Opinion is increasingly pointing to much more than mere regulation. Many are calling for the dismantling of centuries of banking chicanery.

In The Quiet Coup, Simon Johnson points out that the United States is no better than a banana republic:

The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States.

If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform.

And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.

Johnson is a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund.

Though not scholarly, this 2007 post, American Plutonomy, is one of the most popular on this site with readers popping in worldwide, most often from schools or colleges.

AS school districts across the nation revamped curricula to meet requirements of the federal “No Child Left Behind” Act, opportunities for children to be physically active during the school day diminished significantly.

YET physical activity may strengthen children’s ability to pay attention. ScienceBlog

“I can feed you a diet of Hershey bars, keep you up all night, truck you around, and spray Raid in your face, and I guarantee you’ll get sick,” says Jerry Hayes, Florida’s assistant chief of apiary inspection. “That’s kind of what’s happening to bees.”

Commercial honeybees are tough. They get trucked cross-country to pollinate vast crops, often while fed unnatural diets such as sugar water and soy flour. Their hives are treated with chemicals to deter parasites, and they’re exposed to pesticides and fungicides in the fields where they work and feed. Scientific American

“For almost two years we’ve been documenting and sampling colonies that are dying and examining healthy colonies in the same area, trying to determine what factors are involved,” Pettis says. “I think there are interactions going on, like low-level pesticide exposure and poor nutrition weakening the host honeybees and then pathogens doing the killing. It’s similar to a human who might not be eating, or is frail and traveling too much, and as a result is more susceptible to pathogens. If you go into a hospital in excellent health, you don’t contract pneumonia, but if you go in weakened, pneumonia kills you.”

Eric Dinallo, New York Superintendent of Insurance, guest post at NakedCapitalism:

Credit default swaps must be regulated and sellers must be required to hold sufficient capital. That will make them more expensive, but it will mean the guarantee has real value.

Does requiring adequate capital mean the end of financial innovation? Of course not, it just means that most institutions will operate with less leverage.

Risk and reward are integral to capitalism. But innovators should risk their own capital, not the entire financial fabric. Setting that balance is where effective regulation comes in.

In sum, if you offer a guarantee – no matter whether you call it a banking deposit, an insurance policy, or a bet – regulation should ensure you have the capital to deliver. If you offer investments, be transparent, but buyer beware.

No one should ever again get to bet the store called the Entire American Economy.

In all the analysis, criticism and bellyaching, was Bucky Fuller warning us years ago?

“All our economic accounting hold strictly to the rules, value systems, terminology, and concepts established by the Great Pirates.”

A sure sign that folks are troubled by spikes, shortages and slumps:

I had a dream last night that we solved the energy crisis by forcing the animal kingdom to create energy for us, but the trick was picking an animal ugly and unlikeable enough that the least number of people opposed the enslavement. So in the end, we had these enormous generators pushed by massive armies of slugs on land and eels in the water that created the entire world’s energy needs.

There were of course, slug and eel appreciation societies that picketed the energy companies but most people didn’t mind because they hated the selected animals so much.

Experimenting with an airplane engine while in flight.

Reflections on Three Mile Island 30 years later, by Fred Bortz, Science Blog.

The Bush McCain-Palin Pension Plan:

Just months before the start of last year’s stock market collapse, the federal agency that insures the retirement funds of 44 million Americans departed from its conservative investment strategy and decided to put much of its $64 billion insurance fund into stocks.

Switching from a heavy reliance on bonds, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation decided to pour billions of dollars into speculative investments such as stocks in emerging foreign markets, real estate, and private equity funds.

The agency refused to say how much of the new investment strategy has been implemented or how the fund has fared during the downturn. The agency would only say that its fund was down 6.5 percent – and all of its stock-related investments were down 23 percent – as of last Sept. 30, the end of its fiscal year. But that was before most of the recent stock market decline and just before the investment switch was scheduled to begin in earnest.

No statistics on the fund’s subsequent performance were released. [link]

We’re lucky the Wall Street ‘free market’ busted just prior to moving our entire government to New York.

The last suckers:
“…the main takeaway here is the roughly $500 billion in underfunded private pension plans… in this financial Armageddon, there isn’t a model that hasn’t been laid to waste.”

A vast number, maybe even a majority of U.S. private equity firms, owe their existence to CalPERS. Exxon Mobil filed a lawsuit against Northern Trust alleging a breach of fiduciary responsibility, investing funds “recklessly and imprudently, by acting disloyally and causing massive losses.” This type of lawsuit may be a seachange in terms of corporate pension funds, who are on the hook for massive losses, turning their anger toward Wall Street.

Economic upswing needed here perhaps?

Nearly 1/3 of women over 65 will fall every year, and the rate goes up with age.

The risk for men is somewhat less but still substantial.

Although hip fractures are the classic disastrous consequence of falls, head injuries and back injuries can also occur.

These incidents can set people on the path to long-term decline and disability.

What’s needed to help revive the economy? Thoughtfulness about people’s physical environment…

After

Econopalypse,
Financeageddon,
Collapsonomy,
Cha-chingularity,

what will the economy look like?

Remarkable. The pool of customers shrinks but the price doubles.

Health care costs doubled from 1996 to 2006, but more are being left out of the health care system than ever before.

An estimated 87 million people — one in every three Americans under the age of 65 — were uninsured.

And blacklists are everywhere, pumping margins.

Trying to buy health insurance on your own and have gallstones? You’ll automatically be denied coverage. Rheumatoid arthritis? Automatic denial. Severe acne? Probably denied. Do you take Metformin, a popular drug for diabetes? Denied. Use the anti-clotting drug Plavix or Seroquel, prescribed for anti-psychotic or sleep problems? Forget about it.

First, do no harm to the health care provider’s income.

Our culture of raiders truly needs strong challenge. Our corporations are resources to be well managed rather than prizes to be pillaged.

Simon Caulkin: It’s time to explode the myth of the shareholder | Observer

“the entire notion of the shareholder has to be rethought.

“In an age when a listed company’s share register suffers 90% churn each year, the very concept of “the shareholder” dissolves, corporate governance expert Professor Bob Garratt told a recent meeting of the Human Capital Forum. Calling for a ‘cultural and behavioral transformation’, Garratt declared that the first duty of directors was not to shareholders, but to the company itself.

“…to move from agency theory to stewardship theory…”

In contrast to our nervous daze:

India stands on the cusp of a revolution.

There is optimism all-round and in certain quarters, even fear of the growing prowess of India. This is a good start, but only the first step in what is a long journey. This is an opportunity for change and growth that we in India can simply not afford to lose.

There are a billion dreams at stake.

So, these are my suggestions to you. The goal is not to find fault with what is happening. Rather, it is to provide specific inputs so that you and your government can continue to catalyse the positive forces that have been unleashed in the marketplace.

And what of our 300,000,000 dreams?

From seekingAlpha, “We still have not seen any of the real villains of this crisis be brought to justice.”

If a person murders another they can get the death penalty. But if a banker is responsible for fraud causing trillions of dollars of losses, affecting millions of people, the bankers claim ignorance.

And they not only get to keep their bonuses that were collected illegally, but they aren’t charged with any criminal activity.

Only in America will you see this. This isn’t allowed in Japan, Canada, or Europe. And it certainly isn’t allowed in China.

Perhaps many of you have forgotten the dotcom charade. I certainly haven’t. Thousands of people should be in prison, from Wall Street analysts and bankers involved in irresponsible IPOs, to executives and others involved in insider trading. But only a few were indicted.

Most likely, this current crisis will share a similar fate because the media will continue to distract attention away from the real criminals and focus on Madoff and Stanford. But remember, neither had anything to do with the banking crisis.

This is a character line of Sherlock Holmes:

“Sometimes in this life you meet people who you see as ‘large soul’ which are a privilege to know.”

These are not a criminal mind nor would they seek your loss or want your prize.