Gas Pump Woes
Time for comic relief. Hat tip Tim Coldwell (click to enlarge):
Read more...Category Archives: Curiousities
Semi-Nude Parliamentary Candidate Protests Against Banker Pay At RBS AGM
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...The Independent Commission on Banking Interim Report, not
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...Here, there, and everywhere
All the banks are fed up with regulation and they’re all going somewhere else.
Read more...Why is a Powerful Faux Liberal UK Think Tank Using a Tarnished Pol and Recycled US Republican Talking Points to Fight Breaking Up Banks?
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...Microsoft, General Electric on List of World’s Most Ethical Companies
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...Adulterous failed banker Sir Fred Goodwin obtains superinjunction
…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...Wisconsin Humor Fest
First, Jon Stewart on the teacher versus Wall Street pay logic (hat tip reader Scott via Jesse):
Read more...The Project Merlin Back Story
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 […]
Read more...Budgeting, Australian Style
Even if you don’t get all the political and business references, I suspect you’ll appreciate this video. Hat tip readers hum and Hubert:
Read more...How Banks Influence People in High Places
This e-mail to Congressional staffers speaks for itself. I am probably being far too nice by omitting the RSVP details. However, I must note the ethics rules for Congress are more lax than those of some private sector companies. I had one client, a Fortune 25 company, that forbade all employees from taking gifts or entertainment of any kind from vendors, down to a cup of coffee. And that’s not as nuts as it sounds. Research by social psychologist Robert Cialdini verifies that a gift as small as a can of soda predisposes the recipient to a sales pitch.
From: The Financial Services Roundtable
Read more...Hans Rosling’s 200 Years of Global Health in Four Minutes
I’m of the school that PowerPoint has served as the breeding ground for many misguided efforts to gussy up simple messages with unproductive or even worse, confusing and misleading graphics. This is an example of the opposite, a very good use of visualization of a large and complex data set by Hans Rosling, who has made a near art form of this sort of thing. Notice how the tradeoff between wealth and life expectancy flattens once a reasonable level of wealth has been achieved.
Read more...Reader Nominations for Best and Worst Predictions for 2011
It’s the time of year where pundits and professional forecasters pull out their crystal balls and offer their prognostications for the new year. I’ve never been keen about forecasting. Even though we offer views of what might happen, it usually falls in the realm of applying well established patterns to new fact sets (as in […]
Read more...Google Rates Website Wonkiness
This post’s headline misrepresents the apparent intent of a new Google filter in its advanced search function. Per the SearchEngineLand report, “Google Lets You Dumb Down Your Search Results With “Reading Level” Filter,” the aim is apparently to allow web surfers to steer clear of pages that might be too taxing.
Read more...“So You Want to Be a Journalist”
Some comic relief, hat tip reader Scott:
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