Merkel defies reality with hard line support for austerity

German Chancellor Angela Merkel still doesn't even realize that she cost Germany and Europe even more money by dragging out the Greek bailout negotiations. Now she wants to deny reality yet again by making the outrageously false claim that chopping spending (rather than increasing spending) will somehow solve the crisis. Not possible. What part of the collapsing eurozone is Merkel missing?

Stubbornness can be a good thing but when it's not possible to admit a mistake and move on, there's a serious problem. People across Europe are fed up with austerity since it just makes everything worse. If pro-austerity politicians like her weren't so tone deaf, they might hear the complaints and reevaluate. Germany has done a lot of things right to keep their own economy moving but the eurozone is much more than Germany.

What Europe needs now is spending and without government intervention, the next few years will be painful. Is being flexible really so bad?

Since the election of Socialist Francois Hollande as French president on Sunday, Merkel has come under pressure to relax the austerity measures that, as leader of Europe's biggest economy, she has prescribed as the remedy for the euro zone debt crisis.

But Germany's center-right leader, standing her ground, told the Bundestag (lower house of parliament) in a speech that reducing debt and encouraging growth were "twin pillars" of European policy, rather than two alternative paths.

"Growth through structural reforms is sensible, important and necessary. Growth on credit would just push us right back to the beginning of the crisis, and that is why we should not and will not do it," she said.

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iPad games for cats?

I'm not sure I would want to run the risk of either of my cats damaging my iPad, if I ever bought one. Poor little Buckwheat is trying to find something under the iPad when patting on the screen doesn't help. It's not exactly catching a mouse or a bird but it is some activity. According to this USA Today "article" (that closely resembles ad placement for Nestle-Purina) they've had over 500,000 downloads. If you have a cat, would you try this? (John did with his dog Sasha, with interesting results.) Read the rest of this post...

Austerity crushes UK economy more than previously thought

Ya don't say? What a shock to hear that austerity is failing miserably because the GOP keeps telling us that it's the only thing that will save America. As long as you ignore the fact that jobs growth is better under Obama than it was under Bush and that austerity keeps dragging down the UK and Europe, austerity is probably great. Ignorance is bliss.

Britain’s economy may have shrunk more than previously estimated in the first quarter after the statistics office reported a deeper slump in construction.

Building output plunged 4.8 percent in the three months through March, the Office for National Statistics said today. That compares with a 3 percent drop in the first estimate of gross domestic product on April 25, which showed the economy contracted 0.2 percent. The revision on its own would shave 0.1 percentage points off GDP, the statistics office said.

The building data may add to concerns about weakness in the U.K. economy as it grapples with a double-dip recession. Bank of England policy makers hadn’t seen the revision before their decision yesterday to halt their quantitative-easing program at 325 billion pounds ($524 billion), according to statistics office officials.

“The lazy assumption was that because GDP was drastically below forecasts, it would go up with subsequent revisions,” said Alan Clarke, an economist at Scotia Capital in London. “The economy was in the eye of the storm in the fourth and first quarters.”

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Video: Allo, allo (two Americans in Paris)

A neat video by two Americans visiting Paris, set to a fun song.  It encapsulates nicely why I love Paris so much - nothing in particular, just all around fun and pretty and cool. In a very real way, this video is what Paris feels like (without the soundtrack :)

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CFTC Commissioner blasts CEO Dimon, calls out Wall Street

It's really a must read column at CNBC today because the commissioner he confirms what many of us have known since the initial banking crisis starting. The bankers are little more than a bunch of gamblers and their crying to Washington has been proven to be false with this latest collapse.

Thankfully the most arrogant and most obnoxious mouth on Wall Street has been the CEO of JP Morgan, the bank that is $2 billion lighter than they were just a few weeks ago. And yes, we're talking about the Jamie Dimon who called banking rules that would protect Americans and investors, anti-American. The Jamie Dimon who said journalist make too much money. The same Jamie Dimon who made $42 million last year. The guy who received an easy settlement from the SEC and who still complained the regulations were burdensome.

Jamie Dimon probably won't be learning any lessons from this self inflicted $2 billion loss but the political class should. But will they?

Yesterday, JPMorgan Chase reported mammoth losses—over $2 billion—a significant amount of which appear to be related to failed speculative bets on credit default swaps. While that won't trigger a repeat of 2008, it certainly highlights what we already know, painfully well: reckless speculation and poor risk management by large, interconnected financial institutions can spark financial calamities.

These circumstances take on a fantasy-world quality in that many of us continue to believe the bankers are so scary smart about our markets and economy. What it really demonstrates is what chumps we sometimes have become.

These guys drove the economy into the ground like a lightning bolt and still have the gall to tell Congress, the President and regulators how wrong it was to rein in Wild West style trading in unregulated markets—trading that has cost a single bank $2 billion in six weeks' time and required a bail out of $414 billion as a result of non-existent regulation in the dark over-the-counter trading world in 2008.

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Why are the Trans Pacific free trade negotiations secret?

It would be a refreshing change to have some transparency in government. Both parties talk about it a lot but neither does a good job of following through. So-called free trade is rarely as free and beneficial as promised. (Think NAFTA.) If I was a complete cynic I might think that the political class likes these free trade deals so they're guaranteed lobbyist jobs when their political career is over.

Now more than ever, it's important that Americans have a full understanding of what Washington is negotiating. Americans have been hit hard by the bad economy and giving away more jobs needs a full, open discussion before anything is concluded.

More on the TPP secret negotiations at the Huffington Post.

Next week in Dallas, negotiations for what's likely to be the largest Free Trade Agreement (FTA) in U.S. history will continue in near total secrecy, despite growing demands for an open process. The darkness surrounding the talks isn't surprising, considering the American public's increasing disapproval of FTAs and the laundry list of corporate handouts under discussion. What is surprising is United States trade representative Ron Kirk's growing crackdown on public involvement, despite claims of "unprecedented transparency."

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement (TPP) is being negotiated as a nine country FTA between the U.S., Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. Canada, Japan and Mexico are all expected to join talks, and many see more Pacific Rim countries including China and Russia eventually signing on. With floundering WTO talks, the TPP could very well establish U.S. trade policy for the next generation, yet all talks are happening behind closed doors and public influence has been increasingly suppressed.

(H/T to Sandra for this important yet under reported story.) Read the rest of this post...

Chris Matthews takes down Tony Perkins over gay rights

Yes, Chris Matthews.

There's an interesting backstory to this story (thanks to emailers for all of these links).

Matthews had previously been all deferential to Tony Perkins of the "Family Research Council" — not only by not challenging his lies and distortions, but by handing out cred like cookies with comments like those noted below (see first quote block).

But thanks to Obama's sea-change (regardless of its cause), many in the media and government are getting religion, the real kind, and rethinking their gay positioning. Yes, this really was a big deal, what Biden–Obama did. (It probably helps to have the well-liked Rachel Maddow over there as well, spreading her think-this-through pixie dust.)

According to this story, someone confronted Matthews at a book signing in late March of this year, and the following occurred (video at the link; my emphasis and some reparagraphing throughout):

Last weekend, Faithful America members from the Boston area confronted Chris Matthews at a book signing in Framingham, Massachusetts about his track record of inviting Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Hardball as a representative of Christian voters.

FRC was named a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2010 for spreading hateful lies and junk research about the LGBT community — and in part because of an incident in which a senior FRC staffer said on Hardball that there should be “criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior.”

Matthews, who just received Human Rights Campaign’s Ally for Equality award, responded by falsely claiming that Perkins has never “pulled that homophobic stuff on my show,” and insisting that “every time he’s on he’s challenged.” ...

That’s just not true. ... Instead, Matthews has gone out of his way to give credibility to Perkins, calling him an “honest conservative” with “true views” whose conscience he trusts. Viewers who trust Matthews’s judgment and honesty come away with the impression that they should do the same of Perkins. ...

As you can see in the video [click link to play], when Faithful America member Jeff Bridges raises the question of legitimizing Perkins’s off-air comments, Matthews has no real response, admitting that “you may be right. I may agree with you, but not right now.”

The sea around Matthews has changed since then, and Matthews seems to have changed with it. Thus the new Matthews in this May 10 exchange with Tony Perkins (helped out by Barney Frank, who knows a thing or two). Watch:



This is how the media should treat Perkins, each and every time he appears. The "Family Research Council" has been named a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center. That should be part of his intro wherever he goes.

(Why the quotes around "Family Research Council"? Because they don't stand for real families; they don't do research; and as far as I know they're not a council, but the policy arm of Tony Perkins. Ever see anyone else but Perkins represent them?)

Good work, Mr. Matthews. Good work also by Jeff Bridges of Faithful America, who confronted him. See, not all religious people are not-religious — just a great many of them.

GP

To follow on twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius
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Video: Tom Friedman's enormous moustache

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Top Romney aide gleefully outed transgender woman, ending her political career

So much for pivoting to the middle. Read the rest of this post...

JPMorgan hit with $2 billion trading loss - would have been illegal under Volcker Rule

What do they say about karma? JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon has been an outspoken critic of Wall Street reform, often leading the torch-carrying mob in broadside attacks against Obama. It's amusing since Dimon was widely reported to have been in the final running to be Obama's Secretary of Treasury. (Not that he would have differed much from Geithner.) Even more so since Obama has been so easy on Wall Street, a point which still angers most of America. Oddly enough his kindness is not appreciated on Wall Street who still believe they are victims.

Fast forward to this week, JPMorgan is now having to put out fires allegedly caused by their own proprietary trading systems. Ah yes, the smartest guys in the room once again. What should be noted about this fall for the most arrogant CEO in an industry known for arrogance is that the trading loss of $2 billion would have been banned by the Volcker Rule that Dimon criticizes so often. More from CNBC:

The $2 billion trading loss announced by JPMorgan on Thursday as a result of a failed hedging strategy does not bear the earmarks of coming from only a “rogue” trader, and developments that follow are more likely to get worse for the Wall Street bank rather than better, Dennis Gartman, founder of The Gartman Letter, told CNBC on Friday.

"I operate under the old rule that there is never just one cockroach, when ill news comes out there is usually more ill news to follow,” the famed investor and former floor trader said.

“This clearly isn’t a rogue. This is not the same thing that happened at SocGen, by any stretch of the imagination,” said Gartman, making reference to the 2008 trading losses suffered by French Bank Societe Generale at the hands of a single trader, Jerome Kerviel.

It's really time to break apart the too-big-to-fail banks and move forward with serious reform. Of course the bankers love to gamble because if they win, they win big and if they lose, everyone else pays for it. Bankers like Dimon will continue to play the scare tactics card but this latest hideous loss should be enough to show how important regulation and reform is to the country. Forget about what's good for Dimon and the 0.0001%, it's time to think about the USA as a whole. Read the rest of this post...

Are Americans in the Vatican – including disgraced Cardinal Law – behind the Nuns Crackdown?

As Joe reported here, the Vatican has opened a new front on the war against women with a crackdown of the largest and most influential organization of nuns in the U.S., the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR).

From Joe's story, quoting the NY Times (please click to get the full picture):

The Vatican has appointed an American bishop to rein in the largest and most influential group of Catholic nuns in the United States, saying that an investigation found that the group had “serious doctrinal problems.”

The Vatican’s assessment, issued on Wednesday, said that members of the group, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, had challenged church teaching on homosexuality and the male-only priesthood, and promoted “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

The sisters were also reprimanded for making public statements that “disagree with or challenge the bishops, who are the church’s authentic teachers of faith and morals.” ... Word of the Vatican’s action took the group completely by surprise, Sister Sanders said.

That's the background. Now comes news of who's running this Vatican operation — a bunch of American priests, possibly including disgraced Boston Cardinal Bernard Law (my emphasis and [bracketed notes]):

When the Vatican last month announced a doctrinal crackdown on the leadership organization representing most of the 57,000 nuns in the U.S. [see above], the sisters said they were “stunned” by the move. Many American Catholics, meanwhile, were angry at what they saw as Rome bullying women whose lives of service have endeared them to the public. ...

[I]t turns out that conservative American churchmen living in Rome—including disgraced former Boston Cardinal Bernard Law—were key players in pushing the hostile takeover of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, or LCWR, which they have long viewed with suspicion for emphasizing social justice work over loyalty to the hierarchy and issues like abortion and gay marriage.

Vatican observers in Rome and church sources in the U.S. say Law was “the person in Rome most forcefully supporting” the LCWR investigation, as Rome correspondent Robert Mickens wrote in The Tablet, a London-based Catholic weekly. Law was the “prime instigator,” in the words of one American churchman, of the investigation that began in 2009 and ended in 2011. The actual crackdown was only launched in April.

Also named in the story are Cardinal Raymond Burke, former archbishop of St. Louis; Cardinal William Levada, a former archbishop of San Francisco; and Cardinal James Stafford, a former Denver archbishop.

Conservatives all. Levada has Ratzinger's old job as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, "the Vatican’s powerful doctrinal watchdog."

At issue is not just the fact that Bernard Law and Raymond Burke were given "asylum" in Rome after being driven out of the U.S. in the wake of the child abuse scandal. It's that the Vatican dragged its feet to protect its priests while putting its female community into receivership:

“American Catholics have not forgotten how long it took bishops to wake up to the sexual-abuse crisis they created. And now they see that the Vatican took just three years to determine that it had no other option but to put 80 percent of U.S. nuns — whose average age is 74 — into receivership, an effort led in part by Cardinal Bernard Law,” Grant Gallicho, an associate editor of Commonweal, a liberal Catholic periodical, wrote on the magazine’s blog.

The average age of nuns in the U.S. is ... 74 years old? Man, do these guys owe them.

Is it safe to say that, like all troglodytes, these males hate women? Is it safe to say that if this weren't a "church," most of these types would be serving time for sexual abuse of minors in prisons around the world? I would say Yes on all counts.

The good news? There really are good Catholics — Catholics who are also actually good — Fr. Daniel Berrigan types, who live and breathe under the Bush-like dictatorship of the conservatives who control their organization.

What do you call a religious leader who loves power more than doing right? Not-religious.

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius)
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Romney, who bullied a gay kid in prep school, abolished anti-bullying commission as governor

This is timely news, as we discovered yesterday that Mitt Romney physically bullied a fellow prep school classmate because he thought the kid was gay.

Via Alan Colmes' Liberaland:

Mitt Romney clashed with a state commission tasked with helping LGBT youth at risk for bullying and suicide throughout his term as Massachusetts governor over funding and its participation in a pride parade. He eventually abolished the group altogether.

“We remember well what Romney tried to do as governor of Massachusetts and we now we have more info on some of his own attitudes that may have led to his policy actions,” Eliza Byard, executive director of LGBT anti-bullying organization GLSEN, told TPM, drawing a connection with reports that Romney cornered a youth in high school and cut his hair. “If he’s willing to dismiss that incident as ‘hijinks,’ I could understand that he wouldn’t understand at all why this program was so critical.”

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Egyptians watch first ever presidential debate

TV debates may not be everything that they've been told it is, but it's probably better than the old dictatorship. Hopefully the new president will bother to listen to the people and make some efforts towards democracy but they shouldn't get their hopes up. The Guardian:

Millions of Egyptians tuned into the first ever presidential debate in the country's history on Thursday night between frontrunners Amr Moussa and Abdel-Moneim Abul-Futoh.

With former president Hosni Mubarak languishing in hospital as he awaits sentencing next month, Egyptians watched two private satellite channels to witness an event held within its borders for the first time: a bona fide presidential debate.

There are 13 candidates in the campaign, which begins on 23 May, but the two who showed up for the TV bout were the established frontrunners in the polls, former foreign minister Moussa and former Muslim Brotherhood member Abul-Futoh.

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Poll: New low for support of Afghanistan war

Who are the 27% that support this ridiculous war? It's about time the DoD had a serious come-to-Jesus about spending and start spending at home. These wars have been a terrible drain on the economy yet the defense industry keeps finding new toys to play with as though we're not in a beaten down economy. There have been some cuts to Pentagon spending but it's nowhere near enough for one of the most bloated parts of the government.

The original purpose of being in Afghanistan passed years ago so let's declare victory and cut the spending now. If the 27%ers want to support the war, let them start writing the checks. The US is locked in to spending there whether we like it or not. There's a high likelihood the situation will rapidly deteriorate after the US pulls out completely but after eleven years, so be it. Nation building was a bad idea before and it's just as bad today. LA Times:

On the heels of President Obama's surprise visit to Afghanistan last week, in which he pledged to "finish the job we started" and "end this war responsibly," the American public’s support for the 11-year conflict has reached a new low, according to a poll.

Just 27% of respondents said they back the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan, the new Associated Press-Gfk poll found. Of the 66% who said they oppose the war, about half said they believe the presence of American troops in Afghanistan is doing more harm than good.

But among all respondents, nearly half -- 48% -- said they think the continued U.S. military presence is doing more to help Afghanistan become a stable democracy.

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