As Jim Morrison once sang..."This is the end, my only friend, the end."

For several months (seeming more like years), the primary has felt like a pitched battle.  A forced march.  I've watched my hair turn gray.  I've snapped at those I've loved.

But in the end, it's going to come down to this.  There's just no more money in the cupboard...save for that which HRC is lending herself.  And this is going to be what drives her off the road.

More after the flip

We all know that someone should have a long hard chat with HRC and point out to her that there is no chance that she is going to win the nomination and maybe she should just face reality.

Of course the same thing could be said for the entire country as my less than favorite columnist pointed out the other day:

We are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three decades, the Asian values of our parents’ generation — work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means — have given way to subprime values: "You can have the American dream — a house — with no money down and no payments for two years."

You're broke, unemployed, bills are coming due, and gas prices are approaching $4 bucks per gallon.

Whatcha gonna do?

Get a Hummer!

http://www.hummer.com/...

Consider the Hummer H2.

No Kidding, Holy S^&*, Great jumping jehosophat or Where the H#$$ is my Money?

If you parked your car at a parking lot and discovered the attendants had sold your car during
lunch you'd file charges.

If you had left your coat at a coat check at a theater, and you discovered the attendants had
borrowed your fur coat and been out clubbing?  You;d have people fired.

and  

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au...

OLYMPIC hero Herb Elliott faces the loss of half of his $40million fortune, becoming the highest-profile casualty of the Opes Prime collapse.

The Weekend Australian understands that Mr Elliott has lost control of about half of his 5.5million shares in would-be iron ore producer Fortescue Metals Group, founded by Australia's richest man, Andrew Forrest.

why? Because he's australian and put his retirement in a brokerage

??????????

The latest scandal is in full force: Bitter Gate. Obama, sensing there may be a problem (even if what he said was perfectly fine), decided to turn back the attacks as only he can do.

John and Jane, brokers, sit in their mortgage originator store front office. They spy a couple reading their window adverts.
"Come in, come in. And how are you lovely folks today?"
"Good." "Good."
"May we ask you if you rent or own?"
"Ah, you rent. $900 a month and it's tight. We see." (They huddle a moment.)

The economy is going to be at least bad enough so that we need a new name to call it. A recess is a small indentation while a depression is a larger hole, so I think this new worse economic crisis should by called an Abyssal, and since it comes with inflation, it will be a Stagflationary Abyssal.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution today is running a Business Feature that demonstrates precisely why we need a law requiring the execution of coporations that repeatedly visit ruin and destruction upon actual people in our country.

While I am not a lawyer, it doesn't take a Clarence Darrow to know that the corporate system in the United States has become a runaway savage that regularly visits depradation upon innocent consumers and faces little or not real punishment for its offenses.

More below the fold.

Wall Street is on a bull run today as I type this. The Feds announced a new program,Term Securities Lending Facility (TSLF), today to bail out the financial firms that are nose deep in bad debt. Oh and by the way, you and I get to pay for it.

Read on my fellow marks.

Despite a deal that may keep it solvent until June, the city of Vallejo, CA, is teetering on the edge of declaring bankruptcy.

Worried yet?

No, hunh? Well, I think we're looking at major potential damage to one of the few institutions regular folks have to defend our interests these days.

Let's squint a little harder at the mess in Vallejo. It's an East Bay city of about 120,000, not particularly wealthy, with a population split between a fairly diverse working class already hammered by the closure of a Navy shipyard in the '90s and commuters who can't afford to buy closer to San Francisco.

The "Limbo" song lyric asks:  "How Low Can You Go?"  That seems to be a valid question for FED Chairman Ben Bernanke these days.  He hinted yesterday about another lowering of the prime rate which, again, sunk the value of the United States dollar to a new low.

Let's see if we can get Senators Obama and Clinton to support this.

H.R. 3609 is the Emergency Home Ownership and Mortgage Protection Act of 2007.  Currently, a debtor who declares Chapter 13 bankruptcy cannot renegotiate his or her first mortgage.  This bill would allow someone to declare bankruptcy and allow the debtor and the mortgage holder to work out a restructuring plan.  As a taxpayer, I don't think we should bail out the banks who created the subprime mess in the first place.   They create the mess, they should feel the pain.  As you might think, Wall Street opposes this strongly.

Here's the text of the bill, sponsored by Congressman Brad Miller (D-NC).
http://www.govtrack.us/...

I don't want my tax dollars used to bail out the mortgage lenders.

lEmail your Representative and Senators to Support H.R. 3609.
http://www.webslingerz.com/...

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Samuel L. Bufford in Los Angeles issued a notice last month warning plaintiffs in foreclosure cases to bring the mortgage notes to court and not submit copies.

"This requirement will apply because developments in the secondary market for mortgages and other security interests cause the court to lack confidence that presenting a copy of a promissory note is sufficient to show that movant has a right to enforce the note or that it qualifies as a real party in interest."

In November, Federal District Judge Christopher Boyko walked into his Cleveland courtroom and into the news. He made the mainstream media in a small way and the blogosphere in a big one (and Fire on the Mountain was there). You may remember Boyko—he knocked the attorneys for the US unit of global giant Deutsche Bank for a loop. Their lawyers were in court as the subprime mortgage mess unfolded, trying to evict 14 families and seize their homes for non-payment.

Retailers across the country have been laying off staff and closing stores as consumers cut back on discretionary spending, faced with weak credit and housing markets and high food and gas prices. Consumers used to pay 10 cents of every dollar for food and fuel, they now pay up to 20 cents per dollar in part, because of those higher energy costs and the need to find alternatives to oil. The ethanol craze is behind a lot of the food inflation in the sense that it's driven up corn prices and increased the demand for crop space because people want to grow crops to make ethanol. The price of food, in Boston at least, is going through the roof!

Food and energy prices have been tracking higher for some time, but the data for January showed a more worrisome trend: Those higher costs seem to be working their way through the economy faster than expected. The price increases were broad-based, a sign that companies can no longer absorb the higher costs of producing goods and services, economists say.

When companies costs of producing goods and services go up, pink slips go out.

About three years ago when traveling though the Midwest I happened upon a conversation that struck me very odd. The discussion going on was about the mortgage crisis. The point of the conversation was clear, Midwesterners, the salt of the earth, the no need for government help kinds of people, or as I like to put it, the responsible Americans, were talking about walking away from their home loans and being in essence irresponsible. That conversation didn’t compute well in my head so I probed a little. I asked why? Why would these people known for their practicality born out of surviving extreme harsh winters walk away from loans and houses that they had called home? The answer was simple and direct. They were walking away from their homes because they simply couldn’t afford the loans that they had taken out. It was either eat or pay everything to the mortgage and eating is kind of vital to life. The stigma of bankruptcy still runs deep in these parts. The pain they felt added creases to their faces that previously weren’t there. They were walking away because that was their only choice. I came to the conclusion that something had gone terribly wrong. This disturbed me so much that I tried desperately to put it out of my head.

The U.S. House of Representatives delivered a body blow to financially-distressed student-loan borrowers earlier this month when it voted down an amendment to a key higher education bill that would have allowed private student loans to be dischargeable in bankruptcy. Overall, the amendment, sponsored by Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL), failed by a vote of 179 to 236, with nine Republicans supporting the measure and 52 Democrats opposing it. But some very strange arguments were made.

I am still dumbfounded at what happened with student loans last week.  Please read this.  The Blue Dog Democrats have some serious explaining to do.

Also, check out our website:  www.studentloanjustice.org
We started a facebook at http://www.facebook.com/...

What happened in Congress last week on the Higher Education Act Reauthorization was a stunning defeat for students locked into predatory student loans.  This is thanks to the Blue Dog Democrats.

I feel this is quite disturbing.

Please go to Studentloanjustice.org if you want to see more, or check out our facebook at:  

http://www.facebook.com/...