Staff at Goldman Sachs staff can look forward to the biggest bonus payouts in the firm’s 140-year history after a spectacular first half of the year, sparking concern that the big investment banks which survived the credit crunch will derail financial regulation reforms.
If Obama had any populist instincts at all, he’d announce a 100 percent tax on banking bonuses as long as the government is keeping the banks afloat. These “record profits” are a joke. It’s not exactly hard to make a sizeable profit when the government is shoveling money at you and taking responsibility for your losses.
Megan McCardle and other suckers are shocked and awed that Amazon and Apple may flex the muscle that their idiot customers handed them:
In the meantime, Amazon wants us to upgrade our Kindles every year or two. Apple wants us to upgrade our iPhone or iPod touch every year or two. This means that although the books remain in your Kindle library online you may not be able to download them once you upgrade your hardware. And there is no way to know — at least according to what the customer service rep told me.
Now everyone is relieved because the limits are on simultaneous devices, not downloads. But that’s not the point. The point is that if you accept DRM devices, then you had better accept you are going to be completely at the mercy of the device manufacturer. That’s why I refuse to buy either a Kindle or an iPhone; anything that requires passing your own data through the manufacturer’s official distribution channel is of zero interest to me. Yes, I’m aware that there are always ways to get around it, but I prefer to give my business to manufacturers who aren’t attempting to keep their customers, and their customer’s data, in virtual lockdown.
DRM is nothing more than theft… from the consumer. It’s the transformation of a purchase transaction into a rental one. Piracy is an abstract, invented, and artificial “crime”.
I trust it is clear to everyone that my intelligence is so superlative and important to the Internet that any admission of a mistake would be catastrophic and risk a total meltdown of the global communications system:
Today, amid the wreckage of the gravest financial crisis since the Great Depression, bigness is one of our biggest problems. Major banks, the Detroit automakers, the financial basket case that is the American International Group — the only reason these giant, sclerotic companies are still standing is that they have been deemed “too big to fail.” Or, more precisely, too big to be allowed to fail. Policy makers fear companies like these are so enormous and so intertwined in the fabric of the economy that their collapse would be catastrophic. Hence, all those multibillion-dollar, taxpayer-financed bailouts.
In its overhaul of financial regulation last week, the Obama administration proposed several measures to try to contain the biggest of America’s big banks. But it stopped far short of calling for the dismantling of those institutions.
Now, if it were possible for me to make a mistake – theoretically speaking, you understand – then it might be admitted that the following chart should have accompanied my WND column today. As it happens, the amount of deposits in the depository institutions that failed between 1988 and 1991 was $60 billion less than the amount estimated for 2008 through 2011 should the present rate of failure apply. It’s also interesting to note that FDIC insurance has only reduced the amount of estimated losses to depositors from 24 percent during the pre-FDIC era to 15 percent since 1934. At only 6.8 percent, the estimated losses to depositors for the 65 bank failures in 2008 and 2009 are half the historical norm, and yet even if this unusually low figure proves to be correct, it is already almost equal to the total amount lost in 1930-1933 even when corrected for inflation.
The reason Washington will remain committed to the “too big to fail” policy is that if they do not keep the zombies propped up, the costs of all that doubling-down revealed by the chart above will become due. The straws are being piled on ever higher and faster. When the camel’s back finally snaps it is unlikely to make for an attractive picture.
Last week, I considered the possibility that Barack Obama would fail to reappoint Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Events last week, however, would seem to indicate that this would be a very surprising move. Despite various provocations Federal Reserve officials have given the White House and Congress, most notably their refusal to make public any information regarding the funds provided to them through the various bailout plans, the administration’s white paper actually proposes to expand the scope of the Federal Reserve’s legal authority.
Yeah, it’s The Onion. But it also happens to be more brutally honest than anything any Nice Guy is ever going to hear from his Best Female Friend:
I really like you. I do. You’re so nice, and sweet, and you listen to all my problems and respond with the appropriate compliments. But, well, I don’t really see a relationship in our future. It would be terrible if we let sex destroy this great friendship we have where I get everything I want and you get nothing you want.
Now, I’m not a Nice Guy so this sort of thing has never bothered me. And I’m not saying the Be Great Friends approach can’t ever work for a guy, as I’ve seen it work. Of course, I’ve seen it work precisely one time. It only took three years… and the seduction significantly outlasted the actual relationship.
Iran’s ruling mullahs were always ruthless. But they disguised it a bit with faux elections. I say faux elections because while the regime may have counted the votes accurately, it tightly controlled who could run. The choices were dark black and light black.
Yes, this is completely different in the United States, where we have a wide range of candidates from across the political spectrum. When one considers the huge ideological gap that separated Barack Obama from John McCain in the last presidential election, how can one help but be grateful for the electoral freedom enjoyed by the American people?
I have to admit, the funniest thing about most secularists is the way they are totally clueless about what their kind have done to society and what it is in the process of becoming. I’m quite confident that the shiny, sexy, science fiction world they had in mind didn’t look anything like this. It was supposed to be Logan’s Run minus the hand expiry, not Kull the Conquerer meets Tarl Cabot.
The end game is pagan barbarian culture, with all the lunacy and violence that historically entailed. My question for the true-believing secularists is this: Assume for the sake of argument that I am correct regarding where the West is heading. Would you have sought the end of traditional Western Christian culture if you’d known it was going to be succeeded by pagan barbarism rather than the progressive sci-fi vision that was assumed?
This week’s discussion concerns the first chapter and Benito Mussolini, although questions concerning matters from the Introduction may be posted as well. This should not be interpreted to mean that long-winded comments concerning tangential matters derailing the topic will be permitted. And remember, the purpose of these quizzes is to strengthen your memory about the basics of the book; it’s a (mostly) multiple choice quiz so it’s not going to get into any deeper, philosophical tangents. There are no trick questions, so if you know the material well, it should strike you as fairly easy. You have only to look at the score reports to see that it’s not quite as easy for those who haven’t read the book or don’t recall it well. Please note that if you missed the first quiz on the Introduction, you can still take it here.
The reading for next week will be Chapter 2 – “Adolf Hitler: Man of the Left”. The quiz for that chapter will be posted on Saturday, June 27th.
One of the boys is watching something. I don’t know what he’s watching, but if the show is a sitcom or cartoon I can make the following prediction without any fear of being wrong; the father on the show is a bumbling idiot who is always being shown up by his smart aleck children and is always being corrected by his wonderful and wise wife…. Apparently it wasn’t enough for fathers to be morons. These days, most of the boys are idiots, too. I am hard pressed to name a single cartoon that doesn’t have at least one boy who complete and utter moron. Conversely, I can’t name a single cartoon which has even one girl who isn’t clever and forever having to pull the moron boy’s fat out of the fire.
It is ironic, as Henry points out, that being repeatedly told that they are morons incapable of feeding themselves without the help of a girl is just fine for boys, while being told that they are superlatively lethal bad asses capable of noble and heroic action will permanently harm them in some mysterious manner that justifies keeping them in a drugged stupor. I’d always assumed that boys and young men preferred electronic games to television because they are dynamic and active rather than static and passive. But, it’s true. If you were a boy, would you want to be more like the well-beloved Raymond of television or BJ Blazkowicz of Wolfenstein 3D fame? Or, to use a more recent example, would you rather be one of the effeminate boys of High School Musical or Niko Bellic of GTA IV?
Please note that I’m not complaining or lobbying for Hollywood to change in any way. I’m quite content to see an outdated 2D medium I despise transform itself into the same sort of societally irrelevant ghetto for gays and girls that Broadway has.
