Monthly Archives: September 2014

Banksters

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The beginning of the end of the Roman Republic was when the ruling class loss respect for and the willingness to abide by their own rules. Scholars don’t frame it like that because it’s hard and boring. Instead they focus on economic changes like the flood of slave labor after the defeat of Carthage and Corinth. Alternatively, the political changes make for nice stories because the characters are interesting. The road off the cliff, however, started with the loss of respect for the spirit of the laws and customs.

The point when our politicians stopped punishing criminal financiers will similarly be looked at as an inflection point. There was a time when politicians and wealthy members of the ruling elite faced criminal punishment for breaking the law. Nixon was run out of DC for talking about what Obama boasts of doing. Michael Milken went to jail for two years for what is common today on Wall Street. A great trivia question is how many bankers went to jail for the sub prime mortgage scandal. The answer is zero.

This article on Bloomberg points this out.

Yesterday, we looked at why bankers weren’t busted for crimes committed during the financial crisis. Political corruption, prosecutorial malfeasance, rewritten legislation and cowardice on the part of government officials were among the many reasons.

But I saved the biggest reason so many financial felons escaped justice for today: They dumped the cost of their criminal activities on you, the shareholder (never mind the taxpayer).

Corporate executives theoretically work for the owners of the company, namely, the shareholders. But there is an agency problem in that owners can’t closely manage and object to the actions of these executives. Collective owners, such as mutual funds, seem to have no interest in doing so. What we end up with is a management class that works for itself instead of on behalf of the owners of the publicly traded banks. Many of these executives committed crimes; got big bonuses for doing so; and paid huge fines using shareholder assets (i.e., company cash), helping them avoid prosecution.

As for claims like those of white-collar crime defense attorney Mark F. Pomerantz, that “the executives running companies like Bank of America, Citigroup and JP Morgan were not committing criminal acts,” they simply are implausible if not laughable. Consider a brief survey of some of the more egregious acts of wrongdoing:

Foreclosure fraud: Of all the crimes committed during the financial crisis and in its aftermath, this is one that should have been the easiest to identify and prosecute.

Any bank that owns a mortgage with the debtor in default must follow a simple set of legal steps in order to foreclose. The procedure is time consuming, specific to each state’s laws and involves lawyers, so foreclosures are expensive. Hey, it is the cost of issuing credit, and a simple reality of the rule of law. There are no shortcuts.

Except the banks took many short cuts and did so on purpose and with the goal of improperly expediting the process. They failed to review the documents of the mortgages they were foreclosing on, then told courts they had. They didn’t verify information, but claimed to have done so in sworn affidavits. They hired $8 an hour burger-flippers to “robosign” these documents, pretending the underlying legal work had been done. They knowingly used falsified records, some of which they bought en masse. They were aided by a company called DocX, which had a price list of fabricated documents for use in court. (DocX, by the way, was eventually indicted on charges of mortgage fraud).

After creating phony dossiers on borrowers, the banks signed and notarized affidavits stating they had taken all of the legal steps. In many cases, even the notarizations were fakes. Submitting a falsified notarized affidavit to a court is perjury and fraud.

Of course, the burger-flippers who did the paperwork didn’t think up the whole scheme — someone much higher did. Somewhere between these low-level workers and the chief executive officer were managers who masterminded robosigning. So far, just one midlevel executive has been convicted at Bank of America, while scores of others have gone untouched.

Mortgage underwriting: Then there are the crimes committed in mortgage underwriting, where defects were knowingly ignored. The FBI investigated these cases early on, but investigators never moved forward with prosecutions.

Maybe the scale of the financial penalties bank agreed to pay had something to do with this inaction. Bank of America, for instance, using shareholder money, paid $16.65 billion to settle allegations of fraudulent mortgage originations, securitizations and servicing. One can’t help think that this money bought immunity from prosecution for executives.

Money Laundering: Banks have been laundering staggering sums of money for drug dealers and terrorists. Hey, there are big bucks in high net worth narco-terrorists. Awash in cash, drug cartels relied on big banks to launder their ill-gotten money. Apparently, it was just good business to grab a slice of that pie. However, these are deeply offensive, very illegal activities, and deserve not just penalties, but jail time.

How much of this dirty money made its way through the banks? One analysis estimates that $1.6 trillion of tainted proceeds has been laundered through major money-center banks around the world.

A U.S. Senate report linked HSBC to drug lords and terrorists, leading to a record $1.9 billion fine. The Federal Reserve faulted Citigroup over its controls, allowing money laundering to go on. And Wells Fargo admitted to laundering money for Mexican drug gangs.

• Market manipulation: We haven’t even gotten to the manipulation of markets in violation of U.S and international law. Whether it was aluminum or Libor rates, prices were either improperly manipulated or illegally rigged, with knowledge of the bank executives and the traders they employed and supervised. Let’s not forget manipulating the multitrillion dollar derivatives market.

• Fraud, skimming and bid-rigging: Then there is just good old-fashioned fraud and bid-rigging: State Street Bank was accused of skimming money off of the pension transactions it handled while BNY Mellon was accused of skimming money for “fictitious” foreign-currency costs for pension funds.

• Accounting fraud: We could spend months discussing how some executives at banks cooked their books, but really, this is so well known that it hardly merits mention.

So next time you hear the claim that “there were no crimes committed by bankers,” just remember that this may be the biggest lie of the 21st century.
That’s a strong and accurate indictment. When you add in the multiple LIBOR scandals and the ISDAfix scandal, the image we get is of a rapacious bandit class rampaging through the world financial system like pirates. Theft, graft and corruption will always be a part of the financial class. Banks attract bank robbers and the banking system will always attract grifters and confidence men. It is the duty of the civil authorities to police the financial system and punish the people who commit crimes.
If there’s going to be a reform of the ruling class, it has to start with the bandit problem on Wall Street. The reforms following the Great Depression ended for a generation the type of spiritual corruption we see today. Those reforms were not perfect, but they gave an advantage to the type of men who put their reputation and their firms reputation ahead of quick profits. Top to bottom the modern financial firm is filled with men who would gladly murder their mother for a bigger bonus check.
The answer lies in those reforms a century ago. Separating commercial banking from investment banking is where it must start. The former is vital to a strong economy, while the latter is just gambling and popular only in good times. Similarly, retail banking should be separate from commercial banking. A firm offering boat loans and second mortgages should not be financing factory expansion and land acquisition. They have different regulatory needs and different degrees of transparency.
For any of this to happen, the ruling class has to abandon the idea that you can have a civil society based on purely transactional relationships. When all relationships are measured purely on monetary terms in the moment, there’s no reason to be honest in your dealings with others. Completely bankrupting the other guy is fine because you win the deal. Squeezing your vendors into poverty is acceptable, even if it destroys your ability to do business down the road. All that matter is the here and now. That’s a recipe for a low-trust society, not western civilization.

The War on Reality

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The near total control of American life by the Left is so thorough it goes unnoticed. We just accept it, like background noise. Every once in a while their slip shows like in this column by Jonah Goldberg.

About the second point reasonable people can quibble. The terrorist army that calls itself the Islamic State is certainly trying to build a state — and not just a state but a super state, or caliphate. They’re not there yet; their delivery of social services seems spotty at best, though they do collect taxes and uphold the law (in a fashion).

More relevant, it doesn’t really matter if it’s a state. Morally, this weed stinks just as much whether you call it a state or a soccer league that rapes, tortures, and murders people on the side. And legally, statehood would matter — and not very much — only if the U.N. and other bodies agreed to recognize the fledgling caliphate’s legitimacy. That’s not going to happen even if the Islamic State opens up post offices and DMVs on every corner.

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The president’s first assertion is trickier. Is the Islamic State “not Islamic”? Moreover, is it really “clear” that it’s not Islamic?

Not even a little? Is it Islamic-ish?

If we’re talking clarity, I’d say the Islamic State is clearly not Mormon. Or Lutheran. Or Buddhist. It most certainly is not the most extreme example of Quakers gone bad ever recorded.

As for its not being Islamic, that’s at best unclear, if not just clearly wrong. And the fact that the majority of its victims are Muslim is irrelevant. Lenin and Stalin killed thousands of Communists and socialists; that doesn’t mean Lenin and Stalin weren’t Communists and socialists. If such terrorists who kill Muslims aren’t Muslims, why do we give them Korans when we imprison them?

The president faces the same dilemma that bedeviled George W. Bush, and I sympathize with him. It is not in our interest for the Muslim world to think we are at war with Islam, not just because it is untrue but more specifically because we desperately need the cooperation of Muslim nations. That’s why Bush constantly proclaimed “Islam means peace.”

That last paragraph is a strange bit of self-delusion or perhaps a necessary lie. Jonah makes his money as a TV pundit. His role is to be the nerdish conservative, like a part time character on Big Bang Theory. His character is allowed to say bad things about politicians and some of the fads popular with the Left, but he must always be careful to bite the hand that feeds him. Fumble a line about a touchy subject and his struggle session is his next TV appearance.

There’s also some chance he believes it. Take someone off the street, drop them into Utah and there’s a good chance they eventually become a Mormon. Jonah Goldberg is more than a toady for the Left. He is a creation of the Left. He could very well believe we should not be at war with Islam and that it is important Muslims not think we are waging war on them, notwithstanding the 100,000 tons of ordinance we have dropped on the Muslim world.

Reality, the thing that does not go away when you stop believing in it, is nothing like Jonah imagines. Muslims have thought we were at war with them for decades now, maybe even centuries. That’s why they’re pissed, by the way. They are not fooled by the religion of peace nonsense. Further, the only people who fear this truth are Americans, particularly members of the Cult. Just as they cannot face their war on black people, they cannot face this war on Islam. So, they pretend to care about and respect a religion they personally detest.

Reality be damned.

Unitary Cult Theory

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Steve Sailer has been wondering why the Left is obsessing over Ferguson. We keep seeing non-stories getting more coverage than stories one would assume have greater public interest. The increasingly dangerous situation in Ukraine, for example, generates little coverage, for example, despite the ugly showdown with Russia. The domestic economy, staggering along in ways not seen in a generation, generates no news coverage, because Obama, of course.

Then we have this berserk obsession with some football player who hit his old lady. Everyone knew when the story first hit the wires that the player punched his old lady in the elevator. Unless you’re missing a chromosome, you could figure out how the women ended up unconscious. That and the player’s confession solved that mystery months ago. Now, a video comes out showing the incident, as the normally inert US Senate is moved to get involved in what the state prosecutor thought was a nothing incident.

The lunatic sporting press has been treating this like Watergate for two weeks now. Meanwhile, real scandals like the IRS systematically harassing citizen on behalf of the White House goes unmentioned. The White House attempt to declare Obama dictator so he rewrite laws as he sees fit is treated like a zoning board hearing in Poughkeepsie. Whenever this is pointed out, the lunatic press claims they merely chase the stories of interest to the public.

But, public reaction to the Rice story looks more like mockery of the lunatics than real interest. Last night the Ravens played Pittsburgh and the Baltimore fans were wearing Ray Rice jerseys. It seems clear they were not doing this to support wide beating. Most of the people wearing the jerseys were women. They were doing it to protest the lunacy they see from the Cult on this issue.

Music blared from the purple bus, and Baltimore Ravens fan Racquel Bailey stood with drink in hand amid her usual tailgate buddies while making a bold fashion statement: a black, rhinestone-decorated jersey with the white No. 27.

A Ray Rice jersey.

“There’s two sides to every story,” said the 23-year-old waitress from Baltimore. “I saw the video. That’s their personal business, and it shouldn’t have affected his career. I don’t agree with domestic violence, but she’s still with him, so obviously it wasn’t that big of a deal. Everyone should just drop it.”

Ravens fans male and female, young and old, arrived for Thursday night’s game against the Pittsburgh Steelers debating the events that have affected their team over the last few days. Their once beloved running back has been kicked off the team and banned by the NFL after a video surfaced that showed him punching his then-fiancee — and now wife — inside an Atlantic City hotel elevator.

All condemned Rice’s actions, but there was little consensus as to what his punishment should be. The NFL did the right thing by suspending him, some said, but the Ravens shouldn’t have terminated his contract as well. Or maybe the suspension should have remained at two games, where it stood before the punch video became public.

The question is why does the Cult become obsessed on nothing stories like this or hoax stories like the Ferguson riots?

My offering is the Unitary Cult Theory. This is when members of a mass movement, always jostling with one another for status within the movement, close the information loop, excluding information from people outside the movement regarding a topic. The result is a piety contest where members of the movement stand up and commit increasingly extreme acts of public piety.  As more and more members jump into the ring, the contest quickly spirals out of control resulting in these absurd public displays.

Because the country is run by the Cult of Modern Liberalism, these piety wheels get maximum attention. The public is often sucked into the the false drama in the same way people get caught up in a TV serial. That’s gasoline on the fire. With Ferguson, the public has seen that drama too many times to stay interested for very long. The Gay Gayington story is too disgusting. This Ray Rice story gets more interest because the NFL is so popular and everyone can relate the story at the center of it.

The other piece of this, of course, is why the focus on trivia and hoaxes? We’ve had so many race hoaxes, the default assumption now is the next one will be a hoax as well. Part of it is how the mind of the fanatic operates. They see only that which confirms their fanaticism. When a white cop shoots a black giant, the fanatics in the Cult process that as yet another bit of data confirming the narrative. When a black cop shoots a white guy, it is filtered out and ignored.

At the macro level, the Cult, like any mass movement, will collectively focus away from dis-confirmation. The Cult has been in charge of American cities for 70 years. The problems of the black ghetto are the responsibility of the Cult. They cannot admit it or even acknowledge it, so they look to places like Ferguson. Given the times, the Cult is desperate to focus on news stories that have nothing to do with politics because then they have to face up to the failings of their idol, Barry Obama.

Finally, this story has something extra for the Cult. They love to destroy that which is popular with normal people. The NFL is very popular with typical white people. It is the typical white person sport. That means the Cult must hate it with all their worth. The Ray Rice story gives them a chance to land some blows on what is for the Cult, a proxy for middle America.

Evolution and Bad Science

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Most of us with an interest in evolutionary biology understand that it is mostly a speculative science. Genetics takes some of the speculation out of it, but only a small part. The fossil record and materiel science helps, but there are huge gaps in the fossil record that leave huge gaps in our understanding of life in the long ago past. That does not mean it is not science or without loads of interesting data. It just means the the people in the field rely on inductive reasoning more than other fields.

That said, there’s informed speculation and then there’s crazy talk. This story crosses into crazy talk.

Mankind is undergoing a major evolutionary transition comparable to the shifts from prosimians to monkeys, monkeys to apes, and apes to humans, according to Cadell Last, a doctoral student in evolutionary anthropology and researcher at the Global Brain Institute.

Human life expectancy has already increased from about 45 at the start of the 20th century to 80 today. Because of advancements in technology, which will affect natural selection, Last suggests life expectancy could increase to 120 as early as 2050 — a concept known as radical life extension.

In addition to longer lives, humans will likely delay the timing of biological reproduction and reduce the number of offspring too, according to Last. Taken together, these changes could signify a new type of human, more focused on culture than biology.

Well, life expectancy has increased considerably, but that’s mostly due to a drop in human violence and a massive drop in childhood mortality. In 1900, getting killed by bandits was common in much of the world. Dying from the runs was also common. It does not mean we are living longer. People in the 18th century who were not murdered, killed in war or killed by the plague in youth lived into their sixties and seventies. Ben Franklin lived to 85. Augustus lived to 75. Tiberius lived to 79.

Fertility rates have been dropping in the west for a long time and no one has a good explanation. The cost of children is one argument, but children have always been a cost. Similarly, humans in the West have been having children later in life. That’s not new either. Taken together, it could be nothing more than a fad in the West that will go away in a generation or two. Jumping to the claims about new types of humans is nonsense.

Last makes his case in a paper from the most recent issue of Current Aging Science. Citing other futurists like Ray Kurzweil and Francis Heylighen, Last theorizes about human interaction with technology, relying on observations of past primate evolution and biology.

Ray Kurzweil is a good example of someone who can have a top-1% IQ and be crazy.

According to life history theory, natural selection shapes the length of an organism’s life and the timing of key events to produce the most surviving offspring. In the “fundamental life history trade-off,” organisms must choose between spending their time producing as many offspring as possible or rearing those offspring to make them as successful as possible, according to Last.

And as brain sizes increases, organisms require more energy and longer rearing time to reach their full potential.

Human brain size has gone down since human settlement. There’s no science to back the idea that bigger brains mean longer development cycles.

Based on these ideas, three major shifts in primate history have occurred toward longer lives and delayed reproduction: between prosimians and monkeys, monkeys and apes, and apes and humans.

Humans already dedicate the most time and energy toward nurturing offspring of any primate species, and this pattern is becoming only more extreme.

“Human life history throughout our species evolution can be thought of as one long trend towards delayed sexual maturation and biological reproduction (i.e., from ‘living fast and dying young’ to ‘living slow and dying old’),” Last writes.

While physical needs fueled previous evolutionary changes, cultural and technological innovations will drive the next shift, which has been accelerating since the Industrial Revolution.

Simply said, humans need more time to develop to take advantage of our complex world.

This is just Tofflerism wrapped in bad science. The pace of change may seem like it is accelerating, but we can’t know how the pace of change felt in 1930 or 1430. If you were alive in Bohemia in 1620, life was changing pretty damned fast.

Considering recent advancements like in-vitro fertilization, egg-freezing, and even adoption, the mechanics of biological reproduction have radically changed. “The biological clock isn’t going to be around forever,” Last says — or at least, people can turn it off or ignore it for a while.

Today, and even more so in the future, the success of individual and collective human life depends on knowledge and economic prosperity. Passing on new and important ideas to the next generation involves a process called cultural reproduction, which redirects time and energy toward cultural activities, as opposed to biological reproduction.

In the 19th century, what passed for futurists used to write about how the Industrial Revolution was radically altering humanity. H. G. Wells comes to mind. Marx was so convinced he founded one of the most destructive cults in human history. I would imagine that the spread of settlement probably included cranks claiming the advent of farming was the end times.

As far as a new type of human, that’s the lesson of the fossil record. No species sticks around for ever. Some have a nice long run and things change too fast for them to adapt. Then poof, they are nothing more than weird looking marks on a stone. Others come along have a relatively brief run and end up as nothing more than drawings on a cave wall. But, some species adapt and then adapt and then adapt again. When you’re in the drive through at KFC, you’re not thinking of T-Rex, but he is thinking of you, through the mists of time, leastways.

Worth Remembering 9/11

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This day has become an unofficial holiday for Red Team. Members of Conservative Inc get to go on TV and act solemn and serious, maybe even say a bad word about Islam. The Forever War crowd gets to compare some batch of Muslim fanatics to Hitler, demanding we blow them up before, wait for it, we have another 9/11. The only good thing is Lefty stays home and hides under his bed. Otherwise, Derbyshire is right on this one. You don’t celebrate great failures or humiliations.

Jim Geraghty has this on his blog.

We remember how the 9/11 era began today, and the emotions are still fresh and strong, 13 years later.

But that was only one part of the story.

Take a good look, ISIS. You never know when the U.S. Navy SEALs are at your door.

My response:

Not really. It was a stunning failure by our rulers, for sure, but not one worth remembering. If our rulers had learned from their blunders leading up to 9/11, then sure. But, they learned nothing. They continue to troll Muslim countries for immigrants. Inviting people who want you dead to settle in your lands is madness, but here we are anyway.

If anything, our rulers drew all the wrong lessons. They reasoned that the Muslims attacked America because it was full of Americans. If they could just replace all the Americans with foreign imports, problem solved! Since 9/11 Muslim immigration has gone up with over one million of them coming here from places like Yemen, Syria and Iraq.

I guess if you want to get weepy on 9/11, the thought that our rulers are not the only people who want us dead is a good reason.

The lesson of 9/11 is big bureaucracies are not good at this stuff. That’s not what they are built for, which is why they fail at small, complex tasks. Government is a sledgehammer, not a scalpel. In order to prevent another 9/11, we should have immediately ended all immigration from Muslim countries. Visas for visiting should have been limited to diplomatic and high level trade. If an oil sheik needs to come here to do a deal with Exxon, fine.

Further, Muslims here should have been deported if they were not citizens. The foreign funding for mosques should have been confiscated. We can’t ban the religion, although I would be in favor of it, but we can encourage our citizens to put out the unwelcome mat to Muslims. Islam is a fine religion that brings its adherent happiness. It is incompatible western democracy. It is hostile to western culture. We should have learned that 13 years ago. Our rulers learned the opposite.

Happy 9/11

CSI Effect

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The term used to explain why 12 sensible people would acquit, despite witnesses and physical evidence, is the “CSI Effect.” That’s where juries expect conclusive scientific evidence like they see on TV. If they don’t get it, they assume the case is weak or the accused is innocent. It seems ridiculous, but we tend not to select the bets people for juries, as smart people duck their duties.

This story is another example of how television is warping the public’s ability to understand the world.

We’ve frequently talked about law enforcement and the intelligence community accessing and making use of cell site location data, which looks to figure out where people are based on what cell towers they’re connected to. Law enforcement likes to claim that it doesn’t need a warrant for such data, while the NSA has tested a pilot program recording all such data, and says it has the legal authority to collect it, even if it’s not currently doing so.

However, as anyone with even a basic geometry education recognizes, which cell tower you’re connected to does not give you a particularly exact location. It can be useful in putting someone in a specific (wide) area — or, much more useful in detailing where someone is traveling over long distances as they repeatedly switch towers in a particular direction. But a single reading does not give you particularly exact location details. I had naturally assumed that most people understood this — including law enforcement, lawyers, prosecutors and judges — but it turns out they do not. A rather depressing story in The Economist notes that, thanks to this kind of ignorance (combined with bogus cop shows on TV that pretend cell site data is good for pinpointing locations), cell site location data is frequently used to convict innocent people.

We should not expect the average person to understand how their gadgets work. Probably 90% of people have no understanding of their car’s engine and that technology has been with us for a long time. It is also much easier than cell phone technology or network technology. Cops are no brighter than the general public so they can’t be expected to know this stuff either. Prosecutors and judges have the power to take a man’s freedom away so that’s a problem.

SOMEONE strangled a prostitute in Portland, Oregon in 2002. The police arrested Lisa Roberts, the victim’s ex-lover, who spent more than two years in custody awaiting trial. Shortly before the trial the prosecutor told Ms Roberts, via her lawyer, that tower data collected by Verizon, her mobile-telephone network, showed precisely where she was at the time of the murder. As her lawyer recalled, the prosecutor said Ms Roberts could be “pinpointed” in a park shortly before the victim’s naked and sexually assaulted corpse was found there. She was told she faced 25 years to life in prison. She accepted a deal to plead guilty and serve 15 years.

But the high-tech evidence against her was bunk. Routinely collected tower data can place a mobile phone in a broad area, but it cannot “pinpoint” it. That would require a special three-tower “triangulation”, which cannot reveal past locations. It took a decade for Ms Roberts’s guilty plea to be thrown out. On May 28th she left prison, her criminal record clean, after nearly 12 years in custody.

The problem here is that even if the accused knew the DA was lying, she could not be sure the jury would understand that the DA was lying. The defense attorney probably lacked the knowledge and resources to fight it. That opens the door for the many crooked prosecutors to make claims about technology, like in this case, that are batshit crazy, but may fly with a jury or a gullible defendant.

This really points to a larger issue: people have this tendency to believe that technology can answer all questions. The NSA’s fetishism of surveillance via technology is an example of this. There’s data there, so it becomes all too tempting to assume that the data must answer any possible question (thus, the desire to collect so much of it). But the data and the interpretations it can lead to are often misleading or simply wrong. And that’s especially true when dealing with newer technologies or forms of data collection. That the criminal justice system could go decades without everyone recognizing the basic geometric limits of cell site location data based on a single cell is… both astounding and depressing. But it’s also a reminder that we shouldn’t assume that just because some evidence comes from some new-fangled data source it’s automatically legitimate and accurate.

This is why the NSA spying stuff is mostly bullshit. The government buys all of its technology from the private sector. There are things done for the government by private contractors that are not for anyone else, but the government does not have special magic. Further, the government is not getting the best and brightest. There’s way too much money to be made in the private sector for the government to get the best and brightest.

More important, the volume of data involved is so large there’s simply no way to sort through it in a meaningful way. There are 150 billion e-mails sent every day. That’s 55 trillion e-mails a year. Searching that volume of records for useful data is simply impractical. Throw in the 100 trillion or so phone calls and probably the same number of texts and the volume of data is well beyond what could be useful. That’s why they don’t try, but they’re fine letting people think it. The Feds are relying on the CSI effect to convince the world they can read your mind.

Legalized Soma

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Anyone who has any familiarity with the drug game knows that the libertarian claims about drugs are mostly nonsense. Drugs certainly play a role in the degeneracy of the lower classes, but they are not a cause.  Poor people make bad choices, have high time preference and a below average IQ. There are exceptions, but that’s always the case with general rules. Drug use is a symptom of other problems, like the unwillingness oft he ruling class to do their duty.

That’s not to say the war on drugs is a good thing or even a necessary thing. In a time of low cultural confidence, aggressive policing of vice is never going to work. In fact, it just adds to the social pathologies that blossom during times of cultural decay. The cops are not hassling drug dealers in the ghetto out of righteous anger. They are doing it for money and the right to push people around in public.

That’s why the tide seems to be turning on the drug war. All of the most glamorous people are now proud of their hookahs and dank tanks.  The cultural elite are squarely behind legalization and the political elites are coming around now too.

A 21-member international panel urged a global overhaul of drug policies on Tuesday, calling for some drugs such as marijuana to be regulated, an end to incarceration for drug use and possession, and greater emphasis on protecting public health.

The Global Commission on Drug Policy said traditional measures in the “war on drugs” such as eradicating acres of illicit crops, seizing large quantities of illegal drugs, and arresting and jailing violators of drug laws have failed.

The commission’s 45-page report pointed to rising drug production and use, citing the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime’s estimate that the number of users rose from 203 million in 2008 to 243 million in 2012.

The commission includes former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan; the former presidents of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Poland, Portugal and Switzerland; British tycoon Richard Branson and former U.S. Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker. It was established in 2010 with a stated purpose of promoting “science-based discussion about humane and effective ways to reduce the harm caused by drugs to people and societies.”

The commission’s first report in 2011 condemned the drug war as a failure and recommended major reforms of the global drug prohibition regime. This report goes further, encouraging experiments in legally regulating markets in currently illicit drugs “beginning with but not limited to cannabis, coca leaf and certain novel psychoactive substances.”

It called for “equitable access to essential medicines, in particular opiate-based medications for pain,” noting that more than 80 percent of the world’s population has little or no access to such medications. It also called for an end to criminalizing people for drug use and possession, a halt to “compulsory treatment” for such people, and alternatives to incarceration for non-violent, low-level participants such as farmers, couriers and others involved in producing, transporting and selling illegal drugs.

“The facts speak for themselves,” said Annan, who is also the convener of the West Africa Commission on Drugs. “It is time to change course.”

The facts clearly show the war on drugs to be a failure. Compared to the past, drugs are cheaper, more diverse, more potent, more evenly distributed and more sophisticated than at anytime in history. If prohibition was having any impact on supply, all the metrics would point in the other direction. The best you can argue is it could be worse, but that’s a gratuitous assertion. When you add up the costs, the war on drugs looks like an epic failure and probably a deliberate failure.

Legalization will not be a panacea. In fact, there may be an even higher cost to legalization. Drugs like weed have been proscribed for generations now. No one alive recalls a time when heroin, cocaine and cannabis were legal. More modern drugs like hallucinogens and dissociatives were broadly banned decades ago. That means generations have adjusted to the current arrangements. There will be a cost to breaking up those arrangements.

No one considers that because it is hard and not very cool. Libertarians, like Liberals, see only one side of the ledger. Basking in their new hipness, the drug legalizers are in no mood to think about the other side of the ledger. But, the first time a “dispensary” blows up or the owner is gunned down, everyone will suddenly remember that the drug dealers did not pack up and go away just because weed is legal.

Not that it will matter. The rulers have concluded that it is too much fuss to defend western civilization. The easy choice is to give the mob free drugs so they can sleep through the rest of the collapse. The Romans gave away free grain. The new Rome gives away free weed. I’m sure it will turn out just fine.

Ted Cruz

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I’m not sure where I am with Ted Cruz. I like some things he has said, but I have my doubts about his sincerity on issues important to me like immigration, guns and the size of government. I’m still open minded about him, but given the state of his party and the Right in general, he’s probably just another grifter working a scam. Stories like this make me wonder if he is an idiot or extremely clever.

Sen. Ted Cruz was booed offstage at a conference for Middle Eastern Christians Wednesday night after saying that “Christians have no greater ally than Israel.”

Cruz, the keynote speaker at the sold-out D.C. dinner gala for the recently-founded non-profit In Defense of Christians, began by saying that “tonight, we are all united in defense of Christians. Tonight, we are all united in defense of Jews. Tonight, we are all united in defense of people of good faith, who are standing together against those who would persecute and murder those who dare disagree with their religious teachings.”

Cruz was not reading from a teleprompter, nor did he appear to be reading from notes.

“Religious bigotry is a cancer with many manifestations,” he continued. “ISIS, al-Qaida, Hezbollah, Hamas, state sponsors like Syria and Iran, are all engaged in a vicious genocidal campaign to destroy religious minorities in the Middle East. Sometimes we are told not to loop these groups together, that we have to understand their so called nuances and differences. But we shouldn’t try to parse different manifestations of evil that are on a murderous rampage through the region. Hate is hate, and murder is murder. Our purpose here tonight is to highlight a terrible injustice, a humanitarian crisis.”

“Christians have no greater ally than Israel,” he said, at which point members of the crowd began to yell “stop it” and booed him.

EWTN News Nightly’s Jason Calvi caught the moment on video.

“Those who hate Israel hate America,” he continued, as the boos and calls for him to leave the stage got louder. “Those who hate Jews hate Christians. If those in this room will not recognize that, then my heart weeps. If you hate the Jewish people you are not reflecting the teachings of Christ. And the very same people who persecute and murder Christians right now, who crucify Christians, who behead children, are the very same people who target Jews for their faith, for the same reason.”

The cries of “stop it, stop it, enough,” and booing continued. “Out, out, leave the stage!” At this point IDC’s president, Toufic Baaklini, came out to the stage to ask for the crowd to listen to Cruz, but Cruz had already had enough.

I probably know more about Arab Christians than most people, but guys in his league have sharp people around them who do their homework before sending their man out to speak. Arab Christians hate Arab Muslims and they hate Israel. They have good reason to hate both camps. They are typically used as canon fodder by both sides. The Israelis and Arabs have run most of the Christians out of Lebanon, for example.

Now, maybe Cruz is just a blockhead, who assumed all Christians are like American Evangelicals. He went in thinking he had a great pitch only to find they thought he was flinging poo at them. On the other hand, it may have been a setup. The three “I’s” still apply to some degree in American politics. That’s Iowa, Ireland and Israel. Get the support of all three and you win the presidency. Ireland has fallen by the wayside now, but Israel still counts for a lot. Taking one for the Tribe looks pretty good on the resume if you’re planning to run for president.

The Season of Struggle

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One of the more bizarre rituals on the Left is the self-criticism session. The Chinese called them Struggle Sessions. The difference is probably cultural. Oriental societies have always maintained a dense wall between the public life of a person and the interior life of a person. We have the word inscrutable for a reason.

Western culture has often, but not always, sought a strong link between the public man and his private thoughts. In the West, “what you see is what you get” makes a lot of sense for this reason. In China, such a concept is hilariously alien. Still, the idea of confession as a cleanser is a universal.

The NBA is going through that now. Donald Sterling’s threat to dish dirt on the league has frightened them into a careful re-examination of their private musings. Given how modern management works, the league office probably instructed each team to scour their networks for any communications that could be upsetting to blacks. Now we have a GM subjected to a struggle session. His crime was the same one tripping up everyone these days. That would be noticing.

It was Charles Murray who documented that regulations tend to come along after the threat had dissipated. In other words, once people became aware of some danger they adjusted their behavior. It was only after that government came along with rules intended to mitigate the danger. Something similar is afoot here. It seems that most people are looking at the public hysteria over these thought crimes and wondering if the rulers have lost their minds.

Maybe these latent struggle sessions are a response to the public’s dwindling interest in race or maybe it a foreshadowing of what lies ahead for all of us. Unless you have brain damage, you can’t help but notice that life for black Americans is pretty good. If you avoid crime, drugs and mayhem, you will have a good life. You may not get rich, but you can have a decent middle-class life. Most of the nation’s celebrities are black. All of the athletes are black. They live like royalty. Evidence of real discrimination is impossible to find without a lot of digging and imagination.

The Breakdown of Order

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Way back in the olden thymes, bankers went crazy and we ended up with the S&L Crisis. Bank fraud, bubbles, busts and system collapse are regular features of banking. The reason is simple. Banks attract bank robbers. The role of government is to police the banks, arrest the robbers when they find them and then make examples of those bank robbers by putting them in cages for long periods. It is not perfect, but it keeps the banking system of a nation working in an orderly fashion.

In the Clinton years, that all changed. We stopped putting bankers in jail. In fact, we stopped arresting them entirely. Instead, it is a free-for-all in finance. Here’s yet another story of systematic bank fraud that will result in no action by the government.

Derivatives regulators told the U.S. Justice Department they’ve found evidence of criminal behavior following an investigation into banks’ alleged manipulation of ISDAfix, a benchmark used to set rates for trillions of dollars of financial products.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which first sent subpoenas to the world’s largest banks in November 2012 to determine whether ISDAfix was rigged, has flagged its findings to prosecutors, according to a person familiar with the matter. The CFTC’s enforcement powers are confined to bringing civil, not criminal, cases. It isn’t clear who the CFTC suspects broke the law.

Benchmarks like ISDAfix, which is used to track prices on interest-rate swaps, serve as the foundation of global finance, helping pension funds determine their future obligations and lenders decide how much to charge borrowers. Regulators around the world are probing allegations that measures used to set prices in gold, oil, interest rates and currencies were rigged by banks and brokers wanting to pad their profits while cheating their clients and other investors.

Last week, the Alaska Electrical Pension Fund accused 13 banks including Barclays Plc (BARC), Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. (C) as well as broker ICAP Plc (IAP) of conspiring to manipulate ISDAfix. The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority is also looking into allegations of wrongdoing involving the benchmark.

Representatives of the Justice Department, CFTC, Barclays, Bank of America, Citigroup and ICAP declined to comment.

This is not just a few guys stealing. This is systematic theft of public monies by the world’s largest banks. This does not happen without the top level managers knowing and directing it. None of these people can plead ignorance or say that this is an unexpected and un intend consequence. It’s done on purpose.

Bloomberg News, citing a person with knowledge of the matter, was the first to report last year that the CFTC found evidence traders at Wall Street banks instructed ICAP brokers to buy or sell as many interest-rate swaps as necessary to rig ISDAfix by moving it to a predetermined level. Doing so helped banks reap millions of dollars in trading profits, costing companies and pension funds, the person said at the time.

Brokers on the ICAP desk, nicknamed “Treasure Island” because of the large salaries and bonuses they were paid, negotiate swaps trades on behalf of banks. Until this year, the dollar-denominated version of the ISDAfix rate was set daily by ICAP based on data submissions from banks. Amid the CFTC investigation, ICAP lost that central role. The International Swaps & Derivatives Association Inc., or ISDA, picked Thomson Reuters Corp. to take over that job this year.

Deferred prosecution settlements between regulators and banks including UBS AG and Barclays related to London interbank offered rate rigging have compelled firms to hand over information in the ISDAfix and currency probes to avoid criminal prosecution in the Libor case.

The term “deferred prosecution” is a neologism that means no prosecution. If you are a young gun working your way up in finance, you see no risk to this behavior. If you get caught, your bosses cover it up, you keep the money and maybe you have to change firms as a “punishment.” Start putting these guys on The Farm and we suddenly get a new respect not only for the law, but the spirit of the law.