Category: Politics

F%$# Me, I Agree with Donald Trump

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On Monday, Trump fired off a tweet telling Rattner: “I think you should have gone to prison for what you did, I guess Obama saved you.”

He ended the tweet telling Rattner to watch: “I will win!”

It was unclear what activity Trump was referring to that should have landed Rattner in jail. Trump did not respond to CNNMoney’s request for comment.

In 2010, Rattner did pay $10 million in fines when he settled with the New York state attorney general for his alleged involvement in a pension fund scheme. While Rattner was never charged criminally, some others who were involved in the same scheme, such as former New York comptroller Alan Hevesi, did not.

Yes, he should have gone to jail.

Much like a stopped calendar, Donald Trump is right once a year.

So Not a Surprise

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The Pension Trustees of New Jersey decided that the huge private equity fees being paid to Christie supporters needed to be investigated.

Now we discover that the Christie administration is slow walking the investigation:

When New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was preparing to launch his presidential campaign this spring, he faced a big potential headache: New Jersey pension officials had voted to investigate secret taxpayer fees that the Republican governor’s administration paid to Wall Street firms. But Christie’s administration may have found a stopgap solution: stall.

Four months after state pension trustees’ vote, the retirement system’s chairman told International Business Times that Christie’s aides have so far prevented the probe from getting off the ground.

“They are throwing up obstacles, as many as they can find,” said Tom Bruno, who leads the N.J. Public Employees’ Retirement System’s board of trustees. Bruno says Christie’s Treasury Department has prevented the probe from going forward until Christie’s appointees on the State Investment Council give their blessing.

The investigation was supposed to evaluate the higher fees that have accompanied the administration’s shift of billions of dollars of pension money into hedge funds, private equity and other so-called “alternative” investments. Despite federal and New Jersey “pay to play” rules, some of those fees have been paid to firms whose executives donated to GOP groups affiliated with Christie. But with New Jersey having no independently elected auditor, treasurer or attorney general, pensioners must ultimately rely on the Christie administration to approve an investigation of its own decisions affecting thousands of retirees.

………

Pension trustees demanded the audit in April following a series of reports from International Business Times spotlighting a massive increase in pension fees paid to private financial firms — some of whose executives have made campaign contributions to Republican groups affiliated with Christie. In March, IBTimes reported that the Christie administration had failed to disclose potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in fees the state had been paying since Christie took office in January 2010.

………

Last year, after the initial disclosures, Christie’s then-State Investment Council Chairman Robert Grady resigned amid questions about political favoritism in awarding pension contracts. This year, Christie’s state treasurer, Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff, resigned in June, a month after a testy legislative hearing in which state lawmakers raised questions about the undisclosed fees paid by the pension system under Christie.

The pension trustees’ push for a full audit of the pension system follows moves by the Christie administration that appeared to obscure or conceal details of the system’s finances and oversight decisions.

After financial experts raised questions about the accuracy of the pension performance data in 2014, Christie’s administration rejected repeated open records requests for documents that would show how it calculated the figures. When in the same year it was revealed that Massachusetts Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker donated $10,000 to the New Jersey Republican Party months before his financial firm received a New Jersey pension deal, Christie’s aides blocked the release of the findings of the government’s pay-to-play investigation until after Baker’s closely fought election.

Meanwhile, in the pension system’s most recent annual report, Christie’s aides changed the way they tabulated pension management fees to make it seem as if the fees had decreased — when, in fact, they had jumped to $600 million.

………

The state’s investment strategy has not, however, generated higher returns for taxpayers and retirees. Last year, a study by Wilshire Associates found that the New Jersey pension fund’s investment return has trailed the median for pension funds throughout the country.

………

On Wednesday, however, the State Investment Council said the pension’s returns have been lower than expected so far this year.  

I so hope that he ends up in jail, but given his background as a former US Attorney, I fear that he has surrounded himself with plausible deniability.

This is Just F%$#ing Evil

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And, of course, the targets of such an action are the poor, the mentally ill, and minorities, so the fact that the Senate version of the transportation bill will includes a measure that will cut off social security benefits to everyone who has an outstanding warrant:

The large transportation funding bill moving through the Senate would end Social Security benefits for 200,000 people who have an outstanding felony arrest warrant—but have never been convicted by a court, or have a warrant for violating probation or parole, according to disability rights advocates tracking the legislation.

………

“There are two key issues here,” said T.J. Sutcliffe, income and housing policy director for The Arc, a national disability rights organization. “One is that the Social Security Trust Fund should not be used for unrelated purposes, no matter how important. And the other is Congress is considering cutting off benefits to 200,000 people who rely on Social Security and SSI [disability] benefits, who, in the case of arrest warrants have never been convicted.”

The proposal surfaced in the Senate on Tuesday in a package of amendments (page 949, Section 52303) being added to a transportation bill. The House’s version of the bill only would have extended funds for several months, while the Senate is looking at a six-year proposal—which becomes a vehicle for many other languishing bills.

Slightly different versions of a bill to punish people with outstanding felony warrants, or warrants for violating probation or parole, were introduced in both chambers. Disability and low-income advocates were quick to criticize the proposals, saying that they will punish people who rely on Social Security with little law enforcement benefit.

“It would not help law enforcement secure the arrest of people they are seeking for serious crimes,” explained Justice In Aging. “Law enforcement is already notified of the whereabouts of every person with a warrant for a felony or an alleged violation of probation or parole who turns up in the Social Security Administration (SSA) databases.”

The anti-poverty law group listed 10 reasons why the proposal was unduly punitive and would have very draconian consequences:

  • “Those most likely to lose benefits are generally those most in need.
  • A significant number of people will become homeless when they lose their benefits.
  • Some people have had benefits cut off while residing in nursing homes.
  • A very high percentage of those who will lose their benefits are people with intellectual disabilities or mental illness.
  • An unusually high percentage of those who lose benefits are African-Americans.
  • Many will lose Medicare outpatient (Part B) coverage because of inability to pay the quarterly premium.
  • Eliminating what may be their only source of income does not help resolve these issues.
  • Many people never know that a warrant has been issued for them as warrants are often not served on the individual.
  • These warrants are often not easily resolved since many of those who lose benefits live far from the issuing jurisdiction.
  • SSA will have increased administrative costs for processing appeals and requests for waiver of recovery of overpayments.

“A majority of those affected who are receiving benefits based on disability fall into these categories,” it said. “Large numbers of those who will lose benefits had warrants routinely issued when they were unable to pay a fine or court fee or probation supervision fee.”

OK, it’s not, “Just F%$#ing Stupid”, it’s evil AND stupid.

What the hell is wrong with these people?

What a Surprise: Poles are Worrying about a New German Conquest

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In response to the largely German driven takeover of Greece, Polish support for joining the Euro has fallen off a cliff:

Once, it was an exclusive club that nearly all of Europe aspired to join. Now, in the wake of Greece’s latest financial crisis and the hard-line response from many of the Continent’s powers, becoming a partner in the European common currency seems less and less appealing to many of the countries lined up for their chance.

From Poland to the Czech Republic to Hungary and points farther south and east, joining the euro is increasingly seen as rife with risks and costs — including a substantial surrender of sovereignty — that outweigh the benefits. And while many of the countries that have not yet adopted the single currency had doubts before the Greek crisis flared, the heavy penalties incurred by Athens to stay in the eurozone have made the trade-offs even clearer and the political leanings against membership more pronounced.

The qualms about partnership in the currency raise further questions about the ability of the European Union to maintain momentum toward its long-held and oft-stated goal of ever-closer union. More than any other policy, the single currency was intended to bind the members economically and politically while reducing the chances of conflict, and the decline in enthusiasm for the union has tracked a more general reassessment of European integration.

The doubts are now playing out primarily in the countries that most recently joined the European Union, primarily in Central and Eastern Europe. Lithuania became the 19th and newest adopter of the euro in January.

………

With such political attitudes hardening, the prospect of Poland’s or any other country’s adopting the euro anytime soon appears quite remote, said Sebastian Plociennik, an analyst for the Polish Institute of International Affairs who focuses on European integration and economic issues.

This is not a surprise.

The EU was all about preventing another horrific war in Europe, particularly another attempt by Germany to conquer Europe.

So now, other nations which bound by treaty to join the Euro at an indeterminate time are thinking that the proper time is, “When hell freezes over.”

This has set back EU integration, and Euro adoption by decades.

John McCain needs to Man the F%$# Up

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I understand the freakout over Donald Trump impugning John McCain’s war record:

“He’s not a war hero,” Mr. Trump said during an appearance at the Family Leadership Summit. “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

Of course, considering the record of Republicans on this:

  • George W. Bush and Karl Rove starting a whispering campaign in the 2000 primaries that McCain had collaborated with his North Vietnamese jailers.
  • Belittling Al Gore’s service in Vietnam.
  • Calling Max Cleland, a silver star recipient who lost three limbs in Vietnam a coward.
  • Mocking John Kerry’s service by sporting band-aids with purple little purple hearts on them at the 2004 Republican presidential convention.

The idea that now somehow it is beyond the pale for people to mock someone’s military service, when Republicans have been doing so for more than a decade, is ludicrous.

Republicans have been mocking opponents military service for over a decade.

That pretty much the whole Republican Presidential field are having the vapors over Donald Trump is a mark of both hypocrisy and a terminal lack of self awareness.

The fact that “The Donald” makes this clear to any cogent observer amuses me.

Someone at the IMF Gets It, but It Ain’t Lagarde

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In response to the mindlessly punitive deal for the Greek bailout, IMF staff have released a report that calls for massive debt write-downs, and an anonymous source at the IMF implied that such a write-down is a requirement for IMF participation:

The International Monetary Fund threatened to withdraw support for Greece’s bailout on Tuesday unless European leaders agree to substantial debt relief, an immediate challenge to the region’s plan to rescue the country.

 The aggressive stance sets up a standoff with Germany and other eurozone creditors, which have been reluctant to provide additional debt relief. The I.M.F role is considered crucial for any bailout, not only to provide funding but also to supervise Greece’s compliance with the terms.

 A new rescue program for Greece “would have to meet our criteria,” a senior I.M.F. official told reporters on Tuesday, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “One of those criteria is debt sustainability.”

 Debt relief has been a contentious issue in the negotiations over the Greek bailout.

 Athens has pushed aggressively for creditors to write down the country’s debt, which now exceeds €300 billion. Without it, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has argued the debt will remain a heavy weight on Greece’s troubled economy.

 But Germany and other countries, including the Netherlands and Finland, are loath to grant Greece easier terms, which are a tough sell to their own voters. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has ruled out a “classic haircut” on Greece’s debt.

 The I.M.F. is now firmly siding with Greece on the issue. In a report released publicly on Tuesday, the fund proposed that creditors let Athens write off part of its huge eurozone debt or at least make no payments for 30 years.

 ………

 In going public, the I.M.F. is making a tactical move, adding pressure to the negotiations over the bailout deal. But its aggressive position also complicates efforts to complete a deal, with Greece’s Parliament scheduled to vote on Wednesday whether to accept the creditors’ conditions.

One thing that we can be sure of, however, is that whoever leaked the need for debt relief was not the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund Christine Lagarde, because she has walked back this assessment:

In general, when discussing large complicated institutions distinctions must be made between parts of this institution. The mainstream press is particularly bad at that kind of nuance because these organizations are already complicated: making further distinctions between IMF managing directors, IMF staff and the IMF executive board gets needlessly obscurant in their view. However, these distinctions are important. The report that was leaked two weeks ago and the latest update to that report was written by IMF staff and specifically “neither discussed with nor approved by the IMF’s Executive Board”. Additionally, Christine Lagarde or her title “managing director” appear no where in this document. Thus to say that the “IMF” is saying anything in this report is deeply misleading.

The reporting of this latest update was even more muddled because it was combined with an anonymous statement from a “senior IMF official” by the Financial Times. The Financial Times lede reads as follows:

The International Monetary Fund has warned that it might not be able to participate in Greece’s bailout if the programme does not include substantial debt relief, setting itself on a collision course with the country’s eurozone creditors.

This (and the rest of the document) suggests to me that it is the Managing Director (ie Christine Lagarde) who goes to the board and ask for authorization. Is the anonymous official claiming to speak on behalf of Christine Lagarde? If so why is she not making this statement publicly? In my mind this anonymous official’s statements only make sense in three situations:

  1. Christine Lagarde is both unwilling to sign on to a deal the Eurogroup would currently agree to and unwilling to overtly and strongly pressure them to create a “better” deal they could sign. Thus she is aiming for a Grexit and no deal.
  2. Christine Lagarde is willing to sign on to whatever deal the Eurogroup would currently agree to but wants to covertly pressure them to offer more debt restructuring. In other words it’s a point of contention but not a dealbreaker.
  3. Many on the IMF staff don’t want Lagarde to sign whatever deal the Eurogroup is currently considering and specifically want much more debt restructuring. They have and are willing to leak things to the media to attempt to create this outcome whether by embarrassing their own Managing Director or putting indirect pressure on the Eurogroup.

To me option three seems like the most plausible. The same FT reporters (Peter Spiegel in Brussels and Shawn Donnan in Washington) reported over three weeks ago that a “senior [IMF] official” says many staff at the IMF “would rather cut off their little finger” than continue being involved in Greek bailouts. The use of similar descriptions (“senior official” and “IMF senior officials”) implies that the same sources at the IMF that said this over three weeks ago have been leaking the Debt Sustainability analysis and interpreted them for the press. This suggests a revolt among the rank and file of the IMF that doesn’t extend to the people who will ultimately make the decision. Remember that the definition of a “senior official” is necessarily vague to preserve anonymity and could easily be someone who can’t directly influence the decision made and certainly doesn’t speak for Lagarde. Thus, in this scenario this statement makes sense as a calculated lie by IMF staff to influence events. This also may suggest that my intuition earlier this week was wrong: it may not be the Obama administration crafting a narrative with the leaked reports and selective interpretations of official statements, but simply off the record comments from these same IMF staff sources (or at least, a complicated combination of both these sources).

What we are seeing here is a conflict between people who understand the underlying economics, and the “Very Serious People”, like Lagarde, or her predecessor Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was in charge when the original deal with Greece was signed,  who are somehow operating out of a sense of European Union exceptionalism.

I would note that when DSK approved the original deal, he actually violated some basic IMF rules about requiring a creditor haircut, because, unlike dealing with, for example, Thailand, they know the creditors, and go to cocktail parties with them.

Tribalism is truly corrosive to good governance.

Sh%$ Like This Makes Me Feel Unreasonably Smug

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It appears that the New York Times has finally had enough of right wing publishers manufacturing data for its best seller list, and it’s first target is the Ted Crux Book A Time For Truth:

Conservatives are furious at the New York Times for refusing to allow Ted Cruz and his publisher, HarperCollins, to game the system and “earn” his way on to the bestseller list via “strategic bulk purchases.”

 In an email to Politico’s Dylan Byers, Times spokeswoman Eileen Murphy explained why Cruz’s “A Time For Truth” was omitted, noting that the company has “uniform standards that we apply to our best seller list, which includes an analysis of book sales that goes beyond simply the number of books sold.”“In the case of this book,” she added, “the overwhelming preponderance of evidence was that sales were limited to strategic bulk purchases.”

 Conservatives are complaining that “bulk purchases” should still count as sales:

 ………

 And while they might have ground to stand on there — if by “bulk purchases,” the Times meant “10,000 copies purchased to be sold at Walmart” — but the Times specified that it believes HarperCollins engaged in “strategic bulk purchases.” In essence, The Times accused Cruz’s publisher of trying to buy its way onto the bestseller list by having a firm like Result Source hire thousands of people across America to individually purchase a copy of “A Time For Truth,” in the hope that some of those retailers are on the secret list of booksellers who report their sales to the Times, or that the aggregate purchasers will simply be too high for the Times to ignore.

 In other words, conservatives are upset that HarperCollins got caught trying to rig the system in order to make “A Time For Truth” a bestseller, though that’s not quite how they see it:

 ………

Wingnut tears are salting my soup as we speak.

Finally!

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Following a very long debate, and an empassioned argument in favor of removing the Confederate flag by (among others) a descendent of Jefferson Davis, the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia is leaving the statehouse grounds in South Carolina:

South Carolina’s governor signed a bill Thursday that will send the Confederate flag to the state’s “relic room.” The decision was made more than 50 years after the rebel banner began flying at the statehouse in Columbia to protest the civil rights movement.

Governor Nikki Haley praised lawmakers for realizing that the long-celebrated symbol is too painful to keep promoting.

“The Confederate flag is coming off the grounds of the South Carolina Statehouse,” Haley said. “We will bring it down with dignity, and we will make sure it is stored in its rightful place.”

State lawmakers were prompted to remove the flag by the recent killing of nine African Americans at a church Bible study in Charleston.

South Carolina’s leaders first flew the battle flag over the statehouse dome in 1961 to mark the 100th anniversary of the Civil War. It remained there to represent official opposition to the civil rights movement.

………

Rep. Jenny Horne, a white Republican who said she is a descendent of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, scolded her party members for stalling.

“I cannot believe that we do not have the heart in this body to do something meaningful such as take a symbol of hate off these grounds on Friday,” she shouted. “For the widow of Senator Pinckney and his two young daughters, that would be adding insult to injury and I will not be a part of it!”

The pity of all this is that it took a racist maniac to kill 9 people at a prayer meeting to make this happen.

Greece Just Caved

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As Paul Krugman notes, Argentina’s dropping the dollar peg, equivalent to a Grexit,and did not cause widespread economic devastation, it was the flailing around and uncertainty before making the break

Greece has presented a new proposal to the Troika, and it appears to be a complete capitulation to delusional German economics:

Only a day after grim predictions of financial and social collapse in Greece, a scramble appeared underway to work out the details of a new bailout package to bring the country back from the brink of falling out of the euro.

As details of the new offer emerged, it appeared that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras was capitulating to demands on harsh austerity terms that he urged his countrymen to reject in the referendum last Sunday, like tax increases and various measures to cut the costs of pensions.

But Mr. Tsipras sought a three-year bailout loan totaling 53.5 billion euros (about $59 billion) and asked creditors to commit to discussing restructuring the nation’s massive debt. The amount was more than it would have been without a nationwide banking shutdown that has pummeled the economy. If granted, it would come on top of 240 billion euros in bailout loans Greece has received since 2010. Mr. Tsipras seemed to have gained ground on debt relief, his one bedrock demand. Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, finally gave a little on that Thursday, admitting that “debt sustainability is not feasible without a haircut,” or write-down of debt, even if he then appeared to backtrack.

Greece’s debt has been unsustainable, and when /the previous government doing what was demanded of it by the Troika, it caused the economy to implode, driving debt higher, both on an absolute basis, and on a debt to GDP basis.

This is a f%$#ing disaster, not just for Greece, but for the Euro Zone.

It’s clear that Greece is going to leave the Euro under these terms, and when the Greek new Drachma era shows the kind of explosive growth that Argentina did post dollar peg, there will be a clamor among the southern tier of the Euro Zone to reestablish their own currency.

Least Surprising News of the Day

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At The Intercept, Lee Fang notes that Eric Holder has returns to his former law firm, which lobbies for corporate criminals on Wall Street.

Notwithstanding Einstein’s laws, the revolving door is spinning faster than the speed of light:

Eric Holder Returns as Hero to Law Firm That Lobbies for Big Banks

After failing to criminally prosecute any of the financial firms responsible for the market collapse in 2008, former Attorney General Eric Holder is returning to Covington & Burling, a corporate law firm known for serving Wall Street clients.

 The move completes one of the more troubling trips through the revolving door for a cabinet secretary. Holder worked at Covington from 2001 right up to being sworn in as attorney general in Feburary 2009. And Covington literally kept an office empty for him, awaiting his return.

 The Covington & Burling client list has included four of the largest banks, including Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. Lobbying records show that Wells Fargo is still a client of Covington. Covington recently represented Citigroup over a civil lawsuit relating to the bank’s role in Libor manipulation.

 Covington was also deeply involved with a company known as MERS, which was later responsible for falsifying mortgage documents on an industrial scale. “Court records show that Covington, in the late 1990s, provided legal opinion letters needed to create MERS on behalf of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and several other large banks,” according to an investigation by Reuters.

 The Department of Justice under Holder not only failed to pursue criminal prosecutions of the banks responsible for the mortage meltdown, but in fact de-prioritized investigations of mortgage fraud, making it the “lowest-ranked criminal threat,” according to an inspector general report.

For insiders, the Holder decision to return to Covington was never a mystery. Timothy Hester, the chairman of Covington, told the National Law Journal that Holder’s return to the firm had been “a project” of his ever since Holder left to the join the administration in 2009. When the firm moved to a new building last year, it kept an 11th-story corner office reserved for Holder.

Well, now we know why the Obama DoJ prosecuted fewer financial wrongdoers than did the Bush DoJ.

It’s why I have always called him “Place” Holder.

If True, Then the Germans Are up to Their Old Tricks, but One Must Consider the Source

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Somehow or Other, this got deleted from my blog, and so I am reposting:

Andrew Ross Sorkin (of all people) teases an interesting tidbit out of Timothy Geithners self-serving and factually challenged memoir, Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises, specifically that in discussions with German FM Wolfgang Schäuble, Angela Merkel’s go to guy on finance had as his goal maximizing pain for the Greeks with the hope that they would be compelled to leave the Euro:

In July 2012, Timothy F. Geithner, the United States Treasury secretary at the time, traveled to Sylt, an island off Germany in the North Sea.

 Mr. Geithner was there for a meeting with Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, who would spend his summers at his vacation home on the tiny island.

 The topic was Greece.

 In the home’s library, the two men spoke about Greece’s prospects and begun discussing ways for the European Union to keep the country in the eurozone.

 To Mr. Geithner’s dismay, however, Mr. Schäuble took the conversation in a different direction.

 “He told me there were many in Europe who still thought kicking the Greeks out of the eurozone was a plausible — even desirable — strategy,” Mr. Geithner later recounted in his memoir, “Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises.” “The idea was that with Greece out, Germany would be more likely to provide the financial support the eurozone needed because the German people would no longer perceive aid to Europe as a bailout for the Greeks,” he says in the memoir.

 “At the same time, a Grexit would be traumatic enough that it would help scare the rest of Europe into giving up more sovereignty to a stronger banking and fiscal union,” Mr. Geithner wrote. “The argument was that letting Greece burn would make it easier to build a stronger Europe with a more credible firewall.”

 Fast-forward three years. What Mr. Schäuble articulated that summer afternoon to Mr. Geithner is finally taking shape.

 ………

 A crucial decision made over the weekend had largely gone unremarked upon but is telling. The European Central Bank decided to halt an expansion of its emergency lending facility to Greek banks. That facility could have allowed the banks to continue operating without as much panic and helped avoid some of the capital controls by providing additional liquidity.

 ………

 By closing the cash spigot, the E.C.B. managed to instill additional fear and panic into the day-to-day lives of the Greek people, ahead of the vote on the referendum.

 That panic could cut two ways. The Greeks could look at the lines around the banks as a warning of what’s about to come, which would undoubtedly be worse in the short term, and vote in favor of the latest bailout agreement.

 Of course, they could also view the lines as further evidence of their subjugation to the eurozone and the continued austerity they would experience under the bailout, pushing them to vote against it.

 The E.C.B.’s decision also has another important purpose outside of Greece: It might be a warning to countries like Spain and Italy, should they ever consider following Greece out of the eurozone — if that comes to pass.

 It may seem counterintuitive, but rather than make a Greece exit easy and seamless to avoid dislocations in financial markets, the E.C.B. has the perverse incentive to make it messy and difficult to deter others.

 None of this is to suggest that the E.C.B. is the source of Greece’s problems. They were largely self-inflicted. Regardless of whether you think that the creation of the euro was a terrible mistake, Europe has severely mishandled the situation in Greece.

 “The economics behind the program that the ‘troika’ (the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund) foisted on Greece five years ago has been abysmal, resulting in a 25 percent decline in the country’s G.D.P.,” Joseph Stiglitz, an economist and professor at Columbia University, wrote on Monday. “I can think of no depression, ever, that has been so deliberate.”

 In his book, Mr. Geithner reflected on his conversations with European leaders about the measures they sought to take. “The desire to impose losses on reckless borrowers and lenders is completely understandable, but it is terribly counterproductive in a financial crisis,” Mr. Geithner said.

 At one point, he told Mr. Schäuble: “You know you sound a bit like Herbert Hoover in the 1930s. You need to be thinking about growth.”

(emphasis mine)
If this report is true, and note that I do not consider Geithner’s memoir to be much more than an exercise in self-hagiography, then much of the pain of the that Greece has experienced over the past 6 years has largely been an exercise in sadism for its own sake by the Germans.

If there is a flaw at the heart of the European Union, it is Germany hegemony, which allows them to enforce their chauvinism on the other members.

I So Hope that Cuomo is Toast

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Bill De Blasio, the mayor of the world’s greatest city, has had enough, and he has accused Governor Andrew Cuomo of prosecuting a vendetta against him at the expense of the City of New York:

Mayor Bill de Blasio, in candid and searing words rarely employed by elected officials of his stature, accused Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo on Tuesday of stymieing New York City’s legislative goals out of personal pettiness, “game-playing” and a desire for “revenge.”

In an extraordinary interview, Mr. de Blasio, appearing to unburden himself of months’ worth of frustrations, said that Mr. Cuomo — who, like the mayor, is a Democrat — “did not act in the interests” of New Yorkers by blocking measures like reforming rent laws and the mayor’s long-term ability to control the city’s public schools.

“I started a year and a half ago with a hope of a very strong partnership,” Mr. de Blasio said of the governor, whom he has known for two decades. “I have been disappointed at every turn.”

Mr. Cuomo, the mayor said, had acted vindictively toward the city, citing cuts in state financing for public housing and what he called an abrupt ramp-up of state inspections of city homeless shelters “with a vigor we had never seen before.”

“That was clearly politically motivated,” Mr. de Blasio said, “and that was revenge for some perceived slight.”

The mayor added: “It’s not about policy. It’s not about substance. It’s certainly not about the millions of people affected.”

………

There is a long history of bitterness between mayors and governors of New York, even those from the same party. But Mr. de Blasio, speaking calmly and deliberatively, indicated that his relationship with the governor had deteriorated to a historic low.

The mayor summoned journalists to his City Hall office for a pair of interviews on Tuesday afternoon, only hours before he was to leave New York for a weeklong family vacation to the Southwest. He said he had finally run out of patience with Mr. Cuomo, who has been widely viewed as being an obstacle to the mayor’s agenda since Mr. de Blasio took office in 2014.

“We will not play these games,” Mr. de Blasio said, adding that Mr. Cuomo’s behavior was “not anything like acceptable government practice, and I think people all over the state are coming to the same conclusion.”

………

Some mayoral aides suggested that Mr. de Blasio might be able to convince city liberals and Democrats that Mr. Cuomo was no longer representing their interests, threatening the support for a governor who was defeated outside New York City in last year’s campaign.

………

“I’m not going to be surprised if these statements lead to some attempts at revenge,” Mr. de Blasio said, his voice even. “And we’ll just call them right out. Because we are just not going to play that way.”

If the 5 boroughs sit on their hands in the next gubernatorial election,  Andrew Cuomo loses.

In fact, there is a reasonable chance that if New York City works against him, he loses the primary.

After all, running as “inevitable” in 2014, Zephyr Teachout, who had next to no money, and started late, got 34% of the vote against a Democratic Party apparatus that was uniformly against her.

He is widely loathed by the party base, and he returns the feelings.

It’s also clear that he is still a person of interest in federal investigations of corruption in Albany.

I do not think that Cuomo gets it, but stick a fork in him. he’s done.

Disclaimer:  It is possible that I am projecting my own feelings into this matter.

Óχι* Euro?

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So Greece has now officially defaulted on its IMF loan:

Greece has officially missed its payment to the IMF.

Though this is not technically considered a “default” — the IMF now considers Greece “in arrears” — Greece has now officially not paid the 1.6 billion euros (or about $1.8 billion) it owed the IMF by Tuesday.

IMF managing director Christine Lagarde, however, said in June that she would consider Greece in default if it did not pay.

 This is the largest missed payment ever owed to the IMF.

Greece is now no longer in a bailout program for the first time since 2010.

 In a statement, the IMF confirmed that Greece missed the payment due on Tuesday and added that Greece requested an extension of its repayment, which the IMF’s executive board will consider “in due course.”

 Greek banks and the Athens stock exchange remain closed through this week ahead of a July 5 referendum to vote on the latest bailout proposal from Greece’s creditors.

This is a big deal, but I do not think that the Greek government was left with a choice.

It has become increasingly clear that the goal of the Troika has been regime change ever since Syriza won the last election, primarily because they are a bunch of moralistic† idiots, who do not realize that the alternative to Syriza is not a return to the center-left and center-right parties, but rather the rise of the fascist Golden Dawn party”.

This is why Greek PM Alexis Tsipras felt compelled to call a referendum.

The demands of the Troika have always been about a number of things, none of which have anything to do with the well being of the Greek people:

  • Protecting their own domestic banks from thrie exposureto Greek Debt.
  • Reinforcing German hegemony of the Euro Zone. (Berlin only on this one)
  • Making a public example of Greece as a warning to others.
  • Preventing other “leftist” (social democrat by the standards of the 1960s) parties, particularly Die Linke (The Left) in Germany, from coming to power.
  • Discrediting the modern social safety net.

It should be noted that I do not see any way to a happy ending here:

………

But a former deputy governor of Cyprus’s central bank, Spyros Stavrinakis, has warned that reopening the banks will be hard.

Stavrinakis lived through the 2013 Cyprus crisis, in which capital controls were imposed for almost two years.

He says:

Once you impose capital controls, you immediately send a message that there is something wrong with the banking sector.

It is very difficult to phase down and unwind capital controls, once they are imposed, Stavrinakis adds.

………

Most things in the European Union are designed to actively obfuscate reality. These are called deposit insurance schemes but that is a legal lie. In the United States the FDIC is Federal (its right in the name). The EU imposes a requirement that each country “insure” their deposits but it provides no financing for this. The last data I saw (which I can only verify from 3 years ago) is that the Greek deposit insurance fund has a paltry 3 billion dollars in it. In short there is no current backstop for Greek depositors. This is why they are talking about implementing a European wide deposit insurance union but that isn’t supposed to come until next year at the earliest and who knows if that will really happen and to what extent it will be universal among current Eurozone members. relevant links below.

………

Three-and-a-half billion euros. That is roughly how much cash Greece’s banks need to get through the week if each adult takes out the €60 ($67) they are allowed each day. It isn’t much for Greeks to live on, but it may be more than the banks have.

Also, in the realm of the absurd, there is a  crowdfunding project for the Greek Bailout Fund on  Indiegogo, with about €¾ million raised, out of the €1.6 billion needed raised so far.

The German insistence on Versailles Treaty economics, when juxtaposed with the Greek tradition financial profligacy and corruption, has produced a truly toxic mix, which will probably break up the Euro Zone, if not the whole European Union.

*Greek for no.
†The word for “debt” in German is “Schuld”. This is also the word for “guilt” or “blame”, which explains why the Germans are so fond of Sado-Monitarism. The Germans see this as a morality play, and the last time that Germans tried to enforce a morality on the rest of Europe, it was pretty unfortunate.

Dumbass

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Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal thought that an open forum on Twitter would be a good thing.

This has been done before, and has failed before, but Jindal did not get the memo:

Someone on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s campaign staff had the brilliant idea of opening up a discussion between the Republican hopeful and Twitter. The result was a terrible idea, poorly executed.
The first, and possibly most important, set of questions for the candidate:

If you know so little about the Internet that you think #AskBobby is wise, how can you consider yourself a competent 21st Century President?

— Michael O’Neill (@hkeller812) June 30, 2015

he wasn’t dumb enough to do #askbobby. he couldn’t have been.

— Bomani Jones (@bomani_jones) June 30, 2015

Yes — he most certainly was. ………

It goes on from there, and the questions become less “meta” and far more aggressively hostile.

Republicans have been trolling politics since the 1960s, and somehow, they do not understand that there are trolls on the internet.

Not only is Bobby Jindal too stupid to be President, he is too stupid to be allowed around sharp object.

I wonder who is employed by him to cut his meat for him, and I wonder what the f^%$# this benighted soul is going to put on his resume.

My guess is “Nutrition Consultant.”

I am Amused

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In the latest Fox News Poll, Donald Trump is the 2nd most popular candidates in the Republican primaries:

There’s been a lineup change in the race for the GOP nomination, as businessman Donald Trump moves up after declaring his candidacy. He’s now second in the order after former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who also got an uptick in support after his formal announcement.

For Democrats, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is still — by far — the team leader, according to a new Fox News national poll on the 2016 presidential election.

Bush tops the list of GOP contenders with 15 percent support among Republican primary voters. That’s up from 12 percent last month and his best showing yet. Support for Trump more than doubled since his announcement and that catapults him into the top tier at 11 percent. He’s followed by retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 10 percent. No one else receives double-digit backing.

Bush officially kicked off his campaign June 15 and Trump launched June 16. It’s common for candidates to see a bump in their numbers in the days following their formal announcement and the media coverage that comes with that.

The bad news for Trump is that only 29 percent of GOP primary voters consider him a serious candidate. More than twice that many — 64 percent — think he’s a side show. Among all registered voters, nearly 8 in 10 say Trump is a side show (77 percent).

This appears to mean that the “2nd worst Donald on Earth,”*Fox News, much to the chagrin of the voters, is trying to limit its debates to the “top 10” candidates, which has the effect of eliminating those at positions 11 and below from having a meaningful chance in Iowa or New Hampshire, and hence the primaries.

And it appears that the biggest joke in Presidential politics will get one of those seats at the table.

It so sucks to be a Republican right now.

Heh.

*Larry Wilmore called Donald Rumsfeld, “The Only Donald Worse than Trump,” and I wholeheartedly agree.

Why Does this Remind Me of Stalinist Architecture?

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Positively Hideous

It seems to me that whenever a reactionary government remains in power too long, it seems that they develop an edifice complex:

A plan to erect a 10-storey statue in a national park on one of Canada’s most scenic shorelines has prompted outrage and sparked a growing political row as the country heads towards a general election this fall.

The statue of Mother Canada – a cloaked female figure with her arms outstretched towards the Atlantic Ocean – is intended to honour the country’s soldiers who died overseas.

But growing anger over the plan has made it a new focus of opposition to the increasingly unpopular government of Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper.

The proposed monument is an awkwardly remodelled, vastly upscaled version of an earlier statue, known as Canada Bereft, which adorns the memorial to the country’s first world war dead near Vimy, France.

The design has been widely lambasted both for its design and its proposed location in Cape Breton Highlands national park. In an editorial this week, the Globe and Mail newspaper described it as “offensively tasteless” and a “hubristically arrogant act of arrogant unoriginality”.

“The bigger-is-better approach to art is best left to Stalinist tyrants, theme park entrepreneurs and insecure municipalities hoping to waylay bored drive-by tourists,” the paper wrote.

Stephen Harper has gagged government scientists,  used the Canadian Revenue Agency to target charities who protest his agenda, and gutted the census, among other things, and now we have this.

My condolences to my friends in Canada, because this cannot be good, particularly if the Conservatives are not turfed out in the 2015 elections.

Hero of the Day

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And the accursed flag comes down

Brittany ‘Bree’ Newsome:

A woman scaled the flagpole in front of the South Carolina Statehouse Saturday morning and temporarily removed the Confederate flag that flew there. The woman was arrested by State Capitol police along with a man who had entered the grounds with her, the Associated Press reported. The flag was replaced and raised a short time later.

The woman, who was not identified by authorities, was named on social media as Brittany “Bree” Newsome, an activist from North Carolina. Her actions inspired the hashtag #KeepItDown, which was one of the top trending topics on Twitter in the U.S. Saturday. Later in the day, the hashtag #FreeBree was also trending in the U.S.

According to BreeNewsome.com, a site linked to a Twitter account belonging to a user with the name Bree Newsome and mentioned by numerous users in conjunction with the #KeepItDown hashtag, Newsome is an activist and graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.

 Here is hoping that this happens regularly until it comes down forever.