Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has sued 16 big banks that set a key global interest rate, accusing them of fraud and conspiring to keep the rate low to enrich themselves.

The banks, which include Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. in the U.S., are among the world's largest.

The FDIC says it is seeking to recover losses suffered from the rate manipulation by 10 U.S. banks that failed during the financial crisis and were taken over by the agency. The civil lawsuit was filed Friday in federal court in Manhattan.

A number of U.S. cities and municipal agencies also have filed suits against banks that set the LIBOR rate. They are seeking damages for losses suffered as a result of an artificially low rate. Local governments hold bonds and other investments whose value is pegged to LIBOR.

In addition, government-controlled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have brought similar suits against many of the banks.

On Sunday, thousands of Japanese residents marched to Parliament and called on the new Japanese government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe not to restart some of Japan’s 48 idled reactors. Speakers at the rally included former Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who held the post at the time of the Fukushima meltdown.

NAOTO KAN: [translated] I believe that now is the crucial time for us to eliminate nuclear power, or we forgive the Abe administration, which is going in the opposite direction.

AMY GOODMAN: Since the Fukushima crisis, Naoto Kan has become a vocal critic of nuclear power, saying it’s too dangerous for Japan to keep open any of its nuclear plants. Up until the time of Fukushima, he was a longtime supporter nuclear power.

In this exclusive extended broadcast interview, I sat down with former Prime Minister Naoto Kan when we were in Japan in January. I began by asking him to talk about what happened three years ago today, on March 11, 2011.

AMY GOODMAN: Who was responsible for this catastrophe, for the meltdown at the reactors?

NAOTO KAN: [translated] First of all, I believe that the fact that all of the electricity was lost through this earthquake and tsunami, but no preparation or no consideration of such accidents or such things happening, and no preparations being made for this, under the assumption that no accidents could happen, and the technical side of things from this, including both the facilities and also the staffing situation, and the lack of ensuring the full safety of the plant, but still continuing to increase nuclear power plants and the situation, the responsibility for this lies on the state of Japan and on the government, including me. There is also responsible on TEPCO as the operator, in fact, of the site for not predicting, not expecting, not planning for such an accident to happen. But politically, of course, the responsibility lies on me, the government at the time, and also the previous government and TEPCO, in charge of the plant.

Buffett said he's been bullish on the U.S. economy since the fall of 2008, but he doesn't expect it to rapidly accelerate this year. Instead, he thinks it will continue its slow upward trajectory.

It is also important to note that Microsoft was a particularly eager participant in NSA spying from the very beginning. For example, according to the following PRISM slide provided by Edward Snowden, we see that Gates’ company was the first to become involved. In fact, they were participating a full six months before Yahoo!, while Apple didn’t join until a year after Steve Jobs died.

Question: When people think about the cloud, it’s not only the accessibility of information and their documents that comes to mind, but also their privacy – or lack of it.

Gates: Should there be cameras everywhere in outdoor streets? My personal view is having cameras in inner cities is a very good thing.

Question: Thanks to Edward Snowden, who has leaked tens of thousands of NSA documents, we are. Do you consider him a hero or a traitor?

Gates: I think he broke the law, so I certainly wouldn’t characterize him as a hero. If he wanted to raise the issues and stay in the country and engage in civil disobedience or something of that kind, or if he had been careful in terms of what he had released, then it would fit more of the model of “OK, I’m really trying to improve things.” You won’t find much admiration from me.

Higgenbotham wrote:It is a carnival atmosphere and Buffett is the head barker. CNBC is a media outlet devoted to airing the views of carnival barkers.

“Somebody came to us a couple years ago…a large investment bank and they said take a look at this portfolio… They said to us, ‘Will you insure that these bonds in these states will pay for 10 years?’

“I looked at the list and Ajit Jain [Buffett’s ace reinsurance exec] looked at the list and we had to decide would we insure them and what premium we would charge. We offered to charge $160 million for 10 years… We will pay somebody on the other side—the counterparty they call it—if these states don’t pay, we will pay as if they did pay.

“We didn’t dream up this list,” Buffett says, and then makes one of the most revealing statements of the session.

“Another carny dreamed up this list.”

Upon entering the workforce, with PhD in hand, you immediately get a higher pay of around $68k, but you're well behind the bachelor. Assuming you slog it out in the profession (and we're all still around in 25 years) you'd never quite catch up because the premium of $17k becomes a smaller and smaller proportion of the lifetime earnings. To help make up the difference the PhD perhaps should consider becoming a manager, although even this wouldn't be enough