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5 ways to fix Wall Street - too bad we wont see any of them

Ritholtz had a great short post today - a brilliant set of principles that would fix the financial sector and restore - maybe - enough credibility to banking to be meaningful.

Under either Obama or Romney we wont see any of this - they are both acting as if they are committed to guaranteeing the too big to fail banks a second bailout as the global economy continues to choke on higher EROI on liquid fuels. Many (if not most) of the idependent banking experts say another finance crash is inevitable, because fundamentally nothing has changed, and risky unregulated trading in poorly understood complex derivitives is still standard practice, made worse by high speed trading, and the international economic slowdown.

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2012/10/bair-5-steps-to-fix-wall-street/

2. Publicly commit to end bailouts
Market must punish the boneheads.” We should learn from post-2008 bailouts is we should never allow ourselves to be in that position again. Wall Street cannot have an indefinite option to “put” its losses to the Treasury and to taxpayers.

Solution: Make penalties for asking for and getting bailouts egregious — wipe out shareholders, fire management.

4. End speculation in the credit derivatives market
If arsonists can’t buy fire insurance on someone else’s house, why allow speculation using credit derivatives? Credit default swaps with no vested interested are the same thing. Read more »

Ahead of the Curve

 

At 7 AM today, Governor Romney lambasted President Obama for the “truly terrible job he has done in executing the emergency response in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.”   “In a Romney administration,” he intoned, “You can expect the difficult work of cleaning up from the devastation of any national disaster will be finished by the time the disaster occurs.”  “Anything less i a dereliction of duty.”

Possibly the best article ever written on why hardcore progressives should not vote for Obama

Hardcore progressives dont need to be too concerned if Romney wins. Romeny and the republicans have no economic plan, no solutions for any of the problems we face, and the american people will pay a HUGE price for electing him. And that is as it should be. Americans cant think clearly about the future, they believe the corporate media when they shouldn't trust the "official story" that comes from any corporate source, and a solid dose of awakening pain will do the whole country a lot of good.

So, dont be sad if Romney wins, is my position. Yes, the Iraqi oil we took for the fossil carbon corps will start to come online before 2016, holding worldwide fuel prices down a bit, and the republicans will take credit for that; but, thats a minor force, and the other economic forces will reduce that to a relatively small bump in a downward arc as the perfect storm of population increase, resource depletion, and global warming slowly strangle the oil age economy.

Republican nostalgia, and their fearful denial of reality and the natural world of physics and biology, can't solve complex problems that require complex, intelligent, and longterm solutions. 

And the democrats need to learn to be bolder, braver, and less corrupted by wall street. 

Anyway - to get to the original impetus for this post - we have to remember that Obama is 100% a tool of the corporate elites - and this article outlines his tool nature as well as anything I have ever read:

  Read more »

Betting markets (like Intrade) more accurate than polls, market expert says

Right at this moment, Intrade still says Obama has a 60% chance of winning the election, intrade says:

Barack Obama to be re-elected President in 2012

NBC news had a piece on betting markets - worth a read.

"Bookmaker markets allow players to place bets on specific election outcomes. If Betfair.com, for example, showed Obama with a 6 in 10 chance of winning the election, the payoff on a $60 bet would be $40 (a player would risk $60 to win $40, with their initial $60 stake returned). Due to U.S. regulations, Americans can’t use sites such as Intrade.com and Betfair.com, so most of the wagering is by overseas bettors.

Following the third debate, Vaughan Williams put Obama’s chance of winning on Nov. 6 at 68 to 70 percent — up from 65 percent before the debate. He compiles his odds from an average of all the betting websites and bookmakers’ odds he monitors, allowing for possible inaccuracies and market manipulation. Vaughan Williams also takes into account how accurate these betting sites have been in past elections.

Vaughan Williams says betting websites offer a far more accurate prediction of electoral outcomes than opinion polls because the average voter doesn’t have any incentive to tell a pollster the truth about their voting habits, but when they are betting their own money they will tend to think hard about the choices they make using the best information available to them. The more money involved, the more efficient and accurate the market, he said. Read more »

MItt no More

Stevieslaw: Mitt no More

“You won’t have Mitt to kick around anymore,” opined Smokey Diamond, our ace reporter.  “The word on the street is he is changing his name from Mitt to Franklin Delano Romney.”

We turned on the TV just in time to catch the end of the ceremony on Fair and Balanced.  Franklin Delano Romney waxed eloquently on just what Roosevelt and the New Deal had meant to him when he was growing up in a cold-water flat in Toledo, Ohio.  After, he hugged Bernie Sanders, the left leaning Senator from Vermont, and said Bernie was his “new best bud.”

Paul Ryan, who is apparently still severely conservative would only say, “I will be at the gym.”  “I will be pounding things at the gym--- pounding them bloody, for the next few weeks.”

 

Tracking the Candidates

Stevieslaw: Tracking the Candidates

Smokey Diamond, our usually unflappable ace reporter, went catatonic after the first debate.  She is recovered and will be closely following the Republican candidates daily, until Election Day, which Republicans in Ohio are now telling everyone is December 7th.

Today, Romney continued his foreign policy blitz by telling a roaring crowd in Miami that, “If only I had been President during the Cuban missile crisis, rather than that weak-kneed John Kennedy, we could have avoided a nuclear war.”

The RNC, reported today at 9 AM, that Paul Ryan had driven a municipal garbage truck through Toledo, Ohio.  Ryan, breakfasting after at the popular “Grits and Chips” restaurant, told a cheering crowd that he was proud to be a Teamster. 

The RNC spokesperson, RU Kidgme, later admitted that it wasn’t a real garbage truck Ryan was not a Teamster, and that, in fact, Ryan was in Sarasota.  When pressed, Kidgme would only say, “It’s pressure time and hard to keep track of every little this and that.”

"I Have A Drone" - the ultimate presidential debate parody video - MUST SEE

This is one of the great parody playlists of all times. Just let this baby play.

Live Debate between Democrat Charles Dumas and Republican Glenn Thompson tonight

5th Congressional District Debate

Monday, October 22 at 8pm


http://wpsu.org/live

Funny that all the voter fraud caught this election is being committed by republicans

We all heard about the big voter fraud deal in Florida, where a company hired by the republican party faked republican voters in 11 counties.

Here's a new case closer to us in virginia - the republicans set up voter registration tables, and threw out forms that didn't register republican, from the looks of it,

A third instance of fraudulent voter registration has been uncovered in the important swing state of Virginia, where a Republican consultant has been arrested and thousands of discarded voter registration forms were recovered from a dumpster earlier this week. According to the Not Larry Sabato blog, a law student at James Madison University registered to vote on campus, but found when she tried to verify the change online, found that her form had never been submitted.

On Thursday, Raw Story reported that 31-year-old Colin Small, a Republican operative employed by Pinpoint, a firm contracted by Republican Party of Virginia, was arrested and charged with “four counts of destruction of voter registration applications, eight counts of disclosure of voter registration application, and one count of obstruction of justice” for throwing active voter registration forms into a dumpster.

Excellent video from Thom Hartmann - Why Fox News has the legal right to lie, and the origins of corporate personhood

RT is producing some good stuff lately...

More comment to follow,,,

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Dr. Radut