All Things in Moderation

Morning Report

16 Responses

1. 

   jnc4p, on June 26, 2012 at 10:47 am said:

   I’ll toss a couple of live grenades in to start the day’s thread:

   For those who haven’t seen this yet:

   “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All

   It’s time to stop fooling ourselves, says a woman who left a position of power: the women who have managed to be both mothers and top professionals are superhuman, rich, or self-employed. If we truly believe in equal opportunity for all women, here’s what has to change.

   By Anne-Marie Slaughter”

   …

   “The best hope for improving the lot of all women, and for closing what Wolfers and Stevenson call a “new gender gap”—measured by well-being rather than wages—is to close the leadership gap: to elect a woman president and 50 women senators; to ensure that women are equally represented in the ranks of corporate executives and judicial leaders. Only when women wield power in sufficient numbers will we create a society that genuinely works for all women. That will be a society that works for everyone. ”

   http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-still-can-8217-t-have-it-all/9020/

   Contrary view in the Atlantic:

   “Why There’s No Such Thing as ‘Having It All’—and There Never Will Be
   By Lori Gottlieb

   Jun 25 2012, 12:11 PM ET 244

   Women can’t have everything they want all of the time. Neither can men. Who ever thought otherwise?”

   http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/06/why-theres-no-such-thing-as-having-it-all-and-there-never-will-be/258928/

   I still think Jack Welsh has the best observation:

   “There’s no such thing as work-life balance,” Mr. Welch told the Society for Human Resource Management’s annual conference in New Orleans on June 28. “There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.”

   http://blogs.wsj.com/juggle/2009/07/13/jack-welch-no-such-thing-as-work-life-balance/

   http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303877604577382321364803912.html

   QB – Here’s one for you from a writer on the left who shares your assessment of President Obama as the most cynical politician/president ever (or at least since Nixon).

   “The Source of Barack Obama’s Power to Trick Us Comes from Our Willingness to Be Tricked
   by Matt Stoller”
   …

   “This is cynicism as art. It’s literally a Presidential candidate running on hope and change saying that campaign promises are a joke and a ruse.”

   http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/06/back-obama-the-cool-self-aware-irony-drenched-con-artist.html

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   • 

     quarterback, on June 26, 2012 at 11:29 am said:

     jnc,

     I saw wb quoting that piece over at the ol’ thunderdome–sort of like wb on steroids. I still think it is only a half-truth about Obama at best. I firmly believe his heart is on the left.

     I tossed my own grenade over there–about the DOJ’s setting up a hotline to solicit civil rights complaints about Arizona immigration enforcement. It’s a last straw for me. I would like to see immediate impeachment proceedings. It’s an odd last straw, admittedly, but this act reflects a level of cynicism and hostility to the rule of law and the integrity of American society that can’t be defended.

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   • 

     ScottC, on June 26, 2012 at 11:59 am said:

     jnc:

     For those who haven’t seen this yet:

     Interesting article, although I found your choice of excerpts odd. After reading the whole article, the bit you quoted seems to be totally out of place with the rest of it. Why is electing a woman president and 50 women senators the “best hope” for seeing the societal changes she is looking for? The claim struck me as a complete non sequitur, unrelated to what went before and after it.

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2. 

   jnc4p, on June 26, 2012 at 11:42 am said:

   “quarterback, on June 26, 2012 at 11:29 am said:

   “I tossed my own grenade over there–about the DOJ’s setting up a hotline to solicit civil rights complaints about Arizona immigration enforcement. It’s a last straw for me. I would like to see immediate impeachment proceedings. It’s an odd last straw, admittedly, but this act reflects a level of cynicism and hostility to the rule of law and the integrity of American society that can’t be defended.”

   I don’t see that as being an impeachable offense. I’d argue your real issue should be with the Supreme Court for accepting the administration’s argument in the Arizona case in the first place.

   The only thing that President Obama has done that in my view would warrant possible impeachment would be the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki in violation of the Fifth Amendment’s restrictions on American citizens being “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”, Attorney General Holder’s admonishments that due process doesn’t equate to a judicial process notwithstanding.

   If you are going to impeach the President, do it for something of sufficient gravitas, not over a phone bank.

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   • 

     quarterback, on June 26, 2012 at 12:02 pm said:

     jnc,

     I understand what you are saying, but I take the DOJ hotline to be proof that everything about the “burden” they spent the past two years arguing was a fraud on the courts and a fraud on the American public.

     Their argument was that the burden of answering calls from Arizona would be so great as to undermine their ability to administer the law–a profoundly cynical argument to begin with. Now that the Supreme Court has reversed the injunction against that provision of the Arizona law, and held that the government has not shown such an improper burden, they respond by saying, we not only won’t take calls from Arizona law enforcement but are setting up a special hotline to take calls complaining about Arizona law enforcement.

     I see no way to spin those facts except that the administration has been lying to the courts to justify its refusal to cooperate in enforcing federal law.

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     • 

       markinaustin, on June 26, 2012 at 12:16 pm said:

       Interesting take, QB.

       “Burden of answering calls” – that was laid out in the DOJ briefs?

       I suppose their answer to a contempt citation would be that the ruling forces them to divert resources to this “burden”.

       Loss of credibility for the Solicitor General is punishment enough, I think.

       That is, assuming DOJ actually made the “Burden of answering calls” argument, plainly, to the Court.

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3. 

   jnc4p, on June 26, 2012 at 11:43 am said:

   I wonder if Meredith Whitney will end up being vindicated on municipal bankruptcies:

   “Stockton City Council expected to approve bankruptcy tonight
   June 26, 2012 | 6:56 am ”

   http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/06/stockton-city-council-expected-to-approve-bankruptcy-tonight.html

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4. 

   jnc4p, on June 26, 2012 at 1:14 pm said:

   “ScottC, on June 26, 2012 at 11:59 am said: Edit Comment

   jnc:

   For those who haven’t seen this yet:

   Interesting article, although I found your choice of excerpts odd. After reading the whole article, the bit you quoted seems to be totally out of place with the rest of it. Why is electing a woman president and 50 women senators the “best hope” for seeing the societal changes she is looking for? The claim struck me as a complete non sequitur, unrelated to what went before and after it.”

   That was my impression as well. It was a bit of wishing for a Deus ex machina to resolve the inevitable tension between work and home commitments. This tension isn’t a problem to be solved though, but rather an individual choice to be made.

   The other framing paragraph was this one:

   “I still strongly believe that women can “have it all” (and that men can too). I believe that we can “have it all at the same time.” But not today, not with the way America’s economy and society are currently structured. My experiences over the past three years have forced me to confront a number of uncomfortable facts that need to be widely acknowledged—and quickly changed. ”

   Other follow up articles:

   http://www.theatlantic.com/debates/women-workplace/

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5. 

   jnc4p, on June 26, 2012 at 1:31 pm said:

   “quarterback, on June 26, 2012 at 12:02 pm said:

   jnc,

   I understand what you are saying, but I take the DOJ hotline to be proof that everything about the “burden” they spent the past two years arguing was a fraud on the courts and a fraud on the American public.”

   The republic has survived worse. The ballot box is a better remedy for this behavior than turning impeachment into a vote of no confidence.

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6. 

   Kevin S. Willis, on June 26, 2012 at 2:35 pm said:

   The best hope for improving the lot of all women, and for closing what Wolfers and Stevenson call a “new gender gap”—measured by well-being rather than wages—is to close the leadership gap: to elect a woman president and 50 women senators; to ensure that women are equally represented in the ranks of corporate executives and judicial leaders. Only when women wield power in sufficient numbers will we create a society that genuinely works for all women.

   There’s not an empiric foundation (at all) in that statement, and many, many pitfalls. Well-being is self-assessed, and as society bends over backwards to improve the well-being of one entitled class of people, the self-assessment will not likely improve. It will probably get worse. It’s a fantasy to think that he grass is greener once you get to some mythical future point of arbitrarily defined perfectness self-reported well-being will improve. Is there any indication that self-reported well-being of women is significantly higher now than it was 20 years ago, or 30 years ago, or 40, when there was much less of what is being prescribed a solution to the “new gender gap”.

   There is no reason to think that “closing the leadership” gap will have any impact on the sense of well-being of individuals living their daily lives. None.

   Also, at what point can things become problems for individuals to deal with, rather than things that demand society restructure itself? If your sense of well-being is off, that has more to do with you as a person than it does the demographics of congress.

   My sense of well-being is all right, but it could be much better. What can I do to make society conform to my expectations so that I might feel better for some indefinite amount of time before the new society becomes status quo and I begin to complain again?

   The idea that you can have it all at the same time is more problematic and more detrimental to any sense of well-being than the number of women senators, no matter who you are. If you have a fantasy that you can have everything, all at once, and do it all perfectly (which is the implication of “having it all”) and that’s the yardstick you are constantly comparing your life too, you will be unsatisfied. And electing a woman president will not change this.

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7. 

   jnc4p, on June 26, 2012 at 2:46 pm said:

   Bipartisan consensus reached!

   “Posted at 04:10 PM ET, 06/26/2012
   Student loan rate deal reached, Senate leaders say”

   The pay for looks dubious. Why do I suspect an increase in unfunded pension liabilities down the road being traced back to this?

   “The extension would be paid for by raising premiums for federal pension insurance, an idea acceptable to businesses because rules will also be changed on how companies calculate their pension liabilities. The pension proposal came from Reid.”

   http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/2chambers/post/student-loan-rate-deal-reached-senate-leaders-say/2012/06/26/gJQAQBPv4V_blog.html?hpid=z1

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   • 

     ScottC, on June 26, 2012 at 8:27 pm said:

     For anyone not yet convinced that Europe is completely FUBAR, perhaps this will do the trick:

     For most Europeans, almost nothing is more prized than their four to six weeks of guaranteed annual vacation leave. But it was not clear just how sacrosanct that time off was until Thursday, when Europe’s highest court ruled that workers who happened to get sick on vacation were legally entitled to take another vacation. “The purpose of entitlement to paid annual leave is to enable the worker to rest and enjoy a period of relaxation and leisure,” the Court of Justice of the European Union, based in Luxembourg, ruled in a case involving department store workers in Spain. “The purpose of entitlement to sick leave is different, since it enables a worker to recover from an illness that has caused him to be unfit for work.”

     It doesn’t matter what happens with Greece or Spain or Italy. No culture that holds the above to be anything but absolute insanity can possibly be long for this world.

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     • 

       ScottC, on June 27, 2012 at 6:26 am said:

       jnc:

       News coming out right now…CFTC settles case with Barclays over LIBOR manipulation. No details yet.

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8. 

   jnc4p, on June 27, 2012 at 9:12 am said:

   Dealbook piece on it:

   “Legal/Regulatory June 27, 2012, 8:11 am
   Barclays Settles Regulators’ Claims Over Manipulation of Key Rates
   By BEN PROTESS and MARK SCOTT

   Barclays has agreed to pay more than $450 million to resolve accusations that it attempted to manipulate key interest rates, the first settlement in a sprawling global investigation targeting many of the world’s biggest banks.”

   http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/06/27/barclays-said-to-settle-regulatory-claims-over-benchmark-manipulation/?hp

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   • 

     ScottC, on June 27, 2012 at 9:29 am said:

     jnc:

     Here’s the filing re Barclays.

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9. 

   Kevin S. Willis, on June 27, 2012 at 3:01 pm said:

   when Europe’s highest court ruled that workers who happened to get sick on vacation were legally entitled to take another vacation.

   Oh, my gosh. I can’t imagine that people who take advantage of that don’t feel a little bit like a heroin user or a coke addict. “Man, this feels so good, but I’m not stupid enough to say this isn’t going to kill me. Because obviously, this is going to kill me if I keep doing it.”

   It’s the Super-Sizing of government benefits. Oh, it’s so tasty, but eating nothing but giant fried burgers in greasy, salt-covered buns and washing them down with gelatinous milk shakes will catch up with you, European worker. In the meantime, take up smoking. 😉

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