“Never Again” Laws

Public outcries and politicians looking for gut-wrenching issues upon which they can ride a fast horse to reelection are usually a bad mix. Easy to get the laws passed, but often difficult to undo the longer-term damage of sending too many people to “graduate-level crime schools” – we call them “penitentiaries” or “ prisons,” accelerating gang membership, which long survives the sentences of those eventually released, and providing thousands of hours of free instruction is scamming, stealing, dealing, hurting and killing. Angry and bitter incarcerated prisoners, their ability to get post-prison solid employment decimated enough by a bad economy is all but gone, don’t make for a safer society. That the United States has about 5% of the earth’s population and one quarter of the world’s prison population should tell you we a re most certainly doing something wrong.

With the cost of prison running between $30,000 and $45,000 a year per prisoner, and with state and federal budgets strained beyond the breaking point, the cost of sending people behind bars for longer and often unwarranted periods is no longer a tolerable burden. States are busy reexamining the definition of “habitual criminals” under the oh-so-popular-when-they-were-passed “three strikes and you’re out” statutes, where a relatively petty property crime often triggered the same result as an armed robbery – a third strike was a third strike. Socking the taxpayers with ever-increasing costs associated with incarceration was fine in prosperous times, but under a tight economic reality, we can no longer afford the difference.

Pre-2007, when the U.S. Supreme Court restored some sentencing discretion to federal judges, conviction of possessing 5 grams of crack cocaine were the same as possessing 500 grams of cocaine in its pure form, an anomaly that Congress is addressing as it considers revising its statutes. People with five grams of crack were getting ten year mandatory sentences for first offenses, while criminals with 495 grams of cocaine were getting vastly shorter penalties.

Sexual predator laws – especially involving children – are almost always automatic with any legislature. Take the name of the victim – Megan, Jessica, Amber, etc. – add a horrific sexually-linked criminal activity, and there isn’t a legislator worse his/her salt that could ever vote against the result. Common sense told legislators and voters alike that keeping these predators from living anywhere near where children congregate was absolutely essential.

Jessica Lunsford was a 9-year-old Florida girl who was raped and murdered 150 yards from her home. Deny the opportunity, the reasonable assumption would be a decrease in these heinous crimes. Jessica’s Law was born, carried across state legislatures like a legal tsunami. But no one actually asked if the underlying assumption – a statutorily mandated distance between convicted sex offenders’ homes and children – actually made any difference. No one really questioned how these statutes could be enforced, what the consequences might be and what the associated costs were likely to approach.

The March 14^th Los Angeles Times addressed these concerns: “A January report by the [California’s] Sexual Offender Management Board portrayed the effect of Jessica's Law as difficult to determine at best, and wrong-headed at worst… The requirement that offenders live away from children has required many to stay away from their own relatives or to become homeless -- both instances of instability that put them "at increased risk of re-offense,’ the report said… The report also challenged the premise of the law's residency restrictions…‘The hypothesis that sex offenders who live in close proximity to schools, parks and other places children congregate have an increased likelihood of sexually re-offending remains unsupported by research,’ the report said. ‘On the contrary . . . there is alm ost no correlation between sex offenders living near restricted areas and where they commit their offenses.’”

Clearly, we need solid statutes and appropriate penalties for criminal activity, but these cannot be born where legislatures are riding populist emotional trends with no real information upon which to base their “convictions.” Leadership is precisely that: leading… not following a momentarily popular anger with a statute that not only fails to fix the problem, but leads the population into a false sense of safety, satisfies a need for vengeance but presses taxpayer burdens well beyond any possible justification.

The majority of American criminal activity is drug-related. The majority of those in prison can link their incarceration directly to narcotics, yet drugs proliferate more than ever, gang-related turf wars and killings are almost all related to control of drug trafficking and tough laws with long sentences, for users and dealers alike, have done little to restore the peace and stability that the statutes were intended to create. These are thugs and violent criminals with little concern for “civilian” lives, but the tough laws surrounding drug use have made their “trade” economically viable. They are paid not so much for the distribution of drugs but for their willingness to defy the law at any cost.

In the end, regardless of the criminal statute or the anticipated sanctions, there needs to be a balance between the harm to society, the cost of prosecution and incarceration, and our willingness to pay the hard dollar cost for our decisions. It would seem that in harsh economic times, it might well be worthwhile if our legislatures actually considered more cost-effective alternatives to ever-increasing incarceration.

I’m Peter Dekom, and common sense is elusive when you are angry.

Recalibrating Our Future

The Obama administration believes the direct unemployment rate for 2010 will pretty much stay around 10% (it’s officially 9.7% now) and will even ride at a high 7+% well into 2013. That doesn’t even take into consideration the “alternative measurement” of under employed folks – people who have given up looking for jobs but want to work and part-timers still fighting for full time – 16.8% nationally, but well over 20% in the hardest hit states.

With growth capital in the form of bank loans to small and mid-sized business nowhere in sight, particularly as local banks deal with the massive defaults expected in commercial real estate, most businesses are realizing that their long-term employment needs require some serious downsizing. The March 15^th DailyFinance.com: “‘There are a lot of industries that are recalibrating how much output they can produce and how many people they can employ,’ says Christopher Woock, research associate at the Conference Board who co-authored a recent report on the labor market's recovery from the current recession. ‘There is going to be some significant reallocation of workers across industries, and so we are going to have this period when people are going to have to reassess and find employment opportunities in other industries.’”

Fewer workers not only generates lower consumer spending – which has a further negative pull on business growth – but generally, the tax base suffers as the unemployment benefits skyrocket and drag on for years. Almost 41% of our nation’s unemployed have been jobless for over 26 weeks… 6.1 million out of the total 14.8 million unemployed. Most of these folks aren’t going back to their former jobs and many might not even find work in the industry they left.

“‘Unemployment benefits are a big driver of the budget deficit,’ says Brian Bethune, chief financial economist at IHS Global Insight… Bethune said that from October 2009 through the end of February 2010, the government spent $114.9 billion on all unemployment benefits. During the same period in the previous fiscal year, the government spent $37.7 billion. ‘If we continue to spend at that rate, for the full year we would be close to $250 billion.’” Daily.Finance.com. Sure we see momentary increases in consumer spending, but the elephant in the room is that medium and even long-term trends don’t forecast any material increase in that consumer number. As far as average net worth also impacts consumer confidence, a vital precursor to increase consumer spending, the lack of credit also has put a lid on any significant increase in the housing market – if anything, we should see an increasing number of home values fall well below their mortgage loads.

The bigger question is, of course, whether this economic collapse is covering up a bigger shift in economic power from the Western world to Asia. The March 15^th New York Times reports that the overall credit ratings of major Western powers could easily fall: “Major Western economies have moved ‘substantially’ closer to losing their top-notch credit ratings, with the United States and Britain under the most pressure, Moody’s Investors Service said Monday in a reminder that the global debt crisis is not limited to the small or weak…The ratings of the Aaa governments — which also include Germany, France, Spain and the Nord ic countries — are currently ‘stable,’ Moody’s analysts wrote in the report. But, it added, ‘their ‘distance-to-downgrade’ has in all cases substantially diminished’.”

China – the big winner in the economic wars – is definitely feeling her national oats. She has pushed back against Google’s attempt to relax censorship rules, defied U.S. pressure to allow her currency to increase in value against the dollar and generally asserted her independence from any major policy shifts requested by the West. The March 15^th Washington Post: “China's government has embraced an incre asingly anti-Western tone in recent months and is adopting policies across a wide spectrum that reflect a heightened fear of foreign influence… The shift has accelerated as China has emerged stronger from the global financial meltdown, with a world-beating economic expansion rate and a growing nationalist movement. China has long felt bullied by the West, and its stronger stance is challenging the long-held assumption shared among Western and Chinese businessmen, academics and government officials that a more powerful and prosperous China would be more positively inclined toward Western values and systems.

“China's shift is occurring throughout society, and is reflected in government policy and in a new attitude toward the West. Over the past year, the government of President Hu Jintao has rolled back market-oriented reforms by encouraging China's state-owned enterprises to forcibly buy private firms. In the past weeks, China announced plans to force Western companies to turn over their most sensitive technology and patents to Chinese competitors in exchange for access to the country's markets.”

In the end, the only sure thing is that life in the U.S. will be different and probably downsized for the foreseeable future. That our politicians are seemingly irretrievably fractionalized and unable to grapple with the long-term realities that affect us all does not augur well for the survival of this powerful democracy through these trying times. Unless we all work together, perhaps what we are really going to see is the “beginning of the end.” I, for one, would like to think I’ve left my son and his children with a better world and a powerful long-term country called the United States of America.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the worst thing we can do for our future is fight each other.

Not too Big to Flail

On September 15, 2008, Lehman Bros. failed and began the market collapse that, to this day, is nowhere near “recovered.” In fact, serious economic soothsayers predict economic fall, part two, as the economy sputters under the weight of European defaults in countries like Greece and Spain, commercial real estate failures here in the United States, stagnant unemployment and abysmal housing values.

After the big fall, and amid the “bailout” and “stimulus” frenzy, legislators ran amok telling us how there were going to impose new regulations so that such a colossal economic malaise could never be caused by the same variables again. European leaders and American officials all rallied for a global consistency of financial regulation that would prevent financial miscreants from fomenting their destructive avarice from friendly, look-the-other-way nations. Those vestiges of those that were “too big to fail” but failed anyway – Lehman, Bearn Stearns, GM, Chrysler, Merrill and AIG – can look at the “new world” in which there is not a whole lot more regulatory oversight than was there when they fell. It took the House of Representatives 15 months from the Lehman fall to propose any materially relevant regulatory legislation . The Senate hasn’t done it yet! Connecticut Senate Democrat, Chris Dodd (not-so-coincidentally Senate Banking Committee Chairman), has just released his personal view of what Congress needs to pass. A “compromise,” he calls it. Needless to say, there isn’t a single Republican in favor of his proposal, and with the filibuster rules very much in play, the lack of Republican support is fatal.

After lots of rhetoric to the contrary, the Republicans realized that any profound, far-reaching financial regulatory legislation would of necessity have to come from the majority party in power… and apparently, the GOP has decided that they will back no significant new laws proffered by the Democrats. So their solution to making sure these horrific financial miscalculations never happen again? Don’t change the laws, just go with what you’ve got and let the existing agencies simply do a better job of prevention… with no new laws, empowerment or guidelines. The Democrats want lots of new agencies – additional layers of bureaucracy that send shivers down the backs of those who lean towards the lean… government that is.

For example, much of the turmoil is over the creation of a consumer protection agency… a government bureau whose sole mandate is protecting Mr. and Mrs. Average American from predatory financial practices and self-dealing mega-financial institutions that pushed over-borrowing and absurd business practices on an gullible and unsophisticated public. Dodd suggests that as a compromise, consumer protection would be ceded to the Federal Reserve, an institution whose primary duty is support of the banking industry (just a slight conflict of interest) and which under both chairmen, Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, who were in the regulatory mix as this economy overheated without any serious intervention by the Fed. Greenspan and Bernanke sat and watched banks borrow themselves silly and did nothing about it. The agency, under the Fed, would theor etically be “independent” and “autonomous” but then why would anyone believe that it should be a part of the quasi-governmental body dedicated to the protection of banks?

Europeans seem to be almost as reluctant to regulate their financial world as well… other than to ban the American-style hedge fund/private equity and other forms of “alternative investment” vehicles from their shores, killing off a huge financial sector in the U.K. (which is home to approximately 70% of such funds in Europe) and effectively banning a very large segment of the American financial industry from playing in the European yard (particularly since we have no real plans to add new regulations to these instruments), although the final decision has yet to be made. “The new law, when completed, could block foreign funds from Europe if they don't face tight oversight at home.” March 16^th NY Times. Gone are those promises of regulatory congruency with the United States and other major international regulatory bodies. Gone is the uniformity of commitment from the industrialized world to stop these financial machinations from infecting our global economy once again. The lobbying power of big business and bigger finance has spoken!

And no one, I mean no one, seems happy with Dodd’s proposals. Big business hates the thought of a powerful consumer protection agency, and consumer groups hate the idea of putting that agency under the Fed: “The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has led the charge against a consumer agency, called Dodd's proposal ‘an unfortunate step backward.’… And on the other side, Consumers Union said it had problems with Dodd's plan to allow the council of regulators to veto the consumer board’s decisions…. Dodd has been a fierce critic of the Fed and had proposed last fall to strip it of its consumer and bank regulatory authority. But in his latest draft, the Fed fared much better than analysts had predicted a few months ago. .. ‘Their track record is unbelievably horrible and particularly horrible on consumers, ’ said Bill Black, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and former regulator who cracked down on banks during the savings and loan crisis in the 1980s. ‘It's an extraordinary thing that they serve so inadequately.’” The March 15^th Los Angeles Times. Further, by taking over this consumer-protection function, the Fed’s power would be concentrated in their main offices in New York and Washington at the expense of the regional branches of the Fed, which also seems to depart from the notion that the Fed should be as free of governmental influences (andWashington) as possible in the creation and implementation of its policies.

Dodd spoke the truth when he said: “Let me be clear: We are still vulnerable to another crisis… It is certainly time to act.” But maybe it’s not his “compromise” that does the trick. At least Dodd is trying. But if you think that that the laws that existed on September 15, 2008 are more than adequate to prevent another economic crisis from decimating the United States by reason of the same behavior from Wall Street, then doing nothing is the prudent path. But then, you’d have to ignore the post-bailout behavior of bonus hungry traders creating new derivatives betting that Greece will fail on its credit obligations, making Greece pay even higher rates of interest and falling deeper into the abyss. Add Spain, Portugal…. Oh, did you know the United States is on that list? Want to support a trading industry that is willing to bet against their own country to make money? One that sold mortgage bundles to one group of investors and then created derivatives that made money when those mortgage bundles defaulted? Yeah, well, you might want to mention that to the people you voted into Congress last time around.

I’m Peter Dekom, and sometimes the brightest people do the most incredibly stupid things!

Tense with the Tenth

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

10^th Amendment to the Constitution

As the federal government has used its control over interstate commerce in addition to the other specific empowerments of the Constitution to rise above and preempt state law and policy, states have railed in rebellion, often with limited success. The battle lines formed almost as soon as our Bill of Rights (which contains the 10^th Amendment) passed centuries ago. Sometimes federal money for state projects is conditioned on adopting federal compliance standards. The realities we take for granted, federal income tax, environmental protection, the mandate that State’s contribute to Medicaid, educational standards, etc. are all born of this struggle. But with 39 states facing significant fiscal deficits and the plethora of federal legislation and compulsory legislation, the rebellion by states against the federal government appears to be resurfacing.

The evidence of this rebellion are everywhere, according to the March 17, 2010 New York Times. Utah and Oklahoma are proposing statutes to exempt them from participating in any federally mandated healthcare plan. On March 17^th, Idaho Republican Gov. C.L. ‘Butch’ Otter, a Republican, signed a bill requiring the state attorney general to sue the federal government if Idaho residents are forced to buy health insurance. 37 other states have bills like this pending on their dockets. Utah is also considering legislation that would allow the state to seize federal land under its eminent domain statutes. Wyoming and South Dakota passed laws exempting guns manufactured and used within their states from federal firearms legislation. Washington, Alabama and Tennessee are looking as possibly amending their state constitutions to denote their local police powers as superior to any police powers asserted by the federal government. Rhode Island, Vermont and Wisconsin, objecting to the use of their National Guard in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, are looking at potential laws bringing back those state troops under their local state control. Similar legislation is pending in 37 other states.

Whether the concern is with big federal spending and massive new federal programs, which the Tea Party movement seems hell-bent on challenging, or taking local Guard volunteers into unpopular wars, there are movements left, right and center aiming to curb federal power. But this is battle that states seldom win in this modern world. “[Many] scholars say the state efforts, if pursued in the courts, would face formidable roadblocks. Article 6 of the Constitution says federal authority outranks state authority, and on that bedrock of federalist p rinciple rests centuries of back and forth that states have mostly lost, notably the desegregation of schools in the 1950s and ’60s… ‘Article 6 says that that federal law is supreme and that if there’s a conflict, federal law prevails,’ said Prof. Ruthann Robson, who teaches constitutional law at the City University of New York School of Law. ‘It’s pretty difficult to imagine a way in which a state could prevail on many of these.’”

We have the these fights forming at the strangest levels. California recognizes medical marijuana laws but the fed doesn’t, so you had the anomalous result of DEA and FBI officers busting state-sanctioned medical marijuana dispensaries… until a directive from the Obama administration moved away from federal enforcement. The fed often use big sticks to force states to adhere to federal standard. Refuse to impose federal speed limits on your roads? OK, no federal money in your state for highways, etc. Won’t apply federal educational standards to your schools… there goes the federal contribution to public schools in your district.

Is this (i) resurgence in support of states’ rights over those of the federal government combined with (ii) the literal split of the Congress (particularly the Senate) with an apparently Republican immoveable voting block effectively stopping the federal government from passing any new major legislation without that minority approval a sign that the United States is breaking apart, ceasing to function as a government? Or is this just a phase that will pass as the economy improves? What’s your opinion?

I’m Peter Dekom, trying to read the tea leaves and coffee grounds.

Drugging America’s Interns & Residents

The global pharmaceutical business is bigger than some nations’ entire GDP! They play high-stakes poker in a world where finding the new medical silver bullet spells a massive surge in sales, sky-rocketing stock pricing and unbelievable bonuses to those involved in the chain of revenue generation. Given the billions of dollars spent on research, it is little wonder that disclosing and explaining “side effects” to miracle drugs has spawned an entirely new generation of doctors with public relations jobs. Spin. Marketing. Curving bad results into just minor bumps along the road. Intimidating influential medical professionals who dispute the claims of big drug companies, cutting off research grants, influencing academic tenure decisions, and making life living hell for the academic practitioners who “get in the way” of a new miracle d rug… and proving grants and funds for those who cooperate.

The stories that came out of Merck’s Vioxx campaign are the stuff of legends… a campaign of fighting tooth and nail against doctors who pointed out the cardiac problems (that were taking an increasing number of lives) in the battle to prove that the new cox-2 inhibitors – like Vioxx and Pfizer’s Celebrex – were miracle arthritis drugs with no real side effects… except for an increased likelihood of death, it turns out. Vioxx is no longer with us, and most knowledgeable doctors are wary of this entire category of drugs these days. But how do the pharmas get away with crushing the negative but accurate information discovered by seemingly impartial academics just doing their jobs? Money, of course.

Let’s just take one example of how pervasive big pharma money is in one of the most basic units of medical education, the arena where doctors narrow their focus into their specialties, the critical years(s) of residency. According to the February 22^nd Archives of Internal Medicine report, entitled Pharmaceutical Industry Support and Residency Education, which polled the directors of varying hospitals’ residency programs to see how much pharma money was used in support: “In all, 236 program directors (61.9%) responded to the survey. Of these, 132 (55.9%) reported accepting support from the pharmaceutical industry. One hundred seventy of the 236 program directors (72.0%) expressed the opinion that pharmaceutical support is not desirable. Residency programs were less likely to receive pharmaceutical support when the program director held the opinion that industry support was not acceptable (odds ratio [OR], 0.07; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.02-0.22). Programs located in the southern United States were more likely to accept pharmaceutical support... The American Board of Internal Medicine pass rate was inversely associated with acceptance of industry support: each 1% decrease in the pass rate was associated with a 21% increase in the odds of accepting industry support…”

Look, the residency programs need the money, and the doctors need the residency programs. Medical schools are equally unlikely to turn down massive grants for academic positions and research, and medical periodicals, the ones that accept advertising, are unlikely to turn away drug companies from buying space. Yet look at the incredible conflict of interest inherent in this process. In the last administration, there was an official policy of populating the highest reaches of the FDA, Health and Human Services, etc. with personnel whose most recent jobs included representing big drug companies in their efforts to promulgate new drugs and stifle criticism. The policy of government de-regulation actually included pulling dedicated government professional off the path of verifying drug company claims and possible inaccurate data submitted in support of various new pharmaceuticals.

The area of pharma support for the medical profession, and the educational process that is a necessary part of that profession, requires balancing. But most of all, it requires an uninhibited and free press, doctors who are not afraid to speak the truth and government regulators whose job it is to keep the public safe. If any one of those arenas is compromised, the people who trust the medical system will pay with the quality of their lives, if not their actual lives. And if there were ever a place I want government to be my advocate, a patient’s advocate, it is in the arena of pharmaceutical influence over my life.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.

Give Credit Where Credit is Due

Without an increase in consumer spending, the “recovery” remains nothing more than a misused word to most Americans. Even the devious derelict denizens of Wall Street understand that continued “growth” (even under their definition) requires a fundamental change in this consumer trend, but since there are no clear signs that this reality is likely anytime soon – and the underlying negative job numbers are unlikely to change for the significant good for a very long time – the big financial institutions make money the old fashioned way: they continue to create derivatives that bet against success (like the credit default swaps on national debt in struggling economies overseas, which only makes those countries pay more interest and suffer more) and press for greater increases in productivity (read: more layoffs).

The factors underlying consumer spending, mostly related to consumer confidence and available consumer money to spend, suggest that breaking this consumer trend is going to be anything but easy. First, even Americans with money are spending their cash very, very carefully, and the big crash may have reset spending patterns for decades. Caution has replaced lifestyle as a motivator, and the fact that there may be a recession, part 2, as commercial real estate defaults take down an increasing number of local and regional banks, doesn’t help. Second, since the over-use of credit (leveraging) got us into this mess, lending institutions – feeling pressure from their shareholders and government regulators – have seriously tightened their credit requirements; most people and companies simply cannot qualify, even if money for this purpose were available.

There’s another huge credit elephant in the room, and a definite Catch-22 in the lending markets. Securitization. The old credit bundle (definitely a derivative!) – where financial institutions aggregated one form of debt or another (mortgages, credit card debt, car loans – you name it, they bundled them) into financial instruments and then sold them in the open “securitization” market (the so-called “asset-backed securities” – or ABS – market; “mortgage-backed securities” – or MBS – is a subcategory) to willing investors… like Bear Stearns, Lehman Bros and more than a few pension funds. This process allowed banks to move the debts off their books and free up loan money to lend again. And so the process rolled along. According to the March 8^th The Deal.com: “ [B]y the markets’ height in 2006, U.S. new issuance in mortgage-backed and asset-backed securities totaled $2.172 trillion, according to Dealogic… According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, ABS markets funded almost 66% of all residential U.S. mortgages by mid-2008 and about 25% of non-mortgage consumer credit.”

Well with federal regulators breathing down their necks, notwithstanding President Obama’s mandate that recipients of TARP money were bailed out to restart the consumer and small/mid-sized business credit market, and the inability to sell off any loans they make (they literally have to keep the risk and have vastly less money to lend) into the derivatives marketplace, local lenders are clearly not likely to change the their unwillingness to lend absent some very big indications to the contrary. Defaults are not longer the problems of those who purchased the debt bundles; they now remain the lending banks’ risk. And with commercial real estate loans about to tank the balance sheets of many banks, the prospects of opening up their lending coffers appear to be bleak. 2009 may have represented the greatest lending contraction in decades, but 2010 doesn’t shine even the faintest light of change in this process. Fundamentally, the ABS and MBS markets are pretty much dead in the water. “The federal government recognized early in the crisis that reviving securitization was key to stabilizing the financial system. That's why the Federal Reserve created the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, or TALF…” The Deal.com But that program was only a modest success, insufficient to solve a very, very big problem… and it expires sequentially over the next few months.

So you’re the government, and lending – in a society that is now based on available credit – has never fallen so severely. We have pressure from the international community, particularly China (our largest creditor nation), to stop borrowing so much, especially the U.S. government which has incurred game-changing deficits to cope with this economic collapse. The collapsed economy has also taken companies and individuals that might have been good credit risks a few years ago and put them in a much riskier category, if they would qualify on any basis at all. The unregulated ABS and MBS marketplace help accelerate our financial demise like good ice under a speed-skater’s skates, but without ABS and MBS markets, there are exceptionally limited resources to restart the credit markets again.

So we want more available credit, but we don’t want banks to make risky loans. We want more money to flow to consumers and small and mid-sized businesses, but they are either in the process of getting out of debt or simply don’t qualify anymore. We want strict regulation of the derivatives marketplace, but we want “never again” regulation of these markets to prevent a recurrence of past failures. What you are seeing here is obvious: a pendulum of inconsistencies. We’re seeking balance. All this takes time. Congress, for example, is considering rules that would require banks to retain some risk in bundled lending derivatives so that they cannot escape responsibility for their lending decisions.

And right now, the little guy is getting screwed where credit is absolutely needed. The March 9^th DailyFinance.com: “Millions of Americans today are facing the worst money problems imaginable, but these same conditions are creating flush times for pawn shops and so-called payday lenders. As banks slashed their lending and jacked up fees on overdrafts and bounced checks and as credit card issuers made credit harder and more expensive to get, the number of people walking into a pawnshop or a payday-loan store has skyrocketed.” Payday loan fees, literally charging an effective annual interest rate of 400-500%, and pawn brokers, whose practices aren’t fundamentally different, used to be the place for those at the bottom of the economic spectrum – the poor get poorer – but today, D ailyFinance.com points out, big payday companies are finding half their borrowers have annual incomes of at least $50,000, and 20% make more than $75,000. Last month, a bi-partisan Congressional effort scaled back proposed consumer protection legislation to create and enforce rules against payday lenders; it seems their lobbying efforts and campaign contributions were simply “too big to refuse.” Somehow, the marketplace needs to find middle ground, but when will that occur?

Nevertheless, trend lines are clear; there will be a securitization marketplace in the future, but the rules of necessity will make it much smaller than in the past: “Not everyone thinks this is a terrible idea. Anders Maxwell, a managing director at investment bank Peter J. Solomon Co., says that the re-emergence of securitization in any strong form would be ‘really shocking.’ He argues that over the years securitization created a system where actual lenders to many credit card users, home-buyers and even corporate high-yield borrowers were not banks themselves but investors in the securities, including insurance companies, foreign banks, pension funds and, in increasing numbers, hedge funds. This is the much-­derided ‘shadow banking system’ that until recently existed largely out side regulators' purview. ‘It's a completely unregulated market,’ says Maxwell. ‘And it's proven to be a disaster.’” The Deal.com (March 8^th)

As the government literally works at cross-purposes against itself, there will be movement in that pendulum, from way-overleveraged unrealistic “too big to fail” assumptions to a shriveling up of the entire lending structure. We will wind up in the middle… until Wall Street finds another bubble cow to milk!

I’m Peter Dekom, and this is really complicated stuff!

America’s Net Gain

With slightly above 74% Internet penetration, the United States is a lowly 19^th place among nations as to Web access, falling behind countries like Bermuda, Greenland and S. Korea. Hey, we invented the damned Web! Accelerating high-speed Internet penetration has been a goal by the Obama administration since the campaign for the Presidency began. So here’s a basic question for you: What’s more important in the hierarchy of American mass communications and media: telephone, television or Internet? It is part of the socio-cultural paradigm shift that is literally transforming the world.

With telephone access virtually universal in the U.S., cheap and affordable, and television being pretty close – even with the new digital broadcast model replacing the older analog system that ended on June 12 of last year – the question remains as to the relevance of high-speed Internet access. Can you function in modern America without that access? What happens to children who have very limited access to the Web when they enter the work world? Can you live without television or the telephone if you have Internet access? Clearly, there are lots of folks who are addicted to television programming who don’t have a television. They can receive most of their favorite films and TV shows, even library material, via the worldwide Web, from iTunes or Netflix for downloads, Hulu or even the Websites of their favorite networks, to name a few. They can even Skype their way into the telephone networks. But if all they have is traditional television and a telephone, they most certainly cannot browse, email or engage in modern social networking.

Do you see the storm clouds forming? The Obama administration is trying to open bandwidth, let more people communicate through the Web, and create new technological values – like instant access to your healthcare records for medical professionals (vital in emergency situations) – from this new interconnectivity. Ubiquitous and affordable access. Telecasters are fighting to hold on to the bandwidth they have been accorded – even those little spots where they aren’t currently using it. Common carriers/Internet Service Providers/cable systems are fighting for the right to limit excessive use of their wires and wireless airways, prioritizing who gets what level of access, in order to foster more commercial (revenue-generating) uses. They even point to how some of the biggest users are content pirates, who violate copyrights with little c oncern for the economic consequences. These two objectives – controlled versus open access – are almost mutually exclusive, and guess who has the big lobbying money to press their case?

The issue generally falls under the rubric of “net neutrality,” in which the Internet is either a toll road controlled by the bigger interests or a freeway open to all without limits. The Obama administration has answered the question in my opening paragraph with a clear emphasis on Internet access as more important than telephone or television. The March 13^th New York Times: “The Federal Communications Commission is proposing an ambitious 10-year plan that will re-imagine the nation’s media and technology priorities by establishing high-speed Internet as the country’s dominant communication network… The blueprint reflects the government’s view that broadband Internet is becoming the common medium of the United States, gradually displacing the telephone and broadcast television industries. It also signals a shift at the F.C.C., which under the administration of President George W. Bush gained more attention for policing indecency on the television airwaves than for promoting Internet access... According to F.C.C. officials briefed on the plan, the commission’s recommendations will include a subsidy for Internet providers to wire rural parts of the country now without access, a controversial auction of some broadcast spectrum to free up space for wireless devices, and the development of a new universal set-top box that connects to the Internet and cable service.” Between pressures to reduce the deficit and the intense lobbying efforts of the big telecommunications companies, this threatens to be a long, drawn-out struggle between competing values.

The March 11^th Time Magazine gives us another reason the big telecommunications companies are scared of bandwidth upgrades: “[W]ith the exception of Verizon and its FiOS program, the U.S. bandwidth industry has been reluctant to go beyond its copper wires. For one thing, upgrading to fiber is really expensive. For another, offering users massive Internet bandwidth can create a good reason for them to cancel cable and telephone services, because they would be able to get much of what they want from the Internet.” The title of the article says it all: “Bandwidth is the New Black Gold.”

The administration has staked out its position pretty clearly: “For much of the last year, Julius Genachowski, the F.C.C. chairman and the plan’s chief salesman, has laid the groundwork for the Congressionally mandated plan by asserting that the United States is lagging far behind other countries in broadband adoption and speed. About a third of Americans have no access to high-speed Internet service, cannot afford it or choose not to have it… In a speech last month, Mr. Genachowski observed that the country could build state-of-the-art computers and applications, but without equivalent broadband wiring, ‘it would be like having the technology for great electric cars, but terrible roads.’” The NY Times.

To the administration, “dial-up” access is almost tantamount to no access at all, and children in unwired classrooms are simply not ready to compete in a wired job environment. The big telecommunications companies claim that virtually open access to their pipes will slow down the Web, clog their systems and materially interfere with their ability to provide more mainstream content and services to their customers (coincidentally, where they make the big bucks). Where do you come down on this debate?

I’m Peter Dekom, and being here to watch these changes is fascinating… and a tad scary.

A Nation of Paupers

On the one hand, some folks are doing really well these days: “The number of U.S. households with a net worth of $1 million or more -- excluding wealth derived from a primary residence -- grew 16 percent last year, according to a new report by the Spectrem Group, a Chicago-based consulting firm. After a 27 percent decline in the number of millionaire households in 2008, the ranks of U.S. millionaires swelled to 7.8 million last year [it was 9.2 million in 2007, by the way]… And it was an even better year to be an ‘Ultra High Net Worth Individual,’ defined as someone with a net worth of $5 million or more. That population grew 17 percent in 2009 to 980,000.” Huffingtonpost.com (March 9^th). On the other hand, most of us aren’t.

The crash of 2008 took down a lot of companies and even more pension plans. The government stepped in on numerous occasions in the last two years to bailout failed pension plans insured under the fed’s ERISA statute, but almost always at a level that left impacted retirees at substantially less than their vested benefits. Those with private pension plans were hit even harder as 401(k) and IRA plans sank under a pile of failed investments and paltry interest returns on bonds, savings accounts and certificates of deposit… where total default was averted. While government retirees tend to have pretty generous plans, usually defined benefit plans (where you get a predetermined payout – often with a COL increase – regardless of the performance of the pension portfolio), most folks with retirement savings at all simply count on social security plus what they have been able to put away in one account or another. Most of us not fortunate to have a powerful union or a generous government have, at best, defined contribution plans that yield… whatever they yield at the time of retirement.

And there’s the problem. Many folks were counting on the “savings in their homes” to fund retirement, but today, so many homes are underwater (below their mortgage obligations) that this trusted source of retirement funding has all but vaporized for most. And what’s even worse, according to CNNMoney.com (March 9^th): “The percentage of American workers with virtually no retirement savings grew for the third straight year, according to a survey released [March 9^th]… The percentage of workers who said they have less than $10,000 in savings grew to 43% in 2010, from 39% in 2009, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute's annual Retirement Confidence Survey. That excludes the value of primary homes and defined-benefit pension plans [and you know those have value for a very few]… Workers who said they had less than $1,000 jumped to 27%, from 20% in 2009. Confidence in ability to save enough for a comfortable retirement hovered at 16% of respondents, the second lowest point in the 20-year history of the survey… The percentage of workers who said they have saved for retirement fell to 69%, from 75% in 2009.”

So there you have America’s recipe for disaster. Old folks with medical problems unable to retire, clinging to jobs that younger workers want… or falling off the financial cliff into a world of poverty they never imagined. Sustained pain (and deferred retirement) seems to be the lot of those lucky enough to be older workers… extreme sustained pain is what has happened to older workers laid off in this economy who are unlikely ever to work at a meaningful job ever again. With Medicare costs rising, Social Security checks are becoming less and less able to cover the cost of even the most modest retirement. With this economy lingering on “bad” for the next few years, conditions for most retirees can only get worse.

The government can reduce or eliminate taxation on monies locked into retirement accounts, at least within specified limits, to alleviate some of this difficult problem. They can eliminate the doughnut hole in prescription benefits for the elderly. I don’t see younger workers accepting horrific tax increases to pay for the old folks and reduce their own standard of living. But in the end, families just may have to learn how to support each other… just like in the old days… and most folks might just find that they will retire directly to their casket. Ouch! Golden years turned to coal.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I’m looking into a mirror.

We’re Number Two! We’re Number Two!

Pakistan pledges to help the United States in its quest for the nasty Taliban and al Qaeda fighters – the disruptors of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan – who have found solace and safe harbor within Pakistan’s borders. Their intelligence agency (the ISSI) even occasionally throws us a bone and delivers information that allows the very drone strikes they decry to hit an insurgent target in their Western Tribal District… or even arrests a nasty operative and hands them over to U.S. authorities. It looks nice on paper, but when you read about deep Taliban sympathies throughout the ISSI or the Pakistani military, or see recently “retired” senior Pakistani officers actively training Taliban forces in Pakistan, or recall how the father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, Dr. A.Q. Khan, transferred vital technology designs to Iran to enable the development of their nuclear capacity, well you begin to understand that the U.S. and NATO are very much alone in their quest to destabilize if not eliminate the Taliban from Central and South Asia.

Even when Taliban militants attack Pakistani forces in internal Pakistani-insurgency (in Dir or Swat, for example), and where the Pakistani military even fights back, there remain general sympathies at every level of Pakistan’s social strata for their fellow Muslim passion-mongers, the Taliban. India (a primarily Hindu nation) is the number one enemy by a long shot, and even in the most militant of times, Taliban insurgency never rises above a very temporary second place foe, leagues behind demon India. Mostly, Taliban are admired for their never-ending commitment to their faith and their goal of pushing Western powers out of the region.

And local Pakistanis often pay the price for attacks by both U.S. and Pakistani forces against Taliban, both inside and outside of Pakistan. Bombings are often the retaliation of choice by these extremists, and while they may ostensibly target governmental and military targets, the innocent victims usually outnumber the announced targets by a vast number. On March 12^th, two blasts seconds apart, targeting Pakistani military vehicles driving through a crowded marketplace in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore, killed 43 and injured 95, almost all innocent bystanders. To the locals, they don’t want to die in someone else’s battle; they just want to be left alone to live their lives.

Afghanistan itself is no better. The American military hit upon this notion of arming and training local tribal leaders (with rather significant cash bribes for their cooperation, by the way) to oust Taliban militants from their villages, towns, and rural countryside. After all, reasoned the Americans, giving local people the means of resisting an oppressive master would be the only way our thinly-spread forces could ever have a shot of taking and holding the countryside, far from the dominion of the Kabul government (however corrupt that central government might be). Of course, training and arming local leaders – would you change your opinion if I called them local “warlords,” which is what they really are – does tend to promote rivalry between regional warlords, jockeying for expanding their own oppressive regional control.

Well, once again, the Taliban are only the second real enemy to these Afghan warlords. Tribal enemies are always the first enemy, and everything else takes second place. The March 12^th New York Times: “Six weeks ago, elders of the Shinwari tribe, which dominates a large area in southeastern Afghanistan, pledged that they would set aside internal differences to focus on fighting the Taliban. This week, that commitment seemed less important as two Shinwari subtribes took up arms to fight each other over an ancient land dispute, leaving at least 13 people dead, according to local officials… Questions for Shinwari tribal elders this week about whether the pact against the Taliban still stood went unanswered as the elders turned the conversation to their intra-tribal struggle… ‘We promised to work with the government to fight the Taliban,’ said Hajji Gul Nazar, an elder from the Mohmand branch of the Shinwari tribe. He added, ‘Well, the government officials should have taken care of this argument among us before the shooting started.’”

Bottom line: Our priorities for the region are never going to be local priorities for the people who live there. We are foreigners, culturally and religiously ill-suited to direct regional policies, and often act as a nation hell-bent on violently shaking the local wasps’ nests in an effort to rid the region of wasps. There are mountains of mistrust against us, and there is a huge component in this region that passionately believes that we are waging war against Islam. To them, we are the real enemy, fighting a war they will never let us win… we’re number one!

I’m Peter Dekom, and as Iraqi elections unwind the “democratic” model, I wonder why Americans seem to be unable to learn the simplest lessons of history.

People with Two Car Garages

Case One: You’ve got nothing to lose. You honestly believe that a generation ago, the country that rules the land you live on took your family’s property and deeply oppresses you. You are unemployed or underemployed and surviving on the edge. You are seething with anger. Case Two: You have a good job, own a house with a two car garage and actually have two cars, and are planning a vacation next year to Italy. Case Three: You live in a land surrounded by hostile and well-armed neighbors, folks who have attempted to invade you and have no real issues with lobbing missiles and rockets into your neighborhood, maybe even wiping your entire country off the face of the earth. You’ve got a pocket of impoverished residents in land you have annexed that want to break free and have their own country, and those hostile neighbors use this annexation as the best justification for driving you into the sea.

Case One and Case Three pretty much define the current status of Palestinians and their Israeli overlords. Case Two – a possible Palestine of the future – is probably the only hope for a solution that: (i) takes the motivation out of Palestinians (at least on the West Bank where Hamas does not rule) to attack Israel, provoking a response that could easily lead to the loss of the two-car-garage house, and (ii) serves as an example to the rest of the Middle East that working with Israel and the West is ultimately in the region’s self-interest. It’s not enough that Palestine becomes a separate nation-state; with anger and poverty, it is still too easy to blame Israel and continue launching murderous strikes –rockets, military attacks, suicide bombs, etc. – against that Jewish country. A separate Palestine also needs massive investment in infrastructure, healthcare, education and jobs. From an economic perspective, that “massive investment” by Israel, wealthy Arab sovereign states and the West (particularly the United States) is a vastly less expensive path than funding a huge military capacity and constantly fighting regional wars that seem unwinnable and never-ending.

And with increasing threats from hostile neighbors generating nuclear strike capabilities, Israel has a pretty good reason to find a safer path that does not rely on “never again” defiance and a litany of provocation that might seem politically expedient in the short term, but which may ultimately result in the death of huge segment of the population. After all, one nuclear bomb can pretty much eviscerate a tiny country where cities and towns are so close together.

Which brings me to the current conundrum that faces the Obama administration: on the one hand, a strong, pro-Israel lobby – supporting one of America’s most reliable allies – pretty much backs Israeli policies regardless of the consequences. They see Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party’s hard line conservative stance against the Palestinians as appropriate, even if the peace process suffers almost irreparable harm. On the other hand, there is pressure on the United States – if it is too defuse a hostile region that seems hell-bent on destroying us along with Israel – to adopt a more even-handed tone; this position is also seen by many even in Israel as the best path to reduce the day-to-day dangers of living in an Israel surrounded by angry neighbors.

Vice President Joe Biden, Jr. arrived in Israel on March 9^th to express the Obama administration’s support for the continued and unbending commitment to the security of Israel. Unfortunately for Mr. Biden (not to mention profoundly embarrassing), the Israeli government just announced plans to construct an additional 1,600 housing units for Jewish residents in one of the most provocative areas of the West Bank – occupied by Palestinians – East Jerusalem. To make matters worse, this “out-of-left” field announcement picked a site that wasn’t on anyone’s radar. The timing of the release, which seemed to be intentional, placed the Vice President in an exceptionally awkward position, particularly since he was scheduled to meet with Palestinian leaders the next day. Biden promptly denounced these plans to build another Israeli settlement on the West Bank, noting that the move was “precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now.”

The New York Times (March 10^th) expressed that the decision by Israel’s Interior Ministry may have caught even the conservative Prime Minister off-guard: “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was clearly embarrassed at the move by his interior minister, Eli Yishai, leader of the right-wing Shas Party, who has made Jewish settlement in Ea st Jerusalem one of his central causes… A statement issued in the name of the Interior Ministry but distributed by the prime minister’s office said that the housing plan was three years in the making and that its announcement was procedural and unrelated to Mr. Biden’s visit. It added that Mr. Netanyahu had just been informed of it himself.” Expressing his “displeasure” to Yishai, Netanyahu has apparently instructed his government officials to avoid disruptive and ill-timed announcements such as the above settlement expansion notice.

Palestinian reactions were supportive of Biden’s response but expressive of dismay at the seeming attempt to derail an already fragile peace process that seemed only to sputter through a process of perpetual “one step forward, two steps back” delays and frustrations: “Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for the Palestinian government, called the new housing announcement ‘a dangerous decision that will torpedo the negotiations and sentence the American efforts to complete failure.’… Mr. Abu Rudeineh added that ‘it is now clear that the Israeli government is not interested in negotiating, nor is it interested in peace.’” Quoted in the NY Times. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also indicated that unless the announced 1,600 new East Jerusalem construction plans were withdrawn, Palestine would not participate in the in the indirect peace talks with Israel that have been carefully orchestrated, largely through the efforts of U.S. special envoy, George Mitchell.

The peace process is tortuous. The problem of Gaza – a Hamas stronghold on the Egyptian side of Israel – is much more complex than the solutions that scream for implementation on the West Bank. But without giving Palestinians genuine hope for the future, the lives of so many Israelis appear to be needlessly placed in continuing jeopardy. It’s time to stop the madness and build a solid platform for regional peace.

I’m Peter Dekom, and angry people with nothing to lose are the most dangerous folks on earth.

Billy the Goat

Ever wonder if your elected Congressman/woman is actually building his or her resume (and not so coincidentally, his/her voting record) as a giant audition (yeah, like an acting gig) for the next big job? Lobbyist? Take for example the nice, very well-compensated job that retiring Congressman (Democrat turned Republican from Louisiana, who was first elected in 1980) Billy Tauzin got in December of 2004 as president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the lobbying organization for the pharmaceutical industry. Good job too… $2 million a year… a whole lot better than that lousy (whew) $165,200 that most Congressmen and women get paid, and offices, and the perks are a bit on the super-plush side.

By the way, Congressman Tauzin was principal author of a Medicare drug law, which implemented supplying prescription drugs to seniors through private health care plans, effecting narrowing the number of available drugs… more profits for the private sector, and so what if a few seniors got screwed along the way. Got to admit that this doesn’t look too good. And yet, we don’t have any restrictions on this kind of job transition. ”Sure, the law keeps him from direct lobbying for a year, but he can still interact with his former colleagues “socially.” When he accepted the PhRMA job that year, just months after passage of the Medicare drug benefit, Democrats accused him of trading favorable legislation for his lucrative job. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, said at the time, ‘If you want to know the price of selling seniors down the river, it’s approximately about $2 million a year, if you want to hire the manager of the bill on the floor of the House of Representatives.’” February 12^th New York Times

Billy had a habit of making deals, even while he was in office, to cover his lifestyle. Billy’s a hunter, and according to the, the New Times noted: “[I]n 2003 Mr. Tauzin, then chairman of the powerful energy and commerce committee, made a deal. Though still on a modest Congressional salary, he paid more than $1 million for a 1,500-acre ranch there. And he invited a dozen friends — mostly executives and lobbyists with interests before his committee — to cover its mortgage by paying him dues as members of a new hunting club. It did business as Cajun Creek L.L.C., based in the Baton Rouge office of a lobbyist who was a member.”

Billy was the darling of the healthcare industry. He understood politics and knew the folks on Capitol Hill who made a difference. He knew when legislation was “inevitable,” and when his pharmaceutical “good old boys” should make a deal. When President Obama was certain to jam healthcare reform through Congress, Billy told the leaders in his industry to make a deal… fast… with President Obama. Billy negotiated the pharmaceutical industry’s pledge to reduce their costs by $80 over the next decade. Funny thing though, that healthcare package is stalled in the Congress, and whatever does get passed probably will bear little resemblance to the sweeping changes that seem all-but-certain to Tauzin.

Enter lobbyist number two – U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas J Donohue – “who had fought the health care proposals from the start and complained to the drug makers that Mr. Tauzin had gone along too easily… Mr. Tauzin’s supporters in the drug industry trade group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, known as PhRMA, say that he was essentially undefeated in his five years representing the industry on Capitol Hill — beating back a phalanx of proposals to cut drug costs, including allowing foreign imports or government price negotiations… But in private drug company executives have long rolled their eyes at the ‘Cajun in the Capitol’ routine that Mr. Tauzin, an aspiring actor in his youth, had honed during his years in politics.” The Times.

Did I mention that 66-year-old Billy Tauzin is about to retire? Tough and high pressure job, that lobbying. Not pretty out there… Billy had his run. Bye Bye Billy; I’d like to say we’ll miss you, but…. Hey, which elected representative out there is auditioning for which cool, overpaid lobbying job? Scary, huh!

I’m Peter Dekom, and we have a system… it just needs a big repair job!

A Show of Restraint

In 2007, when nobody was focusing on Wall Street because the world seemed to be humming along, Goldman Sachs’ current chairman, Lloyd Blankfein, received a whopping $68 million dollar bonus. For 2009, when Goldman was even more profitable than it was in 2007, Blankfein was bonused in company stock to the tune of a measly, how-can-you-live-on-so-little (think Haiti earthquake) $9 million (announced February 5^th). The February 6^th New York Times: “While most people can only dream of such a reward, the news was widely seen on Wall Street as a show of restraint and a nod to the uproar in Washington and elsewhere over resurgent pay and profits at banks like Goldman.” In that context, Mr. Blankfein (who claimed that Goldman’s trading activities were “God’s work”), show the Wall Street version of restraint. But let’s get real here! While I have no issue with value-producers making even more than $68 million under the right circumstances, there is still something very wrong here.

Wall Street figured out that if you bonus executives in almost freely-tradable stock, it gets out of the restrictions for TARP beneficiary companies on cash bonuses (big loophole), but Goldman already paid back its TARP money, so that’s not an issue for them. The bigger issue is how financial institutions that encouraged the over-borrowing against assets that were only going to appreciate (houses, stock, corporate assets, etc…. all of which tanked!) and created trillions and trillions of dollars of global economic damage, decimated life for millions of Americans (not even looking at the rest of the world), even created funds that bet against the very investments they recommended to clients and maybe set the United States on a downward streak from which it actually might not recover… well how they really never had to pay for that folly. And what’s worse, the bonus structures on Wall Street are still based on risk-taking and market-making/ manipulation that only encourage speculation and bubble-making In short, American financial players are still rewarded for recreating the very economic instability that brought us down in the first place.

I picture the 2004 meeting at the Securities and Exchange Commission of the CEOs (including then-Goldman CEO, Henry Paulson… yup, that Henry Paulson) of the top five financial institutions in the U.S., including Bear Stearns and Lehman Bros., that they should be exempted from the 12-to-1 ratio of debt-to-assets because they were “too big to fail”… and then ruling on April 28^th of that year that lifted that restriction. When Bear and Lehman failed, their ratios were north of 30-to-1!

And with a Supreme Court ruling that allows these mega-rich institutions to spend a disproportionate amount of cash to support candidates that won’t regulate this behavior out of existence, the likelihood of a Congress that is bought and paid for by special interests instituting the kind of change that will stop this kind of “reward for recklessness” in the future is exceptionally low. That’s not sitting right with me. In the real world of reckless individuals, someone causes lots of damages, there are lawsuits and payouts. Where is the payback from the big moneyed companies and individuals who have left a path of destruction in their avaricious wake? Where is Earth vs. Financial Institutions that Caused the Meltdown? Or are we going to live in a world where a reckless drunk driver who crashes his/her car resulting in profound mayhem is let off scot free and dropped off at the corner bar with a gift certificate?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I still am shocked at how bad behavior is rewarded among the power elite!