We’re now doing a Canada blog at Dow Jones’ MarketWatch site. Please check it out.
Canadians are a lot more interesting — and a lot less infuriating — than the denizens of the D.C. swamp.
That’s what Washington has become, sadly.
Time to drain the swamp.
I’ll be starting a Canada blog for MarketWatch.com next week. Not too many — if any — media outlets in the U.S. covering Canada, so I’m glad to find this niche.
…if you can nail oil, that is.
NYTimes’ columnist Bob Herbert asks today:
“How many people have to die or face ruin, and how much of nature has to be despoiled before we rein in the cowboys of these runaway corporations?”
That’s NOT a rhetorical question, by the way.
…at Twitter, that’s where.
At Twitter.com/newsmann you’ll get to read my latest, several-times-a-day tweets. Some good, some not so. See you over there?
…at the bottom of the Washington Monument, this legend:
“Stay Thirsty, My Friends.”
At the same time the Senate committee was staging its Goldman Sachs dog-and-pony show Tuesday, with Republicans joining in the fun, the same GOP pricks were filibustering Wall Street/banking reform.
Thanks to Rachel Maddow for pointing that out.
Just when you think the Senate couldn’t look any more pathetic…
That’s one of the key points in Krugman’s NYTimes column today:
“Capital was channeled not to job-creating innovators, but into an unsustainable housing bubble; risk was concentrated, not spread; and when the housing bubble burst, the supposedly stable financial system imploded, with the worst global slump since the Great Depression as collateral damage.
So why were bankers raking it in? My take, reflecting the efforts of financial economists to make sense of the catastrophe, is that it was mainly about gambling with other people’s money. The financial industry took big, risky bets with borrowed funds — bets that paid high returns until they went bad — but was able to borrow cheaply because investors didn’t understand how fragile the industry was.”
This is the same point Michael Lewis makes in his No. 1 best-selling book, “The Big Short”:
When Goldman went public a few years ago, it transferred the risk away from its partners — to shareholders. Gambling with other people’s money..our national casino.
Good news just after Obama’s Wall Street speech: MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell, a shrewd judge of the political ethos, said of bank reform, “The train has left the station. It’s going to happen.”
She added that Sen. “Bitch” McConnell made a bet with the 41-signature statement last week, and the GOP lost.
You could say the doughy McConnell’s taken it on the chin. If he had one.
Make our day, Mitch McConnell.
Keep kissing the banksters’ asses and see how that works for you and your weasly GOP pals in the fall elections.
The LA Times and others are reporting that Pres. Obama is fixing to “go big” and blast banks and Wall Street in his address at Cooper Union this Thurs.
Cue McChinless and The Boner to come out and lie their sorry asses off (again).
The Senate GOP weasels are already whining about wanting a “non-activist” judge to be nominated by Pres. Obama to the Supreme Court. Sen. Orren “Booby” Hatch, for example, says he doesn’t want anyone who “legislates from the bench”?
If that’s the case, one might reasonably expect this old hack to begin impeachment proceedings against Roberts and Alioto.
We’ll not hold our breath.