Retiring SEC Attorney Proposes a Market That Puts the Public Interest First

I am not sure what the particular solutions might be, but I think an historically large number of people might agree that the government no longer has their best interests at heart.

The public interest has been sold to the special interests and their ideologues. 

I cannot think of any other reason why the government supports that obscene tax loophole of carried interest that so heavily subsidizes the financialization of the real economy.

I cannot think of any other reason why the government continually refuses, on principle and as a matter of policy,  to prosecute the individuals responsible for monumental financial crimes and abuses of the public trust, handing out wrist slap fines to the wealthy perpetrators and campaign contributors who are engaged in a serial white collar crime spree.

And I cannot think of any other reason why so many state governments would deny medical coverage to the most vulnerable of their own people by refusing the offer of Medicaid expansion on principle. What principle?  That people who are not as fortunate as others should suffer and die, even when adequate medical treatment is available and has been shown to work even better in other countries?

It is an historic feat of propaganda, that the American people think themselves to be the finest people on earth, the paragon of civilization, bringing freedom to the oppressed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria,  Libya, and the Ukraine from their presence in over seven hundred foreign military bases. while their own infrastructure and living standards crumble at home, and their own people become increasingly alienated from a self-serving power structure that governs by and for itself. 

Asking Capitalism to Cure Capitalist Woes:
The US Exchange, a Market for the Rest of Us
By James A. Kidney

High-speed trading, synthetic credit derivatives and other risky Wall Street products are described as refinements of our capitalist system — or lamented as the inevitable product of emerging technology. But the system benefits traders more than real capitalists – those who seek investors on the basis of the merit of their products and services to customers.

The response to the many problems posed by these new technologies, products and delivery systems is predictable: New statutes and rules, inevitably chewed into mush by politicians and lobbyists, and long delays in implementation by regulators. By the time these new rules are in place, Wall Street has found ways to circumvent them, requiring a new cycle of debate, lobbying and minimally effective rule-making in response to the next resulting crisis.

One possible solution seems to have been overlooked: Bringing capitalism to the capital markets. It is not that the trading markets have lacked opportunistic capitalists. Entire new trading platforms have been created to supplement or replace the traditional New York Stock Exchange, the NASDAQ and the old American Stock Exchange. Certainly, many new trading products have been invented. But few of these developments address any real need except trading itself.

 Let me post an example, simple and naïve as it may be, of how capitalism genuinely could improve the market beyond meeting the needs of traders themselves. The notion can at least be the start of something. But first, some background...

Read the entire article here.

After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

"Vanity and narcissism — the compulsive need to be admired and praised — undermine one's courage, for one then fights on someone else's conviction rather than one's own."

Rollo May


"Narcissus so himself, himself forsook,
And died to kiss his shadow in the brook."

William Shakespeare


"Alas! for this gray shadow, once a man —
So glorious in his beauty and thy choice,
Who madest him thy chosen, that he seemed
To his great heart none other than a God!"

Alfred Lord Tennyson, Tithonus

I had intended to write about the winds of change beginning to rise in Europe, but it is hard to find a proper beginning for such a vast and historic subject. But luckily a reader sent me Grant Williams latest newsletter, which you can read in its entirety here. So I may defer on my own effort, and provide a taste of things to come with this.

As you may recall I have said on any number of occasions that when change comes, it will probably come first at the periphery, as in all great changes in empire. In the east it is generally brutish, sturm und drang.   But watch when it comes to the UK, most likely first amongst the English speaking nations.  The backlash and repression there on the whole will be— polite but comprehensive.

The credibility trap takes its toll over time, and people lose interest in the status quo.   The ruling elite never see it coming, because they are so self-absorbed, enamored of themselves.  Their first reaction is disbelief, and then rage, because how can they be unappreciated, so betrayed, such beneficient gods?

I am not saying that the change will necessarily be for the good, but it will come, just as it did in the 1930's, with very mixed results.

Like so many things that approach the universal nature of art, our reaction to it probably says more about us than it does about it. And perhaps for this effort as well.

And the times, they are a-changin'.

THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO Hmmm...
Fight Club
By Grant Williams
01 April 2014

...Elsewhere this past week in Europe, there was another sign of things to come — and this time it played out in the UK as Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg of the pro-European Liberal Democrats threw down the gauntlet to the staunchly anti-European Nigel Farage of UKIP to join him in the first of two live televised debates — ostensibly on whether the UK should remain part of Europe, but in reality a desperate attempt to both blunt the challenge presented by Farage’s surging popularity and at the same time restore some credibility to Clegg’s ailing junior coalition partners.

As regular readers will know, Farage is the very embodiment of the anti-establishment movement. A pint-drinking, chain-smoking everyman who looks like he’d be more at home debating the issues of the day in a London pub than in the European parliament, Farage spent 20 years as a commodity trader and is one of the few politicians amongst the current crop to have a background in the private sector.

Clegg, on the other hand, is the archetypal politician: public school and Oxbridge-educated, related to aristocracy (albeit of the Russian variety), and a man who has been involved in politics for his entire adult life. The debate was fascinating to watch.

Farage’s bluster and soapbox oratory versus the polished politics of Clegg. Farage’s passion and intensity versus Clegg’s measured tone.

In the aftermath, the political pundits had their say on who emerged victorious, and they were unanimous:

Mary Riddell:
No minds will have been changed. The Faragistes who see their champion as the battler against faceless, bloodless, heartless power-brokers will be happy. But Nick won. As he should have. Easily.

Dan Hodges:
Nick Clegg kept calm and stuck to the facts. And it became clear facts are Nigel Farage’s enemy. He became increasingly angry and bombastic. By the end Clegg was engaging easily and effectively with his audience. Nigel Farage appeared to be cracking jokes to amuse only himself. His explanation of his reason for employing his wife was especially embarrassing. Fortunately, by that point, few people in the audience appeared to be listening to him.”

Toby Young:
“Overall, Clegg came across as more in command of the detail (possibly because he’d been briefed by the civil service beforehand) and for that reason I think he edged it.... Farage will certainly have pleased his supporters, but not much more than that.”

So... a humiliating public mauling of poor Nigel. But here’s where it gets interesting. In the Telegraph’s poll more than 81 per cent of readers said they thought Nigel Farage had won the debate.

A YouGov poll found that 57 per cent of people thought Mr Farage won the debate. This is perhaps the most important point.

Regardless of what those who spend their lives around politics believe, the public is ready for change, and they will be very hard to sway unless somehow they feel that quality of their lives can improve drastically — and that is not about to happen.

Measuring political performance by traditional metrics is a waste of time in a world where the people will simply vote for change. We saw it in Greece, we saw it in Spain, and now we’ve seen it in France. Next up, European elections in six weeks’ time.

Public disaffection with the world’s leaders is growing by the day — you can feel it — and nowhere was that made more apparent recently than in Holland last week when Barack Obama, halfway through his tour of Europe, took to the stage alongside Dutch PM Mark Rutte.

Obama, so used to adoring hordes — not only at home, but wherever in the world he is reading a teleprompter giving a soaring lesson in oratory — was presented with the answer to the age-old question about the sound of one hand clapping after he concluded, at a press conference, remarks espousing the USA’s “core values” of privacy, the rule of law, and individual rights. ([See the video below] to watch the most awkward end to a speech since Sally Field accepted the Oscar for Best Actress in 1985.)

People can’t even bring themselves to be polite to the incumbent political class anymore — not even to a rock star like Obama. Make no mistake, from Ukraine to Holland, from the United Kingdom and France to Greece, Italy, and beyond, politicians are under immense pressure to “do something” in order not to lose their grasp on power.

From Nobel to Ignoble

To Understand the News, Follow the Money. To Follow the Money, Follow the Economic Hitmen

"Plunderers of the world, when nothing remains on the lands to which they have laid waste by wanton thievery, they search out across the seas. The wealth of another region excites their greed; and if it is weak, their lust for power. Nothing from the rising to the setting of the sun is enough for them.

Among all others only they are compelled to attack the poor as well as the rich. Robbery, rape, and slaughter they falsely call empire; and where they create a desolate wasteland, they call it peace."

Tacitus, Calgacus' Speech from Agricola

Remembering this may help one to understand some of the things that happen that otherwise may seem to make no sense.   In the pursuit of profit, their hypocrisy and disregard for justice and human life knows no bounds.

I will let you in on a little secret.  Not always, but the worst of them have a 'tell.'  You have to look at the long record of a person's action and mode of acting to assess this.  Are they plain and straightforward, or highly political and evasive in their motives.  Do they often say one thing, and yet do another.  If so, then this is their 'tell.'

The most cynical player will accuse and denounce their adversaries of the exact things that they have in mind, their precise motives, but first, and aggressively so with high indignation.  But their own actions will appear to be without principled cohesion, that is, principles but selectively applied.  Look for the inconsistencies, and if they are there, you know the type of hypocrite with whom you are dealing.

I think they do this because it defeats the ability of their opponent to accuse them of the very things that they themselves are doing.   I have seen this in company politics to geo-political squabbles, over and over.  Bald faced misdirection is almost standard fare these days of spin and propaganda in domestic politics. 

Telling the truth is considered to be naive, embarrassingly clumsy, an automatic disqualification from power. It is almost as bad as bending your knee to the power of God rather than the will to power, when we would all be gods.  Or caring for the poor and the disadvantaged, those disgusting, useless creatures.  Contemptible weakness!  Such are the times.

There is nothing quite so tempting as a poorly managed country with exploitable resources and assets like food, energy, and people.  And if it is well located for other geopolitical purposes, then so much the better.   Winning.

“The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology.”

Michael Parenti

Chalmers Johnson: The Decline of Empire

Signs of Decay

1. Internal corruption
2. Imperial overreach
3. Inability to reform.

Chalmers Johnson: End of Empire, Signs of Decay

"History teaches us that the capacity of things to get worse is limitless. Roman history suggests that the short, happy life of the American republic may be coming to its end... [the US will probably] maintain a facade of constitutional government and drift along until financial bankruptcy overtakes it.

Of course, bankruptcy will not mean the literal end of the United States any more than it did for Germany in 1923, China in 1948, or Argentina in 2002-03.

It might, in fact, open the way for an unexpected restoration of the American system, or for military rule or simply for some development we cannot yet imagine. Certainly, such a bankruptcy would mean a drastic lowering of our standard of living, a loss of control over international affairs, a process of adjusting to the rise of other powers, including China and India..."

Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, 2007

Chris Hedges: The Reaping of America

"We will all swallow our cup of corporate poison. We can take it from nurse Romney, who will tell us not to whine and play the victim, or we can take it from nurse Obama, who will assure us that this hurts him even more than it hurts us, but one way or another the corporate hemlock will be shoved down our throats. The choice before us is how it will be administered.

Corporate power, no matter who is running the ward after January 2013, is poised to carry out U.S. history’s most savage assault against the poor and the working class, not to mention the Earth’s ecosystem. And no one in power, no matter what the bedside manner, has any intention or ability to stop it.

If you insist on participating in the cash-drenched charade of a two-party democratic election at least be clear about what you are doing. You are, by playing your assigned role as the Democratic or Republican voter in this political theater, giving legitimacy to a corporate agenda that means your own impoverishment and disempowerment.

All the things that stand between us and utter destitution—Medicaid, food stamps, Pell grants, Head Start, Social Security, public education, federal grants-in-aid to America’s states and cities, the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program (WIC), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and home-delivered meals for seniors—are about to be shredded by the corporate state.

Our corporate oligarchs are harvesting the nation, grabbing as much as they can, as fast as they can, in the inevitable descent...

Obama is not in charge. Romney would not be in charge. Politicians are the public face of corporate power. They are corporate employees. Their personal narratives, their promises, their rhetoric and their idiosyncrasies are meaningless. And that, perhaps, is why the cost of the two presidential campaigns is estimated to reach an obscene $2.5 billion. The corporate state does not produce a product that is different. It produces brands that are different. And brands cost a lot of money to sell.

You can dismiss those of us who will in protest vote for a third-party candidate and invest our time and energy in acts of civil disobedience. You can pride yourself on being practical. You can swallow the false argument of the lesser of two evils. But ask yourself, once this nightmare starts kicking in, who the real sucker is. "

Chris Hedges, How Do You Take Your Poison?

Read the rest here.

Quo vadimus, Domine?