Word: commoners
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...image] showed a panhandling dolphin, a guy reaching into his back pocket to give him some money, and a woman yelling something at him. I just tried to think about stereotypical things people think about dolphins and panhandlers. Dolphins are intelligent. And one of the most common and nastiest things people say about panhandlers is that they should get a job. And I thought of the caption (registration required). That didn't go over well with my colleagues, because I'm a poverty lawyer...
...projection you're talking about calls to mind a great Slate article in which a caption-contest winner explained that the trick to winning was using common cliches about the cartoon subject. A colleague emailed me that article, by Patrick House. That killed me - he had a great caption, but I really loved that cartoon and my caption was almost identical to his, and mine was shorter...
...there is Fifth Third Bancorp. The Cincinnati-based financial firm is one of a number of banks that have had to spend the past month pulling off some fancy financial gymnastics to meet their capital requirements. The stress test found that Fifth Third was $1.1 billion short of the common equity it needed to be considered well funded. Earlier this week, the bank announced that it had raised $1 billion by selling new stock. But that left the bank $100 million short of its goal. So the bank couldn't stop there. Instead, it offered $365 million of the money...
...move seems to have worked. Fifth Third says the cash payments were enough to persuade holders of more than $550 million in preferred stock to convert their shares to common. Add that amount to the more than $600 million Fifth Third had left from its stock offering, and bingo: Stress test passed - over $1.1 billion in new common equity. The problem is the money Fifth Third paid to preferred shareholders to convert to common equity will also end up depleting Tier 1 capital - a measure of total bank resources, not just common equity - by $365 million...
...politicians back home. And why not? On one side, you had autocrats who feared losing their grip on power if the economy didn't keep growing; on the other were autocrats who feared losing their grip on power if profits didn't keep growing. They had a lot in common. (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis...