STOCK Act’s one little loophole

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

While a measure that was designed to stop insider trading among Congresscritters drew bipartisan support and was signed into law by President Obama, it passed with a tiny, glaring flaw: it doesn’t apply to the congressional family members. The problem stems from a misinterpretation between the House and Senate.

Leader of the Foreign Policy Lightweight Brigade

GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, the former governor from Bain is set to visit Poland at the end of the month at the invitation of Lech Walesa. This may be in part because all the current vice presidential candidates are foreign policy lightweights. It will be part of a six-day overseas trip that will include stops in England and Israel.

Shooting sparks another round of debate about gun control

Here we go again. Whether it is a suspect who shoots a congresswoman or a suspect who fires his gun into a crowded theater, the perennial question about guns in our society is rejoined and it will likely come to the same sorry end.

With a presidential election in full swing and a congress held by the Republican party, don’t expect anything approximating a civil discussion on meaningful gun control.

Is this thing on? Really, is this thing on?

Wow! Has it really been a year since the last post? I guess it has. A lot has happened since then and some of it could be charitably characterized as problematic. It can now be said that there will be more time to tend to the blog than there has been in the last few months. And now that the hair-tugging contest between Viacom and DirectTV is over and done we can rebuild our lives together. I look forward to taking the opportunity to getting back to this blog and reconnecting with my audience.

Also, I would like to invite you to follow the adventures of an up and coming critic in Kharkov, Ukraine named Oksana. Yes, she's for real, she's very intelligent and she'll make a great event planner one day. You'll have to use Google Translate to read her blog but it is worth it.

Greek lightning won’t stay in the bottle

If the economic observers are right, the birthplace of Western civilization is a ticking financial timebomb that will mean the end of the Euro as we know it. This week Standard & Poor's downgraded Greece to "CCC", the lowest credit level possible, on fears of a default. And China’s not very happy about the situation. Two scenarios are likely. The first involves yet another bailout package that would keep Greece afloat. That has stalled. The second is a two-part default with part one by the end of 2013 and part two by the end of the following year. According to currency strategist David Mann, the market has placed the likelihood of a Greek default at 75 percent.

As usual, it’s governments versus bankers. For any second bailout to get the approval of Europe’s largest economy, Germany, public sector support is a must. The European bank is saying it will see any private sector participation in the plan as coercion and call it a selective default. So how the bailout will happen without obliterating the country’s credit score is anyone’s guess. But contagion looks like it’s in the offing. 

Moody’s is examining three top level French banks for their exposure to the probable Greek default.

The Greeks themselves are not taking the austerity measures required for a second bailout lying down. A phalanx worthy of their ancient forebears turned out in force armed with ‘petrol bombs’ turned out near the parliament building to vent their anger at lawmakers. This has led the Prime Minister of Greece to start doing the cabinet shuffle in order to maintain a semiworking government.

The reality is that government defaults are pretty common occurrences. It’s the sovereign equivalent of bankruptcy. The current crisis was also a result of creative practices involving cross-currency swaps by … wait for it … Goldman Sachs, which helped the Greek government paper over its debt so it could appear to be in line with its debt level obligations under its EU membership. Much of Greece’s current woes legitimately may be of its own making, but if default worked for Venezuela nine times during a 175 year period, the world is probably protesting too much over a possible Greek debt conflagration.