No brain fart left behind

The beauty of the Great State of Nebraska is that it can survive -- indeed, prosper -- under the dullest of governors.

Take Ben Nelson, who was an OK governor, I guess, but who moved up to the U.S. Senate only to offer up blather like this on MSNBC.

Unsurprisingly, Nelson then gets utterly owned by Rachel Maddow as he argues that federal construction of schools is an unwarranted intrusion into local affairs. Just like the unfunded mandates of No Child Left Behind.

YOU CAN'T make this stuff up.

So, when can we expect the senator's office to compile a list of every Nebraska school building or college hall or arena constructed as a WPA project during the last depression?

And when that list is completed, can we then expect Ben Nelson to demand every such structure be razed so that Nebraska education might be rid of the malign federal interference it has suffered, lo, these many decades?

I didn't think so.

That darn Roosevelt!

No matter how dumb the past eight years have made the GOP look, there always are some Republicans who will think that's just not dumb enough.

LIKE U.S. Rep. Steve Austria of Ohio. Says The Columbus Dispatch:

Freshman U.S. Rep. Steve Austria conceded yesterday that President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not cause the Great Depression.

In a one-page e-mail, the Beavercreek Republican wrote: "I did not mean to imply in any way that President Roosevelt was responsible for putting us into the Depression, but rather was trying to make the point that Roosevelt's attempt to use significant spending to get us out of the Depression did not have the desired effect. Roosevelt did not put us into the Depression, but rather his policies could not pull the nation out of the recession."

The day before, as Austria was explaining his opposition to the huge federal stimulus package backed by President Barack Obama, he told The Dispatch editorial board: "When Roosevelt did this, he put our country into a Great Depression. ... He tried to borrow and spend, he tried to use the Keynesian approach, and our country ended up in a Great Depression. That's just history."

AND THE FAILED Republican presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, from an appearance on Hugh Hewitt's radio show:

HH: Does it make sense for the President of the United States, though, to use the term catastrophe? Doesn’t that add alarm to an already panicky financial situation?

JM: Well, Hugh, I think he probably believes that, and there are Americans who have lost their jobs and their homes who would probably agree with that. The job of the presidency, in my view, is to give people hope, give people hope. Whether you happen to have liked Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s policies, and there’s a number of them I still think exacerbated the Great Depression, but he gave the fireside chats, and gave people hope and optimism for the future. I think that’s, there’s no problem that America can’t prevail over, because we’re still the greatest nation in the world.

I'M A LITTLE UNSURE how you exacerbate the Great Depression from the 25 percent-plus unemployment that existed when FDR took office in 1933, but why let the facts get in the way of bashin' them lib'ruls, right?

I just got a robocall from my congressman, Lee Terry (R-Neb.), wanting my opinion on the "stimulus" package. You would think Terry might have wanted that input before he voted against the House version of the bill nearly two weeks ago . . . but, whatever.

At the risk of advising the good representative to do something silly like exacerbate our current depression -- if not, indeed, cause it -- I'd tell him to vote for the compromise emerging from conference. Of course, it won't be enough to stop the tailspin and isn't weighted enough toward public works and job creation (think the Works Progress Administration that did so much to "cause" the last depression) . . . but it's better than nothing.

And nothing is exactly what the Republican Party has to offer us, and is stupid enough to think we'll buy.

Looking for stock tips in the graveyard

The problem here is not that we're going through an economic crisis.

The problem is that we're going through a profound moral and intellectual crisis which has caused us to do incredibly stupid things with the economy, which has responded in an eminently logical manner by blowing up.

That is the problem, and you couldn't hope for much better of an illustration of it -- in television terms -- than the "interview" a panel of CNBC blind men and women did Monday with "Dr. Doom" and the "Mr. Black Swan." To people with functioning brain cells and a modicum of seriousness, the interviewees are NYU economics professor Nouriel Roubini and author Nassim Nicolas Taleb, famous for his book "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable."

Both called the mess we're in now well before it started.

IN THE INTERVIEW, Roubini and Taleb were trying to explain things are bad, and we haven't even begun to see how bad they're going to get. The CNBC panel, upon hearing this news of an economic Armageddon (or something really close), pressed the gentlemen for a hot investment strategy.

It's like the old saying: There are none so blind as those who will not see. Unfortunately, that applies to most of the country right now.

Doubly unfortunately, that also applies to the new administration that was supposed to give us "change." The New York Times reports on how Treasury intends to rearrange the Titanic's deck chairs:

Acknowledging that Americans have “lost faith” in the government’s effort thus far to rescue the banking system, the Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, outlined a sweeping overhaul and expansion of the program on Tuesday.

The new program will attempt to marshal as much as $2 trillion from the Treasury, private investors and the Federal Reserve.

But Mr. Geithner left major questions unanswered about the workings of many components of the new plan, and officials acknowledged that they had yet to decide many of the thorniest issues.

As a result, it remained unclear whether the Obama administration would be able to attract the large volume of private investment that Mr. Geithner sketched out in his speech.

With banks and Wall Street firms buckling under the potentially trillions of dollars in unsellable assets, many of them tied to the collapse of the mortgage market, lobbying associations for the banking and financial service companies praised Mr. Geithner’s plan as bold and far-sighted.

But investors were far more restrained. The stock market dipped almost as soon as Mr Geithner began speaking, with the Dow Jones industrial average closing off 381.99 points, or 4.6 percent. And analysts and private investors said they simply did not know enough yet to make a judgment on the plan’s prospects.

Mr. Geithner’s primary goal seemed to be to instill confidence that the Obama administration has a coherent and comprehensive approach to the banking crisis, and to distance the new program from the Bush administration’s management of the first $350 billion that Congress authorized last year for the so-called Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.

“The spectacle of huge amounts of taxpayer money being provided to the same institutions that helped cause the crisis, with limited transparency and oversight, added to the public distrust,” the Treasury secretary said, in a clear swipe at the Bush administration.

“American people have lost faith in the leaders of our financial institutions and are skeptical that their government has — to this point — used taxpayers’ money in ways that will benefit them,” Mr. Geithner said, referring to how the Bush administration managed the first $350 billion that Congress approved last year for the so-called Troubled Assets Relief Program.

Mr. Geithner laid out a multi-pronged program that will include several major components:

— A Public Private Investment Fund, jointly run by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve, with financing from private investors, to buy up hard-to-sell assets that have bogged down banks and financial institutions for the past year. Mr. Geithner said the new fund, often described as a “bad bank” for holding toxic assets, would start with $500 billion with a goal of eventually buying up to $1 trillion in assets.

— Direct capital injections into banks, which would come out of the remaining $350 billion in the Treasury’s rescue program.

— A vast expansion of lending program that the Treasury and Federal Reserve had already announced, which is aimed at financing consumer loans. The two agencies had originally announced their intention to finance as much as $200 billion in loans for student loans, car loans and credit card debt. Instead the program will be expanded to as much as $1 trillion.

In a separate announcement elaborating on the lending program, the Federal Reserve said it “could broaden” the plan to include both commercial and residential mortgage-backed securities. But the Fed made it clear that no decisions had been made and said any subsequent expansion would “draw on initial experience in administering the program.”

THE PROBLEM, however -- as the guy who saw all this coming tried to inform the CNBC twerps -- is that the American banking system is effectively bust. Broke. Insolvent.

How's that for a hot tip, pally?

Why Louisiana is toast

Today, all across the Gret Stet, Louisianians raptly pore over the morning paper and the Internet sports sites to read all about the LSU Tigers' top recruiting class in football.

That's the top story on The Advocate's website down in Baton Rouge because, especially in these dark days for print journalism, newspapers want readers. And the editors have a good idea what Louisiana readers (the few . . . the proud . . .) want to read.

MEANWHILE, down and over . . . in the column of itty bitty headlines . . . we find this: "LSU cuts sketched." Sketched? Let's try something pithier and closer to the point.

Maybe something like "LSU's doomsday budget plan."

Here's what that story says about the cuts being "sketched" at the Ol' War Skule while everybody is paying attention to the football team:

The LSU System on Wednesday contended nearly 2,000 employees would be laid off if worst-case scenario budget cuts discussed by the governor’s office come to fruition.

State Commissioner of Higher Education Sally Clausen also announced Wednesday that college officials plan to meet next week with leaders of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration to flesh out issues concerning budget cuts for the upcoming 2009-2010 fiscal year.

LSU System President John Lombardi said in a phone interview Wednesday that the worst-case scenario — chopping 30 percent of LSU’s budget — would decimate many campuses and shut down many academic programs.

The LSU system includes the main Baton Rouge campus, four other academic campuses, a law school, an agricultural center, two medical schools and the state’s public hospitals.

Patient care at LSU hospitals also would suffer, Lombardi said.

“What you end up with is a lot of lost people,” Lombardi said. “When you lose people, you lose everything. That’s what universities are all about.”

Lombardi said it was important to attach a strongly worded letter along with the numbers concerning the 18-to-30-percent range of cuts for which the Jindal administration asked campuses to prepare.

“When you’re looking at spreadsheets, your mind kind of glazes over,” Lombardi said. “We wanted to say, ‘This is really what you’re looking at.’”

Lombardi is referring to the loss of about 650 faculty and 1,250 support employees on LSU campuses statewide, according to the report. This would change LSU’s mission and wipe out its national competitiveness, he said.

Just on the main Baton Rouge campus, the cuts would amount to closing one entire academic college, he said. The results would include fewer academic majors, larger class sizes, more expensive tuition and greater lengths of time to graduate, the report states.

“While some may imagine that the budget reduction processes in other states protects LSU against dramatic relative decline in effectiveness, they are quite wrong,” Lombardi states in the report.

States such as Missouri, Maryland and Oregon are not planning any higher education cuts despite large state budget shortfalls, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

A LOSS of 2,000 jobs if the worst comes to pass. Devastating consequences for academic programs and students trying to graduate on time . . . or just pay their tuition bills.

And look -- other states with equally bad budget problems that aren't cutting higher education. Where do you think, in the future, a shrinking number of jobs is going to end up going?

To Louisiana, a poor, ignorant state busy devastating higher ed? Think again.

What that "insignificant" story in The Advocate ultimately means, Louisiana, is that more and more of you had better be making plans to visit your kids and grandkids in Texas . . . or Georgia . . . or North Carolina . . . or Missouri . . . or Nebraska.

Pretty much anywhere but the Gret Stet, which, come to think of it, ain't so gret a-tall.

Enjoy your football.

Would they prefer a pay cut . . . or else?

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Barack Obama is giving the plunderers of Wall Street a stay of execution, and those who prefer a nice chablis with their thievery are too stupid and greedy to accept it and just shut up.

MSNBC HAS THE DETAILS of the president's generous gift to folks who deserve so much more than a mere pay cut:

President Barack Obama on Wednesday imposed $500,000 caps on senior executive pay for the most distressed financial institutions receiving federal bailout money, saying Americans are upset with “executives being rewarded for failure.”

Obama announced the dramatic new government intervention into corporate America at the White House, with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at his side. The president said the executive-pay limits are a first step, to be followed by the unveiling next week of a sweeping new framework for spending what remains of the $700 billion financial industry bailout that Congress created last year.

The executive-pay move comes amid a national outcry over huge bonuses to executives heading companies seeking taxpayer dollars to remain afloat. The demand for limits was reinforced by revelations that Wall Street firms paid more than $18 billion in bonuses in 2008 even amid the economic downturn and the massive infusion of taxpayer dollars.

“This is America. We don’t disparage wealth. We don’t begrudge anybody for achieving success,” Obama said. “But what gets people upset — and rightfully so — are executives being rewarded for failure. Especially when those rewards are subsidized by U.S. taxpayers.”

The pay cap would apply to institutions that negotiate agreements with the Treasury Department for “exceptional assistance” in the future. The restriction would not apply to such firms as American International Group Inc., Bank of America Corp., and Citigroup Inc., that already have received such help.

“There is a deep sense across the country that those who were not ... responsible for this crisis are bearing a greater burden than those who were,” Geithner said.

ONE EXECUTIVE has a problem with senior brass being put on a money diet, and whines to The New York Times:

“That is pretty draconian — $500,000 is not a lot of money, particularly if there is no bonus,” said James F. Reda, founder and managing director of James F. Reda & Associates, a compensation consulting firm. “And you know these companies that are in trouble are not going to pay much of an annual dividend.”

Mr. Reda said only a handful of big companies pay chief executives and other senior executives $500,000 or less in total compensation. He said such limits will make it hard for the companies to recruit and keep executives, most of whom could earn more money at other firms.

“It would be really tough to get people to staff” companies that are forced to impose these limits, he said. “I don’t think this will work.”

THEN I GUESS the government will just have to flat-out nationalize the firms and put government functionaries in those jobs. After all, how could they do a worse job than the capitalist pigs?

They couldn't do a worse job than a crowd that has paid itself outlandishly while flying the economy into the ground. These executives should count themselves fortunate, indeed, to still have jobs at all.

And they should get down on their knees and thank God -- or their good fortune, or whatever -- they live in the United States of America, where rarely do the masses take to the streets, ransack stately office towers and drag executives such as James F. Reda onto the pavement below.

They should get on their knees in gratitude that they -- at least for the time being -- don't live in a country where the bottom rail emphatically places itself atop the fence as the new overseer of revenge. Where we don't . . . yet . . . have true People's Courts proclaiming the erstwhile titans of finance and industry guilty, guilty, guilty of capital crimes of capital and immediately remanding them to the jurisdiction of a court not of this world.

3 Chords & the Truth: Will podcast for food

Because we couldn't afford Cloud 9.

It's brutal out there. And the economy is even worse.

I guess you've figured out -- and, boy, are you sharp! -- that we're taking a musical look at the signs of the times this week on 3 Chords & the Truth. Of course, the music will be great (that's a given, he says modestly), but whether your response to it is to enjoy the aesthetics or to howl in rage at the shape we're in . . . well, that's entirely your own choice.

ME, I GO back and forth between wanting to raise the red flag and get revolutionary on Wall Street's arse . . . and thinking, "What you gonna do?" while trying to make the best of what's going to be some hard, hard times.

Perhaps there's room for a little of both responses, you know? But, ultimately, we all do have to make the best of it, no matter what "it" might be. Like the ubiquitous "they" say, the flip side of crisis is opportunity.

Perhaps, like Tony Bennett sings about on the Big Show this week, we're all being called to live "the simple life" . . . because it's good for us. There's something absolutely biblical (in the good sense, not the "of biblical proportions" sense) about that notion.

MAYBE THAT'S the question we're ultimately exploring on this week's 3 Chords & the Truth. Not just "How do we get through this colossal mess?" but, indeed, "What is life?"

A lot of baggage for one weekly music show, eh? That's why the blog is here -- on a music show, you need to have time for the, er . . . music. That we do.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. It's just like radio -- except for it doesn't suck.

Be there. Aloha.

George Bailey is dead. Mr. Potter killed him.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

"And now with today's economic news, here's Noah Cash with the business report. Noah?"

"Thanks, Jim. We're f***ed. And that's our report for today. Jim?"

"Thanks, Noah . . . I think. We'll be back in 30 minutes with the 6 o'clock report, now we go live to New York and MSNBC:

As the government advances historic measures to revive growth, the data point to an economy that is getting worse. It’s far from clear the government actions — including a massive stimulus program and major intervention in the banking system — will stem the slide and restart the economy by year-end.

But even if it does, analysts say the recovery — when it comes — will likely be weak and slow.

With home prices continuing to fall and layoffs rising, the sharp pullback in consumer spending is a powerful force driving the economic contraction. That spending pullback will continue for some time to come, according to Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley’s Asia chairman.

“The biggest force on the demand side of the world economy — the multiyear compression of the American consumer — is going to be ongoing,” he said. “This trend has only just begun.”

The ongoing retrenchment by American consumers makes it unlikely spending will return to pre-recession levels for many years. During the height of the lending boom, consumer spending surged to roughly 71 percent of gross domestic product — up from just 66 percent in 1990.

Since much of that spending was based on unsustainable borrowing, the post-recession economy will remain smaller until that shortfall can be made up from other sources of demand. With the rest of the world also in recession, at the moment, it’s hard to see where those other sources of demand will come from, analysts say.

The root cause of the recession — the collapse of the housing industry — shows no signs of letup. Prices fell by a record 18 percent in October 2008, according to the latest Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller index, and analysts say prices could continue falling well into next year. A pickup in existing-home sales in December was due largely to homes being bought at cut-rate prices in foreclosure.

“In fact the downdraft is probably gaining steam,” said Michael Englund, chief economist with Action Economics. “We are assuming going into 2009 we may be seeing some bottom, but we certainly are not seeing any sign yet in any of the reported data.”

(snip)

That deteriorating economy has also brought a massive wave of layoffs that also shows no signs of letup. The Labor Department reported Thursday that a record 4.85 million people were collecting regular unemployment benefits in the latest week. That doesn't include about 1.7 million people getting benefits through an extension passed last summer; that puts the total number of people on unemployment closer to 6.5 million. Millions more are working reduced hours or have exhausted jobless benefits.

Davos: It's all about the little people

The rich and the powerful are in Davos, Switzerland -- looking rich and important, solving all the problems of the world . . . and . . . bemoaning . . . the . . . economic . . . fate . . . of . . . schmucks . . . like . . . you . . . and . . . me.

F'RINSTANCE, that noted social activist and all-around Mother Teresa, Rupert Murdoch. These profound words from this holy man were lovingly preserved on a parchment scroll by Bloomberg News:

News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch said there’s no hiding from the worsening global economic crisis, and stressed the need for quick and “drastic action” to turn the tide.

People worldwide are “depressed and traumatized” to see their life savings, including homes and pension funds, disappearing, Murdoch said at a press briefing in Davos, Switzerland, today.

“It would be very foolish if we said here we are, we had a crisis, and how do we get out of it quickly,” he said. “The crisis is getting worse. When you get to the real economy, values are still going down.”

THEN MURDOCH, we are certain, went back up to the mountaintop to boogie oogie oogie with former presidential adviser and current cable-news talking head David Gergen, seen above getting his Deney Terrio on at last year's Davos conference. The blonde disco doll, no doubt, was laughing on the inside as hard as I was on the outside.

And none of us will ever be able to take David Gergen seriously again. If we ever did.

Wise course of action, that. I suggest we apply it to the whole bunch.

Free market's just another term for nothin' left to lose

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In Miami, these scenes will have played out some 14,000 times by the time 2008 is over.

In Las Vegas, 50,000 times. In Franklin County, Ohio (Columbus), 9,000 times.

EVICTION: It's going around in these troubled times. And we're nowhere near the bottom of the mortgage crisis or America's economic crisis.

Look at the video, from Dateline NBC. At what point . . . at what rate does this kind of trauma have to happen to ordinary Americans before something collectively snaps in the United States? At what point does the suffering of the middle and working classes crash head-on into Wall Street bailouts, golden parachutes and CEOs as robber barons?

What spark might -- will? -- ignite the leaking fuel tanks of our civic society, and how much will the fireball consume?

Look at the video.

How many people with nothing left to lose does it take to make our political leaders afraid . . . very afraid?

Requiem for the go-go '00s

Even in relatively well-off Omaha, the go-go '00s are slowly but surely turning into the hardscrabble Uh-Ohs.

Here's a case in point: The planned 12-story 80Dodge condo project in our neighborhood has just turned into the generic Extended-Stay Hotel and Strip-Center Extension project. The developers ran into the double-whammy of the New Economy -- ain't many people shelling out for luxury condos, and ain't many banks lending money to build them.

UNLESS, OF COURSE, you can pre-sell more units than developers can pre-sell today. So, the developers are doing what they can, as the Omaha World-Herald reports today:

Developers who had planned a high-rise condominium project at 80th Street and West Dodge Road instead plan to build a four-story, extended-stay hotel and two single-story retail buildings.

"It's just too hard in this climate to do a condominium," said Jerry Slusky, attorney for the development team and part owner of the project.

A hotel franchise approached the developers about three months ago, Slusky said. He declined to name the hotel because the parties have not signed a licensing agreement but characterized it as "one of the top two brand names in the country."

The hotel's demographic studies showed a need for an extended-stay hotel in the Dodge Street corridor from 72nd to 102nd Street to accommodate nearby employers and hospitals, Slusky said.

That need, combined with slow condo sales and the changing financial environment, led the developers to conclude that a hotel was a wiser choice, Slusky said.

"First of all, the construction financing for a large high-rise building with a substantial condominium component is very difficult, if not impossible, because you need at least 50 percent with binding contracts."

Only 14 of 56 condos had been reserved. Reservations are not the same as signed sales contracts.

A typical financing arrangement requires the developer to sell a certain percentage of units — measured in revenue — before the bank will release money for construction. Some lenders are requiring a higher percentage of pre-sales.

Slower sales of the condos — which were priced from $260,000 to $3.7 million — delayed construction start dates, leaving developers in a lurch with people who put money down or who considered buying into a new project.

"People want to be assured of a delivery date. You run into a bit of a Catch-22 there," Slusky said.

"There was uncertainty of so many people about their lives and their situation.

"You have to think about the wisdom in these times of developing a condo project in light of people's ability to buy and own them, financing, etc."

THE 80DODGE developers are the savvy -- and lucky -- ones. Just up Dodge lays the fallow vision of one of the unlucky -- and dead -- ones:

Another multiuse project in the area, which included condos, remains in limbo after the death of developer Ed Boesen of Des Moines. Boesen, who had planned the $6 million Piccolo's Pointe at 77th and Dodge Streets, committed suicide, according to official records.

Since Boesen's death July 15, banks, private lenders and other businesses have sued his estate for more than $50 million.

THIS MAY NOT BE the postmodern sequel of the Great Depression. But just like in the original series, our dreams and illusions are sputtering, stalling and then crashing to earth.

What we need is a new dream. A workaround dream . . . a make-lemonade-out-of-lemons dream.

What we need is a "let's pull together, love one another and trust in God" dream. Do you reckon that would be harder to pull off than building a high-rise condo development?

Are you not the Fed? Save yourself and us.

Our nation's financial system is teetering on the edge of something. Something most assuredly not good.

Many think the stock market is about to respond accordingly. Try to avoid walking on Wall Street sidewalks today, but if that isn't an option, wear a hard hat and keep an eye on upper-floor windows.

From Bloomberg this early a.m.:

U.S. stocks are on the brink of the broadest bear market in four decades as investors ignore the strongest buy signals in almost 20 years.

The retreat by all 10 industries in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index pushed the measure down 18 percent since its Oct. 9 record and 12 percent since the start of the decade. The plunge resembles declines in the 1970s and 1930s, the two worst periods for U.S. equities in the past 80 years. The last six times the index has fallen by 20 percent, only once -- on Black Monday in 1987 -- has the sell-off been so encompassing.

``I tend to agree with the fellow who says, `Hey, this is the greatest financial crisis since World War II,''' said Jean- Marie Eveillard, 68, who runs the $21.3 billion First Eagle Global Fund in New York. The fund, which has returned an average 15.2 percent each year this decade compared with a less than 0.1 percent annualized gain for the S&P 500, has about 25 percent in cash and gold, more than its holdings in U.S. stocks. ``Investors who take the attitude that the economy will be slow in the first half and then it will turn around, they're probably dreaming.''

The declines have left companies in the S&P 500 trading at the cheapest levels in more than 18 years to forecast profits, while valuations versus 10-year Treasuries are the lowest in at least two decades. Investors aren't acting on the traditional buy signals in the midst of the worst housing slump since the Great Depression, $200 billion in bank losses tied to mortgages and the bailout of Bear Stearns Cos. last week by the Federal Reserve and JPMorgan Chase & Co.

JPMorgan Chase agreed today to buy Bear Stearns for about $240 million, less than a 10th of its value last week.

WHAT DOES it all mean? I don't know (apart from Probably Nothing Good), being that I am not an economist, and I don't play one on TV.

But I do have a question for you.

If it all falls apart -- the American economy and America's weatlth as a nation, that is -- who are we? Who are you?

Why are we?

And if any of the answers differ from what they were when we were all tap dancing atop our economic "bubbles," what does that say about us? Or, more specifically, about what we value?

Just asking some hard questions for hard times. That all this is coming to a head during Holy Week may not be an accident, because it's just too damned appropriate.

As we begin yet another commemoration of Christ's Passion, death and resurrection this week, we were reminding members our Catholic church's youth group Sunday night of one important thing: If you don't know suffering, you don't know Jesus.

Not really, you don't.

Such an alien concept in our spoiled, crass, vapid and gilded age. Could be our operating conceptualization is in for a big recontextualization, and we're going to have a big "come to Jesus" moment.

If we're lucky.

Every bank collapse has a silver lining

Yes, Citibank may go down the tubes, sucking God knows what else down with it, with this Associated Press story reporting that a Persian Gulf bailout may not be enough to offset a subprime-sized hole in the bow.

Citigroup shares sank about 6 percent to their lowest level in more than nine years, as stockholders recoiled at forecasts of more losses at the troubled bank and comments from a Middle East fund executive that Citi must raise more cash to stay in business.

Samir al-Ansari, chief executive of the $13 billion government-owned investment firm Dubai International Capital, said Tuesday at a private equity conference that it will take more than the combined efforts of the Gulf’s wealthiest investors — the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the Kuwait Investment Authority and Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal — to save Citigroup.

Back in January, Citi raised $12.5 billion from a group of investors including the Kuwait Investment Authority, the Government of Singapore Investment Corp. and Prince Alwaleed. And last year, Citi nabbed $7.6 billion from the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, a sovereign wealth fund owned by the ruling elite of the United Arab Emirates, the world’s fourth-largest oil exporter, in return for a 4.9 percent stake.

(snip)

Citigroup shares — which have shed about 50 percent since the credit markets froze up last summer — dropped another 5.6 percent to $21.80 in early afternoon trading Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange.

In January, Citigroup reported losses of almost $10 billion in the fourth quarter, spurred by $18 billion in write-downs. In addition to capital injections from sovereign wealth funds, the bank has been raising cash through small asset sales of nonessential assets and nearly halving its dividend in January.

“Not only do they need to raise more money, but they should’ve suspended their dividend six months ago,” said Christopher Whalen, managing director of consulting firm Institutional Risk Analytics. “They’re trying to do this in bite-size pieces. But everyone’s still waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

Citi Chief Financial Officer Gary Crittenden said in January the $12.5 billion stake, along with a $2 billion stock sale the bank completed soon afterward, was enough to address “potential capital shortfall under multiple scenarios.”

“They’re saying it’s enough — it’s not enough,” Whalen said, noting that further losses from consumer debt will draw down Citi’s cash levels.

THAT would be bad.

On the other hand, if Citi goes bust, we'll all get a lot less junk mail hawking credit cards we don't want and can't afford to have.

Many trees, alas, could be saved -- living another day to suck greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. You have to like that, at least.