Matt Taibbi, The Real Housewives of Wall Street, Naughty Nomad and Fidel Castro
Matt Taibbi, The Real Housewives of Wall Street, Naughty Nomad and Fidel Castro
Another good article by Matt Taibbi:
The Real Housewives of Wall Street
America has two national budgets, one official, one unofficial. The official budget is public record and hotly debated: Money comes in as taxes and goes out as jet fighters, DEA agents, wheat subsidies and Medicare, plus pensions and bennies for that great untamed socialist menace called a unionized public-sector workforce that Republicans are always complaining about. According to popular legend, we’re broke and in so much debt that 40 years from now our granddaughters will still be hooking on weekends to pay the medical bills of this year’s retirees from the IRS, the SEC and the Department of Energy.
Why Isn’t Wall Street in Jail?
Most Americans know about that budget. What they don’t know is that there is another budget of roughly equal heft, traditionally maintained in complete secrecy. After the financial crash of 2008, it grew to monstrous dimensions, as the government attempted to unfreeze the credit markets by handing out trillions to banks and hedge funds. And thanks to a whole galaxy of obscure, acronym-laden bailout programs, it eventually rivaled the “official” budget in size — a huge roaring river of cash flowing out of the Federal Reserve to destinations neither chosen by the president nor reviewed by Congress, but instead handed out by fiat by unelected Fed officials using a seemingly nonsensical and apparently unknowable methodology.
Now, following an act of Congress that has forced the Fed to open its books from the bailout era, this unofficial budget is for the first time becoming at least partially a matter of public record. Staffers in the Senate and the House, whose queries about Fed spending have been rebuffed for nearly a century, are now poring over 21,000 transactions and discovering a host of outrages and lunacies in the “other” budget. It is as though someone sat down and made a list of every individual on earth who actually did not need emergency financial assistance from the United States government, and then handed them the keys to the public treasure. The Fed sent billions in bailout aid to banks in places like Mexico, Bahrain and Bavaria, billions more to a spate of Japanese car companies, more than $2 trillion in loans each to Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, and billions more to a string of lesser millionaires and billionaires with Cayman Islands addresses. “Our jaws are literally dropping as we’re reading this,” says Warren Gunnels, an aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. “Every one of these transactions is outrageous.”
Castro resigns from Cuba party leadership
Fidel Castro confirmed he had resigned from the top leadership of the Cuba Communist Party in an article published Tuesday, after the party approved a raft of economic reforms.
“Raul knew that I would not accept a formal role in the party today,” Mr Castro said in an article on the Cubadebate.cu portal, referring to his brother Raul and his own absence from the party’s new Central Committee, elected on Monday.
Mr Castro, 84, had served as first secretary in the Central Committee of the party – which underpins the country’s communist government – since the party’s creation in 1965.
He said he had handed over the functions of the party head to Raul when he ceded power to his brother because of his own declining health in 2006, though he retained the first secretary title.
Interview with Naughty Nomad by LatinStylez. This guy is the real deal.
You’re quite the traveler! What made you want to start traveling? How many countries have you been to?
I’ve been to 58 countries now, including Antarctica and a few self-proclaimed republics. It all started on my trip to Antarctica when I was 18. It was the best experience of my life. In was then I found my vocation – to vacation. Since I was a little kid I always dreamed about being an explorer. The trip rekindled that passion. Now I refuse to accept an alternative destiny, at least in the medium term.
What was the most interesting country you’ve traveled to and why?
Ethiopia. I could talk all day about it… the women, the culture, the history, the vibe… Let’s just say it’s a very special place for me. I’ll have to dedicate a whole post to it; I couldn’t do it justice in this space. Second place would have to be the Philippines – it’s a sexual playground.
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