Others warned that because of the rules, firms might lose their best traders and managers to hedge funds and foreign banks.

Alan Johnson, a compensation consultant who advises many Wall Street banks, said that the rules would make it hard to recruit new managers, too.

“At some point, you begin to wonder: has the government given up on these companies anyway?” he said. “Why would the government or White House want to go along with that unless they have come to the conclusion they will have to nationalize these firms anyway?”

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The cartoon above is a euphemism for the way some executives behave while the goose is beeing cooked. Not only that, most of the present trouble comes from them being too heavy and too greedy at the front of the plane. Thus troubles can be apportionedin various degree to the US government for lack or slack financial regulations and for executives driving banks and other businesses with octane leaded debts beyond imagination. 

As I suggested to myself as an explanation for this cartoon, some privileges can lead to blindness and ignorance of signs telling us things are crook. In this case, the plane is going down fast and the Dom shall be opened, while the goose is cooked by the engines. A bit like the orchestra on the deck of the Titanic.

For example Robert Gottliebsen told John Barry on four corners (09/02/09) that the banking system worldwide had an unserviceable hole of 3 trillion US dollars... Sounds dramatic but from my point of view the banks and the governments do not want to tell the whole story. My "guestimate" of 15 trillion per year for the next 15 years of very wonky credit worldwide is more accurate (by my own calculaltion, for example, the value of the Iraqi oil to the US economy (not to be confused with the US budget) is also 500 trillion (revised figure, John) US dollars over the entire next 25 years, at 50 US dollars a barrel). This is not entirely plucked from the air, so to speak, although I may be wrong I don't feel I'm far off...

It's my view that the whole financial system is trying to hide the extend of money it burned by lighting cigars and investing in back holes — for there was not enough good investment opportunities for the amount of funds (super, retirement, greed, margin lending) that came their way in a flood. And Western governments know it. Otherwise they would not be forking out cash to banks and interest rates the way they are. They would make the banks tighten their belts and governments would support jobs and welfare in a better way otherwise. The problem is the system is trying to make the weaker in the pile suffer more, while the top echelons might loose a few billions here and there, but not be fully penalised for their greedy cock ups. Including  past US administrations. 

Thus, I feel optimism going down the gurgler, from the ordinary folks but also as more and more financiers are awakening to the values of what is, compared with what it could be and what they thought it was — and what they could get away with, to line their own pockets... The stock market has plunged another 4 per cent in New York a few days ago, despite or in spite of the "rescue" stimulus...

I know the system is mostly about perceptions but there has been too much waste. Some have lost more than what they could afford, under the encouragements of banks who'd made a sale bonus no matter whether the advice was sound or not, to eventually be caught in their own bull...

The problem too is that most priming of the pump is designed to recreate more of the same, adding fuel to the fire so to speak...

Meanwhile global warming is not an illusion and it will become more and more quantitated as we grow older... Captains of planes cannot afford to be greedy with the aerodynamics, unlike the captains of the financial system who think they can stretch this system ad infinitum... The plane will not land safely in the Hudson.