brainiac conspiracy

We Need a Global Intervention

Or it's goodbye, Northern Hemisphere:

The man in charge of the clean-up at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant says growing stores of contaminated water from the site will eventually have to be dumped into the sea.

In an exclusive interview with the ABC, the chairman of the Fukushima Monitoring Committee, Dale Klein, has also admitted there are likely to be more blunders and slip-ups at the plant in the months and years to come.

"I think the best word to use with Fukushima is challenging," the former chief nuclear watchdog in the US said.

Yeah, I understand that there is no easy option for them, but you'd think they'd at least consider, like, trying to store the stuff in some empty shipping containers, or even an empty tanker ship before dumping into the sea. Put it this way: If this was a case of the Japanese simply shitting in their own nest, then fine, let them do whatever they want. But as our oceans have currents that pulled by gravitational forces, they're going to be shitting in everyone's nest, eventually. So, time for intervention.

---Baron V

Out of Control

If any of this is remotely true, we can't even pretend to have a functioning democracy anymore:

A diverse array of nonprofits have been targeted by espionage, including environmental, anti-war, public interest, consumer, food safety, pesticide reform, nursing home reform, gun control, social justice, animal rights and arms control groups.

Many of the world's largest corporations and their trade associations---including the US Chamber of Commerce, Walmart, Monsanto, Bank of America, Dow Chemical, Kraft, Coca-Cola, Chevron, Burger King, McDonald's, Shell, BP, BAE, Sasol, Brown & Williamson and E.ON ---have been linked to espionage or planned espionage against nonprofit organizations, activists and whistleblowers.

Have written about this before, but it's still depressing to watch loyal members of Team Democrat defending the administration's unlimited surveillance powers. What they forget is that the same contractors who perform spying for the government can just as easily do the same kind of contract work for private enterprises that may not have the Obama administration noble intentions. Because history teaches us that when institutions of power have the ability to eavesdrop without limit or review on the citizenry, it almost invariably ends up using that ability to harass and discredit leftists, and that's why any Democrat who takes the side of the security-surveillance state is either an idiot or a fool.

---Baron V

Break Up The Casino

Do it now:

Leading US banks have warned that they could start charging companies and consumers for deposits if the US Federal Reserve cuts the interest it pays on bank reserves.

This is yet another problem that could have been solved four years ago if certain policymakers---I'm looking at you, Team White House!---had correctly assessed the extent of the problem, and taken the proper corrective measures. But throwing massive amounts of money at institutions that destroyed the global economy and shielding their leaders from the consequences of their bad business decisions was arguably, in retrospect, the worst thing they could have done. Yes, they saved the banking system from collapsing. But it was parasitic entity that consumed trillions of dollars in resources while providing little of value in return, and it is still a parasitic entity that provides little of value now. It needs to go away and be rebuilt from scratch.

---Baron V

Light Blogging Day

And in fact, posts will be light for most of this week because your humble blogger has places to go and people to meet for the next couple of days. If you need entertainment, go run over some pedestrians.

---Baron V

Teachable Moment

This:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is dangling a 32-inch flat-screen TV for $98, down from $148 last year. Sears Holdings Corp. has waived layaway fees and its Kmart chain is introducing a rent-to-own program. More than a dozen retailers are opening earlier, or for the first time, on Thanksgiving Day. Among the attention-grabbing stunts: a $1 million jackpot for one of the first shoppers to visit Gap Inc.’s Old Navy chain on Black Friday.

I can only speak for myself here, but I suspect that many Americans will be spending a lot less on holiday goodies this year than in the past. How so? Because we're not making as much money as we used to, or because we're not making any money at all, or because we've run out of money after being unemployed for years. This is what happens when you uphold an economic order that relies upon impoverishing millions more people each year to extract profits. Which is to say, it's not happening as a result of market forces or consumer preference but as a matter of public policy.

You want us to spend more money, give us more money to spend. Because if you don't, we won't.

---Baron V

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Economists can debate all day about which policy levers lawmakers should use to heal our economy and restore the nation to full employment, but even if all the jobless people could be transformed overnight into productive worker bees, what happens when 90 percent of the jobs don't pay any money?

And that's household, not individual, income. Okay, perhaps in parts of flyover country, $30K a year is enough to scrape by, but there is no way in hell to survive on that kind of pay in a city like San Francisco or L.A., or even their suburbs, without resorting to living on a diet of pork rinds and ramen noodles in tenement-style conditions. This hasn't happened as a result of some act of God but as an outcome of public policy, and it would behoove our political leaders to reexamine the policy because it's hard to envision the unwashed rabble tolerating their forced impoverishment for very much longer.

---Baron V

Winners and Losers II

We already know who loses under the Goldberg Act---and who wins!

Insurer Cigna Corp on Thursday reported a third-quarter profit that beat analysts' expectations as revenue increased and it managed medical costs in its commercial business.

Net income rose to $553 million, or $1.95 per share, from $466 million, or $1.61 per share, a year earlier.

Excluding investment gains, the company reported a profit of $1.89 per share. On that basis, analysts on average had expected $1.63, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Cigna, which provides U.S. and overseas health insurance as well as disability and life insurance, said it expected full-year earnings of $6.70 to $6.90 per share. Analysts were expecting $6.65, according to Thomson Reuters.

Seven bucks a share. You created that revenue stream in the form of monthly insurance premiums, but instead of providing you with affordable health care, a big cut of the money went to a bunch of rent-seekers instead. Can't afford your new silver plan? Oh well!

People should not be allowed to extract profits from the misery and sickness of others. It's the evil that underlies our for-profit health-care system, and whatever its stated intentions, the Goldberg Act codifies the evil as the law of the land by forcing you to buy into it. It's sad, really, since we have a kindler, gentler health-care system that's already in place---if only we would use it.

---Baron V

United States of Misery

If you're among the millions of jobless Americans, this post obviously needs no explanation. But even if you have a job, chances are that you're miserable at work. There are many reasons for this, but mostly, it comes down to:

1. Americans are overworked and underpaid. People are working more hours than ever, and productivity continues to rise, yet we're not making any more money than we made 10 years ago. Our job benefits are pitiful compared to other countries. And millions of us have full-time jobs but still need to rely on food stamps and Medicaid. No wonder we're miserable.

2. Our bosses are rapacious assholes. Reasons? There are many, but chief among them are executive compensation structures that reward excessive risk-taking and short-term profit-taking at the expense of long-term viability. Since prudent, farsighted caretakers are crowded out by this kind of management regime, it stands to reason that only guys left in the executive suite are the greediest---and often dumbest---assholes. Also too, based on my own experience, too many bosses forget that leadership starts by setting good examples, not by issuing fiats.

How to fix? Pay workers a living wage. Give them decent benefits, and paid time off when they need it. Stop rewarding greedy stupid assholism in senior management, and fire bosses, not workers, when companies underperform. Structure your business to serve the everyday needs of customers, not the extortion demands of rent-seekers. These goals are really not difficult to realize, but the mentality of America's management class---and America's policymakers---are in need of a drastic sea change. Two thirds of American workers obviously think so.

---Baron V

What They Saved

Actually, that should read "what we saved", since a taxpayer line of credit is what has allowed our job creators, five years later, to bid up asset prices and enrich their portfolios:

For the first time ever, the 10 highest-paid chief executives in the US received more than $100 million in compensation last year, and two took home billion-dollar paychecks, according to a leading annual survey of executive pay.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's co-founder, was America's highest-paid boss in 2012, according to GMI Ratings annual poll of executive compensation, released on Tuesday. Zuckerberg's total compensation topped $2.27 billion---more than $6 million a day. His base salary was $503,205 but the vast majority of his enormous pay package came from exercising 60 million Facebook share options when the company went public last year.

Now, your humble blogger is no economist, but the reality that this lopsided distribution of income is getting worse with each passing year would tend to suggest that our current economic policy is deeply flawed, and focused much too heavily on the supply side. Corporate persons aren't the only persons who need money these days, y'know!

---Baron V

Context

While our leaders are freaking out on the TV today over government furloughs and looming debt defaults, it bears repeating that whether we default or not, or whether or not some smart people decide to Mint The Coin---and they really should!---that the "public" they allegedly claim to serve is slowly and systemically being impoverished. And it is not happening by accident but entirely by design:

The boom-bust-flip phenomenon is just one of the most obvious ways that research suggests the financial crisis has benefited the upper class while brutalizing the middle class. Rents have risen at twice the pace of the overall cost-of-living index, partly because middle-class families can’t get the credit they need to buy. That means “landlords can raise rents with impunity,” says Glenn Kelman, chief executive of Redfin. And according to a report by David Autor, the M.I.T. economist, job losses during and after the recession were concentrated in midskilled and midwage jobs, like white-collar sales, office and administrative jobs; and blue-collar production, craft, repair and operative jobs. Employment for higher-skilled workers, on the other hand, has grown substantially . . . [T]he consequences of job loss go far beyond the spell of joblessness. Research shows that layoffs can worsen earnings, health and even mortality rates for up to 20 years after the initial displacement.

Hard to say how they see the wisdom in this business model because eventually all the poor people will run out of money, so then there's no more rents to extract, and the model collapses. It's an Easter Island system of commerce, in other words, and government shutdowns and debt defaults will only determine whether the mushrooming masses of poor people get bankrupted sooner or later. We had a real chance to fix this four years ago. Pity it didn't happen.

---Baron V

Extend and Pretend

It's a catchy phrase, and it oversimplifies the dilemma to an extent, but it essentially encapsulates the policy solution our elected leaders have devised to solve the problems that our job creators, well, created. Because even after dropping three trillion dollars of money on them, they are still unable to function without massive government largesse:

New troubles are piling up for U.S. banks as they prepare to release third-quarter results amid warnings of weak trading revenue, a sharp decline in mortgage-refinancing activity and rising legal costs.

Analysts are scrambling to ratchet down earnings estimates ahead of the reports. J.P.Morgan and Wells Fargo are slated to post results on Oct. 11, with Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp., Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. due to weigh in the following week.

Poor results could prompt additional job cuts and worsen the already downcast mood on Wall Street, bankers and recruiters said.

Terrific return on your $3 trillion investment, no? As an alternative, we can (1) keep giving them more money, which keeps them afloat but otherwise accomplishes nothing, (2) give them a tax cut (which everyone agrees is awesome!), or (3) nationalize them, force them to take their losses, and sell whatever marketable assets are left over. Yes, it will probably trigger another recession, but it will also remove the biggest impediment to the nation's economic recovery. Because right now, these institutions are the financial equivalent of tapeworm: Parasitic entities that provide little if any social utility, that suck up precious financial resources, and which are so big and unmanageable that they can no longer allocate capital efficiently---which is why (ahem) we have banks in the first place. I don't pretend to think this will happen soon---at least, until they crash the car yet again---and even if it does, it will probably be up to some Republican President to offer up some Nixon-in-China tough love, but sooner or later, it will simply have to be done. You'll never heal an ailing body politic if the source of its ailment is left untreated.

---Baron V

What Our Leaders Saved

Good Samaritans all:

Bill Potter wasn't eager to abandon his high-end house last month during evacuations forced by a massive Idaho wildfire, but he felt reassured when his insurance company sent a team to protect his home near the world-class ski resort of Sun Valley.

"I was more than impressed," he said of the water tanker truck and crew privately contracted by his insurer to patrol his road and keep watch over his family's home, custom-crafted from parts of antique barns.

Potter is a member of the AIG Private Client Group, which is geared toward wealthy policyholders and offers a personal wildfire-protection program for customers in select areas in the western United States.

It's not a total grift inasmuch as they are providing a bonafide service for the money, but the fact remains that they wouldn't be performing this service at all were it not for the largesse of taxpayers---or, more accurately, their elected leaders, who thought, however elliptically, that saving the homes of rich people from fires was more important than saving the homes of non-rich people from banks.

---Baron V

Today in Assholism

Guess we can scratch this off the grocery list:

Our family is a traditional family. If gays like our pasta and our advertisings, they will eat our pasta; if they don’t like that, they will eat someone else’s pasta. You can’t always please everyone not to displease anyone. I would not do a commercial with a homosexual family, not for lack of respect toward homosexuals---who have the right to do whatever they want without disturbing others---but because I don’t agree with them, and I think we want to talk to traditional families. The women are crucial in this.

Which I guess means that lesbian couples are no longer a thing.

Regardless, you would think these job creators would be smart enough to simply keep their mouths on the subject since, after all, there are many gay people who like to eat pasta, and it would certainly be preferable to view them as potential customers instead of turning them into potential boycotters. But that's what religious assholism will do to people.

---Baron V

The Sacrifices They Make For Us

It's an article of faith among the serious persons in this country that our leading job creators are incredibly hard workers who are subjected to daily levels of stress that we lowly plebes can barely imagine, hence their enormous compensation packages. Of course, it's total bullshit, and that what's really stressful is being poor and unemployed and hungry and sick, but that doesn't reaffirm the Horatio Alger myth, so the serious persons tend to ignore it because, in their minds, if we deserved to be rich, we would be. And if we're poor and unemployed and hungry and sick, it's because that is our proper station in life. Eggs and omelettes, people!

(As an aside, as a former job creator, your humble blogger can affirm that yes, they do live with a certain amount of job-related stress---I sure did---but pulling down a huge salary and lots of perks makes life a lot easier, and more pleasant overall, than, say, having no salary and no perks. As a wise man once said, it's the lack of money that's the root of all evil, not the other way around.)

---Baron V

Burn Them at the Stake

We are governed by people who either have no morals or no clue:

Last month, a civil disobedience action by fired Walmart workers in Washington, DC, took place the same afternoon as a Walmart US Manufacturing Summit in Orlando featuring Obama’s Secretary of Commerce, Penny Pritzker.

Asked what Pritzker’s appearance there reflected about the administration’s view of Walmart as an employer, U.S. Secretary of Labor Tom Perez told me, “Well, we’re working with everyone on the issue of growing this economy . . . I think what Senator [Ted] Kennedy taught me as much as anything is that idealism and pragmatism are not mutually exclusive.” Noting the late senator’s work with Republicans on healthcare and hate crimes, Perez said it was “important to bring a wide array of stakeholders to the table to engage in a meaningful way in how we grow a vibrant middle class.”

Lately I've been re-reading Arthur Schlesinger's three-part history of the New Deal, and for the life of me, I can't recall any incidents where Franklin Roosevelt expressed a desire to convene a meeting with all of the "stakeholders" to discuss economic policy fixes for the Great Depression. In fact, there was an opposite consensus amongst his advisers, i.e., that the financial system that caused the crash was systemically corrupt, that systemic reform was needed, and that reform would need to be imposed by enforceable law, not by mutual agreement with the "stakeholders". It took awhile for them to work, but the reforms they devised actually did work. And they didn't ask the bankers whether they liked them or not! Too bad our current "liberal" reformers either can't, or won't, learn from their own history that the way to solve our poverty, income and inequality crises is not to solicit opinions from the same people who exacerbate these crises and who've gotten rich from them.

It's like this: Wal-Mart makes money by impoverishing millions of people around the globe. As a policymaker, you either think this is okay, or you don't. If you don't, then you propose new policies aimed at addressing the problem. If you don't propose these things, it means you are okay with the status quo. But you really can't have it both ways.

---Baron V

The Money We Spend on Shit We Don't Need

Even freedom bombs have some social utility---they can be used to defend our freedom, after all!---but lots of other stuff we spend money on has no social utility whatsoever. Okay, you can argue that professional sports franchises "bring people together" by promoting a sense of community among its fan base, but all they really engender is just another form of tribalism, and it comes at a very high cost to the public. Hey, I'm big on infrastructure spending, but not so much for infrastructure that's only in use for eight days a year, and that's a big reason---though it's not the only one---why I hope we never get an NFL franchise in L.A. again. We really don't miss having one.

---Baron V

Pity The Poor Job Creators

It's a lonelier world for them today:

“After 9/11 he was calling up businesses to find out exactly what city government needed to do to restore their confidence,” said Kathy Wylde, CEO of Partnership for New York City, which represents a coalition of financial firms including the top Wall Street banks. “Similarly during the financial crisis, again he was all over where the problems were---who was in trouble, who was giving them trouble in Washington, how could he be helpful, and business felt comfortable reaching out to him.”’

Because a nation where the interests of the state and the interests of the corporation are inseparable, intertwined and mutually reinforcing is a nation that's governed, as a rule, by kleptocrats and fascists. Good thing we don't live in a nation like that.

---Baron V

On The Subject

Since we're going with one Bain guy today, why not a pair?

Your next Chairman of the Federal Reserve: Mitt Romney.

It resolves the divisive Summers/Yellen dispute neatly enough, and he'll be fine there, trust me. There'll be no need to worry about any burdensome tapering once some of his friends come calling on him, and Mr. Market will love him up a lot in exchange for all the money bombs he's going to drop on them. In other words, not much different than the last guy. It won't be, like, Dow 36,000, but it'll be good enough to prop up asset prices and prolong the malaise for another four years before the entire financial system implodes for good on someone else's watch. And don't worry, he'll take orders---he is, after all, a company guy at heart. Yes, this immodest proposal may seem like a joke, but would Mitt Romney really be any worse at that job than John Kerry has been at his?

---Baron V

Reform Legislation

Whenever you hear the term bandied about, you can be sure it's all about the grift:

At the same time . . . Mr. Steinberg introduced a separate measure that would exempt from environmental review a sports arena for Sacramento that he has championed as part of a campaign to stop the city’s basketball team, the Kings, from moving to Seattle.

Because nothing says "eco-consciousness" like a big energy-sucking sports arena that's only open 40 days a year. More to the point, this is a textbook example of why term limits have been such an abysmal failure here. Because, when they know they're going to be out of a job in six or eight years, legislators aren't just legislating, they're constantly auditioning for their next paying gig, which inevitably means working as a lobbyist or a lawyer for some white-shoe firm that represents some job creator whom they've rewarded handsomely with taxpayer dough, and who is now returning the favor unto them. It shouldn't have to be that way, but that's the way it is.

---Baron V

Random Thought

Scarcely a week goes by that we're not reminded that Jeff Bezos is, like, the greatest man ever.

Meanwhile, greatness. Also too, more greatness.

If it's true that each generation gets the leadership it deserves, what awful things did we ever do?

---Baron V