Of course it would be nice if he'd never advocated for these mergers in the first place, but it's better than nothing.

Felix Salmon recently argued that only breaking up the big banks can stop financial scandals, and that increased regulation won't work:

" ... the entire financial-services industry ... needs to be restructured so as to create the kind of institutions which thrive on increased trust, rather than on maximized arbitrage of anything from news to interest rates to regulations.

In order for that to happen, we’re going to need to see today’s financial behemoths broken up into many small pieces — because at that point each small piece is going to have to earn the trust of the other small pieces which rely on it."

The question I'd like to hear answered is why Canada can have such a successful banking system with banks about as large as the US's.

If there was evidence that the mergers of investment banks and commercial banks was a cause of our recent financial troubles, I'd like to hear it. Seems like there other factors that were more significant (lax underwriting, lax oversight, botched mortgage-backed securities, loosened capital requirements, lack of new regulation on new security instruments). For one thing, GLB enabled commercial banks to buy floundering investment banks, thus averting a worse meltdown (link). For another, non-GLB entities (Fannie, Freddie, AIG and GM) did not have investment banking arms and received much larger bailouts than commercial-investment banking houses. Also, those commercial-investment banks paid back their TARP obligations with interest.

Weill has a point that taxpayer dollars were at risk from TARP, but actual taxpayer losses did not come from the companies that merged under Gramm-Leach-Bliley. There were plenty of other practices in his industry that caused more serious problems, yet he is silent on those.

It doesn't come any clearer than this that reality has nothing to do with conservative's beliefs:

A joint statement by Wolfgang Schäuble, German finance minister, and Luis de Guindos, Spanish economy minister, condemned the high interest rates demanded for the sale of Spanish bonds as failing to reflect “the fundamentals of the Spanish economy, its growth potential and the sustainability of its public debt”.

Markets are wrong and government employees like Schäuble and de Guindos know better.

Therefore, we should continue their policy of firing government employees to grow the inherently superior private sector.

The UK's economy is now smaller than when Cameron took office. That's some great work there for two year's effort: 

"Britain is really the perfect test case for the proposition about austerity in a recovery. They had growing but still manageable interest rates when the austerity regime was implemented, and the recovery was on but had not taken a strong hold. Borrowing rates dropped, which conservatives interpreted as confirming their policies were working rather than a signal the market foresaw a downturn. But the economy cratered as well, and the message from the rate drop should be seen as a plaintive beg from the bond market for the UK to start spending again and restore its economy."

Remember to vote conservatives in over here! They've done great things everywhere they've been in power!

Funny - I listened to a discussion on this very subject the other day on Bloomberg radio while driving (long trip, I heard most of it) : one of their regulars (dunno her name: lady with a harsh (Belfast?) Irish accent) interviewing two guys about the whole "TBTF" mess. The one was making the point that in most of the recent cases of Huge Institutional Financial Risk-Taking, the "banks" involved were dealing with nothing at all like the traditional definitions of "banking": while he didn't say so directly, the point was that the the big international financial players had/have devised themselves an inconceivably vast transnational, multi-trillion-dollar casino in which to speculate with inconceivably vast sums of money - which they have fundamentally invented out of nothing - in order to rake off vast sums of "real" money as profit. And then "the market" (i.e. other peoples' governments) deal with the fallout when things go sour.

The "other side" of the discussion, though was just as revealing: some miserable chinless twerp from Goldman, Sachs (yes, I know, it's probably entirely wrong, but his quavering voice just inevitably conjured up the image of "miserable chinless twerp") hemming and hawing and dancing around the subject before finally opining that the main problem  -in the US, anyway - wasn't the lack of regulation of the banking industry, but an excess of it (foisted on the country by the Senate, somehow), and that any further regulatory tightening of the banking/"investing" distinction was a Bad and Wrong policy, because, well, All Regulation is just Bad and Wrong, so there...

Even Bloomberg's Irish moderator seemed somewhat struck at the vapidity of that response: but, predictably, little clarification was forthcoming. I wouldn't imagine that much, if anything, on this front is likely to be accomplished at all, given the inconceivably vast stakes that Moneyed Interests around the globe have in maintaining the present system; Sanford Weill notwithstanding...

I don't hear that one so much these days. I think the last time I heard it was around early 2010. I went digging and found someone saying that around then:

"The euro will become the world's favorite reserve currency because Europe has a better growth strategy than the US, David Roche, global strategist at Independent Strategy told CNBC."

And why will the Euro replace the dollar? B/c austerity is so awesome of course:

"They're so heavily taxed anyway. So you have to shrink spending, which opens up a whole area of the economy for entrepreneurs to enter the act."

... "The Germans are saying to everyone else: ... we're going back to fiscal orthodoxy," said Roche.

"I believe that's the right strategy to get growth going. I don't think spending money you don't have is the right strategy. So the American strategy is totally wrong. And I think the Europeans will be right. I think it (the recovery) will be governed by Germany in a very nice democratic way," he added.

​Of course, the wrongest prediction possible means CNBC has discontinued using him as an economic commentator.

A new AP factcheck finds that the door can't be closed as easily on R. Money's 1999-2001 tenure at Bain as the campaign would like.

An AP analysis of thousands of SEC filings in that three-year period found at least 39 documents in which Romney was listed as sole shareholder, president or director of investment funds that controlled large stakes in Bain-related companies.

Unfortunately it appears that, whether or not he made the actual executive decisions that involved dozens of cases of mass layoffs, offshoring of jobs, investment in entities with eyebrow-raising business involvements like Stericycle, and so forth (and without further evidence that can't be ruled out)... Mitt Romney was in fact the legal fiduciary and a major beneficiary of those decisions.

Greek triple-jumper sent home for political and racist comments on Twitter.

In one sense this is a modern story, but in another important sense it is a very old one. If you do something in public that embarrasses your nation during the Olympics--whether your name is Tommie Smith or Voula Papachristou, you're going to quickly find yourself in a world of hurt from your nation's Olympic committee.*

*--and by the way, yes Avery Brundage was an insufferable p***k.

Pretty good fit over at The Guardian. 

And he's as uncompromising as ever, painstakingly explaining to Obama supporters that No, guys, the President had no interest in shutting down Guantanamo Bay.

Tyler Cowen quotes, w/out approval of course, a paper summary according to which the policies of Iceland are not better than Ireland's or vice versa:

"the conclusion is typically that one set of policies was more beneficial than the other. In this paper we have shown that the truth lies somewhere in the middle."

Smart approach! Austerity and socializing bank losses (vs. haircuts) aren't discredited, b/c the truth lies in the middle. 

How about instead of exploring the merits of that hazy position we ask which country's unemployment, real median incomes, and GDP have recovered more fully?

Surprise! It's Iceland. The basic idea here is that Iceland isn't in the middle between Ireland and Iceland, it just comes out on top by the most important measures.

Cowen's next book should be on his true expertise: "How to be pro-austerity, usually only vaguely so, w/out looking like too much of a hack" 

You know, Calypso Louis ain't exactly a fan of gay marriage, either. Not a big fan of Jews either, last I heard.

defends Joe Paterno and lambasts the NCAA.

David Post: Professional contrarian, always on the side of the powerful.

Unbelievable. He's on a simple, easy trip to have his picture taken with foreign leaders and say nice platitudes. So first this:

The flap over Romney's Olympics comments comes just a day after his campaign went on the defense after the Daily Telegraph quoted an unnamed Romney adviser suggesting President Barack Obama did not fully appreciate the "Anglo-Saxon heritage" between the United States and Great Britain.

And then this:

"You know, it's hard to know just how well it will turn out," Romney told NBC. "There are a few things that were disconcerting. The stories about the private security firm not having enough people, the supposed strike of the immigration and customs officials … that obviously is not something which is encouraging."

he should have taken the advice Lee Marvin dispensed in The Dirty Dozen:

Just walk slow, act dumb and look stupid!

Hey, it worked for Bush.

So suppose Ireland and other European countries who can't control their own currency aren't test cases for austerity. Still, we have the US vs. UK. Cameron took over in 2010 and began austerity. Note the divergence in trajectory:

OK, but at least the UK has slashed its deficit compared to the US, right?

... the U.S. budget deficit has been reduced from 10.5 percent of GDP in 2010 to 8.2 percent in 2012. This reduction is a slightly bigger reduction in the deficit than Britain has managed to achieve in the same period – from 9.8 percent to 8.1 percent.

Link

h/t

They're very UK. They're also clubby electronica, so I'll be interested how they present themselves. Here's a live clip of their most famous tune which will maybe look a little like what they'd do at the Olympics:

26 miles, 385 yards--and the legend of Dorando Pietri.

No, not half of this. The narrative of this LA Times piece is 2.6 million jobs created, women hardest hit. The unmentioned other half of the story is that 80% of the 8.8 million jobs lost prior to that were held my men (link).

The reporter couldn't interview McCain directly so she cobbled a few things together to aid in her storyline. An example:

For instance, on campaign finance — an issue he was so personally associated with that his name was tied to the legislation that Mr. McConnell fought at the Supreme Court — Mr. McCain has been unwilling to work with Democrats on new bills to force more disclosure of the names of wealthy donors.

Funny that her cobbling together of things didn't include his reasoning for opposing the Disclose Act.

"The fundamental here," he said, "is the way you do any reform is on a bipartisan basis. This is totally a partisan bill. We all know that. It's not going to pass. It's for a political purpose. I resent that, having been involved, with Sen. Feingold, in campaign finance reform that was indeed meaningful. Unfortunately, the United States Supreme Court gutted it. But the fact is, everybody knows it has to be done on a bipartisan basis. They have chosen to attack this issue on a partisan basis, for partisan reasons."

 

Another reporter followed up: Would McCain introduce his own reform bill?

"No, because I don't have any agreement from a Democrat. I can't find a Democrat who'd agree to rein in the influence of the trade unions. When a Democrat is willing to do that, I expect to join him."

Another interesting tidbit.

Mr. McCain, who disputed some coverage of him by The New York Times during the 2008 campaign, has a policy of not speaking directly to reporters from The Times.

As Seth Mandel notes, this dispute was centered on a hit piece on McCain that brought forth unsupported allegations of an affair, where even the public editor said "no proof". This recent hit piece may not be as salacious, but it's still a hit piece.

13th Annual System Administrator Appreciation Day

Replaced this POS:

with this:

One thing was strange - the phone costs $299 at the Verizon store, but $99 from Amazon. Not sure how anyone at Verizon thought that was a good idea.

My review so far? Nice phone. Call quality good. Battery good. Switched from AT&T  (who had a horrible, confusing set of plans) to Verizon. Best part about Verizon, if you have access to WiFi (which I have almost everywhere I go) there's no data charges.

The Android marketplace is huge, but the quality of apps vary from very good to abysmal. My favorites so far:

Voice recognition - Built in, so it's not really an app. Surprisingly good. I've already dictated texts and emails, if you speak clearly and there's no background noise it's close to 100% accurate.

MyFiles - Built in, but lets me access any machine on my home network.

MyPhoneExplorer - let's you sync your desktop contacts and calendar to your phone, plus a lot more.

MixZing audio player - I love WinAmp on the desktop, but their Android app is lacking. This one is much better, even though it does have annoying ads. Best feature is looking up songs in their database and identifying them correctly.

Imperio - Great RDP client, I can check my home machine (or client machines) from anywhere

Ringtone Maker - Create your own ringtones from mp3 files. Easy to use and works great.

Alarm and Timer - Stopwatch and alarm clock. Simple and flexible.

Brightest Flashlight - A light when things are darkest.

Quickoffice - Open and even edit Word, Excel, Powerpoint and pdf files.

Things I'm still missing or don't like:

Predictive spellcheckers - Just awful.

Web browser - I've tried a few, Firefox is pretty awful, Opera has some quirks and so does the built in browser.

News sites - Haven't found a good digest yet. Google Current looks promising, but I'll have to get a bit deeper into it to see if it will work.

Good bluetooth headphone/mic - I need noise cancelation for when I'm in my car, plus I'd like to be able to listen to music on it. I'll let you guys know if I find a good one.

How perspectives change.

Rather, it was a sometimes slightly insane portrait of a country that has changed almost beyond measure since the last time it hosted the Games, in the grim postwar summer of 1948.

 

Britain was so poor then that it housed its athletes in old army barracks, made them bring their own towels and erected no buildings for the Games. The Olympics cost less than £750,000, turned a small profit and made the nation proud that it had had managed to rise to the occasion in the face of such adversity.

There was that same sense of relief intermingled with self-satisfaction this time. But such was the grandeur of 2012, even in these tough economic times, that 80,000 people sat comfortably in a new Olympic Stadium, having traveled by sleek new bullet trains and special V.I.P. road lanes to a new park that has completely transformed once-derelict east London.

I watched part of the Olympic opening ceremonies tonight, I haven't had a TV show induce an acid flashback before.

I just listed us in Google Current, which is their news./editorial aggregator for pads and smartphones. So if you could installk Google Current and open this link on your phones -

http://www.google.com/producer/editions/CAowu7px/the_forvm

it will register and list it on their site.

If you want to find more contributors, this is one way to do it.

over at 538?

It predicts that if the election were held today Obama would get fewer electoral votes than he's likely to get in November. So the model predicts that Obama's numbers will rise as the election grows closer.

But why believe that? Obama's been on a slow decline for a month or so and the economy is not picking up. Seems odd. 

Michael Phelps fails to medal in an Olympic race he competed in for the first time since the Clinton Administration, and the way some people are reacting you'd think he fell off the starting blocks and puked in the pool rather than finishing fourth by a narrow margin. I will suggest that it might have been a tad arrogant on his part to contest a race that he had publicly sworn off after winning in in Beijing, only returning to it recently--I'm not criticizing him for taking a spot, because he earned it. I'm saying that his chance of medaling in the 200 freestyle--which he dropped from his program voluntarily--was almost certainly significantly better. Oh well--I suspect he'll win the 200 fly and medal in all his other races.

Is there an important distinction between:

• wanting to wipe out a nation
• wanting to have a different party take over that isn't hardliners and aren't as itchy to bomb your country and such