How about Poledancing?
Ok, serious question, why couldn’t this be an Olympic sport? The Olympics already have “sports” like curling, synchronized swimming, and rhythmic gymnastics. And this requires more pure physical strength than any of those.
Yes.
My boss posted a graphic of the first part of this article on his blog. I found it on the NY Times web site and am reprinting the entire article here. Emphasized text below added by me.
November 5, 1999
CONGRESS PASSES WIDE-RANGING BILL EASING BANK LAWS
By Stephen Labaton
Congress approved landmark legislation today that opens the door for a new era on Wall Street in which commercial banks, securities houses and insurers will find it easier and cheaper to enter one another’s businesses.
The measure, considered by many the most important banking legislation in 66 years, was approved in the Senate by a vote of 90 to 8 and in the House tonight by 362 to 57. The bill will now be sent to the president, who is expected to sign it, aides said. It would become one of the most significant achievements this year by the White House and the Republicans leading the 106th Congress.
“Today Congress voted to update the rules that have governed financial services since the Great Depression and replace them with a system for the 21st century,” Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers said. “This historic legislation will better enable American companies to compete in the new economy.”
The decision to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 provoked dire warnings from a handful of dissenters that the deregulation of Wall Street would someday wreak havoc on the nation’s financial system. The original idea behind Glass-Steagall was that separation between bankers and brokers would reduce the potential conflicts of interest that were thought to have contributed to the speculative stock frenzy before the Depression.
Today’s action followed a rich Congressional debate about the history of finance in America in this century, the causes of the banking crisis of the 1930’s, the globalization of banking and the future of the nation’s economy.
Administration officials and many Republicans and Democrats said the measure would save consumers billions of dollars and was necessary to keep up with trends in both domestic and international banking. Some institutions, like Citigroup, already have banking, insurance and securities arms but could have been forced to divest their insurance underwriting under existing law. Many foreign banks already enjoy the ability to enter the securities and insurance industries.
“The world changes, and we have to change with it,” said Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, who wrote the law that will bear his name along with the two other main Republican sponsors, Representative Jim Leach of Iowa and Representative Thomas J. Bliley Jr. of Virginia. “We have a new century coming, and we have an opportunity to dominate that century the same way we dominated this century. Glass-Steagall, in the midst of the Great Depression, came at a time when the thinking was that the government was the answer. In this era of economic prosperity, we have decided that freedom is the answer.”
In the House debate, Mr. Leach said, “This is a historic day. The landscape for delivery of financial services will now surely shift.“
But consumer groups and civil rights advocates criticized the legislation for being a sop to the nation’s biggest financial institutions. They say that it fails to protect the privacy interests of consumers and community lending standards for the disadvantaged and that it will create more problems than it solves.
The opponents of the measure gloomily predicted that by unshackling banks and enabling them to move more freely into new kinds of financial activities, the new law could lead to an economic crisis down the road when the marketplace is no longer growing briskly.
“I think we will look back in 10 years’ time and say we should not have done this but we did because we forgot the lessons of the past, and that that which is true in the 1930’s is true in 2010,” said Senator Byron L. Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota. “I wasn’t around during the 1930’s or the debate over Glass-Steagall. But I was here in the early 1980’s when it was decided to allow the expansion of savings and loans. We have now decided in the name of modernization to forget the lessons of the past, of safety and of soundness.“
Senator Paul Wellstone, Democrat of Minnesota, said that Congress had “seemed determined to unlearn the lessons from our past mistakes.”
“Scores of banks failed in the Great Depression as a result of unsound banking practices, and their failure only deepened the crisis,” Mr. Wellstone said. “Glass-Steagall was intended to protect our financial system by insulating commercial banking from other forms of risk. It was one of several stabilizers designed to keep a similar tragedy from recurring. Now Congress is about to repeal that economic stabilizer without putting any comparable safeguard in its place.”
Supporters of the legislation rejected those arguments. They responded that historians and economists have concluded that the Glass-Steagall Act was not the correct response to the banking crisis because it was the failure of the Federal Reserve in carrying out monetary policy, not speculation in the stock market, that caused the collapse of 11,000 banks. If anything, the supporters said, the new law will give financial companies the ability to diversify and therefore reduce their risks. The new law, they said, will also give regulators new tools to supervise shaky institutions.
“The concerns that we will have a meltdown like 1929 are dramatically overblown,” said Senator Bob Kerrey, Democrat of Nebraska.
Others said the legislation was essential for the future leadership of the American banking system.
“If we don’t pass this bill, we could find London or Frankfurt or years down the road Shanghai becoming the financial capital of the world,” said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York. “There are many reasons for this bill, but first and foremost is to ensure that U.S. financial firms remain competitive.”
But other lawmakers criticized the provisions of the legislation aimed at discouraging community groups from pressing banks to make more loans to the disadvantaged. Representative Maxine Waters, Democrat of California, said during the House debate that the legislation was “mean-spirited in the way it had tried to undermine the Community Reinvestment Act.” And Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, said it was ironic that while the legislation was deregulating financial services, it had begun a new system of onerous regulation on community advocates.
Many experts predict that, even though the legislation has been trailing market trends that have begun to see the cross-ownership of banks, securities firms and insurers, the new law is certain to lead to a wave of large financial mergers.
The White House has estimated the legislation could save consumers as much as $18 billion a year as new financial conglomerates gain economies of scale and cut costs.
Other experts have disputed those estimates as overly optimistic, and said that the bulk of any profits seen from the deregulation of financial services would be returned not to customers but to shareholders.
These are some of the key provisions of the legislation:
- Banks will be able to affiliate with insurance companies and securities concerns with far fewer restrictions than in the past.
- The legislation preserves the regulatory structure in Washington and gives the Federal Reserve and the Office of Comptroller of the Currency roles in regulating new financial conglomerates. The Securities and Exchange Commission will oversee securities operations at any bank, and the states will continue to regulate insurance.
- It will be more difficult for industrial companies to control a bank. The measure closes a loophole that had permitted a number of commercial enterprises to open savings associations known as unitary thrifts.
One Republican Senator, Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, voted against the legislation. He was joined by seven Democrats: Barbara Boxer of California, Richard H. Bryan of Nevada, Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland, Mr. Dorgan and Mr. Wellstone.
In the House, 155 Democrats and 207 Republicans voted for the measure, while 51 Democrats, 5 Republicans and 1 independent opposed it. Fifteen members did not vote.
Tucked away in the legislation is a provision that some experts today warned could cost insurance policyholders as much as $50 billion. The provision would allow mutual insurance companies to move to other states to avoid payments they would otherwise owe policyholders as they reorganize their corporate structure. Many states, including New York and New Jersey, do not allow such relocations without the consent of the insurer’s domicile state. But the legislation before Congress would pre-empt the states.
Both the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and the Prudential Life Insurance Company are in the midst of reorganizing into stock-based corporations that are requiring them to pay billions of dollars to policyholders from years of accumulated surplus. In exchange, the policyholders give up their ownership in the mutual insurance company.
The legislation would permit any mutual insurance company to avoid making surplus payments to policyholders by simply moving to states with more permissive laws and setting up a hybrid corporate structure known as a mutual holding company.
The provision was inserted by Representative Bliley at the urging of a trade association. It attracted little opposition because it was attached to a provision that forbids insurers from discriminating against domestic-violence victims.
In a letter sent to Congress this week, Mr. Summers said that the provision “could allow insurance companies to avoid state law protecting policyholders, enriching insiders at the expense of consumers.”
The Texas Board of Education Chairman, Don McLeroy, thinks the Earth is 10,000 years old and says evolution is missing evidence and wants to rewrite science books in Texas.
Read the Wall Street Journal article. The Texas Board of Education is voting this week.
Don McLeroy
9277 Brookwater Circle
College Station, TX 77845
979 255-2538
979 846-1174 (FAX)
sboesupport@tea.state.tx.us
Here’s the other SBOE officer’s contact info. Write to them, too!
This is both absurd and scary. But it cannot be ignored. People such as Mr. McLeroy should not be in any position to influence the education of children. Help stamp out ignorance!
Update: Here’s the email I sent:
To Members of the Texas State Board of Education:
Please vote against Mr. McLeroy’s initiative to modify the science/biology curriculum and text books to point out supposed flaws in the theory of evolution. This is nothing more than an attempt to open the door to teach creationism (a.k.a. intelligent design). Intelligent Design is neither testable nor verifiable. Therefore, it cannot be considered a valid scientific theory. Attempts to discredit the theory of evolution using the arguments cited by Mr. McLeroy are not legitimate and do not pass muster with the vast majority of the scientific community.
I urge you to look at this site, which contains many rebuttals to the claims Mr. McLeroy would like to see included in your science curriculum:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/
In particular, you might be interested in these sections:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html#CB
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html#CC200
Thank you for your time.
Respectfully,
Robert Lockstone
Los Gatos, CA
Jim Cramer, host of the idiotic Mad Money show on CNBC, is one of the best examples of a hypocrite I”ve ever seen, and Jon Stewart pulls no punches in demonstrating that.
Watch as Jon Stewart methodically rips apart Rick Santelli and the jackasses at CNBC.
Reyna and I went up to Tahoe earlier this week for “ski week”. She’s a teacher and had the week off, and several storms were due to sweep through Tahoe during the week. Also, even though it was “ski week”, it’s still mid_week and the crowds would be much less than a normal weekend, and especially a holiday weekend. This all adds up to a perfect opportunity to go to Tahoe, so I took a few days off.
I was a little apprehensive because this would be the first time I’ve taken the Mini up when there was bound to be snow, and likely chain restrictions on Hwy 80 going over the top. Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. I thought we had lucked out because just as we left, they lifted the chain restrictions, but they put them back in place just after we tried to stop at In_n_Out Burger, which was swamped with people coming back from the Presidents Day weekend. The line was out the door, so we skipped it and went to Jack_in_the_Box instead.
I was prepared though. Not long ago I purchased Bridgestone Blizzak snow tires and Spikes_Spider Compact snow “chains”, which aren’t really chains at all. Getting the spikes_spiders hubs mounted was easier than the instructions made it look, but you only have to do that once. The real advantage is how easy they are to put on and take off when you need them. With the Blizzaks, I don’t think I needed them to begin with, but when CalTrans has chain restrictions you don’t have any choice. So when the time came, I had them on my tires in about a minute. Then it was a long slog up, over, and down the mountain at 30 miles per hour, which everyone else was doing, too, including those with 4WD, and even the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile!
The entire trip took about seven hours. We arrived at the Sunnyside Lodge at about 6:30 pm, which gave us time enough to unpack and have dinner at 8 at the lodge’s excellent restaurant, which was so good we ended up eating there again on Wednesday.
The storm came in right on time on Monday and continued on all the way through Tuesday, which was a little unexpected. Consequently, Tuesday’s day of boarding (for me, skiing for Reyna) was in conditions I haven’t experienced since my one and only trip to Homewood back during the ‘98-99 season. It snowed all day long and was about as windy as it can get before they start closing lifts. I think they did close some of the lifts at Squaw, but we were at Alpine, which had almost all the lifts open. The Summit Chair dropped us off in white-out conditions that made even the “easy” way down quite an adventure. Honestly, I was surprised they kept it open, but they did.
Tuesday evening was spent with Tim and Chi (and their friends Larry and Cameron, with Ethan, Skylar, and Tyler playing in the tub) at their condo right in Northstar village. I hadn’t been to Northstar in years either, and was amazed at the changes they’ve made. Since we didn’t know where Tim was, he came out to lead us to his place and gamely sat hunched down in the back of the Mini where I couldn’t even give him a seat because of all the stuff back there. It was both fun and funny!
[More Later]
Grab yourself a cup of coffee, sit back, and watch the 12 minute video on this page. I especially enjoyed when the chairman of the committee, Representative Kanjorski, got involved. These are the people entrusted to watch over the U.S. financial markets. Absolutely pathetic.
And for a little taste of why Representative Ackerman is so apoplectic, watch as Representative Maloney tries to get information out of the SEC’s head of enforcement. Presumably, Maloney’s questioning happened before Ackerman got his turn.
