Many lawyers lie in bed awake at night for this very reason...

Telling your boss that you've screwed up is never fun. When your mistake potentially costs $1.26 billion, you really have problems.

Why are these people in charge?

These people are supposed to be the experts. Yet they didn't see the crisis coming, denied that it was possible, and claimed that the economy was in great shape as the economy crumbled around them. They have no credibility. Why does anyone think they can fix the problem? They are the problem.

Alan Grayson asked Ben Bernake a question around the 3:45 mark of this video. Bernake's three-word response should have gotten him fired, indicted, or both.

Basically, Grayson wanted to know which foreign banks received $500 billion from the Federal Reserve. Bernake's response: "I don't know."

There are two possibilities. Either Bernake is lying, or he's admitted to inconceivable levels of incompetence perhaps unequaled in history. Neither are good. Either should cost him his job, at the very least.

I think he's lying. To Congress. Blatantly.

Does anyone really think that the Federal Reserve would dish out half a trillion dollars without the Fed Chairman's approval? Does anyone think that the Fed Chairman would approve distributing $500 billion without checking ID? As ridiculous as it was that mortgage lenders would approve mortgages without verifying income, Bernake claims he allowed the Fed to distribute half a trillion dollars without even knowing who was getting the money.

Responsible lending requires lenders to determine whether the party borrowing the funds will be able to pay them back. Also, lenders should determine if lending the money will be beneficial. It is impossible to do either of these things without knowing the borrower's identity. If Bernake approved this without knowing where the money was going, it would be recklessness beyond comprehension.

There's a much simpler explanation. He's lying.

He shouldn't be able to get away with it.

More student loan analysis

Here's another take.

Makes a lot of sense.

Do you have student loans? If so, you should pay attention to this...

I've been saying this for a long time. People think students couldn't afford college without federal student loans. In reality, federal tuition assistance programs make college far, far more expensive.

Before federal tuition involvement, a decent summer job could pay for a year's tuition. Yet the government wanted to make college more "affordable", so it started various federal tuition programs. As a result, college students don't have to have a summer job, and can live the high life while in college, paid for by student loans. But then they have to spend the next 10-20 years paying off tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, before you count the interest. If they didn't have that debt, instead of paying interest they could invest that money and earn interest. Or put a down payment on a house.

Why has college gotten more expensive? I certainly don't think it's because the quality of education is any better. I'm quite convinced the opposite is true. The government's good intentions of providing students with more for less backfired on both fronts. Just like it did with Fannie/Freddie/CRA and housing. Just like it did with Social Security and retirement.

And just like it's going to do with health care.

Canon is a Great Company

I use Nikon DSLRs, but Canon has always gone above and beyond in the customer service department in my experience. I had some issues a while back with a refurbed multifunction that I bought from Newegg, but they ultimately made it right, and replaced it with an even nicer printer. To be fair, I think the problem was Newegg's fault, rather than Canon's.

As a result, I'm a loyal Canon customer, at least as far as inkjet printers and point and shoot digital cameras are concerned.

Here's another example of Canon taking care of its customers.

Gotta love Dvorak

The guy's a complete moron. I don't know why anyone listens to him anymore. That quote makes me wonder why anyone listened to him ever.

Government-sanctioned fraud

"JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, are all engaged in accounting fraud. They are not realizing losses on trillions of dollars worth of bad debts on their books, giving themselves big bonuses this year, deferring losses to next year ....". Max Keiser

Some might ask why we don't have regulation to stop this. But we already do. Fraud is illegal.

However, the SEC itself actually encouraged these banks to ignore their losses, treating them as if they didn't exist.

http://j.mp/1RlHMQ

You can't blame these bonuses on the free market. If the government would have stayed out of it, these companies would be bankrupt, and we'd be on our way to recovery. Actually, if the government would have stayed out of it from the beginning, we wouldn't be in this mess to start with.

-- Posted from my iPhone

Let's cut out the filler...

Excerpts taken from a Bloomberg article on Yahoo!:

"Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) -- At least 47 school-age children in Chicago have been killed in homicides, mostly by guns, since the month President Barack Obama took office."

***

"'Where there have been opportunities for the president to speak out about the issue of firearm violence, he has missed any number of opportunities,' said Thom Mannard, executive director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence."

***

"Gun issues in Chicago will remain in the national spotlight following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Sept. 30 announcement that it will hear a challenge of the city’s handgun ban, implemented in 1982 to combat urban crime." (emphasis added)

The ownership of handguns in Chicago is already illegal, and has been for over a quarter of a century. Needless to say, banning handguns hasn't eliminated, or even lowered the incidence of violent crime. What more does Mr. Mannard want to do?

It's about frigging time

I'm a huge Apple fan. Huge. Everything they make seems to have been designed in order to get out of your way and let you do what you want to do, without any hassles.

Which is why I've never understood how the mouse that comes with their desktop Macs is one of the worst mice I've ever used in my life. I've never seen one that worked properly for more than a couple months. The scrolling trackball invariably stops working, way too soon.

It still blows me away how such a terrible design could make it out of Cupertino, much less stick around for years. But that's all in the past.

The right result, but reached the wrong way

"WASHINGTON – The Obama administration will not seek to arrest medical marijuana users and suppliers as long as they conform to state laws, under new policy guidelines to be sent to federal prosecutors Monday." AP Article, via Yahoo!

Federal laws banning marijuana use are counterproductive. Regardless, if a medical doctor decides a patient can be helped by marijuana, it's simply not the federal government's place to prohibit it. Physicians can prescribe all manner of painkillers and narcotics that are illegal without a prescription. Why is marijuana different?

I'm glad people won't be prosecuted for medical marijuana use. But I'm disappointed in the way it happened. If these are bad laws, why not get rid of them? Why encourage people to violate the law, with a tacit understanding that they will receive no punishment? Rather than instruct the Justice Department to ignore federal drug laws, he should have pushed Congress to repeal them.

Instead, we ended up with a power grab for the executive branch. This method substitutes the judgment of the president for the judgment of the legislature. Many observers, including Obama, didn't like it when Bush did it, and rightfully so. Although Obama thinks that he should be allowed to selectively enforce legislation, the article indicates he thinks it should be for provisions that are unconstitutional. I personally think that prohibiting medical marijuana use is unconstitutional, but Obama is not making that argument here.

Also, this puts marijuana users in a tough position. They may rely on this development, and assume they're safe to consume marijuana. But by doing so, they're still violating the law. Future administrations can always start enforcing the laws again. The next president could change course, and prosecute all the people who relied on Obama's policy.

Do you see the problem here?

Apparently the federal government's plan to modify mortgages for people who can't afford them isn't working out too well. Check out the below quote from this Reuters article on Yahoo! which describes a guy that didn't qualify.

"Latta, a 53 year-old retiree, pays $1,600 in monthly home payments that eat up 93 percent of his pension and he struggles to make child support payments."

According to my math, his pension is roughly $1,720 per month. His mortgage is $1,600. Yet he apparently decided to retire at age 53.

And he's frustrated the federal government can't save his house.

From a different perspective

It's all a matter of perspective.

Seriously. Listen to these two.

Based on this clip, which one do you think knows what he's talking about? Yet so many people still treat the Fed Chairman as if he's the Great and Powerful Oz.

Videos like this help pull the curtain back.

Whoopi Goldberg is a moron

In the above video, Whoopi Goldberg throws her support behind child rapist and fugitive from justice Roman Polanski. To recap, Polanski, in his mid-forties, told a 13 year-old girl that he wanted to photograph her for a magazine. He lured her to Jack Nicholson's house, got her drunk, gave her a Quaalude, and took nude photos of her in a hot tub. Then, over her repeated pleas to stop, he had oral, vaginal, and anal sex with her.

The police investigated, and he admitted that he had sex with her, but claimed that she was "experienced" and that somehow made it okay. The district attorney shockingly allowed him to plead to having sex with a minor. They dropped the rape charge. They dropped the sodomy charge. Apparently they never bothered to consider the glaringly obvious child pornography and false imprisonment charges. And then, prior to sentencing, he fled the country, living in luxury for decades throughout Europe.

But this isn't the first time Whoopi displayed her idiocy on television:



What the hell.

whoopi slavery
by dollarsandsense123

I've posted this one before. In this clip, John McCain talks about how he would appoint judges who would be faithful to the Constitution. Whoopi Goldberg asks him if that would mean black people would be slaves, apparently because she thinks slavery was mandated in the Constitution. John McCain thanked Whoopi for bringing up "an excellent point", and said that he understood.

This is not an excellent point. The Constitution never mandated slavery. In fact, it has explicitly banned slavery since 1865.

McCain couldn't explain this. Based on the video, I don't even think he understands the distinction. Even the most strict constructionist judge would not allow slavery to return. The Thirteenth Amendment is one of very few limitations on individual actions in the Constitution.

Freedom?

"LOS ANGELES – A surprise arrest at the Zurich airport, detention at the hands of Swiss authorities, and a high-profile extradition process that could take weeks or months. The irony is that for Roman Polanski, the acclaimed director accused of child rape three decades ago, this latest ordeal could lead to the one thing he's lacked since: his freedom." - AP article, via Yahoo!

Seriously? In what way has he lacked freedom? He fled the country prior to sentencing. For the last 30-odd years, he's been able to go anywhere he wants within France, and apparently all over Europe. This wasn't a statutory rape situation, either. He took naked pictures of a 13 year-old girl, lured her back to this guy's house, drugged her, and raped her after she passed out.


Apparently many people are willing to look the other way, because he's a talented director. Well, Michael Vick, O.J. Simpson, and hell, even Bernie Madoff were pretty good at what they did, too. They all served time. And none of them were admitted child rapists, either.