad for all the millions of women who bought stilettos that aren’t made by Jimmy Choo or Menolo (sp? who cares?) because those non-Choo/non-Menolo’s that cost you $200 stilettos sure look funny after you’ve worn them in a little bit and you wobble as you struggle to keep your feet centered in the ever-weakening shoe. Some of those otherwise hot women sure look funny wobbling around like bow-legged cowboys in Ruidoso.

Once we got to the SATC party, we never left, as you can imagine. Indeed, most of the women (yes, especially those wearing new or high-enough quality stilettos that they didn’t stand awkward as you talked to them) looked stunning and sexy. There is certainly something to be said about the posture, the calves, the sexiness of the high heel and short dress when it’s working.

We also ran into the lovely Julia Alison and her too-young-for-me intern, Kate Greer.

Yeah, I gotta admit that after all my anti-Sex and the City ranting around here that I sorta have a whole new warm place in my heart for the show after all.

You’d think AC/DC just wrote this song about our current environment, no? Who made who? The people make it all happen. Not Wall Street. Not Paulson. Not Bush or Pelosi. And neither Obama nor McCain made you either. They can destroy you. They can’t make you.

Read the lyrics. Think about whether the intervention helps or hurts you. Who made you?

AC/DC — Who Made Who?

The video game says “Play me”
Face it on a level but it takes you every time on a one on one
Feeling running down your spine
Nothing gonna save your one last dime cause it owns you
Through and through

The databank knows my number
Says I gotta pay cause I made the grade last year
Feel it when I turn the screw
Kicks you round the world, there ain’t a thing that it can’t do
Do to you

CHORUS:
Who made who, who made you?
Who made who, ain’t nobody told you?
Who made who, who made you?
If you made them and they made you
Who picked up the bill, who? And who made who?

Who made who, who turned the screw?

Satellites send me picture
Get it in the eye, take it to the world (take it to the wire)
Spinning like a dynamo
Feel it going round and round
Running out of chips, you got no line in an 8-bit town
So don’t look down, no

CHORUS

Ain’t nobody told you, who made who?

Watch the video on demand for free in 2008 with one click.  Who made that possible?  Al Gore?

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