What am I thinking?

I'm as guilty as anyone of hoping for Washington to bring about reforms that will help guide us back to a better place. But what can I be thinking?? How can a body as venal as Congress, which can't even begin to reform itself, be my hope for reform of the banking and financial system? Duh? I think I need to become a CNBC host or a political satirist if I'm going to survive this.

Public Pension Funds and Recovery

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/business/economy/10pension.html?_r=1&dlbk
Clearly pension funds have a great interest in a recovery of the economy and asset values. But it's way overdue for them to collectively take responsibility for improved governance of the banking and corporate sectors. The self interested oligarchs need to be thrown off the Boards and true representatives of stakeholders should take their place. Even without bailout money, public funds have a huge ownership stake.

Sociopaths

http://www.mcafee.cc/Bin/sb.html
A most interesting web site. How did so many of them end up running Wall Street and in high political office? Who is your favorite Sociopath?

Celebrity 'roid rage?

Stories of male movie star (and other) violence are a pretty regular staple of the tabs. Is the dirty little secret that these guys are all on the juice to get pumped up for their movie roles? Or are they just *******s?

Government, governance and pay limits

They are a political necessity in the current environment, but government imposed pay restraints on a few executives at bailout recipients are unlikely to achieve very much. The failure of governance of large publicly held companies (including the banks) has been evident for a long time. As the owners of these companies and representatives are unwilling and/or unable to do anything about this systemic problem, there’s a strong argument for intervention and reform. But the public and political debate doesn’t come close to diagnosing, let alone suggesting remedies for, the problem. Whoever leads any attempt at reform, I pray it is not the same self-serving oligarchs who have lead us into the current big pile of doo doo. It’s time to get rid of these corporate and banking (sons of?) Blagojeviches.

Tax credit for first time home owners?????

I don't get it. Why give a tax credit to first time buyers? They are already huge beneficiaries of the housing meltdown - much lower house prices and no loss of housing equity. It's people who already own homes with mortgages who need relief.
Are they going to ask for the tax credit back when the first timers later sell for a big profit?
(Maybe I can get my kids to buy my house from me!)

Tax problems 2

OK, this is becoming ridiculous. Perhaps we should expect the people who set the tax laws to pay the right taxes themselves. But wouldn't it do us all a big favor if they just made the system fair and simple?