1/ What's new with the evil "too big to fail banks"?
Not much except they are getting a little desperate as profits are down......here is an interesting story about J.P. Morgan Chase, which is [quietly] as bad or worse than Goldman Sachs.....
It also shows an obscure corner of the financial markets that has multi-trillion exposure to fluctuations, the "tri-party repo market", which is incredibly risky but also powerful.....
JPMorgan has over 2 trillion in assets......so it's no wonder they own all of our politicians.....
Never mind the Squid. Keep your eye on the Whale.
JPMorgan, that is, which is not nearly as vilified as Goldman Sachs, but is bigger and potentially far more important to the global economy than the Vampire Squid.
With its size, reach and critical role in the still-thriving shadow banking system, JPMorgan will almost certainly play some role in the next financial crisis, whenever it happens.
JPMorgan is now the country's biggest commercial bank by assets, with nearly $2.3 trillion, a number that has increased since the financial crisis. It is also now the biggest investment bank in the entire world, Reuters reported on Thursday, citing a report by a research group called Coalition. Second on the list? The first loser, in other words? Goldman Sachs.
Along with Wells Fargo, the biggest U.S. bank by market valuation, JPMorgan is due on Friday to kick off a slew of first-quarter bank earnings reports. Bank profits are shrinking, with lending slow to recover from the recession and trading volume in stocks and bonds depressed. JPMorgan's earnings are expected to fall to $1.16 a share from $1.28 a share a year ago, according to an Investors Business Daily report. And that's supposed to be one of the better bank earnings reports.
2/ Bubba Watson made an amazing 155 yd hook shot to set up his Masters win.......this is a 1 minute video of him doing it, and below is the trajectory of the shot.....wow......
3/ Paul Krugman on how one of the stars of the Republican party Chris Christie, Governor of New Jersey, lied about the proposed rail tunnel between New York and NJ and cancelled it.....
One of the things this country desperately needs is investment in infrastructure, and this decision by the fat man was one of the worst political decisions ever made.....the right wingers don't care about the future folks, it's all about now.....
One general rule of modern politics is that the people who talk most about future generations — who go around solemnly declaring that we’re burdening our children with debt — are, in practice, the people most eager to sacrifice our future for short-term political gain. You can see that principle at work in the House Republican budget, which starts with dire warnings about the evils of deficits, then calls for tax cuts that would make the deficit even bigger, offset only by the claim to have a secret plan to make up for the revenue losses somehow or other.
And you can see it in the actions of Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey, who talks loudly about acting responsibly but may actually be the least responsible governor the state has ever had.
Mr. Christie’s big move — the one that will define his record — was his unilateral decision back in 2010 to cancel work that was already under way on a new rail tunnel linking New Jersey with New York. At the time, Mr. Christie claimed that he was just being fiscally responsible, while critics said that he had canceled the project just so he could raid it for funds.
Now the independent Government Accountability Office has weighed in with a report on the controversy, and it confirms everything the critics were saying.
Much press coverage of the new report focuses, understandably, on the evidence that Mr. Christie made false statements about the tunnel’s financing and cost.
4/ The megaband Coldplay with "Every Teardrop is a Waterfall"......this video should appeal to graffiti lovers, anyone who likes paint and great rock and roll......an excellent band......
5/ I very rarely agree with David Brooks, the right leaning columnist in the Times, but he nails it in this story. His point is there are two economies in this country - the global one where American companies are efficient and competitive with all comers, and our internal economy like health care, education and government.
Interesting point.....contrast buying an airline ticket on line with renewing your drivers license......and think about any medical office and how amazingly, incredibly inefficient they are....paper!
Good article for once.....
The creative dynamism of American business is astounding and a little terrifying. Over the past five years, amid turmoil and uncertainty, American businesses have shed employees, becoming more efficient and more productive. According to The Wall Street Journal on Monday, the revenue per employee at S.&P. 500 companies increased from $378,000 in 2007 to $420,000 in 2011.
These efficiency gains are boosting the American economy overall and American exports in particular. Two years ago, President Obama promised to double exports over the next five years. The U.S. might actually meet that target. As Tyler Cowen reports in a fantastic article in The American Interest called “What Export-Oriented America Means,” American exports are surging.
Cowen argues that America’s export strength will only build in the years ahead. He points to three trends that will boost the nation’s economic performance. First, smart machines. China and other low-wage countries have a huge advantage when factory floors are crowded with workers. But we are moving to an age of quiet factories, with more robots and better software. That reduces the importance of wage rates. It boosts American companies that make software and smart machines.
Then there is the shale oil and gas revolution. In the past year, fracking, a technology pioneered in the United States, has given us access to vast amounts of U.S. energy that can be sold abroad. Europe and Asian nations have much less capacity. As long as fracking can be done responsibly, U.S. exports should surge.
Finally, there is the growth of the global middle class. When China, India and such places were first climbing the income ladder, they imported a lot of raw materials from places like Canada, Australia and Chile to fuel the early stages of their economic growth. But, in the coming decades, as their consumers get richer, they will be importing more pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, planes and entertainment, important American products.
If Cowen’s case is right, the U.S. is not a nation in decline. We may be in the early days of an export boom that will eventually power an economic revival, including a manufacturing revival. But, as Cowen emphasizes, this does not mean nirvana is at hand.
His work leaves the impression that there are two interrelated American economies. On the one hand, there is the globalized tradable sector — companies that have to compete with everybody everywhere. These companies, with the sword of foreign competition hanging over them, have become relentlessly dynamic and very (sometimes brutally) efficient.
On the other hand, there is a large sector of the economy that does not face this global competition — health care, education and government. Leaders in this economy try to improve productivity and use new technologies, but they are not compelled by do-or-die pressure, and their pace of change is slower.
A rift is opening up. The first, globalized sector is producing a lot of the productivity gains, but it is not producing a lot of the jobs. The second more protected sector is producing more jobs, but not as many productivity gains. The hypercompetitive globalized economy generates enormous profits, while the second, less tradable economy is where more Americans actually live.
In politics, we are beginning to see conflicts between those who live in Economy I and those who live in Economy II. Republicans often live in and love the efficient globalized sector and believe it should be a model for the entire society. They want to use private health care markets and choice-oriented education reforms to make society as dynamic, creative and efficient as Economy I.
6/ Mrs. Brown's family faces a decision to put down the family dog.....with very funny results.....2 minutes of wonderful British humour.....
7/ Interesting article about student loan debt, and how it has reached the staggering sum of $900 billion......the Obama administration is at least trying to do something about this problem, but is being ferociously opposed by the Republicans......
Read the first line below.....
When there are Americans whose Social Security checks are being garnished to pay off their outstanding student loan debt, then it is clear that the United States has a problem. And the rising number of seniors who haven’t paid off loans taken out decades earlier is only one of several reasons to be alarmed by a report on student loan debt released by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in March.
Total debt, as of the end of the third quarter of 2011, had reached $870 billion, a number, the Fed was quick to point out, that eclipses what Americans owed on their credit cards and on their auto loans. According to a more recent report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the amount currently owed on both federal and private student loans has already broken the trillion-dollar barrier.
That’s not just bad for the people struggling to pay off their debt — people who, according to CFPB student loan ombudsman Rohit Chopra, are being punished for “doing exactly what they were told would be the key to a better life.” The burgeoning debt numbers also pose a growing threat to the larger economy: money spent paying back student loans is money that isn’t stimulating overall economic growth. Who will dare risk becoming a first-time home-buyer, for example, or buy a new car, when still struggling to pay back thousands of dollars on their education?
The Fed and CFPB reports launched a new round of well-deserved hand-wringing about the student loan “crisis.” But one of the things that makes this crisis different from previous financial disasters — like, for example, the subprime mortgage debacle — is that it actually hasn’t been ignored. In fact, you can make a good argument that the Obama administration has tackled the student loan crisis vigorously from the get-go, and achieved some signal triumphs, even while being ferociously opposed by Republicans at every single step of the way. Judging the overall success of Obama’s efforts is tricky — it may take many years for Obama’s reforms to make a dent in the overall quantity of outstanding debt — but there is little question that the White House is trying, and that for some students, at least, it has become easier to pay the bills.
8/ Ozzie Guillen, the manager of the Miami Marlins, had to grovel this week for having said he "loved" Fidel Castro.....and Bill Maher had some wonderful commentary on this bogus controversy on his show Friday night.....a funny 4 minutes......
9/ An excellent article from Time titled "Incarceration Nation"....and how we have by far the most people in prison in the world and how the overwhelming driver of jail time is our completely failed "war on drugs"......
Interesting that the President has just met with South American leaders, and there was a debate on decriminalising drugs [background below], which would take away the profit from the drug trade and lessen the enormous power of the cartels......
Of course Obama had to say the war on drugs is going just fine because of the toxic politics here.....imagine Fox News if he gave even an inch......
Very good story.....
Televangelist Pat Robertson recently made a gaffe. A gaffe, as journalist Michael Kinsley defined it, occurs when a political figure accidentally tells the truth. Robertson's truth is that America's drug war has failed and that the country should legalize marijuana. This view goes against the deepest political, moral and religious positions Robertson has held for decades, so imagine the blinding evidence that he has had to confront--and that has been mounting for years--on this topic.
Robertson drew attention to one of the great scandals of American life. "Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today," writes the New Yorker's Adam Gopnik. "Over all, there are now more people under 'correctional supervision' in America--more than 6 million--than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height."
Is this hyperbole? Here are the facts. The U.S. has 760 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. That's not just many more than in most other developed countries but seven to 10 times as many. Japan has 63 per 100,000, Germany has 90, France has 96, South Korea has 97, and Britain--with a rate among the highest--has 153. Even developing countries that are well known for their crime problems have a third of U.S. numbers. Mexico has 208 prisoners per 100,000 citizens, and Brazil has 242. As Robertson pointed out on his TV show, The 700 Club, "We here in America make up 5% of the world's population but we make up 25% of the [world's] jailed prisoners."
The background to the Summit of the Americas discussion......
A historic meeting of Latin America's leaders, to be attended by Barack Obama, will hear serving heads of state admit that the war on drugs has been a failure and that alternatives to prohibition must now be found.
The Summit of the Americas, to be held in Cartagena, Colombia is being seen by foreign policy experts as a watershed moment in the redrafting of global drugs policy in favour of a more nuanced and liberalised approach.
Otto Pérez Molina, the president of Guatemala, who as former head of his country's military intelligence service experienced the power of drug cartels at close hand, is pushing his fellow Latin American leaders to use the summit to endorse a new regional security plan that would see an end to prohibition. In the Observer, Pérez Molina writes: "The prohibition paradigm that inspires mainstream global drug policy today is based on a false premise: that global drug markets can be eradicated."
10/ The movie of the summer will be "The Dark Knight Rises", the third in the Batman trilogy, directed by Christopher Nolan with a $250 million budget......here is the first official trailer.......
11/ Fascinating and frightening scholarly analysis of the science of Fox News - how it's regular viewers are misinformed about major issues, how Fox deliberately distorts facts in it's reports, and how the feedback loop works - it's akin to brainwashing.......
A long article, and should be read by anyone who is not a conservative.......but as the story says conservatives won't read this anyway because it contradicts their belief system......
Really, really interesting.......
Indeed, by 2009, Hart and a team of researchers were able to perform a meta-analysis—a statistically rigorous overview of published studies on selective exposure—that pooled together 67 relevant studies, encompassing almost 8,000 individuals. As a result, he found that people overall were nearly twice as likely to consume ideologically congenial information as to consume ideologically inconvenient information—and in certain circumstances, they were even more likely than that.
When are people most likely to seek out self-affirming information? Hart found that they’re most vulnerable to selective exposure if they have defensive goals—for instance, being highly committed to a preexisting view, and especially a view that is tied to a person’s core values. Another defensive motivation identified in Hart’s study was closed-mindedness, which makes a great deal of sense. It is probably part of the definition of being closed-minded, or dogmatic, that you prefer to consume information that agrees with what you already believe.
So who’s closed-minded? Multiple studies have shown that political conservatives—e.g., Fox viewers--tend to have a higher need for closure. Indeed, this includes a group called right-wing authoritarians, who are increasingly prevalent in the Republican Party. This suggests they should also be more likely to select themselves into belief-affirming information streams, like Fox News or right-wing talk radio or the Drudge Report. Indeed, a number of research results support this idea.
In a study of selective exposure during the 2000 election, for instance, Stanford University’s Shanto Iyengar and his colleagues mailed a multimedia informational CD about the two candidates—Bush and Gore—to 600 registered voters and then tracked its use by a sample of 220 of them. As a result, they found that Bush partisans chose to consume more information about Bush than about Gore—but Democrats and liberals didn’t show the same bias toward their own candidate.
12/ Some of the better sketches on the Daily Show are the ones with the correspondents......and this one is great - the trio kick off the presidential campaign.....a funny five minutes.....
13/ And for a real world example of how even local Fox stations distort the news, our own Orlando affiliate WOFL got hammered this week for this story, calling neo-Nazi white supremacists patrolling Sanford a "civil rights " group......Floriduh indeed......
A local Florida Fox affiliate was forced to backtrack on Monday after airing a report calling a neo-Nazi group a "civil rights group."
A group called the National Socialist Movement announced last weekend that it would begin patrolling the streets of Sanford, the town where Trayvon Martin was killed.
The Southern Poverty Law Center calls the NSM "one of the largest neo-Nazi organizations in the country."
On Monday, WOFL, a Fox affiliate in Orlando, filed a report on the controversy.
"There's another civil rights group in town -- the National Socialist Movement," the reporter said, before a clip of the group's leader, Jeff Schoep, was played.
"We're a white civil rights organization," Schoep said. "...The blacks have Al Sharpton, the whites have the National Socialist Movement."
Todays video - the Bud Lite swear jar commercial......
Todays ladies jokes
What I Want In a Man, Original List
1. Handsome
2. Charming
3. Financially successful
4. A caring listener
5. Witty
6. In good shape
7. Dresses with style
8. Appreciates finer things
9. Full of thoughtful surprises
1. Handsome
2. Charming
3. Financially successful
4. A caring listener
5. Witty
6. In good shape
7. Dresses with style
8. Appreciates finer things
9. Full of thoughtful surprises
What I Want in a Man, Revised List (age 32)
1. Nice looking
2. Opens car doors, holds chairs
3. Has enough money for a nice dinner
4. Listens more than talks
5. Laughs at my jokes
6. Carries bags of groceries with ease
7. Owns at least one tie
8. Appreciates a good home-cooked meal
9. Remembers birthdays and anniversaries
What I Want in a Man, Revised List (age 42)
1. Not too ugly
2. Doesn't drive off until I'm in the car
3. Works steady - splurges on dinner out occasionally
4. Nods head when I'm talking
5. Usually remembers punch lines of jokes
6. Is in good enough shape to rearrange the furniture
7. Wears a shirt that covers his stomach
8. Knows not to buy champagne with screw-top lids
9. Remembers to put the toilet seat down
10. Shaves most weekends
What I Want in a Man, Revised List (age 52)
1. Keeps hair in nose and ears trimmed
2. Doesn't belch or scratch in public
3. Doesn't borrow money too often
4. Doesn't nod off to sleep when I'm venting
5. Doesn't re-tell the same joke too many times
6. Is in good enough shape to get off the couch on weekends
7. Usually wears matching socks and fresh underwear
8. Appreciates a good TV dinner
9. Remembers your name on occasion
10. Shaves some weekends
What I Want in a Man, Revised List (age 62)
1. Doesn't scare small children
2. Remembers where bathroom is
3. Doesn't require much money for upkeep
4. Only snores lightly when asleep
5. Remembers why he's laughing
6. Is in good enough shape to stand up by himself
7. Usually wears some clothes
8. Likes soft foods
9. Remembers where he left his teeth
10. Remembers that it's the weekend
What I Want in a Man, Revised List (age 72)
1. Breathing.
2. Doesn't miss the toilet.
Todays Norwegian blonde joke
Caught In a Blizzard
As Lena (a blonde) was getting off work one day in the middle of winter, it was snowing heavily. Visibility was near zero. Lena finally found her car, but wondered how she was ever going to get home. She started the car to warm it up and tried to think of what to do. Then she remembered her husband, Olaf's, advice. He had told her that if she were ever caught in a snow storm, she should wait for a snow plow to come by and follow it. That way she'd never get stuck in a snow drift.
So she waited and sure enough, a little while later a snow plow went by. Smiling, she began to follow it. Feeling a little smug, she couldn't wait to tell Olaf how she had followed his advice and got home without getting stuck.
After following the snow plow for quite a while, the plow stopped and the driver got out. He walked back to Lena's car and asked if she was all right? He was concerned because she had been following him for a long time.
"Sure," said Lena and she explained how Olaf had told her that if she ever got caught in a blizzard, she should follow a snow plow.
A little confused, the driver said, "OK you can follow me if you want to. But I'm finished with the Kmart parking lot and I'm headed for Wal-Mart next."
Todays Jewish joke
A female CNN journalist heard about a very old Jewish man who had been going to the Western Wall to pray, twice a day, every day, for a long, long time.
So she went to check it out. She went to the Western Wall and there he was, walking slowly up to the holy site.
She watched him pray and after about 45 minutes, when he turned to leave, using a cane
and moving very slowly, she approached him for an interview.
'Pardon me, sir, I'm Rebecca Smith from CNN. What's your name?
'Morris Fishbein,' he replied.
'Sir, how long have you been coming to the Western Wall and praying?'
'For about 60 years.'
'60 years! That's amazing! What do you pray for?'
'I pray for peace between the Christians, Jews and the Muslims.' I pray for all the
wars and all the hatred to stop. I pray for all our children to grow up safely as responsible
adults, and to love their fellow man.'
'How do you feel after doing this for 60 years?'
'Like I'm talking to a fuckin' wall.
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