Wall Street Executives from the Financial Crisis of 2008: Where Are They Now? Vanity Fair. Not in jail for accounting control fraud!
Warren Buffett’s mobile home empire preys on the poor Center for Public Integrity
Exclusive: Cerberus seeks over $3 billion for private equity fund Reuters
Alibaba’s Fake Shoppers Hard to Beat, US Academics Find WSJ
Mass Tax Foreclosure Threatens Detroit Homeowners NPR
On the Trail of the Elusive U.S. Expat Taxpayer WSJ
Jawbs
Unemployment Report Shows Labor Force Drop Outs At Record High The Economic Populist
US companies cut back sharply on hiring FT
Jobs Data: Winter of Discontent, Summer of Discomfort WSJ
Still Missing: At Least 3 Million Jobs Bloomberg
A June rate rise can surely be ruled out FT
Friday lay day – worst sustained British productivity performance since 1948 Bill Mitchell
Emanueldämmerung
How Rahm Emanuel flipped the script on liberal rebels in the Chicago runoff WaPo
Chicago City Council Officials Demand Release Of Rahm Emanuel ‘Secret Emails’ International Business Times
Freddy Martinez Is Exposing Chicago Cops’ NSA-Style Surveillance Gear Vice
Guest Post: On Reparations, the Run-Off, and Confronting Police Torture in Chicago Prison Culture
More Than 100 People Were Killed By Police In The Month Of March Chicago Defender
Half of urban California’s water is used to water the grass Market Watch. Death to all lawns!
2 Kansas school districts to close early because of budgets AP
The 10 men who could be the Republican nominee in 2016 WaPo
Religious Freedom Restoration Act
Anti-Gay Pizzeria Says God ‘Has Blessed Us’ With Over $800,000 For ‘Standing Up’ HuffPo. Ka-ching!
Wiccans say Indiana religious freedom law opens the door to polygamy, nude rituals at the Capitol Raw Story
Evangelicals Incensed by Business Push Against ‘Religious-Freedom’ Bills WSJ
Religious Me-dom Jacob Bacharach
It’s not as simple as homophobic thugs vs. civil rights in Indiana Reuters
Grexit?
Varoufakis to discuss Greek reforms with IMF chief FT
IMF: We Are Not Recalling Staff From Athens Greek Reporter
Syraqistan
When the Jihadists Turn on Their Masters Black Agenda Report
If you really want to bomb Iran, take the deal WaPo
On Iran, the Least-Worst Option Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic
The Pentagon’s $10-billion bet gone bad Los Angeles Times. That’s not very much.
Big Brother Is Watching You Watch
Why Obama’s Plan to Deter Cyber Attacks With Sanctions Is Useless Alternet
How Big Business Is Helping Expand NSA Surveillance, Snowden Be Damned The Intercept
DDoS attacks that crippled GitHub linked to Great Firewall of China Ars Technica
Following Canada’s Bad Example, Now UK Wants To Muzzle Scientists And Their Inconvenient Truths Techdirt
Climate Scientist: No, My Study Is Not A “Death Blow To Global Warming Hysteria” Media Matters
Guatemalans deliberately infected with STDs sue Johns Hopkins University for $1bn Guardian
Class Warfare
It’s Not the Inequality; It’s the Immobility Tyler Cowen, New York Times
RELOCATING GIBRALTARIANS: Friedrich Hayek’s 1944 plan to use market forces to move Gibraltar’s civilian population into Spain Economic History Society
The Rent Hypothesis Evan Soltas
‘Game Of Thrones’ Author George RR Martin Teases Big Twist In ‘Winds Of Winter’ International Business Times
The Awe-Inspiring Power of Baroque Churches Salon. Gallery.
I Have Been to the Mountaintop Martin Luther King
Antidote du jour:
See yesterday’s Links and Antidote du Jour here.
60 comments
Comments are closed.
On jobs: I see it as something of a triumph for the powers that be that almost 100 million US adults are now no longer employed/employable yet our society has not fallen into the inferno (yet). Truly the elites have done a masterful job of manipulating and managing down the expectations of the public on a slow and steady enough slide that all hell has not broken out yet.
Let’s hope that this process can continue until people are finally living within the (relatively limited) energy envelope provided by the sun and ecology. That would be about when people are using less than 5% of the energy and resources they use today–if many appropriate technologies are adopted in the mean time. So expect a slow, or not so slow, decline until then.
So I guess you’re sending your inane posts on a solar- or wind-powered computer and ensuring that all of the intermediate computing devices your message interacts with are solar- or wind-powered. Oh, you’re not? What a shock – hypocrisy from a sociopathic misanthrope who celebrates the misfortune of others as an environmental boon. Get back to me when you’ve voluntarily become unemployed for the sole purpose of using less energy.
I guess your next argument will be that we should all die faster so that the elites whose efforts in disemploying those whom they consider undesirable (along with and the resulting toll in depression, declining physical well-being and even suicides) you apparently approve of can party on in their fuel-guzzling private jets, yachts, mansions, limos, etc. with the resources the proles are no longer using.
What a tool.
Thank you sir, may I have some more.
I see again the problem here is one of inequality.
The elites have too much, so that the rest of us can hardly afford any more cutbacks.
So, perhaps not 5%, as either an medium term goal or a long term goal, but some reduction, along with improved equality and more sharing.
Clearly I don’t get out and about in the blogosphere much these days but it’s been a while since I have witnessed such a grand misunderstanding of an initial comment. And perhaps roadrider should seriously consider meeting and seeing some off the grid residents and their homes in his/her area. It’s amazing just how well people can live without the grid on just a few solar panels. Living costs which are lower than I ever imagined. Soon as air-conditioning problem is solved I will be all in.
We’re looking at this from a lifetime of the house perspective. The initial capital investment is still high for solar electric. We worry most about the legacy utility companies forcing connection to the grid and forced rent extraction, as has happened in Florida. Our experience has been that living well on less is more a lifestyle adjustment than anything else. Even so, there are strong “social” forces working, as always, to demonize independence of any sort.
roadrider got it exactly right. Tell me how does a renter, living paycheck to paycheck, leave the grid with “just a few solar panels”?
If jgordon gets his wish, most people will exit the grid by burning their furniture to keep warm.
You can buy large solar panels at a number of places along the highway in my area starting at 50.00 a pop. Panels are improving at such a dramatic pace the few year old models are a steal. 200 for the really good stuff. Batteries, will cost a few hundred to a grand depending on how many and a few hundred more for the gizmos needed in between. Hire one of these individuals or get a rec. from them to help you. If you call a specialist to do it all a couple thousand dollar of equip and simple job can easily turn into 10 even 20k. All because people like you expect this to be so difficult. It is a change in lifestyle in extended times of cloudiness… but overall it works very well at a dramatically lower cost.
As I said… get out and meet/see some ‘folk’ living off the grid in your area. Once you see it you will be asking how people cannot do it. If you are expecting electric heat from solar… then you really should research before responding. Propane and or wood are what people in my area do for heat. All the money they save does buy (or build their own) nice furniture.
Did you say $200 solar panels are the good stuff?
Try more like $2000 with a $3000 battery and installation cost of $6-8k.
Got some quoted last year, and even with government subsidies/grant/tax breaks, they would still take 10-15 years to pay for the cost. And the issue with solar panels are NOT the panels: its the tranformers. They lose almost 70% of the energy.
Jesse said it at the cafe a while ago:
If society has left you behind the power-curve so that you can’t afford the things you need to live, then there you are. Rule 2 of neo-liberalism is meant for you:
A hell of a thing to say at Easter.
It’s not a matter of me getting my wish. It’s a matter of in twenty years someone having a solar panel, passive solar water heater, LED light and a fan, or having… a plasma TV and air conditioning unit… and no electricity. And incidentally, I make minimum wage did get a lot of the stuff I needed to cut my consumption, energy use, and expenses for nearly free on Craig’s list. It’s not like that’s a horrifically impossible task.
People can live pretty damn well on 5% of the energy budget we use today in fact. The other 95% we blow should properly be classified as profligate waste.
There was no misunderstanding on roadrider’s part. Contrasting today’s immediate and deadly suffering with some theoretically perfect, top-down government-mandated devolution of human existence to a “natural” level in the future is the point.
People are not disposable, unless one is a psychopath in training and practice.
Unfortunately, history shows us that people are indeed, disposable.
Roadrider – I currently have 3 separate solar installations along with a wind turbine (resilience is the word don’t cha know) and have been doing it for over 18 years now and I just want to say….RIGHT ON!
I have not saved a dime anywhere. It has all cost me significant money and requires a high degree of electrical sophistication, above average. I HATE batteries. Inverters and controllers never last very long (except one 300 watt controller that is going on 8 years now). You have to be willing to work your life around the battery capacity level indicators.
All in all I can and will continue to do it but it a choice I made not something that society will “transition” into by any means, at least not in a good way.
You are still trying to run your life as if you had unlimited cheap energy, even with all your investment in renewable energy. The scale you’re operating at is neither necessary nor correct. There is no way Americans are going to maintain their current lifestyle even with all the renewables in the world. Being able to operate and maintain things like personal vehicles and air conditioners will be on the same order as having a private jet in the future.
You have completely missed the boat on everything I commented on, so there’s clearly nothing to respond to here. On the other hand I can restate that could proactively and intelligently cut our energy use using appropriate technology right now, or have the somewhat cold and cruel nature do it for us a short while from now. We should be thankful to the elites in fact, for encouraging people to make the switch to a sustainable lifestyle that much sooner than they otherwise would have.
Which elites are encouraging such a switch? What are they doing specifically to even make such a switch possible? For example, taking the train on the part of millions of people who would rather take the train than drive their car . . . but do not have a train to take? Are the elites doing or even permitting anything to increase the reach and depth of train travel?
As far a population goes, meta studies have shown a high correlation with good median income and lower population growth in developed country’s. Which far less extreme than your clarion call for an abrupt cull of some sort. A message some libertarian sorts of late have been trotting around imo, seemingly to do with securing the life styles of the upper quintile from the ravages of the incessant poor.
All the rest of the stuff is just a matter of political will wrt distribution of goods and services, sticking point is some sorts view points on the nature and control of monies. Libertarians to a fault are the mill stone around the nations neck.
Skippy…. your nascent frontierism is noted, tho… go to one of those compounds, sort it out and send a post card… eh…
gordon, the elites don’t give a crap about saving energy costs. Even if you think their actions are somehow resulting in a few people going green due to crushing debt, or w/e, you have to realize that these people ruin entire countries to obtain wealth. ENTIRE COUNTRIES. Look at Borneo with the excessive palm oil production and mining. Place looks like shit now.
I know a bunch of them, thanks to growing up in a private school in LA. They are the beacons of consumerist ‘capitalism’ at its finest/worst/whatever, wanting more and more to inflate their enormous egos. That’s really how they rise to the top: they start half-way there, attend a great school due to daddy’s $/legacy, get a job due to daddy’s connections, think they are geniuses for ‘having made it so far’, buy 4 houses, 10 cars, etc. I had one tell me how being green has turned his life around, and two sentences later start bragging about his 65 car collection. Ive had another (*cough* jimmy johns founder *cough*) tell me how his company makes America more efficient. That’s right, AMERICA. Like it’s a process or something to be optimized. Of course, he leaves out all the details, like how his company was a). his dad’s idea, or b). how his company promotes industrial farming or c). how his company has more delivery vehicles than any per location.
What you have to realize, gordon, (and it is a crushing realization) is that the vast majority of humans are ruled by their egos, and don’t care if their grandchildren can’t breath air without a respirator as long as they can drive a ferrari. (Going off on a tangent here) We are not a very smart species, not nearly as smart as the media would have you believe. We are not going to reach some teleological point of singularity, barely have ANY knowledge of how things really work. We don’t even know how soil works, and I am being dead honest when I say that. For all we know, pesticides and fertilizers may have already ruined this planet to an unfathomable degree. Our medical knowledge is quite pitiful if you look into any of it with a trained eye. We are simply advanced monkeys in a way: we can manipulate materials at increasingly small levels, but our scientific knowledge has really come from simply smashing things together (whether it be some putting some chemical into a human body, or smashing particles into one another) and observing the results until we find a pattern. We know NO absolutes.
But the thing is, gordon, that most of us don’t care about any of that anyway. We are satisfied by hot showers, television, and good tasting food. The elites are simply the most enabled of all of us to indulge their gluttony, so saying that people are going to one day only use 5% of their energy costs at this time is LUDICROUS. We will obtain more and more and more until the world can’t support us, then maybe cut back for a few generations, until the lessons learned are lost, and then we will start the whole fiasco over again.
Let’s hope that this process can continue until people are … using less than 5% of the energy and resources they use today–.
“We will burn the old grass and the new will grow. ”
~Pol Pot, 1985
“Indiana religious freedom law opens the door to polygamy”
Fascinating that both sides of the gay divide have made that argument, some way or another.
We keep neglecting polyandry.
Who can afford polygamy anymore???
On jobs and the economy, nothing will stop Obots on FB like Occupy Democrats (a contradiction in terms?) from pushing Team Blue propaganda that Obama’s economy is Morning in America, but now with the Iran deal they will shift to telling us he’s the greatest peace maker of all time.
If we end up with a viable genuine agreement with Iran on these issues, that would be a good thing even though the detested Obama would be the one responsible. In which case I will respect Obama for that while condemning Obama overall for everything else.
Sure $10B is not much but $10B here, $10B there, before you know it you’re talking real money.
Is the $10B wasted a portion of the $40B wasted or is it in addition to the $40B wasted on missile defense?
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-missile-defense-20140615-story.html#page=1
Philip E. Coyle III, who oversaw several early test flights as the Pentagon’s director of operational testing and evaluation from 1994 to 2001, said that even the system’s eight successful interceptions should be viewed skeptically because of the staged conditions.
“The tests are scripted for success,” said Coyle, who has also served as a science advisor in the Obama White House. “What’s amazing to me is that they still fail.”
What with inflation and all, Everett Dirksen’s phrase should be updated to “A trillion here and a trillion there and pretty soon you’re talking about real money”.
The inflation is also geographic, since we’ve spread around those spare trillions to deserving Afghans and Iraqis and to countless unnamed, unindicted co-conspirators.
Those 2 Kansas schools could use that money.
If not, they should at least auction off their governor’s limos and all local police military gear, before closing the schools down.
The worst would be to tax people. That would destroy real, main street money.
Let the Kansas experiment play out to the bitter end. States are the Laboratories of Democracy, and Kansas is running a most enlightening experiment. Is it political science? Is it political mad science? Let’s find out.
And let the other states take instruction from what they see.
If the Shit Headistanis drive Kansas all the way to a Moldovakrainian level of existence, then the Modernians will all flee Kansas. Kansas could become the “stub” for a United States of Shit Headistan, should other stateloads of people wish to take the Shit Headistani path into the future.
I don’t know if those baroque churches should inspire awe or sadness and anger from the enslavement of millions along with the massive theft of wealth required to build them.
The US prison culture article raises a curious occurrence.
Yet a quick web search suggests SEIU endorses Chuy.
I would wonder if SEIU Local 73 has any large contracts with the City?
Asked why his union had not backed Garcia in the primary, Balanoff said Local 1 officials began to reconsider their neutrality after the Feb. 24 primary, when Emanuel came up short of the majority needed to ensure a second term.
“We were surprised by how well Chuy did and how poorly Rahm did,” Balanoff said.
Clearly a deeply grounded philosophical position. They would do better to refund the donation money usurped from dues and refund it to the union membership where it would do some good.
I don’t think you get how this “union” thing really works.
Either that, or you are a communist.
Sean Sullivan, at WaPo, Pravda on the Potomac, uses the Chicago mayoral race to give the Democratic Politburo a chance to tell people to shut up:
“The Chicago campaign shows how the governing wing of the party stands ready to forcefully reject the idea it is insufficiently progressive, explain why controversial decisions were necessary and call out less-seasoned challengers.”
So I will invoke Frum’s Law: The Republicans fear their base. The Democrats hate their base.
Don’t worry, they hate (and happily ignore) their “ex-base” and “never-was-base” even more!
Michaelson, Reuters article, Indiana debate: “I understand that evangelizing is part of the faith, and conservative Christians want to stand firm in their beliefs.” The bigger dilemma, the bigger scandal. Christianity and Islam have inflicted horrors on the world as they proselytize and as they justify their proselytization. (They both have astounding records of destroying religious art, let alone rival sanctuaries.) You have evangelicals all over Latin America spreading Tea Party theology. And then there is ISIS and its theological fantasia. Because most Americans have little concern about theology, it would be hard to have this debate. Yet maybe this is the issue: Time for monotheism to stop proselytizing and leave people alone. (I await the caterwauling in the name of God.)
Evangelizing IS part of the faith – however, evanglizing is NOT forcing one’s faith on others, it is being an example of one’s faith to others. The choice of faith is left to the witness, not the one proclaiming faith.
On the Reuters article (it really is an op-ed piece), it contains the usual half baked ideas of Christianity and religion, so it is mostly wrong in its theology. And it is the usual propaganda piece of conflating two ideas, 1st amendment idea that the State can not impose a religion on a person, and the second idea, of the right (need actually) of the State to impose rules and laws for a business to perform its functions. The State has the right to make any and all businesses follow its rules. So, to make it concrete, if a business photographer does not want to take a gay couple’s wedding photos, said photographer may be prosecuted and be forced out of business. Said photographer is free to worship where they please (a private concern), but they can not discriminate at their work place (a public concern).
The King video is noted and appreciated, Lambert! Happy Easter, all!
On Iran, the least-worst option
In case you missed it, see the prior comments regarding the Iran non-deal.
In short, one should not assume that this framework agreement will ever result in a peace agreement. The Obama administration has banked a political/propaganda win. Nothing more. And the Obama Administration has made “deals” in the past where details that remained to be worked out differed from the spirit/intent of the deal. Remember:
Think of that steak as dry-aged, where you need to skin off the outside greenish layer.
If this is Obama’s intention, then he (Kerry) have the problem that the other Big Powers +1 and Iran also want a serious agreement about serious stuff. They will not be the stage upon which Obama gets to strut . . . if that’s all this was to him.
OK, “rotten” may be an exaggeration. But “because Obama” optimism is unwarranted given the Obama’s Administration’s poor record on delivering on promises of real change. The meager changes that ARE instituted are window-dressing for what works for powerful interests.
I was actually pessimistic that anything would come of the negotiations because US+allies are involved, directly or indirectly, in conflicts against Iran’s friend and allies. But this non-deal is soooo much better for Obama.
In short, Obama has just said to the Iranians: If you want your nuclear capability, you can keep your nuclear capability.
Like many I hope that there is peace. I hope the non-deal turns into a real deal. But our hopes have been played upon before so I am very skeptical.
The elites are truly transnational now: Michael Bloomberg ‘considering running for mayor of London.’ As a Tory, no less.
Wrt the Biso the cat story – there has to be a metaphor in there somewhere.
http://www.psmag.com/business-economics/shrinking-city-chicago-97941
This article definitely dovetails with my personal observations of how Chicago has changed over the years. It also confirms that Rahmses has been driving these processes at a far greater pace than Daley. All he cares about is attracting the “creatives” and gentrifying the neighborhoods to house them, driving away existing residents in the process. Good find.
Buffett and mobile homes.
He seems more a nominal* Republican than a nominal Democrat.
*nominal because it has been claimed that they’re the same deep down.
After reading this article, it is clear that the only appropriate action is to immediately give Warren Buffett the William Wallace treatment (not that William Wallace should have been treated as he was). Buffett’s actions make me want to barf more than when reading about Rahm Emmanuel, who always requires the pink liquid.
I’m pretty surprised that Chuy can’t seem to craft a message that is better than what he’s doing. I understand the mistrust between the black and brown – the media has been pitting them against each other for a long time – but it defies explanation how the large unemployed African-American population can choose Rahm over Chuy. They know what they’ve gotten in four years. But it also seems Chuy can’t really make the case that he can run things if elected.
Perhaps the Chicago black voters are showing their race-tribal Race Card loyalty to Obama by staying loyal to his beloved creature Rahm. A vote against Rahm would be a vote against Obama by this logic, and that would be Race Card Disloyal.
But Chuy inherited his spot in the race from the deceased Afro-American teacher leader. She is what is missing now.
But I think you have a point, that AA community is not mobilized to unseat Rahm; all the big name rappers & entertainers could have (and still could) get the vote out overnight if they were mobilized.
I see a market for “Boss Wear”. An automated bio-metrics and reporting wardrobe for employees in the Brave New and Free Workforce. Edward Green shoes outfitted with a GPS chip and WIFI link. ($1000 plus $500 for the electronics) Google glasses and sensors recording limb movements – good and bad. An Apple watch recording pulse rate, temperature and alpha wave activity. All connected to the cloud. A loud beeper to notify when any reading is out of preset limits.
Middle Management becomes obsolete.
oopsie. This was meant for the Big Data Watching you thread. Wherever.
Not to worry. They know what you “really” meant to say, and where and when. Something like Santa’s List, but with Trick or Treat thrown in. In fact, the image of Gomez Addams at a desk in the CIA headquarters with a placard tastefully displayed next to the family portrait photograph that reads, “Director Internet Evolution” pops into mind. If there ever was a more perfect match of person and job, I can’t think of it.
You must mean something like Lobot here:
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lobot
“If you’ve got a part where you’re walking around with lights flashing on your head, you can’t really fail, can you?” ―John Hollis
The entire “creative class” applies for the job.
Climate Scientist: No, My Study Is Not A “Death Blow To Global Warming Hysteria”
So, at least the lesser radiative forcing conclusion makes it less likely that geoengineering by injection of particulates into the stratosphere is a viable solution. Also, more likely that eliminating particulate pollution will cause less warming than thought. Sounds like a win-win