A Craigslist rant against the Wall St. Banksters

You reap what you sow: the greed of an archetypal Lehman douche
Date: 2008-09-16, 5:57PM EDT

Most of you deserve this, you really, truly do. You chose this road because it was easy and because you’re stupid. This was and is the best you’ll ever do. You know who I’m talking about. I’m pointing the finger at you, you and you. And especially you. To all the overtanned Jersey douchebags with steroid addictions, to the smug Ivy League grads with dads in high places, to the good looking brain dead women that eschew Anne Taylor Loft for sales rack Brooks Brothers, and to the upwardly mobile black girls with fake hair and inappropriate-for-work Joyce Leslie outfits. Actually, scratch that. The black girls can stay.

Fuck all of you. You brought this upon yourselves. Your Alpha male bullshit begat this greed, your vile existence is truly at the core of this collapse. For all the times you and your drunk cronies threw up on the street outside Pacha, for all the times you made a scene on the 3:51 LIRR train to Babylon, for all the times you stood on the Path train, or the 6, iPod in hand, desperately trying not to touch anyone. You had it coming.

Is there some kind of code that says you MUST wear a blue shirt? Or is that some kind of unspoken bro ethos? Like, if you’re the dude in the white button down in Bryant Park, is no one gonna blow you? Or is conforming just that much easier, is conformity just a part of your DNA? Is that really the true reason why you’re so universally loathsome to anyone that’s not a part of that vile world?

Before the Bubble O’ Bullshit burst, you would laugh at me. You were the douche bags that felt superior, the ones who turned up their nose at their working-class roots, the ones who scoffed at their peers who worked at the Local Union. You were the ones who laughed at those that worked at non-profits and LIKED IT. “Art History? What are you going to do with a major in Art History?” Yeah, your finance major got you real fucking far. Maybe after this ship sails you’ll realize that aside from your rape trial, college didn’t teach you much of anything. Sorry bro, but in the real world, you can’t walk down the street, lacrosse stick in hand, and just get respect.

I hope that with this smashup comes your own social foreclosure. I hope all those dudes from my high school — you know who I’m talking about — the ones that never got good grades, the ones that never knew how to act like decent human beings, the date rapists, the juicers, the guidos, the Quinnipiac or Iona grads that never should have graduated yet somehow landed cushy Wall Street jobs — receive the guerdon from the gods . I hope you’re evicted from your Upper East Side apartment, I hope your Denali gets repoed, I hope you can’t afford your bullshit Murray Hill lifestyle. I hope you truly get your comeuppance. Because it’s well fucking deserved and the Universe knows it. And what about me, you ask?

I’m laughing all the way to the nonexistent bank.

* it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

PostingID: 843443153

The word bankster was once a depression-era term referring to a predatory element within the financial services industry, such as those offering “too good to be true” adjustable mortgage rates for home buyers, getting undeserved bonuses, creating complex financial instruments that hold no real value or commit large-scale fraud.

I post that craigslist entry because it’s just too funny and almost reminds me of my days at the Rutgers Business School undergraduate programme. Unlike other undergrad business programmes, the Rutgers Business School crams about 4 years worth of business schooling into 2 years to mirror the MBA programme.

The thing about the business school was that a good number of our finance majors were in fact cheaters. Some of them would store finance equations on their graphing calculators, some would find the means to purchase a teacher’s edition of their textbooks along with the exam guides, while a few would try to set their classmates up for for failure to weed out the competition.  Those who tried to speak out were silenced and professors who tried to investigate allegations of cheating go nowhere because these kids destroyed the evidence.

It’s funny that many of these finance majors would eventually land cushy jobs as investment bankers, analysts, managers or financial advisers simply by lying, charming and cheating their way to success.

Here’s something a former Rutgers Business School student wrote about his classmates:

There was something I remembered the first day of business school when I was getting to know my classmates. It was before class and we introduced ourselves; but he stopped talking to me once he found out my GPA was a 3.47. This fucker even went the extra mile by telling some of my friends in the b-school behind my back that we was “mad stupid” and “not a good guy”. I mean, seriously, what the fuck is this shit? What is even worse is that this prick leeches off other people’s work and takes credit for it. I know that cutthroat punks exist in general, and I am under the impression that they all go to the business school.

Not only are there cutthroat leeches, there are also ass-kissers. Some of these people may have been doing it all their lives and feel there is nothing wrong with it. They think that ass-kissing will payoff and bring them great things. In the business school, they might suck up to the professor to get exempt from an exam or a job recommendation, or they may suck-up to fellow students to get votes to become a club officer or to use them. In short, in the business school, your peers will lie, cheat, and steal in the name of good grades and contacts while repeatedly fucking you over in the process. It will become extremely difficult to have friends you can actually trust if you choose to go to the business school.

In some way I can relate to what the guy on craigslist was talking about.  Many of these RBS alumni did not really deserve the high-flying jobs they secured and many of them had bad habits that would naturally cause massive damage in Wall St. and the rest of the global economy.  What these banksters did was scam the vast majority of the population to overconsume and avoid saving while depending on low interest rates to fuel their debt-based spending.  In the end, these clowns were not only able to convince businesses to start giving out huge loans to dangerously unqualified individuals and then spread all the risk out to others so they would never suffer the consequences, they also managed to dupe everyone into believing the hype that all these “good times last forever”.

So kudos to some of my RBS alums for cheating and charming their way to the top with almost no substance or moral fiber.  Kudos to those whose undeserved success is crumbling around them as the world responds to their excesses.  And most of all, kudos for being brought down to reality, where people actually go about their lives producing something of value and save to create wealth with dignity and through their own merits.  All you business school cheats turned banksters have earned the right to be ruined by the financial crisis.

New lingua franca upsets French

New lingua franca upsets French

That the French resent the global supremacy of the English language is nothing new, but as Hugh Schofield finds out, a newly evolved business-speak version is taking over.

They were giving out the annual Prix de la Carpette Anglaise the other day. Literally it means the English Rug Prize, but doormat would be the better translation.

As the citation explains, the award goes to the French person or institution who has given the best display of “fawning servility” to further the insinuation into France of the accursed English language.

Among the runners-up this year: the supermarket company Carrefour ­which changed the name of its Champion chain of stores to Carrefour Market, not using the French word “marche”.

Also the provocatively-named Paris band Nelson (it is the Admiral, not Mr Mandela, that they have in mind) whose frontman J.B. sings in English because, he says, French does not have the right cadences for true rock.

Worst offender

But topping the poll for grave disservices to the mother tongue is France’s higher education minister, Valerie Pecresse.

Her crime: proclaiming to the press that she had no intention of speaking French when attending European meetings in Brussels, because, she said, it was quite obvious that English was now the easiest mode of communication.

The rise and rise of the English language is a sensitive subject for many here in France, who believe that French has every bit as much right to be considered a global tongue.

Even conceding to English victory in the war for linguistic supremacy, the French believe that the least they can do is defend their own territory and keep the ghastly invader at a decent remove.

The same group that sponsors the Prix de la Carpette also brings legal actions against companies that, it says, breach the law, for example, by not issuing French language versions of instructions to staff.

Personally, I sympathise greatly with defenders of the French language. I think it is true that culturally the world will be diminished if one monolithic form of discourse squashes the rest. But then I am also a realist.

Recently I have spent a lot of time in French multinational companies, and what is inescapable is the stranglehold that English already has on the world of business here.

French executives draft reports, send e-mails, converse with their international colleagues – and increasingly even amongst themselves – in English.

It is of course a kind of bastardised, runty form of business-speak full of words like “drivers” and “deliverables” and “outcomes” to be “valorised”, but is nonetheless quite definitely not French.

New language

This brings me to Jean-Paul Nerriere.

Monsieur Nerriere is a retired French businessman who one day in the course of his work made a fascinating observation.

In a meeting with colleagues from around the world, including an Englishman, a Korean and a Brazilian, he noticed that he and the other non-native English speakers were communicating in a form of English that was completely comprehensible to them, but which left the Englishman nonplussed.

He, Jean-Paul Nerriere, could talk to the Korean and the Brazilian in this neo-language, and they could understand each other perfectly.

But the Englishman was left out because his language was too subtle, too full of meaning that could not be grasped by the others.

In other words, Monsieur Nerriere concluded, a new form of English is developing around the world, used by people for whom it is their second language.

It may not be the most beautiful of tongues, but in this day and age he says it is indispensible. He calls the language Globish and urges everyone – above all the French – to learn it tout de suite.

In his book Don’t Speak English, Parlez Globish, Monsieur Nerriere sets out the rules.

Globish has only 1,500 words and users must avoid humour, metaphor, abbreviation and anything else that can cause cross-cultural confusion.

They must speak slowly and in short sentences. Funnily enough, he holds up the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as an excellent exponent.

Many in France consider Monsieur Nerriere a traitor for promoting the dreaded Anglais, but he insists he is not.

He says the French have to recognise that the language war is lost.

“We’re just urinating on the ashes of the fire,” he says. We should look on Globish not as a triumphant cultural vehicle for les Anglo-Saxons, but as a tool, he says: essential but purely utilitarian.

For lovers of English there is another consideration, only half-serious I admit. But what if this were all a devious Gallic plot?

After all, if Globish really does take over the planet with its stunted business-speak, its bland insignificance, its cultureless access-for-all availability, then where does that leave the real English?

Will the language of Shakespeare suffer by association, leaving the field open one day for the resurgence of the other great tongues of the world ? Like French?

From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Thursday, 22 January, 2009 at 1100 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/7844192.stm

Published: 2009/01/23 08:04:16 GMT

© BBC MMIX

Must learn Globish.

Battlestar Galactica, Season 4, Episode 13, “Sometimes a Great Notion”

The human remains found on earth are actually cylons who fought against robotic centurions (earth variant) and perished in a nuclear holocaust 2000 years before BSG takes place. The Final Five are actually the “Earth Cylons” who lived in the planet before dying and reincarnating 2000 years later in the Colonies.

Kara finds her crashed Viper and her corpse somewhere on Earth but she is not the Final Cylon. Ellen Tigh is the Fifth and Final Cylon but she died back in New Caprica.

Duella commits suicide after loosing all hope upon finding Earth. Roslin loses her faith while the rest of the fleet also lost hope.

Batman is Dead in Final Crisis #6

I was going to write about how the Dow Jones took a huge beating in light of low retail sales and the looming panic over Q4 earnings for the blue chips. I even considered talking about how Geithner is a shady character for owing around $34,000 in back taxes to the IRS or how he likes to hire (exploit) undocumented immigrants as nannies. I even thought about talking about how Citigroup proved that American financial institutions are incapable of being financial supermarkets like their counterparts outside of America. But not today. Instead I am going to write about the death of Bruce Wayne, a popular character also known as Batman.

Batman (Bruce Wayne) finally meets his end facing a supervillain called Darkseid, who is a being known as a “New God” in the comic book world. Earlier in the year, there were headlines from the corporate media about Batman meeting his death in a controversial storyline called “Batman RIP” where he supposedly endures a series of psychological attacks from a villain purporting to be his father. This storyline generated controversy by forcing readers to question Batman’s origins and his sanity and ended with Batman attacking his “father” before disappearing.

A follow-up storyline to “Batman RIP” tied into the mini-series where Batman meets his final fate. In this story, we learn that Batman did survive the events of Batman RIP and is currently imprisoned by Darkseid’s minions who are attempting to extact Batman’s mind to clone an army of soldiers who think and act like him. Bruce manages to break out of the trap and goes to put an end to Darkseid’s plans.

Still psychologically scarred from his encounters in “Batman RIP” and from Darkseid’s torture, Batman confronts the villain and threatens to shoot Darkseid with a bullet that can kill New Gods:

He manages to wound Darkseid but is hit by Darkseid’s Omega Beams, which are known to instantly kill anyone on contact. It would seem odd to see Batman threatening to kill someone with a gun given his tragic origin, but the events in Batman RIP forced him to question his background, his sanity, and his motivations.

In that storyline, the villain claims to be Thomas Wayne, Batman’s father, who had hired Joe Chill to kill his entire family so he can start his life over again as Simon Hurt. Most of all, he had planed hypnotic suggestions in Batman to make him mentally shutdown and quit crimefighting. Unfortunately, Batman was unable to investigate any of Hurt’s allegations as he was captured by Darkseid.

If no one believes that Batman was killed in Final Crisis #6, here is the final page of the comic that just came out this Wednesday:

Batman is killed by Darkseid’s Omega Beams; not even Superman can save him. Batman RIP.  It looks like Dick Grayson, the original Robin, will take over as Bruce Wayne has met his end.

The writer responsible for both the controversial storylines “Batman RIP” and “Final Crisis” is Scotsman Grant Morrison. His official website is http://www.grantmorrison.com/. Let him know what you think!

Thank You Amy Tan: Support the Joy Luck Club!

Thank You Amy Tan: Support the Joy Luck Club!
By Captain Livingston

Asian doll. Tight, submissive, exotic, mysterious and sultry. She shrieks at the sight of a mouse. She takes insults as a reminder to improve upon her flawed self. She is the survivor of abuse by Asian men from her past, just as she watched her mother abused by the hands of her father. She endures. She sits quietly alone, waiting for her White knight to sweep her away from generations of misery. Who is she?

She is a fantasy Asian woman created by Amy Tan to get Asian girls into the hands of the White guys like us.

My campaign, or better put, my goal is simple: to promote Amy Tan’s Joy Luck Club in the reading lists of high schools and universities across the nation to get more White guys like myself with Asian girls. Right now, the Joy Luck Club (JLC) is currently used by academic institutions in the US and is known by us White guys as a novel that is “Draws Asian girls to [us]“. Through Amy Tan and her novel, the images of self-loathing Asian women and abusive, wicked Asian men have reached the millions across the nation, much to our favor.

In my campaign to promote JLC for schools, I have enlisted the support of Asian-American women’s groups, fraternities, pornographers, the Republican Party, and any Asiaphile group of every feasible nature. I am not looking to wipe out all Asian males nor am I looking to ignore White women. I just want more Asian girls to learn about Amy Tan and her wonderful novel so more White guys like me can enjoy them.

What I love most about her is the way she plays upon all of the Asian stereotypes. Asian women are depicted as lonely miserable characters whose ultimate salvation comes when united in marriage with a White male (us). Furthermore, she mercilessly smears all of the Asian male characters, confining them to the role of the wife-abuser, pervert, weakling or the nit-picking egomaniac, which is party true from my own observations. This novel really represents the Asian American experiences and it is loved by critics, in addition to being popular with Asian girls and us White guys.

Amy Tan (who in real life was swept away by a white man) said herself that she would never date Asian men because she would not date her father or her brother, and this only helps our cause. I truly respect and believe her as a major figure of the collective voice of Asian-Americans and I really don’t think it’s right to question her thinking because that would be racist.

When chatting with Asian girls of every background online, they all said that the story is a major reason why they only date White guys. I must confess that there were parts to JLC that I could relate to, such as the generational and cultural gap the main characters felt with their parents. Nevertheless, alongside these anecdotes came, what I felt, were interesting generalizations that brought back memories of the abusiveness and arrogance that I faced from Asian nerds and thugs in high school.

So long as JLC and Amy Tan are the only widely recognized products of Asian American literature, Asian girls will date us more. I hope others will enjoy reading Amy Tan because she is both a very engaging writer and gives us a the truth at what Asian women had to suffer from in her pages.

Pornos for Bailout!

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/01/07/porn-industry-seeks-federal-bailout/

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Another major American industry is asking for assistance as the global financial crisis continues: Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild CEO Joe Francis said Wednesday they will request that Congress allocate $5 billion for a bailout of the adult entertainment industry.

“The take here is that everyone and their mother want to be bailed out from the banks to the big three,” said Owen Moogan, spokesman for Larry Flynt. “The porn industry has been hurt by the downturn like everyone else and they are going to ask for the $5 billion. Is it the most serious thing in the world? Is it going to make the lives of Americans better if it happens? It is not for them to determine.”

Francis said in a statement that “the US government should actively support the adult industry’s survival and growth, just as it feels the need to support any other industry cherished by the American people.”

“We should be delivering [the request] by the end of today to our congressmen and [Secretary of the Treasury Henry] Paulson asking for this $5 billion dollar bailout,” he told CNN Wednesday.

Flynt and Francis concede the industry itself is in no financial danger — DVD sales have slipped over the past year, but Web traffic has continued to grow.

But the industry leaders said the issue is a nation in need. “People are too depressed to be sexually active,” Flynt said in the statement. “This is very unhealthy as a nation. Americans can do without cars and such but they cannot do without sex.”

“With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind. It’s time for congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America. The only way they can do this is by supporting the adult industry and doing it quickly.”

So far, there has been no congressional reaction to the request.

–CNN’s Chloe Melas contributed to this report

MILFs, loose teens, and well-hung doods need their bailout money too!