Paul Ryan Hands Cold War Victory to the Ruskies

Well, there it is folks.  Plain as day: Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan's "Roadmap to Ruin" austerity program sh*tcanned the U.S. Spaceshuttle program and left us dependant upon the charity of ex-KGB chief Vladimir Putin.  No you wouldn't hear much about that from the Fox News(tm) Politburo.  Seems that we have to rely on our Aussie cousins to get the scoop.

It's true.  Now without an independant space program of our own, we'll be at the tender mercies of the aparatchiks in Moscow to support our telecommunications satellite infrastructure.

Now I don't have definitive proof yet that Paul Ryan is a sleeper agent for Uncle Vanya, but all signs point to yes.  In debt ceiling talks this week his lot are trying to force American-born grandmothers to give up their cat food money in order to support the vodka habits of his Wall Street buddies like Frenchman "Fabulous" Fab Torre.

Millions for Defense; Not One Cent for Tribute

Oh how the times have been a changin' since Robert Goodloe Harper coined that gem in 1798.  In the 21st century, apparently, patriotism means stealing hundreds of billions from the U.S. Treasury to bailout incompetent bankers, as "minute man"[1] Paul Ryan begged the House to do on September 29, 2008.



Okay, so as a nation we're totally cool with recasting tribute to greasy financial fatcats as "investment"--even if it doesn't exactly pay a huge return. [2]

But since "far left socialist" Barack Obama proposed cutting Social Security benefits during recent talks to increase the nation's debt ceiling (to much Republican enthusiam), making sure Granny gets her catfood money has also been redefined as "wanton profilgacy".  Ah, sure, the ol' gal only had another ten years left in her TOPS anyways, right?

America, you are a pack of perverts.[3]

Footnotes
[1] Not a quote from Ryan's wife, mind you, but my personal interpretation of the guy's attention span.  Not only does he seem never to have bothered considering the negative consequences of diverting billions from high multiplier government programs to line the pockets of his already bloated buddies at AIG, I'm not sure that he even knows what the term "fiscal multiplier" means. 

[2]  The Bureau of Labor Stats today showed that our nation of 300+ million managed to increase jobs by a lousy 18k.  Which I figure is about 80k short of even keeping up with the increase in the work force.  But of course the fantastically inept media will fail to report the numerous predictions that enactment of Ryan and Obama's tax cuts in December would lead to job losses not gains, so in the public mind the policy's continued failure will remain a mystery.

[3]  Feel free to let your representatives and senators know how obscene you find highjacking old age pensioners to pay for Goldman Sachs bonuses:  right them NOW.

Foghorn Leghorn Speaks . . .

Is it possible to spirit channel a fictional character?  Specifically, the Southern-gentrified blowhard from the Warner Bro.'s 1960's "Foghorn Leghorn" franchise?  Based upon experiments performed over the weekend, I can report a firm and conclusive "yes".  But the ritual requires copious volumes of an obscure Sri Lankan stout called "Lion".  And Mr. Legohorn seems to have quite a bit to say about Wisconsin people and places . . . .

"The behavior on display before us in this instance constitutes a perfect SCANDAL in the eyes of our sacred parliamentary traditions.  This method of proceeding cannot call to mind words any loftier or more noble than "poltroon" and "knave".  I understand that the accepted standards of comportment may not be all they could in some of the darker corners of the great state of Wisconsin, but I see no reason to drag them into the sacred halls of our legislature." (Regarding the extradordinary violation of Wisconsin's open meetings law by which Republican majority leader "Big Fitz" Fitzgerald surreptitiously passed Gov. Walker's union-busting bill.)

"I am led to believe that Mr. Fitzgerald holds some strong opinions regarding the physical attractiveness, or lack thereof, of the typical Wisconsin voter.  No doubt the feeling is heartily reciprocated.  Indeed, I daresay that Mr. Fitzgerald's but-tocks are still sportin' the friction burns from his mother's desparate attempts to force in a feedin' bottle."  (Regarding Senate majority leader Scott Fitzgerald's comments suggesting that Wisconsin citizens "smell bad".  Stay classy, Fitz.)

"I obtain an uncommon degree of satisfaction from Represenative Ryan's enthusiastic sallies onto the rhetorical battlefield of economic policy; they are a reliable source of great amusement.  Only a comedic genius of Rabelaisian proportions or a complete imbecile would prescribe a tourniquet around the throat as a treatment appropriate for a patient dying of thirst."  (Regarding the brutally counterproductive austerity plan proposed by Janesville's Paul Ryan.)

"I personally find the extraordinary conduct exhibited within Waukesha county to be scarcely worthy of a mangey street mongel much less purported gentlemen and ladies.  It is a shocking disappointment, to say the least."  (Regarding the transparent fraud approved by the so-called Government Accountability Board during the recount in the Prosser/Kloppenburg race.)

"No, sir, I do not hold any degree in the biological sciences.  I cannot opine on the plausibility of a human male siring offspring by union with a she-goat.  As such, I decline to further entertain any notions regarding the true parentage of the Government Accountability Board's Kevin Kennedy."  (Apparently a reflection of the current esteem in which Mr. Kennedy is held, given the Prosser fraud in Waukesha and the approval of 3 recall elections against "Wisconsin 14" senators, despite literally hundreds of signatures found to have been obtained through fraudulent means.)

American Death Cult Part III: Pavlov Speaks*

A creepy house in backwoods Wisconsin funded by bloodmoney, built by a minion of  the Aztec Night Lord Tezcatlipoca, and a talking Chihuahua seeking redemption and to end the millenia-old feud with the Ho-Chunk culture hero Red Horn.  Must be Thursday.

The first and most cardinal rule of any heavy drug habit is to hold fast to your center, not allow yourself to panic at the inevitable bad trip. Assenine braggarts are likely to tell you that it’s an inborn character trait that you simply either have or do not have, and that it is not possible to cultivate a tolerance.

Utter and complete bullshit.  Dangerous bullshit.  Because it denies the essential primacy of DISCIPLINE in the process and is a telltale sign of the feckless self-indulgent irresponsibility that means imminent death or at least a lengthy sanatorium stay.  No, what is required is a steely willfulness and intense focus.

There are several techniques to achieve this focus and they all work, even under the most insane sensory assaults--provided you employ them with an iron discipline.  One method is to always remain in the company of a responsible, experienced user whenever you take a new drug for the first time.  But even more important is the technique of listening to your heartbeat.  It alerts you to any potential medical problems early enough to seek professional care should that be necessary and it grounds you, reminds you that you are still John or Jane Q. Ordinary living in Normalsville, Planet Earth, complete with all the standard plumbing.  You know that you have a living, breathing material avatar to take care of here, even if you can see and count the quarks vibrating through your hands.  Or, as in this particular case, if you haven’t taken any illicit substances (that you know of), but find yourself engaged a in a twelve hour conversation with a Chihuahua dog1 claiming to be the exiled ruach2 of the Paul Ryan, the Republican chair of the House Budget Committee.

“So you see?  I couldn’t tell ANYONE about this stuff until you’d spoken my name out loud and broken the taboo.3  You’re the only one who understands this nefesh/ruach/neshama stuff AND gives a flying fuck about my welfare.   The ONLY one.”

“YOUR welfare?  Let’s not exaggerate here;  I only care about stopping your wholesale destruction of the—“

He grimaced and interjected impatiently:  “Okay okay okay!  You’re the only one who gives a shit about what my neshama is doing.”

Fair play.  I wasn’t going to argue with a frantic talking dog.  Especially one that was such a cutie pie, complete with the lisp of a five year-old child.  If he said I was the only one who could save all three of his souls from eternal damnation, who was I to argue?  I continued.

“Okay.  Agreed.  I don’t want you to destroy the country by undermining its social and economic infrastructure . . . “

“You don’t want my NESHAMA to destroy the country by undermining its social and economic infrastructure, you mean!  Get it right!  Not me, my NESHAMA.  Remember, I'M the ruach, that blabbering gobadaw you see prattling away on television is just an empty shell of a soul--an impoverished neshama leaning on a hollow nefesh.  I was ejected by the force of pure moral disgust when that eejit proposed the 'Roadmap to America's Future'".

"Er, yeah.  Got it.'  I recapped the nonsense as best as I could, as much to keep my own mind from imploding under the stupifying weight of its absurdity as to placate Pavlov's wrath.  "And when you ended up in the netherworld, Red Horn pleaded on your behalf for a second chance, a chance to defeat the dark corruption of The Roadmap.  But the only way you could do that was to incarnate in an avatar, an avatar that reflected the nature of your sin and wouldn't provoke Tezcatlipoca's wrath or attention."

"Basically, yes."

"Okay.  Now  I get you.  You didn’t mean for all this to happen.  You just wanted a little attention, wanted to be loved.  You didn’t think all this would happen, that it’d spin out of control so quickly.  You didn’t mean for grandmothers to get thrown out on the streets ‘cause they couldn’t make rent AND afford their meds or little kids to get pulled off chemo because the insurance company—“ But I couldn’t go on that line.  The little fella had melted into the settee, whining as his eyes began to tear up.

I could hardly believe this.   Not the part about Paul Ryan being a Midwestern hayseed who didn’t know what he was doing and found himself sucked into something he didn’t really understand on his first trip to the Big City.  That’s the oldest and saddest story in the world.  What I couldn’t believe was that I FELT SORRY for the sonofabitch who was planning to do all this horrible shit . . . er, that his NESHAMA was planning to do, anyhow.

I couldn’t take in all of this in one sitting.  It was all too much.  I wasn’t yet ready to feel sympathetic towards this scumbag, and I wasn’t yet ready for Pavlov’s description of the building of the House on Maiden Lane.  Nor was I ready to hear an epic narrative describing the battle between the Ho-Chunk culture hero Red Horn and the Aztec Tezcatlipoca, Lord of the Night.  And the sun was sinking fast, too, covering the sittingroom in a cold shadowy blanket.  I got up and made my excuses, saying I was going to the back yard to get lumber for a fire.

Pavlov just curled up into a fetal sleeping position and quietly ignored me.  He had no reason to fear that I was going anywhere.  We were in the middle of Bum-Fuck, Wisconsin, and Siobhan had cobbled my truck the prior night.  No one was going anywhere without Pavlov.

Footnotes

*  Again, people, this is allegory.  A fictional narrative attempting to describe certain social realities using poetic or figurative language.  Don’t get your knickers in a bunch or hit the DEA on your speed dial.  Check out the friggin’ footnotes already, will yah? Sheesh! . . . . The readership of William F. Buckley’s “National Review” got this when they published it, why can’t you?

1     Pavlov, the Chihuahua dog who called out to Liam at the end of Part II of this story.

2    This is NOT a trivial point that you can just gloss over in order to get to the punchline.  The Kabbalistic scheme of the soul’s architechture is a primal key component of this plot and you’ll never be able to achieve any satisfaction until you have a working knowledge of it.  I’m not claiming that it’s necessarily a factual reality that you’ll need to function adequately as a moral human being, but it’s one of the cornerstones upon which this narrative is built.  According to the simplified (purists would say ‘bastardized’) version of Kabbalah that I’m cobbling together here, the human soul is comprised of 3 parts:

a.    The Nefesh:  Representing man’s base physical, instinctual or ‘animal’ nature.

b.   The Ruach:  Representing man’s emotional or moral character.  This describes the ways in which a person relates to others.  It recognizes the non-materialistic links of psychic interdependency between individuals that transcends the immediate claims of biology.

c.   The Neshama:  Representing man’s rational, intellectual character.  This describes the meta-cognitive structures and biases that inform a person’s thought processes.  In and of itself the concept of neshama is completely value-free. 

However in practice the latent bias of its various particular structures has profound spiritual consequences that can either amplify, complement or negate the moral polarity of the ruach.  For example, a simple, earnest man such as the image of St. Patrick conjured for us in his Confessio seems likely to have originally been possessed of a rather kind, but simple ruach despite lacking the polished social graces or academic credentials favored by the Roman hierarchy of his day.  Patrick’s quintessentially compassionate brand of holiness seems to shine forth all the more brightly because of his neshama’s lack of sophistication. 

On the other hand, an urbane Church Father like St. Augustine seems to have been possessed by a considerably more impoverished ruach, though it was more than offset by an uncommonly refined neshama.  Turning his back on a youth spent in debauchery and the thoughtless indulgences of a citified sophisticate, he devoted the rest of his life to creating the foundational intellectual doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church regarding numerous moral issues such as slavery, the role of women in society, the extent to which warfare may be considered morally justified. 

St. Augustine’s legacy is considerably more complex than that of St. Patrick and I will not attempt to make a final evaluative comparison of the two here, but merely emphasize again that the careers of these two exceptionally influential and holy (though not uncomplicated) men serve as excellent illustrations of the interaction between ruach and neshama.

             

3    Pavlov, the Chihuahua-dog avatar of Paul Ryan’s exiled ruach could not explain himself or plead his case, could not deal openly with Liam, until Liam had spoken his name, as occurred at the end of Part II.  This is just one variation of a narrative trope repeated ad infinitum throughout the world’s fantastical and spiritual literature (e.g., the Grail King cannot be healed or turn the Grail to its destined guardian, Percival, until the king had been asked the specifically what ailed him; Rumplestiltskin’s devious plan to steal the princess’ firstborn cannot be foiled until she has pronounced his name; Superman cannot defeat the villain Mxyzptlk until he chants his name aloud, etc., etc.) 

           I was inspired to use this motif here by further meditation on the Obama’s disconcerting betrayal of his own legislative caucus in December, which I satyrically treat here.  My current thinking (admittedly wayyyyyy behind the learning curve of many Disinformation commentors) is that as parties, both the Democrats and Republicans are whoring shams whose platitudinous rhetoric is a stark contrast with their actual immoral actions, and that perhaps the only way to achieve any real progress will be to get the public and the media to call this thing like it is.  It’s not a deistic democracy, it’s not a ‘Christian’ republic.  It’s an amoral plutocracy.

      But that seems extremely unlikely in the short term because people are in such deep, deep denial.  It’s easy to see why:  no one’s going to any great lengths to hide the facts and the level of guilt that is incumbent upon the realization of the truth is so fuckin’ horrible that few people have the guts, the moral integrity or whatever you care to call it, to simply own up.  Shame that nothing will ever get any better until we as a whole nation own up to the fact that we’ve all become soulless whores in thrall to an amoral beast.

      That said, while I’m 100% certain that Obama’s lame “rain puddles in heaven” tripe will never help us confront the national demons that consume us, neither will my traditional tack of single-minded satirical focus on the obvious excesses of the right wing.  That only papers over the equal culpability of limp-dicked, lilly-livered approach of traditional Dems.  So what I intend the story arc to do going forward is to try to take the most sympathetic view of the many and horrible failings of our leaders as possible, while still forcibly decrying their stupidity and innately immoral character.  A tough balancing act, but that’s why it took me nearly two months to come up with Part III.

The Economy of The Crow: Bird Brains Want to Throw Away $116 Billion A Year to Benefit The Richest 1.3% 'Small' Business Owners

There is an old folk saying that comes down from the Irish tradition:  “The economy of the crow”.  It’s uttered whenever some old wag wishes to describe, in a dryly pithy manner, a short-sighted and foolish resource management strategy.  It supposedly is derived from the habit of scavenger birds like crows who, upon noticing an unharvested bit of carrion ripe for the picking, tend to drop whatever goodies they may currently have in their clutches in order to go in pusuit.  Basically the saying is a ridicule, a chastisement of stupid waste.

Chart 1 (see underlying calculations  here)

While that kind of bird-brained buffoonery may be understandable in a creature with the cranial capacity of a thimble, it’s not the type of responsible management practice we expect from our elected representatives.  Certainly not from the members of the party that claim in one breath to be both the party of fiscal responsibility and the party of deep business savvy.  Nonetheless that’s exactly what Republican’t douchebags like Paul Ryan (R-WI) and McConnell (R-KY) continue to parrot unashamedly when they urge for yet another tax cut for the wealthiest 2% of Americans.  We’ve already estimated at Chart 2 of this post that tax cuts for elite income individuals as proposed by Ryan will likely add $116 BILLION* per year to the deficit.

And what, pray tell, do sirs Ryan and McConnell promise the American people will receive in return for the bankrupting of the national treasury?  Jobs.  Jobs they say will be created by pushing more capital into the economy.  They’re kinda vague about just how many jobs, though.  While the suspicious among us might be inclined to attribute this to fundamental dishonesty, the generous interpretation of their lack of clarity is because they don’t want to confuse what they regard as their constituency of simpletons with all sorts o’ complimicated numbers an’ stuff.  ‘Cause numbers are for egg heads and nerds—not cool ‘down home folks’ like you an’ me, right?

Bullshit.  I call fucking bullshit on Ryan and McConnell.  And here’s why:  LESS THAN 2% OF THE SMALL BUSINESSES THEY KEEP HARPING ON NET MORE THAN $200,000 A YEAR.  And here’s the fucking proof drawn directly from  the IRS’s most recent business survey.

Table 1 (See underlying calculations  here)

That’s right.  Even if these tax cuts could spur job creation (which clearly they won’t1), they are focused on less than 2% of small businesses, the sector that the Kaufmann Foundation says creates 2/3 of all net new job creation.  Now that’s what I call a horrendous goddamned waste of money.

That sound like a good deal to you?  Throw away $116 BILLION and increase the deficit by 7.5% every year for less than 2% of benefit?

The Technical Stuff

This is by far and away the simplest analysis conducted on the blog yet.  All I had to do was go to the IRS’s website, download the most recent available survey of business filings by receipts and net income, calculate the average net income in each net income bracket and the % of total businesses that fall within each bracket.  Incredibly straightforward.

Nothing technical there.  But for purposes of full disclosure, I’ll point out the following:

1.  Businesses included for consideration here are only what the IRS calls ‘flow-through entities’—that is, those businesses organized under charters which require their owners to report business income directly on their individual tax forms rather than separately on a corporate income tax return.  I trust the reason for this is simple enough—the discussion at hand, like the bills currently before Congress, focuses on the taxation of individuals rather than corporations.  Just for your information though, these ‘flow-through’ entities included S Corporations, Partnerships and Sole Proprietorships.
2. The most recently available survey, published here, is for 2003.  Meaning that for purposes of debating the current bills, I’ve had to inflate the historical net income $’s reported to the most recent Consumer Price Index, published for October 2010.

Check out the charts, tables and underlying data and source citations here at your leisure.

Analysis

So there it is, the straight dope:  Ryan and McConnell want you to throw away $116 Billion each year, bankrupt the Treasury and destroy the United States all for the sake of some make believe hope (not anything remotely resembling a signed contract, mind you) of an unspecified number of jobs at some point in the undetermined future.  Never mind that the rhetorical bullshit that bargain is premised upon has been destroyed years ago and many multiple times over, not only on this blog2, but by the CBO as early as 2005 (linked here).  And never mind the fact that we’ve proven on this blog that a single dollar retained spent in federal programs typically has 4,700% more job creating potential than any dollar ever spent by Ryan’s corporate finance buddies3 over at AIG or JP Morgan Chase4.  And never mind the fact that Ryan’s credibility has been severely challenged time and time again over a shamefully inadequate fiscal plan that has been publicly branded a “sham” by prestigious economists.  Paul Ryan and McConnell seem to think that you are so fucking stupid that you will thank them for destroying both the economy and the United States.

Response

So are you going to prove them right?  Are you going to just sit back and take it?  Or are you gonna stand up for common sense and your rights and say “BULLSHIT!  No more millionaire handouts!  We're not gonna let you bankrupt the nation for the sake of your country club pals!”

Call and your representatives and senators immediately on this issue.

Footnotes

* That is, $114 billion (2009 dollars) annual cost of extending Bush era tax cuts to all but the elite, inflated to the October 2010 Consumer Price index.  See calculation and citations for underlying data on the 'Analysis and Charts' tab  here.

1  Numbnuts like Ryan and McConnell need to understand that the principle is to shove capital into sectors with higher, rather than lower, fiscal multipliers.  Clearly the federal government's fiscal multiplier of 9.4 is larger than the 0.2 (ZERO POINT TWO) of the financial sector.  Or clear to you and me at least.  See the chart and supporting calculations here. 

And even if you were naively to assume that the wealthy individuals receiving these tax cut windfalls would go out and spend them on their businesses right away instead of hoarding them in their already bloated securities holdings, the federal  fiscal multiplier of 9.4 is almost THREE TIMES as large as the  fiscal multiplier of the non-corporate sector's of 3.6.  That sound like savvy financial strategy to you?  Throwing away $0.66 of every dollar?  If so, please leave a comment with your name and contact information; I have some lovely 'marshland' property in Florida you may be interested in purchasing.

2  See the following:

    Return of "Doctor Weird and The 'Laugher' Curve"

    "Fail Files", Volumes I and II.

3  Yeah, that's right.  Fiscal multiplier of 9.4 for the federal government is literally 4,700% of the fiscal multiplier for finance of 0.2.  See  this original blog for discussion of the calculation of those multipliers.

4.  During this last election cycle, Paulie boy was a big favorite of the banksters.  His clients included not only Goldman, but CITI, Bank of America, JP Morgan and a host of other F.I.R.E.  (i.e., "Finance, Insurance and Real Estate sector) companies and trade groups.  In fact, he got about $246,000 or 25% of his total PAC money from these guys.  See details here.  Who knows how much else he got INdirectly through Orwellian-ly named PACs or individual contributions?

American Death Cult Part II*: Welcome To The House on Maiden Lane

I arrived at Siobhán’s new digs in late evening, after more than three hours of driving north through blustering gusts of cold air, along deserted Wisconsin state highways and country lanes, ringed with a seemingly endless succession of pale grey and weather-worn barns, silos and stubble fields of harvested corn, punctuated every 30-40 miles by the glistening plastic pillars of some shopping center, gas station or outlet mall.  And while the sterile fakeness of it all might seem utterly foreign on the surface, I was soon reminded just how integral a part of this place’s heritage Death worship is.   When I passed the familiar gloom of the Lac Butte des Morts^ fens, I recalled that this place used to be Winnebago country, supposedly the prehistoric stomping grounds♦ of Red Horn, the Ho-Chunk culture hero who freed the land from the tyranny of monsters hunting his people like vermin, and the native place of Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca, rival brother gods of the Aztec people who led their people from wintry Aztatlan in the north to their current patrimony in the Valley of Mexico.  The White Man displaced most of those first nations people from this part of Wisconsin long, long ago, but in some ways the deathgrip of the old gods and monsters is stronger than ever.

“Oh, hi, Liam!  C’mon in!”  Siobhán greeted me at the foyer door of the shabby-genteel Victorian pile on Maiden Lane.**

“Uh, wow, I didn’t see you as the ‘dog-in-a-handbag’ type of girl, Shivvers ,“  I was trying to be cute, witty, sardonic—anything to  suppress my shock at her drawn and wan appearance when she came to the door.

She shot back a weak, snarky smirk while wrestling with the little Chihuahua wriggling in her arms.  “Yeah, well, it’s a long story.  Take a load off.”

Oh, shit.  Éamó was right.  He’d tried to warn me but I never fuckin’ listened to him, and now I couldn’t do anything but play through.  The scene swam back to me as I followed sullenly in her shadow into the sitting room.

Flash back almost one week ago:  As soon as I’d hung up after Siobhán’s call my uncle Éamonn asked me with an unusual bluntness what I’d intended to do.

“Head up north.  What else?  She’s basically offered me a blank check to do renovations on some rich doctor’s summer house.”

“So just like that you said ‘yes’?”

“Well, what are my options?  Winter’s coming on hard and I’ve lost probably a good three weeks of work with the downturn.  Gotta make hay while the sun shines.”

“Think about it, boyo.  Didn’t her voice sound a little uptight to you?  A little clipped?  Like the vocal chords were stretched to snapping?  Don’t you think that merited a few questions?  Like: ‘How long do you figure it’d take?’, ‘Just what type of work does he need done?’, ‘Why the Hell aren’t you living it up on the Gold Coast or getting ready to vacation in Vail?’  Does it really make sense to you that a party girl like Shivvers is holed up in the middle of Bumfuck, Egypt?”

“What?  She didn’t sound that bad.  Could have been the connection, or maybe she’d caught a bit of a cold—the weather is changing.  Besides, she’s never done me a bad turn.”  My thoughts now turned to her holiday card last year—a pickkie of her in a Colorado ski lodge, clad in a bear-skin bikini, posing with biceps flexed triumphantly and sitting astride an enormous stuffed moose head.  THAT was the dominant image of her in my mind.  I was constitutionally unable to even imagine a scared, uptight Siobhán, much less register any micro-decibel of doubt in her voice over a shaky cell phone signal.  Still, Éamó did sound insistent . . .

“I’m not saying she has ever done you wrong.  Just saying you should stop, look and listen a bit. Ask a few questions before plunging in.  Wait for answers.”  This old bullshit artist was serious and it caught me like a deer in headlights.  Pulling an Obi Wan-style mind bender, he gave one final parting shot, “Yes, she’s a lovely girl, but you know a person’s judgment isn’t always what it could be when they’re stretched.”

And even now, while my consciousness flashed forward again to the present, with me taking a seat in a plush fashionable settee at Siobhán’s invitation, that last word echoed in my mind:  “stretched”.  That was a perfect description of her appearance now.  No artful application of make up could conceal the dark rings of fatigue swelling under her eyes or the pale, hollow cast of her cheeks.  Something WAS wrong and I’d committed myself to dealing with it for a matter of weeks at least—all without asking a single pertinent question.

But Siobhán’s mind was a million miles ahead of me on that curve.  Gently setting the beast down on its little canopied doggie bed she rushed into the kitchen and returned unbidden to hand me a glass brimming with red wine.

“Yeah, I admit I’ve been a little short on sleep lately.  I’m kinda keyed up to get settled in to the new situation, y’know?”

“Like the dog.”  I thought I was being clever and disarming by starting out slowly, but Siobhán shot a tense glance back at the animal.  Its eyes glared back at us with a weird green sheen from the flickering darkness of its throne just behind a covey near the fireplace.

“Uh, yeah, Pavlov# is a big part of it,” she said, launching into what seemed like a well-practiced recitation of a drama worthy of Dostoevsky.  She’d had a grand setup in a Gold Coast suburb of Chicago, working as ‘au pair’ to a handsome, older ophthalmologist and all was well—until the shrill old bitch of a wife got to ‘imagining’ some kind of shenanigans afoot in the household.  Siobhán kept her cool and made every effort to be above the board with the older woman, but she would simply not be placated.  The old man clearly wasn’t able to ‘keep up’ his end, and in the end the best deal he could strike with the wife was exile for Siobhán in return for getting rid of the dog, which he never got on with.  "Kept pissing in his shoes at night.” 

I would’ve sworn that even the dog reacted with a dry little laugh at that last part.

“Well, at least this gives you some breathing room, time to make a few calls and pick up the pieces before you blow out of Dodge altogether.  Soon as your pals in Vail or Saint Tropez can return your calls, right?  The only awkward aspect might be dropping off the dog.  But that’s hardly any big deal:  ‘Wham, bamm, thank you, ma’am’.”

“Er, yeah . . .   Say, would you like another glass of wine?” and without waiting for an answer she returned with another glass of the red stuff, filled to the brim.

She plopped down next to me on the settee.  “Listen, there’s more than enough work to be done around this place, but it’s late tonight.  And it’ll still be here tomorrow.  So what’s the hurry?  Let’s just relax some now and leave that kind of heavy talk for tomorrow, hmmm?”  Her tone had segued into a warm, throaty purr that coaxed a blush of warm blood to my face.  “I’ll turn on some tunes and you can tell me about your adventures since getting the boot by A-Visa or whatever her name was.”  Waving the plastic magic remote-control wand, she activated her iPod’s playlist of mellow-mood tunes from the likes of Mumford & Sons and Iron & Wine. 

She spent the rest of whatever I can still recall of that night seducing me, drink by drink, into unwariness, vanity and stupor.  She laughed at all my shitty jokes, told me that I didn’t need Aviva anyway, and massaged away any tension that became apparent in my shoulders whenever I started to evince any regret about the way things had ended.

“Awww, you can do better than that, Liam.  And you know what they say anyhow—“If it don’t fit, don’t force it.”  I let out a low chuckle and then she got really bold; she physically drew me over to her on the couch, and began to gently stroke the back of my ears.  That’s about the last thing I remembered before drifting out of consciousness—that and the weird fact that Pavolv seemed to take the gesture as a cue, and sprang out of his cubby and shuffled out of the room, his nails click-clacking on the kitchen tiles as he left.

It must’ve been shortly after noon when I woke up shivering—and alone—on the couch.  Glancing around to get my bearings I felt kind of lost at first—the place had a cold, pale hollowness when viewed in broad daylight that was fundamentally from the psychic geography of the rich warm, brown-ness it radiated by last night’s fire.  It seemed tidy and in good order, but cavernously empty as if nobody had really lived in the place for years.

Siobhán had exhibited enough class to throw a comforter over me and as I pulled it tighter, I began to mentally review the chronology of last night’s events; the wine, the music, the talk, the embrace—shit, did anything happen?  I checked my junk.  Nope all dry and packed as tight as if it’d never been brought out of storage.  Damnit, blew it!

Before I could start to pity myself too much I noticed a light scratching noise coming from the kitchen that turned out to be Pavlov’s nails pouncing against the pantry doors.  I pitied him; he looked just about starved, with the corrugated edges of his ribcage protruding though a hide pulled too tightly over him.  So I didn’t even bother to check and see if there was any dog food in the place and immediately dug into the fridge and shot him a couple of wet hot dogs on the floor that he gobbled up greedily.  Yeah, his mummykins back home in the Gold Coast would probably shit herself if she found out her baby was eating anything other than a precisely measured quarter cup of Doctor Parnassus’ Fat-Free Specialty Beluga Caviar Canine Mix, but fuck her and fuck her dog.  Siobhán and I were only here ‘til we caught the next train out of Maiden Lane, which wouldn’t be long at all.  Little did I know.

I spent the next hour or so doing my best to respect Siobhán’s space, and retreated to the sitting room to watch some low-volume television and waited for her to wake up and talk about a work plan.  I’d brought most of my tool kit and supplies, including a portable drill press, table and jig saw, so I doubted that I’d need much additional stuff other than the lumber that I could only assess adequately after getting a tour of the place.  But as one hour stretched into one-and-one-half and into two, my patience ran low and Pavlov’s eerie stare began to creep me out and I longed for some human companionship, so I started to roam the inhabited west wing looking for her room—which I found empty.

WTF? Did she pick up and leave camp altogether?  I stormed out to my truck and immediately noticed the vicious crumple of the rear driver’s side quarter panel that turned in on itself into a dagger threatening the tire with a nasty puncture if I even thought about turning the ignition key.  Stooping down to read a faded yellow Post-It™ note I saw her large, loopy writing:

“Oops!  Sorry ‘bout the mix-up!  Text you at 2:00!

Love, Shivvers☺”

THAT FUCKIN’ BITCH!  Just then I heard the digital ‘plink’ of my phone announcing the arrival of a new text message.  Must have hit 2:00 that moment.

“LM, U THR?”

“Y.”

“TLK 2 PVLV YT?”

What the hell was THAT supposed mean?  “Talk to Pavlov yet?”  Had she gone completely mad in this Wisconsin wilderness?

“Y.  D’ U TLK 2 HM YT?”

I blew my top at this altogether and began shouting out loud to no one in particular.  “No I did NOT talk to Pavlov yet!  He’s a fucking DOG!!!”

From over my shoulder I heard the rejoinder:  “Who the fuck is Pavlov?  My name’s Paul.  Paul Ryan.”

Footnotes

*Remember this bit?  It’s allegory:  a fictional narrative presenting in symbolic form actual events or persons intended to make rhetorical rather than strictly factual or historical points.  Remember that when interpreting the events described here.

^ Actually Lake Butte des Morts—I changed it a bit to sound more exotically French.  It’s the name of a small town in Winnebago County.  Translates literally to “Lake of the Hill of the Dead”.  Apart from some fishing, there’s nothing much to see here for the casual traveler but the low-lying shallow lake fens that stretch below part of I-41.

♦This stuff has only a rough, historical basis to it.  It’s true that this is the native country of the Ho-Chunk (aka Winnebago) people, and that Red Horn was their mythology’s great culture hero—like Hercules to the Greeks or Cú Chullain to the Irish.  And while I’m unaware of any strict canonical interpretation of his tradition, what I present here is only my rough re-imagining and is in no way to be interpreted as either recapitulation or violation of the authentic Ho-Chunk legends about him.  Similarly with Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca.  Some proto-archaelogists like N.F. Hyer thought that the legendary prehistoric homeland of the Aztec people, Aztalan, was located in Wisconsin, but I am unaware of anyone taking that idea seriously today.  True there was definitely some kind of culture interchange between ancient Wisconsin and the Valley of Mexico—they both were centers of maize cultivation—but the extent and nature of that contact is far from clear to me.  Far more important for the purposes of my narrative will be re-interpreting in the context of modern American politics the status of these figures as mythical hero, founding father and Death God, respectively.

** I chose the name ‘Maiden Lane’ for this house’s location because it just happens to be the name of a series of special-purpose entities established by the Federal Reserve Bank in Q3 2008 to deal with the liquidity crisis precipitated by the failures in the mortgage and insurance business, particurarly of two of Paul Ryan’s biggest customers, AIG and JP Morgan Chase.  I’ll go into more detail about how socializing the cost of these failures has impaired the effectiveness of federal government later in the next installment of this series.  But for now you might want to peruse the Wikipedia page description of their activities.  I know it’s Wikipedia, but it is a fair high-level summary of the entities’ purpose, structure and timeline. There’s more technical stuff, like their financial statements, available here.

# Pavlov, the surname of the famous 19^th century Russian scientist Ivan Pavlov, whose experiments with dogs established the notion of involuntary physical response to psychological stimuli.  Etymologically it happens to be cognate with the English or Scottish surname “Paulson”—son of Paul.

Q: How Wisely Do ‘Wealth-Friendly’ Policies Employ Capital? A: Not So Wisely

To say that reaction to my latest post has been ‘mixed’ would be generous.  While grasping the way the Bush-era handouts to the richest 2% reinforce wealth redistribution, it seems that folks may not yet see just how they're like a ‘Death Cult’.  At least in the opaque allegorical form I set out in part one of the newly planned 3-part series.  For most readers, the point still seems a little abstract.   So here I lay down some more explicit exposition.  Today I will demonstrate the difference between ‘Wealth’ and ‘Productivity’.

The Right Wing may be many things, but subtle is not one of them.  Their financial platform is quite clear:  Profit is the ultimate yardstick of economic progress, tax cuts and deregulation of markets allow perpetual increases in the level of profit; ergo continual reductions in tax and regulation guarantee the wisest allocation of resources.  But is this true?

Answer:  Not Unless You Think The Lottery Is A Sound Investment

Far from it.  We’ve already disposed on multiple occasions with the Laffer Curve myth1.  We’ve already demonstrated the relationship between tax cuts for the richest 2% and deterioration of the income for the median tax filer2.  And we’ve even provided an analysis from uncontested data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Federal Reserve showing that the federal government is typically 4,700% times more productive than the financial sector.3  But now take a gander at the chart above. 

Note the difference in the % of the total money supply our ‘wealth-friendly’ policies allocate to each sector and their relative productivity in terms of GDP.  We literally piss away over 34% of our money on a sector (i.e., Corporate Finance) that provides only 0.8% of our productive capacity3.  Not too shrewd now, is it?  That’s more or less like a man in 2008 making the average annual salary of $43,000 spending $14,710 of it on lottery tickets4.  Is that what voters of Wisconsin elected Paul Ryan to do?  Spend over 34% of our national productive capacity on Powerball tickets?

Wasted Money and Wasted Jobs

“But wait,” you say.  “Aren’t there other ways of measuring the inefficiency of this resource allocation?”

Indeed there are.  While it’s not possible within this short space to exhaust all the possibilities or perform  superfine, CBO-quality calculations, it’s still worth performing a rough, back-of-the-envelope calculation to determine the relative magnitude of the inefficiency.  Here are my guesses as to the maximum potential figures for Wasted Money and Wasted Jobs:

• Wasted Money:  Holding all price levels equal to those of 2008, the last year for which fully comparable data was available for all variables, we typically throw away $1.9 TRILLION or $1 out of every $12 in circulation.  Smooth move, X-Lax. 

Now keep in mind that represents the net negative impact Gross Domestic Product or "GDP" of our current, un-optimized resource allocation.  Basically this means to say that by spending $X's in less productive areas of the economy instead of spending that same dollar in the more productive segments of the economy, we lose $1.9 trillion of GDP.

 

Of course the reality is more complex than this because there is the possibility that radical changes in the allocation of resources to a sector can alter its aggregate productivity (e.g., per unit step fixed costs may not vary directly with the scale of operations, and the introduction of too much liquidity in a given market all at once may result in a certain amount of inflation).  But it is still an interesting, thought-provoking exercise to estimate the maximum potential cost of inefficient allocation, even if the assumptions used are pretty basic.

 

If you care to see details of my calculation, look at cell V118 on the tab ‘Velocity of Money by Sector’ within the workbook here.  I can answer more detailed questions upon request.

• Wasted Jobs:  68.7 million jobs sound like a big number to you?  Well, it should—that’s 47.5% of our total employment base of 144.5 million jobs per the October release by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  “Fuckin’ ape-shit crazy!” you say.  “How the hell can that be right?”

Well, take a look for yourself.  See cell BB118 on the tab ‘Velocity of Money by Sector’ within the workbook here for more details.  That’s the best shorthand calculation available based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Bureau of Economic Analysis regarding wages and total compensation by sector and their typical percentages of GDP through 2008 and current employment base as of October 2010.

“But WTF could that possibly mean that we have a supply of capital that could fund employment at a level 136.1% of our actual workforce?”  Well, among other things it means that the current “magic-of-the-markets” system of allocating wages ain’t so fair.  But you already knew that based on our analysis of income inequalities from the Bush-era tax regime2, right?

Recommendations

“Goddamn, that’s disgusting!” you may be thinking to yourself.  And so it is.  There is no freakin’ way we should tolerate simpletons like congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), senator elect Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Right Wing pundit David Frum5 to be pushing yet MORE tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% and stonewalling every effort to regulate the pitifully unproductive financial industry.  Get on the horn or send an email straight away to your  representatives and senators telling them:

• “NO WAY” to renewal of the Bush-era handouts to the richest 2%.
• “Get working NOW on further financial regulatory reform”
• “Stop messin’ around with baloney cuts to high value-add programs like Medicare and Social Security—they actually provide economic benefit, instead of hamstringing the economy like tax cuts do.”6

As a nation we just can’t afford to go on like this.

Footnotes

1    See the inaugural blogpost here decisively discrediting the baloney notion that tax cuts invariably boost the economy.

2    See this blogpost detailing how the Bush-era tax cuts for the richest 2% ended up increasing the average income of the wealthiest Americans by at least 20% while DECREASING average income for Joe Average by 17%.

3    Read here how $1 dollar in the federal government sector typically increases GDP by 9.4 times whereas $1 in the financial sector DECREASES it by 80 cents.

4    Yeah, for real.  See data on average wages on cell F12 on tab ‘Profile of Typ. Ee-2009’ and the % of total money supply within the financial sector within cell AK115 on the ‘Velocity of Money by Sector’ tab all within this workbook.

5    That’s the former speech writer for Bush II.  I’m referring especially to a recent radio commentary on “Marketplace” where he again puked forth another plea to give away more tax cuts to the wealthiest 2%.  Contact them and let them know how much bullshit you think that is.

      But one further thing I’d like to call to your attention:  David Frum maintains dual citizenship with both the U.S. and Canada.  Now does it seem right to you that a guy who doesn’t see fit to commit 100% to a country should have a whole lot of influence on policy?  I’ve got nothing against Canadians—I have lots of friends in Montreal myself.  But they seem to know that if you’re gonna flood the airwaves asking a country to go to war, you’d better be fully committed to said country yourself; they’re all single-country citizens of Canada.

6    And don’t just take my word for it.  Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's testified before the Senate in September about the positive fiscal multiplier effects of these programs.  Forward this to  representatives and senators  if they just don’t seem to get it.

[Editorial Note December 2, 2010:  See item #1 regarding revision to calculation of M3 here.]

Should Republicans Consider Hedging Their Bets on Paul ‘Speedy’ Ryan? Fail Files, Vol. II

Disinformation’s readers come through yet again.  Responses to my last blogpost were extremely varied and thought provoking, with some well-reasoned and others less so.  The persistence of themes played out in the latter so impressed me that it well pleases me to once again examine the big ol’ “Fail” written all over Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) endorsement of the Laffer Curve, especially its implications for ‘The Velocity of Money’.

Remember ‘The Velocity of Money’?  That’s the basic economic concept introduced in our post about the hypothetical castration of Goldman Sachs.  It’s a thumbnail measure of how efficiently an economy employs its capital—the more often a single dollar is spent during a given year, the higher the rate of employment.  Any number of other theoretical implications can be drawn from that;  the higher the rate of employment, the greater economic, social and political equality, the higher the rate of technological innovation, etc., etc. 

Paul Ryan’s bizarre fixation with tax cut giveaways for his bankster buddies*** and slashing Social Security benefits relates to ‘The Velocity of Money’ in this way:  He is trying to sell you on the notion that corporate spending has a faster velocity than federal spending.  Is this true?  Let’s take a look at the evidence ourselves.

Data and Analysis

Before we begin, you should know that there are many standard ways of comparing the relative productivity of government vs. corporate spending.  But they are typically too narrow (e.g., don’t even consider the usefulness of non-profit driven infrastructures like courts, roads, bridges, water and electricity lines, etc.) or require use of numerous complicated and opaque actuarial assumptions (e.g., the relative propensity to spend for pensioners vs. new college graduates just entering the work force, etc.).

But we can go another route.  We can use that very simple concept, ‘The Velocity of Money’.  Remember, that’s a quick thumbnail stat that shows how often a dollar gets spent in a given year, and the higher the better.  It has a high, positive correlation (i.e., >75%) to employment.  So the higher the velocity the better.

The math is simple, too.  It may not even require an inflation-indexing of the data, because what we’re trying to measure is how many times a dollar cycles through the economy during a single year, not a static comparison of income levels between different years.  All we have to do then is divide each sector’s contribution to Gross Domestic Product (“GDP”) by its money supply, per the standard formula we learned about here.

The non-partisan career professionals at the Bureau of Economic Analysis regularly publish breakdowns of GDP by sector here.  One minor new term for you to learn is Gross Value Added (“GVA”).  Basically this just means the contribution by a given sector; the sum of GVA’s for all non-government sectors plus that of the government sector equals the total GDP.  See the reconciliation of this sector detail to the total in rows 19 through 21 of the workbook ‘Velocity of Money by Sector.xls’ here.

Probably the only novel component of this calculation is allocating a portion of the money supply to individual sectors; after all money is the ultimate in fungible assets, and a key concept underlying ‘The Velocity of Money’ is the relational dynamic of the various sectors interacting with one another to maximize GDP.  But that may not be as challenging as you’d think: the Federal Reserve Bank regularly publishes reports summarizing the total flows and balances of money and other financial instruments throughout the U.S. economy.  This is called the ‘Release Z.1’, and we can use it to calculate the average money held by each sector during a given year.  We’ll focus especially on the levels tables L.204, L.205, L.206, L.207 and L.208.  They tell us the total aggregate balances of currency and cash, time and savings deposits, money market funds, federal funds repurchase agreements and open market paper components of the money supply.

Unfortunately, after February 2006, the Fed stopped tracking M3 components separately, meaning that we’ll have to both estimate M3-only components subsequent to that date, and come up with some reasonable way to allocate it to the various sectors.  However, we’re not totally out of luck.  We already estimated subsequent M3 based on its strong correlation to the Dow Jones here.  And it turns out that two M3-only components are broken out separately in workbooks L.207 and L.208—and that gives us a rationale to allocate the rest of the estimated M3 balance.  Unsurprisingly, on average over 60% of M3-only components are held by the corporate financial sector.

So far so good.  Pretty simple: divide gross value added by the average money supply for the sector during the year.  But I would give you three reminders when you look at this data:

1.  The Fed has only made complete data for the years 2001 through 2009 available in Excel format.  While I could spend the next five decades manually transcribing the PDF file information for other years, I’m not sure that’s so value added for our purposes.  Especially since the remaining data doesn’t go back much farther than 2000.
2. Data for 2008 and 2009 was very skewed by certain measures taken to address the liquidity crisis that started in Q3 2008.  The Fed initiated two programs under Section 13[c] of the Federal Reserve Act that were funded by sales of government securities, bumping up federal cash quite a bit--$259.3 billion for the Commerical Paper Financing Facility ("CPFF") and $49.8 billion for the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility ("AMFL") in 2008 alone.  Of course, since Paul Ryan not only begged for passage of the TARP  the House floor, but was also a big beneficiary of some of the rescued firms (i.e., AIG and JP Morgan Chase)***, I think he will agree that these extra-ordinary funding events should be removed from the analysis in order to preserve comparability.  See further details about these transactions at note BJ in cell AA100 on the ‘Velocity of Money by Sector’ tab within the workbook here.
3. Be aware of some important sector classifications.  I’ve followed the Fed’s own classification system for the most part. (Well, I have to, don’t I?  I don’t have access to the full underlying dataset.)  That puts the Fed and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well as all federal and state pension plans within the ‘Financial Sector’.  Being in a generous mood, and wishing to head off potential controversy regarding the role of those institutions in the home mortgage debacle that most say lead to the whole fiasco in Q3 2008, I've cut the corporate finance guys a little slack:  while I give them full credit for the GDP of the entire financial sector (including the Fed, Fannie and Freddie), I've taken the Fed's cash OUT of the equation. I have them listed in the workbook as 'Monetary Authority'.  So the private financial sector gets a little boost by not having to cary the Fed's cash in this calc.

Okay!  Got all that.  Feel free to take your time and read it over again if need be.  Here’s a short glossary of terms if you need help.  And here’s a link to the analysis workbook:  ‘Velocity of Money by Sector.xls’.  Continue on to the conclusion whenever you feel you get the gist of what we’ve done here.

But I myself can hardly wait.  Paul Ryan’s laid big money (via TARP bailouts and tax cuts for the uber-rich  ) on the financial corps(e) coming out wayyyy ahead of slow-poke federal government.  Let’s see how well that works for him.

Conclusion

Huh.  Who’d have funk it?  Turns out, compared to Ryan's corporate bankster buddies, dat' damn gubmint' is a job creatin' machine!  The federal government has a jobs-producing median velocity of 9.4, versus ZERO-POINT-TWO (0.2) for financial corporations!  That suggests that, at least as it's currently structured, the Big Banks are actually a drain on the national economy rather than a boon.  Wonder if that ever comes up during Ryan's fundraising dinners with JP Morgan Chase and AIG execs?***

Non financial corporations fare somewhat better at 5.5, but that’s just baaaaarely over half the rate that federal spending increases GDP.  Look here in the workbook 'Velocity of Money by Sector.xls' for details.

Turns out Ryan was completely wrong about this when he submitted a budget plan that slashes federal programs like Social Security and Medicare in favor of handouts to his buddies at JP Morgan and AIG***.

Or was it a mistake??  Maybe Paul actually knew that his plan would likely ruin the economy and cost thousands their homes and destroy the United States; maybe he just didn’t give a flying fuck.  Maybe he thought we weren’t gonna catch onto him.  Though I don’t know how; his hypocritical ragging on the 2010 financial regulation law after he’d begged for the TARP handouts is legendary.  He’d have to know we’re on to him by now.

Recommendations

Call and your representatives and senators immediately and often telling them that you know what a horrible idea Paul Ryan's "Roadmap to America's Ruin" is.  And let them know that you know what you’re talking about.  Send them a copy of this chart.  Send them a link to the workbook‘Velocity of Money by Sector.xls’so they can see for themselves.  Send them a link to this blog post.  Send them a link to the Senate testimony of Mark Zandi, Chief Economist at Moody's, to the effect that tax increases for the rich are tantamount to robbery of the middle class and that continued support of government programs like Social Security and Medicare is vital.  Send them a link to the Congressional Budget Office's report that renewal of the Bush era tax cuts would add bring the national debt up to 100% of GDP by 2020.  Email this stuff to your friends, family and acquaintances.  Whatever you do, don't keep this information to yourself.

Footnotes

*Excludes effects of about $309.1 billion and $37.9 billion in 2008 and 2009, respectively,  to fund a bailout of Ryan’s buddies at AIG, JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs.  See further discussion in point #2 in the Data and Analysis section.

**Includes, in accordance with the Fed’s own classification system, GDP activity of the Fed itself as well as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  However, as further explained at point #3 in the Data and Analysis section above, I felt generous and gave the corporate financial sector a break by splitting out the Fed's cash balance separately.  Don't say I never gave them a hand!

*** During this last election cycle, Paulie boy was a big favorite of the banksters.  His clients included not only Goldman, but CITI, Bank of America, JP Morgan and a host of other F.I.R.E.  (i.e., "Finance, Insurance and Real Estate sector) companies and trade groups.  In fact, he got about $246,000 or 25% of his total PAC money from these guys.  See details here.  Who knows how much else he got INdirectly through Orwellian-ly named PACs or individual contributions?

[Editorial Note December 2, 2010:  See note regarding the revision of M3 calculation at item #1 here.]