Who cares about height?

If the stories in the British media (the normal media) are to be believed, why does Sarkozy care about his height? He's president is one of the largest economies in the world. He's made it. If anything, he should talk about how height doesn't matter and joke about it instead of providing critical feedback through official channels. The British politicians could have avoided the jokes but Sarkozy needs a better response than having a hissy fit.

David Cameron has become embroiled in an embarrassing row with Nicolas Sarkozy after it emerged that the French have complained about a series of jibes at their leader's lack of height.

French officials have lodged a protest after the Tory leader appeared to make a comment about "hidden dwarfs" in relation to a photo of himself and the 5ft 5in President Sarkozy, according to a report in The Mail on Sunday.

The remark, made in a newspaper interview six months ago, was followed by another slight, when the Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne publicly described a box placed at a speaker's lectern as a "Sarkozy box".

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Report: Dodd's regulation reform ditches independent oversight

Please tell me it's not going to be as bad as being reported. If this turns out to be true, it will explain why Dodd is so unpopular and why Democrats are viewed as spineless and weak by voters. Please, please be wrong. Again, how do you not strike fear into the hearts of Republicans when you have 82% of the public supporting regulation?

The senator trying to rewrite the nation's financial industry rules is dropping plans to create a stand-alone consumer financial protection agency and give a single regulator the power to oversee all banks, according to people familiar with the evolving proposal.

Backing away from the proposal he offered four months ago, the chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee is now incorporating GOP ideas, and yet not one Republican senator is coming along so far.

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White House uses strong language following Israeli settlement announcement

Netanyahu is a bully, so I'm glad to see the White House pushing back. AFP:

Israel's announcement of plans to build 1,600 settler homes in east Jerusalem was not only an "insult" to the United States but "destructive" of the Middle East peace process, a top White House official said Sunday.

"This was an affront, it was an insult but most importantly it undermined this very fragile effort to bring peace to that region," said David Axelrod, one of President Barack Obama's closest advisers.

"We have just started proximity talks, that is shuttle diplomacy, between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and for this announcement to come at that time was very destructive," he said on NBC television's Meet the Press show.

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Clarence Thomas' wife becomes Teabagger leader, wants to stop Obama's 'hard-left agenda'

Republicans destroy institutions, it's what they do.

Science, media, government - their goal, for whatever reason, is to undermine. It's what they're doing to congress and the presidency, it's what they've been doing to the courts for years (arguing that courts are no longer impartial arbiters), and now it's what they're doing to the Supreme Court. It's no coincidence that at the same time Clarence Thomas' wife is taking corporation donations to influence elections and policy, Justice Roberts is picking a partisan fight with the White House, and Justice Alito had the temerity to speak out against the President at the State of the Union.

For whatever reason, Republicans believe in destroying institutions of authority in our country. It's a scary thought, and it's working.

In January, Virginia Thomas created Liberty Central Inc., a nonprofit lobbying group whose website will organize activism around a set of conservative "core principles," she said.

The group plans to issue score cards for Congress members and be involved in the November election, although Thomas would not specify how. She said it would accept donations from various sources -- including corporations -- as allowed under campaign finance rules recently loosened by the Supreme Court.

Must be nice to have your husband help give a kick start to your new financial venture. Read the rest of this post...

Lehman triggers investigation into accounting practices

I guess I should have been more outraged with the accounting firm (E&Y;) who worked with Lehman to play accounting games, but I'm not. It's not that I agree with their actions or think they shouldn't be punished but we've been seeing this over and over. Enron? Parmalat? Tyco? What the hell do the authorities need to see to actually change the system? Now that we're down to only the Big 4 auditors, should we expect anything else? As I mentioned the other day when the Lehman report came out, these firms desperately want to hold on to these lucrative contracts so they will agree to almost anything to hold them.

Thanks to consolidation in the market there are fewer alternatives and the size of these contracts grows every year. Until there's a serious effort in Europe and the US to address this situation we can expect more of these scandals. Maybe this latest effort will instigate reform but somehow that's doubtful. Political leaders have decided that they're OK with these scandals or else they would have done something serious after the last round of mega-accounting scandals.

When we can have reports showing the rapid collapse of multi-billion dollar operations such as Lehman yet no clear violation of the law, you have to wonder what is wrong and rotten in our legal system. It only reinforces the belief that business always has the upper hand and they own politicians. Look at how badly the Wall Street reform has gone in Washington. Trillions blown away yet Washington can't find agreement on reform? Yes it's the GOP who is blocking reform and backing Wall Street but how hard is it to shove the 82% down the throats of Republicans? It doesn't say much about the Democrats if they can't win over the public and force the GOP to back down on this issue. Time to call it a day if that happens.

Of course we should expect more from our political leadership. How many more Enron's or Lehman's before they care enough to ignore the lobbyists and do something? How many more billions need to be lost before the laws make that a criminal offense?

Prem Sikka, a professor of accounting at Essex University and a leading critic of the accounting profession, warned that without deep-rooted reform the crisis could repeat itself. "The report into the collapse of Lehmans is indicative of a deeper malaise," he said. "We rely on the discretion of eminent firms of auditors and lawyers that are paid millions of pounds for their efforts, but that discretion is too often abused."

A damning 2,200-page report commissioned by the US bankruptcy courts into the collapse of Lehman said that Ernst & Young's failure to act over off-balance sheet accounting practices which allowed the bank to hide $50bn of debts, and failing to investigate the concerns of a whistleblower, amounted to "professional negligence".

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The Pogues

Lots of birds chirping again in the mornings these days. It's definitely warming up. Though the birds can wake us up, Sushi is the wake-up artist at the moment. As he gets older, he becomes more clingy by the day. Since we went to see our cousin a few weeks ago in Bergamo, Sushi is even worse. He walks across us at night and stands on us. He stays on the bed almost all night. During the day, he stays close too and cries out when we move. If we pay attention to Nasdaq, he then attacks her. Nasdaq gets stressed out so she starts to chew the hair on her arms. Ugh and double ugh. At least they're both sleeping now. Read the rest of this post...

Vatican: Everyone is trying to set up the Pope - he's the victim

Uh huh. It happened a few decades ago and the Pope, then archbishop of Munich, was involved in reassigning a paedophile priest and shuffling him around as seemingly every other Catholic diocese in the world has done. But he's being set up. Right. The bigger concern for the church is that more and more similar scandals are being aired out throughout Europe. It was the Irish scandal that triggered the German (and possibly Dutch) scandal. People are watching these events closely and have been disgusted by the actions of church leadership.

This obviously cuts close to the top leadership of the church so it's very likely going to receive more intense scrutiny and higher coverage. The church should be worried much more about the victims in these cases and their responsibility than throwing this back on the media. The media didn't create these scandals out of thin air. They were created by and covered up by the church for a long time. They have no one to blame other than themselves for failing to address serious problems. Live with it and quit blaming everyone else.

The pope's spokesman has launched a vigorous counter-attack against a report linking Benedict XVI to a sex abuse cover-up while he was archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1981.

Father Federico Lombardi appeared to suggest in an interview on Vatican Radio that the pope, who also has strong links to the city of Regensburg, was the victim of a plot.

"It's rather clear that in recent days there have been people who have searched – with notable tenacity – in Regensburg and Munich for elements to personally involve the holy father in the question of the abuses," Lombardi said. "To any objective observer it's clear that these attempts have failed."

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