Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for March 02, 2014

If you don’t want to be hated, don’t work on Wall St.

Ooh! There’s going to be a LOT of comments by morning!(Yay Iceland!)

Jail is too god for them. Rawhiding or being staked in the sun are apt punishments.

Actually the model preferred involves a guillotine and is much more limited in scope.

One perp walk. I want to see just one of them do a perp walk. Is that too much to ask?

I propose a drinking game: Take a drink (of whatever) every time exoticdoc2 uses the word “Obamanation” ANYWHERE on this site. And you KNOW he’ll use it here!

Chris Dodd?

lame above proves once again what three formal studies have proven before: that blight wingers are less well informed than people who read or watch no news at all and have no opinions.

Didn’t Shakespeare say first kill all the bankers?

There is an old joke: Steal from one author, it is “plagiarism”; steal from many authors, and it is “research.” Maybe we could also say: Trick one person out of his money and it is “fraud”; trick millions out of their money, and it is “business.”

GT nails it again! Brilliant!

When a good economy occurs under one presidency, does he blame the president before him?

Night-Gaunt is not an idiot. I disagree with him often, but he is not an idiot. In fact, I’d wager that no one who reads, let alone comments, on this site is an idiot. It’s a convenient put down, but it is seldom true and always needlessly hurtful. I move to have that word struck from common use. On a lighter note, the word “idjit” can be employed with impunity.

Texas S&L ca. ’89?We made ’im President3 sons, all lawyers, none of ’em in jail yetThanx, W!

I have the feeling Iceland and Sweden have campaign financing systems quite different from ours -

In merry old England they used to HANG bankers who did these things!Maybe we ought to consider doing the same here!

One of my favorite protagonists of all time is Serge Storm. Invite all the bankers and Serge (don’t forget Coleman) to a party and the problem will be cleared up. But be careful, you might die laughing!

If your “people” happen to be a corporation, you just pay a (pittance) fine, admit no wrong-doing, and walk. Works for them.

True. Bush gave billions away, Obama gave tens of billions , and the labour non-partcipation rate in the US is now 41%, a record high. From 1945-2009 it was between 20-30%.

Way 2 go iceland! Too bad we failed to jail here.

No, they knew the products they were selling were “crap” in their own word, and they bet against it, and they said to the buyers it was great. So it’s the fault of the buyers, right?

The term “Europe” now applies to nations that are part of the Euro Zone. From Portugal to Baltic, from Ireland to Greece, all these countries use one currency and play by the rules set by ECB in Frankfurt.Iceland and Sweden are not part of the Euro Zone.NG maybe many things, but he is not an idiot nor an ignoramus. The fact the you cannot engage in a discussion without resorting to name calling says more about you than NG.There is nothing polite about you.

I don’t get upset with people referring to Europe as a country (even if technically incorrect) since the European Union acts in a coordinating fashion regarding the “Euro” and the subject is usually financial in nature.

Does Europe include Ukraine? If Russia had a Monroe Doctrine, wouldn’t it cover Ukraine? Just askin’

And yet, Sarah Palin, a candidate for vice-president of the U.S., thought Africa was a country!! Many people, especially kids, don’t know the concept of geography anymore; so, quit being so “picky-choosy”!!!!!

Excellent use of logical non-sequiturs, Tigger. Unfortunately, if you’re going to make groundless assertions based on what Faux Nooz and talk radio told you, you’re either going to be subject to ridicule, or mostly just ignored..You do realize that the ACA is based almost entirely on a proposal by the far-right think-tank (there is arguably an oxymoron) The Heritage Foundation? The paper is still available at the Heritage Foundation website http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/1989/a-national-health-system-for-america (although it is interesting they’ve recently removed the text, now requiring you to download a PDF file). Of course, acknowledging that would mean recognizing Obama, far from being the socialist menace the far-right would like to paint him as, has actually effectively been the second coming of Bush Jr. – which should be the truly damning judgment on him, not phony birther or Muslim or socialist accusations..To wit: No major Wall Street player has been jailed or even charged for costing taxpayers trillions, and visiting ruin on the economy through their pedalling of fraudulent subprime loans, packaged and fraudulently rated as AAA and sold to pension funds, governments, and anyone else Wall Streeters could put one over on, while betting against these same investments themselves. The only Wall Street player doing time is Bernie Madoff. That’s because he made the mistake of stealing from the very rich, instead of making like the rest of Wall Street and stealing from everyone else..Obama has also continued the practice of making top positions at Treasury and the SEC essentially a revolving door for Wall Street execs – actually, almost exclusively Goldman-Sachs’ execs – meaning that quite literally, the fox has been running the hen house. Check out Neil Barofsky’s Bailout : an inside account of how Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street, for a very readable account of how both parties have ignored the public interest in favour of not rocking Wall Street’s boat – and while shovelling trillions of taxpayers dollars at the same people who caused the financial crisis (a lot more money has gone to bailouts than just the TARP funds – much off-book, much like Bush kept trillions in spending on Iraq and Afghanistan off-book by simply spending the money without putting it in the budget). Barofsky was the Special Inspector General appointed to oversee TARP and protect the public interest – and who found his work obstructed by the Wall Street lackeys running Treasury, and who was ignored by both the Bush and Obama administrations to which he was supposed to report.

“The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” is a line from Dick the Butcher in Henry VI Part 2. It’s meant to be the first step in creating a utopia…-Or a dictatorship. I live in a country founded by lawyers; John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison.

Iceland is not in Europe

A word left out or a word inserted can reverse the meaning of a statement.Saying things like, “Well, you knew what I meant,” are also false even if we guessed correctly. We didn’t ALL KNOW what was intended.

When we say no banker has gone to jail, we lie to ourselves because some have, for crimes..When we complain no banker has been beheaded, we are just griping about lax capital punishment laws which don’t give us the blood, gore and suffering we crave..When we acknowledge the Obama Administration has not rounded up and prosecuted thousands of bankers, we bring up the possibility either that the Obama Administration’s Justice Department is incompetent (obviously unthinkable) or that the thousands of despised bankers actually did not break any laws in their actions.Further, we would be well served to remember you can not punish people for things which were not crimes when committed. (Contemplate concept of ex post facto — or after the fact — laws. A number of not-quite-crimes unpunished would not be as bad as a government which could outlaw whatever we did yesterday or last year.)

The media has made a great deal over the fact that 85 individuals own half of the money In the world. No one has ever said how many of those 85 people are Americans. Does anyone have a link?thank you,C.

“Blame The ACA for the widening gap between the have and have nots”

This may be the most absurd statement in several weeks, a period that has included a rerun of the birther position and someone claiming that we should thank conservatives for the advancement of gay rights.

nope, UK not part of Europe. Headline in London paper STORM IN ENGLISH CHANNEL EUROPE CUT OFF

wish that goldman sachs and citigroup and aig should all be guillotined. all their assets(personal and business) should be seized. and be thrown into the arena and fight to the death like gladiators in the colosseum.

While touring sunny southeast Asia, I was never in country but was often in continent.

These days it is rare in the UK to say that we are not part of Europe geographically; if trying to make the distinction people will refer to “continental Europe”. The traditional dividing line between Europe and Asia is the Bosphorus, which does at least provide a sea boundary at the bottom of the Black Sea that links through into the Aegean and the Med. North of the Black Sea is more problematic, as we can see only too well at present.

Reading the comments here make me sad. Economics should be a required subject in high school, so everyone would have at least a little understanding of it. In the absence of economics knowledge, writers for the press often don’t have much understanding of economics, either, and they spread that to the masses.

The core truth is that the economy is cyclical, and always has been. In cyclic downturns, home buyers with mortgages don’t make their payments, and whoever made the loans takes a hit. In the 30’s it was banks. They wanted no part of it again (borrow short, lend long is a bad idea), so S&L’s took over the business. In the 70’s it was them that took the hit.

With S&L’s gone, the government created Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and had Wall Street repackage mortgages and sell them to pensions, etc, and sure enough, the pensions, etc took the hit (along with Freddie Mac, etc) when the economy started going south.

This solution was actually the worst yet because it separates the loan originator from the person whose money is at risk. If you borrowed from a bank in 1925, the bank looked you over closely as it was their money. If you borrowed from an S&L in 1969 the same was true. If you borrow from Acme Mortgage in 2003, they didn’t care about your personal history; because so long as they could resell the loan, it was to be sold within days.

Were crimes committed? Sure, but they were on Main Street, not Wall Street. Borrowers lied about their income. Loan originators encouraged borrowers to fudge numbers. Appraisers fudged appraisals. Fact checkers didn’t check all the numbers. But who wants to blame them? It’s more fun to blame some rich guy whose job no one understands anyway.

Even with all this, it might have worked, except that 30 or so employees in the “Mortgage Insurance” department of the world’s largest insurance company dramatically mis-estimated the risks of a country-wide default. That small department lost more money than the entire rest of the worlds largest insurance company had made in its entire history. Meanwhile, pensions, and Wall Street firms bought the loans, and thought they were safe because they bought insurance to cover the risks.

So, have we learned anything? No. Because we scapegoated instead of looking at the real problems, we are still doing mortgages the same way. Yes, they tightened down the underwriting process, but will the tighter standards hold down the default rate? Sure…for awhile. Given that the economy will be in an upcycle for the next 20 years of so, we would be fine for awhile, but don’t be too surprised when the next downcycle causes mortgage defaults again, and whoever is the lender takes a hit. Yes, history will repeat again.

Letting tectonic plates define continents is obviously silly. Some plates are separating in the middle of continents. Some are smashing together, sliding under or alongside each other.Doesn’t anyone take science?An island in a river on a continent is still part of the continent.An island in the sea or ocean is not part of a continent.Some islands are big enough they may be considered continents. Some continents are small enough they may be considered big islands.India was a large island or small continent ere it smashed into Asia and is still ramming it.The Mediterranean Sea used to be dry land ere Eurasia and Africa separated enough to let in the Atlantic waters just asthe Gulf of Mexico used to be dry land.Political names are not the same as geographical features.Nobody has to use my definitions and I certainly don’t have to use their exotic definitions.