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Testamonial:  And i have actually gone to a bar and had a bouncer try to start a fight with me on the way in. I broke his teeth out of his fucking mouth and put his face through a passenger side window of a car.

Guess thats what the Internet was build for, pussy motherfuckers taking shit in safety...

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Financial fuckery thread

Started by Cain, March 12, 2009, 09:14:45 AM

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The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Cain on December 31, 2012, 08:56:39 PM
Certainly part of it.

However, I was thinking more hegemony.  Funding insurgencies is expensive, even with the CIA's budget. 

I hadn't even thought that far, Cain.  I was stuck on the idea that the bank cannot be prosecuted for breaking laws.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Cain

Ever I am here to ask the question "why" that should be the case.

At least until I suffer a fatal mugging.

Cain

Meanwhile, in the UK, the government has launched an all-out assault on benefits rises.

Why?

The argument is that since no-one else is getting inflation equalling payrises, those on benefits should not, either.  Throw in copious amounts of strawmen about punishing those who "choose to work" and scroungers and Labour and you get the general idea.

Polls show it is not working, but it's fairly depressing to watch, nontheless.

Cain

Ah, here is more proof of the kind of thing I am talking about:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jan/03/obesity-benefits-cuts?CMP=twt_gu

QuoteObese and other unhealthy people could be monitored to check whether they are taking exercise and have their benefits cut if they fail to do so under proposals published on Thursday by a Conservative-run council and a local government thinktank.

Westminster council and the Local Government Information Unit say new technologies such as smart cards could be used to track claimants' use of leisure centres, allowing local authorities to dock housing and council benefit payments from those who refuse to carry out exercise prescribed by their GP.

Cain

This is brilliantly savage

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n01/john-lanchester/lets-call-it-failure

QuoteIn June 2010, in his first budget, Osborne said the structural deficit was 4.8 per cent, and that with three years of reduced spending, the figure would be down to 1.9 per cent. So how's that going? Well, by the end of those three years, after £59 billion of tax rises and spending cuts, the figure is set to be 4.3 per cent. Even that number was achieved only thanks to a kitchen sink's worth of special inputs, including a £3.5 billion windfall from auctioning off the 4G telecom spectrum, and some exuberant, almost rococo creative accounting to do with the transfer of Royal Mail pension liabilities, state ownership of the Bradford and Bingley building society, and interest credit from the Bank of England's quantitative easing scheme.[1] All the tweaky accounting is in the government's favour, obviously. (The Royal Mail transfer is a particular goody: the pension fund's £28 billion in assets are transferred to the government, meaning a sudden boost to its books, even though the liabilities are transferred too, meaning that the taxpayer is now going to have to make up the fund's significant deficit. So we're now on the long-term hook, but who cares, as long as the government gets a short-term boost to the balance sheet, and another medium-term boost to the balance sheet when the Royal Mail is sold off to a private buyer, a process which is going to be much easier now that it's no longer liable for its own employees' pensions.) If you reverse the creative accounting and add the interest from the quantitative easing back where it used to be, as a Bank of England asset, it adds 0.6 per cent to the structural deficit. That takes it back up to 4.9 per cent – higher than it was when the coalition came to power. Osborne's single biggest economic ambition was to get the deficit down, but he hasn't managed it, and has had to abandon his noisily announced target to get rid of most of the deficit in a single parliament. Gather round, children, and take a good look. This is the thing we call failure.

QuoteBecause the coalition has ringfenced spending in health, schools and overseas development, the cuts needed to achieve the public spending targets all have to come from non-ringfenced departments. That means job cuts – lots and lots and lots of job cuts. In the last quarter of 2008, total public sector employment was 6,058,000. At the moment, it stands at 5,860,000.[4] This means that in the four years since the crisis hit the public sector has lost 198,000 jobs. Public sector employment has fallen for 11 quarters in a row. Here, though, is the bad news: the OBR predicts that from a starting point of 2011, by the beginning of 2018, the economy will have lost 929,000 public sector jobs. That means there are more than half a million public sector jobs still to be cut over the next five years. 'All this implies an average fall in GGE' – General Government Employment – 'of just under 30,000 per quarter over the remainder of the period.' That's 10,000 public sector jobs going every month: more than 330 people being sacked every day, or (given an eight-hour workday) one public sector worker being sacked every ninety seconds for the next half-decade.

Is this achievable? Could any government do that? No government in British history has, which should give us a clue. The cuts to unprotected, unringfenced departments, in real terms (that means adjusted for inflation), would amount to more than 30 per cent. The Institute for Fiscal Studies thinks it is 'inconceivable' for the implied levels of cuts to be achieved. In the LRB of 11 March 2010, when the cuts to unprotected departments were set to be 18 per cent, I quoted an IFS economist as saying that 'for the Ministry of Defence an 18 per cent cut means something on the scale of no longer employing the army.'

LMNO


Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: Cain on January 03, 2013, 05:24:45 PM
Ah, here is more proof of the kind of thing I am talking about:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jan/03/obesity-benefits-cuts?CMP=twt_gu

QuoteObese and other unhealthy people could be monitored to check whether they are taking exercise and have their benefits cut if they fail to do so under proposals published on Thursday by a Conservative-run council and a local government thinktank.

Westminster council and the Local Government Information Unit say new technologies such as smart cards could be used to track claimants' use of leisure centres, allowing local authorities to dock housing and council benefit payments from those who refuse to carry out exercise prescribed by their GP.

Uh wow.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on January 03, 2013, 06:16:22 PM
Quote from: Cain on January 03, 2013, 05:24:45 PM
Ah, here is more proof of the kind of thing I am talking about:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jan/03/obesity-benefits-cuts?CMP=twt_gu

QuoteObese and other unhealthy people could be monitored to check whether they are taking exercise and have their benefits cut if they fail to do so under proposals published on Thursday by a Conservative-run council and a local government thinktank.

Westminster council and the Local Government Information Unit say new technologies such as smart cards could be used to track claimants' use of leisure centres, allowing local authorities to dock housing and council benefit payments from those who refuse to carry out exercise prescribed by their GP.

Uh wow.

Relax.  It's only slapstick.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

inode_buddha

C|N>K

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: inode_buddha on January 08, 2013, 08:18:07 PM
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/01/07/rescued-by-a-bailout-a-i-g-may-sue-its-savior

Seems that AIG may be suing the US Gov't for the harsh terms of the bailout...

OH HOLY SHIT

I hope they do, because I would love to see the precedent THAT would set for borrowers to sue lenders for setting harsh terms.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Cain

So....18 months ago, JP Morgan Chase were fined $88 million for sending gold to Iran.  They were also told to improve their compliance programs.

However, they did not.

Their punishment?  Being told yet again to improve their compliance programs.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/11/us-jpmorgan-compliance-idUSBRE90A0DN20130111

QuoteA U.S. regulatory probe of JP Morgan Chase & Co is expected to result in an order that the bank correct lapses in how it polices suspect money flows, in an action expected as soon as Friday, people familiar with the situation said.

The action would be in the form of a cease-and-desist order, whichregulators use to force banks to improve compliance weaknesses, the sources said.

The order is expected to be issued by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve.

JP Morgan is not expected to pay a monetary penalty, according to one person familiar with the situation.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: Cain on January 11, 2013, 04:02:30 PM
So....18 months ago, JP Morgan Chase were fined $88 million for sending gold to Iran.  They were also told to improve their compliance programs.

However, they did not.

Their punishment?  Being told yet again to improve their compliance programs.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/11/us-jpmorgan-compliance-idUSBRE90A0DN20130111

QuoteA U.S. regulatory probe of JP Morgan Chase & Co is expected to result in an order that the bank correct lapses in how it polices suspect money flows, in an action expected as soon as Friday, people familiar with the situation said.

The action would be in the form of a cease-and-desist order, whichregulators use to force banks to improve compliance weaknesses, the sources said.

The order is expected to be issued by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve.

JP Morgan is not expected to pay a monetary penalty, according to one person familiar with the situation.

"You should stop doing that."

"No."

"OK... but you really should stop doing that."
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Cain

Remember in 2009 and 10, when people were talking about using "export-driven growth" to get the world out of the financial crisis?  People pointed to the examples of China, and Germany, and said "we should do that", ignoring the impossibility that everywhere in the world could maintain a trade surplus.

Well, there is another reason it's not a good idea:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/economics-blog/2013/jan/15/germany-exports-economic-slowdown

QuoteAfter posting strong growth of 4.2% in 2010 and 3% in 2011, Germany came down to earth with a bump last year. National output expanded by 0.7%, and although Berlin has yet to publish data for the final three months of 2012 the government is pencilling in a fall in gross domestic product of around 0.5%.

Two key factors lie behind the current slowdown. Firstly, life has been a lot tougher in 2012 for German exports. The impressive recovery in 2010 was largely due to global demand for Germany's precision manufacturing goods, particularly the machine tools needed by the bigger developing countries for their industrialisation programmes. That demand cooled in 2012, with the uncertainty caused by the US fiscal cliff row further affecting export sales.

Secondly, the euro finally took its toll both on exports and investment. The sharp contractions in Greece, Spain and Portugal, together with budget cutbacks and slower growth in other eurozone member states, has not only fed through into weaker order books for German firms, it has also made them more cautious about spending money on new plant and machinery.

Take away exports and investment and there is not a lot to sustain German growth. The price of making German industry ultra-competitive in world markets has been a prolonged period of low wage settlements, keeping a firm lid on consumer spending. Reforms to the labour market and to the welfare state have also ensured that little of the gain from Germany's productivity improvements over the past decade have trickled down to workers in the form of higher living standards. Unemployment, on the other hand, has come down.

Cain

Welfare queens decry welfare for others

http://news.yahoo.com/business-ceos-call-raising-retirement-age-190704794--finance.html

QuoteAn influential group of business CEOs is pushing a plan to gradually increase the full retirement age to 70 for both Social Security and Medicare and to partially privatize the health insurance program for older Americans.

The Business Roundtable's plan would protect those 55 and older from cuts but younger workers would face significant changes. The plan unveiled Wednesday would result in smaller annual benefit increases for all Social Security recipients. Initial benefits for wealthy retirees would also be smaller.

Medicare recipients would be able to enroll in the traditional program or in private plans that could adjust premiums based on age and health status.

Included on the Business Roundtable?  Goldman Sachs.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57552173/goldman-sachs-ceo-entitlements-must-be-contained/

QuoteSo there will be things that, you know, the retirement age has to be changed, maybe some of the benefits have to be affected, maybe some of the inflation adjustments have to be revised. But in general, entitlements have to be slowed down and contained."

The Good Reverend Roger

70?

Welcome back to the Victorian Era, spags.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.