Word: banking
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...most exciting day of the financial year should have been today because the government releases the results of its multi-month bank "stress test" program which includes thorough vetting of the health of America's 19 largest banks. That part of the drama is over. Someone leaked almost all of the information on the banks that failed the tests and how much money they will be asked to bring in as new capital. Citigroup (C), Wells Fargo (WFC), and Bank of America (BAC) are troubled, as the government sees it, and will have to improve their balance sheets...
...excitement over the bank tests was an important replacement for the thrill of Bernie Madoff's weird and exotic life. He was remarkably clever and had great skill in robbing otherwise intelligent people blind. A careful analysis of Madoff's actions has not uncovered much that was not clear in the first few weeks of the investigation other than the fact that the people who gave him money were not intelligent at all. Madoff was such an improbable monster that the public followed the story with untiring fascination week-after-week. Once Madoff went to prison, the magic wore...
...primary reason that news organizations gave the bank story so much space was that the public knew the tests were a fraud. Warren Buffett said so, along with a number of other financial analysts. Bank balance sheets are so complex that applying one set of measures for all of them is irresponsible reductionism, these analysts argued. The second part of the fraud was much more elaborate. The government, led by Henry Paulson, forced large banks to take TARP money that they did not need. He made sure that the taxpayers received preferred shares in the firms in exchange...
...That's according to the mission statement of the blogger Legofesto, who's amazingly found a way to use LEGO - the stackable, clickable, infinitely malleable children's toys - to tell the story of Guantanamo Bay detainees, prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, British bank instability, and civilian deaths in the Iraq War. Legofesto, a blogger located in the United Kingdom, won't reveal her identity, but her politics are clear. According to the profile on her blog, she's "a politics-junkie and news-hound, with a obsession for lego and other construction toys ... She is very, very pissed...
When it comes to opera, big is traditionally beautiful. But London's English National Opera (ENO) - the small, scrappy neighbor of the illustrious Royal Opera House - has succeeded by going a different route. While major opera houses bank on grand sets and virtuosos projecting stiffly from center stage, the ENO's nimble productions are as intimate as the form permits. "We want to draw our audience in rather than draw their attention to the artifice of what they are watching," says artistic director John Berry...