BorightBlog

Not so well apparently, unless you’re a banker. Thank goodness we have Dodd-Frank to help us with this. 

Obama Bid to End Too-Big-to Fail Undercut as Banks Grow (Bloomberg)
Two years after President Barack Obama vowed to eliminate the danger of financial institutions becoming “too big to fail,” the nation’s largest banks are bigger than they were before the credit crisis. Five banks– JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and Goldman Sachs– held $8.5 trillion in assets at the end of 2011, equal to 56 percent of the U.S. economy, according to the Federal Reserve. Five years earlier, before the financial crisis, the largest banks’ assets amounted to 43 percent of U.S. output. The Big Five today are about twice as large as they were a decade ago relative to the economy, sparking concern that trouble at a major bank would rock the financial system and force the government to step in as it did during the 2008 crunch. “Market participants believe that nothing has changed, that too-big-to-fail is fully intact,” said Gary Stern, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

Resorb. 

transitive verb

1. to swallow, or suck in again
2. (sic) to charge an outrageous sum of money to get a tooth fixed

Sounds innocuous right?  Not when your periodontist uses it. 

What it means is that the $2,000.00 you just spent to have a tooth removed, a titanium implant placed where your tooth root used to be, and then a crown screwed onto the implanted post, isn’t actually going to work, because your jawbone has (unfortunatly) resorbed and there isn’t enough bone in which to put that implant.

Not to worry though; we can – another new phrase – do a sinus lift and graft some bone in there to correct that resorb problem.  That costs $3,000.00.  Expensive little word. 

Especially unfortunate as I need two of them.

On the plus side, is a good new word for Draw Something.

In 1972, Joe Miller was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Tulsa Junior
College.

On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with
one leg raised in the air.  The elephant seemed distressed, so Joe
approached it very carefully.  He got down on one knee, inspected the elephants foot, and
found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it.  As carefully and as gently
as he could, Joe worked the wood out with his knife, after which the elephant
gingerly put down its foot.

The elephant turned to Joe, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared
at him for several tense moments.  Joe stood frozen, thinking of nothing else
but being trampled.

Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away. Joe never
forgot that elephant or the events of that day.

Thirty years later, Joe was walking through the Tulsa Zoo with his family.  As
they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked
over to near where Joe and his family were standing.  The large bull elephant
stared at Joe, lifted its front foot off the ground, then put it down.  The
elephant did that several times, then trumpeted loudly, all the while
staring at the man.

Remembering the encounter in 1972, Joe could not help wondering if this was the
same elephant…  Joe summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing, and
made his way into the enclosure.  He walked right up to the elephant and stared
back in wonder.   

The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of
Joe’s legs and slammed him against the railing, killing him instantly.

Probably wasn’t the same elephant.

If Knowledge is knowing it, or knowing someone who knows it.

And I know someone (else) who is romantic, then…….

!

Maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.

Where is that Grinch DVD. Got to get over to the store and get a new one. Wait, can get the enhanced remastered in 3d version from Netflix instantly on my fancy new tv. Accumulate new stuff training runs deep.

Nice to see religious fundamentalism is still alive and well in the commonwealth. We have separation of church and state so it must be god who only likes Anglicans. The Catholic vs Protestant thing has survived 400 years; pretty impressive given it only took Henry VIII about 10 years to get rid of the nobles who might have been a threat to him, nationalize all the Papist church property he needed to refill the royal coffers, and get the divorces he wanted. All for the good of the souls of his citizens of course.

Won’t it be fun if William and Kate have a daughter who decides to become a Muslim, and marry a guy from Wajiristan?

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/29/world/europe/rule-of-male-succession-to-bri…

Gupta to Face Criminal Charges

(WSJ) The 62-year-old Mr. Gupta is expected to surrender to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Wednesday on criminal charges of leaking inside information to Galleon Group hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam, according to people familiar with the matter…

I am prejudging Gupta’s guilt of course, but the stuff that made the news during Rajaratnam’s trial seemed pretty damming.  I’m sure there is more than a little of the perp walk Martha Stewart pour encourager les autres law enforcement grandstanding going on, but there is too much smoke for there not to be fire?

And it tells an ugly tale about the corrupting power of money………that there is never enough. And the “need” for more can get anyone to start cutting corners 

You don’t get to be the Managing Director of McKinsey, and spearhead the successful internationalization of a firm like that, by being a dummy.  You built something yourself, and your organization helped a global who’s who list of companies build things.  A captain of industry.  Enviable career.

By “the 99%’s” definition, Gupta will have achieved unimaginable success, and earned stratospheric rewards; power, esteem, the requisite board seats at P&G and Goldman Sachs, and he probably uses his social security check as a week’s pocket change.

And somewhere in that timeline that the FBI are trying to build…..  he spent time with all these CEO’s over the past 15 years who got hired and fired, and lined up to sell their companies to private equity, carrying around personal compensation packages of $100M. Who knows what shenanigans he witnessed while on the board of the lords of the universe.  Well I guess Raj knows some of what he heard because we heard the phone taps.

And he starts rubbing shoulders with the titans of Wall Street.

And he thinks well they’re no smarter than me, and they have billions and I only have millions, so…………

There’s never enough.