Tom The Dancing Bug Blog

While you were watching the financial crisis...

The senate somehow found time to pass S. 2913, the Shaw Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008 ("Orphan Works Act") on Friday.

I've written about my opposition to this bill.

This week's comic

The critics say:

"to compare the u.s.s.r. to the united states is without a doubt the dumbest,innacurate,and most desperate comparason I,v ever seen in my life"

A Message to Tom the Dancing Bug Readers Who Live in Bethesda, Md., East of Wall Park, Near the White Flint Metro Station, North of Nicholson Lane

This Sunday, October 5, I will be at the SPX Cartooning and Comics Arts Festival, at the Marriott Bethesda North Hotel and Conference Center, 5701 Marinelli Road, North Bethesda, Md., participating in a panel entitled "Drawing the Election," from 2:30 - 3:30 pm, moderated by Marc Singer, and also including Jen Sorenson, Mikhaela Reid and Keith Knight.

Pliocene Park, Part 2 of 4

Here is Part 2 of the 1993 Tom the Dancing Bug series, Pliocene Park.

I really haven't been posting enough to link to Part 1 -- it's just a quick scroll, two posts down (one of which is a video embed that I did moments ago) -- but I'll make believe that many, many posts ago I presented the first part of this ongoing series, and the only way to remind you is to provide this link.

The Great Schlep

Viewer discretion advised.

The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.

Here's the New Game

I can't pretend to know or understand all the details or even the major points of the proposed financial bailout because it's changing every moment. But from what I can gather from media reports, it looks to be a swindling of American taxpayers on a monstrous scale.

We're going to spend, just to start, $700 billion -- that's $2,000 from every man, woman and child in the land -- to buy the worst, most problematic assets from financial institutions that had made the mistake of buying them. We're going to buy them at prices way above their market prices.

Some are saying that we're not really losing $700 billion, because even though we're buying these instruments at prices above what anyone will pay for them now, we'll eventually get to sell the assets, and maybe we'll even make a profit. Let me tell you: we'll take a loss on that money, and it will be huge.

After the bailout, the government will be holding all these toxic mortgage-related assets. How is it going to know what it's got, how to value it, and how to sell it? These aren't cartons of apples, they're some of the most complex financial instruments known to man, each instrument governed by hundreds and hundreds of pages of documents.

So who is our government going to sell them to? There's only one group on earth that it could sell it to -- the same financial institutions they bought them from.

We'll have the biggest, dumbest, most bureaucratic institution, our US Government, trying to sell $700 billion in insanely complicated financial instruments to a group of the most sophisticated, smartest, nimblest institutions, the banks that created the damn things. Who's going to come out ahead?

These bankers are geniuses at finding the game, understanding the rules, and figuring out a way to win. And the new game is going to be Fleece the Government.

But this huge giveaway to the investment banks is necessary, as the investment banker who is the Treasury Secretary assures us, to loosen the credit markets and save the economy. If the federal government is willing to spend $700 billion, there are other ways to loosen the credit markets, ways in which the government is more likely to get some sort of upside if things go well.

We're told they're going to put some "safeguards" into the plan as a compromise to those who oppose it, but these modifications will just make the rules of the game a little more interesting for the bankers. For example, the plan supposedly is going to place limits on executive compensation for the the banks that participate. These bankers are ingenious at getting around rules, but if you want to see truly mind-boggling creativity, place limits on a banker's actual compensation, and watch the sparks fly.

At a time when the deficit is around $9.7 trillion, dragging down our currency and economy, the structuring of this deal is a disaster.

Pliocene Park, Part 1 of 4

A while ago, I used to occasionally do multi-part Tom the Dancing Bugs, often featuring Charley the Australopithecine.  Since these have never been reprinted, I thought I'd use the blog to show some of these old comics.  Today, I'm starting a series that ran in June, 1993, and I'll run the subsequent runs every week or so.

Maybe He Should Wear Shades...

Tom Tomorrow's new book is now out!
The Future's So Bright I Can't Bear To Look:

Kim Deitch

I went to the opening reception of the Kim Deitch exhibit at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art last week, and I urge you to go to this really cool exhibit on an important cartoonist.

Maverick McCain

In this week's yarn:  The townsfolk want Old Man McCain to be sheriff.  They'd damn well better understand that he ain't changin' who he is for any man.