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John Stewart's the Daily Show along with the Colbert Report and Real Time with Bill Maher are crossing the News-Infotainment Divide in the opposite direction - going from infotainment and humor to educating their audiences on some rather subtle aspects of  current political events. Also note the balance here, Democrats get their fair share of criticism, as much as the Republicans - a telling contrast with Fox News party-line GOP Bias. See the full misadventures here, this is a masterpiece of political humor. And thank the Gods that Humour is filling in where the Media, especially TV News Media , simply dare not tread.

The Republican Presidential campaign has been a dramatic example of Just in Time Journalism. Each time a new candidate has reached the top of the Media Hype Heap a simple fact-checking pin prick  does in the new  Pseudo Presidential front-runner. And there have been 7 pretenders  - Sarah Palin, Donald Trump, Rick Perry, Hermann Cane, Newt Gingerich,  Ron Paul, and the latest Rick Santorum - all Whack -a-moled in one month or less of Hype Heap Riding. And you guessed it, after nearly winning the Iowa Presidential Primary, Rick Santorum is the latest to be subject to This-Time-The-Real-Media  Cross Examination [aka  the Hype Heat]. And right on time, Howard Kurtz at The Daily Beast delivers a Double Heap of Heat:

The media assault on Rick Santorum has begun. Turns out he was a tough-guy lawmaker who played hardball with lobbyists and made a bundle after leaving the Senate.In other words, a typical member of Congress.

This is all fair game, mind you. In fact, it's the kind of information the voters of Iowa might have found useful before propelling Santorum into a virtual tie with Mitt Romney in the caucuses (or a victory, if reports of aRomney overcount are to be believed). But the press didn't care then. Santorum was an also-ran, a loser, a single-digit guy. Until he wasn't....

The Post is joined by the New York Times in reporting that Santorum made $1.3 million in 2010 and the first half of 2011 by selling his services to various industry groups, and in a similar vein as Newt Gingrich, Santorum was not registered as a lobbyist. For instance, after pushing two bills in the Senate to steer hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicare money to Puerto Rican hospitals, the ex-senator joined the board of United Health Services, where he hauled in $395,000 in fees and stock options. And how did investigative reporters unearth this information? It was in Santorum's  financial disclosure form.

This is exactly the kind of scrutiny that a presidential candidate should be receiving. Too bad the media didn't take Santorum seriously enough to provide it until now.

But really Kurtz is right on with the second remark. Why did the media and Press choose to ignore the qualifications of Rick Santorum?
Ye editor has scoured the Web for a media outlet [newspaper, magazine, political websites, even wikipedia] that provides a list of the candidates with a summary of the qualifications, political history, strengths, weaknesses, upside potential and/or downside risks[aka "skeletons in the closet"]. Just a capsule summary is sufficient in briefing style maye double Twitter's 140 character limit for each category the Press chooses to pursue. It would be nice to have a  pros and cons approach lest it be mistaken for a political ad instead of journalistic coverage.

Ooopps - Journalistc Coverage Is Opinion and Infotainment

Media Shift is  the informative  coverage  by PBS of the decline of traditional paper and even broadcast media in favor of  the Web as the news medium of choice. Seeping through the convenience and financial advantage stories is the the picture of the press in gut-wrenching transition as  wholescale cutbacks in journalist  employment and coverage  are occuring in newspapers, magazines and local radio and television.  But two aspects of the change investigated by PBS  have gotten shortchanged. First, it goes back to Marshall McLuhan hot and cold media. Traditional press like newspapers and magazines are relatively cool - once a day to once a week [or month]news cycles . Traditional black and white layout, people read the news to become informed, there is a strong fact checking aspect to cool media. Hot media like radio and now TV and Web are fast breaking, full of emotional sound, fury and action video, shorter on facts-longer on opinion. Second, as hot media like radio, TV and now the Web with social media  prevail with their built-in  hot, emotional aspects - opinion, especially outrageous, humorous, and entertaining opinion prevail. News and fact checking take second seat to the hot media's priority:  infotainment. And so the Fourth Estate has such aberrations as Fox News Networks  where opinions  become  News and Ooops-we-made-mistake-in-fact, but now that the show is over with we shall issue a required correction. Or more common - short of the facts,  Just in Time Journalism.

In the last two years, more article are appearing from Wall Streeters who are questioning the budding financial myths on what caused the Financial Meltdown of 2007-2008. Here is a telling one by a Wall Street analyst, Barry Ritholtz that appeared in the Washington Post and has been picked up by a number of Share websites like Reddit, Stumble On , Tumblr, etc. Barry minces no word in this posting on the Wall Street espoused Big Lie:

One group has been especially vocal about shaping a new narrative of the credit crisis and economic collapse: those whose bad judgment and failed philosophy helped cause the crisis.

Rather than admit the error of their ways — Repent! — these people are engaged in an active campaign to rewrite history. They are not, of course, exonerated in doing so. And beyond that, they damage the process of repairing what was broken. They muddy the waters when it comes to holding guilty parties responsible. They prevent measures from being put into place to prevent another crisis.

Here is the surprising takeaway: They are winning. Thanks to the endless repetition of the Big Lie.

A Big Lie is so colossal that no one would believe that someone could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. There are many examples: Claims that Earth is not warming, or that evolution is not the best thesis we have for how humans developed. Those opposed to stimulus spending have gone so far as to claim that the infrastructure of the United States is just fine, Grade A (not D, as the we discussed last month), and needs little repair.

Wall Street has its own version: Its Big Lie is that banks and investment houses are merely victims of the crash. You see, the entire boom and bust was caused by misguided government policies. It was not irresponsible lending or derivative or excess leverage or misguided compensation packages, but rather long-standing housing policies that were at fault.

Indeed, the arguments these folks make fail to withstand even casual scrutiny. But that has not stopped people who should know better from repeating them.

Now The Big Lie really depends on 3 enablers:
1)the policy issue is either complex or subsject to confusion or uncertainty as to what cause and effect applies;
2)the explanation of events is shrouded in critical omissions or plausible falsehoods or smears and hominem attacks discrediting fact checkers;
3)the press coverage on the issue is disjointed or minimal for any number of reasons.
In the case of the Financial Meltdown , The Financial Big Lies has relied on plausible distortions by figures in power along with a Press that has been delinquent - particularly the national TV networks whose coverage has been sporadic at best.

The science magazine New Scientist raises the issue in its in a story on A New View of Human Evolution - On Selfless Behaviour starting on page 28 of the August 6-12 2011 issue.

Our ability to cooperate closely with other group members and to suppress cheats means that selection at the group level rather than the individual level has been an exceptionally strong force during human evolution. It may have played a crucial role in shaping both our genes and our culture...Vigilant egalitarianism probably arose early in human evolution and was a precondition for other attributes that make us so distinct as a species.... Punishing cheats is a key part of maintaining co-operation and keeping groups competitive.

In sum, Wall Streeters like Barry Ritholtz or Nomi Prins are just doing self-discipline and control for a professional group that at its executive top has lost all touch with its own ethical and trust enegendering oaths of fiduciary trust: Put client above self gain as one acts in their stead and seeks to do no financial harm of their entrusted assets. This is simply a lost moral committment at the highest and the currently most prospering levels of Wall Street and the GlobalFinancial Community. Need we say more about a similar disregard for the Congressional Oath of Office.

An argument is being made that the Press itself is a co-conspirator in vitriolic partisan politics that characterizes the US scene. The Press needing to sell papers and news, profits from high drama and conflict. So instead of disciplining itself and political players when stunts and popular deceptions are employed by politicians, the press lets the matters slide. In an article on her website, Ariana Huffington raises the issue of the level of lying in politics - Mitt Romney Brazenly Lies and the Media Lets Him Slide. Here is he crux of the complaint against Mitt Romney and his election team:

The lie is found in Romney's first television ad, run last week in New Hampshire. The ad shows President Obama saying, "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose." What the ad doesn't tell you is that this was from 2008 -- and that Obama was quoting an aide to John McCain at the time. Here is the full Obama quote: "Senator McCain's campaign actually said, and I quote, 'if we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose.'" (The full speech can be found here.)

This is far from the garden-variety truth stretching we're used to in political advertising. This is so breathtakingly cynical it should cause us to question whether a candidate that would put it forth is fit for any public office -- let alone the presidency.

Ariana was as furious with many  in the media and Press as she was about the dirty trick of the Romney campaign. She feels too many let the issue slide through and  names the culprits from NYTimes and Politico through to PBS Washington Week and even FactCheck.org. The problem is described as follows:

Along with being deceitful, the ad is also a challenge to the media. It's like when a toddler looks right at you and slowly and deliberately spills a glass of milk. The child wants to see the reaction. It's a test of boundaries. If there's no reaction, then the message is that it's OK

Ye Editor agrees exactly with Araiana. Too much of the past two years has seen the Media and Press turning a blind eye to blatant lying by politicians and  even worse,  "news" sources like Fox News,and many in the Rupert Murdoch publishing world. Britain has gotten to see the consequences of the latter with. Mediamatters,org and Factcheck.org are expected to carry the load on keeping political players honest.

But the problem with Mediamatters.org and Factcheck.org is a)they simply do not have the reach of the major TV, Press and online sources and b)because so much of the deception is emanating from Republican sources[of top 10 recent week of Factcheck stories, 8 are GOP misdemeanours, 1 is both parties and 1 is Democratic missteps], one gets the impression they are biased against the GOP.  So media control groups like Factcheck can be branded as "liberal think tanks".

Worse,  the GOP is by far the worst offender in terms of lying and slander. But they are not alone, the Democrats unleash low blows too. So the GOP can always say - "see , the Democrats do it too". But its sort of like the recent  Israeli-Gaza conflict - for every 1 Israeli casualty, there were 10 Palestinian casualties. The attacks and political partisanship are asymmetrical; its as if the GOP were using Terrorist tactics. Use  extreme radicals like Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Glen Beck to launch outlandish smear campaigns, followed by Fox News "opinion" pieces supporting some of the details, followed by GOP Think Tanks that  who have a dollar budget  and numeric advantage over Democratic and neutral institutions. So the level of lying and smear available and used by the GOP has radicalized political partisanship in Washington - making it more dysfunctional than ever before.

Ye Editor who strives to achieve journalistic credence with direct links to most major assertions in Takethe5th articles and postings, find these War of Partisan attrition so worrying. The US is confronted with a series of Economic, Resources, and Environmental problems that global and far reaching. The US and the World have littlemargin or  time to make major missteps. Yet thwarting any progress is  an attitude of  "we can dismay and  dupe most most of the people most of the time" which now prevails in politics. The GOP is saying can deliberately damage the economy to gain political success and suffer no consequences. It is quietly terrifying.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest This third in the trilogy of very popular Henrik Bloomqvist thrillers is the most satisfying. Again the major protagonists are Lizabeth Salander, a young women wracked by a depraved father, her court appointed protector and her police psychotherapist manages by sheer intellectual brilliance to stay alive. But she is protected in tangential fashion by journalist Bloomqvist and a host of regulars from the Swedish monthly news magazine Millenium.

What makes it entrancing is the believability these days of government state machinery running amuck [just look at the Energy scandals in the US and Africa plus the financial fiasco in the US and World Financial markets], the victimization of women[from Afghanistan to DSK in New York], plus the double and triple levels of security paranoia weaving in and out of the story. It is clearly a cerebral story of move, counter-move to manipulative, mastering checkmate.

But equally intriguing is to see the life of Stieg Larsson entwined into the storytelling. Readers should see for themselves what Wikipedia reveals about the author - and then suddenly it is as if the whole trilogy is spun from a personal web of enchantment, revelation and inevitable self deception vs realization. Reading about Stieg Larsson reveals layers and facets of Henrik Bloomqvist - and vice versa, to the readers delight.

The Congressional Budget Office's recent report on National Income trends for the past 30 years finds that the top 20% of earners have gained at least twice as much in income while all other other groups have fallen behind. The Wall Street Journal felt compelled to respond with the  interview below in its Opinions section.

From the beginning  this WSJ video opinion piece was out of kilter. The interviewer/reporter fails to identify himself - so he shall be identified as Anonymous Reporter. Then guest and WSJ columnist Mary Anastasia O'Grady makes verbally clear that  she really wants nothing to do with this tiresome "news flash issue". So there is no effort by Mary or Anonymous Reporter to use any of the many available and succinct charts that quickly summarize the Wealth Inequality issue. And there are plenty of sources like the one from the CBO report shown below [also see here for some very relevant  charts and graphics] :

Even more compelling is that this data stop in 2007 and the top 1% have been doing very well indeed  in 3 of the 4 past years while economic data shows decline in incomes for the lower 99% for the same period. See here for more details.

So Mary establishes that this issue of Wealth Inequality reflects  a recurring "Media fascination with political overtones". Next Mary  dismisses the idea that executive compensation [which she fails to mention is currently 320 times the average workers pay in top  US companies] is at all a relevant measure. Rather Mary argues that the current poverty level at $14,700 for a family of two in the US for 2011[again, a $numbert omitted by Mary] is quite well off relative to other countries. Furthermore Mary argues that upward wage mobility is the prize that most Americans value the most[again, no reference for this assertion by Mary] - their ability to jump up one or two quintiles in the earnings parade.

Mary furthur argues that this upward wage movement is determined by a host of factors most of which are not influenced by top executives pay[Mary does not consider  executive total compensation as  crowding out lower level salaries and wages and corporate financing , nor the  race to the bottom in wages and benefits in many corporations, nor the shedding of jobs through automation or off-shoring].Instead she posits this interest in Wealth Inequality  as a precursor to policies that "Punish the Rich" . Then Anonymous Reporter interrupts to say that if George Soros can double my wealth then I don't begrudge him tripling his own management income. This is the justification for Hedge Fund and other financial advisory fees being so much higher than other financial compensation[ in 2009 the average pay for the top 25 Hedge Fund managers was $1billion]. But Mary steers clear of this and instead argues that Bill Gates of Microsoft is a better example. Bill is a wealth creator and therefore any attempts to measure his compensation versus performance is just an attempt to create counter productive pay envy.

Thus Mary concludes that  movements like Occupy Wall Street are not good because they smack of class warfare which is largely un-American[and reserved for the top 1% of Americans]. To which Anonymous Reporter adds that if you are among the 9% offically unemployed and 20% underemployed, you are not going to be concerned when you finally get a job you are not going to be concerned about how much your new company's CEO is making [again no mention of the fact that for Fortune 500 companies it is likely 320 times or more than you will be making]. In response Mary argues that innovation and risk taking requires skewed compensation for these "job creators". The last thing the US wants now is ideas that smack of the French Revolution. Mary argues that it is completely backwards to consider that top level compensation and taxation can be tapped to help control our economic woes. Finally, Mary concludes that " when I get there, there better not be a lot of people coming after me".  "Get there" is later revealed to be a $billion or more in wealth.

Summary
So there you have it - an utterly dismissive and nearly factless examination of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The conclusion is yet again an encomium to Trickle Down for the almost exclusive benefit of the topmost Job and Wealth creators - and don't you dare consider examining their performance versus their compensation. And as for taxes as percentage of income - just forget that  altogether. If you look at the Opinion section of the Wall Street Journal , these type opinions have become standard fare, in effect partisan political diatribes. The result is quite FoxNews-like: WSJ Opinions have become ultra conservative viewpoints and almost factless arumentation[remember this is an Opinion, so journalistic standards for fact checking and issue overview can  simply be ignored]. Instead of the old Dow Jones comprehensive analysis and unbiased insight which one would count on for well considered, non-partisan opinion and critical thinking  at a time of National Testing, one now gets the new WSJ Opinion - it has become just  another conservative mouthpiece for Rupert Murdoch and friends. Such a waste of hard earned Journal credibility.

Bookraft has been arguing that the NYTimes has been besting most of its news magazine/website competition with superior interactive widgets and grahics. The coverage of Hurricane Irene shows another example of how the NYTimes yet again leads the pack:

Thius is not the best possible graphic of the storm - as it does not indicate storm surge levels nor does it provide a picture of the rainfall conditions - important because flooding appears to be one of the chief dangers from Irene.

But like all Google Maps it provides zoom in capability which tells the local story. And for friends in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, upstate Vermont, and into Quebec and New Brunswick in Canada, the NYTimes storm track is one of the best ways to follow the impending threat from Irene. Kudos to the NYTimes Interactive Graphics team.

In the body blow to the US National Interest and Economy that is the Deeply Partisan Politics Quaqmire pervading Washington, ye Editor has been looking for signs of optimism. There are very few. But one worthy of note is that very conservative media have been on occasion printing very liberal ideas and vice versa.

Liberal Ideas appearing in Conservative Media : Forbes

The Forbes story is Why Amazon Can't Make a Kindle in the USA.
The gist of the story is how Taiwan and then China over the past 10-15 years have captured large fragments of the computing and electronic manufacturing businesses. All of the US computer, smartphone and electronic vendors have outsourced all of their manufacturing and even design operations to China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan. So the result is:

Decades of outsourcing manufacturing have left US industry without the means to invent the next generation of high-tech products that are key to rebuilding its economy, as noted by Garry Pisano and Willy Shih in a classic article in “Restoring American Competitiveness” (Harvard Business Review, July-August 2009)

But what is really surprising is the prescription for solution which has government playing a critical role in creating an industrial commons. This idea that governmenent a)can be a critical player in the economy of the US and b)is instrumental in providing key innovation leadership flies smack in the face of current GOP positions.

Government: Government has a role to play in protecting and promoting fields of expertise or what Pisano and Shih call “the industrial commons”. Thus: “Government-sponsored endeavors that have made a huge difference in the past three decades include DARPA’s VLSI chip development program and Strategic Computing Initiative; the DOD’s and NASA’s support of supercomputers and of NSFNET (an important contributor to the Internet); and the DOD’s support of the Global Positioning System, to mention a handful.”
Politicians: At a time of poisonously divisive political debate, in which candidates recite anti-government mantras and call for “getting government out of the way of the private sector”, it is time for serious politicians to step up and examine which parts of the private sector are fostering, and which parts are destroying, the economy of the country. They must stop embodying e.e. cummings definition of a politician as “an ass upon which everyone has sat except a man.”

These are tough ideas for conservatives that are not just embracing but out promulgating the big lie that government cannot work effectively and is inevitably badly flawed when it regulates and otherwise gets in the way of business and unbridled free markets. Instead the US needs to embrace Albert Einstein's observation "The significant problems that we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them." Indeed, many actors will have to play important roles in solving the problem Globalization that has sucked Jobs out to the lowest-cost builders from the US.

Conservative Ideas Appearing in Liberal Media: Teachers Unions

There are a series of articles in Liberal Media about the status of education in the USA - clearly going backwards as US math and reading scores have declined for the the past two decades in World rankings. These articles question the power of the teachers unions in constraining US excellence in schools:
Reuters - Steven Brills School Reform Deniers - questions Teachers Unions role in education
Reuters - counter argument against Steve Brill's from NYU Educator Deborah Meier
NYTimes - Review of Steve Brill’s Report Card on School Reform
Time - Why We Are Failing Our Schools
theAtlantic - Why Michelle Rhee's Education 'Brand' Failed in D.C.
LATimes - Teaching Teachers
NewYorker - Most Likely To Succeed - How to Predict Teaching performance
Most of these articles conclude that a)teachers are not the only detrminant of teaching quality - parents, educational interest, and group social norms all have key roles. But tecahers are look at for being able to compensate for the low marks on the other indicators;
b)that predicting which teachers will succeed/perform best is hard to predict;
and c)that teachers unions protect many under-performing teachers with a variety of union practices that such as Last In First Out tenure protection, resistance to student performance measurements tied to teachers compensation, and long arbitration for teachers misdeeds.

Clearly the liberal press is taking on the Teachers Unions who are strongly Democratic leaning. What is interesting in the Liberal press is the range of viewpoints on the role of the teachers and the reliance on fact-based scientific evidence to lead the debate and conclusions.

This is a small sample but clearly some media are beginning to reject polical propaganda and are looking for evidence based solutions. Yes, overdue, small and scattered. But a welcome change from infotainment which dominates the Web and TV media.

News Corp International is the name of Rupert Murdoch's media empire that stretches from his native Australia [owning many of the largest Australian newspapers] thru Europe with many interests based in England [including Harpers Collin Book Publishing, Sky Italia and other Sky TV networks, several newpapers including the Sunday Times and the just now defunct News of the World] plus major holding in the U.S. with Twentieth Century Fox in movies, Fox network in TV, Fox News in cable news, the complete set of Dow Jones financial newspapers and other properties. News Corp outlets have a reputation in the newspaper and media business of being relentless if not ruthless in their journalistic practices[see here for an assessment of Fox News]. The verdict is now ruthless.

The  scandal that has broken out in England shows that  News Corp newspapers have been criminally and  journalistically negligent on a massive scale. These include illegally wiretapping/hacking into the phones of politicians, movie stars, families of British war casualties and crime victims; bribing police and public officials to get access to information and to suppress investigations; plus stealing medical and other confidential records from various databases. And it was not just the tabloid scandal sheets like  the Sun and the now shuttered News of the World but also the prestigous Sunday Times and the News Corp TV channels that were also complicit in the gross misdeeds.

Newsweeks Carl Bernstein raises the depth of the issue calling this Murcdoch's Watergate -

The hacking scandal currently shaking Rupert Murdoch’s empire will surprise only those who have willfully blinded themselves to that empire’s pernicious influence on journalism in the English-speaking world. Too many of us have winked in amusement at the salaciousness without considering the larger corruption of journalism and politics promulgated by Murdoch Culture on both sides of the Atlantic.
The facts of the case are astonishing in their scope. Thousands of private phone messages hacked, presumably by people affiliated with the Murdoch-owned News of the World newspaper, with the violated parties ranging from Prince William and actor Hugh Grant to murder victims and families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The arrest of Andy Coulson, former press chief to Prime Minister David Cameron, for his role in the scandal during his tenure as the paper’s editor. The arrest (for the second time) of Clive Goodman, the paper’s former royals editor. The shocking July 7 announcement that the paper would cease publication three days later, putting hundreds of employees out of work.

Time Magazine's Massimo Calabressi speculates on whether Murcdoch's troubles will cross the Atlantic to the US. Newsweek's Bernstein implies the ambition was there:

Almost every prime minister since the Harold Wilson era of the 1960s and ’70s has paid obeisance to Murdoch and his unmatched power. When Murdoch threw his annual London summer party for the United Kingdom’s political, journalistic, and social elite at the Orangery in Kensington Gardens on June 16, Prime Minister Cameron and his wife, Sam, were there, as were Labour leader Ed Miliband and assorted other cabinet ministers.

Murdoch associates, present and former—and his biographers—have said that one of his greatest long-term ambitions has been to replicate that political and cultural power in the United States. For a long time his vehicle was the New York Post—not profitable, but useful for increasing his eminence and working a wholesale change not only in American journalism but in the broader culture as well...

Then came the unfair and imbalanced politicized “news” of the Fox News Channel—showing (again) Murdoch’s genius at building an empire on the basis of an ever-descending lowest journalistic denominator. It, too, rests on a foundation that has little or nothing to do with the best traditions and values of real reporting and responsible journalism: the best obtainable version of the truth. In place of this journalistic ideal, the enduring Murdoch ethic substitutes gossip, sensationalism, and manufactured controversy.

And the record of misdeeds at just one of Murdoch's US media properties, Fox News, shows the same chronic repeated offenses in doctoring/editing stories to fit the Fox/News Corp agenda. The revelation of Fox News misdeeds by Jon Stewart's Daily Show is the stuff of comic legend. But there is a deep darkside to this as the chronicles at mediamatters.org show. Thus it was a surprise when the NYTimes David Brooks and Washington Posts Ruth Marcus on PBS NewsHour dismissed the prospect of Murdoch's troubles crossing the Atlantic to the US since supposedly the journalistic traditions are so different and the breech of journalistic integrity is not nearly so bad in the US. So this leniency raises the issue of rule of law for the elites once again.
Rule Of  Law Implications
One of the continuing problems from the Financial Meltdown has been the appalling lack of civil or criminal indictments against those who perpetrated the  many financial misdeeds. The NYTimes caught the gist of this with their comparison of the prosecutions of those responsible for the  S&L  debacle of the late 1980's and early 1990s with what has happened to the those involved in the 2007 to 2010 Financial Meltdown:

But several years after the financial crisis, which was caused in large part by reckless lending and excessive risk taking by major financial institutions, no senior executives have been charged or imprisoned, and a collective government effort has not emerged. This stands in stark contrast to the failure of many savings and loan institutions in the late 1980s. In the wake of that debacle, special government task forces referred 1,100 cases to prosecutors, resulting in more than 800 bank officials going to jail. Among the best-known: Charles H. Keating Jr., of Lincoln Savings and Loan in Arizona, and David Paul, of Centrust Bank in Florida.
Former prosecutors, lawyers, bankers and mortgage employees say that investigators and regulators ignored past lessons about how to crack financial fraud.

As the crisis was starting to deepen in the spring of 2008, the Federal Bureau of Investigation scaled back a plan to assign more field agents to investigate mortgage fraud. That summer, the Justice Department also rejected calls to create a task force devoted to mortgage-related investigations, leaving these complex cases understaffed and poorly funded, and only much later established a more general financial crimes task force.

Leading up to the financial crisis, many officials said in interviews, regulators failed in their crucial duty to compile the information that traditionally has helped build criminal cases. In effect, the same dynamic that helped enable the crisis — weak regulation — also made it harder to pursue fraud in its aftermath. [many thanks to President George W. Bush for this parting gift to the American people]

This is the crux of the problem with the economic recovery as cited here - there is simply no credible deterrence for bad behavior by financial and corporate elites because they see themselves as above the law - either the strict letter of the law or moral law. For example, here is another example of evasion of the letter of the law on both sides of the Atlantic and here is moral law being spurned by America's corporate  executive elite who are rewarding themselves at record levels yet again while their employees limp along at 1/5th  to 1/10th of their compensation increases.

Now what does this have to do with Rupert Murdoch and the media scandal in Britain?
Simply this - Prime Minister David Cameron in England yesterday promised the following about the News Corp scandal:

The political pressure intensified as Prime Minister David Cameron, who had originally hesitated, finally moved on Wednesday to back the Opposition move against the bid and to announce details of an inquiry into the hacking scandal and the wider issue of media regulation and media relations with politicians and the police. And he confirmed that the judge in charge of the inquiry will have the power to call any relevant individual to give evidence under oath, whether or not they are U.K. citizens. The Australian-born Murdoch, a naturalized U.S. citizen, is expected to top the list of witnesses invited to attend. Cameron also declared that anyone involved "whether they were directly responsible for the wrongdoing, sanctioned it, or covered it up, however high or low they go must not only be brought to justice they must also have no future role in the running of a media company in our country."

These are indeed fighting words. But England's Cameron, which also had its own fierce financial meltdown, has a prosecution batting record against the financial and corporate elites similar to his US Presidential counterpart; roughly 0 on 999. I believe in English Cricket, this might be called a sticky wicket - you simply can't get the criminal elites out.

Normally I cannot stand to read a novel twice - its just not in the cards so to speak. But I have made two exceptions. I have read Agatha Christie's Cards on the Table three times. The first time for fun; the second time to examine the exceptional plotting and story line details; and the third time this past month for fun again. Yes, it is that good.

This Agatha Christie mystery is one of the best in the Hercule Poirot series. The plotting is diabolically symmetric - four sleuths including Hercule at a Bridge card table; four suspected murderers at another card table . Eh bien sur - a murder is committed right on the very spot!

What makes the story even more engrossing is that Agatha has removed regulars like Inspector Jaap, Colonel Hastings and Miss Lemon from the scene. This allows for a departure in story telling that adds to the fascination.

Oh do enjoy the fabulous reading of 4 + 1 murders most Christienne nefarious!