According to this esteemed money expert, a pickup in Wall St. hiring is splendid news for all! Because Wall St. usually hires lots at the first sign of good things and fires everyone at the first sign of trouble. We’ll just ignore, for now and probably forever, the implicit images of perpetually uneasy millionaires running around controlling trillions of dollars of wealth impulsively and wildly, because it is horrifying.

The shift underscores the remarkable recovery of the biggest banks and brokerage firms since Washington rescued them in the fall of 2008, and follows the huge rebound in profits for members of the New York Stock Exchange, which totaled $61.4 billion in 2009, the most ever. Since employment bottomed out in February, New York securities firms have added nearly 2,000 jobs, a trend that is also playing out nationwide at financial companies, commodity contract traders and investment firms.

Though the figures are small in compairson to overall Wall Street employment, executives, economists and headhunters say that they expect growth to pick up steam in the coming months.

“I think we’re seeing some hiring in anticipation of better times,” said Rae Rosen, a regional economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. “Wall Street typically hires in anticipation of the recovery, and there is a sense that the economy has bottomed out and is slowly improving.”

Here’s to hoping that they’re right I guess. Although, politicians frantically yelling about inflation and deficit cutting right now while the economy is still severely depressed kind of cancels all that hope and makes me want to go hide in a hole with some canned goods.

[NYT]

Alan Greenspan is a real American hero.  We could all learn a thing or two from this exceptionally exceptional man.  Not only was he heavily responsible for the obliteration of the financial system and the current state of the world economy but he also has a knack for not recognizing that he did all these things! 

He says that the people we should really be blaming are those stupid fucking smelly Euros and their horrible lust for criminally irresponsible mortgages.  Hah, yeah.  Fuck them!

Winner’s quote of the day:

“We had a 70% success rate, and if you get it right 70% of the time that is exceptionally good,” he said.

Yes, especially when the 30% failure rate literally pulls the world’s pants down and ass rapes it.

A man like Alan Greenspan is something most of us can only aspire to be.  GET MONEY, FUCK EVERYTHING ELSE.

[Guardian]

The poll was conducted amongst self identified Democrats, Independents, and Republicans.  Nearly 66% of Democrats and Independents assign the blame to banks for ass fisting the world and under half of Republicans assign that same blame.

Which is because it is obvious that all of America’s blacks and poor decided simultaneously that they would go get a house they couldn’t afford. I love reason.

[Washington Independent]

This is regarding Mr. McCain suspending his campaign during 2008 to “address the economy” which was in shambles.

McCain wanted a meeting at the White House, and the president felt he had no choice but to accommodate him.

I called Obama right away. He said that he would try to be as constructive as possible but that the Democrats were doing their part and I had better keep in touch with McCain. The president was scheduled to give a major speech that evening making the case for TARP, but news of McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign dominated the rest of the afternoon.

We’d devised TARP to save the financial system. Now it had become all about politics—presidential politics. I wondered what McCain could have been thinking. Calling a meeting like this when we didn’t have a deal was playing with dynamite.

So it’s meeting time at the White House and all the big kids are there including President Bush, VP Cheney, Congressional leaders, Hank Paulson and other economic advisers, Barack Obama, and John McCain, who had called for this meeting.

The president asked me to speak, and I once again described the dire conditions in the market and the need for emergency powers. When I finished, the president said he had a simple test for making a decision on this: “If Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke say it’s going to work and help stabilize the financial system, we are for it.”

By protocol, the president turned to call on the speaker of the House. And when Nancy Pelosi spoke, it was clear the Democrats had done their homework and had planned a skillful response for McCain.

[...]Ms. Pelosi said that Obama would represent the Democrats. Then Obama sketched the broad outlines of the problem and stressed the need for immediate action. He said the Democrats had been working closely with me; Obama ran through the rough terms of the morning’s discussion on the Hill, then he mentioned the need for adjustments on oversight and executive compensation, as well as help for homeowners. He spoke without notes–much less a teleprompter–and spoke eloquently. “The Democrats will deliver the votes,” he asserted.

Now Obama and the Democrats were skillfully setting up the story line that McCain’s intervention had polarized the situation and that Republicans were walking away from an agreement. It was brilliant political theater that was about to degenerate into farce. Skipping protocol, the president turned to McCain to offer him a chance to respond: “I think it’s fair that I give you the chance to speak next.”

But McCain demurred. “I’ll wait my turn,” he said. It was an incredible moment, in every sense. This was supposed to be McCain’s meeting–He’d called it, not the President, who had simply accommodated the Republican candidate’s wishes. Now it looked as if McCain had no plan at all–his idea had been to suspend his campaign and summon us all to this meeting. It was not a strategy, it was a political gambit, and the Democrats had matched it with one of their own…

…Finally, raising his voice over the din, Obama said loudly, “I’d like to see what Senator McCain has to say, since we haven’t heard from him yet.”

The room went silent and all eyes shifted to McCain, who sat quietly in his chair, holding a single note card. He glanced at it quickly and proceeded to make a few general points… As he spoke, I could see Obama chuckling. McCain’s comments were anticlimactic, to say the least. His return to Washington was impulsive and risky, and I don’t think he had a plan in mind.

It got so ridiculous that Vice President Cheney started laughing. Frankly, I’d never seen anything like it before in politics or business—or in my fraternity days at Dartmouth, for that matter. Finally, the president just stood up and said: “Well, I’ve clearly lost control of this meeting. It’s over.”

And thus it’s been since; a disturbing lack of policy or any input whatsoever from McCain and his cronies.  But seriously, wow.  I almost feel bad for the old guy except I remember that he pulled this whole stunt to score a few political points for his bid at the Presidency.  What a joke.

[Daily Kos]

The theme this time is SOVEREIGN DEBT.  Remember those words for you will hear them NON STOP on ALL news networks from now till forever.  You see, since the governments of all the world’s countries decided to save their economies by throwing money at things they were able to avert a grave economic depression but at the cost of large debts.  So now everyone’s worried about countries defaulting on these debts.  Basically, even if you don’t know anything about anything:  SELL, SELL, SELL.  Oh god, they almost had me there for a second.  Let me know when the silly market commotion is over so I can come out of my bomb shelter.

Look at what happened to GOLD.  The last bastion of economic freedom!:

[Business Insider/Google]

New South China Mall is the world’s second largest mall in the world measuring 7.1 million square feet (behind another one of those freakishly irresponsible buildings in Dubai), and has the most leasable area of any mall in the world with over 1,500 available spaces for stores.  Only problem is most of those 1,500 spaces are still available.  The mall is, for the most part, completely barren.  It’s another of the many bastard children of an era built on frighteningly unshakable optimism towards real estate.

Click here for the ~14min PBS video.  Highly recommended.