May 30, 2012 archive

West Side Story; The Classic That Never Grows Old:

I started writing an essay with this title early this morning, only to have it just disappear on me when I was roughly halfway through it.  It’s a royal pain in the ass when that happens, but I decided to wait until later today to try it again, as I was too exasperated to try to do it over again right away.  

I’ll start out by saying that my initial introduction to West Side Story was through the music of the original Broadway stage production of this musical.   It came while I was attending day camp out west in the summer of 1962, prior to entering the sixth grade.  A girl in the group I was with, who’d just received an LP copy of the original Broadway soundtrack of WSS for her birthday, brought it to camp and played it for the rest of the group.  My love of West Side Story took off…instantly.  

West Side Story-mania was in the air that summer.  Kids roamed the hallways, sometimes in groups, snapping their fingers, and the various songs from WSS rang through the bus to and from camp every day of the week, as the kids sang all the songs.  It was cool.  

I missed seeing the film version of West Side Story during the heyday of its popularity, partly due to my relative isolation from most of the other kids, and partly because my parents refused to  take my sister and I to see it, at least in part because they didn’t think (and my mom still doesn’t think) that West Side Story was a kids’ movie.  Having seen this great, golden oldie but keeper of a Classic movie/musical more times than I’m able or willing to count at this point, the more I think about it, the more I tend to agree with my mom on this point.  

Since my parents also had an LP copy of the soundtrack of the original Broadway stage version of WSS, I played it on my parents’ Hi-Fi whenever I had the opportunity to do so, because I’d come to so love the music and the story of West Side Story itself.  I would not get to see the movie until seven years later, as my high school years were coming to a close, and WSS, although there was a big national re-release of it, had passed the heyday of its popularity, freshness and newness.

I finally did get to see it for the first time, at around Christmastime of 1968, as a high school Senior, at a now-defunct cinema that was roughly 45 minutes north of Boston, and fell in love with this film the minute I saw it.  Little did I, or my family know, that this was the start of my own love affair with the film West SIde Story that would last all the way up until the present, much to their amusement, chagrin and resigned acceptence of this particular idiosyncrasy of mine.  

FOIA Revelations Show Administration Role In Occupy Crackdown

DHS documents were released to Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) that despite extensive redactions reveal a greater administration role than previously known in the crackdown on the Occupy movement.

The release is described on the PCJF website:

Homeland Security Documents Show Massive Nationwide Monitoring of Occupy Movement

Documents just obtained by the PCJF from its FOIA request show massive nationwide monitoring, surveillance and information sharing between the Department of Homeland Security and local authorities in response to Occupy. The PCJF, also on behalf of author/filmmaker Michael Moore and the National Lawyers Guild Mass Defense Committee, has made a series of FOIA demands regarding law enforcement involvement in the Occupy Crackdown. …

This set of released materials reveals intense involvement by the DHS’ National Operations Center (NOC) in these activities. The DHS describes the NOC as, “the primary national-level hub for domestic situational awareness, common operational picture, information fusion, information sharing, communications, and coordination pertaining to the prevention of terrorist attacks and domestic incident management. The NOC is the primary conduit for the White House Situation Room and DHS Leadership for domestic situational awareness and facilitates information sharing and operational coordination with other federal, state, local, tribal, non-governmental operation centers and the private sector.”

Documents are available in 3 pdfs here, here and here.

Real Politics

Sometimes called Realpolitik (use your best Henry Killinger accent)-

Let’s Talk Turkey About Greece

Ian Welsh

2012 May 26

Greece is going to have get hardcore and creative about creating a new economy.  Since the monetary authorities intend to starve them and deprive them of oil, they must retaliate hard.  Greece has a number of options, and this is what Greece should do You don’t play nice with people who are trying to cause a famine in your country.

  • Greece has a large fleet.  Use it to strip mine the Mediterranean of all resources possible.  Yes, the Med is a fragile ecosystem.  If the other Euros don’t like it, they can not punish Greece, otherwise Greece will have to feed itself.  The Euros could send fleets, but as the British-Iceland fishing war proved, that’s prohibitively expensive.
  • Start gun-running and other black market activities up.  European gun-running currently goes through Albania.  Greece has much better ports.  If the Euros don’t like it, they can militarize Greece’s borders at a cost much higher than feeding the Greeks.
  • Become a full on black-hole for banking.  If anyone wants to store money in Greece, they can.  No questions asked, no forms needed.
  • Make deals with other “pariah” and semi-pariah nations.  Start with Iran and Russia for oil (Iran will be happy to give oil in exchange for black market help).  Make a deal with various 2nd world nations for food, start with Argentina, they have no reason to love the IMF or the European Union, which promised to “punish” them for nationalizing oil in Argentina.  In exchange Greece can offer use of their fleet, for cheap, and port rights for the Russian navy.  They’ve wanted a true warm water port for some time.  Offer them a nice island in the Med with a 30 year lease.
  • Hold on for a couple years.  Odds are that soon enough Ireland, Spain, Portugal and maybe others will leave the Euro.  They won’t be in any mood to screw Greece for their ex-Euro masters.  Heck, odds are 50/50 that there won’t be a Euro zone at all in 3 years, since Germany wants to screw everyone, including France.
  • Nationalize basically every industry.  It’s unfortunate, but it’s going to be necessary.  Hundreds of billions of dollars have fled Greece in the past 3 years, in fact that was one of the main reasons for dragging out the “bailouts” (really, bailouts of German banks), to let the money flee.  All Greek assets are going to be frozen overseas, so the Greeks will need to work with what they have.
  • No more money goes out of the country.  Slap on currency controls, to make sure what money is there doesn’t leave (this is aimed at Greece’s rich).  If any banker or anyone else circumvents them, throw them in jail, the sentence should be life, generous, since they are committing treason.
  • Seriously change the tax system, and insist on really taxing the rich.  Go to heavily progressive taxation, reduce the burden on the poor (a large number of people now), this will buy support.
  • A food rationing system, with cards and delivery to every person in the country will be necessary.  It won’t be fun, but combined with the above, you can make sure that no one starves.

Greece has been under siege for years now, and traitors within its own country (its politicians) have betrayed it.  This means Greeks are in serious danger of suffering a famine.  The response to that, by Greeks, will have to be pragmatic and severe.  If non-Greeks don’t like it, that’s too bad.  When millions of people are in danger of starving, a country does what it has to.

Hardly Even Pretending

SEC: Taking on Big Firms is ‘Tempting,’ But We Prefer Whaling on Little Guys

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone

May 30, 11:23 AM ET

Want an example of the S.E.C.’s idea of “shot selection”? Every year, a parade of itty-bitty failed public companies lets their paperwork lapse. Dead little companies sitting in the bureaucratic atmosphere doing nothing at all are a major threat to national security, of course, so the S.E.C. flies in to the rescue and feverishly revokes their registrations.

These actions are called “12(j) registration revocations,” and the beauty of them, from the S.E.C.’s point of view, is that it can list each one of those revocations as a separate enforcement action, when it goes before Congress at the end of every year to brag about all the good work it’s done.

Therefore toward the end of every calendar year, you’ll see a rush of these 12(j) revocations. In 2011, about one out of every six S.E.C. enforcement actions – 121 out of 735 (.pdf) – involved these delinquent filings. In the stats they submit to Congress, they list these cases right next to things like market manipulation, insider trading, and financial fraud. “The S.E.C. Enforcement staff takes 10 minutes and shoots a zombie company in the head and then has the guts to call it enforcement,” is how one attorney put it to me.

Just days after 60 Minutes ran its piece last year about the epidemic of unprosecuted fraud on Wall Street, the S.E.C. charged into action. Take a look at the dates on these two (.pdf) documents (.pdf). While Chase’s “London Whale” was preparing to play billion-dollar faro with federally-insured money and MF Global was still struggling to find its “misplaced” $1.6 billion in customer money, the S.E.C. was gallantly taking on the likes of A.J. Ross Logistics, Inc., Status Game Corp., and Fightersoft Multimedia Corporation. And bragging to Congress about its conquests. It’s as clear a case of juking the stats as you’ll ever see.

Your tax dollars at work.

Cartnoon

Hare Tonic

On This Day In History May 30

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

Click on image to enlarge

May 30 is the 150th day of the year (151st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 215 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1922, Former President William Howard Taft dedicates the Lincoln Memorial on the Washington Mall on this day in 1922. At the time, Taft was serving as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Taft remains the only former president ever to hold a seat on the Supreme Court. He served from 1921 to 1930. He recalled his time on the court as his most rewarding career, later saying in his memoirs, I don’t remember that I was ever president.

History

The Lincoln Memorial, designed after the temples of ancient Greece, is significant as America’s foremost memorial to their 16th president, as a totally original example of neoclassical architecture, and as the formal terminus to the extended National Mall in accordance with the McMillan Plan for the monumental core of Washington.

Demands for a fitting memorial had been voiced since the time of Lincoln’s death. In 1867, Congress heeded these demands and passed the first of many bills incorporating a commission to erect a monument for the sixteenth president. An American, Clark Mills, was chosen to design the monument. His plans reflected the bombastic nationalistic spirit of the age. His design called for a 70-foot (21 m) structure adorned with six equestrian and 31 pedestrian statues of colossal proportions, crowned by a 12-foot (3.7 m) statue of Abraham Lincoln. However, subscriptions for the project were insufficient and its future fell into doubt.

The matter lay dormant until the turn of the century, when, under the leadership of Senator Shelby M. Cullom of Illinois, six separate bills were introduced to Congress for the incorporation of a new memorial commission. The first five bills, proposed in the years 1901, 1902, and 1908, met with defeat; however, the final bill (Senate Bill 9449), introduced on December 13, 1910, passed. The Lincoln Memorial Commission had its first meeting the following year and President William H. Taft was chosen as president. Progress continued at a steady pace and by 1913 Congress had approved of the Commission’s choice of design and location. However, this approval was far from unanimous. Many thought that architect Henry Bacon’s Greek temple design was far too ostentatious for a man of Lincoln’s humble character. Instead they proposed a simple log cabin shrine. The site too did not go unopposed. The recently reclaimed land in West Potomac Park was seen by many to be either too swampy or too inaccessible. Other sites, such as Union Station, were put forth. The Commission stood firm in its recommendation though, feeling that the Potomac Park location, situated on the Washington MonumentCapitol axis, overlooking the Potomac River and surrounded by open land, was an ideal site. Furthermore, the Potomac Park site had already been designated in the McMillan Plan of 1901 to be the location of a future monument comparable to that of the Washington Monument.

With Congressional approval and a $300,000 allocation, the project got underway. On February 12, 1914, an inauspicious dedication ceremony was conducted and following month the actual construction began. Work progressed steadily according to schedule. However a few changes did have to be made. The statue of Lincoln, originally designed to be 10 feet (3.0 m) tall, was later enlarged to 19 feet (5.8 m) to prevent it from being dwarfed by its huge chamber. As late as 1920, the decision was made to substitute an open portal for the bronze and glass grille which was to have guarded the entrance. Despite these changes, the Memorial was finished on schedule. In a (May 30) celebration in 1922, Commission president William H. Taft dedicated the Memorial and presented it to President Warren G. Harding, who accepted it for the American people. Lincoln’s only remaining son, 79 year old Robert Todd Lincoln, was in attendance.

Muse in the Morning

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Muse in the Morning


Pierce

Late Night Karaoke

Cause I Don’t Like It Here?

Look you have advertized my job twice already based upon snap decisions made by a manager every long term employee here considers a first class asshole.  This is in spite of my stellar career of 22 years in a directly related field.  Your documentation is ten years old including instructions sheets calling for lead solder.  The place is run much like junior high school, we can’t build stuff cause we don’t have parts cause you didn’t pay the bills.

It is institutionalized mediocrity.  I miss talking to intelligent people.

So I blew my first real interview for a job I have been doing for about six months cause I was honest with the HR thrity something twit?

I don’t like it here?

Nobody likes it here!

Former premier defense contractor.  Name forthcoming upon my termination and subsequent litigation process.

Fed Bank Examiners Go Native

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

Not only did they go native, they were hand picked by the same bank CEO’s that sit on the Federal Reserve board of directors. This is great article of how that works from Prof William K. Black, associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, who explains some more of the reasons the TBTF banks need to be broken into smaller pieces.

Embedded Examiners always married the Natives, but now their Bosses Do Hook Ups

Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Ben Protess have written an extraordinarily important column for the New York Times about embedded examiners at JPMorgan.

Embedded examiners’ are federal regulators whose normal work station is a desk at the bank.  We only embed examiners for systemically dangerous institutions (SDIs) – banks so large that they pose a systemic risk to global economy.

Embedded examiners do not work.  They get too close to the bank officers and employees.  In the regulatory ranks we called this “marrying the natives.”  Nothing works with SDIs – they are too big to manage, too big to fail, and too big to regulate.  A conventional bank examination, scaled up to size to fit an SDI the size of JPMorgan would have 500 examiners and take 18 months to “complete.”  (Obviously, when it takes that long to complete an examination it is impossible to “complete” an examination in any meaningful sense – by the time you’ve spent 18 months examining an SDI it can be a radically different bank.)  One cannot conduct an effective conventional bank examination of even a medium-sized bank on a “real time” basis because of the amount of new information pouring in every minute.  Conventional examinations examine a bank’s records and operations “as of” some date (typically the last quarter-end for which reports have been filed).  Embedding examiners is an effort at achieving an “early warning” system.  It has one virtue – it indicates that some senior regulator(s) recognized that they cannot rely on the bank’s own reports to determine whether it is steering toward trouble.

In fairness, twenty-five years ago the proponents of embedding recognize the severity of the “marrying the natives” problem.  They simply viewed embedding as the least bad manner of attempting the impossible – effectively regulating SDIs.  Here is the key passage of the NYT column.

   Roughly 40 examiners from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and 70 staff members from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency are embedded in the nation’s largest bank. They are typically assigned to the departments undertaking the greatest risks, like the structured products trading desk. Even as the chief investment office swelled in size and made increasingly large bets, regulators did not put any examiners in the unit’s offices in London or New York, according to current and former regulators who spoke only on condition of anonymity.

   Senior JPMorgan executives assured the bank’s watchdogs after the financial crisis that the chief investment office, with hundreds of billions in investments, was not taking risks that would be a cause for concern, people briefed on the matter said. Just weeks before the trading losses became public, bank officials also dismissed the worry of a senior New York Fed examiner about the mounting size of the bets, according to current Fed officials.

The authors of the article frame the issue as whether Jamie Dimon’s role as Director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York poses a conflict of interest and could have led to the regulatory failure to place any examiners in the chief investment office (CIO).  The CIO appears to be the largest de facto hedge fund in the world.  (Note: “hedge fund” is a deliberately misleading term.  Entities called hedge funds typically speculate rather than hedge.  When I call the CIO a “hedge fund” I mean that it largely speculates and disingenuously calls its bets “hedges.”) [..]

SDIs are not simply dangerous, they are also inefficient.  Shrinking the SDIs to the point where they no longer posed a systemic risk would also increase their efficiency, make them small enough to regulate, and help recover our democracy.

SDIs that function as banks pose intolerable risks to the global economy.  SDIs that function as (thinly disguised) hedge funds should be far beyond the pale.  Conservative and libertarian philosophy rightly condemn providing enormous federal subsidies to a private entity whose senior officers claim any wins and socialize any severe losses.

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The IMF on UK macroeconomic policy: Part 1

Martin Wolf, Financial Times

May 25, 2012 4:43 pm

How long then is a change in policy supposed to wait?

I find it hard to believe that the Fund staff disagree that action is needed right now. It is far more likely that they (and, not least, the IMF’s Managing Director, Christine Lagarde) felt unable to take on the government of what remains an important member country. That is also what the BBC’s Stephanie Flanders suggests in her excellent post, “IMF: ‘Great Policies: Shame about the Economy‘.”

The time for aggressive fiscal consolidation is when the economy – by which I mean spending by the private sector – is strong, not weak, as it is now. What, then, is the argument against using fiscal policy more aggressively, to support the economy now? As Jonathan Portes, director of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research, notes, it is very hard to make one.

The principal argument against any fiscal action now, apart from the hope against implausible hope that monetary policy is going to do the job, even though interest rates are almost zero and the Bank of England has indulged in substantial “quantitative easing”, is that it will destroy the government’s credibility, lead to a rapid spike in interest rates and so weaken the economy, rather than strengthen it.

The IMF on UK macroeconomic policy: Part 2

Martin Wolf, Financial Times

May 28, 2012 5:52 pm

(A) willingness to make determined use of fiscal policy should also reduce the uncertainty of decision-makers about the likely direction of the economy. If businesses think the authorities are not determined to sustain demand, they are right to be more cautious. Ultimately, the government insures business against the macroeconomic risks of investment, via its determination to sustain demand in a slump. But the government has shown no such determination, with effects on the willingness of business to invest that we now see. Thus, the very determination to act might make a huge difference to the outcome for the economy.

In brief, the endlessly repeated “credibility” arguments against a change in fiscal policy are feeble. The UK has fiscal levers at its disposal and should use them.

What is true, however, is that a change would weaken the government’s credibility. But this is because the government made an unwise commitment.

(h/t Herr Doktor)