A simple distinction from “The Economics of Contempt”

In general, when I talk about “Wall Street,” I’m referring to the major dealer banks (both domestic and foreign) and the two big custodian banks. Specifically, I’m referring to the following institutions:

1. Goldman Sachs

2. Morgan Stanley

3. JPMorgan

4. Deutsche Bank

5. Barclays

6. BofA-Merrill Lynch

7. UBS

8. Citigroup

9. Credit Suisse

10. SocGen

11. BNP Paribas

12. RBS

13. Wells Fargo/Wachovia Securities

14. Nomura

15. HSBC

16. BNY-Mellon

17. State Street

[…]

When you hear people in the industry say things like, “the Street is short 2YR swaps,” they’re generally talking about these institutions. They’re not talking about hedge funds, or PIMCO, or boutique firms that have offices in lower Manhattan. It’s really just a relatively small group of major dealer banks.

via Economics of Contempt: Defining “Wall Street”.

“We’ll ask exclusive guest this morning, Arizona Senator, Republican… John McCain”. – David Gregory’s lead in to hosting McCain on Meet the Press this morning. How can having McCain as guest be considered exclusive when he is on the damn Sunday morning shows every week?

Full episode embed after the jump.
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Speaks for itself.

FRANK[S]: In this country, we had slavery for God knows how long. And now we look back on it and we say “How brave were they? What was the matter with them? You know, I can’t believe, you know, four million slaves. This is incredible.” And we’re right, we’re right. We should look back on that with criticism. It is a crushing mark on America’s soul. And yet today, half of all black children are aborted. Half of all black children are aborted. Far more of the African-American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by policies of slavery. And I think, What does it take to get us to wake up?

via Think Progress » Rep. Trent Franks: African-Americans were better off under slavery.

Krugman revels in the transformation of the WSJ into a right wing organ under Rupert Murdoch’s multimedia

And this bad news is good news. There’s a pretty good chance that we will end up with only one great national newspaper. And I know which paper that should be …

via Good News About The WSJ – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com.

After the Judith Miller, Jayson Blair and Zachery Kouwe scandals the Bill Kristol experiment and Thomas Friedman’s eloquent “suck on this” he shouldn’t be so sure that the masthead he writes under is a great national newspaper.

Reporting from Bogota, Colombia – One of the biggest earthquakes in recorded history rocked Chile on Saturday, killing at least 300 people, toppling buildings and freeways, and sending sirens wailing thousands of miles away as governments scrambled to protect coastal residents from the ensuing tsunami.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet declared parts of the country “catastrophe zones” in the wake of the 8.8 magnitude quake, which was centered about 70 miles offshore from the port city of Concepcion.

With images still fresh of Haiti’s devastation from an earthquake last month, the world woke up to new disaster — and fears of another catastrophic toll. But the Chile quake struck at a relatively deep 21.7 miles, and building codes are strict in a country that 50 years ago was struck by the biggest earthquake ever recorded: a magnitude 9.5.

Nonetheless, Bachelet said in an address to the nation Saturday night that a million buildings had been damaged. And with television footage showing topsy-turvy structures, severed bridges and highways whose pavement looked as if it had been tilled by some giant farm machine, the death toll was expected to rise.

via Chile reels from 8.8 earthquake – latimes.com.

At a conference I was at this week, Daniel Ellsberg recounted a time in 1969 when he explained to Henry Kissinger what would happen after he was given the dozen or so clearances above Top Secret the existence of which is also classified, of course. What happens first is you feel like a fool. Youve published books that you now discover were filled with stuff that was wrong. You have believed you understood how things worked for your entire professional life, but you now find out you were completely wrong, that the real world is entirely different from what you have been told. The books you’ve written, the lectures youve given are based on a false understanding of the world.

But this stage only lasts a few weeks. […]

via Eschaton – Clearances.

Click through and read the rest.

All in all, the summit was just illustrating the stalemate for the American people. McCain did demonstrate why we should be glad that he didn’t become president (or an admiral for that matter). Ever.

Of his political party.

Collegiality is nonexistent today, and any outreach across an aisle is castigated as weakness by the talking heads who constantly stir a pot of discontent. So vicious is the political climate that within two years, Sen. John McCain has gone from GOP standard-bearer to its endangered-species list. All of which leaves homeless those of us with views that don’t stack up neatly in any ideological box the way we’re told they should.

Consider that I’ve long insisted on the need to profile in the war against terrorists. I believe that if someone like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has actionable intelligence on future terrorism, you try the least coercive methods to extract it but ultimately stop at damn near nothing to get what you need to save American lives. I want the U.S. military out of Iraq, but into Pakistan. I’m for capital punishment. I think our porous borders need to be secured before we determine how to deal with the millions of illegal immigrants already within them. Sounds pretty conservative. But wait.

I think that in 2008, the GOP was wrong to adopt a party platform that maintained a strict opposition to abortion without at least carving out exceptions in the case of rape, incest, or danger to the mother’s life. I was appalled that legislators tried to decide Terri Schiavo’s end-of-life plan. I don’t care if two guys hook up any more than they should care about my heterosexual lifestyle. And I still don’t know what to think about climate change.

I think President Obama is earnest, smart, and much more centrist than his tea party caricature suggests. He has never been given a fair chance to succeed by those who openly crow about their desire to see him fail (while somehow congratulating one another on their relative patriotism). I know he was born in America, isn’t a socialist, and doesn’t worship in a mosque. I get that he inherited a minefield. Still, the level of federal spending concerns me. And he never closed the deal with me that health insurance is a right, not a privilege. But I’m not folding the tent on him. Not now. Not with the nation fighting two wars while its economy still teeters on the brink of collapse.

via Michael Smerconish: For Me, the Party Is Over.

FoxNews is “investigating” whether or not the latest Missile Defense Agency logo is a result of Obama’s campaign strategy infiltrating the government.

Richard Lehner, a spokesman for the Missile Defense Agency, dismissed the comparison entirely.

“It’s ridiculous,” Lehner told Fox News. “It isn’t a new logo to replace the official logo. It’s a logo developed for recruiting materials and for our public Web site. Also, it was used prior to the 2008 election and it has no link to any political campaign.”

via FOXNews.com – Missile Defense Agency, Obama Campaign Logos Cause Internet Stir.

See, in the FoxNews world, you don’t worry about the fact that lawyers in President Bush’s White House decided they could indefinitely jail and torture an American citizen by labeling them a terrorist. No. That is fighting for freedom. You do worry about playing concentration with government logos.

If Democrats learn one thing from ACORN and the Death Panel August it better be that a big loud lie beats dignified debate any day.

The embattled liberal group ACORN is in the process of dissolving its national structure, with state and local-chapters splitting off from the underfunded, controversial national group, an official close to the group confirmed.

“ACORN has dissolved as a national structure of state organizations,” said a senior official close to the group, who declined to be identified by name because of the fierce conservative attacks on the group that began when a conservative filmmaker caught some staffers of its tax advisory arms on tape appearing to offer advice on incorporating a prostitution business.

The videos proved a rallying point for conservatives who had long accused the group of fomenting voting fraud. Though the videos did not produce criminal charges, they appear to have been fatal to the national organization.

“Consistent with what the internal recommendations have been, each of the states are developing plans for reconstitution independence and self-sufficiency,” said the official, citing ACORN’s “diminished resources, damage to the brand, unprecedented attacks.”

The new organizations, he said “will be constituted under new banners and new bylaws and new governance,” he said, consistent with the recommendations of an outside panel.

via ACORN ‘dissolved as a national structure’ – Ben Smith – POLITICO.com.