another site
New York City’s Commission on Human Rights
has fined Sistina restaurant $5,000 for placing
ad an on Craigslist for a hostess. The commission says
gender-specific job ads violate the city’s civil rights
ordinance.
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Yesterday, I
reported that
Rolling Stone‘s bombshell story about a gang rape at
the University of Virginia was drawing some skeptical appraisals,
most notably from writer Richard Bradley. I wrote that while I had
no reason to distrust Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the author of the
Rolling Stone piece, I shared some of Bradley’s concerns
about the plausibility of the narrative.
Since then, numerous media outlets have cited my concerns while
adding their own. Far too many have weighed in to keep a proper
count, but
The New Republic,
The Washington Examiner,
The Federalist,
The American Conservative, and
The Washington Post all published articles worth a read,
and all have valid questions about Erdely’s reporting.
But perhaps the most serious question about the accuracy of the
story is one inadvertently raised by Erdely herself, at the
prompting of Slate‘s Hanna Rosin, several days ago. Erdely
was interviewed by Rosin’s Double X podcast; when
pressed for crucial details about whether she knew the perpetrators
names and sought their sides of the story, Erdely repeatedly dodged
the question. Eventually, she conceded this: “What exactly
happened? I wasn’t in that room. I don’t know.”
On Tuesday evening, Rosin
wrote a polite but critical response to Erdely in which she
essentially said, that’s not good enough. As
she—and Slate colleague Allison Benedikt—note, there were
supposedly seven other people in that room, and Erdely didn’t
make much of an effort to contact them. Some important parts
(emphasis mine):
It could be that Erdely did try her hardest to reach the alleged
rapists. Or it could be that she didn’t, out of deference to
Jackie. We’ve interviewed many of Jackie’s friends, including some
who were quoted in the Rolling Stone story.
They verified that Jackie did get very upset when Erdely
wanted to find out more about the alleged assailants. Sara Surface,
a good friend of Jackie’s and a member of One Less, a victim
advocacy group at UVA, had the impression that Jackie’s reaction
was “extreme” when Erdely pressed her—meaning that Jackie became so
terrified that she reconsidered going public with her story, even
anonymously. If that’s true, then Erdely was in a tough
position. Push too hard and she might lose Jackie. But not pushing
harder has created a whole new nightmare.Various writers and media outlets have now started
to pick apart Erdely’s reporting, as well
as the details of Jackie’s story as reported
by Rolling Stone. That’s because, even by the
standards of horrific, despicable frat behavior, this story stands
out. Jackie, who says she was sober, was allegedly led
upstairs by her date into a dark room, where seven men allegedly
raped her as others egged them on. She tells Erdely that she was
smashed into a glass coffee table and raped by a beer bottle. Drew,
who had invited her to the frat party as his date, allegedly stood
by and orchestrated the whole thing. When he later ran into Jackie,
she says that he told her he’d had a “great time.” That’s
not expected behavior even by the standards of rapists. That’s
psychotic.
Rosin and Benedikt mention that they found out who Jackie
is, contacted her, and arranged an interview, only to have Jackie
back out as the public’s skepticism of the story began to increase.
An interview between Jackie and The Washington Post
is apparently forthcoming.
I reached out to Erdely and her editor, Sean Woods, today; I had
questions about the efforts undertaken to speak with the
perpetrators. Neither responded. Instead, I was forwarded a
statement by Rolling Stone spokesperson Melissa Bruno.
It’s the same one that other journalists seeking comments from
either party are receiving at this point, but here it is,
nonetheless:
In response to your questions about Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s “A
Rape on Campus”: The story we published was one woman’s account of
a sexual assault at a UVA fraternity in October 2012 – and the
subsequent ordeal she experienced at the hands of University
administrators in her attempts to work her way through the trauma
of that evening. The indifference with which her complaint was met
was, we discovered, sadly consistent with the experience of many
other UVA women who have tried to report such assaults.
Through our extensive reporting and fact–checking, we found Jackie
to be entirely credible and courageous and we are proud to have
given her disturbing story the attention it deserves.
Based on what Erdely has said, and what Woods told The New
Republic previously, it seems like Rolling Stone was
positive that the rapists existed. But they only made successful
efforts to reach the fraternity, not the individuals—even though
contacting the individuals is as easy as typing a name into
Facebook’s search menu or UVA’s student directory, presuming one
knows the actual names.
Rosin and Benedikt did speak with some of Jackie’s “supporters”
on campus; what’s striking is that none of these people know the
identities of the attackers, either:
What became clear from talking to Jackie’s supporters at UVA is
that the community of victim advocates operates by a very specific
code. “The first thing as a friend we must say is, ‘I believe you
and I am here to listen,’ ” says Brian Head, president of UVA’s
all-male sexual assault peer education group One in Four. Head
and others believe that questioning a victim is a form of betrayal,
because it will make her feel judged and all the more reluctant to
ever speak about what happened. None of the people we spoke to had
asked Jackie who the men were, and in fact none of them had any
idea. They did not press her on any details about the
incident.
This undermines a claim, made by Erdely to Rosin during the
podcast, that “people [on campus] seem to know who [the
perpetrators] are.”
So we know that Erdely never spoke to the alleged perpetrators.
She hasn’t suggested that she made an effort to contact them
individually at all. We know that Jackie balked at the idea of
giving up “more” information about them. And we know that Rosin and
Benedikt couldn’t find anyone who knew who they were.
At this point, I’m skeptical that anyone other than Jackie knows
their names. To utterly clear up the confusion, my most pressing
question to Erdely was whether she learned the perpetrators’
identities. In return, I was forwarded Bruno’s statement.
Erdely told Rosin that “there’s no doubt in my mind that
something happened to her that night.” That’s more easily proven;
as The Post’s Erik Wemple
noted, sources who were actually named in the article did
testify that something happened to Jackie that
night. But something is a far cry from the
extreme horror story that ran under Erdely’s byline.
Lastly, I should mention that I have fielded criticisms all day
from people—some of them libertarian-leaning—who think it was wrong
of me to write a story questioning a rape accusation at all. Some
believe that by expressing skepticism of Erdely’s reporting, I
risked identifying libertarianism with rape denial. Needless to
say, I disagree; anyone who gives my previous work a fair appraisal
should conclude that I treat sexual assault with the utmost
seriousness. Whatever the extent of the campus rape crisis, I am
interested in exploring potential solutions, and believe I have
pinpointed a major one.
Still, I must go on reporting the news as it actually happens,
not the version of it that is most convenient for making
libertarianism more palatable to the social justice crowd.
Free Minds and Free Markets aren’t free! Support
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Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
A major theme here at Liberty Blitzkrieg over the past year has been the creative ways in which corrupt Chinese oligarchs and government officials are maneuvering their way into the United States. To be clear, I am not anti-immigration by any stretch of the imagination. My mother was an immigrant. This is about being against corrupt and morally compromised individuals being welcomed here with open arms just because they have cash. We have enough domestic criminal oligarchs as it stands. These people have collectively captured the American political and economic system and control it to their own ends. Do we really need to import more of these types from abroad?
Did you know that there exists a federal Immigrant Investor Program that grants “EB-5″ immigration visas to foreigners who provide at least $500,000 to U.S. projects that create 10 or more American jobs? I wasn’t familiar with this, but apparently the good folks at the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission are well aware of it, and are using it to raise $200 million.
Here’s what I’d like to know. Who are these investors and who vets them? It is a known fact that corrupt Chinese officials and businessmen are scrambling to get themselves and their money out of their homeland as the government cracks down on corruption. How many of them are going to use this program to get into the U.S., and what will be the long-term impact to our society? Important questions that must be asked, but most likely aren’t being taken seriously.
From Philly.com:
Chinese investors have begun signing up to spend $500,000 each to help pay for a long-awaited connection between the Pennsylvania Turnpike and I-95.
In exchange, the investors hope to get permanent residency in the United States for themselves and their families.
The heavily indebted Turnpike Commission is borrowing the $200 million from foreign investors under the federal Immigrant Investor Program that grants “EB-5″ immigration visas to foreigners who provide at least $500,000 to U.S. projects that create 10 or more American jobs.
The foreign investors and their families will get a quick path to legal residence in the United States, though they may lose money on their investment.
The brokers and lawyers will collect millions in commissions and fees, with each of the 400 investors paying $50,000 to the dealmakers and $15,000 to the lawyers.
At least someone’s getting paid.
The first $50 million installment from the foreign investors is due to be paid to the Turnpike Commission by April.
The Berwyn company created to make the deal, the Delaware Valley Regional Center, expects to meet that deadline, said Joseph P. Manheim, its managing director.
“It is going as we had planned,” he said. “We are on track.”
The deal was suggested to turnpike officials by Turnpike Commissioner Pasquale T. “Pat” Deon Sr., a Bucks County restaurateur, beer distributor, and Republican power broker. Deon, who also is chairman of the board of SEPTA, saw SEPTA make a similar deal to borrow $175 million to pay for its smart-card fare-payment system in 2011.
Similar EB-5 foreign-investor deals have provided funding for the Convention Center, the Temple University Health System, and the Comcast Center.
The turnpike deal was created by Manheim and other officials of the Swarthmore Group, a Philadelphia investment-management firm headed by James E. Nevels, a prominent Republican donor and fund-raiser.
As I mentioned at the top, this has been a theme on the site all year. Check out these previous posts on the topic:
Chinese Purchases of U.S. Real Estate Jump 72% as The Bank of China Facilitates Money Laundering
Zillow Opens the Floodgates to Chinese Buyers in Order to Keep Housing Bubble 2.0 Inflated
Corrupt Chinese Politicians are Buying Billions in U.S. Real Estate
Here’s the best part. You ready for this one…
Nevels is chairman of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and was the first chairman of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission, appointed by Republican Gov. Mark Schweiker. Nevels is also a former president of the Pennsylvania Society, the organization best known for its annual Manhattan gathering of Pennsylvania politicians, lobbyists, and business people.
Naturally, a member of the Federal Reserve System would be somehow involved in this scheme. When bankers run into trouble, these clowns don’t waste any time in coming up with trillions in backstops and bailouts. However, when American plebs need a highway, we have no choice but to get on our knees and grovel to the Chinese.
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Submitted by Dr. Ulrich Salzer, a German economist and banker, Munich
Deficit spending And Money Printing: A German point of view
The leading macroeconomic Nobel-Laureates, the Central Bankers as well as most Politicians have reduced their economic judgment on how to get the economies in Europe and Japan back to sustainable growth on just two recipes: public investments in infrastructure to be financed by additional public debt and, second, an expansive money market policy based on printing more money and reducing interest rates to zero or even beyond zero to negative rates!
And if the capital markets don’t swallow additional public debt, then the Central Banks will step in eagerly as Investors – regardless if this is in line with their statutes!
The expected results, backed by the leading macroeconomic wisdom, should be to kick-start economic growth, to induce private industry to invest and banks to lend to private investors, and thereby to reduce unemployment, and get deflationary tendencies back to an inflation rate that is now officially regarded as ideal if it oscillates around 2 % p.a. When and why this “two-percent” benchmark was introduced for the first time I can’t remember, but everybody today takes it for granted and repeats it like as an undisputed target of Central Bank’s money market policy. Included in this assumption is ever more public debt as the guarantor for lasting GDP-growth!
I never understood why macroeconomics should be regarded as an academic discipline if it is in practice reduced to these rather simple theories of how to handle a recession or even deflation! Maybe Alfred Nobel was just as clear-sighted as I am, and consequently never introduced a Nobel-prize for economics. That was done after his death by the Central Bank of Norway, which also contributed the required funds. It still does so, and not the Nobel foundation!
My personal advice is to stop handing out any more Nobel-prizes for economics to any more American professors on any new theory how to steer economic development and sustainable economic growth, because none of them has ever worked.
There is a lot of blame offloaded onto Maynard Keynes by critics of the present ruling opinion of more deficit spending by governments. But I don’t believe that Keynes would approve any of today’s Nobel-Laureates who saw no other way out of recession than by money printing in unlimited amounts and years of deficit spending by already over-indebted economies. According to Keynes public investment on deficit could be regarded as an “ultima ratio” to re-kick-start a slow economy, but he would never have advised any government that is already highly indebted to increase this debt even more!
In his theory, deficit-spending should be a limited action in time and amounts, and directly afterwards this debt should be repaid by the additional tax income from the stronger revenues of industry and private individuals who have profited from the intervention of the State.
But what our economists and central bankers are recommending nowadays is completely different from “short-term-kick-starts” – our systems are so full of the sweet drug of government deficit spending that (like a drug-addict) it constantly needs heavier doses of the same drug!
It was not long ago that the American Treasury Secretary publicly blamed Germany for not using its remaining credit standing for another round of deficit-spending in order to help Italy, France and other Southern European countries. As if more public debt and burning straw in Germany would have any impact on the southern countries’ economies without any serious political and economic reforms in those countries themselves to fight the weakness at its real source!
As long as our “economy doctors” don’t know anything better than to prescribe more drugs instead of getting the patient off the needle and help him to abandon the ever increasing drug doses, we will never get our economies “back to normal”!
We should never forget that at least the European economies had no real problem as long as the public debt to Gross National Product ratio remained within the Maastricht limits of 60% and before liquidity in the banking sector was multiplied without limit, thereby creating big bubbles in the financial assets of the banks which finally led to the financial crisis of 2008.
Japan is the very best example to prove that the therapy of deficit spending and money printing is dangerously wrong: it is now 25 years since Japan has adopted this cure. If anybody needs proof that the prescription was unprofessional and ineffective, he should look at the results to the Japanese economy and its public debt. Although hundreds of billions of Dollars have been spent during this period on programs to stimulate the Japanese economy the effect was that Japan fell from one recession into the next depression and the public debt ratio to GNP has meanwhile reached the astronomic bench mark of 230% (!!), which is double that of Greece and four times higher than the Maastricht criterion!
I am certain that Maynard Keynes would turn in his grave if he knew to what extent his theory was misinterpreted and misused! Of course it’s a big temptation for every politician to utilize the sweet but toxic medicine of deficit spending and more public debt rather than to introduce hard reforms on public budgets, on social spending and other benefits to their voters.
It’s also a big mistake that European governments have disregarded the traditional role of the European Central Bank as the watch-dog against inflation. In creating the ECB, Germany never consented that it should have more responsibilities and more authority than the Deutsche Bundesbank ever had.
It’s just like with deficit spending Keynes had recommended under certain conditions: it may be acceptable if the Central Bank acts as “Lender of last resort” in case of actual liquidity crisis. But this should be strictly on short-term basis. What we experience today is completely contrary to the German (maybe not the U.S.) understanding of the role of the Central Bank. The ECB has now assumed a role not only to protect the value of our common currency against inflation but also to take action as if it is responsible to create economic growth and full employment with instruments like money printing, zero interest rates and unlimited investments in bonds which the free market is rejecting.
We pay a high price for the chimera that we need constant economic growth and that it is a stigma if our GDP-growth is only 1.5% p.a. Can’t we accept that after 50 years of undisturbed peace and continuous prosperity we have reached a certain degree of personal satisfaction where we don’t need a new car every year, another cell-phone, additional furniture, more TV-sets, more laptops etc, etc. Why do we insist upon economic growth, if we don’t actually need the products which are additionally produced every year?
Is it really worth it to increase the already heavy burden of public debt, which our children must service someday, by accepting even more debt in a vain effort to increase public demand? Let’s instead be happy with zero GDP growth, zero inflation and zero growth of public debt! That could be a more rational solution. Why don’t we consider it?
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Only the 1% can afford to go to a basketball game…
The crowd for tip-off in Atlanta… (vs Celtics)
h/t @TheNBACentral
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With African Americans. However, even they are unhappy with Obama’s Ferguson performance.
As The Washington Post reports,
President Obama has pointedly refused to weigh in on what happened in Ferguson, Mo., aiming not to inflame an already delicate situation.
That approach, though, is not earning him his usual strong marks from his most loyal base of support: fellow African Americans.
A new poll from the Washington Post and ABC News shows that blacks still approve of Obama’s handling of the issue by a significant margin. But the 63 percent who approve is his lowest rating on any of seven issues tested in recent months by WaPo and ABC. It’s also 28 points below his overall approval rating among blacks, 91 percent in a late-October Post-ABC poll.
Further, the 30 percent of African Americans who disapprove of Obama’s handling of Ferguson is an unusually high number. This demographic, after all, voted for Obama 93-6 in 2012 and 95-4 in 2008.
* * *
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Not a quarter passes without a bank announcing, as part of its earning statement, that – it just so happens – it has incurred a few hundreds million (or billion) in legal fees, expenses and charges for breaking the law and manipulating this market or that (recall that for banks “Crime Is Now An Ordinary Course Of Business“), but it’s ok, because it is a one-time, non-recurring thing, so please exclude it from the EPS calculation…. Until the next quarter when everything repeats once more. But the repetition of “one-time” events is not the only constant: the other one, of course, is that nobody ever goes to jail.
The latter is also the reason why, as the WSJ reports, British regulators are “getting exasperated with banks failing to clean up their act after repeated wrongdoings.”
No, really: the UK’s equivalent to the SEC truly can’t understand how banks, which have trillions in central bank reserves sloshoing around on their balance sheets as the replacement to trillions in taxpayer bailout funds, and which are delighted to use said reserves to pay for hundreds of billions in legal fees in order to avoid prison time for financial crimes, market manipulations and countless other legal transgressions which their executives were caught doing, refuse to stop breaking the law when the have a paid for by others – and quite literal – get out of jail card.
The FCA’s so-called quandary in a nutshell: “Following the £1.1 billion ($1.7 billion) of fines it doled out to five banks over misconduct related to foreign exchange rate rigging, Tracey McDermott, head of enforcement at the Financial Conduct Authority, said: “Is our action effective at all?”
The answer, clearly, is no. But hey, maybe the next wristslap will fix everything and the New Normal criminal syndicate, i.e., bankers. will promptly fix their ways.
On Tuesday Ms. McDermott said she had recently looked though the slew of statements put out by punished banks dating back to 2002. They read like a “PR paint by numbers,” she said. The press releases all state that the wrong doing is linked to a few employees, changes have been made and that it won’t happen again.
But “lessons are not being learnt,” she said.
She was speaking at a conference in London on legal enforcement.
Here is Tracey McDermott confused that
“Lessons are not being learnt.”
Surely, there were also hundreds of bankers at said conference, smiling gleefully at what the past 6 years have demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt, is unconditional banker immunity from prison time. In perpetuity.
The recent foreign exchange debacle has cause particular consternation for the regulator. In 2012 and 2013 several banks paid fines for misconduct relating to rigging interbank lending benchmarks. At the time many pledged to reform their rate setting practices more widely.
But Barclays traders manipulated gold prices the day after the bank was fined over efforts to rig interbank lending rates, according to the FCA. It is now clear that employees at some lenders, such as Royal Bank of Scotland Group RBS.LN +2.39% PLC, continued to try to rig foreign exchange markets even as these internal clean up operations were ongoing, the FCA found.
So what is the FCA’s solution? Well, just like central planners, central bankers, and clueless Princetonian economists, the FCA has a brilliant idea – let’s do more of the same and hope this time it’s different.
Ms. McDermott said that big fines must continue to be meted out to keep bank boards focused on changing their institution’s culture. She refuted claims that the FCA’s approach to fining was “like a soviet tractor factory” — referring to accusations that the regulator was just churning out fines to appease policitians — saying that London’s reputation as a financial center was at stake.
“Enforcement should not be written off as a trip to the headmaster’s office where you take your punishment and leave,” Ms. McDermott said.
Lessons are being learnt. Slowly. The FCA hopes that banks will change in the same way that attitudes to drink driving have altered over time. Ms. McDermott said her parents’ generation didn’t drink and drive for fear of getting caught. “For my generation it was presented as a moral issue… the impact on the lives of other people.”
So according to the FCA, the one thing that should stop banker crime is concerns over the loss of their pristine reputation. Yes, for those wondering, the FCA does resides on this world, a world where bankers at least in the eyes of the FCA, still have something called a “reputation” which is “at stake.”
Which also explains why said reputation will continue to get worse until even organized crime syndicates will bristle when compared to the most criminal, pardon, lucrative M&A bank or hedge fund du jour.
In the meantime, if the FCA, or SEC, or DOJ, or whoever, really wants to “fix” the rampant, criminal banker problem, here is a simple solution: throw someone in jail for a long, long time, and stop showing to the world that one can avoid prison if only one pays a large enough fee (out of other shareholders’ funds).
Better yet, take a clue from Iran:
“A billionaire businessman at the heart of a $2.6 billion state bank scam in Iran, the largest fraud case since the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, was executed Saturday, state television reported…. A total of 39 defendants were convicted in the case. Four received death sentences, two got life sentences and the rest received sentences of up to 25 years in prison.“
And guess what: nobody in Tehran has rigged the USDJPY, ramped the E-mini, or banged the close in gold in years.
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Outspoken realist billionaire Sam Zell tells Fox’s Maria Bartiromo, “the US economy is bifurcated,” noting that “the very top has done very well as The Fed’s QE ‘saved the system’,” but, he adds, the 90% that did not benefit from that “have seen wages go down and the recent election showed a lot of discomfort and a lack of trust.” A hopeful money-honey asks whether the president will work with the Republicans to improve this situation, Zell lashes back, “isn’t the question whether the president wants to work with anybody to create anything?”
At 4:45, Zell discusses the market, “the stock market does not reflect what’s going on in the economy.” “Holding cash is a better holding than investing in an over-valued stock market”
Via Fox News,
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Tonight’s episode of The
Independents (Fox Business Network, 9 p.m. ET, 6 p.m. PT,
repeats three hours later) includes but will not be limited to:
* Fox News
Senior Judicial Analyst and Reason.com
columnist Andrew Napolitano on his new book
Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and
the Lethal Threat to American Liberty.
* Everyone’s favorite communist Jesse Myerson, on how our shiny
new
$18 trillion national debt ain’t no big deal.
* Party Panelists Rick
Ungar (Forbes
columnist) and Amy Holmes (host on The Blaze) on
Ferguson, the dreaded
Cromnibus, and Bond villainy.
* Your cohosts, on various
serious (and unserious) presidential candidates making news
this week.
* Yours truly, on Attorney General Eric Holder’s
less-than-impressive calls to “end” racial profiling.
Online-only aftershow begins at http://ift.tt/QYHXdy
just after 10. Follow The Independents on Facebook at
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follow on Twitter @ independentsFBN, hashtag
us at #TheIndependents, and click on this page
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Mission Accomplished Abenomics? The Nikkei 225 just hit fresh 7 year highs at around 17,900 (the highest since July 2007) managing to soar 24% off the mid-October ‘Bullard lows’. Great news for all the bulled up US investors we see day after day on financial TV… wrong! In US Dollars, US investors remain down 4% year-to-date (and have yet to have a positive close in 2014). But hey on the bright side, your Japanese brethren are loving the nominal surge in their ‘wealth’ as their currency collapses to 119.4 this evening.
The Nikkei 225 is up ~24% off the Bullard lows…
But Year-to-Date, US investors in Japan remain losers… underperforming US Treasuries by over 20%…
Charts: Bloomberg
Bonus Chart: And if you’re wondering where all the Chinese QE-lite money went now that the real estate market has started to collapse…
* * *
Fun-durr-mentals indeed!!!
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