Fake Fear, Real Fear, Utter Terror

Fake fear:

Not nearly enough dust. Too few screams.

Real fear:

Utter terror:

When it’s the entire nation.

And there are no explosions at all.

The Internet Is A Harsh Copy Editor

Erica Jong tries to get away with something:

So let’s just remember our mothers–who bore us, protected us against our fathers and grandfathers and all the pink or brown men who wanted to rape us or kill us or starve us because we were girls.

… and is called on it (scroll down) in comments:

Who the fuck is your family, the Borgias?

I’ve opened comments here. Hence my sentences are now short.

It’s Sunset In America

Citigroup’s Layoffs Could Reach 24,000 This Year

Citigroup plans to announce a writedown of as much as $24 billion and layoffs that could total as much as 24,000 due to subprime and credit-related losses, CNBC has learned.

And:

Citigroup is likely to cut between 17,000 and 24,000 positions over the course of the year through a combination of layoffs, attrition and selling off businesses as part of Pandit’s cost-cutting plan, sources said. Previously, it was estimated that the layoffs could reach 20,000.

And:

Citigroup also intends to raise as much as $15 billion from various foreign and domestic entities including Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Citigroup’s largest individual shareholder, as America’s biggest bank grapples with heavy mortgage market losses.

Alwaleed has owned his Citi stake since the early 1990s and helped engineer a previous rescue plan for the bank more than a dozen years ago. According to a report on the Wall Street Journal’s Web site, he is likely to keep his total stake in the bank below 5 percent to avoid regulatory scrutiny.

But wait, as those ads say, there’s more!

American banks set for further big write-downs

Two of Wall Street’s biggest banks are preparing to write off tens of billions of dollars of investments in the US mortgage market, and to replace the capital with an $18bn cash infusion from emerging market investors.

The “clean slate” strategy being pursued by Merrill Lynch and Citigroup is aimed at drawing a line under the six-month-old credit crisis, and in so doing it will dramatically reshape the ownership of the American financial industry.

Emphasis added by me.

Who will own the U.S. Dollar?

And what kind of owners will they be?