Back in the Saddle

I know, I know, it's been way to long since my last post.  For my part, let me just say that when you do as much writing and online research as I do in my regular job, sometimes the though of facing the computer screen and keyboard in my spare time is more than I can bear. 

Still that's not excuse, I guess.  Sometimes I just get lazy.

I will say it does bolster my admiration for those who do this for a living. 

Lot's of interesting stuff goin on.  Beyond the couple of posts that will follow on this one, here are a few noteworthy items:

Felix Salmon got my laughing with his "Adventures with "Free" Checking."  But really, this is no laughing matter.  The manner in which our financial institutions are nickle-and-diming us all the way to the poor house is beyond disgusting.  This practice came into the news the other day, which is just kind of emblematic of how the biggest companies in the world are conspiring to separate us all from our hard-earned cash.  Wasn't the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau supposed to protect us from this sort of thing?  I suppose they'll get around to it, after they've finished compiling their database on every transaction we have ever engaged in.  After all, how can they protect us if they don't know what we're doing, right?

CIA insists that torture is ok because it works....

US Median Wealth is only 27th in the world.  I was kind of shocked when I read this, especially since I knew we are ranked much higher when looking at average wealth (7th).  Of course, the reason for the vast difference in rankings is economic inequality in the U.S. is greater than in just about any other developed country in the world.  But clicking through this various articles on this topic I came across this one which kind of stunned me.  It says the global household wealth is $$226 trillion, or an average of $49,000 per adult person in the world.  Compare this to the median wealth per adult in the U.S. at $38,800 per adult.  We really are becoming a third world country....

Here is an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal about the kind of people hired by companies for employee training conferences.  Apparently, these kinds of things work very well when companies use them to train their employees, but if the government uses them to train its employees, they are a total boongoggle and waste of time.  Speaking of which, this article, which goes into the details of the IRS training conference that created such a hoopla, does a good job of exposing why the whole issue is a molehill disguised as a mountain.  And it points out something that nobody mentions about the IG report that started the whole thing:

"Was the conference a boondoggle with no value? "We did not evaluate the appropriateness or relevance of the training provided at the Anaheim conference. It was beyond the scope of this review to assess the merits and effectiveness of the conference agenda,"

In other words, our job is not to say whether the money spent on this conference was money well spent.  Well, fuck, then, what are you good for?  I'm starting to think that somebody really needs to investigate the Treasury's Inspector General.

And finally, speaking of the Wall Street Journal, Paul Krugman toots his own horn a bit (that's ok, he's entitled to) by linking to this survey of the top business thinkers in the world, where he's listed as number 1.  And surprise, surprise, Joseph Stiglitz is listed as number 2.  Two DFHs at the top of the list.  So tell me why at this point are people in Washington still not listening?