5 recent reads, and a sixth that makes you go Hmmmm

Robert Kuttner - "Fraud At Last"

…Paul Volcker was right when he quipped that the last useful innovation produced by the banking system was the ATM machine. For something like three decades, the financial part of our economy has become a world unto itself, consuming over 40 percent of all corporate profits by 2006, the last year before the crash…

We need a drastic, radical simplification of the financial system. That means breaking up large institutions that are too big to fail, and breaking the rice bowl of ones that add nothing to broad economic welfare and efficiency other than an opportunity for the own enrichment at the general expense. To get there politically, we first need to expose the full extent of the fraud, and we need a Democratic Party that reverts to its New Deal role as the party of regular people rather than its Clintonian role as a second party of Wall Street….

Fact Checker for Lost

…But fight scenes are nothing compared with flight scenes. The plane, Nations says, “is the bane of my existence.” The task of keeping, say, row numbers straight in a hectic production on a cramped set makes his stomach turn, especially as they’ve filmed essentially the same scene over multiple seasons. …

Pictures of Various Countries' Antarctica Bases

Bradford DeLong Reports that GOP opposes Solomon as Judge.

In a press conference last midnight, Senators McConnell and Hatch reacted to a report by Jeremiah that YHWH had secretly met with Solomon ben Davi in a dream at Gibeon and planned to nominate him. "We question whether YHWH understands what makes a good judge," they said in a joint statement…

A Flash game (not the program - the super hero)

To put it plainly, I just don't see how one could work. My reasons:

The Flash is all about speed. His greatest power is supposed to be his ability to move near light-speed. How exactly are you supposed to portray that in a game? Moving at those speeds, it would be impossible to control the Flash with any kind of precision. You can't use trickery either, like slowing down the rest of the world while Flash moves at normal speed. It would work, but it just wouldn't be Flash. You wouldn't have that sense of speed….

And Worth a re-read.

McClatchy on How Moody's and others sold their ratings

…The Securities and Exchange Commission issued a blistering report on how profit motives had undermined the integrity of ratings at Moody's and its main competitors, Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor's, in July 2008, but the full extent of Moody's internal strife never has been publicly revealed.

Moody's, which rates McClatchy's debt and assigns it quite low value, disputes every allegation against it. "Moody's has rigorous standards in place to protect the integrity of ratings from commercial considerations," said Michael Adler, Moody's vice president for corporate communications, in an e-mail response to McClatchy.

Insiders, however, say that wasn't true before the financial meltdown.

(Does anyone else think find it interesting that Moody’s has started a lot of whispering about lowering the ratings of U.S. Government Bonds while the Senate discusses regulating Moody’s? I suppose it is just a coincidence)