I HATE IT WHEN...

...I have to correct myself, but a loyal reader called to tell me that I should have said, "...it appears that Mr. Feinberg will refuse..." He is of course correct. The pay czar has made no final decision but I will lay 8-5 that what we will get in this case is a lot of, "Outrageous, Unconscionable, Undeserved," blah, blah and little else. I tend not to get too excited about this pay czar thing, stupid though it might be, because it will certainly whither and disappear as the financial sector emerges from this latest collapse which if the Fed continues to hand out free money will not be too long from today (mind the regionals, however). The signs are already emerging in the U.K. where the FSA blinked on the supposed mandated pay schedules, and are speaking only in terms of pay "guidelines" as the outlook for the sector improves. I suspect that good deal of this is to let bygones be bygones, after all boys will be boys and all of the stuff we love, what--but let us remember that the FSA has already been pronounced dead and buried by the Conservative Party if it is successful in the next election (less of a bet but still odds-on) and why get the City all riled up at this stage? The feeling on the Street here across the pond is that this too shall pass.

However, this tendency on the part of The Leader and Our Hero to control practically everything is not just a passing fancy. Has one noticed that not only are there discussions as to the need for the free flow of credit to resume but that in addition, there is a very clear undercurrent as to what locations it should be directed? The cash for clunkers program, while great for dealerships is about as dumb a use of money the country doesn't have as one can find. (Full disclosure: I checked on my clunker with messrs.Toyota and Honda: my old Acura was made with two different catalytic converters; one qualifies the other doesn't. Of course there is no way to tell which is which. You can't make this stuff up). I though we had seen this movie before when, in an attempt to eliminate "Redlining," mortgage lending was expanded by government fiat with, shall we say, somewhat uneven results. Or billions to the UA...ah, GM and Chrysler on the biggest come-line bet ever made. Oh, as an aside, GM announced its Chevy Volt yesterday with a milage rating of 240 per gallon if you have a 400 mile extension cord. I's supposed to have unlimited milage in city driving. Memo to The Leader: WE DON'T WANT BLOODY CARS IN THE BLOODY CITY!!! But of course, it's clean; it's a shame 2.5 billion Chinese and Indians aren't. In the good old days we used to say,"Hell, it's not our money it's the depositors." Wonder what these guys say?

As a final note to this week, jobless claims went up, retail sales were lousy and the Dow was up 36+ points. Go figure. I guess the continued uptick was based on the fact that France and Germany said the recession was over and it was onward and upward. Did someone, somewhere, care?

See you on Monday. It's too nice outside to write inside