Month: August 2013

What a Surprise

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When Whites are asked about affirmative action in the context of Asian-Americans, suddenly they are much more supportive of affirmative action:

Critics of affirmative action generally argue that the country would be better off with a meritocracy, typically defined as an admissions system where high school grades and standardized test scores are the key factors, applied in the same way to applicants of all races and ethnicities.

But what if they think they favor meritocracy but at some level actually have a flexible definition, depending on which groups would be helped by certain policies? Frank L. Samson, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Miami, thinks his new research findings suggest that the definition of meritocracy used by white people is far more fluid than many would admit, and that this fluidity results in white people favoring certain policies (and groups) over others.

Specifically, he found, in a survey of white California adults, they generally favor admissions policies that place a high priority on high school grade-point averages and standardized test scores. But when these white people are focused on the success of Asian-American students, their views change.

As the saying goes, “Where you stand depends upon where you sit.”

Linkage

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I really want to know the backstory.

Where the Conventional Wisdom is Wrong

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This New York Times article about German authorities freaking out about Germany’s falling birth rate:

At first glance, this town in central Germany, with rows of large houses built when it was a thriving center of toy manufacturing, looks tidy and prosperous. But Heiko Voigt, the deputy mayor here, can point out dozens of vacant homes that he doubts will ever be sold.

The reality is that the German population is shrinking and towns like this one are working hard to hide the emptiness. Mr. Voigt has already supervised the demolition of 60 houses and 12 apartment blocs, strategically injecting grassy patches into once-dense complexes.

“We are trying to keep the town looking good,” he said.

There is perhaps nowhere better than the German countryside to see the dawning impact of Europe’s plunge in fertility rates over the decades, a problem that has frightening implications for the economy and the psyche of the Continent. In some areas, there are now abundant overgrown yards, boarded-up windows and concerns about sewage systems too empty to work properly. The work force is rapidly graying, and assembly lines are being redesigned to minimize bending and lifting.

In its most recent census, Germany discovered it had lost 1.5 million inhabitants. By 2060, experts say, the country could shrink by an additional 19 percent, to about 66 million.

Demographers say a similar future awaits other European countries, and the issue grows more pressing every day as Europe’s seemingly endless economic troubles accelerate the decline. But bogged down with failed banks and dwindling budgets, few are in any position to do anything about it.

………

If Germany is to avoid a major labor shortage, experts say, it will have to find ways to keep older workers in their jobs, after decades of pushing them toward early retirement, and it will have to attract immigrants and make them feel welcome enough to make a life here. ………

This is not a problem.

A labor shortage is not a problem.  One only has to look at what happened after the Black Death hit Europe:  Wages for ordinary folks exploded, because of  this.

The top of the feudal hierarchy was hurting, because they lost power, and wealth, relative to the hoi polloi, but that is a good thing.

Doubtless, the costs of supporting an elderly population will increase per capita, which is a sort of social safety net that did not exist in 1350, but if we look at things like a Social Security fix the costs for a timely fix are relatively low.

Even if the taxes of the 99% go up by 5%, and their wages go up by 10%, the 99% wins.

Do the math.

Ancient history, bitches, it just works.

I’m a Little Bit Less Enthused About Martin O’Malley Now

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It turns out that he campaigned with corrupt Joe Lieberman wannabee Cory Booker:

Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) will campaign for New Jersey Senate candidate Cory Booker (D) on Thursday.

The governor, considered a likely 2016 presidential contender, sent out a tweet on Tuesday alerting his followers to his plans.

“Excited to join @corybooker on the campaign trail in New Jersey this Thursday,” he tweeted.

According to PolitickerNJ, O’Malley will make stops on his own in Trenton and Paterson and appear with Booker in Newark, N.J.

He’s previously helped another New Jersey Democrat, gubernatorial candidate Barbara Buono, to raise cash, lending his name to a fundraising email sent out by her campaign last month.

I understand the motivation, he wanted to hook up with a winning campaign to show that he has some political pull to aid his embryonic presidential bid, but Booker is a corrupt bankster loving SOB.

Oh, well.

FCC Takes a Half Step in the Right Direction

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If you follow telecommunications developments, you are no doubt aware, that, following Superstorm Sandy, Verizon decided not to fix the conventional wire lines and instead used something called fixed wireless (Voice Link™).

Basically, it means unreliable 911, credit card machines don’t work properly, DSL is not available, and it’s reliability is suspect.

Verizon applied for permission from the FCC to shaft its customers by making its removal of copper a permanent things.

Well, today, the FCC voted to move Verizon’s application off the fast track:

For those following the summer sitcom That Darned Voice Link, it looks like the FCC has now decided to order new episodes for the fall season.

Short version: the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Wireline Competition Bureau issued a public notice taking Verizon’s Section 214(a) request to discontinue copper-based TDM service on Fire Island, NY and Mantaloking, NJ off the “fast track” streamlined process on the grounds that it needed more information before it could properly consider the request. Had the FCC not acted before August 27, the request would have been automatically granted.

The Bureau made it clear that this was not in any way a determination on the merits of the request. But in light of several substantive filings raising questions about whether substituting Voice Link for copper would (in the words of the statute) “reduce, or impair service to a community” (including requests from both the NY Public Service Corporation (PSC) and the NJ Board of Public Utilities (BPU) to hold off until they complete their state level inquiries), the Bureau wanted more information to properly consider the request.Consistent with this, the Bureau also sent Verizon a request for additional data that covers the areas you would hope the FCC would want to know about before deciding whether substituting Voice Link for copper lines “impairs” service to the local community.

The Bureau made it clear that this was not in any way a determination on the merits of the request. But in light of several substantive filings raising questions about whether substituting Voice Link for copper would (in the words of the statute) “reduce, or impair service to a community” (including requests from both the NY Public Service Corporation (PSC) and the NJ Board of Public Utilities (BPU) to hold off until they complete their state level inquiries), the Bureau wanted more information to properly consider the request.Consistent with this, the Bureau also sent Verizon a request for additional data that covers the areas you would hope the FCC would want to know about before deciding whether substituting Voice Link for copper lines “impairs” service to the local community.

So, it’s not a formal decision, but the fact that they rejected a fast track does not bode well for Verizon.

Fabulous!

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Pastor Scott Lively, a homophobic bigot who was one of the Americans involved in drafting, and lobbying for Uganda’s “Kill the Gays” bill, has has been sued in court for crimes against humanity:

A federal judge on Wednesday denied a motion to dismiss a crimes against humanity case brought against evangelical pastor Scott Lively of Massachusetts.

Lively is accused of violating international law by inciting the persecution of LGBT individuals in Uganda. The lawsuit was filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of Sexual Minorities of Uganda (SMUG) in 2012.

“We are gratified that the court recognized the persecution and the gravity of the danger faced by our clients as a result of Scott Lively’s actions,” CCR Attorney Pam Spees said. “Lively’s single-minded campaign has worked to criminalize their very existence, strip away their fundamental rights and threaten their physical safety.”

The lawsuit alleged that Lively aided the persecution of LGBT people in Uganda over the past decade and inspired notorious anti-LGBT legislation known as the “Kill the Gays” bill.

Here’s hoping that they take him for all he’s worth.

H/t BS at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Linkage

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From Paul Jamiol

More Lying Liars

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This time it’s Attorney General Eric “Place” Holder, and he is lying about prosecutions for mortgage fraud.

Not only did he puff up the about the numbers and amount of mortgage prosecutions, but the DoJ retroactively edited the transcript of his speech on this subject:

Not sure that even the Bushies ever tried pulling the “modify the text of old archived speeches a year later” trick.

Yes, this is a level of mendacity that would impress Karl Rove.

Michael Bloomberg Gets a Well Deserved Smackdown on Stop and Frisk

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Ta-Nehisi Coates nails it when he calls the judge’s ruling, “Ending Michael Bloomberg’s Racist Profiling Campaign:

As I’ve noted before, Ray Kelly and Michael Bloomberg justify the number of stops by arguing that black and Latino men commit the majority of violent crime. This position intentionally ignores the data which shows, even after controlling for crime rates, the NYPD still discriminates. It’s very important that people interested in this case understand that. And as always, anyone who is interested in the case really needs to listen to This American Life‘s reporting on Officer Adrian Schoolcraft.

He’s actually easier on the bigot Bobsey twins Kelly and Bloomberg than I have been.

I have described this as Bull Connor bullsh%$ and described it as an attempt to terrorize minorities.

Bait and Switch on Healthcare ……… Again

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This time, it is the out of pocket limits for group plans that has been delayed:

In another setback for President Obama’s health care initiative, the administration has delayed until 2015 a significant consumer protection in the law that limits how much people may have to spend on their own health care.

The limit on out-of-pocket costs, including deductibles and co-payments, was not supposed to exceed $6,350 for an individual and $12,700 for a family. But under a little-noticed ruling, federal officials have granted a one-year grace period to some insurers, allowing them to set higher limits, or no limit at all on some costs, in 2014.

The grace period has been outlined on the Labor Department’s Web site since February, but was obscured in a maze of legal and bureaucratic language that went largely unnoticed. When asked in recent days about the language — which appeared as an answer to one of 137 “frequently asked questions about Affordable Care Act implementation” — department officials confirmed the policy.

The discovery is likely to fuel continuing Republican efforts this fall to discredit the president’s health care law.

Under the policy, many group health plans will be able to maintain separate out-of-pocket limits for benefits in 2014. As a result, a consumer may be required to pay $6,350 for doctors’ services and hospital care, and an additional $6,350 for prescription drugs under a plan administered by a pharmacy benefit manager.

Some consumers may have to pay even more, as some group health plans will not be required to impose any limit on a patient’s out-of-pocket costs for drugs next year. If a drug plan does not currently have a limit on out-of-pocket costs, it will not have to impose one for 2014, federal officials said Monday.

The health law, signed more than three years ago by Mr. Obama, clearly established a single overall limit on out-of-pocket costs for each individual or family. But federal officials said that many insurers and employers needed more time to comply because they used separate companies to help administer major medical coverage and drug benefits, with separate limits on out-of-pocket costs.

Gee, they had only 4 years to get this working, and they “can’t get their computers to work”.

Am I the only one who is beginning to suspect that maybe the real intent of Obamacare is to eliminate employer sponsored health plans?

This is exactly the sort of thing that Obama’s economic brain trust ***cough*** Cass Sunstein ***cough*** would like.

There are a lot of academic economists out there who hate employer sponsored health insurance.

This is Not Going to End Well………

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The regular reader(s) of my blog may be aware of my travails with RP the feral cat.*

The short version is that we caught her in a Have-a-Heart trap, and brought her in.

When I let her out she freaked, and ran into the basement ceiling, but not before biting me and giving me puncture wounds through oven mitts.

The next day, I saw her outside, so she figured a way out of the house.

When we got our cats, RP continued to come into the house somehow, and eat our cats food. (Video here) We still haven’t figured out how she does that.

A few weeks after that, RP fell out of the ceiling, and I caught her, and she peed on me and clawed the hell out of me.  (I did not blog on that particular affront to my already limited dignity)

I even made a cat shelter outside in the vain hope of giving her an alternative to going into the house. No such luck.

Well, this morning, I got a call from Sharon†. RP was in the house, and had lured our kitten Destructo into the ceiling.

The kitten had gotten stuck (or maybe just confused)and was panicking, and my wife and kids had to reach into the suspended ceiling to get him out.

While this was going on, RP was watching with what my wife describe as smug amusement.

It’s on. It is totally on.

I’m halfway through cobbling together a trap made from the cat travel cage and the aforementioned Have-a-Heart trap, and if it works, we will either try to tame the cat, or take to a shelter and get it the f%$# out of our neighborhood ……… and my house.

I do realize that I have been channeling Robert Redford playing John Dortmunder in the 1972 film, The Hot Rock

Dortmunder: Not me. I’ve got no choice. I’m not superstitious. And I don’t believe in jinxes, but that stone’s jinxed me and it won’t let go. I’ve been damned near bitten, shot at, peed on and robbed. And worse is gonna happen before it’s done. So I’m takin’ my stand. I’m going all the way. Either I get it, or it gets me.

Considering my record with this cat, I can only conclude that the chances are remarkably good that it will get me.

There is a part of me that fears I am so going to get killed or maimed by this f%$#ing cat.

*RP stands for Rodentia Phage, or Ravage and Pillage, or maybe just RP. I don’t know for sure, but it is a cat, so it does not come when it is called.
†Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

Healthcare Quote of the Day

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In this New York Times article, they discuss the consequences of the increasingly frenetic pace of mergers among hospitals.

One line of the story is particularly important:

“The rhetoric is all about efficiency,” said Karen Ignagni, the chief executive of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group that represents insurers. “The reality is all about higher prices.”

Notwithstanding any “efficiencies”, the price hikes come from the fact larger chains have more pricing power when negotiating with insurance companies and the government.

It serves to illustrate a point: We do not have a healthcare cost problem in the United States, we have a healthcare price problem in the United States.

This is a classic case of a market failure.

He is Probably Going to Win the Primary Tomorrow, but Cory Booker is a Corrupt Rat-Bastard

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You may remember his wankitude in the 2012 elections, when he said that Obama being mean to Bain Capital gave him a sad, but it’s worse than that.

He is deeply and openly on the take:

The conference room in the Mountain View, Calif., headquarters of LinkedIn was packed with the stars of Silicon Valley. Top executives of Facebook, Google and Twitter gathered around a table; the billionaire Sean Parker looked on from a back row. The guest of honor: Cory A. Booker, the mayor of Newark.

 The stated purpose of the gathering was to give Mr. Booker, already a Twitter fanatic, a seminar on social-networking technologies. But hanging in the air was an electrifying sense of being in the presence of an ascendant politician they believed understood the potential of the new digital world they were shaping.

 “He’s part of this tide,” said Gina Bianchini, an entrepreneur who was at the meeting, in May 2009. “It feels like he’s one of us.”

 Two and a half years later, some of those same Silicon Valley leaders joined forces again on Mr. Booker’s behalf. But this time, their efforts resulted in giving Mr. Booker, until then an admired outsider, the equivalent of full-fledged membership in their elite circle: an Internet start-up of his own.

 Mr. Booker personally has obtained money for the start-up, called Waywire, from influential investors, including Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman. A year after its debut, Waywire has already endured a round of layoffs and had just 2,207 visitors in June, according to Compete, a Web-tracking service. The company says it is still under development.

 Yet in a financial disclosure filed last month, Mr. Booker, 44, revealed that his stake in the company was worth $1 million to $5 million. Taken together, his other assets were worth no more than $730,000.

 That revelation, with just a week left in Mr. Booker’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate, shows how a few tech moguls and entrepreneurs, many of them also campaign donors, not only made a financial bet on the mayor’s political future but also provided the brainpower and financing to help create a company that could make him very rich.

Why is this blatant influence peddling?

Well, the tell is that Waywire hired the 15 year old son of the head of CNN and gave him stock options:(Yes, it’s NY Post, but echos the New York Times story linked above, and it is far less oblique)

He isn’t even old enough to drive — but CNN President Jeff Zucker’s teenage son has already resigned from a cushy position at Cory Booker’s closely watched Internet start-up.

 After somehow scoring a seat on the advisory board of the rising Democratic star’s Waywire video-sharing site, 15-year-old Andrew Zucker abruptly quit yesterday amid questions over his qualifications.

 The rich kid’s consulting career as a “millennial adviser” ended just hours after it was revealed that he had been granted stock options in the firm co-founded by Booker, the Newark mayor who polls show is a shoo-in for the US Senate after a special election.

 “Despite the fact that his affiliation with Waywire was extremely limited to only an advisory capacity, in order to avoid even the perception of a conflict, Jeff’s son has resigned from the Waywire advisory board, effective immediately,” CNN said in a statement.

 News of Andrew’s stock deal lit up social media yesterday, with critics on Twitter branding it a “gross nepotism alert.”

 Corporate-governance experts also called his hiring highly unusual, saying they’d never before heard of anyone so young getting such a cushy gig.

 Advisory boards are usually stocked with “seasoned folks who have been through the process of making that kind of a start-up work, or enhancing the capacity of a company so it can move to an IPO [initial public offering] or the next level of business,” said Eleanor Bloxham, CEO of The Value Alliance. “So you’re not generally looking in the high-school age range.”

The defense is that he got less than qualified than, “Lady Gaga’s manager.”

Seriously, the royalty of Silicon Valley is showering their largess on this guy because it’s such a good idea? For a web site that got 2,207 visitors in June?

Seriously, I got 1,457 unique visitors in June, and I’m the worst writer on the internet.™

But wait, there’s more. There is also the case of his old law firm, which continued to pay him for years while getting lucrative contracts from the city:

Cory Booker pocketed “confidential” annual payouts from his former law firm while serving as Newark mayor.

 Booker, the front-runner in New Jersey’s Senate race, received five checks from the Trenk DiPasquale law firm from 2007 until 2011. During that time, the firm raked in more than $2 million in fees from local agencies over which Booker has influence.

 “This was a settlement buyout for my interest in the firm,” the mayor told The Post at a campaign stop in Jersey City yesterday. “I had an equity stake, and we had a negotiated settlement.”

 Booker worked at the West Orange firm for five years, leaving in 2006 when he was elected Newark’s mayor to avoid “the appearance of impropriety.”

 He refused to answer how much he received in the five years after leaving.

 “It’s all been disclosed for the last seven years,” Booker said.

 Not quite. Booker’s state financial disclosures from 2006 to 2011 list two sources of income — the city of Newark and the law firm. The forms mandate reporting of income over $2,000 a year, but do not require an exact sum or range.

 Booker’s closed lips on the earnings fly in the face of his public stances. In 2002, he released his tax returns during his unsuccessful race against incumbent Mayor Sharpe James, and ripped James for not doing the same.

 The returns “provide the only clues as to how many deals the mayor is involved in . . . and the only record of the money he’s making on the side,” Booker said at the time.

 When The Post asked Friday for Booker’s recent returns, his campaign refused to turn them over.

And then there are his positions on the issues:

  • He supports privatizing public education and handing it to Wall Street.
  • He has repeatedly allied himself with religious organizations that have sponsored Uganda’s “Kill the gays” bill.
  • His close relationship with Scaife/Olin/Koch funded political organizations.
  • His founding an organization heavily funded by the Walton (Wal-Mart) family.

If he wins the primary, he is almost certain to win the general.

First, New Jersey is very blue now, and second, the Republican field is best defined as a clown show.

Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever………

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Look at the White House transcripts of the most recent press conference:

Q: Can you understand, though, why some people might not trust what you’re saying right now about wanting to —

 THE PRESIDENT: No, I can’t.

This is wrong on so many levels:

  • The constitution was explicitly created to make sure that we did not have to trust the authorities.  It was intended to create contention, and quite honestly distrust, to make sure that powers are limited.
  • He does not understand how people might be concerned that he might not be completely forthcoming.

I am not sure what is more alarming, his complete lack of understanding of the critical in the Constitution concept of the separation of powers, or the pervasive narcissism.

I would be hard pressed to find a better illustration of why the founding fathers were concerned about the possibility of excesses by the executive.

White People Do Not Trust Cops Either

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Susan Webber, better known by her nom de blog Yves Smith is white.

How white is she? This white: Harvard BA in literature and history (Phi Beta Kappa), MBA Harvard, Salomon Brothers, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey & Co, head of M&A for Sumitomo Bank, and now she is the head of Aurora Advisory.

And guess what, after 4 decades of the war on drugs, almost as long a period of militarization of law enforcement, and 10 years of anti-terror hysteria, she now does not trust police officers:

Since I live the most boring personal life imaginable, my interactions with the police types are limited to the every-thirty-five-year big speeding ticket, the TSA, and passport and customs officials (well take it back, I have a very long ago funny story when I went on a car ride in Harlem with a couple of black men who offered me a lift to try to find a kid on a bike who’d snagged my wallet out of my hand. The men who trundled up in the car knew the woman who’d run down the block ahead of me trying to apprehend or at least identify the robber, so they looked to be neighbors in that little corner of Harlem. The men dropped me back where I’d called 911 on a pay phone, this being in the pre-cell phone days. The cops had just arrived and drove me home and thought I was clearly insane to have take up an offer of local assistance).

 I have heard bad stories about cops from cab drivers here (New York City and Bloomberg in particular has it in for cabbies for reasons I’ve never been able to fathom) and former DAs in other cities (for instance, that decades ago it was routine for cops to plant evidence and fabricate testimony in high profile cases if they couldn’t find a logical suspect fast enough). I’ve also heard some good stories about cops from local people and have seen them have to perform some unpleasant duties (like enforcing ridiculous cordons mandated by Presidential visits, the degree of lockdown and the diversions forced on locals who wind up on the wrong side of lines are insane, and the police stay patient with irate locals. I suspect they think the procedures are overkill, and even with all the overtime, they look none too happy about it). And then we have the really hair-raising media accounts, of paramilitary crackdowns on Occupy Wall Street and other dissident groups, of tasers and pepper spray and pain-inflicting zip handcuffs becoming appallingly routine.

 I’ve noticed a shift in my reactions to police. While I generally assume they need to be handled with care, I’ve assumed in certain tame neighborhoods that they aren’t so bad (as in the local needs don’t call for much aggressive policing), such as my immediate ‘hood and coastal Maine.

 But the other night, I saw a fire engine pulled up outside the local fire house. It had its lights on but no siren and wasn’t going anywhere. There was a cone next to it. I wasn’t paying much attention but it looked to have been deliberately parked close enough to the curb to allow traffic to pass.

 I was walking towards the fire engine when I saw a cop stop a cab trying to go by the parked fire engine (I didn’t see any police car visible, so I’m not sure how he came to be there). He asked for the driver’s license and registration and told the driver in a normal conversational tone, “Park over there, this is going to take a long time.”

 Now I have no idea what lead to this. I see a policeman taking a cabbie off duty (and remember, cabbies rent their vehicles, so this will force they guy into a loss regardless of what else cams out of this interaction). I realized later than with no information either way, no basis for knowing whether the cop was being completely proper or not, I assumed the cop was likely not in the right.

 Maybe I’m just an outlier, but here I am, in one of the tamest spots (in terms of police likely to get rough with a resident going about their normal business) and my default assumption with my own police force has become not to trust them. That may have been what I believed on some deeper level before, but that view has now become more apparent to me.

When someone like Ms. Smith/Webber sees a confrontation involving a cop, and immediately assumed that the cop was abusing his authority.

This is a direct consequence of the changes that we have made in our police forces.  They have gone from being peace officers that served the community into a paramilitary force that is intended to exert control of the community.

In other words, they have increasingly adopted a mind-set of an occupying force.

OOPS!

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Not only am I day late for bank failure Friday, but I also missed last weeks bank closure completely.

My bad.

As the graph below shows, nothing has been happening lately, and I stopped looking.

And here they are, ordered, and numbered for the year so far.

  1. First Community Bank of Southwest Florida (also operating as Community Bank of Cape Coral), Fort Meyers, FL  <==From August 1
  2. Bank of Wausau, Wausau, Wisconsin

Full FDIC list

So, here is the graph pr0n with last years numbers for comparison (FDIC only):