Cross-posted from Credit Writedowns President Obama is not the only debt ceiling flip-flopper. During the Bush administration, when a budget surplus tuned to deficit and debt piled up, Republican leaders in Congress voted to raise the debt ceiling 5 times, increasing the limit nearly $4 trillion. We’re talking about Speaker John Boehner, House Majority Leader […]
Read more...Cross-posted from Credit Writedowns In the end, I hearken back to revered economist Hyman Minsky – a modern-day economic godfather who predicted the subprime crisis. “Big Government,” he wrote, should become the “employer of last resort” in a crisis, offering a job to anyone who wants one – for health care, street cleaning, or slum […]
Read more...Back in March, and courtesy of Naked Capitalism’s US locale, we arbed away Fred Goodwin’s superinjunction, which banned UK reporting of his affair with a junior director at RBS. After more challenges by the UK newspapers, the superinjunction has now been amended: it’s OK to identify Fred Goodwin as the failed banker with the wandering body part; but still not OK to identify his partner, who is referred to in the official documents by the code letters “VBN”.
Read more...Hat tip reader Bruno (click to enlarge):
Read more...OMG, the folks at Versus have outdone themselves! Too clever!
Read more...Pat Caddell, who was Carter’s pollster, sent this tidbit and considers it to be a meaningful indicator:
Superman may be a comic book character, but he is very much an iconic cultural figure to Americans, particularly the Baby Boom generation.
As reported by Laura Hudson in Comics Alliance:
Read more...Time for comic relief. Hat tip Tim Coldwell (click to enlarge):
Read more...I missed this extraordinary scene. When the aspiring politician Kit Fraser stripped to his boxer shorts outside RBS’s annual shareholder meeting last Tuesday, I was already inside the meeting, listening to chairman Sir Philip Hampton defend the bank from shareholder allegations that he had lost the plot on pay.
Read more...9:00 Two hours after publication time, the Commission web site is still down. UK web site capacity planning! I’ll report, umm, later.
Read more...All the banks are fed up with regulation and they’re all going somewhere else.
Read more...By Richard Smith
The publication of a pamphlet from Demos, a British fauxgressive think-tank (unconnected with the American think-tank of the same name), is the latest visible move in a not-always-public epic battle between banks and regulators about bank reform. While Americans may assume that the time for regulatory intervention has passed, the preliminary findings of the Independent Banking Commission, a UK body whose output will put an important stake in the ground in the UK, is to be released on April 11th. Whatever mix of legislation, regulation and inaction is deemed appropriate by the politicians will follow the publication of the final IBC report in September.
Given the importance of this report, it should come as no surprise that the banks, or rather the bank that has most at stake, Barclays, is using every available channel to convey dire warnings about how terrible reining in the banks would be, particularly since the banks are really hardly at fault at all.
A curious centerpiece of this effort is this 100 page abortion of a pamphlet, penned by a fallen Labour MP (the usual expense account improprieties), Kitty Ussher.
Read more...Ethisphere just published its annual list of the most ethical companies in the world. I am surprised to see Microsoft and General Electric included among the 110 singled out. GE is the only member of the “diversified industries” group; the other companies in the “computer software” cohort are Adobe, Salesforce.com, Symantec, and Teradata.
Some industries, such as arms merchants, Big Pharma, and US health insurers, are apparently so compromised as to have no representatives.
Read more...…So the UK press aren’t allowed to call him a banker (!), or mention his infidelity with a married colleague.
However, since MP John Hemming mentioned the case under parliamentary privilege, you can get part of the story from the Telegraph:
He said: “In a secret hearing this week Fred Goodwin has obtained a super-injunction preventing him being identified as a banker.
Read more...First, Jon Stewart on the teacher versus Wall Street pay logic (hat tip reader Scott via Jesse):
Read more...Not a bad couple of week’s work for the banks, since the “Project Merlin” publicity? Actually it’s taken a bit longer than that, and reconstruction of some of the behind-the-scenes action might be instructive. Although other banks get walk-on parts, the story is mostly about Barclays. Let’s start the timeline in September 2010, when John […]
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