Bear Stearns Exec Canned -- Look Out Below!

[Check out the date this was posted -- boy, can I call 'em or what!]

Curious that Bear Stearns chose a Sunday afternoon to announce the firing of president and co-COO Warren Spector. What do they know that we don't? Considering Spector's amazing performance in making a couple billion dollars (that we know about) vanish, the safe answer would be, "A hell of a lot." Yeah, they prolly know sumpthin' we don't.

Ladies and gentlemen, the end is nigh. The jig is up. High finance has been nothing but a big con game for the past several years, propped up by the Monopoly money recklessly printed by the government to pay for TWoT (The War on Terror) and the shell game called derivatives. I have seen the writing on the wall for a couple years, and have tried to warn everyone I knew. Even my closest friends and family members seemed to think me nuts. I forgave them for their ignorance. They simply do not know how the game works: You work hard, throw your money into your 401(k), a bunch of dumb-but-connected Ivy League jocks play with it on Wall Street for a couple of years, take massive sums (speaking of which, the bonus fest of last year should have told you everything you needed to know) for "managing" your money, then retire at the age of 28. Then, much like Albania or any other Ponzi-scheme economy, eventually the market crashes and the head gangsters own everything (including the guns and bullets) while everybody else shivers in soup lines.

That's where we're headed, friends. Get used to the idea. It can't be stopped now. It could have been stopped a few years ago if guys like me had been taken seriously, the war averted, the financial system managed prudently, taxation kept reasonably progressive, foreign policy more reliant on carrots than sticks, etc. Instead, the Bill O'Liellys and Gush Liebaughs of the world used their massive soapboxes for deadly deception, and the so-called press feasted like pigs being led to slaughter on official pronouncements while studiously avoiding any semblance of real reportage or analysis.

Guess what: It's almost time to pay the piper. Good propaganda married to bad policy can work for a while, but it always ends in disaster. You'd think we would have learned that from the fates of both the Nazis and the USSR.

Our best propagandists used to sell cigarettes very successfully. Now they sell bullshit economic data and horseshit policy, and half the kids have asthma even though they're not exposed to secondhand smoke. The kiddies aren't any healthier. Cancer rates aren't any lower. To add insult to injury, the simple pleasure of a decent smoke is denied. That's what happens when a society's best propagandists stop selling product and start selling bullshit: Eventually, reality bites you in the ass; history proves it.

Even so, there's hope. They'll never tamp out the last burning tobacco ember. The flame of liberty always leaps to roast the evildoers. The market will right itself eventually. Tobacco made this country great, created more wealth than any other commodity in our history including gold and oil. Tobacco will be grown, traded, and smoked long after the last drop of that black toxic shit is sucked out of the Iraqi desert. We were in trouble the moment we went to war against it. (This is metaphor, of course, but it fits uncannily.)

That's big-picture, long-term stuff, though. The markets, as in Wall Street, are going to tank like a mofo this week, and even if the bottom stays intact, it won't be long before it falls out completely. Bad things are afoot when a guy like Warren Spector ducks out quietly through the service entrance. You can't build an economy out of smoke and mirrors for long. If you're gonna build it out of smoke, it should at least be commodifiable smoke.

Hang on to your hat because you're about to lose your shirt.