Retraining

========== Sounds good, and should work. The problem is that the markets no longer set CEO pay. CEOs set their own pay with all that this implies. When was the last time you saw a CEO position put up for competitive bid, or even an RFQ?

=============== Opposite sides of the same coin. Right & left hand sock puppets in the long running punch-n-judy show.

Well, most of the original neocons actually were Democrats, and the current ones are "rightists" only in a narrow sense. You should read that article in _Commentary_ that I posted about. It's a pretty good education in neoconism.

-- Ed Huntress

Yep!

Thank you Ed! "Neocon" seems to be one of those words that people bend to their will without a clue as to the true meaning...like George has done.

It is a word that gets bent all around, and it has evolved, but the foreign diplomacy part of it also is a philosophy based on a cockeyed view of the world. The antithesis of the neocons is another new movement that we haven't heard much about yet but which is destined to play a big role in political arguments of coming years, IMO. They're called the Radical Centrists. Watch for further announcements on TV and on your supermarket shelves...

-- Ed Huntress

We would all be like Hawkie? Sleeping in a nest of dead leaves, and eating worms?

Ayup...he is a carrion eater. The avian equivelent of a dung beetle.

Gunner

================ Looks like the derivatives/dominos are starting to topple.

This is a positive feed-back loop and looks like it may have *VERY* high gain.

(For those not familiar with the bond market, MBIA is a major bond "insurance" company that guarantees the payment of interest and principal of (generally municipal) bonds. This [has] greatly reduced the risk premium / interest rate on these bonds. If MBIA and the other bond "insurers" get into serious trouble, the ratings of the bonds they guaranteed will drop and so will the value of these bonds, resulting in further write-downs, losses, and credit contraction.)

By STEPHEN BERNARD, AP Business Writer 1 hour, 48 minutes ago

NEW YORK - MBIA Inc. reported write-downs of $3.5 billion on souring credit markets Thursday, exacerbating concerns that rising costs could squeeze local governments as well as slow any recovery for big banks.

Continued weakness in the bond insurance market may put struggling banks in a precarious position. Banks, which have reduced portfolio values by more $140 billion during the second half of 2007 in a deteriorating mortgage market, might be forced to take further write-downs tied to bonds insured by companies like MBIA.

The insurer lost $2.3 billion in the fourth quarter, or $18.61 per share, compared with earnings of $181 million, or $1.32 per share, during the same period the previous year.

MBIA raised more than $1.5 billion in recent months to try and maintain its critical "AAA" rating. The company raised $1 billion through the offering of surplus notes and another $500 million through a direct investment by private equity firm Warburg Pincus, which closed Wednesday.

Oppenheimer & Co. analyst Meredith Whitney said banks' could take up to $70 billion in additional write-downs because of the faltering bond insurers.

The bond insurance market is in the midst of a major upheaval after ratings agencies began reviewing their operations during the fourth quarter.

============

Come on, Gunner. 'Hawkie' is so lazy if it doesn't die right in front of him, he'd rather go hungry.