Do you announce to LA it's the target of terrorist attack? The result would be panic, fear, shutting down of commerce, fleeing the city, closing the airport, and eventually martial law. Add in vigilante gangs, looting, and crime, and Katrina would look like a walk in the park.

Yeah, I saw that movie. It was called Independence Day, wasn't it? I didn't realize that it was a documentary though.

But vigilante gangs, looting, and crime doesn't sound all that different from LA today. Besides, as Rumsfeld says, 'freedom's messy' and 'stuff happens'.

An amazing read:

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2007/08/cramer-pleads-f.html

In a truly astonishing clip, Erin Burnett interviewed Jim Cramer on Friday.

It is destined to become a classic Wall Street legend. I expect it will become required viewing for market historians and technicians alike.

There's no other way to say this: Jim goes postal. When Cramer essentially begs the Fed Chair to rescue the big Investment banks, you know things have gone awry.

Highlights include:

"Open the darn Fed window.

"He has no idea what its like out there - None!"

"They [the Fed] know nothing. The Fed is asleep."

"My people have been in this game for 25 years . . . They are losing their jobs -- these firms are going out business"

"Bill Poole is shameful"

"Cut the rate. Relieve the pressure"

"In the fixed income markets we have Armageddon."

I am not sure what he means about people talking to him every night "off the record" (was Jim inferring the Fed calls him? )

[clip would be here]

Ever since TV has been banned from our trading room (CNBC and Bloomberg alike), I only get to see these things when they show up online.

A truly astonishing performance. Kudos to Erin for maintaining her cool, as well as not adding to the madness.

I have two words for Jim: Moral Hazard. Contrary to everything we learned under Easy Alan Greenspan, it is not the Fed's role to backstop speculators and guarantee a one way market.

What's the difference between GWBush and Paris Hilton? Both are spoiled, rich brats doing just as they please, but GW gets to be above the law and get away with it, while Paris found out she couldn't.

GW has politicized everything; the military is just one in a long line. We will be paying high costs for this for years to come. If we can't trust our own Department of Justice, who can we trust? If Gonzales isn't out soon, the entire government better be ready to cut and run. Vote them all out!!!

Good points. However, I think that the Dem leadership, such as it is, essentially threw Angelides under the bus because they wanted Villeraigosa in 2010. I wonder what they're thinking now that Antonio is a little muddied.

[The time of Tiberius, when the empire swelled] -- "It was a tainted, meanly obsequious age. The greatest figures had to protect their positions by subserviency; and, in addition to them. allex-consuls, most ex-praetors, even many junior senators competed with each other's offensivley sycophantic proposals. There is a tradition that whenever Tiberius left the Senate house, he exclaimed: 'Men fit to be slaves'!! Even he, freedom's enemy, became impatient of such abject servility."

(Tacitus, the Annals of Imperial Rome. III.64)