Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank has earned the
distinction of "Porker of the Year" from
the group Citizens Against Government Waste. With 49 percent of the
votes, Frank beat out Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Calif. Rep.
Maxine Waters, who came in 2nd and 3rd,
The Global Debt Bomb at Forbes
Updated and related topic: Niall Ferguson video interview discussing Debt
Appalled In Greenwich Connecticut
Clifford S. Asness, Ph.D.
AQR Capital Management, LLCPreliminary version last updated: January 24th, 2010
Comments welcome: comments@StumblingOnTruth.com
Related essays available at: www.StumblingOnTruth.comThe President, in these last few days following the second revolution against big government started in Massachusetts, has come out swinging savagely against “banks” in numerous ways in numerous speeches. Let’s be clear. There are legitimate issues and reforms to be discussed. But my first question is why this exact moment? The answer is simple. When a failing government with authoritarian impulses needs help, it’s pretty standard strategy to call down a pogrom against an unpopular class of citizens. The bankers are nothing if not unpopular. Unfortunately for this President, he will, I hope, find the financial community not cowering from his Cossacks on a shtetl in the Pale of Settlement (Greenwich, CT), but meeting his accusations with logic and patriotism.
This is a short but terrific description of the moral laxity in the boardroom on Wall Street and apparently in the air in Washington. Please read it all.A successful economy hinges on trust. Trade must be mutually advantageous the vast majority of the time, with buyer and seller both content. If we are cheated 1 per cent of the time, we are dismayed, but we write it off. If we are cheated 10 per cent of the time, we practise “defensive trade.” We draft contracts carefully, seeking to anticipate every possible abuse.Why poor moral ethics prove costly
By Rob Arnott
Published: January 24 2010 10:40 | Last updated: January 24 2010 10:40
In 2004, I wrote a piece in the Financial Analysts Journal on the distinction between moral ethics (doing only what is right) versus legal ethics (doing only what is allowed). In a very real sense, the credit bubble and its aftermath hinges on this conflict. Worse, we are going further down this path, at a prodigious pace.
This is the first two paragraphs from this editorial on IBD today. it isn't long but it is very good read the rest by following the link.Regulations: Apparently believing the best defense is a good offense, the president wasted no time after his jarring loss on medical overhaul in upping the ante on another of his signature issues — financial change.
Just as Speaker Nancy Pelosi confessed Thursday she lacked the votes to quickly move the Senate's sweeping health care bill through the House — foreclosing one way to keep hope alive on socialized medicine — President Obama approached the lectern at the Executive Office Building to drop a bombshell of his own. Training his sights back on Wall Street, he called for tougher regulations that would limit the size of banks and their ability to engage in propriety trading.
"Many economists say the four-week average of jobless claims would need to fall consistently below 425,000 to signal that the economy is close to generating net job gains." In sum, said Reuters, "employers are reluctant to hire."I happen to agree with Volcker that the separation of commercial banking from the invetment bank is a good thing but, this President believes profits are a crime agains the poor. He doesn't understand the profit incentive is what drives innovation and creativity in the economy. Obama believes in only one incentive, fear of the powerful. He finally listened to Volcker long enough to realize he can threaten and show the banks how tough he is by bullying them.To which we say: No kidding! Who in his right mind would be hiring in an environment like this, with the government taking control or clamping down on one industry after another?
American officials now believe Britain poses a major threat to Western security because of the large number of al-Qaeda supporters that are active in the country. Two years ago Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, estimated that there were 2,000 al-Qaeda sympathisers based in Britain – the largest concentration of al-Qaeda activists in any Western country. But American officials, who regularly refer to “Londonistan” because of the high concentration of Islamic radicals in the capital, believe the figure is growing all the time. They point out that recent al-Qaeda terror attacks planned in Britain have been the work of British-based Muslims, many of whom have been trained in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan.The entire article is here and is worth your time.
Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- A case of trading-pit envy is rumbling in Chicago.
Been there done both and most of the time the eledtronic is better ( for the publi), but if there is crisis or panic the pit is better. A group of guys in a given pit make prices in that commodity. That is who they are and in a crazy market they still do it. Screen traders just change to a more manageable symbol or different commodity leaving a market vacant or very thin. A mixture of both is the best solution.“Floored,” a documentary that shows the fading of the city’s rough and rowdy open-outcry culture, is driving some of Chicago’s top electronic traders to defend the drama of their mouse-click world. The film is in the middle of a one-week run at the Gene Siskel Film Center.
As the clock ticks down to the final decisive vote in Congress on Obamacare, one question stands above all else: Is there one Senate Democrat with the political courage to stand with the American people and say no? Who among the 60 Senate Democrats will put the national interest above partisan politics and say to his or her colleagues that "We must start over and do this the right way"? Regardless whether one favors or opposes a government takeover of the American health care system, the reckless manner in which Obamacare has been brought to this final decisive moment offers five indisputable reasons for casting a vote for principle and against blind partisanship.
