The anatomy of a proposed settlement by Citigroup

Matt Taibbi dissects a proposed deal between the SEC and Citigoup, after Judge Jed Rakoff harpoons it:

In the deal, Citi made a $160 million profit, while its customers lost $700 million. . . . So to recap: a unit of Citigroup, having repeatedly violated the same laws and having repeatedly violated the SEC’s own cease-and-desist orders and injunctions, is dragged into court one more time for committing a massive fraud. And what does the SEC do? It doesn’t even bring up Citi’s history of ignoring the SEC’s own order, slaps the bank with a fractional fine, refuses to target any individuals, allows the bank to walk away without an admission of wrongdoing, and puts a cherry on the top by describing the $160 million heist not as a crime, but as unintentional negligence.

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Senate upholds FCC rules on net neutrality

This is a great development on the topic of net neutrality, reported by Free Press:

[T]he Senate rejected a motion to proceed on its "resolution of disapproval" of the Federal Communications Commission’s Net Neutrality rules. The resolution failed by a margin of 52–46. The measure was an effort by Senate Republicans to reverse the FCC’s December 2010 rules intended to prevent Internet service providers from blocking or discriminating against content and applications on the Web.
I had previously published articles urging the rejection of the "resolution of disapproval" at DI (and see here).

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America’s failed plan for Iraq

At TruthDig, Tom Englelhart takes a look at America's plan for Iraq and then examines the facts, concluding that it is the American nightmare.

Washington, though visibly diminished, remains an airless and eerily familiar place. No one there could afford to ask, for instance, what a Middle East, being transformed before our eyes, might be like without its American shadow, without the bases and fleets and drones and all the operatives that go with them. As a result, they simply keep on keeping on, especially with Bush’s global war on terror and with the protection in financial tough times of the Pentagon (and so of the militarization of this country).

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On teacher pay

According to a 2010 study, "The U.S. recruits most teachers from the bottom two-thirds of college classes, and, for many schools in poor neighborhoods, from the bottom third." This is not surprising, according to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, given that higher ranked college graduates can earn far more money in other fields:

McKinsey & Co. did a study (PDF) last year comparing the U.S. to other countries and found that America's average current teacher salaries -- starting around $35,000 and topping out at an average of $65,000 -- were set far too low to attract and retain top talent. The McKinsey report found that starting teacher salaries have not kept pace with other fields. In 1970, beginning New York City lawyers earned $2,000 more than first-year teachers. Today, a starting lawyer there can earn three or four times as much as a beginning teacher. Money is never the sole reason that people enter teaching. But it is a reason why some talented people avoid teaching -- or quit the profession when starting a family or buying a home. Other high-performing nations recruit teachers from the top third of college graduates. That must be our goal as well, and compensation is one critical factor. To encourage more top-caliber students to choose teaching, teachers should be paid a lot more, with starting salaries of $60,000 and potential earnings of $150,000.

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Matt Taibbi reports on Mitt Romney’s insulting plan

At Common Dreams, Matt Taibbi reports on Mitt Romney's insulting and and inequitable plan to address past financial abuses with new financial abuses:

Your typical Medicare/Social Security recipient might already have been ripped off three different ways in this era. He might have been sold a crappy mortgage or a refi by a Countrywide-type firm (which often targeted the elderly). He might then also have unwittingly become an investor in such mortgages and seen the value of his retirement holdings devastated (many of the banks sold their crappy mortgage-backed securities to state pension funds). Lastly, if he paid taxes, he saw part of his tax money go to pay off the bets the banks made against these same mortgages. So now that Wall Street has ripped off this segment of society three times, it makes all the sense in the world that Mitt Romney – a former Wall Street superstar who was a chief architect of the modern executive-compensation-driven corporation – is coming back and telling us that we need to cut their Medicare and Social Security benefits in order to defray the cost of the previous three scams.

Continue ReadingMatt Taibbi reports on Mitt Romney’s insulting plan