Tuesday, May 29, 2012
If The Pyrenees Are On Your Travel Agenda:
We had wonderful stay at a cycling-friendly Bed & Breakfast on the French side of the Pyrenees.
Paul Krugman: Dimon’s Déjà Vu Debacle
"...The point, again, is that an institution like JPMorgan — a too-big-to-fail bank, not to mention a bank whose deposits are already guaranteed by U.S. taxpayers — shouldn’t be engaged in this kind of speculative investment at all. And that’s why we need a return to much stronger financial regulation, stronger even than the Dodd-Frank regulations passed back in 2010.
Will we get that kind of regulation? Not if Mr. Romney wins, obviously; he wants to repeal Dodd-Frank, and in general has made it clear that he would do everything in his power to set us up for another financial crisis. Even if President Obama is re-elected, getting the kind of regulation we need will be an uphill struggle. But as Mr. Dimon’s debacle has just demonstrated, that struggle remains as necessary as ever."
Paul Krugman: Egos and Immorality
"In the wake of a devastating financial crisis, President Obama has enacted some modest and obviously needed regulation; he has proposed closing a few outrageous tax loopholes; and he has suggested that Mitt Romney’s history of buying and selling companies, often firing workers and gutting their pensions along the way, doesn’t make him the right man to run America’s economy.
Wall Street has responded — predictably, I suppose — by whining and throwing temper tantrums. And it has, in a way, been funny to see how childish and thin-skinned the Masters of the Universe turn out to be. Remember when Stephen Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group compared a proposal to limit his tax breaks to Hitler’s invasion of Poland? Remember when Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase characterized any discussion of income inequality as an attack on the very notion of success?...
...Think about where we are right now, in the fifth year of a slump brought on by irresponsible bankers. The bankers themselves have been bailed out, but the rest of the nation continues to suffer terribly, with long-term unemployment still at levels not seen since the Great Depression, with a whole cohort of young Americans graduating into an abysmal job market.
And in the midst of this national nightmare, all too many members of the economic elite seem mainly concerned with the way the president apparently hurt their feelings. That isn’t funny. It’s shameful."
Friday, May 11, 2012
This Man Wants To Be President:
I don't see what's so funny. Do you? I see a mean-spirited bully. We had a President like that too recently: George W. - and he was a disaster.
The Rachel Maddow Show: (video) Inappropriate laughter calls Romney sincerity into question
I don't see what's so funny. Do you? I see a mean-spirited bully. We had a President like that too recently: George W. - and he was a disaster.
The Rachel Maddow Show: (video) Inappropriate laughter calls Romney sincerity into question
