Econ 101: March 12, 2012

post from ThinkProgress on 12 March 2012 09:00:04 AM. © ThinkProgress

Welcome to ThinkProgress Economy?s morning link roundup. This is what we?re reading. Have you seen any interesting news? Let us know in the comments section. You can also follow ThinkProgress Economy on Twitter.

Americans took 10.4 billion rides on public transportation in 2011, the second highest total since 1957. [New York Times]

U.S. exports to China are surging. [Washington Post]

The latest round of bank stress tests are expected to show improving balance sheets at the nation’s financial firms. [New York Times]

Business groups are pushing back on a provision of Wall Street reform that subjects certain too-big-to-fail financial firms to enhanced regulation. [The Hill]

Greece’s debt swap may provide only a short-term reprieve from the Eurozone crisis. [CNBC]

How banks won concessions in the $25 billion foreclosure fraud settlement. [Wall Street Journal]

Scams targeting older Americans are on the rise. [Huffington Post]

House Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Barney Frank (D-MA) has joined the calls for the nation’s top housing regulator, Edward DeMarco, to be replaced. [The Hill]

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/03/12/442256/econ-031212/

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A Toast for the Douchebags at SXSW

post from ThinkProgress on 12 March 2012 09:00:04 AM. © ThinkProgress

A programming note: posting’s going to be a bit slow for the rest of my time at SXSW. There are just too many panels to go and people to see. Thanks for being understanding. I’ll keep the content coming as best I can.

“In Hollywood, the douche is louche. The douchebag, as opposed to the meathead or the jagoff, is a viable hero in cinema,” Slate’s Dan Kois said at a panel on SXSW on Sunday. “Usually, a douchebag could only be a hero if he was redeemed, usually by the love of a good woman…[But now we have] Iron Man, the world-historical first superhero douchebag franchise…[In The Hangover movies]Bradley Cooper plays an unrepentant douchebag who is terrible to his friends.” The panel didn’t entirely get into it?instead, it devolved into one of the more committed piece of performance art I’ve ever seen at a conference?but it’s an interesting question. What does it say about us that we’ve got so many movie heroes who disregard everyone around them in pursuit of their own interests?

There’s something Randian about the perspective that Kois and his fellow panelists, Robyn Sklaren, P.E. Oppenheim, Eliza Skinner offered up. “We’re all animals. We go after our wants and needs,” Skinner said, arguing that in a moment when we put a premium on authenticity, “A douchebag feels so much more authentic that anyone else. A douchebag is honest about the fact that he wants to fuck that girl. Everybody wants to fuck that girl.” Kois said that Michael Mann’s movies have thrived on the fact that “they all demonstrate the charismatic amazingness of douchebags.” And Skinner suggested that, in contrast to your everyday deeply unpleasant person, “you have to be charming to be a douche. People have to want to talk to you.”

The thing is, most people don’t actually meet that charmingness threshold. And most people don’t possess the other attributes, like insanely good looks or extreme wealth, that allow them to ignore the wishes, needs, and even rights of others, and still compel people to continue interacting with them, much less fulfilling their needs. Being able to be utterly impossible and still get everything you want isn’t a remotely obtainable fantasy for almost any of us. For all that romantic comedies get blamed for feeding unrealistic conceptions of what love and relationships look like, it’s more plausible that flawed people will make accommodations for each other than that the average person can get through life being entirely anti-social without ever once being called effectively to account and forced to alter their behavior to get something that they want.

Because I think the truth is, conditioning or no, most people actually want certain levels of interconnection. At worst, that manifests as a desire for credit for being compassionate and thoughtful, which means you’ve at least got to go through some of the motions. At best, we crave actual intimacy and emotional interdependence. These things are messy, and strange, and not uniformly rewarding, but we do often want them. Fantasizing about wanting interactions without the possibility of experiencing pain may not result in attractive fantasies. But it’s a rational response, if not a classy one, to great fear, and great want.

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2012/03/12/442085/a-toast-for-the-douchebags-at-s
xsw/

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On This Day In History March 12

post from Docudharma - Front Page on 12 March 2012 09:00:00 AM. © Docudharma - Front Page

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow GazetteThis is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.Find the past "On This Day in History" here.March 12 is the 71st day of the year (72nd in leap years) in[...]

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http://www.docudharma.com/diary/29327/on-this-day-in-history-march-12

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The Future is Far from Certain

post from The American Prospect on 12 March 2012 08:57:10 AM. © The American Prospect

For Democrats, the last month has been filled with schadenfreude and glee. Beginning with their opposition to the administration?s contraception mandate?which bled into a general opposition to contraceptives?Republicans have done everything they could to alienate women voters, from dismissing birth control as an integral part of women?s health care, to standing on the sidelines as key conservative activists unleashed vitriolic rhetoric against contraception advocates?and women who use birth control in general?attacking them as ?sluts? who need to keep their legs together.

If it sticks in the public consciousness?and if they refuse to back down from their anti-contraception stance?this incident promises to be a disaster for Republicans in the fall.

On the gleeful side, Democrats are clearly excited about President Obama?s improved standing with the American public. Job growth has exceeded 200,000 for the last three months, and Obama?s approval rating has been on the upswing, reaching the 50 percent mark in polls from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, and the near?50 percent mark in polls from Gallup, Rasmussen, and Public Policy Polling.

But for as much as recent events have been good to Democrats, there?s always the possibility that this is just noise, and that the usual sturm und drang of American politics will give way to the fundamental reality of this election: Barack Obama is in a precarious position. The latest poll from ABC News and The Washington Post is evidence of this fact.

With 46 percent approval to 50 percent disapproval, public assessment of Obama?s job performance has returned to its usual place just below the surface. Indeed, in a head-to-head matchup with Mitt Romney?the likely GOP nominee?President Obama loses, 47 percent to 49 percent. Against Rick Santorum, Obama has a scant three-point lead. The Washington Post attributes this drop to rising gas prices, which seems likely?the president?s standing has declined at both the same time that gas prices have gone up and Republicans have made it an issue.

That said, if you look a little deeper into the poll, the results improve for Democrats; 44 percent of Americans say that the party ?better represents? their personal values, 46 percent say that they are ?more concerned? with the needs of ordinary people, and 55 percent say that they care ?more about the issues that are especially important to women.? And when asked to make a guess about who will win the presidential election, 54 percent say Obama, while only 40 percent will go to bat for the Republican candidate.

Supporters of the president should put the champagne away for now; the electorate is close to evenly divided, and regardless of who wins the Republican presidential contest, the eventual nominee will have a good shot at winning the presidency. Recent events have obscured this, but the simple fact is that the 2012 election will be close.

Read The Full Article:
http://prospect.org/article/future-far-certain

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The Future Is Far from Certain

post from The American Prospect on 12 March 2012 08:57:10 AM. © The American Prospect

For Democrats, the last month has been filled with Schadenfreude and glee. Beginning with their opposition to the administration?s contraception mandate?which bled into a general opposition to contraceptives?Republicans have done everything they could to alienate women voters, from dismissing birth control as an integral part of women?s health care, to standing on the sidelines as key conservative activists unleashed vitriolic rhetoric against contraception advocates?and women who use birth control in general?attacking them as ?sluts? who need to keep their legs together.

If it sticks in the public consciousness?and if they refuse to back down from their anti-contraception stance?this incident promises to be a disaster for Republicans in the fall.

On the gleeful side, Democrats are clearly excited about President Obama?s improved standing with the American public. Job growth has exceeded 200,000 for the last three months, and Obama?s approval rating has been on the upswing, reaching the 50 percent mark in polls from NBC News and The Wall Street Journal, and the near?50 percent mark in polls from Gallup, Rasmussen, and Public Policy Polling.

But for as much as recent events have been good to Democrats, there?s always the possibility that this is just noise and that the usual Sturm und Drang of American politics will give way to the fundamental reality of this election: Barack Obama is in a precarious position. The latest poll from ABC News and The Washington Post is evidence of this fact.

Read The Full Article:
http://prospect.org/article/future-far-certain

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You Want to Kill Bad Guys Prove That Theyre Bad.

post from The American Prospect on 12 March 2012 08:53:26 AM. © The American Prospect

Last week, I took a break from my regularly scheduled gender beat to be grieved, as a citizen, about the Obama administration?s newly announced policy that asserted, as Charlie Savage reported in the New York Times:

? that it is lawful for the government to kill American citizens if officials deem them to be operational leaders of Al Qaeda who are planning attacks on the United States and if capturing them alive is not feasible.

A friend called me to argue with me about my recoil, saying that surely I had misunderstood. There is a process, my friend argued, a very reasonable one: Administration officials define someone as a terrorist who?s an imminent threat to the U.S., and are reviewed by a Congressional committee. So I went back and checked. That?s not what Holder said. He outlined some possible scenarios that would justify extrajudicial assassinations of American citizens, but he did not limit the President?s power to those scenarios. And he said that the administration would brief Congressional leaders, but not that it was required to brief them. In other words, the policy is the same as it was under George W. Bush: Trust us. We know what we?re doing. Glenn Greenwald explains it this way:

When Obama officials (like Bush officials before them) refer to someone ?who is a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or associated forces,? what they mean is this: someone the President has accused and then decreed in secret to be a Terrorist without ever proving it with evidence. The ?process? used by the Obama administration to target Americans for execution-by-CIA is, as reported last October by Reuters, as follows:

?American militants like Anwar al-Awlaki are placed on a kill or capture list by a secretive panel of senior government officials, which then informs the president of its decisions . . . There is no public record of the operations or decisions of the panel, which is a subset of the White House?s National Security Council . . . Neither is there any law establishing its existence or setting out the rules by which it is supposed to operate.?

As Leon Panetta recently confirmed, the President makes the ultimate decision as to whether the American will be killed: ?[The] President of the United States obviously reviews these cases, reviews the legal justification, and in the end says, go or no go.?

? the President and his underlings are your accuser, your judge, your jury and your executioner all wrapped up in one, acting in total secrecy and without your even knowing that he?s accused you and sentenced you to death, and you have no opportunity even to know about, let alone confront and address, his accusations; is that not enough due process for you? At Esquire, Charles Pierce, writing about Holder?s speech, described this best: ?a monumental pile of crap that should embarrass every Democrat who ever said an unkind word about John Yoo.?

The New York Times editorial board weighed in on it this way:

President Obama, who came to office promising transparency and adherence to the rule of law, has become the first president to claim the legal authority to order an American citizen killed without judicial involvement, real oversight or public accountability.

If you?re reading this at The American Prospect, you may trust the Obama administration to only kill genuine evildoers. I don?t; personally, I don?t trust any powerful entity that does not have to have its evidence and reasoning examined by some other entity, beyond its orbit. The desire to please one?s boss, to be thought a team player, is just too powerful. But even if you do trust Obama, consider: Any policy enacted by this administration exists also for every following administration. How will you feel when you don?t trust the President or the President?s advisors?

The Obama administration hasn?t even shown the memo from the Office of Legal Counsel (i.e., the equivalent of the John Yoo authorization letter) that outlines the underlying legal justification for this policy. In what circumstances can the legal policy itself be so classified that it bears no public review? Here?s the New York Times? editorial board?s comment:

[The administration] has even refused to acknowledge the existence of a Justice Department memo providing legal justification for killing American citizens, even though that memo has been reported by The Times and others. It is beyond credibility that Mr. Obama ordered the Awlaki killing without getting an opinion from the department?s Office of Legal Counsel. Even President George W. Bush took the trouble to have lawyers in that office cook up a memo justifying torture?.

We have said that a decision to kill an American citizen should have judicial review, perhaps by a special court like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which authorizes eavesdropping on Americans? communications.

Mr. Holder said that could slow a strike on a terrorist. But the FISA court works with great speed and rarely rejects a warrant request, partly because the executive branch knows the rules and does not present frivolous or badly argued cases.

That?s the point: Force any administration to reveal its reasoning and have it examined against the rules. That makes people more careful. When people do not have to explain their reasons, those reasons can get sloppy. Self-justification sets in. Do we really want the President of the United States, one of the most powerful people in the world to begin with, to have the power to assassinate American citizens without even checking in with a secret court?

This is how the rule of law dies and a president becomes an emperor: in silence, with no outcry.

I remain shocked and grieved that my country has come to this.

Read The Full Article:
http://prospect.org/article/you-want-kill-bad-guys-prove-they%E2%80%99re-bad

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Cheers and Jeers: Monday

post from Daily Kos on 12 March 2012 08:33:43 AM. © Daily Kos

C&J Banner

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE?

Retired Terror Alert Colors: The C&J Reunion Interview

Ten years ago today, after a grueling selection process involving thousands of hues, shades, pigments and a $100 billion consultation fee for the Pantone Corporation, five noble colors were chosen to stand watch over America's shores as official representatives of the federal government's new Homeland Security Advisory System.

The assembled group---Green, Blue, Yellow, Orange and Red (aka Terror Tint Team Tango)---quickly gelled into a rainbow of resolve. During their first two years, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge changed---or was pressured to change---the alert level ten times, mostly due to the dire threat of Democrats winning elections. When they disbanded in April of 2011 after 3,326 days on the job, they went their separate ways. But over the weekend C&J assembled all five original members for an EXCLUSIVE interview, excerpts of which are published here for the first time:

Cheers and Jeers: Green, you represented "Low Risk" on the chart, and in nine years of service you were never activated. But that didn?t stop you from gaining a reputation as a bit of a free spirit.
Green: Yeah, I was the token "safe" color everyone knew would never get called on. So I said, what the hell---if I'm supposed to represent some Kum By Yah Party Town, let's ROCK THIS JOINT! To be honest, I don't remember much. But I checked the archives at TMZ and apparently I trashed a bunch of hotel rooms, got my stomach pumped a lot, punched Russell Crowe in the face for no reason, and I hear the green movement considered going taupe because I was tarnishing their brand. But I got my life back together and now I'm married to my wife, Fern, and we have two lovely kids, Olive and Jade.
C&J: Blue, you were the "Guarded" one in the group. But, like green, you were never called on. Looking back, do you harbor any bitterness?
Blue: Why do you ask? Are you implying something? Do you know something I don?t? Did someone say I was bitter? Do you believe everything you hear? Why should I trust you? Why am I even here? I think this is a matter best left to the proper authorities. I have no further comment at this time.
C&J: Yellow, you were the "middle color" representing "Elevated" risk. Except for a few days when level Orange took over, you were on duty 24/7 the entire time the program existed.
Yellow: What? You mean the other colors would dump all the responsibility on the middle color and then go off and do their own shit? Really??? Get?OUT!!! That is a NEWS FLASH! Y'know what I wanted to do with my life? I wanted to be a yellow road sign. "Divided Highway" or "Slippery When Wet" or "Moose Crossing." But noooooo!!! Let's get Yellow to "guard the homeland" for a decade by threatening to tell Mom and Dad about who caused that dent in the station wagon. It's so UNFAIR!!!
C&J: Orange, you were probably the best-known. First, you came out of the closet in 2007 as America's first openly-gay alert color. And second, you sounded the TSA intercom message at all the airports, which were designated "High" risk up until the end. Can you give us an encore of your standard announcement for old time's sake?
Orange: Of course! I'm here to please my fans. Ahem: "Attention passengers! Pay no attention to the gajillions of dollars we've poured into personnel training, grandma-sniffing dogs, metal detectors, gunpowder detectors, liquid detectors, sharp-object detectors, X-ray machines, gamma-ray machines, luggage scanners, laptop scanners, body scanners, shoe scanners, scanners to scan the scanners, residue swabbers, latex gloves, and an unwieldy no-fly list to catch devious types like the late Senator Ted Kennedy. We're apparently as unsafe as ever, so Orange it is! Have a nice day, you fabulous pissed-off travelers!" I won an Intercommy Award for my reading of that at O'Hare.
C&J: And finally, Red, you represented "Severe" risk on the chart. When people think global apocalypse, they think of you. What are you doing these days?
Red: Same old same old. Rotating the non-perishables in the bunker. Stringin' barbed wire. Stackin' the gold. Lockin' and loadin'. Keepin' an ear tuned to Glenn Beck for news of the impending invasion. Oh, and I also got married to a bag of Twizzlers and opened a daycare center. It's all good.
C&J: Thanks for your time, threat levels. We appreciate your service.

The current system enacted by the Obama administration is less fear-based and more practical. Killjoy.

Cheers and Jeers starts below the fold... [Swoosh!!] RIGHTNOW! [Gong!!]

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/oRzt7sXQ0lM/-Cheers-and-Jeers-Mond
ay

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Romney's Southern Problem Might Not Matter
Tuesday

Tomorrow night's primaries could end up being anticlimactic after Republicans have spent the past few week fretting about Mitt Romney's inability to win southern states. So far the Bible belt has been his weakest territory to date. While Romney could lose every state in the Deep South and still gain the required number of delegates, conservatives have been worried about the fractured nature of a party where the likely nominee fails to win the most reliably Republican region of the country.

Mississippi and Alabama might just buck the anti-Romney trend. Public Policy Polling looked at both states over the weekend and found Romney in a statistical dead heat with his social conservative opponents. Romney had the slight lead in Alabama with 31 percent to 30 for Gingrich and 29 percent for Santorum. That tracks along the same lines as a Rasmussen poll from the end of last week that also had the three candidates separated by one point margins. It's more of a two-man race in Mississippi?Gingrich is up 33-31 over Romney, and Santorum is a little further back at 27 percent. That's another state Rasmussen sampled last week, though they put Romney far ahead at 35 percent trailed by Gingrich and Santorum at 27 percent.

Exit polls from past states indicated that one of Romney's biggest problems has been with very conservative and evangelical voters?two groups that tend to overlap. Romney actually carried Tennessee voters who termed themselves "somewhat conservative" or "moderate or liberal," but Santorum won the state by sweeping up votes from the "very conservative" wing, which swung for him over Romney 48-18 percent. It was the same when pollsters asked about religion. Romney beat Santorum by 13-points among the non-reborn Tennesseans, but evangelicals made up 73 percent of the total Republican turnout and voted for Santorum in heavy numbers.

Mississippi and Alabama have a disproportionate number of those demographics. It had been assumed that Romney wouldn?t stand any chance among those groups. Around 45 percent of likely primary voters were termed very conservative in the two PPP polls and in neither instance did Romney fair well. Yet he might plausibly win or finish in an essential tie for both states. We'll have to wait until the exit polls to see if evangelicals have finally found a place for Romney under their tent, but the more probable explanation is that they're dividing their allegiance between Santorum and Gingrich. One imagines that the 30 percent of Alabamans supporting Gingrich would break for Santorum for high numbers if the former speaker weren't in the race. Santorum and his campaign have been applying public pressure over the past week to encourage the former speaker to end his campaign so that Santorum can stand as the lone anti-Romney choice for movement conservatives. But if he fails to top Gingrich in Mississippi and Alabama it's hard to see Gingrich leaving anytime soon. Gingrich will stick around, siphoning would-be Santorum voters and making Romney's steady march to Tampa that much easier.

Read The Full Article:
http://prospect.org/article/romneys-southern-problem-might-not-matter-tuesday

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If You Own Dividend Stocks and Are Worried About
Taxes, Then Read This

I recently shared an important piece of news with readers of my High-Yield Investing newsletter that I think every dividend investor should know about.

Last month, President Barack Obama tabled his $3.8 trillion budget for the 2013 fiscal year starting this October 1. The budget proposes $1.7 trillion in new revenue over the next 10 years, in part by ending Bush-era tax cuts for "wealthy" individuals making more than $200,000 in income and households earning more than $250,000 a year. That's nothing new. In a recent article, I talked about what Obama was proposing when tax cuts approved under George W. Bush expire at the end of this year. What is new, however, is that for . . . → Read More: If You Own Dividend Stocks and Are Worried About Taxes, Then Read This…

Read The Full Article:
http://jutiagroup.com/20120312-if-you-own-dividend-stocks-and-are-worried-about-t
axes-then-read-this/

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Gingrich and Santorum's Pipe Dream

The basics of simple math are seeping into the 2012 race as the media challenges Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich to reconcile with the fact that reaching the required 1,144 delegates has become a near statistical impossibility. The candidates themselves might not cop to these facts, but it's clear they've shifted gears, turning the focus from winning a majority themselves to blocking Mitt Romney from gaining enough delegates to win on the first ballot in Tampa.

"Romney needs about 50 percent of the delegates," Santorum said on Meet the Press yesterday. "On the current track that we're on right now the fact is Governor Romney doesn't get to that number." Gingrich pushed the same idea on his Sunday stop by Fox News. "He's not a very strong front runner. Almost all conservatives are opposed, which is the base of the party," the former speaker said. "And I think we are likely to see after the last primary in June, we're likely to see a 60-day conversation about what's going to happen as we already see Romney dominating."

Their campaigns are filled with dreams of a brokered convention where movement conservatives swoop in to save the day, recapturing the party from the faux-candidate. It's a foolhardy proposition. Romney does not need to reach the absolute majority. As long as he maintains his wide lead through the end of voting in June he'll end up as the Republican nominee, brokered convention or not. As Ross Douthat explained on Friday:

While there are still scenarios in which the frontrunner ends up 50-100 delegates short of the magic number at the end of primary season, it would take a truly extraordinary turn of events (a huge scandal, say) to deny Romney the nomination at this point. The chaos-at-the-convention scenarios were almost plausible pre-Michigan, but they only made sense in a world where the leading candidate ended up well short of the necessary delegates. Now Romney is on track to win at least a clear plurality, and if he goes to the convention with over a thousand delegates, Jeb Bush isn?t going to sweep in and swipe the nomination out from under the man who won the most primary-season votes. It just ? isn?t ? going ? to happen.

The conservative base might be wary of Romney, but they're even more skeptical of the dreaded Republican establishment. Party leaders would ruin their standing if they stepped in at Tampa to overturn the preferences of a clear voter majority. Political scientists like to describe the system of primaries and caucuses as exercises to tease out elite sentiments, but that is not how the general public views the nomination process. For them, the nomination cycle is a chance for the average party voter to help shape the direction before the general election kicks in. A slight tip of the scales toward Romney wouldn't be enough to incite a revolt from the base; that'd only develop under the split decision scenario Gingrich has been hawking, and it certainly wouldn't end well for Gingrich, Santorum, or whoever knocked Romney off his pedestal.

Read The Full Article:
http://prospect.org/article/gingrich-and-santorums-pipe-dream

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