The Democratic Playbook - Simply Hire The Smart Regulators

The standard Democratic Party solution to any problem Barack Obama or Elizabeth Warren can identify is to hire the smart regulators and put them in charge of fixing it. And by the way, the smart ones will also be honest and incorruptible, immune to any temptations such as, hmm, claiming to be a minority.

One might wonder whether these paragons can reliably be hired en masse at government pay scales. Actually, one might not wonder - they can't be.

Two different stories illustrate the conundrum. First, the Times reports on the problems with overseeing JP Morgan Chase:

After the financial crisis, regulators vowed to overhaul supervision of the nation’s largest banks.

As part of that effort, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in mid-2011 replaced virtually all of its roughly 40 examiners at JPMorgan Chase to bolster the team’s expertise and prevent regulators from forming cozy ties with executives, according to several current and former government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

When a regulator can quadruple his compensation by switching sides and joining the regulatee, "cozy relationships" are an ongoing problem. And one might worry that the regulatory team that watched the big banks go over the cliff in 2008 (although less so with JPM) might not have possessed the sharpest knives in the drawer.

However!

But those changes left the New York Fed’s front-line examiners without deep knowledge of JPMorgan’s operations for a brief yet critical time, said those people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because there is a federal investigation of the bank.

Forced to play catch-up, the examiners struggled to understand the inner workings of a powerful investment unit, those officials said. At first, the examiners sought basic information about the group, including the name of the unit’s core trading portfolio.

By the time they got up to speed, it was too late. In May, JPMorgan disclosed a multibillion-dollar trading loss in the investment unit.

They “couldn’t ask tough questions,” said a former official who was based at JPMorgan.

Ooops!

Of course, the premise is that the smart, experienced traders and risk managers at JP Morgan Chase were too stupid to see that their slick "hedge"/trade was going to cost them $5 billion, but all could have been averted if some twenty-five year old who couldn't score a job at an investment bank out of school asked a few probing questions.  Uh huh.

Flashing over to the WaPO, let's see what happens when the A-Team of regulators gets involved:

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York said Tuesday it had received word as early as 2007 from the British bank Barclays about problems with the benchmark interest rate that underpins much of global lending.

Barclays has admitted to rigging Libor, an interest rate that sets the standard for lending in a wide variety of markets — from corporate bonds to credit cards and some mortgages.

On Tuesday, the New York Fed said that it had received “occasional anecdotal reports from Barclays of problems with Libor” in late 2007, as the financial crisis was starting.

...

In testimony last week before the British Parliament, former Barclays chief executive Robert E. Diamond said the bank had repeatedly brought to the attention of U.S. regulators — as well as U.K. regulators — the problems that the bank was experiencing in the Libor market.

He said the bank’s warnings to regulators that Libor was artificially low did not lead to action.

Barclays’ regulator in the United States is the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which was run at the time by current Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner.

Diamond said that his bank had alerted the New York Fed to issues with Libor at least 12 times.

After receiving initial reports in 2007, the New York Fed said, it made additional inquiries of Barclays about its Libor operations, and subsequently made suggestions for changes to British authorities.

Geithner personally participated in several conversations with Barclays executives, according to his New York Fed calendar, later posted on the Web site of the New York Times. It wasn’t clear if these meetings focused on the Libor issues now coming to light.

Geithner has sailed on to Treasury Secretary, where he continues to oversee smart regulators asking the tough questions.

The surprise is that this sort of outcome is inevitable, yet it is a constant source of surprise to the statist Dems.

One last bit to conclude this tirade - in 1999 Team Clinton had Bob Rubin and Larry Summers who, along with Alan Greenspan were viewed as the greatest economic stewards in the history of economic stewardship. Surely these were the smart guys to whom we should defer, yes?

Uh, no, and stop calling me 'Shirley'.  With a few short, ghastly years the mainstream progressive position (subject to pushback) was that Summers and Rubin had been wrong about Glass Steagall and very wrong about light regulation of derivatives.

Yet Summers and Rubin were the reigning geniuses, having been around for budget surpluses, rising incomes, miraculous employment, and heroic rescues of Mexico, Russia and LTCM (oops...).

I guess the real Dem strategy is to hire the next generation of geniuses.  Good luck with that.

Comments

[Clarice]

It's for essentially the same reason I oppose term limits. The bureaucrats will do fandangos on an inexperienced legislature's head.

[rse]

I am off to a Milton Friedman luncheon. A good time to remember what happens when you are out and someone else is paying and they cannot object to what you spend. And you don't have to live with the consequences of your poor decisions.

I guess to really be an apt metaphor for the regulator the included compensation should also include spa treatments to put the consequences of the excess someone else funded behind you in the nicest way possible.

[Rick Ballard]

"And going forward, there may be a day when letting a big firm or two fail will be a very good thing."

True when TM wrote it in 2008 and truer today as we watch the zombies stagger in the twilight. I might put the number at three or four rather than one or two.

[narciso]

Douglas Adams was more right then he even knew;

It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see …”
“You mean it comes from a world of lizards?”
“No,” said Ford, “nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”
“Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.”
“I did,” said Ford. “It is.”
“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?”
“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates the government they want.”
“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”
“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”
“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”
“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?”

[Melinda Romanoff]

Rick-

I'll go with seven.

[narciso]

The book length version of this 'Laurel and Hardy' play, is Schrieber's Escape Artists, where he goes into great detail, how Rubin, Geithner, et al, made the world safe for 'Big Oligarchs'

[Melinda Romanoff]

Everybody forgets Summers, and his trusty sidekick Turbo Timmy, in the fiasco that was the Indonesian Currency Board.

That went well.

[Danube of Thought]

The word "regulation" has always carried a magical, talismanic meaning for the central planner. Questions about who is to do the regulating, or whether the thing can be regulated, do not arise. And their faith in it can never be dimmed.

[narciso]

Ah, yes, how could I forget the Third Amigo,
who worked much like the sheriff in Indy's hometown, giving Coronado's cross over to the graverobber, (ahem, transferring Russia's bounty from the nomenklatura to the oligarchs,
who happen to be the same people)

[Jim,MtnView,Ca,USA]

It's not just the regulators, either. Some time back, this blog post warned about the problems we face when ordinary middle class Americans stop cooperating with the system.
http://gonzalolira.blogspot.com/2010/10/coming-middle-class-anarchy.html

Today, Instapundit links to an article on how people are going ever further along the Galt path. One para in particular caught my eye.
http://godfatherpolitics.com/6104/americans-revolt-billions-of-times-a-day/
It’s not civil disobedience that I’m talking about. It’s the opposite: Civil disobedience is meant to be noticed. It is a price paid in the hope of creating social change. What I’m talking about is not based on hope; in fact, it has given up much hope on social change. It thinks the government is a colossal amoeba twitching mindlessly in response to tiny pinpricks of pain from an endless army of micro-brained interest groups. The point is not to teach the amoeba nor to guide it, but simply to stay away from the lethal stupidity of its pseudopods.

[MarkO]

Regulation is just another means of taking someone's freedom. Billy the Kid's gang was known as The Regulators. They simply killed people.

[Jim,MtnView,Ca,USA]

I see MarkO and others already started discussing the GodFatherPolitics article two posts back :)

[NK]

TomM-- I love this post-- oozing with justified sarcasm and snark-- Love it:
Geithner-- I gues TomM is not rebutting my suggestion that Turbo Tax Timmie is muppett, who has no idea whatever about what's really going on;
Clinton's Econ Team: 1994-1999 go-go years were the result of the tech bubble and Boomer demographics; the budget surplus came from Ideological Rightwing Repubs tight spending and Clinton demanding military Cuts in return-- tax revenue exploded due to tech bubble cap gains, housing cap gains, payroll tax from 4% unemployment. Clinton? he was just along for the ride while getting hummers from interns. Rubin?-- yeah he was a whore for Citi, but personally I think he was more of an Eisenhower Repub desperate to reduce bond yields to help his and his rich friends' portfolios.

[OldTimer]

Team USA uniforms reportedly made in China -

Why not? It's not as if American workers could use the paychecks to feed their families by producing these duds in the United States, or anything..

http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2012/07/12/team-usa-uniforms-reportedly-made-in-china-again/?test=olymp

[Bruce]

It's for essentially the same reason I oppose term limits. The bureaucrats will do fandangos on an inexperienced legislature's head.

And, yet, the experienced pols, the ones who would be eliminated by term limits, are the ones most tied to the lobbyists, the most corrupt, etc. Many seem to start thinking of their political post as their career, and, thus, their route to wealth and security.

They are also the politicians who are coziest with the bureaucrats who actually do much of the running of the government agencies.

What is there to keep them honest? The experienced incumbents almost invariably are able to massively out fund raise their competitors - which means that the only way that many can be challenged is through self financing (think the still-unindicted John Corzine here). Pretty soon, the politicians represent the lobbyists who fund them, much more than their putative constituents.

I don't know the answer here, except to reduce the size of government, and, in particular, the federal government. But, that is unlikely as long as we have career politicians running this country.

Take one recursive example - how could we implement federal term limits? A Constitutional Amendment would be required. But, the politicians with the most to lose, those with life tenure, are going to block that in Congress. Saw this in many of the states that implemented such - they often had to go the initiative/referendum route, which is not available at the federal level.

[Janet]

. And by the way, the smart ones will also be honest and incorruptible, immune to any temptations such as, hmm, caliming to be a minority.

"The claims of these organizers of humanity raise another question which I have often asked them and which, so far as I know, they have never answered: If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?"
~ Frederick Bastiat

[iqvoice]

O/T: Did anyone read the article that instapundit linked a few days ago, with regards to the Stolen Valor law struck down by SCOTUS?

Seems to me that the decision was wrong, but perhaps not for the reasons cited in the article. If Obamacare can be re-written by Judge Dipshit to be a tax, then why can't Stolen Valor? Anyone who makes false claims about military service is subject to a $10,000 tax. Done.

[dublindave]

Joe killed it at the NAACP!

"This is NOT your father's Republican party" -Joe Biden

That's cold.

[NK]

I wonder if any vommit came up when DD belched that 11:42. 'Bam sent that moron Biden to speechify at NAACP? If I were a member I'd be pissed.... Biden?

[GMAX]

Did Joe tell them the private sector was doing fine? Zero did. Not even the lapdogs at the NAACP believe that.

[Danube of Thought]

Saw Jack Abramoff the other night, talking about his days as a lobbyist. Apple-cheeked congressional staffer comes in, Jack says "we really like your style, and hope down the road you'll consider coming to work for us," which would mean an instant quadrupling of salary. As Jack said, "from that moment on we own him."

[Danube of Thought]

July 12, and DuDa is still unaware that Obama is done.

[hit and run]

"This is NOT your father's Republican party" -Joe Biden

“These guys have a social policy out of the ‘50s,”
--stuff Biden (also) said

[NK]

DoT@11:58-- regulatory capture. Madoff did it with the SEC, The MBS syndicators did it with rating agencies, and Fannie Mae it to Congress. TBTF banks? I always wondered if Sandy Weill's 'financial services supermarket' had regulatory capture as a primary objective to become TBTF, or if there were real business reasons to conglomorate and regulatory capture was a consequence. Unless Weill, Rubin and Dimon make deathbed confessions, we'll never know.

[Jim,MtnView,Ca,USA]

"July 12, and DuDa..."
One suspects that Obama being done or not is beside the point? LUN

I come [to JOM] with my hat caved in,
Du-da! Du-da!
I go back home with a pocket full of tin,
Oh, Du-da day!

(Are they really paying a buck a post now to spam conservative web sites? Or is that a baseless rumor?)

[jimmyk]

I can see it's time again to bring out Milton Friedman: "Where in the world do you find these angels who are going to organize society for us?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kOH76ImjSM

[Melinda Romanoff]

DoT-

Sometimes visual imagery works better for those with sclerotic synapse counts.

[MarkO]

By the way, everything we were once told about Penn State football is a lie.

[matt]

Joe sounds ever more like Baghdad Bob. As do most of them.

[jimmyk]

Diamond said that his bank had alerted the New York Fed to issues with Libor at least 12 times.

I asked the other day: How do we make sense of this, now that Barclay's is accused of manipulating LIBOR? Were they asking for help to stop themselves from cheating? Or maybe they saw others cheating, complained, and when it went nowhere decided they may as well join in?

[NK]

Back to Biden-- he really is the Judge Smails of the Obamaniac crowd. Now that 'Bam has given up in the Indie vote, what purpose does Biden serve being 'Bam's personal cranky old white guy. Honestly, Biden goes to the Latino pols and says "Ola-- mi compardres' just like you I grew up with thin walls in the bario so we all knew when the folks were the horizontal jumping bean dance.. know what I mean! He's a stone cold dufus. I just don't get it.

[jimmyk]

One might wonder whether these paragons can reliably be hired en masse at government pay scales.

I don't think pay has anything to do with it, as the Friedman quote suggests. For one thing, people with high-level government positions get highly rewarded after they leave. But beyond that, micro-management-style regulation is doomed to failure because there is just no way for outsiders to follow and understand everything they would need to. They are always fighting the last war.

[NK]

jimmyK--the whole LIBOR rig is depressing-- not surprising, just depressing. What was Diamond doing complaining to the NY Fed? No idea, but Occam's razor says he was complaining that Barclay's had to rig to counter NYC money center banks rigging the other way. But that's a guess based on logic not information. Some still unemployed Lehman Bankers will drop a dime about the rig, no doubt.

[Janet]

That's great, Mel! This turkey is DONE!

[Extraneus]

Of course, the premise is that the smart, experienced traders and risk managers at JP Morgan Chase were too stupid to see that their slick "hedge"/trade was going to cost them $5 billion, but all could have been averted if some twenty-five year old who couldn't score a job at an investment bank out of school asked a few probing questions. Uh huh.

So the regulators are there to stop the banks from making bad investments? Shouldn't we have regulators at each of the Fortune 500 companies, too, then? What if a company's management makes a bad business decision? That could hurt the investor and cost workers their jobs, for heavens sake.

[Captain Hate]

By the way, everything we were once told about Penn State football is a lie.

I badly want to hear Musberger admit that everything he's said about the program was a steaming pile.

[Carol Herman]

If you're dancing, and you trip, blame your feet.

Elizabeth Warren had a fighting chance of regaining the Kennedy senate seat ... till her faux indian status made her notorious. She's a Cherokee, my foot.

It also isolated her campaign by showing her to be a fraud. Can she still win?

Well, news of her Cherokee identity didn't hurt Scott Brown one iota.

That's how it is in politics. Most people make up their minds. And, rather enjoy quick ways to tell you that they don't want your product.

Once the "NO" arrives ... very little can change people's points of view.

Sort'a what happens when you look out the window and see rain drops.

That's why advertisers. And, the best salesmen. Never try to get you to the point where you want to tell them to bug off.

For Barnum, it was the spending habits of people who'd buy tickets to his circus.

For political parties, it's trying to find attractive candidates. Because running them is easier than running those that are flawed.

But once you've chosen the candidate?

In 1972, Nixon's re-election was against McGovern. And, all McGovern could win against Nixon was the electoral college votes from his own state.

Painful, to say the least, for McGovern.

For Dukakis.

And, for Adlai Stevenson, who ran against "I LIKE IKE."

Imagine matching a good man to a clever slogan.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Regulators are supposed to catch ILLEGAL investments and ILLEGAL management decisions.

Hard to do when they keep putting gold stars in your eyes.

This used to be known as "Bribery", but not anymore.

[Porchlight]

Biden cut his NAACP remarks short because he was "preaching to the choir" (his words).

Got that, NAACP? You are bound in chains on the Dem plantation. Joe Biden wonders why he even bothers coming to talk to you, there is so little point in it.

[Clarice]

The bread story is up
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2012/07/12/how-i-learned-to-bake-french-bread-in-the-south-of-france/?singlepage=true

[centralcal]

Biden cut his NAACP remarks short because he was "preaching to the choir"

Well, that, and a low turnout perhaps? It was raining hard, is the excuse.

[NK]

Biden-- even NAACP members won't listen to that dufus.

[NK]

Clarice-- thanks for the post-- my wife and I are doing a Provence walking tour in September with a group of town acquaintainces. Foucasse bread stuffed with sun dried tomatoes?-- yum. I guess I shouldn't plan on losing weight during this trip.

[Threadkiller]

He writes his own speeches.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smQ8zloEv7U

For those without YouTube

http://mcclintock.house.gov/2012/07/an-appeal-to-a-higher-court.shtml

Kickass.

[Porchlight]

NK, I bet you'll lose weight anyway, if you're doing a walking tour.

[dublindave]

"Joe sounds ever more like Baghdad Bob. As do most of them."

When an audience doesn't boo your message.... that's a good thing.

Although it's becoming increasingly clear that yesterday,Mitt shipped in thirty or forty rent-a-negroes who rehearsed,applauded and booed on cue,according to the NAACP leadership.

However,political theatrics aside,Mitt's got bigger 'integrity' problems on the horizon because 'The Boston Globe' just busted him for lying to the American people about how long he spent at Bain capital.

When you thread that into the outsourcing/offshoring PR disaster and the way Romney denied even being at the company when that all happaned..........this is about to get real ugly real fast.

Add to that mess his suspect dummy corporations in the Cayman,his secret Swiss bank accounts and his refusal to release his tax returns..........bad week for Rombot's honesty.

Still,he can counter the bad press with his multi-million dollar dressage horse on show in Great Britain.

[Jane - Get off the couch your country needs you!]

Clarice,

I can smell the bread (and its making me crazy).

What a wonderful wonderful article.

[centralcal]

Wonderful, Clarice. Loved the photos accompanying the article. Now I am craving a warm from the oven hunk of crusty bread with a smear of butter. I bet it smelled heavenly in there!

[Melinda Romanoff]

Biden's speech may not have received any boos, or much applause. It certainly didn't fall on deaf ears, just NO EARS.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Weasel Zippers story. Sorry about that.

[OldTimer]

It's beyond sad and frustrating to see black Americans sell out to Obama and the dems for the lowest gov't bid. They persist in giving themselves over to slavery and don't see the irony.

I wonder just how many at the NAACP convention are secretly in agreement with every word of Romney's speech and plan to vote for him in rebellion to their slave-masters. As a reliable dem voting block, it would be refreshing to see even 2 or 3% break away from their chains.

[Melinda Romanoff]

OT-

See above.

[jimmyk]

As a reliable dem voting block, it would be refreshing to see even 2 or 3% break away from their chains.

Anyone see Jimmy Walker on BOR last night? He wasn't afraid to say "The emperor has no clothes."

[centralcal]

I saw that too, jimmyk - and noted that he said he didn't vote for Obama the first time (2008) either.

[Sue]

OT,

I would love to see them rebel. Won't happen. Look at Rangel.

[Jane - Get off the couch your country needs you!]

Dudu,

You are the only person I know who calls black people "negroes". Why is that?

[OldTimer]

Hmmmm...I was busy writing my lament while the picture worth a thousand words was posted above.

Sweet! There may be hope for change...

[Threadkiller]

Bungduster uses "Negroes" too. Probably learned it from Harry Reid.

http://www.humanevents.com/2010/01/13/harry-reids-negro-problem/

[jimmyk]

See, this is the problem when they don't defend capitalism, and instead say "I didn't do it."

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/questions-romney-left-bain-capital-135713042.html

I'm sure this doesn't amount to anything, but it would be a non-issue if they'd given a better response in the first place.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Story out there that iBama campaign now says Romney committed felony, while at Bain.

Yep.

Classic Axelrod.

Time for lunch, but I'm going to pick up some popcorn.

[(Another) Barbara]

What a glorious experience, Clarice, and fab photos and description. I won't try it at home (use Sullivan method for rare bread forays these days) but it's inspiring to read about a man who puts so much devotion into his craft. And YUM! Did you get a photo of the crumb? That always leads to a copious drool.

[poppaindia]

As usual, Dave sounds like he's trying too hard, throwing out poorly sourced accusations left and right-he must see the writing on the wall. By October, we'll be calling him DesperateDave.

[Frau Wahlkampf]

"And, for Adlai Stevenson, who ran against "I LIKE IKE."
Imagine matching a good man to a clever slogan."

You mean like this?

I was there and I wore this.

[daddy]

Good Morning!

Anybody see anything a little slanted in this first sentence of an ADN story on Obamacare?

"Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell is expressing "serious concerns" about letting the federal government pay for medical care of more than 30,000 lower-income Alaskans, saying it would also result in state costs he's hesitant to take on."

[narciso]

Scrumptious, clarice, I recall the author of that Yahoo piece, was one that wrote a particular fulsome post about Kerry, in 2004,
that another blog, fisked mercilessly.

[Jane - Get off the couch your country needs you!]

It's a globe reporter's revenge Jimmy according to Breitbart.

Apparently he is also a felon.

[narciso]

Yes that's an interesting way, that they put it,

He said, even in the first years of 100 percent federal coverage, the state would be on the hook for an estimated $12 million a year. There would be more costs when the federal share gradually drops to 90 percent, he said, as well as if federal budget problems lead to a slash in funding.

Parnell declined to take questions on health care, saying "if you want more comment than this during my deliberative process, you will need to seek it from (Alaska Department of Health and Social Services) Commissioner Streur."

Streur said the federal government is pledging to pay only the actual medical care for the newly eligible Medicaid patients, whose claims he expects to total more than $300 million a year.

The federal pledge doesn't cover associated costs such as technology, staffing and administration of processing the claims, he said. The federal government is paying 90 percent of the expense for states to overhaul their computer systems for the expansion but as low as 50 percent of other related costs, Streur said.

Parnell, in his statement, said Alaska's Medicaid costs are already growing by $100 million a year. Currently Medicaid eligibility is broken down by categories, such as children, pregnant women and people aged 65 and over, with each category having a different income standard for who is eligible.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/07/12/3701770/alaska-gov-sean-parnell-might.html#storylink=cpy

[glasater]

Guys like Jaime Dimon and Blankfein are going to run rings around regulators.
Why the NY Fed changed staff at such a critical time in the on-going events is something I would really like to know about.

[Jim Ryan]

Liberals think blacks are incompetent. (For a recent example, consider that liberals think nothing of maintaining that blacks cannot be expected to produce ID at a polling place.) Liberals think that blacks need white authoritarians in government who will give them wealth transfers, and they believe this coincidentally with feeling a strong desire to be those very authoritarians in government. Their bigotry fits hand in glove with their lust for power.

[narciso]

Well they did the same with W, and Harken Energy, so it shows 'he's over the target'

[Chubby]

forgive me, totally off topic--

I like this simple recipe a lot, and hope you do too:

Tarragon Chicken Salad

2 cups cooked chicken, cut into cubes
1/4 cup mayo
2 tablespoons chopped fresh tarragon
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup (or more) small, sweet, seedless grapes (if you use large grapes, cut them in half.)

Mix chicken, mayo and tarragon.
Salt and pepper to taste.
Fold in the grapes.

Yum.

[centralcal]

This sounds really promising:

Can Americans discern between the “dreams” of President Obama and those of the Founding Fathers? The makers of the upcoming documentary film “2016: Obama’s America” hope so. “I’ve got a strong desire to defend against the changes in our culture, our life, our laws, our freedom. We now have someone in office who has professed a desire for change, and this has disturbed me,” producer Gerald R. Molen tells Inside the Beltway.

Mr. Molen, 77, is the Hollywood heavyweight and Oscar-winning producer behind “Schindler’s List,” “Rain Man,”and “Jurassic Park” among many other blockbusters. But he prefers life in Montana to that in Tinseltown, and as a former U.S. Marine, he has a strong memory of a traditional, cheerful, can-do America. He’s also not too keen on Mr. Obama’s penchant to “go around Congress,” among other things.

“We don’t have an imperial presidency. He’s not the king,” Mr. Molen says.

[NK]

Narc/MelR- I took a look at Drudge's links to the leaving Bain 'felonies'. The concepts of fact and truth are completely foreign to Axelrod. Even Kessler,WaPo's fact checker, is dismissive and telling Axelrod the Bain dog won't hunt. But Kessler is talking facts, and they mean nothing to Axelrod. What a c@%*-s*&%#er Axelrod is. MelR hasn't been exagerating.

[Chubby]

((Story out there that iBama campaign now says Romney committed felony, while at Bain.))

it sounds like desperate innuendo to me, which makes them so eminently deserving of being ignominiously kicked out of office

[Manuel Transmission]

Well, it's finally official, we have become a 3rd world exotic stopping off point for cruise ships. That pretty much confirms the state of our economy up here.

As a result, I've started to encourage the locals to show up at the dock (where the shuttles arrive) in their finest native costumes and set up kiosks to sell trinkets. It is certainly better than the current malaise we are suffering from.

ps. That ship is the World, which is apparently one of those floating condo operations.

[NK]

MT-- which harbor is that?-- pretty coastline

[narciso]

Is everyone responsible for every transaction:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=conewsstory&refer=conews&tkr=JPM:US&sid=aXKdXtqVavak

[Chubby]

imo, they are overestimating the amount of pestilent bs they can spread, and that will hurt them more than it hurts Romney

[MarkO]

Musberger said as much this morning on ESPN. Saint Joe has fallen.

[Jane - Get off the couch your country needs you!]

Chubby,

I agree, I think that dog has stopped hunting. One can only image what they will cook up for Nov.

As of today, the sitting president presiding over a country which is close to failing, has proposed "not changing the tax code for the middle class", as his entire vision. And he can't even get that to a vote.

BTW today when I referred to Dick as a democrat he loudly rebelled and said that wasn't true.

[Extraneus]

He's in a pretty hot place right now, for a saint.

[MarkO]

I think Sandusky needs to meet new and interesting friends in jail. The other 3 should be indicted for conspiracy and join him in the showers.

[Jim,MtnView,Ca,USA]

LI also covers the new Bain charges. Appears to be no there there.
http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/07/boston-globe-repackages-its-2002-romney-bain-ceo-story-as-breaking-news/

[MarkO]

Bob Bauer? Does he still have a law license? How is that possible? Bill Clinton and both Obamas don't. Is it just an oversight?

Just think of that: Clinton and both Obamas surrendered their bar licenses.

[NK]

OT-- I've read comments today damning Joe Paterno to hell for-- well whatever reason-- and yet --I believe-- some of those same commenters-- describe GZ -- someone who is not a public figure and they probably know nothing about-- as a complete victim of circumstance, completely innocent of any bad judgment, and exempt from second guessing. I find that bizarre.

[narciso]

I know it's 'tree falling in a forest' and in this case, it was a smart a move as going on the 'Daily Trainwreck'

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matt-hadro/2012/07/12/cnn-gushes-over-bidens-reception-democrat-friendly-naacp

[boatbuilder]

For those of you outside New England, the Boston Globe makes the NYT look like the Wall St. Journal. They are far left, completely in the tank for the Democrat machine (both local and national) and entirely without ethics.
Great sports pages, though.

[centralcal]

Haven't read the L.I. Bain piece, but Drudge links this in Politico:

Bain Capital sends the following statement, following today's Boston Globe article reporting that MItt Romney was CEO there until 2002:

Mitt Romney left Bain Capital in February 1999 to run the Olympics and has had absolutely no involvement with the management or investment activities of the firm or with any of its portfolio companies since the day of his departure. Due to the sudden nature of Mr. Romney's departure, he remained the sole stockholder for a time while formal ownership was being documented and transferred to the group of partners who took over management of the firm in 1999. Accordingly, Mr. Romney was reported in various capacities on SEC filings during this period."

[NK]

Boston Globe is still owned by the NY Times Co., no?

[RichatUF]

Jane-

dudu is still taking it out for a hunt. come on dudu, freshen up the latest talking points.

Now off to read Clarice's piece.

[NK]

CC@2:28-- and I believe Kessler in WaPo 'fact checked' and found that the explanation Bain gave was disclosed in Bain SEC filings during the 1999-2002 period. This is complete BS. the failed Bain deals in the 200-2001 recession were not Romney's, and his lack of operational involvment was fully disclosed to Bain investors and regulators. Truth and fact mean nothing to Axelrod or the NY Times Co.

[narciso]

And they are in turn supported by a Mexican oligarch, Carlos Slim, which the original
bailout, back in '1994, helped save and expand his fortune,

[dublindave]

((Story out there that iBama campaign now says Romney committed felony, while at Bain.))

Dear oh dear,you righties certainly can pick'em.A Democratic President presiding over an economy on the brink and your candidate is the one defending his financhial record.

Well,looks like Swiss Mitt will have to spend the next two weeks proving when he exited a company that offshored American jobs.When he's finished with that, he'll have to spend another few weeks refusing to show his tax returns.

As far as defining the candidate goes, it's game set and match.

Next time don't chose an imbicile to run for President.

[matt]

Does JPM announce earnings before or after the bell tomorrow?

[NK]

Monkey see, monkey do: somebody called DD an imbecile last night -- rightly so. Now DD has appropriated that word-- I love that word, and DD truly is definitely an imbecile. I wonder if DD researched the definition? (can he read?)

[dublindave]

Monkey see, monkey do: somebody called DD an imbecile last night --

No,they didn't.

NK lies again.

[narciso]

Now whats' the line re Geithner, first is accident, second, Lehman Bros, coincidence, third, Libor is enemy action,

[RichatUF]

Clarice-

Great article. I'm licking my chops like Wile E. Coyote.

[NK]

Carlos Slim-- it is a small world. Rubin smashes the moral hazard rubicon with the mexican Bondholder bailout-- and by definiton bails out Carlos Slim. NYT hails the financial genius of Rubin, Clinton and Greenspan for doing the bail out. In 2009, Carlos Slim bails out Pinch Sulzberger, but in the process makes 14% on the $250M loan(in a ZIRP world) and becomes a major shareholder in the NYT Co. Since then NYT business has only gotten worse, and someday --soon-- Slim will drop the hammer on Pinch and sell the NYT Company's bones in the marketplace. Who played whom here?

[jimmyk]

Mitt Romney left Bain Capital in February 1999 to run the Olympics and has had absolutely no involvement with the management or investment activities of the firm or with any of its portfolio companies since the day of his departure.

At the risk of repeating myself, the stronger response is to defend capitalism, and say that unlike Obama, Bain was saving jobs by trying to keep companies in business and make them more productive and efficient. The tone here is as if there was some kind of criminal activity going on.

On a lighter note, yesterday was "Manhattanhenge"! (Not sure why the press has started making a big deal out of this twice/year event, but it makes for some cool pictures.)