It must be redecorating season on Wall Street

You can't even make this crap up. Spongers.

Step aside and take solace, John Thain: The public flogging you just endured for spending $1.2 million to jazz up your now-vacant office at Merrill Lynch could subside once the sanctimonious mob moves on to other Wall Street titans who would dare redecorate their digs.

Next likely target: Citigroup. Though it is ailing mightily, Citi only recently began sprucing up an entire floor of offices for its senior-most executives at its headquarters in Manhattan, at 399 Park Avenue. That includes a new office for chief executive Vikram Pandit. If a disgruntled staffer leaks details of any new accoutrement and their price tags, the bank could come under new fire for its supposedly profligate ways.

Just down the street, J.P. Morgan Chase is close to completing a gut renovation of all 50 floors at its headquarters at 270 Park. Cost of the project, which began 18 months ago: A quarter of a billion dollars. Let any cushy details from that facelift surface, and JPM Chief Executive Jamie Dimon could have some ’splaining to do.

No doubt some other Wall Street giants have redone their offices, too. Let the witch hunt begin for the next CEO we can pillory for his fatcat ways.

The big problem with all this is it criminalizes capitalism. It plays right into the ill-conceived agenda of Wall Street’s harshest critics.

Um, since when was capitalism about losing billions? Typicaly CNBC excuse making. Let these people make real profits and not profits that can't survive on the books for a couple of years. These people wouldn't know capitalism if it bit them in the ass. Despite what CNBC thinks, this is an indictment on capitalism. If this is the best it can offer it's no wonder people are against it. The sooner this type is run out of business the better. And that includes CNBC. Read the rest of this post...

A typical shopping day in an Alaskan village

Amazing blog post.

Today my husband and I decided to travel the 25 miles to Emmonak to get groceries. Here is what getting groceries entails in Nunam Iqua.... We went into the store and bought our groceries. Here is a list of what we bought:

$ 8.99 —- 2 lbs Raisins
$ 3.10 —- 2 boxes of Jiffy Blue berry Muffin mix
$ 6.99 —- 1 bag generic cheerios
$10.25 —- 3lb Coffee creamer
$ 4.72 —- 8 packages unsweetened Koolaid
$17.34 —- 6 cans of fruit cocktail
$10.76 —- 4 cans vegetables (2 peas 2 beans)
$13.35 —- 1 large jar of Mayo
$ 6.45 —- 1 one pound box spaghetti noodles
$10.35 —- 5 lbs white rice
$13.40 —- 4 boxes of rice-a-roni
$ 4.49 —- 1 can spaghetti sauce
$ 5.00 —- 4 small cans chili
$ 8.95 —- 12 cup a noodles
$11.98 —- 2 loaves generic bread
$ 9.95 —- 6 rolls of Toilet paper
$12.90 —- 2 - 2lb boxes of pilot bread
$ 6.99 —- 5 lbs fresh potatoes
$ 5.99 —- 18 eggs
$ 3.81 —- 1 quart cottage cheese
$ 7.99 —- 1 pkg string cheese
$ 6.38 —- 2 pkg blue bonnet margarine
$ 3.99 —- 1 pkg frozen stir fry veggies
$ 9.15 —- 1 dozen frozen corn on the cob
$ 7.41 —- 1 pkg oven roasted turkey (for sandwiches)
$ 6.19 —- 1 pkg sliced ham (for sandwiches)
$14.78 —- 2 pkg Kielbasa Sausage
$11.42 —- 2 lbs ground beef
$22.36 —- 5 pork chops
$16.38 —- 2 pkgs Johnsonville Italian Sausage
$19.58 —- 2 pkgs Tyson IQF frozen drumsticks
$ 9.79 —- 1 pkg Tyson IQF chicken thighs
$ 6.49 —- 6 rolls generic paper towels
$82.55 —- 1 case size 6 Huggies diapers (144 diapers)

Total including tax
$409.26

The groceries were packed into 3 boxes plus the box of diapers. We took this out and put it in our sled and wrapped it with a tarp and tied it down so it wouldn’t slide around. We then went to the Emmonak Corporation Store Deli and shared a plate of fried shrimp and French fries and a can of pop totaling about $16.00. We left the Corporation Store and went to the Tank farm to get gas before we headed home. We bought 6 gallons of gas which cost us $43.50 but we were relieved because we had been hearing the rumors that Emmonak’s gas might jump to $9-$11 a gallon so we were happy we only had to pay $7.25 a gallon...

Goes to the point I always make about the effect of your income being totally contingent on where you live and the local cost of living. Read the rest of this post...

Republicans hard at work

Who says science isn't fun?

[A] report that says NSF [National Science Foundation] employees have been spending significant amounts of company time on smut sites and in other explicit pursuits....

Despite the less-than-lurid sound of the probes, the employees in question weren’t just logging onto their Facebook accounts or buying birthday gifts on Amazon.com. The report says they were watching, downloading and e-mailing porn, sometimes for significant portions of their workdays, and over periods of months or even years.

In one particularly egregious case, the report says one NSF “senior official” was discovered to have spent as much as 20 percent of his working hours over a two-year interval “viewing sexually explicit images and engaging in sexually explicit online ‘chats’ with various women.”

Investigators calculated the value of the time lost at more than $58,000 — for that employee alone.

Read the rest of this post...

Iceland to appoint gay woman minister to Prime Minister post

I'd settle for us overcoming our Cabinet-post phobia.

Iceland's next leader will be an openly gay former flight attendant who parlayed her experience as a union organizer into a decades-long political career.

Both parties forming Iceland's new coalition government support the appointment of Johanna Sigurdardottir, the island nation's 66-year-old social affairs minister, as Iceland's interim prime minister.

"Now we need a strong government that works with the people," Sigurdardottir told reporters Wednesday, adding that a new administration will likely be installed Saturday.

Have any other countries ever been led by an openly gay leader? More from Terje's diary over at DKos. Read the rest of this post...

Unemployment up everywhere in December

Again, why are Democrats tolerating the GOP obstructionists who brought us to this recession? Their economic model has failed. Completely. They had their time and they blew it and the American voters chose a new path.

Rising unemployment spared no state last month, and 2009 is shaping up as another miserable year for workers from coast to coast.

Jobless rates for December hit double digits in Michigan and Rhode Island, while South Carolina and Indiana notched the biggest gains from the previous month, the Labor Department said Tuesday. A common thread among these states has been manufacturing industry layoffs tied to consumers' shrinking appetite for cars, furniture and other goods.

With tens of thousands of layoffs announced this week by well-known employers such as Pfizer Inc., Caterpillar Inc. and Home Depot Inc., the unemployment picture is bound to get worse in every region of the country, economists say.

"We won't see a light at the end of the tunnel until 2010," said Anthony Sabino, a professor of law and business at St. John's University.

Read the rest of this post...

Mikulski on new bill: "If you don’t want to be sued, don’t discriminate"

Elections do have consequences, don't they? We've catered to big business and obstructionists so it's about time Congress moved forward with plans to help the rest of America. During the Bush/GOP years, none of this was ever possible.

Congress gave final approval on Tuesday to a civil rights bill providing women, blacks and Hispanics with powerful new tools to challenge pay discrimination in the workplace. It is likely to be the first significant legislation signed by President Obama.

The 250-to-177 vote in the House came five days after the Senate passed the bill, 61 to 36.

The bill, named for Lilly M. Ledbetter, a longtime supervisor at a Goodyear tire plant in Alabama, would make it easier for workers to win lawsuits claiming pay discrimination based on sex, race, religion, national origin, age or disability.

Ms. Ledbetter became a champion of women’s rights and an outspoken supporter of Mr. Obama after the Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision in 2007, rejected her lawsuit against Goodyear.

A jury had found that the company paid Ms. Ledbetter less than male supervisors, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Supreme Court did not deny that she had suffered discrimination, but said she should have filed her claim within 180 days of “the alleged unlawful employment practice” — the initial decision to pay her less than men.

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"Limbaugh actually was more lucid when he was a drug addict."

Via DownWithTyranny, we get some of the best lines yet to describe the self-anointed leader of the Republican Party:

Alan Grayson, the outspoken member from Orlando, as usual, wasn't mincing words: "Rush Limbaugh is a has-been hypocrite loser, who craves attention. His right-wing lunacy sounds like Mikhail Gorbachev, extolling the virtues of communism. Limbaugh actually was more lucid when he was a drug addict. If America ever did 1% of what he wanted us to do, then we'd all need pain killers."

Thank you, Congressman Grayson.

More must-see Grayson. Watch him grill the Vice Chair of the Fed a couple weeks ago about $1.2 trillion of your money:



Fearless and very smart.

Read the rest of this post...

A Kindle in every pot

A very interesting, short video of George Papandreou, the opposition leader in Greece, addressing the Greek parliament about eBooks. You see, in Greece, the government pays for 99% of students' books. So, Papandreou argues, why not give the kids every book in existence for a hundred bucks (or $360 in the case of the Kindle). It's an interesting argument - they're expensive up front, but remember how much it costs to buy books? There's still the issue of getting the rights to the various books - at least modern books (ancient ones are presumably beyond copyright, unless they're translated).

Read the rest of this post...

Obama put Clarence Thomas to sleep

Remember that cool clickable inaugural zoom photo I posted yesterday?


Did anybody notice Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas?



Just beaming with pride over the incredible step forward his people have just taken.

Read the rest of this post...

Holder confirmation passed out of Senate Judiciary Committee

There was a lot of grousing and chest puffing by Republican Senators, especially Arlen Specter, over the nomination of Eric Holder as Attorney General. But, it was all for show. Ridiculous. The nomination passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee by a wide margin, 17 - 2. After all the drama, Specter was one of the "yes" votes:

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted Wednesday to advance the nomination of Eric Holder to become President Obama’s attorney general.

Six Republicans voted with Democrats in favor of Holder, assuring him of confirmation by the full Senate. Holder would become the first African-American to serve as attorney general.

Holder made headlines and won applause from Democrats when he declared the practice of waterboarding akin to torture and illegal. The stance drew Republican opposition, however, notably from National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (Texas).

Cornyn and Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.) were the only two Republicans to vote against Holder.

Read the rest of this post...

What a surprise. I get nothing from the House stimulus package.

Too "rich" to get a withholding or EITC tax cut. Too "poor" to get a business tax cut. Too single (and too gay) to get a child tax cut.

It's not about me. It's about what I represent. Millions of Americans who make enough money to earn a good living, but who live in large expensive urban areas, have tens of thousands (if not more) in student loans, and now are saddled with expensive mortgages (it costs a lot more to get a one-bedroom condo in the city than a house in the country) and more. We are not "rich." If we lived in Topeka, we'd be rich. But we don't. So why treat us like we are?

The House stimulus bill, like every other piece of legislation passed by Congress and offered by this and every other administration, does not take into account where people live, or what their cost of living is, when determining whether they're "rich." It's particularly ironic, and unfair, since the federal government pays its own employees more based on where they live (i.e., based on the local cost of living).

Did you know that the feds will pay you 25% more than your base salary if you want to live and work in Hawaii. Yes, Hawaii. It's a hardship post. So they raise your salary 25%. And then there's the Virgin Islands, always an awful place to visit, unless you're on your honeymoon and like idyllic beaches and sun and sea - you get a 23% cost of living adjustment for living there.

In Anchorage, Fairbanks and Juneau in Alaska, COLA rates are decreasing from 25 percent of base pay to 24 percent. In Puerto Rico, COLAs are shifting down from 11.5 percent to 10.5 percent. For Kauai and Maui counties in Hawaii, the rates are increasing from 23.25 percent to 25 percent. In Hawaii County, COLAs are decreasing from 16.5 percent to 16 percent. In the U.S. Virgin Islands, they are rising from 22.5 percent to 23 percent.

Why do they pay you more for doing the same job in different cities? Because the cost of living is higher in those cities, among other reasons. Then why not treat tax policy the same way the feds treat their own employees - take into account the local cost of living when determining someone's wealth? Or, get rid of the COLAs and treat us all equally.

I know some in the base of the Democratic party hate money and success. They think anyone who has busted their butt and made it in this country deserve to be punished, or at least shunned. This post isn't for you. The problem is, far too much of that attitude has become dogma - subtle dogma - in the Democratic party. Every proposal has to help the poor, screw the rich, and perhaps help people in the middle (though it's not a priority), and if we help the middle, we arbitrarily exclude millions of upper middle class Americans as "rich" because, well, they've done well for themselves, and as Democrats, we sub-consciously abhor success.

I should not be paying for this economic stimulus package. I just bought my first condo, ever. I've been living in a studio apartment for 15 years while paying off student loans that were equal to my monthly rent payment. I have health insurance that, for all intents and purposes, includes no prescription drug plan. I'm trying to figure out how to scrounge up enough free drugs to pay for my asthma medicine. I am not rich. (And yes, I do get to go Paris every year. But often the trip is paid for by a client, or because I stay with friends, so again, not rich here - I'm just good at finagling free trips.) Yet somehow, people like me are treated as though we're rich. And in a normal year, I can suck it up and take one for the country. But this isn't a normal year. I'm just as worried as anyone about where my salary is going to come from this year. But for some reason, people like me are the only ones ignored by the House stimulus package - ignored by pretty much every piece of legislation out there to help people financially. We are the only ones who are literally being asked to pay for this package while everyone else benefits from it.

At some point, you get really sick and tired of always paying for everyone else. You get really sick and tired of people who have rather cushy jobs, guaranteed paychecks, and unlimited health care telling you that you live too well, and therefore need to take one for the team.

If this were a welfare bill, and we were all being asked to pay for it in order to help the poor pay for their winter heating, or some such thing, I'd say, great, where do I sign up? But it's not a welfare bill. It's a bill that hands out free money to big business, to the poor, and to lots of people in the middle who aren't poor and aren't having a problem paying their bills. It just gives them money anyway, my money, our money. I get that we're risking a depression here, and we need a stimulus packag - and I'm all for infrastructure projects and the like. But I'm just getting a little tired of always being the one - the single gay guy without kids, the upper middle class yuppie living in a big expensive city, the small businessman too small to have a "real" business that actually gets tax cuts - footing the bill for everyone else's handout, rich and poor. Read the rest of this post...

Prediction of zero votes from the GOP zeroes in the House

I know I sound like a broken record here, but is this a surprise? The Republicans, under the leadership of George Bush, destroyed the American economy. We're on the precipice -- facing a depression. But, the House Republicans are being petulant - they got 33% of the House stimulus bill devoted to questionable tax cuts, but that's not enough. Obama tried. He did his part (more than he should have.) But, it's not worth the effort. Republicans don't want better policy. They just want political issues:

While GOP lawmakers said they appreciated Obama's visit, their leaders urged a "no" vote because of the bill's price tag. "All it does is burden our kids and their kids with more debt," said House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio, citing a non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimate that the plan would add $347 billion in interest on the national debt over 10 years.

Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., said there could be as many as 10 to 15 Republicans supporting the package, but added, "If I had to bet, I would bet zero."

Zero from the zeroes. On the economy, Republicans have zero credibility. Zero.

Bi-partisanship only works when both sides come to the table. The GOP leaders are like little children. If they don't get their way 100%, they won't play. They don't seem to understand the precarious situation we're in. Or, maybe they don't care. The message from today should be pretty simple: A "NO" vote is a vote for a depression.

Read the rest of this post...

I mean, who doesn't like a little mercury in their high fructose corn syrup?

Absolutely disgusting. From a product that's already kind of disgusting, and ubiquitous. I've even found granola with high fructose corn syrup. And now, apparently, with deadly mercury too!

Many common foods made using commercial high fructose corn syrup contain mercury as well, researchers reported on Tuesday, while another study suggested the corn syrup itself is contaminated.

Food processors and the corn syrup industry group attacked the findings as flawed and outdated, but the researchers said it was important for people to know about any potential sources of the toxic metal in their food.

In one study, published in the journal Environmental Health, former Food and Drug Administration scientist Renee Dufault and colleagues tested 20 samples of high fructose corn syrup and found detectable mercury in nine of the 20 samples.

Dufault said in a statement that she told the FDA about her findings but the agency did not follow up.

Dr. David Wallinga, a food safety researcher and activist at the nonprofit Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, said he followed up on the report to find mercury in actual food.

"When I learned of that work, I said that is interesting but we don't just go out and eat a spoonful of high fructose corn syrup," Wallinga said in a telephone interview.

"We went and looked at supermarket samples where high fructose corn syrup was the first or second ingredient on the label," he said. These 55 different foods included barbecue sauce, jam, yogurt and chocolate syrup.

"We found about one out of three had mercury above the detection limit," Wallinga said.

Read the rest of this post...

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

We're having an ice storm here in D.C. Snow is bad enough. Ice sucks. But, we're told it's going to get warm later today.

Big vote in the House today on the stimulus bill. Obama courted Republicans yesterday -- the very Republicans who got us into this mess. Those GOPers know that this bill will help the economy. Might not be exactly what they want, but the legislation will help the economy. So, do the Republicans rise to the occasion and vote to save the economy? We already know the answer.

Let's get cranking... Read the rest of this post...

Geithner cracks down on lobbying for bailout cash

A decent start but hard part will be to implement this and make it work. Between Congress and Paulson, banks have been given a free pass on doing whatever they like for decades, including during the bailout that saved the banks from total failure. This is a case where it makes sense to throw out both the baby and the bathwater. They're all rotten.

The new Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, announced on Tuesday that he would crack down on lobbying to influence the $700 billion financial bailout program by companies that are receiving billions in taxpayer money.

Mr. Geithner, who was confirmed on Monday, also said he would set new limits intended to prevent political interference with decisions about which companies received bailout money.

Among other steps, the Treasury department said it would make public a log of all contacts by public officials and bank officials regarding specific financial institutions.

The log will be posted on the department’s Web site and updated weekly, it said.

Read the rest of this post...

Guardian's "Road to Ruin" and the bonus culture

Today's Guardian has a few excellent articles about what created and fed the credit crisis. The bonus culture has driven this costly fiasco that everyone else is now paying for these days. What continues to amaze me is how much the US executives had made compared to the bloated comp plans in the UK. Europeans have been angry and stepping up action against their executives who are very well paid, but it's nothing compared to their US counterparts.

Such eye watering sums of money have been paid out in City bonuses for two decades but the City minister Lord Myners - who sat on the board of NatWest at the time of the RBS takeover - has proclaimed the "golden days of huge bonuses in the investment banking arms are gone".

"I have met more masters of the universe than I would like to, people who were grossly over-rewarded and did not recognise that. Some of that is pretty unpalatable," Myners said last week.

Adair Turner, the chairman of Financial Services Authority, has gone further still, suggesting the vast rewards on offer sucked talent from more productive parts of the economy. "In the years running up to 2007, too much of the developed world's intellectual talent was devoted to ever more complex financial innovations, whose maximum possible benefit was at best marginal, and which in their complexity and opacity created large financial stability risks," he said.

The concern about City bonuses has not just been their size but the way they are structured. In existence for long before the credit crunch, they were once regarded as a legitimate way to pay staff in an industry that has cyclical earnings and only one real cost: people.

Richard Lambert, director general of the CBI, said: "Before all this happened you would say bonuses were the right way to reward people where the highest costs are salaries and revenues are very volatile."

In the old-style City partnerships the profits were distributed among partners at the end of each year. They were largely profits generated from giving advice to companies and did not involve taking big risks that could backfire later.

But when US investment banks started to operate in the City 20 years ago they took bonuses to new dimensions: the major US players used their balance sheets to bolster profits by allowing traders to use the banks' own money to take bets on the financial markets. Bonuses were bigger because profits were bigger. And rival banks were paying even bigger sums which drove up bonuses in a never ending spiral.

And then the really bizarre investment tools were introduced. The new tools took advantage of the system of easy credit and lax oversight. And the rest... Read the rest of this post...

Same as it ever was

Why should anyone expect any change? Just because they brought the global economy to its knees and have lost billions despite being paid millions, can't we all just get along?

At banks that are receiving federal bailout money nearly nine out of every 10 of the most senior executives from 2006 are still on the job, according to an Associated Press analysis of regulatory and company documents.

The AP's review reveals one of the ironies of the bank bailout: The same executives who were at the controls as the banking system nearly collapsed are the ones the government is counting on to help save it.

Even top executives whose banks made such risky loans they imperiled the economy have been largely spared any threat to their jobs, as Washington pumped billions in taxpayer money into the companies. Less fortunate are more than 100,000 bank employees laid off during a two-year stretch when industry unemployment nearly tripled, bank stocks plummeted and credit dried up.

"The same people at the top are still there, the same people who made the decisions causing a lot of our financial crisis," said Rebecca Trevino of Louisville, Ky., a mother of three who was laid off from her job as a Bank of America training coordinator in October. "But that's what tends to happen in leadership. The people at the top, there's always some other place to lay blame."

Read the rest of this post...

At least Wall Street is paying the price for ruining the global economy

Bonuses are down a little for some, but up for others. Gosh, that's fair but I hope they're not too upset because then what will we do? Sure they lost billions and OK, they were paid handsomely the last few years while they sold total rubbish that was wiped off of the books but if we make them mad, they might leave and go somewhere else. Then what would happen?

Most Wall Street professionals took home smaller year-end bonuses and nearly half were dissatisfied with their payout, according to a survey released Tuesday.

The survey, by eFinancialCareers.com, a unit of specialty jobs site operator Dice Holdings Inc, found 54 percent of respondents took home a smaller bonus this year.

More than a third reported getting a bonus that was at least 31 percent less than last year's, and 1-in-10 said their bonus was slashed more than 70 percent.

At the other end of the scale, 12 percent said their bonus was at least 51 percent higher than last year, according to the survey, which included responses from 900 currently employed people and was conducted earlier this month.

It's a good thing we decided that there aren't two Americas. Read the rest of this post...