The major story of last week was the Barclays Bank scandal, and although Matt Taibbi's article [#1] is excellent, I recommend you watch the TV interview with Matt and a very articulate lawyer on the Elliot Spitzer show.......#2.....very clear and explains everything.......
1/ Matt Taibbi with a story everyone in this country should be outraged about.....but aren't, because our mass media isn't saying anything about it........
Saturday in the Times there were a couple of stories but nothing more, and I am not clear if there has been any TV coverage but doubt it as it would take more than 30 seconds to explain.
Note in Britain this story has exploded on to the front pages AND the TV News, the CEO and senior execs of Barclays have resigned in disgrace and politicians are scared shitless as there are links to the British government......
In a nutshell Barclays and other major banks have conspired to rig the LIBOR rates, which set interest levels for worldwide transactions.....this is a huge deal........
The LIBOR manipulation story has exploded into a major scandal overseas. The CEO of Barclays, Bob Diamond, has resigned in disgrace; his was the first of what will undoubtedly be many major banks to walk the regulatory plank for fixing the interbank exchange rate. The Labor party is demanding a sweeping criminal investigation. Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, responded the way a real public official should (i.e. not like Ben Bernanke), blasting the banks:
It is time to do something about the banking system…Many people in the banking industry are hardworking and feel badly let down by some of their colleagues and leaders. It goes to the culture and the structure of banks: the excessive compensation, the shoddy treatment of customers, the deceitful manipulation of a key interest rate, and today, news of yet another mis-selling scandal.
The furor is over revelations that Barclays, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and other banks were monkeying with at least $10 trillion in loans (The Wall Street Journal is calculating that that LIBOR affects $800 trillion worth of contracts).
The banks gamed LIBOR for two semi-overlapping reasons. As noted here last week, there were instances of Barclays traders badgering the LIBOR submitters to "push down" rates in order to fatten their immediate bottom lines, depending on what they were trading or holding that day. They also apparently rigged LIBOR downward in order to produce a general appearance of better health, essentially tweaking their credit scores a few ticks upward.
Most intriguingly, or perhaps disturbingly, there were revelations last week that Bank of England deputy Governor Paul Tucker had a conversation with Diamond at the peak of the crisis in 2008. The conversation reportedly left Diamond, and subsequently his traders, with the impression that the bank had carte blanche to rig LIBOR downward in order to help allay spiraling public fears about the banks’ poor financial health.
British officials, and Tucker individually, deny that Tucker gave Diamond permission to rig rates. But a report by British regulators did conclude that the two were talking about Barclays LIBOR submissions on October 29, 2008, and that as a result of that conversation, Diamond came away with a “misunderstanding.” The Daily Mail quotes the Financial Services Authority report:
However, as the substance of the telephone conversation was relayed down the chain of command at Barclays, a misunderstanding or miscommunication occurred.This meant that Barclays’ submitters believed mistakenly that they were operating under an instruction from the Bank of England (as conveyed by senior management) to reduce Barclays’ Libor submissions.
That is explosive stuff.
2/ As a follow on to Taibbi's article but an excellent standalone primer on this scandal as well is a 9 minute interview with Matt Taibbi and Dennis Kelleher, a former financial lawyer on the Elliot Spitzer show on Current TV......
3/ This is definitely weird, but what the hell - it's a male seahorse giving birth......male seahorse? Giving birth? Hmmmm.......
Two strange minutes..........
4/ A Rolling Stone story on Rachael Maddow and what makes her tick - the media attention to this article has been focused on how she suffers from depression, but I found this piece fascinating because it shows how she puts her show together and meticulously plans her segments......you may notice when I include a Rachael video it's normally a long one, over 15 minutes, and this is because her main in depth story of the day is one of these slow-build sagas......
If you like her show, this is a good read......
"So just who is Sarah Palin?"
This is Keith Olbermann talking, back in the summer of 2008, when the Alaska governor is brand-new to the national scene and Olbermann himself is still in the position he pioneered, as the first great contemporary liberal television pundit, the face of MSNBC. Olbermann, in his smart-aleck way, is introducing Palin to the national in-crowd: "A former beauty queen and runner-up in the Miss Alaska contest, a star point guard who earned the nickname Sarah Barracuda," he says. "A sometimes sports reporter who wanted to work for ESPN until she realized" – and here Olbermann starts to laugh, the condescension becoming open – "that she would have to move from Alaska to Bristol, Connecticut."
Television news, in 2008, is still more or less a jock's medium, and this is the way that jocks bait transfer students, mocking them as clueless hicks. In the final years of the Bush administration, Olbermann has transformed liberal anger into a smirk, a feeling of superiority over the dorks and freaks and clown who run Washington. But what makes Olbermann's introduction of Palin arresting, in retrospect, is not his patronizing tone, but the woman who is waiting to speak, on a splitscreen: Rachel Maddow, a 35-year-old radio host who is about to debut her own show on MSNBC, and who will eventually take over for Olbermann as the face of the network.
From the start, Maddow's brand is not so much out lesbian or angry liberal, but full-on nerd: the chunky black glasses, the flailing limbs. She doesn't seem to care much about the question that Olbermann has fixed on: So just who is Sarah Palin? "We don't know very much about Governor Palin," Maddow says, when Olbermann finally gives her a chance to speak. "She's basically been a human-interest story in terms of the political press in this country thus far." Then she moves on to what really interests her: not politics as personality but politics as mechanism, not who is winning power but what is being done with it.
http://www.rollingstone.com/5/ And following on this is a wonderful illustration of Maddow's technique with the news - off on a topic seemingly unrelated to Mitt Romney, then zing....the point is made.....17 minutes of nostalgia [you'll see] and great political analysis........
6/ Classic "Whose Line Is It Anyway" with the gang and Richard Simmons.......Simmon's schtick is still very, very funny today but imagine how amazing this was 15 years ago when the "gay thing" was still daring.....an excellent 6 minutes.......
7/ Paul Krugman with his take on the Romney campaign twisting in the wind over health care, and how the Mittster's denial of the one good thing he achieved as Governor [Romneycare] is sinking him......and then there's his record at Bain Capital and how this "businessman" experience is supposed to give us confidence he could help the economy.....yeah, right.....
Great column as always......
In a better America, Mitt Romney would be running for president on the strength of his major achievement as governor of Massachusetts: a health reform that was identical in all important respects to the health reform enacted by President Obama. By the way, the Massachusetts reform is working pretty well and has overwhelming popular support.
In reality, however, Mr. Romney is doing no such thing, bitterly denouncing the Supreme Court for upholding the constitutionality of his own health care plan. His case for becoming president relies, instead, on his claim that, having been a successful businessman, he knows how to create jobs.
This, in turn, means that however much the Romney campaign may wish otherwise, the nature of that business career is fair game. How did Mr. Romney make all that money? Was it in ways suggesting that what was good for Bain Capital, the private equity firm that made him rich, would also be good for America?
And the answer is no.
The truth is that even if Mr. Romney had been a classic captain of industry, a present-day Andrew Carnegie, his career wouldn’t have prepared him to manage the economy. A country is not a company (despite globalization, America still sells 86 percent of what it makes to itself), and the tools of macroeconomic policy — interest rates, tax rates, spending programs — have no counterparts on a corporate organization chart. Did I mention that Herbert Hoover actually was a great businessman in the classic mold?
In any case, however, Mr. Romney wasn’t that kind of businessman. Bain didn’t build businesses; it bought and sold them. Sometimes its takeovers led to new hiring; often they led to layoffs, wage cuts and lost benefits. On some occasions, Bain made a profit even as its takeover target was driven out of business. None of this sounds like the kind of record that should reassure American workers looking for an economic savior.
8/ It's time for one of the most powerful drink/driving ads ever again - the Australian TAC ad, set to 'Everybody Hurts" by REM........I put this in every 6 months or so, and it still brings some moisture to the ducts...... it's good.....and powerful - should be seen by every teenager.......5 amazing minutes.......
9/ I've never seen a politician melt down quite like Tea Party favourite Joe Walsh on CNN, interviewed live after he denied calling his Democratic opponent, double amputee Lt. Col. Tammy Duckworth, not a true hero......8 minutes of pathetic lies and babbling........
The above interview was edited down to two minutes..........and watch this asshole repeat the interviewers name 90 times......."Ashleigh"........
10/ A Times story on how the extreme heat in the midwest is affecting the corn growing season, and how what would have been a record crop won't be.....but it's not as bad as it sounds because a lot of the corn is grown for ethanol production......our corrupt, wasteful farm subsidies are funding your gasoline additive.....
HARTFORD CITY, Ind. — Across a wide stretch of the Midwest, sweltering temperatures and a lack of rain are threatening what had been expected to be the nation’s largest corn crop in generations.
Already, some farmers in Illinois and Missouri have given up on parched and stunted fields, mowing them over. National experts say parts of five corn-growing states, including Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio, are experiencing severe or extremedrought conditions. And in at least nine states, conditions in one-fifth to one-half of cornfields have been deemed poor or very poor, federal authorities reported this week, a notable shift from the high expectations of just a month ago.
Crop insurance agents and agricultural economists are watching closely, a few comparing the situation with the devastating drought of 1988, when corn yields shriveled significantly, while some farmers have begun alluding, unhappily, to the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Far more is at stake in the coming pivotal days: with the brief, delicate phase of pollination imminent in many states, miles and miles of corn will rise or fall on whether rain soon appears and temperatures moderate.
“It all quickly went from ideal to tragic,” said Don Duvall, a farmer in Illinois who, in what was a virtually rainless June, has watched two of his cornfields dry up and die as others remain in some uncertain in-between.
11/ Be careful when you call in or email a TV anchor to correct anything they may have said - Brooke Alvarez from ONN had some harsh words for one of her viewers.......2 minutes.....
12/ Timothy Egan, a Times columnist, got a little passionate this week about the extreme weather......he may have been watching Fox News........
CASCADE, Colo. — Nature makes a mockery of our vanity. We live in flood and fire zones, nurture stately oaks and take shade under pines holding the best air of the Rocky Mountains. We plant villas next to sandstone spires called the Garden of the Gods, and McMansions in Virginia stocked with people who have the world at their fingertips.
Then, with a clap, a boom and a roar, fire marches through a subdivision on a conveyance of 60 mile an hour winds. A platoon of thunderstorms so loaded with energy it has its own category name — derecho — cuts a swath from east of Chicago to the Atlantic.
The pines flame and hiss, shooting sparks on the house next door, a fortress no more. The oaks tumble and crush roofs. Almost 350 homes burn to the ground, and nearly 5 million people lose all electricity in sweltering heat. Lobbyists and congressmen curse at mute cellphones and sweat through their seersucker. The powerful are powerless.
So it went the first 10 days of summer, another extraordinary chapter in a weather year of living dangerously. At one point, 113 million Americans were under an extreme heat advisory. It was 109 degrees in Nashville, 104 in Washington, D.C., and much of the West was aflame.
If recent history is a guide, it will all be soon forgotten and dismissed. Amnesia, in regard to unpleasant science, is the guiding principle for a political party that has an even chance of winning everything that matters this year.
If recent history is a guide, it will all be soon forgotten and dismissed. Amnesia, in regard to unpleasant science, is the guiding principle for a political party that has an even chance of winning everything that matters this year.
13/ Drink milk? Ever have any dietary problems or weight gain? It may just be the dairy products......
Bottom line - human beings do not need milk and adults are much better off without it...........
Drinking milk is as American as Mom and apple pie. Until not long ago, Americans were encouraged not only by the lobbying group called the American Dairy Association but by parents, doctors and teachers to drink four 8-ounce glasses of milk, “nature’s perfect food,” every day. That’s two pounds! We don’t consume two pounds a day of anything else; even our per capita soda consumption is “only” a pound a day.
Today the Department of Agriculture’s recommendation for dairy is a mere three cups daily — still 1½ pounds by weight — for every man, woman and child over age 9. This in a country where as many as 50 million people are lactose intolerant, including 90 percent of all Asian-Americans and 75 percent of all African-Americans, Mexican-Americans and Jews. The myplate.gov site helpfully suggests that those people drink lactose-free beverages. (To its credit, it now counts soy milk as “dairy.”)
There’s no mention of water, which is truly nature’s perfect beverage; the site simply encourages us to switch to low-fat milk. But, says Neal Barnard, president of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, “Sugar — in the form of lactose — contributes about 55 percent of skim milk’s calories, giving it ounce for ounce the same calorie load as soda.”
14/ An Oliver Stone movie is always an event, and his new one "Savages" about two American dope dealers vs the Mexican cartels is a decent one.......but warning - lots of ultraviolence......
The 19th-century historian Frederick Jackson Turner described the Western frontier as “the meeting point between savagery and civilization.” That frontier is long gone, and the meanings of those words have changed, but the West — California in particular — still thrives in the popular imagination as a place where wildness and refinement, law and violence, inferno and Utopia collide and commingle.
The more salient border, in politics and pop culture, is the southern one, between the United States and Mexico. One of the jokes in“Savages,” Oliver Stone’s feverish, fully baked, half-great adaptation of Don Winslow’s ferocious and funny drug-war novel of the same name, is that the film’s title is flung back and forth between north and south — an epithet that is also eventually claimed as a badge of honor. The Southern California marijuana dealers on one side of the conflict that energizes the film’s zigzagging narrative are appalled by the brutality of the Mexican narco-traffickers, for whom torture and mutilation are routine ways of doing business. Some of the Mexicans, in turn, are disgusted by the sloth and shallowness of the gringos, who seem to lack any sense of dignity, tradition, family or honor. Savagery is in the eye of the beholder.
Both sides have a point, though prejudices and blind spots make clear judgments doubtful. The judgment of the American weed merchants may be further clouded by their continual violation of a basic rule laid down by Mr. Stone back when he wrote the screenplay for Brian De Palma’s “Scarface”: Don’t get high on your own supply. (They also ignore another “Scarface” rule: Never underestimate the other guy’s greed.)
'Savages" trailer........looks pretty cool, lots of stars.......
15/ Katy Perry has a movie out........it's a "follow me around" video, concert excerpts and "Katy living a hectic life" movie, but will definitely break box office records with young females......
There is also some meat in this film about her divorce from Russell Brand, so it's not just a chick flick......
"Part of Me" trailer........
16/ My favourite Katy Perry music video, better even than the one with fireworks coming out of her bra.......here she sings a great song, but more importantly shows she has a sense of humour as well......
Todays video - one for our golfer readers......actually specifically for male golfers.......
Todays Italian joke
AN ITALIAN CONFESSION An elderly Italian man who lived on the outskirts of Rimini, Italy, went to the local church for confession. When the priest slid open the panel in the confessional, the man said: "Father, during World War II, a beautiful Jewish woman from our neighborhood knocked urgently on my door and asked me to hide her from the Nazis. So I hid her in my attic." The priest replied: "That was a wonderful thing you did, and you have no need to confess that." "There is more to tell, Father. She started to repay me with sexual favors. This happened several times a week, and sometimes twice on Sundays." The priest said, "That was a long time ago and by doing what you did, you placed the two of you in great danger, but two people under those circumstances can easily succumb to the weakness of the flesh. However, if you are truly sorry for your actions, you are indeed forgiven." "Thank you, Father. That's a great load off my mind. I do have one more question." "And what is that?" asked the priest. "Should I tell her the war is over?'' |
Todays Scottish joke
A man was sitting on a blanket at the beach. He had no arms and no legs.
Three women - one from England, another from Wales, and the other from Scotland, were walking past and felt sorry for the poor man.
The English woman said, "Have you ever had a hug?"
The man said, "No."
Three women - one from England, another from Wales, and the other from Scotland, were walking past and felt sorry for the poor man.
The English woman said, "Have you ever had a hug?"
The man said, "No."
So she gave him a hug and walked on, feeling pleased about herself.
The Welsh woman said, "Have you ever had a kiss?"
The man said, "No."
The Welsh woman said, "Have you ever had a kiss?"
The man said, "No."
So she gave him a kiss and walked on, feeling pleased about herself.
The Scottish woman came to him and said, " 'ave ye ever been fucked, laddie? "
The man broke into a big smile and said, "No".
She said, "Aye, well ye will be when the tide comes in".
The Scottish woman came to him and said, " 'ave ye ever been fucked, laddie? "
The man broke into a big smile and said, "No".
She said, "Aye, well ye will be when the tide comes in".
Todays Irish joke
VOTED BEST JOKE IN IRELAND
John O'Reilly hoisted his beer and said, "Here's
to spending the rest of me Life, between the legs
of me wife !"
That won him the top prize at the pub for the best
toast of the night !
He went home and told his wife, Mary, "I won the
prize for the Best toast of The night."
She said, "Aye, did ye now. And what was your toast?"
John O'Reilly hoisted his beer and said, "Here's
to spending the rest of me Life, between the legs
of me wife !"
That won him the top prize at the pub for the best
toast of the night !
He went home and told his wife, Mary, "I won the
prize for the Best toast of The night."
She said, "Aye, did ye now. And what was your toast?"
John said, "Here's to spending the rest of me
life, sitting in church beside me wife."
"Oh, that is very nice indeed, John!" Mary said.
The next day, Mary ran into one of John's drinking
buddies on the street Corner.
The man chuckled leeringly and said, "John won the prize the other
night at The pub with a toast about you, Mary."
She said, "Aye, he told me, and I was a bit
surprised myself..
night at The pub with a toast about you, Mary."
She said, "Aye, he told me, and I was a bit
surprised myself..
"You know, he's only been in there twice in the last four years.
Once I had to pull him by the ears to make him come, and the
other time he fell asleep".
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