This is a history book. It’s a detailed account of the key events since the Depression that have shaped modern finance. I love history, and I’m familiar with those events. Stockman’s spin on financial history makes for a very good read. There’s something for everyone. For example, were you troubled by the bailout of AIG, and TARP? If so, you’ll love this chapter:

Paulson’s Folly – The needless Rescue of AIG and Wall Street

Do you worry that Bernanke has overplayed his hand with monetary policy? Stockman rips him apart:

The Bernanke Bubble: Last Gift to the 1 Percent
or

How the Fed Brought the Gambling Mania to America’s Neighborhoods
Do TV talking heads influence Fed policy? Stockman says “yes”.
The Rant That Shook the Eccles Building: How the Fed Got Cramer’d
Worried about US indebtedness to foreign central banks? That’s covered in:


Monetary Roach Motels
Stockman puts meat on the bones to some old stories. A few examples:


Read more: http://brucekrasting.com/david-stockman-is-mad/#ixzz2P6EEh4sx

The Dow Jones and Standard & Poor’s 500 indexes reached record highs on Thursday, having completely erased the losses since the stock market’s last peak, in 2007. But instead of cheering, we should be very afraid.

Over the last 13 years, the stock market has twice crashed and touched off a recession: American households lost $5 trillion in the 2000 dot-com bust and more than $7 trillion in the 2007 housing crash. Sooner or later — within a few years, I predict — this latest Wall Street bubble, inflated by an egregious flood of phony money from the Federal Reserve rather than real economic gains, will explode, too.

Since the S.&P. 500 first reached its current level, in March 2000, the mad money printers at the Federal Reserve have expanded their balance sheet sixfold (to $3.2 trillion from $500 billion). Yet during that stretch, economic output has grown by an average of 1.7 percent a year (the slowest since the Civil War); real business investment has crawled forward at only 0.8 percent per year; and the payroll job count has crept up at a negligible 0.1 percent annually. Real median family income growth has dropped 8 percent, and the number of full-time middle class jobs, 6 percent. The real net worth of the “bottom” 90 percent has dropped by one-fourth. The number of food stamp and disability aid recipients has more than doubled, to 59 million, about one in five Americans.

So the Main Street economy is failing while Washington is piling a soaring debt burden on our descendants, unable to rein in either the warfare state or the welfare state or raise the taxes needed to pay the nation’s bills. By default, the Fed has resorted to a radical, uncharted spree of money printing. But the flood of liquidity, instead of spurring banks to lend and corporations to spend, has stayed trapped in the canyons of Wall Street, where it is inflating yet another unsustainable bubble.



More:http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/opinion/sunday/sundown-in-america.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss&ref=opinion&

Highest paid banker on Wall Street suing renovators of neighbouring building for ruining view from his 360-degree glass penthouse

As the highest-paid banker on Wall Street, Dick Handler feels he has earned a $24-million glass penthouse from which to enjoy uninterrupted 360-degree panoramas of the city he conquered.

So it is unacceptable, he alleged in a lawsuit filed in Manhattan this week, that fashionable upstarts from London are preparing to spoil his view.



Mr Handler, 51, “will suffer real and irreparable harm” if Spring Studios, a Camden-based design firm, installs a lift on the roof of a neighbouring building, he claimed in his complaint.








http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/03/28/highest-paid-banker-on-wall-street-suing-renovators-of-neighbouring-building-for-ruining-view-from-his-360-degree-glass-penthouse/

MAR 27, 2013

The skeletal remains of an individual living in northern Italy 40,000-30,000 years ago are believed to be that of a human/Neanderthal hybrid, according to a paper in PLoS ONE.

If further analysis proves the theory correct, the remains belonged to the first known such hybrid, providing direct evidence that humans and Neanderthals interbred. Prior genetic research determined the DNA of people with European and Asian ancestry is 1 to 4 percent Neanderthal.

The present study focuses on the individual’s jaw, which was unearthed at a rock-shelter called Riparo di Mezzena in the Monti Lessini region of Italy. Both Neanderthals and modern humans inhabited Europe at the time.


“From the morphology of the lower jaw, the face of the Mezzena individual would have looked somehow intermediate between classic Neanderthals, who had a rather receding lower jaw (no chin), and the modern humans, who present a projecting lower jaw with a strongly developed chin,” co-author Silvana Condemi, an anthropologist, told Discovery News.

http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/neanderthal-skeleton-provides-evidence-of-interbreeding-with-humans-130327.htm

(CNN) - Actress and Democrat Ashley Judd, who was openly considering challenging Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell for his Kentucky seat in 2014, announced Wednesday she was "currently unable" to run for public office.

"After serious and thorough contemplation, I realize that my responsibilities & energy at this time need to be focused on my family," Judd wrote on Twitter.

The announcement comes after months of speculation that Judd – an actress with family roots in Kentucky - would jump into politics. The rumors sparked heavy backlash from Republicans, including McConnell, who began producing videos attacking Judd.


http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/03/27/ashley-judd-wont-run-for-senate/

Actually the original photo looks fake too.
Which you can see here:



http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/03/is-this-north-korean-hovercraft-landing-photo-faked/100480/

An Orlando judge today sentenced Jim Greer, former high-flying chairman of the Florida GOP, to 18 months in prison, followed by one year of probation.

"You certainly in my opinion egregiously violated a position of trust," Circuit Judge Marc Lubet said at sentencing. "While you do need to go to prison for this, you don't need to go for 42 or 46 months."

It was a humbling end for a man who, until four years ago, wielded enormous political power in Florida and was part of then-Gov. Charlie Crist's inner circle.

But the sentence was significantly lower than what the state had asked for: a 3 1/2-year prison term.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/os-jim-greer-sentence-20130327,0,7299839.story

Supreme Court Justices Brought To Tears By Heartfelt Testimony Of Bigot Who Hates Gay People


WASHINGTON—Listening to oral arguments Wednesday regarding the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, all nine Supreme Court justices were reportedly moved to tears by the heartfelt and highly personal testimony of a bigot who despises homosexuals unreservedly. “It’s impossible for anyone who hasn’t spent their whole life in a state of benighted prejudice to know the pain and hardship that people like myself endure every day in our efforts to ensure that gays and lesbians remain oppressed and unequal,” said the immense homophobe, whose stirring, emotional speech about his harrowing daily struggles to impede social progress prompted a weeping Chief Justice John Roberts to halt the proceedings briefly so that he and the 500 individuals in attendance could compose themselves. “Just for a moment, put yourself in my shoes and try to imagine how difficult it is to know that the elevated social standing that I so unjustly enjoy is at stake. We have come too far and worked too hard to make sure that gays are second-class citizens, and all we’re asking for is basic unfairness. After all, isn’t that what this country is founded on?”

Forgoing their typical months of deliberation, the justices issued an immediate 9-0 decision upholding DOMA, with Roberts writing that the testimony had “opened [his] eyes” to the plight of the nation’s intolerant and vowing that the court would never again allow progress and equality to impede the happiness of the nation’s close-minded and prejudiced.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/supreme-court-justices-brought-to-tears-by-heartfe,31826/

Scientists have linked the underground injection of oil-drilling wastewater to a magnitude-5.7 earthquake in 2011 that struck the US state of Oklahoma.

Wastewater injection from drilling operations has been linked to seismic events in the past, but these have typically been much smaller quakes.

They also have tended to occur in the first weeks or months of injection.

The study in Geology suggests that "induced seismicity" can occur years after wastewater injection begins.

Wastewater was first injected into Oklahoma's Wilzetta oilfields, near the town of Prague, some 18 years prior to the November 2011 series of quakes that included three of magnitude 5 or greater.

The new study adds to an increasing body of evidence that the injection of wastewater is correlated to an increase in seismic events.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21952428