Excellent Economic News

The banksters are fat and happy again.

Firms are adding jobs for the first time in two years, rebuilding businesses cut during the financial crisis and offering guaranteed payouts to lure top bankers. In New York, 6,800 financial-industry positions were added from the end of February through May, the largest three-month increase since 2008, according to the New York State Department of Labor.

Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc. are among banks that are hiring to replenish their ranks, while Nomura Holdings Inc. and Jefferies Group Inc. have been recruiting talent from larger firms in a bid to increase their standing on Wall Street.

And later in the piece, you have this little gem:

Firms are paying 30 percent to 40 percent more than what employees are expecting to earn to lure them from other banks this year, according to an April report from Options Group, a New York-based executive search and compensation consulting company.

[...]

The demand for investment bankers and traders has led some firms to offer pay packages as high as $8 million, including guaranteed bonuses, which are paid regardless of an employee’s or the company’s performance, recruiters said.

Still cleaning up the mess from the last exploded bubble and our bankster overlords are already regrouping and teeing up for the next one. And all this while we are likely facing a healthcare-style implosion since the death of a Democratic senator makes it exponentially more of a fucking pain in the ass to financial regulation passed.

Ken Feinberg has our backs, though

It will be very tough for Wall Street to go back to the good old days

I'm sure.

This Is Laughable

Fox Business Network, now with glibertarian programming:

“Welcome to this struggle,” Andrew Napolitano said triumphantly as he wrapped up the first television episode last weekend of his libertarian talk show, “Freedom Watch.” He saluted the camera and concluded, “From New York, defending freedom, so long America.” He will be back next week, a commercial said, with a special guest, Glenn Beck.

[...]

Now, the upstart Fox Business is making room for libertarian talk, too. An aggressive pro-civil liberties, anti-government streak is evident on both “Freedom Watch” and “Stossel,” a weekly Fox Business show hosted by the former ABC News anchor John Stossel that was added last fall.

As any libertarian will tell you, there are sharp differences in opinions between conservatives and libertarians, and now Fox has programs for both.

[...]

With its emphasis on out-of-control government and with Mr. Napolitano’s warning last weekend that the United States was “halfway to socialism,” “Freedom Watch” could be seen as a reaction to the policies of President Obama and a Congress controlled by Democrats.

Special guests Glenn Beck and Michelle Bachmann, anti-government rhetoric, and cries of socialism? How very original. Good thing they gave this its own show. You can't find shit like this on any other Fox network, that's for sure. As the article states, there are serious differences between conservative and glibertarian opinions.

Another War That Will Pay For Itself

This one in lithium:

WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and Blackberries.

I guess I just don't see how or why this matters. The natural resource canard already played itself out so well with Iraq.

Quoted for Truth

Glenn Greenwald eviscerates John McCain's TNR piece:

As the American war in Afghanistan enters its ninth full year and our occupation of Iraq its seventh, and as we continue to find all new ways to kill innocent civilians in various countries around the world, and as we continue to transfer billions of dollars every year to Israel and the Egyptian dictatorship -- all while thinking about how to slash Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and thus erode the weak safety net even further, while confronting collapsing domestic infrastructure, rampant unemployment, and massive teacher lay-offs and even grade elimination for American children -- is there any other country you can think of, besides Iran, which "spends its people's precious resources not on roads, or schools, or hospitals, or jobs that benefit all [citizens]" but rather on wars and support for foreign groups which kill "the innocent"? And over the last decade, what was the position of John McCain and his party on whether the "people's precious resources" should be spent (a) on "roads, or schools, or hospitals, or jobs that benefit all" (see here) or (b) wars that kill the innocent?

I don't have a lot to add to that, because he pretty much nails it. But it is heartening that after eight years in Afghanistan and nine years in Iraq, both of which ostensibly centered around some form or another of regime change and nation building, we still have Republican warmonger assholes like McCain being given a platform to advocate for more regime change and more endless military incursions in the Middle East. Maybe McCain should be given a few more appearances on Meet the Press to really drive the point home.

How's It Working Out For You?

Being Clever (via Think Progress):

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor will kick off a personal drive Friday to rebrand the GOP as "a party that gets it” and would focus on spending — not ideology — if Republicans win a House majority in November.

Without even reading much more, you already know this is going to be rich. Just how exactly does the GOP 'get it,' other than electing a chairman that flashes fake super fly GOP gang signs and is totally hip-hop? It's all in the e-Reader:

As part of showing he “gets it,” Cantor has long sported a Kindle and now happily shows off his iPad, which he enjoys as a “consumer of the news flow.” He complains that The New York Times’ “Editors’ Choice” app doesn’t have a big enough selection of stories.

What the fuck does owning a Kindle or an iPad have anything to do with 'getting it'? And how do you even publish something that full of stupid with a straight face?

Personally I can't wait to see the marketing campaign for this gimmick du jour. I imagine it will be as successful as the previous GOP listening tours (which weren't, in fact, really listening tours), or their echo chamber crowd-sourcing website where they listen only to ideas with which they agree.

It only makes sense that the Republicans would come up with with a slogan completely antithetical to their party's record and try to pass it off as truth. Or that the media would let them parade it around without calling it the complete farce that it is. Or worse, that people would actually believe it.

From the 'No Shit' Department

No one could have predicted:

Despite the many options it had, the team led by current Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner chose to bail out ailing insurer American International Group Inc. and its Wall Street counterparties to the eventual tune of more than $182 billion, a decision that continues to have a "poisonous effect on the marketplace," according to a new Congressional report.

[...]

Among the bailout watchdog's findings:

• Policymakers had several options to resolve the firm's troubles, rather than a "binary" choice of bailout or failure;
• Federal regulators could have acted earlier, potentially saving taxpayers from a $182 billion investment in the giant insurer;
• The government-led private-sector effort to save the firm primarily relied on just two financial firms and a small group of law firms rife with conflicts of interest;
• Policymakers involved in the rescue continue to change their public rationale for rescuing AIG with taxpayer cash, perhaps for political considerations;
• Even more foreign banks than previously disclosed were direct beneficiaries of the taxpayer bailout;
• It was "unlikely" a more muscular regulatory agency would have caught the insurer's problems given that the firm's own management didn't know what was going on;
• And despite the panel's mission of auditing how the government responded to its biggest intrusion in the financial markets since the Great Depression, some firms, including Goldman Sachs, which taxpayers bailed out with $10 billion in cash and nearly $21 billion in debt guarantees, continue to refuse to turn over key documents, the panel said in its report. Goldman faces a multitude of investigations regarding its subprime-era practices.

As if this much wasn't glaringly obvious when the AIG bailout was first discussed. When is an overnight decision to funnel $200 billion into a failing firm ever a good idea?

Also, I am not sure why the story says that Geithner bailed out AIG. Although I'm sure he would have done so had he been Treasury Secretary at the time, that decision was all Paulson.

A Long Shot

But it sure would be a sweet victory:

"I want to be our party's Scott Brown," he [Rodney Glassman] said, in a sit-down with the Huffington Post, one of several media interviews he did during his recent Washington swing. "The only thing we can do as a party to trump Republicans taking Ted Kennedy's seat is for us to take out John McCain."

[...]

Not everyone is ready to commit, let alone tout his capacity to pull off an upset. At a briefing on Thursday, DSCC chairman Robert Menendez was asked whether the Democrats had positioned themselves poorly to benefit from the bloody primary fight between McCain and former Congressman J.D. Hayworth. To which he responded with a demonstration of only tepid interest in the race.

It'll be interesting to see how well Glassman does. My guess is not very well, but it would be great to see him unseat McCain or defeat Hayworth.

Also, go figure - the DSCC will spend millions propping up a Blue Dog loser like Blanche Lincoln, but they have a candidate genuinely interested in taking out an entrenched GOP icon like McCain and they can't be bothered to care.

Unbelievable

You've got to be kidding me:

"I think the people responsible in the oil spill--BP and the federal government--should take full responsibility for what's happening there," Boehner said at his weekly press conference this morning.

Boehner's statement followed comments last Friday by US Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue who said he opposes efforts to stick BP, a member of the Chamber, with the bill. "It is generally not the practice of this country to change the laws after the game," he said. "Everybody is going to contribute to this clean up. We are all going to have to do it. We are going to have to get the money from the government and from the companies and we will figure out a way to do that."

Shameless doesn't even begin to cover it. We can't get the Republicans to vote for a fucking extension of unemployment benefits, but this asshole wants to sign up the federal government up for helping foot the tab in the Gulf.

(h/t Huffington Post)

What Would You Say...Ya Do Here?

The New Yorker has a decent piece that summarizes our joke of a regulatory system:

These failures weren’t accidents. They were the all too predictable result of the deregulationary fervor that has gripped Washington in recent years, pushing the message that most regulation is unnecessary at best and downright harmful at worst. The result is that agencies have often been led by people skeptical of their own duties. This gave us the worst of both worlds: too little supervision encouraged corporate recklessness, while the existence of these agencies encouraged public complacency.

The obvious problems of graft and the revolving door between government and industry, in other words, were really symptoms of a more fundamental pathology: regulation itself became delegitimatized, seen as little more than the tool of Washington busybodies.

I really don't think that regulation itself is seen as illegitimate simply because it's imposed by government. What is seen as illegitimate is any obstacle that impedes their supposed right to make enormous profits at the expense of any modicum of corporate social responsibility or ethics. Never mind that mine shaft isn't getting any ventilation - proper safety measures would be too costly. The blowout preventer is a shell of what it should be? Forget that - $500,000 is way too steep to install a proper countermeasure, and nothing could possibly go wrong. We're leveraging ourselves to the the hilt and selling shit securities that we know are worthless? No big deal - we've got short-term gains, and the US taxpayer will clean up the mess.

Installing competent regulators with a legal framework that actually has some teeth would be a start. But nothing will ever change until there is a wholesale reversal in the culture of these corrupt organizations, and that isn't likely to happen soon, if ever. And why should they change? There is simply zero incentive for them to do so. They have Congress bought and paid for, who continue to push the bull shit notion that the way to economic prosperity is to allow industry and the free market to DWTFTW. And when their bloodlust for cash finally causes an explosion, an oil spill, an economic implosion, all they have to do is take their seats in front of Congress, say they didn't see it coming, face no criminal or civil penalties, and they're back in business by Monday morning.

I'll eat my words if we ever see any heads roll for the financial crisis or the Gulf oil spill. But I'm not holding my breath.

Never Enough

Senate Republicans have a hard time making up their minds when it comes to the proper length and/or volume of documents necessary to do their jobs:

Senate Judiciary ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) called the number of documents released inadequate and reiterated his concern that the committee will not have enough time to pore over the information before Kagan’s hearings.

“The batch of documents received today represent less than a third of the 160,000 pages of material we have been told exist from Elena Kagan’s time as a senior policy aide to President Clinton. We are now a mere 23 days away from the hearing and the committee still has yet to receive over 100,000 pages of documents,” Sessions said in a statement.

What Sen. Sessions is really after is the Goldilocks level of data: the Healthcare bill was too much, the 45,000 pages on Kagan are not enough, but 160,000 pages would be just right. Maybe Sen. Sessions is hoping that in those additional 115,000 pages, he will find the answers to burning questions like whether or not Kagan is a lesbian, or why she deigns to cross her legs. Because we absolutely have to get to the bottom of that.

I Think He's Gonna Be Sad

I think it's today, yeah:

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) is demanding that Paul McCartney apologize for expressing his gratitude that America again has a president "who knows what a library is," Human Events' Connie Hair reports.

"Like millions of other Americans, I have always had a good impression of Paul McCartney and thought of him as a classy guy, but I was surprised and disappointed by the lack of grace and respect he displayed at the White House," Boehner said in a statement. "I hope he'll apologize to the American people for his conduct which demeaned him, the White House and President Obama."

And I expect that Boehner will apologize to the American people for his hideous spray tan and his pervasive infantile behavior. So there. At least Boehner calls for conservative celebrities to apologize when they say much worse things. Seriously. Cry more.

Racism Is Over (If You Want It)

Arizona is officially hellbent on becoming the most ignorant, regressive state in the Union:

A group of artists has been asked to lighten the faces of children depicted in a giant public mural at a Prescott school.

The project's leader says he was ordered to lighten the skin tone after complaints about the children's ethnicity. But the school's principal says the request was only to fix shading and had nothing to do with political pressure.

The "Go on Green" mural, which covers two walls outside Miller Valley Elementary School, was designed to advertise a campaign for environmentally friendly transportation. It features portraits of four children, with a Hispanic boy as the dominant figure.

R.E. Wall, director of Prescott's Downtown Mural Project, said he and other artists were subjected to slurs from motorists as they worked on the painting at one of the town's most prominent intersections.

"We consistently, for two months, had people shouting racial slander from their cars," Wall said. "We had children painting with us, and here come these yells of (epithet for Blacks) and (epithet for Hispanics)."

Wall said school Principal Jeff Lane pressed him to make the children's faces appear happier and brighter.

I don't think I have the energy to even come up with a comment for this one. It's just sad. And pathetic. That and the whole 'racism is over/black president' joke has been done.

(h/t Balloon Juice, via Wonkette)

Sharp Dressed Man

Very serious vapid ex-beauty queen Gretchen Carlson unleashes some seriously fair and balanced commentary on the Gulf Oil spill:

Also, did you see, President Obama is being criticized for what he had on. When he was standing at the shoreline there, he had on fancy pants and a fancy shirt. Look, what other critics are saying, is that 80% of public perception is image. Not what you say. And he should have had on, like what Thad Allen has on next to him. Something that looked like he was a little bit more at the scene.

I realize that picking on Fox and Friends is fairly low hanging fruit, but it doesn't really get past the stupidity of such a comment. It would be great if our only concern on the Gulf Coast was Obama's dress code, but unfortunately the situation is much more dire. But not for Fox, which has all the time in the world to masquerade their channel as something other than a tabloid propaganda wing of the Republican party instead of actually covering the facts on the ground.

Also, khakis and a button up shirt are now strictly for elitist fags along with arugula and dijon mustard.