Bank CEOs continue to be well paid

Results are irrelevant in the banking industry. It must be nice to screw up so badly yet still command such enormous payouts. The numbers below are estimate made by Dick Bove of Rochdale Securities. CNBC:

Take JPMorgan Chase. The Wall Street titan's CEO, Jamie Dimon, will earn just shy of $42 million this year for a bank that lost nearly a quarter of its market cap—or 23 percent—during the year, according to Bove's numbers. There's also Bank of America head Brian T. Moynihan, who will earn a comparatively small $2.26 million this year while his bank's market value dropped 60 percent — the worst in Rochdale's study. Goldman Sachs head Lloyd Blankfein's compensation was $21.7 million, while the investment bank he runs lost 46.4 percent of its market cap. Richard B. Handler, who runs Jefferies, earned $21.4 million for a firm that a few months ago came under the gun for its potential exposure to European debt, the Rochdale analysis shows.

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Federal court approves telco immunity for spying on citizens

The bad guys hate us because of our freedoms.

A federal appeals court has ruled as constitutional a law giving telecommunications companies legal immunity for helping the government with its email and telephone eavesdropping program. Thursday's unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court decision regarding the 2008 law. The appeal concerned a case that consolidated 33 different lawsuits filed against various telecom companies, including AT&T;, Sprint Nextel, Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. on behalf of these companies' customers.

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Despite SOPA, Congressional offices illegally downloading

It sounds a lot like insider trading which is OK for Congress but illegal for everyone else. There's a reason Congress has the lowest ever approval rating. DailyTech:

TorrentFreak used Hurricane Electric's handy list of assigned IP blocks (found here) to track down which IP addresses belong to the offices of members of Congress. And lo and behold, when those addresses were compared to results on YouHaveDownloaded, a torrent tracking site, they yielded over 800 hits. Now to put this in context YouHaveDownloaded tracks only a tiny portion of torrent traffic, so it appears that Congress -- even as they look to punish lesser mortals for file sharing -- are themselves gleefully committing a "smash and grab" as Vice President Joe Biden (D) once put it. Much of the pirated materials appeared to be adult self-help or education books such as "Crucial Conversations- Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High" and "How to Answer Hard Interview Questions And Everything Else You Need to Know to Get the Job You Want".

There were also recorded downloads of software as well as porn. How very moral of them. Read the rest of this post...

Report: Dept of Justice planning charges in BP Deepwater disaster

It's definitely a change of attitude by the Obama administration that was previously much too cozy with BP. It's also an encouraging sign to see that Attorney General Holder is more focused on actual crimes that have consequences instead of bootlicking for Hollywood. Mistakes certainly happen, but the failure at Deepwater went far beyond any normal mistake. It's about time.

Oil major BP is bracing itself for criminal charges against some of its American employees, amid allegations that it misled regulators on the dangers posed by the Deepwater Horizon rig which exploded last year killing 11 employees and unleashing the worst offshore oil spill in US history. A Department of Justice investigation has identified several Houston-based engineers and at least one BP supervisor it expects to charge in the New Year, according to reports yesterday. The US Attorney-General Eric Holder announced a criminal investigation at the height of the public outcry over the spill, which sent BP shares plunging and even called into question whether it could survive as a company. To date, the British oil giant has taken $41bn (£26.7bn) in charges to cover the cost of the spill, including legal claims against it that will hit the courts in 2012. BP refused to comment on the reports of impending criminal charges against individuals, who could face up to five years in prison if they are found guilty of providing false information in federal documents. The latest developments in the criminal investigation were first reported yesterday by The Wall Street Journal.

If only Holder could muster up the energy to step away from an Obama Wall Street fundraiser and take the same action against Wall Street. Read the rest of this post...

Reich: Get ready for an Obama–Clinton ticket in 2012

There was a point (see here) when I thought a primary challenge to Obama could easily come from within the Dem power structure. Obama seemed that vulnerable.

And I assumed that Hillary was positioning herself to be that person. In 1968, RFK didn't declare his candidacy until Gene McCarthy had fatally wounded Johnson, making a safe entry possible. I saw the same strategy back then for a Clinton challenge for the crown in 2012.

But the moment passed, and hopes for a primary challenge seemed to have dimmed. ("Seemed"? Yes.)

Not only that, but the Clinton and Obama machines seem to have merged; certainly the CEOs of those machines are more and more aligned.

So I find this the next logical step — Hillary Clinton as the 2012 VP nominee. This makes her a shoo-in for the nomination in 2016 (assuming no horrid misstep betwixt), and possibly the presidency as well, given the current state of the opposition. So everyone's happy:

▪ Obama can't run again and the Dems need an heir.
▪ His daughters are too young for their dynastic turn.
▪ The Clintons still want it.
▪ Hillary as heir-apparent gives both her and the Dems another 4–8 years on the throne.

Sweet deal for them. Let Chelsea and Sasha duke it out, come their turn to seek the crown. That will be later; this will be now.

Here's Robert Reich, who might know a thing or two about the Clintons, on this subject (my emphasis):

My political prediction for 2012 (based on absolutely no inside information): Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden swap places. Biden becomes Secretary of State — a position he’s apparently coveted for years. And Hillary Clinton, Vice President.

So the Democratic ticket for 2012 is Obama-Clinton. ... Obama needs to stir the passions and enthusiasms of a Democratic base that’s been disillusioned with his cave-ins to regressive Republicans. Hillary Clinton on the ticket can do that. ... Clinton would help deflect attention from the bad economy and put it on foreign policy, where she and Obama have shined.

Sign me up — I think Reich makes the good call.

Am I liking this? Do you think I think we need 8 more years of progressive dreams deferred? That would be No.

But my dreams are beside the point, aren't they. You and me, we're just God's spies, inspecting the mystery of things. Birds in a cage, as it were.

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China continues crackdown on dissidents

It's so refreshing to know that the Olympics did so much to open up China. Mission Accomplished, IOC. Governments in the West remain much too afraid to take a hard line with China, fearing the loss of cheap factory labor for business. The Independent:

A lawyer left wheelchair-bound after alleged mistreatment in police custody went on trial yesterday, testifying from a sickbed. Earlier in the week two other rights activists were jailed for up to 10 years as Beijing continued its crackdown on dissent. Ni Yulan, 51, is charged with fraud and falsifying information to steal property. She is also charged, along with her husband, Dong Jiqin, with causing a disturbance at a guesthouse where the couple were detained by police. Her daughter, Dong Xuan, told reporters that her mother appeared at the opening of her trial in a bed, and relied on an oxygen mask to help her breathe. "Seeing my mother lying on that bed, it made my heart ache," Ms Dong said. "This is definitely not a normal trial procedure, so I feel the risk of conviction is high," she added.

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Egyptian security and police shut down US NGOs

It's always the same old story with the Egyptian powers that be. They're never shy taking the billions of dollars of US government money, but they also like blaming the US for all of their problems and use the US as their scapegoat. The US has of course been central to many bad things that occurred in Egypt, but that was by backing the powers that be. While it was encouraging that the US did eventually see the light and publicly use strong language to ask for restraints against the protesters, it's always understood that the US will be there to throw money at the Egyptian military. The timing of the raids was fortunate since it was when Congress was not in session but we should expect repercussions from these raids soon enough. The Egyptian military still needs to be tamed because if these raids say a lot about how much power they intend to hold regardless of the new government. Al Jazeera:

Egyptian security forces and police have stormed non-governmental organisation (NGO) offices throughout the country, temporarily detaining employees and searching computer files, an activist and security official have said. The official MENA news agency said 17 "civil society organisations", including two prominent US-based pro-democracy groups that run programmes training political parties, had been targeted as part of an investigation into foreign funding of such groups. "The public prosecutor has searched 17 civil society organisations, local and foreign, as part of the foreign funding case," MENA cited the Egyptian prosecutor's office as saying. "The search is based on evidence showing violation of Egyptian laws including not having permits."

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