Archive for February 17th, 2009
Why are US auto makers like Oprah after cookies?
Do I smell delicious cookies? Why, yes I do. Will I eat delicious cookies? Why, yes I will.
Chrysler demands $5 billion more from the Treasury
GM demands $30 billion from the Treasury
Why are US automakers going after Treasury billions like pigs after truffles, or Oprah after cookies (or, come to think of it, truffles)?
Does anyone else out there have a serious problem with this?
Or, in The Golden Age of Obama, is it just limitless billions for everyone, and as many cookies as a self-absorbed glutton can eat?
If that’s the case, then where the Hell’s our unicorn?
SA-RAH! SA-RAH! SA-RAH!
Here are some things we love about this video:
(1) There are hot hockey guys in it
(2) It’s all about Sarah Palin
(3) Piper’s as adorable as always
(4) It makes us chant SAR-AH! SAR-AH! SAR-AH! involuntarily here at Buzzquarters (where a framed sky blue “DeMcCrats for McCain” shirt we wore to 7 states during the campaign, and Palin signed in Indianapolis, hangs on the wall)
(5) It makes us wish 2012 would get here all the sooner
(6) We just Mapquested a Chicago-Anchorage road trip, and figure we could probably watch this puppy 1,000 times or more the first time we load up a car and trek on out there to see our favorite Governor
(7) Did we mention the hockey guys? ‘Cause they were hot.
Hillary Clinton Heads To Indonesia
Goodbye Japan!
Hello Indonesia!
Hillary Clinton’s on the move, headed to Jakarta from Tokyo.
Good luck and God speed, Madame Secretary!
Hillary Clinton calls Japan "a cornerstone of US foreign policy"
Here’s the most interesting bit of Hillary Clinton’s remarks in Japan today, pertaining to the relocation of US Marines to Guam (something Clinton campaigned on during the primaries, involving a modernization of American military facilities on Guam, and intense economic and infrastructure development of the island).
We have just signed the Guam International Agreement on behalf of our two nations. This agreement reflects the commitment we have to modernize our military posture in the Pacific. It reinforces the core of our alliance, the mission to ensure the defense of Japan against attack and to deter any attack by all necessary means. It enshrines our two nations’ shared contributions in carrying out the realignment of our forces and the relocation of marines from Okinawa to Guam.
Full remarks after the jump
Read the rest of this entry »
A Glimpse Into Hillary Clinton's Visit To Japan
Hillary Clinton at the Meiji Shrine, February 17th, 2009
Here’s a very interesting glimpse into Hillary Clinton’s trip to Japan, as posted on the official State Department blog, Dipnote (yes, we know, it’s a terrible name for a blog, but HillBuzz was already taken).
Despite the name, Dipnote’s a remarkable place to visit lately, as a concerted effort’s obviously being made to give readers an unprecedented inside look at the State Department, and Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State. Apart from knowing people who are actually in the foreign service, where else could you find insights like those below?
About the Author: Lori Shoemaker serves as Assistant Press Attache at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo. You may also read Secretary Clinton’s blog entry from Japan.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in Tokyo the evening of February 16 on her much-anticipated first trip abroad as Secretary, to reassert our commitment to our allies and partners in Asia and discuss common approaches to the challenges facing the international community. In her arrival ceremony Monday night, she met Japanese female astronauts and members of Japan’s Special Olympics team. On Tuesday, she started the day with an early-morning visit to the Meiji Shrine, one of my favorite spots in Tokyo. Walking under the Meiji Shrine’s majestic tall trees and historic torii (traditional wooden gates), you can leave the concrete, glass, and steel of modern Tokyo behind for a moment and feel a real sense of traditional Japanese culture.
Next Secretary Clinton stopped by the U.S. Embassy to meet and greet embassy employees and their families, expressing appreciation for our work preparing for her visit and in representing the United States abroad. Although I had to miss the “meet and greet” because I was already working at the Secretary’s next stop, Iikura Guest House, her close attention and willingness to listen to embassy staff meant a great deal to all of us.
Iikura Guest House is a beautifully-appointed Foreign Ministry building with a large reception hall, meeting rooms, and dining room. Secretary Clinton came to Tokyo to meet with senior Japanese officials for discussions on the strategic bilateral alliance and cooperation with Japan on regional and global issues such as the financial markets turmoil, humanitarian issues, and security and climate change. At Iikura House, the Secretary had a meeting and working lunch with Foreign Minister Nakasone and then together they addressed and took questions from a group of more than 100 journalists, including camera crews, assembled in the hall. My own role was to work out arrangements at the site for the traveling press which accompany the Secretary. After her meeting with Defense Minister Hamada and then a few moments with Ambassador Ogata, the president of the Japan International Cooperation Agency, the Secretary returned to the U.S. Embassy to meet with family members of Japanese citizens who were abducted to North Korea, an issue to which she attaches great importance.
The Secretary then held a busy round of interviews with ABC, CBS and NBC in the embassy’s small television studio, before proceeding to the Imperial Residence, where, as a former First Lady, she was received by Empress Michiko. (In 1994, President and Mrs. Clinton held a state dinner in honor of the Emperor and Empress.) After tea with the Empress, the Secretary returned to her hotel to continue interviews, on-camera with two Japanese broadcasters, and then with two Japanese newspapers. (My job involved setting these up.)
The Secretary’s schedule was tight, timed down to the minute, and next she was whisked off to Tokyo University for a “Town Hall” meeting with Japanese college students. My colleagues told me that Secretary Clinton was in her element at the college “Town Hall,” warmly greeting individual students after answering a wide range of their questions. (If you have a question for the Secretary, you may ask her one yourself online.) Since I wasn’t at the “Town Hall,” look for more about it later.
From Tokyo University, the Secretary proceeded to a meeting and working dinner with Prime Minister Aso, where I am sure that both the conversation and the cuisine were high-level. She then had a meeting with opposition party leader Ozawa, before the end of her long day’s schedule.
As a mid-level press officer not at the Prime Minister’s dinner, I enjoyed a “conbini obento” (box lunch from a convenience store) back at the office while finishing up assigned tasks, including this blog, in order to rush home to see my (sleeping) children. I’m sure that our Secretary, as a hard-working mother and professional for many years, would understand.
Video of Hillary Clinton in Japan
Stanford Financial's offices raided in Houston: control $50 billion in investments
We’ve told you repeatedly that two things stick in our minds whenever we think about America’s economy these days:
(1) the Zombie Banks financial types in Chicago warned us about
(2) the hedge-fund anything goes culture personified in a woman we know in New York
In terms of Zombie Banks, we first heard that term back in June or July, when a few financial big wigs at an Obama event we were invited to told us, in no uncertain terms, that a large number of banks would collapse in 2009, along with numerous financial firms, which were all basically houses of cards awaiting the wind. The Obama people believed Republicans, at the time, were doing everything possible to keep insolvent banks on their feet for as far into 2009 as possible, so Bush would not be blamed for their collapse. These “Zombie Banks” were as good as dead, we were told, but weren’t allowed to be disposed of during the election season — and not until after Bush was safely out of office.
Consider the source on that one, as there’s some partisan conspiracy theories at work there, but we do believe they were spot on about many, many more banks failing in 2009 — and the Treasury needing to pump a few trillion more into the system, as the EU struggles with the same problem relating to banks and institutions in Eastern Europe. It will all get a lot worse before it gets any better.
And then there’s the hedge funds and investment firms. We’ve told you about a woman named Lourdes in New York, who is one of the most self-centered and spoiled people we’ve ever known. For years, she’s put people down for not living as posh a lifestyle as she does (largely with her parents’ help, of course, not that she’s one to mention that, or remember they’re the ones who bought her that Park Avenue apartment of hers), while also going on about hedge-fund this, and hedge-fund that. Lourdes loves mentioning in every conversation that she went to graduate school at NYU, no matter how tangential that is (“Could someone pass the butter? Oh, butter reminds me of graduate school at NYU, where I got my master’s in Nineteenth Century Russian Literature, and one of the many books I read, in Russia, mentioned butter in it. I went to NYU for grad school. Look at me. “). She also believes she should be the Vice President, or even CEO, of a company, despite the fact she has the emotional maturity of someone in high school, and that’s being very generous to the long-lost third Hilton sister. One of the things she wanted to be Vice President of was a hedge fund, despite not knowing what a hedge fund even is, or what it does, but just asserting her God-given right to be Vice President of it (because she went to NYU).
Lourdes is not the only spoiled clown to want to run a hedge fund, we’re sure.
When we read stories about investment firms going under, or hedge fund managers heading to jail for massive fraud, we think of Lourdes and realize what’s REALLY going on that the media doesn’t report on: so many of these money managing firms are run by complete and utter morons that it’s actually terrfying. All of those fortunes are on paper, and people like Lourdes are on the company’s payroll because they are pretty to look at and have great family connections — all of which suckers in new investors, who are so caught up in their own spending and extravagance that they never catch on to the fact that all of the profits they’ve been promised will never materialize.
In the meantime, Lourdes sits in her office, with her Pradas up on her never-used glass desk, wondering if she should have her assistant bring her the Bavarian ham with extra mustard or the Buffalo mozzerella salad for lunch today — without a clue in the world as to what she’s doing, or where all the money’s gone, only that she looks killer in the Armani suit she just bought at Bergdorf’s.
We wish we could say we are kidding about any of this — but sadly we are not.
So, every time you hear someone talk about a hedge fund or investment fund, wonder how many VPs like Lourdes are running around that office, none of them realizing they’re complicit in Ponzi schemes (“Wasn’t Ponzi that guy on that old show with the leather jacket who could make the jukebox play when snapping his fingers? That guy must be really old now”).
Wish we were kidding about that last bit, too, but Lourdes really said that as well. And wasn’t kidding.
Today, authorities raided the offices of Stanford Financial Group in Houston, where $50 billion in investments was supposedly managed, but where a lot of Lourdeses probably work, in very high positions we’re sure. So far, it looks like there’s at least $8 billion in securities fraud at Stanford alone — and that’s not figuring in the ripples Stanford will send into the financial community (remember when Enron went down, it took a lot of ancillary companies with it too).
We didn’t go to NYU, and didn’t study Nineteenth Century Russian Literature, but we bet Stanford won’t be the only offices raided in the financial and banking sectors in the days, weeks, and months ahead.
Sooner or later, all of the Zombie Banks will be put to rest and the Ponzi schemes collapsed…but it will take a while.
In the meantime, Lourdes ended up going with the Bavarian ham and mustard, with a pink Vitamin water to wash it down…and tickets for Confessions of a Shopaholic for after work tonight, because, really, all work and no fun makes Lourdes a sad hedge fund manager.
