To 361,000 better, but still sucky.
Month: August 2012
What a Surprise, The Vampire Squid Skates
What a surprise, Goldman Sachs gets to defraud its customers in and lie to Congress about the Abacus deal, where they sold bad loans to investors, and then bet against them, and there is no prosecution:
Neither Goldman Sachs Group Inc nor its employees will face U.S. criminal charges related to trades they made during the financial crisis that were highlighted in a 2011 U.S. Senate report, the Justice Department said on Thursday.
The unusual announcement not to prosecute criminally came in an unsigned statement attributed to the department.
Few expected the bank to face criminal charges, but in April 2011, U.S. Senator Carl Levin asked for a criminal investigation after the subcommittee he leads spent years looking into Goldman.
Levin’s subcommittee held televised hearings as part of its inquiry, which centered on a subprime mortgage product known as Abacus. He said Goldman misled Congress and investors.
Goldman employee Fabrice Tourre still faces a civil complaint from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He has denied any wrongdoing and was the only person accused.
Goldman itself settled with the SEC for $550 million in July 2010 without admitting wrongdoing.
(emphasis mine)
Why am I not surprised?
Dualing Quotes of the Day
It’s a tough choice, reader(s), which do you prefer:
Why David Cameron is the ultimate “seagull” managerHe flies in, makes a lot of noise, dumps on everyone from a great height, and then flies out again.
Or this one:
Romney finally gets a supporter who changes positions as often as he does.Thomas Myer, on the news that pr0n star Jenna Jameson has endorsed his candidacy.
It’s a tough call.
It Won’t Pass
The Maryland Health Security Act of 2012, a single payer health care proposal, has been submitted to the legislature.
A quick Google reveals that it’s been submitted since at least 2008, so I don’t expect anything to come of it though.
Damn
Darcy Burner has lost the primary for Washington’s 1st district.
Former Microsoft exec Suzan DelBene after dropping over a million dollars of her own money, bought second place (it’s a non-partisan primary, with Teabagger Republican John Koster getting a plurality).
Rather unsurprisingly, DelBene also got the lion’s share of the Democratic Party establishment, since they go for the money, and real Democrats scare them.
So the good folks in the 1st have the choice of the Teabagger or the MBA.
My condolences.
Yep, It Happened in Libya Too
When you allow the House of Saud and the rest of the Medieval Gulf Despots determine which Arab regimes to overthrow, they go after the secular regimes, and the armies that they fund engage in ethnic and religious persecution and bigotry:
Syria’s 2.3 million Christians, constituting about 10 percent of the country’s population, have generally known a more privileged existence under the Assad dynasty than even the Shiite Alawi sect to which President Bashar al-Assad belongs. Yet their allegiance to Assad was never absolute. Some Christians openly clamored for political change in the early months of the anti-government uprising. But as the rebellion became suffused with Sunni militants sympathetic to or affiliated with Al Qaeda, Christians recoiled.A churchgoing Syrian told me that he used to see himself primarily as “Syrian” and that religious identity, in political terms, was an idea that never occurred to him — until an opposition gang attacked his family earlier this year in Homs. “It’s a label they pinned on us,” he said. “If their revolution is for everyone, as they keep insisting it is, why are Christians being targeted? It is because what they are waging is not a struggle for freedom, and it’s certainly not for everyone.”As Saudi Arabian arms and money bolster the opposition, the 80,000 Christians who’ve been “cleansed” from their homes in Hamidiya and Bustan al-Diwan in Homs Province in March by the Free Syrian Army have gradually given up the prospect of ever returning home.The rebels’ conduct has prompted at least some Sunnis who had supported the rebels and once-wavering Syrians to pledge renewed loyalty to Assad. Many who once regarded the regime as a kleptocracy now view it as the best guarantor of Syria’s endangered pluralism.A Sunni shopkeeper in the impoverished suburb of Set Zaynab, which was partly destroyed in the clashes last week, no longer supports the rebellion. “I wanted Assad to go because he is corrupt,” he said. “But what happened here, what they did, it scared me. It made me angry. I cannot support the murder of my neighbors in the name of change. You cannot bring democracy by killing innocent people or by burning the shrines of Shiites. Syrians don’t do that. This is the work of the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia,” he added, referring to the ultra conservative Sunni sect.Repeated attempts by Free Syrian Army fighters to destroy a shrine to Sayyida Zeinab, the granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad revered by Shiites, have not yet caused the area’s Sunni minority to flee — many Shiites here have refused to blame their Sunni neighbors for the rebels’ crimes.Over the past week, more than a dozen Syrians — chiefly Alawi and Christian, but also a handful of Sunnis — affirmed to me their determination to pick up arms to defend Assad.The seeming indifference of the international community to the worsening condition of Syria’s religious minorities — and the near total absence of censure of the opposition forces by the Western governments arrayed against Assad — is breeding a bitter anti-Americanism among many secular Syrians who see the United States aligning itself with Saudi Arabia, the fount of Wahhabism, against the Arab world’s most resolutely secular state.Fresh from abetting the suppression of a pro-democracy uprising in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Syria is part of its effort to attenuate Iran’s influence and cripple what it fears is a growing Shiite corridor of power in the Middle East.Most Syrians, regardless of their faith, want the power to change their government. But the armed groups that have seized control of the rebellion, now contaminated with Al Qaeda fighters and corrupted by Saudi money, have repelled many people.
This is no surprise.
The Libyan transitional government, also funded by the Saudis and the various Emirates is doing the same thing, engaging in ethnic cleansing of Black African Libyans.
The Assad Regime sucks, but for the United States to allow its own interests in a modern, generally secular governance in the Arab world to be subverted to the needs of the ineluctably corrupt House of Saud, is simply nuts.
A majority of the 911 hijackers were Saudi for a reason.
The House of Saud bankrolls much of the infrastructure of terrorism in the world, exporting a harsh and reactionary ideology, and it is not in the best interest of the United States.
H/t Washington’s Blog.
no surprise. The Lybians are doing the same with Black African Lybians.
An Interesting Insight into the Role of IP in Developing Societies
Indeed, only 1,000 new works appeared annually in England at that time — 10 times fewer than in Germany — and this was not without consequences. Höffner believes it was the chronically weak book market that caused England, the colonial power, to fritter away its head start within the span of a century, while the underdeveloped agrarian state of Germany caught up rapidly, becoming an equally developed industrial nation by 1900.
Even more startling is the factor Höffner believes caused this development — in his view, it was none other than copyright law, which was established early in Great Britain, in 1710, that crippled the world of knowledge in the United Kingdom.
Germany, on the other hand, didn’t bother with the concept of copyright for a long time. Prussia, then by far Germany’s biggest state, introduced a copyright law in 1837, but Germany’s continued division into small states meant that it was hardly possible to enforce the law throughout the empire.
Höffner’s diligent research is the first academic work to examine the effects of the copyright over a comparatively long period of time and based on a direct comparison between two countries, and his findings have caused a stir among academics. Until now, copyright was seen as a great achievement and a guarantee for a flourishing book market. Authors are only motivated to write, runs the conventional belief, if they know their rights will be protected.
Yet a historical comparison, at least, reaches a different conclusion. Publishers in England exploited their monopoly shamelessly. New discoveries were generally published in limited editions of at most 750 copies and sold at a price that often exceeded the weekly salary of an educated worker.
London’s most prominent publishers made very good money with this system, some driving around the city in gilt carriages. Their customers were the wealthy and the nobility, and their books regarded as pure luxury goods. In the few libraries that did exist, the valuable volumes were chained to the shelves to protect them from potential thieves.
In Germany during the same period, publishers had plagiarizers — who could reprint each new publication and sell it cheaply without fear of punishment — breathing down their necks. Successful publishers were the ones who took a sophisticated approach in reaction to these copycats and devised a form of publication still common today, issuing fancy editions for their wealthy customers and low-priced paperbacks for the masses.
This is an intriguing though.
I think that the current IP regime, both copyright and patent has become excessive, and serves to hinder innovation and creativity, rather than enhancing it.
But, I am still surprised that even the relatively modest protections in the 18th and 19th century,* appeared to be a major impediment to development.
I guess that those economist say about rent seeking behavior is truer than I thought.
*You had to explicitly file for copyright, and the term was only 14 years, and copyright infractions were a private tort, not a criminal infraction with the threat of years in jail.
Iceland Gets it Right, Part XXVII
Now Iceland is separating its commercial and its investment banks:
Iceland was brought to the brink of bankruptcy when its biggest banks failed four years ago. Now, the site of the world’s most spectacular financial collapse is becoming a pioneer in banking reform.
“We’ve been burned by this and that’s why we have to look very closely at what we need to do to prevent it happening again,” Economy MinisterSteingrimur J. Sigfusson said in an interview. “Icelanders are more interested in taking greater steps than small steps when it comes to regulating banking.”
His party, the junior member in Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir’s coalition, has submitted a motion to parliament to stop banks using state-backed deposits to finance risky investments. The move puts Iceland on course to become the first western nation since the global financial crisis hit five years ago to force banking conglomerates to split their business.
It’s a proposal that’s gaining traction elsewhere. Even Sanford “Sandy” Weill, whose 1998 creation of New York-based Citigroup Inc. (C) triggered the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that paved the way for financial behemoths, now says investment banks should be separated from deposit-taking banks. Opponents including JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon say diverse businesses are needed to spread risk across divisions and stay competitive.
Gee, Glass Steagall was a good idea.
There is a shocker.
They appear to be the only government in the world that has had the fortitude and the foresight to actually learn from their own financial disaster.
Spitzer Ain’t Olbermann but He’s Good
Bringing on Felix Salmon* and Dennis Kelleher to discuss our we need to put some senior banksters in handcuffs was a good move:
*Unfortunately, he was not wearing his Willy Wonka suit.
Read the Rude Pundit
Read his full throated endorsement of Harry Reid’s accusation against Mitt Romney. (NSFW)
I completely agree with his sentiments.
H/t Cthulhu* at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
*No, not the unspeakably malevolent super-being, the contributor to the Stellar Parthenon.†
†OK, I’ve never seen the two of them together, so Cthulhu might actually be the Cthulhu, but the mere fact that he is on a BBS, interacting with humans‡ would seem to mitigate against this.
‡Yes, I know, this is the internet, where no one knows if you are a dog.
What Might Be the Most Important Story You Have Not Heard About the Oak Creek Massacre
Yes, the events in Oak Creek are a tragedy, but this was not the only act of right wing bigoted domestic terrorism in recent months, it wasn’t even the only act of right wing bigoted domestic terrorism this weekend.
Some Klan wannabee firebombed a Mosque in Joplin Missouri.
These are not isolated incidents. Rather this is a part of a deliberate effort to create an environment that encourages people with a few screws loose to engage in acts of terrorism.
The assassination of George Tiller is another part of this trend.
Well This Might Explain the Whole Tax Return Thing
Marcy “Emptywheel” Wheeler finally has a decent theory as to why Mitt Rmoney is refusing to release his taxes.
Basically this theory concludes that Reid (a fellow Mormon) has good information that Romney has been shorting the Mormon Church on his tithes:
For the record, I think Mitt has multiple reasons to hide his tax returns. I think it’s largely about what his returns would say about his business practices, it’s partly about his tax shelters, and, one way or another, it’s about his relative loyalty to his church and his country.
But here’s a thought.
Harry Reid, Mormon, and Senator from Nevada, is the one leading the charge to return attention to Mitt’s tax returns.
He attributes his claim that Mitt paid no taxes for ten years to someone who invested with Bain. Now he may know his purported Bain-related source because he travels the halls of power. But Bain has very close cultural ties to the Mormon Church–according to some, improperly so. Moreover, because Mitt and other Bain execs have given so much to the Mormon Church in the form of Bain stocks, high ranking Mormon insiders may have a better idea of what Bain Capital actually does–and how Mitt valued his holdings before he gave them to the Church–than most others.
So Reid may be calling out Mitt not just as a former boxer, but as someone who shares a very wealth-based and close knit faith with Mitt.
Add in the practice–which even an outsider like me saw when I lived in UT and worked for a predominantly Mormon company in the 1990s–of gossip about tithing, notably whether Mormon colleagues tithed pre- or post-tax. That’s another reason why Reid may have a better sense of what Mitt’s tax practices look like than DC pundits might guess on face value.
Finally, though, there’s this. If one of the reasons Mitt is hiding his tax returns does have to do with under-tithing (as the returns Mitt released may suggest), and not just his business practices and tax shelters, remember that both CO (2.15%) and especially NV (over 5%) have larger Mormon populations than average. Nate Silver considers NV the state with the biggest return on investment per voter (CO is 6th). These are lean Democratic states that Mitt might need to win if Obama’s attacks on Bain outsourcing continue to turn the race in the manufacturing swing states (though if Mitt doesn’t win FL and VA, it may be moot anyway). Driving down the Mormon enthusiasm for Mitt might be one way to boost Obama’s chances.
It’s an interesting theory.
H/t Atrios.
He Can See Russia from His Mansions!
H/t Vonners at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.
I Missed this Bon Mot from [i]The Onion[/i]
Seen on Facebook
Heh
A Baloney Sandwich
Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, who rose to infamy when he pepper sprayed women who were peacefully behind a police line, has been thrown to the wolves by the city of New York, which is refusing to defend him in civil suits filed against him:
New York City has distanced itself from a high-ranking police official accused of firing pepper spray at Occupy Wall Street protesters, taking the unusual step of declining to defend him in a civil lawsuit over the incident.
The decision means Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna also could be personally liable for financial damages that may arise out of the suit, said lawyers familiar with similar civil-rights claims.
The 29-year veteran has asked a judge to reverse the city. “He wasn’t doing this as Anthony Bologna, mister. He was doing this as Anthony Bologna, deputy inspector, NYPD,” said his lawyer, Louis La Pietra. Mr. Bologna’s union, the Captains Endowment Association, is now covering the cost of his defense.
Mr. Bologna was one of the most contentious public figures to emerge out of frequent clashes between Occupy Wall Street protesters and police officers last fall. A video that purported to show him aiming pepper spray at a group of demonstrators who were being held behind orange netting was widely viewed on the Internet.
Four weeks after the Sept. 24 incident, which allegedly occurred during an unpermitted march that ended in dozens of arrests, an internal investigation found Mr. Bologna in violation of New York Police Department guidelines. He was given a departmental punishment called a command discipline and docked 10 vacation days.
The city’s action is an uncommon occurrence, and I’m wondering if this means that he will start rolling on higher-ups.
This should get interesting.
$10 Billion
The program to extend the life of the B-61 nuclear bomb is looking to have a price tag in excess of $10 billion: (Paid subscription required)
In the Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration, (NNSA), officials of nuclear weapons programs try to keep them out of the limelight. But extending the life of the B61 is attracting all kinds of unwanted attention.
The cost of the nuclear bomb has doubled, with estimates now projecting that the weapon designed to defend Europe could cost $10 billion. On top of the weapon’s ballooning price tag, the Air Force is working on a $1.2 billion tail kit program that adds a limited guidance capability to the bomb. And the arms control community is starting to buzz about the implications.News about the B61’s cost growth and two-year schedule delay is gaining traction on Capitol Hill. The concern among lawmakers could have implications for the program and the NNSA that oversees the U.S. nuclear force.B61 bombs are the oldest in the U.S. stockpile. They entered the force in the 1970s, and can be used on fighter jets and long-range bombers. The arsenal has five different versions, both strategic and tactical, focused on protecting NATO members.The latest life-extension program (LEP) aims to extend their life , merging four of those variants, all with different-sized explosive capabilities, into the B61-12. The B61-12 would draw on the design of the smallest nuclear explosive, or yield, weapon. The administration says using one variant will save money, and the B61-12 weapon would add an advanced security system to prevent unauthorized access to the weapons.
Serious, $10 billion to standardize on one bomb variant, and $12.2 billion to give it a tail steering guidance system?
These numbers are f%$#ing nuts!
Banks Got Eated
Yep, bank number 50 40, Waukegan Savings Bank of Weaukegan, IL, and credit union number 8 (I missed one) A M Community Credit Union of Kenosha, WI.
So here is another late bank failure Friday.
Here is the graph pr0n (FDIC only)
Good Riddance
In another Friday news dump, we discover that Cass Sunstein will be leaving his position as head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs.
The man has been a train wreck if you are interested at all in the idea of regulation being a way to protect the public welfare:
“Cass Sunstein is the most well-connected and smartest guy who’s ever held the job,” said Rena Steinzor, president of the Center for Progressive Reform and a professor at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law. “But he’s also done untold damage.”
…
Few proposed rules escaped his gaze or his editor’s pen. Of the hundreds of regulations issued by the administration as of late last year, three-quarters were changed at OIRA, often at the urging of corporate interests, according to an analysis from the Center for Progressive Reform, a liberal-leaning group that monitors federal regulation. For rules from the Environmental Protection Agency, the figure was closer to 80 percent, the group found. In virtually every case, the rule was weakened, the group claimed.
Professor Steinzor cited Mr. Sunstein’s role in the killing of the E.P.A.’s proposed tightening of the standard for ozone pollution, the indefinite delay of rules governing coal ash disposal and the withdrawal earlier this year of a proposed update of child agricultural labor standards.
And here is the money quote:
Mr. Sunstein’s recommendations carry extraordinary weight, White House officials said, but the ultimate decisions in those cases were made by the president, his senior political advisers or cabinet officers.
We also have these comments:
“It’s a glorious day,” said Frank O’Donnell, of the group Clean Air Watch. “Sunstein has been a blot on the landscape.”
And from an Obama adversary:
“The Chamber has enjoyed a good working relationship with Cass Sunstein and we wish him well in his return to Harvard Law,” said a spokeswoman for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Despite its happiness with Sunstein, the agency has spent millions of dollars attacking the president’s policies.
I think that the fact that the US Chamber of Commerce liked him is the best evidence about how harmful he was to the basic idea of regulations that protect the public.
The US Chamber of Commerce is to the idea of good governance and reasonable regulation as Colonel Sanders was to the life span of chickens.
And important thing to remember though is that the Cossacks work for the Czar.
As to the greater meaning to his departure, my guess is that Obama is looking to appeal to the base for the election.
I Hate My Son*
So, we were driving back from the bookstore, and I ended up mentioningMad Magazine, and he goes, “What’s that?”
So I feel like I’m older than Methuselah, because, after all, what twelve year old doesn’t know about Mad?
So I explain what it is, and give him a primer on the magazine, and the history of EC Comics, and what it was all about.
As we are parking, he reveals that he is fully cognizant of Mad, and that he’s been pulling my chain.
Sharper than a serpent’s tooth.
I am currently developing an appropriate plan for revenge.
*Not really, but I have to get him back for this.