Tax on big banks?

Obama is pushing for a tax on the fifty biggest banks on the country. The banks are wailing, Republicans are opposing, but actually, it's not a bad idea in my book. The fifty big Wall St banks bear a lot of responsibility for Great Depression 2.0. The "too-big-to-fail" banks made risky loans on the theory that when they pay off, you get rich, when they don't pay off, the taxpayer (ME!) bails you out.
Since the too-big-to-fail banks enjoy taxpayer support, they might as well pay for it. If they find the tax too heavy, they can always spin off parts and become smaller. Which is a fine idea. That makes them small enough to fail. Which is good, they will be more careful.
Plus, the big Wall St banks don't do a thing for me. They don't do car loans, they don't do mortgages, they don't lend to companies, they don't do venture capital. Far as I can see they just do deals with each other. So tax the bejeezus out of them.

You don't have to be crazy, but it helps

Tina Brown reviews the "Game Change" book here. This is the book that quoted Harry Reid saying "Light skinned" and "no Negro accent". Tina goes on at length describing one gaffe after another. She gives a number of unscripted Hillary moments but fails to mention the one unscripted moment that allowed her to beat Obama in the NH primary. It was one of those "man on the street" interviews, actually a woman at the diner counter, and just once, Hillary choked up a little bit. There was a catch in her voice, and for about 10 seconds Hillary looked like a real person with strong emotions. It was her most effective TV appearance of the whole NH campaign, and yet Tina doesn't mention it at all, instead dwelling on other less important incidents.

Body Language

Obama is delivering a Haiti speech. Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton are standing on either side. But why do Biden and Clinton have such sour expressions on their faces?

Airheads in California

According to this, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) has time and money for yet more foolishness. They will require mandatory tire inflation tests with jail sentences for non compliance.
If California ever wants to get serious about cutting state spending, I know just where they can start. Close down CARB, fire all the employees, and burn the files.
Good thing NH is too intelligent to fall for something this dumb. We are, aren't we?

Excessive Wall St Skimming

Wall Street exists to route society's capital into economic development. They haven't done a very good job lately, and in fact, stupid Wall St moves are largely responsible for Great Depression 2.0.
Right now, while the wounds are still fresh, we ought to outlaw, or at least tax the bejeezus out of, risky Wall St speculation scams that do not yield economic growth, or create vast surpluses. The "credit default swaps" don't invest money in the real economy, they are just a cover your ass maneuver. Underlings can make risky investments and tell their bosses "It's safe, I bought a credit default swap to insure it". When all the investments went bad at the same time, AIG couldn't pay off, we taxpayers had to cover AIG's bad bets.
Resale of mortgages and the "mortgage backed security" are scams that allow unscrupulous operators to sell mortgages that should never have been written and dump them on more gullible investors before the junk mortgage goes into repossession.
Credit rating agencies were paid to put AAA ratings on junk, and gullible investors bought the junk. We don't need that kind of credit rating agency. Actually, any broker worth his salt should do his own rating. We would do our selves a favor by taxing the credit rating agencies like Moody's right out of business.
We need to create some corporate governance. Right now the management runs the banks pretty much the way they like. The pay them selves and their buds outrageous salaries with money that by rights belongs to the stockholders. We need to give the stockholders and the boards of directors more say over company operations. For instance top management salaries ought to require a majority vote from the stockholders. Big moves ought to require board of directors say-so.
Then we need to clean up the accounting business. American "Generally Accepted Principles of Accounting" allow companies to carry purely imaginary assets on the books, allow ordinary running expenses to be "capitalized", and allow "sales" to be credited as income before the money comes in. Plus a bunch of other unsavory stuff.

We ought to demand Wall St reform from our Congress critters.

Meeting the NH State Republicans

The NH State Republican Committee had a meeting in Concord last night. I caught a ride down with Bruce Perlo. It was pitch dark when we left and it got no lighter. The meeting was chaired by JOhn Sununu, former governor and current Republican state chairman. John spoke of the Scott Brown campaign in Massachusetts and said Brown was very close in the polls, give or take 5% he said, and getting better day by day. He urged us all to give Scott a hand over the next week to the special election. Sununu feels the NH democrats are on the defensive over the LLC tax (a 5% income tax on small business owners) the state budget problem, brought on by a 24% increase in state spending over the last two years, and the $? trillion Obamacare. Sununu feels that this year will be the best year ever for Republicans. If Republicans cannot win this November, they will never win.

Scott Brown rising.

Scott Brown, the Republican candidate for Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat, is a comer. A few weeks ago he was rated a long shot. Today one poll has him in the lead. That's a lotta of coming up in the polls. The election is the 19th of this month, only nine days away. If Scott Brown keeps on rising like he has been, he's gonna win.
Brown has promised to vote against Obamacare if elected. Obamacare will still be before the Congress on the 19th, and likely for some days after. A Brown victory will scare the daylights out of all democrats from swing districts. Some of them will be scared enough to vote their districts, and the districts are against Obamacare.