You had better have missed me

It's been a while. I know, I shouldn't have left you, not (at least) without a strong rhyme to step to.

Only David will possibly understand that joke.

So! It's springtime, and the headlines are pregnant with fuck-uppery. I don't even know what I should be aiming at, if I'm to carry out a successful sniping mission in the smugness and obscurity of the sidelines. Ben got Goldman, and Dave's dug up the dirt on Rush and Rand; I'm feeling like the fat kid who's sweating his way to the start line even as the long-legged Adonises blaze towards the finish.

How about Greece? It's in a tight spot, and I'm going ten to one that it'll take more than olive oil and kebab fat to squeeze its way out. For all of you who've made heavy bets in sovereign-debt markets, I'd suggest you start shedding bonds like necrotic extremities. My guess is that Athens will be so weakened by discord and popular dissent that it will have succumbed to semi-, and then full, anarchy by mid-summer, with the worship of ritualized conflict as mortal pseudo-sport a sure bet for the Christmas season.

Financial regulation is doing well: it's shaping up to be almost as eye-boilingly infuriating as healthcare was. If I had a nickel for every time I wanted to infect a Republican member of Congress with incurable bone plague, I wouldn't even need to spring for the plague--I could just choke him with nickels.

Finally, everyone give a big round of applause for the United Kingdom, where it looks as if the utter ruination of the Labour Party is all but tattooed onto the Queen's chest. In a surprise upset, backstretch warmers the Liberal Democrats are set to snatch an unprecedented three-times-ten-percent share of the upcoming vote. Not bad for the worst country in the world, transforming a devastating and relentless economic catastrophe into a once-in-a-generation political upheaval which may yet remake British politics entirely for the better.

Who am I kidding? They're still ugly and awful, and, if lazy, American humor is anything to go by, they eat like medieval dungeon prostitutes. U-S-A!

My Belated and Obligatory Goldman Post

I realize that this is coming a week and a half too late (too late for me to contribute anything new or particularly meaningful to the subject in any event), but having saved a dozen or so tabs on my browser just for this occasion and this blog being that it is, I would have felt remiss in not at least mentioning the SEC v. Goldman thing, if only for continuity or posterity.

Information on the SECs complaint and Goldman's potential violation abound, and so I won't rehash the issue here. If you've missed or ignored it up until this point, there's this New York Times article from back in December, this more recent update, and this post at Baseline scenario, to name a few sources that explain the whole in clearer terms than I would be likely to muster.

There are a number of issues that this case raises. First, now that SEC has taken the rare step of actually doing something in its capacity as an enforcer, does this auger a change in attitude or approach at either the agency specifically or throughout the administration as a whole? Specifically, is this to be the first in a long line of cases brought by the government against financial malfeasance or is this going to be, much like the case against Madoff I think, an easy way to blame the entire financial crisis on a few bad people doing a few bad things and to ignore a system-wide overall in the process? Which is all to paraphrase Yves Smith who writes:

it is too early to tell whether this suit is indeed the beginning of a concerted initiative (with the initial litigation allowing the SEC to perfect its legal arguments and uncover more information through the discovery process) or simply an effort to address (as in appease) to a public mad as hell about no-questions-asked bank bailouts and continuing subsidies to the financial services industry. (NakedCapitalism)

The timing of this case, given the current wrangling over financial regulatory reform, could really be interpreted either way, I think.

But there are some positive signs, according to Bonddad:

[I]n government based litigation, the government is going to argue more or less the same thing in a line of cases. Therefore, they usually bring their best case first to set a precedent for other jurisdictions to follow (this is what the IRS does in anti-avoidance litigation). I'm guessing this is the government's best case in this area. In correlation, the SEC is desperately trying to re-establish itself as a potent enforcement arm. I don't think they would bring a case right now unless they thought they had as close to a slam dunk case as possible.

Admittedly, those are some pretty thin tea leaves: little more than speculation, it seems to me. Either way, Bonddad makes a compelling case that whatever the motivation behind bringing this case at this time in this way, the SEC is forcing Goldman to fight this issue out in the public (a settlement would open the bank up to an onslaught of civil charges). From a policy perspective, the more attention this gets, the more pressure members of congress receive to actually act against this nonsense, the better.

Second, this all brings to mind the all-too-familiar conclusion: so much of modern finance is socially useless. As far as I can tell, none of the financial products or arrangements in the Goldman-Paulson deal, like those in the strikingly similar Magnetar scheme explained on last week's This American Life, like those concocted by Lehman Brothers according to this New York Times article, serve any good whatsoever, even by the standard definition of social good offered by finance academics and bankers. In many cases, the opposite seems just as likely to be the case.

More than anything, a lot of it amounts to complexity for the sake of complexity. Smoke and mirrors serve the interest of banks. It makes it that much easier to maximize fees, over-price assets, and circumvent regulation. And within the banks themselves, based on the recent testimonies of Robert Rubin and Charles Prince--

Even his lofty title at Citigroup didn't involve frequent meetings and "wasn't a substantive part of the decision-making process," Mr. Rubin told the panel...Mr. Prince said he wasn't aware that Citigroup traders decided to keep on the company's books $40 billion of super-senior collateralized debt obligations, pools of assets tied to subprime mortgages. "After all, having $40 billion of [highly rated] paper on the balance sheet of a $2 trillion company would typically not raise a concern," he said. Such assets eventually produced losses of $30 billion. (WSJ)

--the complexity and scale of the institutions and transactions involved make it virtually impossible for the left hand to know what the right is up to. Or at least, it provides management with an ability to make that argument and take their bonuses with a straight face when the shit inevitably hits the fan.

It is a bit of a cliche at this point, but banking should be boring. From what I understand, the regulatory proposals being discussed don't go nearly far enough in achieving the obvious goal. But maybe, the SEC can start picking the slack.

In which David's feelings are hurt

NOTE: What follows is super navel-gaze-y and whiny and for that I apologize. Think of it less as a blog post and more as something I would be telling you about over a beer were I physically proximate enough to do so.

Although I am a heavy consumer of blogs, I rarely, rarely comment (except here, of course). There are a few reasons, but the main one is that blog comment sections are dens of logical and rhetorical iniquity, places where lonely, angry people are given free rein to verbally assault other lonely, angry people that they may never meet. Trying to insert one's carefully crafted opinion into a comment section is like dropping a bottle of Purel into an outhouse.

It's not that I don't read comment sections occasionally and desire to jump in as well. It's just that I know that no matter what I say, no matter how limited in scope or tentatively put it may be, if there is an ounce of provocation or debate in it, someone will jump up and down on my e-balls like a crazed baboon.

The relevant example: yesterday, a friend of mine changed his Facebook status to

"To all those who "liked" the page "DEAR LORD, THIS YEAR YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTOR, PATRICK SWAYZIE. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTRESS, FARAH FAWCETT. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE SINGER, MICHAEL JACKSON. I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW, MY FAVORITE PRESIDENT IS BARACK OBAMA. AMEN." need to explain to me why calling on the death of a sitting US president (who isn't even liberal, let alone a socialist) is ok..."

He's a liberal dude who is originally from Northern Florida and was in a frat, so I doubt he posted it without expecting some kind of response. And of course he did.

A sampler:

"he is a socialist, communist, super leftie who sucks at his job...and what, these jokes were never around for other presidents...chill out chevo!"

"Fritz has a point. The 2008 election had a record number of extremely uneducated voters who turned up at the polls for "hope" and "change". (read: clever marketing). They didn't know the issues then, they don't know them now. All that goes on in their heads is "Obama = god, people who don't like Obama = idiot right wing extremists who don't know what they're talking about". Nothing has changed in America, except the fact that now China basically owns us..."

"...So why are they raising taxes on nearly everything AND proposing this God awful VAT? Maybe so they can continue to fund the support of the 47% of the US populace that does not pay any income tax. Make sure the plebes have their bread and circus and Rome can continue. It isn't that hard."

Against my better judgment, I posted a response:

1. What does "rated as the most liberal senator" mean, exactly? Not only are those ratings usually pulled together by thinktanks with thinly veiled political intent, how do you rate someone as "the most liberal"? What is "the most liberal" thing I could do?

2. "Maybe so they can continue to fund the support of the 47% of the US populace that does not pay any income tax." This is horribly misleading. This number refers to federal income tax only. There's a whole array of other state and federal-level taxes that are being paid, like state income tax or payroll taxes (3/4 of American households pay more in payroll taxes than incomes taxes anyway). In reality, the number of people who pay no net federal taxes is around 10%. Beyond that, states taxes are mad regressive, so whatever benefit the "plebes", as you put it, may acquire from exemptions on federal income taxes are lost.

3. Where is the evidence that "some of the most uneducated people voted in this election"? Is that provable? Does Rush Limbaugh own an apartment in your brain, or just rent?

Here's the entirety of what I got back:

Oh look at the clever liberal. I don't like Obama's policies, so I must be a Rush Limbaugh listener. Fail logic sir. I don't watch FOXnews either, I know, how can that be possible! Doesn't like Obama AND doesn't like conservative talk radio/TV?

I'm a fiscal conservative. Everything Obama is doing to the country goes against what I believe fiscally. Nothing good will come from spending this kind of money on programs with limited foreseeable benefit. I think the Bank Bailouts proved that beyond a doubt, have you seen the unemployment numbers? Money well spent? Not in this life, buddy.

That's it.

Now, to be fair, there were a number of people who posted (30 long, long comments) and both the tone and the intelligence level varied a lot. But c'mon! I put forward a series of points, and the only response I get focuses entirely on a line of snark I nailed on to the end before wandering back into the land of fact-free irrelevance. It's almost like the dude scrupulously avoided reading or thinking about any of what I wrote that didn't offend him.

Anyway, I could go on, but I shouldn't. The point of this post is that while I find the internet a great place to find and study information and opinions, it really is a horrible place to have an actual conversation. Am I alone in thinking this?

Take them on, on your own

In the original spirit of The Chorography, as a place to bring any and all relevant and not-so-relevant things to each other's attention, I present you with The Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937:

The Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937, frequently called the court-packing plan,[1] was a legislative initiative to add more justices to the Supreme Court proposed by U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt shortly after his victory in the 1936 presidential election. Although the bill aimed generally to overhaul and modernize all of the federal court system, its central and most controversial provision would have granted the President power to appoint an additional Justice to the U.S. Supreme Court for every sitting member over the age of 70½, up to a maximum of six.

Crazy stuff, especially for someone whose knowledge of New Deal history is fragmentary at best. Roosevelt got beat to shit over the court-packing plan, as it was a fairly blatant attempt to overcome a number of unfavorable rulings the Supreme Court had handed him through his first term, but it's interesting to me to compare this kind of legislative tactic with, well, anything Obama has done. I only came about this while reading Path to Power, a book about yet another progressive/left-of-centre president with ambitious plans for the federal government, and as bad as Johnson (and, to some extent, Roosevelt) come off looking, the sheer ball-sack that they brought to the table in the pursuit of a progressive agenda is pretty impressive. I suppose you could argue that they lived and operated at a time when organizing legislative/populist resistance to liberalism was harder or that modern partisanship would paralyze any president, no matter how persuasive or assertive he or she may be. That said, reading about Johnson and Roosevelt isn't doing a lot to convince me that Obama is a leader in their mould. Whether that's a good thing, I guess, is something we should debate.

Things that are awesome

This picture was taken with a pinhole camera over six months.

Things I did not realize

1. Rush has a big old boner for Ayn Rand.

2. You can get published in an academic journal just for pointing this out.

Thankfully, knowing these things doesn't make 2112 any less awesome.

An open letter

Dear everybody:

Please stop comparing women to dogs. It wasn't funny when Peter McKay did it and it's not funny now.

The thing is, it's not a double standard if calling a woman a dog carries the kind of symbolic weight (i.e. all strong women in politics are bitches) that it does.

Sincerely,

Sarah

Veil debate update

Article in the G&M about a young Muslim woman ordered to leave government-funded French classes because of her refusal to take off her veil.

I'm still not entirely sure where I stand on the whole veil debate, but there is one thing I will say: for everyone complaining that the veil oppresses and disempowers women, etc., please consider that perhaps taking a French course is an empowering experience for her. That's certainly the impression I got from the article.

I do not personally like the veils and I admit that I find them jarring and seeing women in the niqab makes me uncomfortable. However, I think that by removing access to government services Quebec is removing access to the very kind of empowerment and independence that everyone seems to claim that veiled women need.

EDIT: by "everyone" I don't mean this blog.

Vile and disgusting trigger warning here

I'm back, ladies and gentlemen, and with something particularly horrifying on this delightful Wednesday morning.

Via Shakesville: a great article in the Guardian by a Shakesville contributor concerning a cartoon by a right-wing blogger (Darleen of Protein Wisdom) depicts Obama putting his shirt on and leaving after raping the statue of liberty.

I'm not going to post the cartoon here because I can't figure out how to put it behind a cut and I don't want to put it on the front of the blog.

As another blogger, Amanda at Pandagon, writes, what is so fascinating about this is how some conservatives are able to understand that rape is about power when using it as imagery to describe legislation or governmental power they don't like, yet the same (or other conservatives) are unable to understand this when rape is happening to ACTUAL PEOPLE, choosing instead to understand it in the context of promiscuity (women) or humour (men).

The other blatant, glaring issue here, for me, is the fact that the blogger who came up with the cartoon denies that there is a racial element to it. Even if (and this is a big IF) she came up with the cartoon without any intention to have racist over-, under-, and any other kind of tones, the failure to recognize the implications of "black man" + "sexual assault" + "white - OK, green - woman" is a gross oversight.

There are just so many things wrong with this that I don't know what else to say.

The Great Unveiling

This veil business is surprisingly interesting, something I've never paid much attention to until Dan and Sol wrote about it. So congrats, guys, you're getting me to stop thinking about America and start thinking about Canada.

The larger issue here, as Dan briefly touched on, is that Canada has one broad standard of cultural acceptance, and Quebec has a much narrower one. I made mention of this in the comments for Dan's post, but a not insignificant portion of the Canadian elementary/high school social studies curriculum is devoted to parsing the differences between Canadian "multiculturalism" and American melting pot-ism. Obviously, any attempt to talk about Canada and America is fraught with problems of identity, autonomy, and inferiority, and I still to this day do not fully understand what the distinction is or why its a good thing. The 30-word summary of it, though, is that Canadian immigrants are allowed to retain their cultural heritage (becoming Italian-Canadians or Indian-Canadians) while American immigrants have to take a citizenship test and assimilate (becoming Americans, full stop).

Now, much ink has been spilled debating whether this is a good idea. Frankly, I'm no ultra-nationalist, but I think that if Canadians are seriously concerned about maintaining cultural and political autonomy from our neighbors to the south, we need to do a better job of making people proud to be and proud to be called Canadian. At the moment, the "mosaic" approach makes citizenship in Canada look like a great dental plan: of course you're glad to have it, but it ain't you, man. The concept of Canadian identity is largely detached from any social or civic obligation, leaving it to the predations of beer companies and heritage moments.

As we all know and have experienced, Quebec, the nation within a nation, has a much different take on this, one that is fundamentally irreconcilable with the federal concept of multiculturalism. The provincial government has a huge say in determining a) what is part of the Quebec identity b) whether it should be legally enforced and c) how. As the demographics of the country have turned against them (no link, but the French-only population is on the decline), the aggressive defense of French Canadian identity has picked up steam. One can see that in the veil ban, something we seem to all agree has very little to do with feminism and as Dan pointed out effects a very, very small portion of the population.

The problem, for me, is Ignatieff's response. Yes, he's only opposition leader, but he's highlighting a political dynamic that I expect we will be dealing with for some time. In short, the current balance in the House of Commons makes Quebec an incredibly valuable piece of real estate. Conservatives have, in the last three elections, worked hard to take seats from the Bloc, with varying success, largely because they realize that a majority government can only realistically be formed with some portion of French seats. As a result, both the Liberals and the Conservatives have adopted a strategy of neutralization: if they can take away the nationalist reasons for voting for the Bloc, they might have a shot with the Quebec electorate. Harper's 'nation within a nation' is an obvious example of this, and I think Ignatieff's comment on the veil issue is too.

So the federal political climate is basically letting Quebec drift even further away from the multicultural ideal than it was before. This is the worst of both worlds: Canada on the national level remains undefined, while Quebec becomes more and more absurd and militant about its own identity. Stressing the flexibility and openness of Canadian society while tacitly letting Quebec close in on itself is a recipe for disaster, the kind that rhymes with "shmeparation" and maybe also with "shmederal shmissolution".