High Heels and X-Ray Eyes
First, you hear the high heels. These are not the pretty heels of Ginger Rogers, floating in ostrich plumes for some impromptu dance across a marble floor.
No no, these are the no-nonsense high heels whose rhythmic ticktock, louder and louder, signify the approach of authority – firm, fair and with eyes that see through every excuse. It’s Dr. Warren, and she’s ticked.
Elizabeth Warren, head C.O.P. over at the Congressional Oversight Panel which is “charged with the job of reviewing the state of the markets, current regulatory system, and the Treasury Department’s management of the Troubled Asset Relief Program [and] required to report their findings to Congress every 30 days.” She is a longtime researcher of bankruptcy and professor of bankruptcy law, and she saw the crash of the middle class coming from miles away.
In videos like “The Coming Collapse of the Middle Class” (early 2008) and her various net-based reports, TV appearances, and appearances before Congress, she combines absolute clarity of message with a mildness that tempers that message, often dismaying in its implications, enough so it can be heard and digested.
Messages like this graph. 
And those numbers are from 2001.
She’s just been named the ‘Bostonian of the Year‘ by the Boston Globe, complete with an interesting video that catches her offstage persona. It’s a lot like her camera persona, but madder. Worth watching, if only to see her berating Timothy Geithner, (about 3.02) whose smirking response should infuriate anyone who sees it. Read the accompanying article, too.
A few Elizabeth-quotes from the Globe video:
“The mortgage lenders have behaved abominably.”
“It seems to me that far to often women are the people who do what needs to be done. It’s about how the old boys club who brought us not just to the brink of ruin, but beyond that, they still want to play the same way. And, well, somebody’s got to say no. If all the old boys want to roll their eyes over it, well then let them roll their eyes over it.”
“AIG was not a bank!”
“Here we are in the middle of a financial crisis. The market is broken. We have a system where very large financial institutions systematically take advantage of hardworking American families. The role of government is just to level that playing field a little bit, and the financial institutions are fighting that tooth and nail. They’re willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to block that kind of legislation, and I’ll just tell you, I find that deeply and profoundly shocking.”
“I am not looking for jobs with these guys. My job is not to get out there and kowtow to these guys so they’ll be nice to me. I figure this is the one time I will have a true public-service job. I’m going to do everything I can to execute this job the way it ought to be done. If there’s some politician, Republican or Democrat, who has a problem with that, I just don’t care.”
Every couple of weeks I scan the internet looking for new reports and video from our COP on the beat. So should we all.
Bravo, Dr. Warren.
The Science of Debt Dependent Saturation Macroeconomics
Terminal Quantum Fractal Progressions – Identifying the Wilshire’s 11 October 2007 Secondary High
The exact high for the Wilshire on October 11 2007 was prospectively predicted by the science of saturation macroeconomics. The science of saturation macroeconomics as defined by quantum fractal growth and decay of macroeconomic system’s countervailing debt, on the one hand, and commodity and equity, on the other ‘investment’ instruments has now retrospectively indicated the final secondary high for the Wilshire.
Speculative money rotating from equity and commodity speculative instrument that flowed into global debt instruments driving the US ten year note, as way of a sovereign debt proxy, to its 150 year low at 2.04 percent on 18 December 2008 well matched the Wilshire’s initial nodal low at 7400 on 21 December 2008. With the 150 year low long term interest, speculative money began flowing back into equities which had lateral growth and thereafter downward growth until 6 March 2009, completing a 7/16 week x/2-2.5x fractal sequence.
With the US central bank’s counterfeiting 350 billion dollars in the short term treasury market to incrementally absorb short term US roll over debt that had insufficient real economy buyers, the US equity market and the entire global equity markets achieved growth valuations beyond that which would have occurred if competing short term debt instruments were placed on the existing capital market table.
Since 6 March 2009 the Wilshire completed a fractal sequence formed by the earlier 7/16 week first and second fractal series. A 7/16/19 week fractal series completed the first of two final fractal growth periods.
The 19 weeks of the 7/16/19 first fractal series were composed of a daily fractal series of 17/38/35 days :: x/2-2.5x/2x with a nonlinear drop seen on the minute unit charts on the 38th day of the second fractal.
The second fractal series is composed currently of 6/12/7 weeks :: x/2x/1x or 27/55/33 days. The 27th day of the third fractal is nested in a cup 5 days from the likely secondary Wilshire high on 4 December and the secondary high on 16 December 2009.
Since 9 December 2009 the Wilshire has followed a 15/32/15 hour :: x/2-2.5x/x fractal growth series ending on Friday 18 December 2009 with the characteristic nonlinear drop on the 31st hour of the second fractal. The final 15 hour is composed of a 3/8/6 hour fractal x/2.5x/2x or a 12/24/20 :: x/2x/1.6x 15 minute fractal.
On Friday 18 December the Wilshire reached its second and (relatively) final lower high of a 27/55/27 day x/2x/x fractal followed by a 15/32/15 hour : x/2x/x
fractal. Incipient nonlinearity of a major degree is expected on Monday 21 December 2009.
Possible fractal decay progressions using the 6/12/7 week fractal sequence (decay is confluent with and begins in terminal apical growth) are: 6/12/12 weeks or 6/12/12/9 weeks with the third fractal (of the latter fractal series) 12th a final third much lower high.
Noni
Dr Warren is a hero, and she is doing the right thing. And we need to listen to her. Then we need to do something about it.
But if you are going to turn this into a feminist issue, then you are doing exactly what the “old boys” want. They have known for a thousand years that they can turn the ‘people’ to fighting with each other about some side issue while they make off with the money and keep the power.
Nothing feminist about it at all, except for Warren talking about the “old boys club”, which sounds about accurate from where I stand. Is it the high heels that bother you, Cobe? She’d be just as focused in runners, I am sure, but heels seem to be like neckties on the old boys — formal wear. That they make a sound like approaching doom is a mere side effect.
Noni
it was this: ““It seems to me that far to often women are the people who do what needs to be done. It’s about how the old boys club wh…”
trust me, i can’t get into the old boys club myself and i am a white male chauvinist pig. i like to think it’s because i was the sort of people who do what needs to be done… they never forgive that.
Ah. Well yes, there are men, many of them, who “do what needs to be done”, and they are seldom (never?) members of the old boys’ clubs. I think that’s what defines old boys clubs — they “have people for that kind of thing.” Often unpaid.
Not knowing for sure what Warren was referring to in this quote, but perhaps she was thinking of the legions of women in India who spend much of the day gathering cattle dung, taking it home and molding it into bricks for fuel.
Or perhaps she’s thinking a large number of single mothers (shown in the bar graph above), going bankrupt to the tune of 2.3% per year (probably more by now.) (BTW, the bar graph didn’t include a bar for single fathers with children going bankrupt, because there were too few of them.) (perhaps more by now.)
I agree that they turn common people against each other, to preserve control and defuse resistance. It’s not a matter of women versus men, but of a few people prospering by sluffing off their work onto others. It’s just that in the micro-economic arena, the one who gets sluffed onto is very often a woman — the “mom of last resort.”
Noni
It’s obvious we need to get rid of this woman. Send her back where she came from, we have a country plunder here.
noni
i agree that something needs to be done. and very often it needs to be done for women. especially in those countries it is not pc to denigrate. all i am saying is that if you can take the feminist chip off your shoulder you will find a lot of decent men anxious to help.
i think “myname” (below) is on to something. Warren and I are on to the same set of bad guys (good old boys and boy geniuses from Harvard and Yale, and their female versions… ms busywoman perhaps. Warren has worked harder than I have so she is in a better position to have an effect. But it’s not at all clear she is going to have an effect. Certainly not if she is counting on us to DO anything.
Accident law It seems to me that far to often women are the people who do what needs to be done. It’s about how the old boys club who brought us not just to the brink of ruin, but beyond that, they still want to play the same way. And, well, somebody’s got to say no. If all the old boys want to roll their eyes over it, well then let them roll their eyes over it.