This cartoon was in the Chicago Tribune in 1934.
Look carefully at the plan of action in the lower left corner.
Remember the adage: "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it."
Commentary: Disincentivizing greed
From McClatchy.com - Financial reform is now the law of the land, and by reconfiguring the banking industry and siccing watchdogs on economic shenanigans, the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act is intended to help avoid another meltdown. If only. The problem with nearly all attempts at financial reform, including this one, is that they try to prevent malfeasance either by changing the economic architecture, like erecting firewalls between financial sectors, or by mandating institutional curbs, like increasing reserves. But the new law gets at only proximate causes. The system malfunctioned because the human beings who ran it were greedy and saw a way to enrich themselves. That means that the recession from which we are still reeling was primarily a result of human nature, which the latest reforms don't begin to address. Indeed, our economic catastrophe actually can be traced to government policies that encouraged this sort of misbehavior. To change that behavior and prevent future disasters, one needs a much different and, frankly, far simpler solution than the one President Obama signed - one that disincentivizes greed. Read more
NY Mayor Bloomberg still doesn't get it
From the New York Post - by Michael Goodwin - With Donald Trump and New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver now urging developers to move the Ground Zero mosque, the New Majority movement continues to pick up broad support. From Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin to Howard Dean and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, top Republicans and Democrats are united in a truly bipartisan cause. Gov. Paterson and Archbishop Timothy Dolan, both on record as favoring another location, met yesterday to talk ideas. The movement would be complete if only Mayor Bloomberg came to his senses to play the role of mediator. Instead, he repeated his off-the-point lecture at a Ramadan dinner last night, saying the mosque must go forward. Read more:
Attention Commander in Chief: Progressive Magazine Offers Military Advice
Laurence Kotlikoff - Social Security is BROKE
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| Social Security |
Social Security just celebrated its 75th birthday. Love it or hate it, it has done its job and should retire. We need a new system, the Personal Security System, which retains Social Security’s best features, scraps the rest, and covers its costs. Social Security’s objective -- forcing people to save for retirement -- is legit. Otherwise millions of us would seek handouts in our old age. But Social Security has also played a central role in the massive, six-decade Ponzi scheme known as U.S. fiscal policy, which transfers ever-larger sums from the young to the old. In so doing, Uncle Sam has assured successive young contributors that they would have their turn, in retirement, to get back much more than they put in. But all chain letters end, and the U.S.’s is now collapsing. Read more here:
Patricia Murphy - Sarah Palin Scores Another Victory
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| Patricia Murphy |
Sec. of State Hererra's Office Remains in Turmoil
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| Mary Herrera |
Social Security a Legalized Ponzi Scheme: Will It Require Fewer Withdrawals?
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| Hide My Contributions |
Gulf War Veteran Miller an Upset Winner?
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| Sarah Palin |
Biden: 'We've seen this movie before'
From the Chicago Tribune by Mike Memoli - Vice President Biden today played attack dog for the White House, accusing Rep. John Boehner (R) of being "nostalgic" for the failed economic policies of the Bush administration. At an event where he was to unveil a report analyzing the impact of the Recovery Act, Biden broke from prepared remarks to react to the House minority leader's speech in Cleveland today. What was billed as a major economic address for Boehner offered no new policy other than to fire the White House economic team, Biden said. "[That's] very constructive advice and we thank the leader for that," Biden said sarcastically. Instead, Biden made the case that voters should not hire Republicans this fall. "For eight years before we arrived in the West Wing, Mr. Boehner and his party ran the economy literally into the ground," he said. "We've seen this movie before, Mr. Boehner. We've seen it before and we know how it ends." Read more
Ghost of 9-11 - Napolitano Ignores the Law
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| Janet Napolitano |
Human Tendencies - Lessons from Charles Munger
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Charles Munger |
Reward/Punishment Super Response: Incentives & Incentive-based biases create dominant behavioral forces. When trouble-shooting, first check the structure of the incentives.
Cascade Effect: An extremely powerful consequence from confluence of several psychological tendencies acting strongly in favor of a particular outcome.
Reason-Respecting: Advanced mental skills are widely revered by the vast majority of people. Wisdom is perceived as a precious commodity.
Contrast-Misreaction: Cognition/recognition responses can be incorrect due to slow changes involving low contrasts or by rapid and stark changes.
Powell Outlines His Reform Ideas
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| Ray Powell |
China Traffic Jam Could Last Weeks
From the Wall Street Journal - BEIJING—A 60-mile traffic jam near the Chinese capital could last until mid-September, officials say. Traffic has been snarled along the outskirts of Beijing and is stretching toward the border of Inner Mongolia ever since roadwork on the Beijing-Tibet Highway started Aug. 13. The following week, parts of a major road circling Beijing were closed, further tightening overburdened roadways. As the jam on the highway, also known as National Highway 110, passed the 10-day mark Tuesday, local authorities dispatched hundreds of police to keep order and to reroute cars and trucks carrying essential supplies, such as food or flammables, around the main bottleneck. There, vehicles were inching along little more than a third of a mile a day. Zhang Minghai, director of Zhangjiakou city's Traffic Management Bureau general office, said in a telephone interview he didn't expect the situation to return to normal until around Sept. 17 when road construction is scheduled to be finished and traffic lanes will open up. Villagers along Highway 110 took advantage of the jam, selling drivers packets of instant noodles from roadside stands and, when traffic was at a standstill, moving between trucks and cars to hawk their wares. Truck drivers, when they weren't complaining about the vendors overcharging for the food, kept busy playing card games. Their trucks, for the most part, are basic, blue-colored vehicles with no features added to help pamper drivers through long hauls. Truck driver Long Jie said his usual trip from the coal boomtown of Baotou in Inner Mongolia to Beijing, which normally takes three days, was now taking him a week or more. The delay, he said, meant he would have to raise his rates above the usual 12,000 yuan, about $1,765, for a 30-ton truck full of cargo. Read more
Border Patrol Agent Back on Duty - Holder Investigates
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| A.G. Eric Holder |
Murkowski Trails - Palin Has Coattails
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| Sara Palin |
Walter Williams - Who Cares About Our Future
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| Walter Williams |
McCain Beats Hayworth Like a Drum
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| Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) |
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