Spring Break Gets Tamer as World Watches Online

KEY WEST, Fla. — Ah, Spring Break, with its copious debauchery, its spontaneous bouts of breast-baring, Jager bombing and après-binge vomit.

In this era of “Jersey Shore” antics and “Girls Gone Wild,” where bikini tops vanish like unattended wallets, it would seem natural to assume that this generation of college student has outdone the spring break hordes of decades past on the carousal meter.

But today’s spring breakers — at least some of them — say they have been tamed, in part, not by parents or colleges or the fed-up cities they invade, but by the hand-held gizmos they hold dearest and the fear of being betrayed by an unsavory, unsanctioned photo or video popping up on Facebook or YouTube.

Late one March evening at Rick’s Bar on rum-soaked Duval Street, college students alternated Jell-O shots with iPhone shots.

“We are very, very reserved,” said Mia Klein, 22, a University of Connecticut senior from Amityville, N.Y., who stood around a table at Rick’s with friends and cups of beer. “You don’t want to have to defend yourself later, so you don’t do it.” The “it” being get sloppy, word-slurring drunk in an unvetted crowd.

“People do regret it later,” chimed in her friend and sorority sister Kelsey Tynik, who had just finished checking e-mail amid the screaming house music.

To help keep students in check, college Web sites, magazines and blogs post dos and don’ts for spring break. Chief among them is the peril that comes with uninhibited spring break celebrations getting on the Internet and doing long-term damage. “Don’t lower your standards or let your judgment be impeded just because you’re in a different time zone,” one Web site cautioned.

Read the rest here.

Well I'd say this is the first positive thing I have read about Facebook in a long time.  But setting aside the benefits of toning down some of the excesses of our college kids, it really reinforces my gut feeling that a lot of so called "social media" is an engraved invitation to invasion of privacy, or worse. Don't look for me on Facebook or MySpace.  You won't find me.

Former Rutgers student convicted of hate crime, invasion of privacy in webcam suicide case

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — A former Rutgers University student accused of using a webcam to spy on his gay roommate’s love life was convicted Friday of invasion of privacy and anti-gay intimidation in a case that exploded into the headlines when the victim threw himself to his death off a bridge.

Dharun Ravi, 20, shook his head slightly after hearing guilty verdicts on all 15 counts against him. He and his lawyers left the courthouse without comment, his father’s arm around his shoulders.

Read the rest here.

My take: There is no question of harassment and invasion of privacy. That's a given. But I am not a fan of so called "hate crime" laws. Anything which places a thought or opinion, no matter how odious, under the ban of public law is unconstitutional in my opinion. I think the family of the victimized young man has a very good civil case here (wrongful death), but the criminal charges are hugely overblown. This was a legal lynching. Look for a vigorous appeal.

California could decide the GOP nominee

California is not exactly the GOP’s idea of home turf.

But in the 2012 Republican presidential primary, it’s the most important state on the calendar.

California’s June 5 primary, despite being the second-to-last contest, is looking more and more like it may determine whether Mitt Romney can win the Republican nomination or whether the party goes to its August convention without a nominee.

“If Gingrich drops out and Santorum can go at Romney one on one, it could be competitive all the way to California, in which case California would pretty much decide the nomination,” said John Ryder, a Republican National Committeeman from Tennessee who is an expert on the delegate process.

Part of the reason is the state’s sheer size. Because states are given three delegates to the Republican National Convention for every congressional district they have, California has a whopping 172 delegates. That’s more than 15 percent of the delegates needed to win the nomination.

California is technically a winner-take-all state, but because basically all of its delegates are awarded by congressional district, there is the possibility that they get sliced up any number of ways.

Read the rest here.

Debate rages over Mexico 'spillover violence' in U.S.

TUCSON -- On an isolated ranch 10 miles from the Mexican border in southern Arizona, Tangye Beckham worries about what the night will bring. That's usually when her family's 100-acre ranch begins to crawl with drug and immigrant traffickers from Mexico heading north into the United States.

"They're belligerent, they carry weapons," she said. "It's a nightly problem with them being on the property. They've already tried to break in."

Recently, as she was closing one of her gates in the pre-dawn hours, Beckham found herself surrounded by a group of illegal immigrants and feared being attacked. By running to her car, she said, she was able to get away, badly shaken. Two mountain ranges away, ranchers Christin Peterson and Sonny McCuistion have the same problem with armed Mexican smugglers crossing their properties. "It's upsetting and there's a lot of them. It hasn't decreased; there's a lot of traffic," said Peterson.

Read the rest here.

Dr. Tighe: Is the Papacy in Need of Structural Reform?

Dr. Tighe has written a review of Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy: Ut Unum Sint and the Prospects of East-West Unity, by Adam A.J. DeVille.

Despite its subtitle, this book, written by an assistant professor of theology at the University of St. Francis in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and a member of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, does not to any significant extent examine the “prospects” of unity between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church. Rather, in light of John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical Ut Unum Sint, and particularly the late pontiff’s request therein to leaders of other Christian churches and communities for “dialogue” on how papal primacy (or the Petrine “ministry of unity”) could be exercised in a mutually acceptable way, this book considers Catholic and Orthodox views of the papacy since 1960, and advances proposals for a major restructuring of the papacy that would separate the role and functions of the pope as “Patriarch of the West” (or “of Rome”) from those that pertain to his Petrine “universal primacy.”

After an introduction that adumbrates the arguments and conclusions of the book, and which postulates, accurately enough, that the papacy’s claims for itself and its ministry constitutes the fundamental obstacle to East-West ecumenical progress, the book examines Ut Unum Sint (UUS) and the very few official Orthodox responses the Pope’s request evoked — and why there were so few of them. It proceeds with a discussion of the views of twenty-four Orthodox theologians who have written on the papacy in recent decades, and the views of eighteen Catholic theologians. Two of the latter are Eastern Catholics: the current Mel­kite Patriarch of Antioch, Gregorios III, and the Ukrainian Catholic Michel Dymyd. The Western Catholics include Joseph Ratzinger (the fact that all but one of the works cited come from between 1964 and 1971 is, as we shall see, significant); Yves Congar; the Polish ecumenist Waclaw Hry­niewicz; Geoffrey Robinson, the retired liberal auxiliary bishop of Sydney, Australia; and Walter Cardinal Kasper, the recently retired president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

Some of the Orthodox theologians whose views are discussed are, if not exactly hostile to the papacy, then at least negative and “stand-offish” in tone, while others are much more positive about the ecumenical potential of a “reformed” papacy. DeVille himself draws three positive and three negative conclusions from their writings. Positively, they all acknowledge that the primacy of Rome is a historic fact, and that Rome is the only plausible claimant to such a universal primacy; many of them acknowledge the desirability and necessity of such a primacy, given the current “jurisdictional chaos” of Orthodoxy; and they envisage Rome’s proper function as being “a center of appeal [from the decisions of other churches and patriarchates] of coordination and of solicitude for all the churches.” Negatively, they all reject papal universal jurisdiction as defined by the First Vatican Council; they reject a “juridical understanding” of papal primacy; and they insist that it is as “first bishop” and “patriarch of the first see of Rome” that he must exercise this universal primacy. The gap thus seems nearly absolute.

Read the rest here.

Rome's latest to the SSPX

Via Rorate Caeli word that the Holy See has sent a note to Bishop Fellay "inviting" him to clarify the SSPX's position not later than April 15 in order to avoid a potentially serious rupture.  If this is not exactly an ultimatum, it is a none too thinly veiled threat and a clear signal that Rome's patience is at last running out.

On a side note, for those with superstitious inclinations the date is an ominous one.  April 15th... (Orthodox Easter this year) is also the anniversary of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, The Ringling Brothers circus fire, the sinking of the Titanic and was for many centuries the date most widely believed to be the one on which Jesus Christ was crucified.  It is also Income Tax Day here in the United States.  Just saying...

Rowan Williams to Retire

Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams announced his plans to retire today.  He will stand down at the end of the year.  Dr. Williams has been perhaps the most controversial ABC in centuries as he presided over the near breakup of the Anglican Communion.  While I believe his motives were generally honorable, the man simply could not assert himself and was totally unable or unwilling to act decisively, even within the admittedly significant limitations of his office.  My take... a brilliant man, but a very poor leader who is likely to be remembered for trying to straddle a fence that was on fire.

I'm not going to post any specific links, this is all over the web.  Check out T-19 for a myriad of articles and links dealing with the subject.

Oh My

Lots of news and bloggable stuff today.  My inbox is overflowing.

Financial Markets Recover to Pre-Crash Levels

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The S&P 500 closed above 1,400 for the first time since the 2008 financial crisis on Thursday as stocks resumed the upward climb that has produced a steady stream of gains this year.

The benchmark index is up for six of the past seven sessions and is on target for its best week since early February. Financial stocks <.GSPF>, which have dragged lately, led the day with the S&P sector index up 1.9 percent as another round of better-than-expected economic data bolstered investors' enthusiasm.

"The data is lifting us today, but so is the momentum of the market," said Rex Macey, chief investment officer at Wilmington Trust in Atlanta, Georgia, which manages about $60 billion.

"People are getting more comfortable with the S&P above 1,400 and financials leading, which by itself is indicative of a sigh of relief. The trend is your friend, and lately the trend has been higher."

Though 1,400, which marks the highest level for the index since June 2008, does not have much technical importance, it is viewed as a bullish psychological marker.

Read the rest here.

California: College students may be asked to declare their sexual orientation

Officials of the University of California system have proposed asking incoming freshmen to identify their sexual orientation, a move that might cement such declarations as an emerging topic in the college admissions process.

ABC News reports that the Academic Senate of the University of California system initiated the proposal to ensure that services are provided for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students.

Read the rest here.

Financial Hurricane Warning

If you're putting money to work for the long-term, you might want to prepare for a rough ride.

Rob Arnott, the money manager who runs the $45 billion PIMCO All Asset and All Asset All Authority Funds, tells us a storm is coming – one he calls a financial ‘hurricane.’

“Deficits are higher that most people realize,” he says. “The debt burden is soaring as a consequence of that. And we’re asking our kids to pay it off." He sees these market influences as dark clouds swirling on the horizon and they could hit as early as next year, he says. And probably no later than 2015.

Read the rest here.

Greetings citizen!

You have been determined to be an enemy of the state and the President of the United States has sentenced you to death.  Please click here for instructions and relevant information.  Have a nice day!

Goldman Sachs Exec Resigns With Blistering Op-Ed

NEW YORK — Goldman Sachs, arguably the most storied investment bank on Wall Street, has been compared to a money-sucking vampire squid and called the evil empire of finance. On Wednesday it got an entirely different kind of black eye — delivered by one of its own.

Greg Smith, an executive director at the bank, resigned with a blistering editorial that accused the bank of losing its “moral fiber,” putting profits ahead of customers’ interests and dismissing customers as “muppets.”

The decline of the bank’s culture, he wrote, threatened the bank’s survival after 143 years.

The stinging editorial, “Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs,” appeared in The New York Times, was the talk of Wall Street and was widely circulated online. Smith became a trending topic on Twitter, the social network website.

Read the rest here.
Read the actual op-ed from the Times here.

Santorum Wins Mississippi and Alabama in Blow to Romney

Rick Santorum has won Republican primaries in Mississippi and Alabama, exit polls and vote tallies show--a surprising Deep South sweep that signals Santorum is consolidating support among the party’s conservatives.

Both of the wins were narrow: just a few points separated Santorum from rivals Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. The larger lesson of the night was that this long-running primary--far from leading the party to unite behind a favorite--has left Republicans divided stubbornly into thirds.

Read the rest here.

Consumer spending up despite higher gas prices

Americans might complain about higher gas prices, but new government data show that hasn’t stopped them from driving to the mall.

The Commerce Department reported Tuesday that retail sales climbed 1.1 percent in February compared with the previous month. Consumers pulled out their wallets for new cars and clothes, electronics and sporting equipment despite spending 3.3 percent more at gas stations. The results boosted estimates of how fast the economy is growing, particularly as it comes on the heels of data showing a strengthening job market.

Read the rest here.

FED remains cautiously optimistic

The Federal Reserve stood pat on Tuesday, saying in a relatively upbeat statement that the job market has been more vibrant recently but that the economy is still likely to improve only gradually.

The Fed did not take any new policy action, reaffirming its plan to keep interest rates extraordinary low through at least late 2014.

Read the rest here.

How to do (and not do) Lent

Click here to enlarge.

Shamelessly stolen from here (an outstanding blog).

Egypt: The coming persecution

Makram Diab, an Egyptian Coptic Christian, was sentenced to six years in prison by a court in the province of Assiut on charges of “insulting the Prophet.” But the trial took place with a crowd of two or three thousand Muslims outside the courthouse demanding the death penalty. Eyewitnesses said that many protesters were armed with knives, and that the police barely managed to prevent them from breaking into the courtroom and lynching the accused.

Diab’s lawyer, a Muslim called Ahmad Sayed Gabali, said he had never seen anything like it in 18 years of practicing law. “More than 80 Islamic lawyers representing the plaintiffs filled the courtroom. They locked the door from the inside, preventing the judge from leaving and preventing me from entering the courtroom to defend my client.”

Read the rest here.

Santorum sees nomination being decided in brokered convention

WASHINGTON — Rick Santorum’s campaign has begun to argue forcefully that Mitt Romney will fail to win the 1,144 delegates needed to clinch the Republican nomination for president, leaving the decision to a wide-open national convention in Tampa, Fla., this summer.

The argument suggests that Mr. Santorum’s strategists have all but given up on the idea that their own candidate can reach that magic number himself. A count by The Associated Press found that Mr. Romney has already collected 454 delegates, more than twice the 217 that have pledged to support Mr. Santorum.

But Mr. Santorum and his advisers believe that he — along with Newt Gingrich and Representative Ron Paul— can effectively block Mr. Romney’s march to the nomination over the next three months. If that happens, they argue, Republicans will gather for their convention with no certain winner — and with Mr. Romney at a disadvantage.

Aides to Mr. Santorum predicted that convention delegates — including a majority of the “superdelegates” — would throw their weight behind Mr. Santorum once Mr. Romney failed to lock up the nomination.

“When we go to this convention, if that’s where we end up, it’s a conservative party,” Mr. Santorum said Monday morning on NBC’s “Today” show. “If an opportunity provides itself at an open convention, they are not going to nominate a moderate Massachusetts governor.”

Read the rest here.

I think this is wishful thinking on Santorum's part.  Modern conventions and nominating processes are specifically designed to avoid the uncertainty of a brokered convention.  So called super delegates can very often tip  the balance on the first ballot if things are too close with primary delegates.  For the record, the last time the Republicans had a brokered convention was 1948 (Thomas Dewey).  The last time the Democrats had one was 1952 (Adlai Stevenson).  The last brokered convention to pick a winning presidential candidate was the 1932 Democratic Convention (FDR).

An Open Letter to Jamie Dimon

I am posting this in its entirety as it is an open letter and one I think well worth reading.

“People fall not from their weaknesses, but from their strengths gone to excess.”- Aeschylus

Dear Mr. Dimon,

I used to be one of your biggest fans. Back when I was 17 years old working at a Salomon Smith Barney branch in Ft. Lauderdale, you were fired from Citigroup when everyone had you pegged as the heir to Sandy Weill’s burgeoning empire. Everyone at the branch was shocked, as we all knew you by reputation as a brilliant CEO-in-the-making, and frankly, most of us were disappointed as we genuinely were all looking forward to working under your leadership one day.

While your ousting was unexpected, you recovered quickly, and perhaps it helped motivate you to accomplish great things in the financial industry. You came to the CEO post at Bank One, then engineered its acquisition by JPMorgan Chase and took the CEO prize for yourself. All the while, Citi floundered, and you led JPMorgan Chase to become the premier American bank. Under your stewardship, Chase eschewed most of the sub-prime crisis and snapped up some of the choicest prizes in the ensuing crisis, namely Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual. Well done, sir.

Personally, I was proud to be a JPMorgan customer and proudly listed in our offering documents that our firm’s operational capital was safely held with your institution. I enjoyed great relationships with both your hedge fund/commercial banking division and your newly resurgent futures prime brokerage group. We were even on good terms with your private bank.

Then, the MF Global bankruptcy happened. And, I became aware of your bank’s involvement with the firm’s collapse. How the New York Times reports that JPMorgan received 325M in segregated customer funds despite the fact that JPMorgan Chase was a primary custodian for them. Then, JPMorgan Chase reportedly failed to return the funds when MF Global reported that they erroneously transferred customer assets and went a step further into “CYA” mode by requesting a comfort letter indicating that JPMorgan Chase had not received customer funds. JPMorgan Chase reportedly did not receive this letter, yet still, it kept customers’ property.

Through my role as the co-founder of the Commodity Customer Coalition and pro bono counsel for some 8,000+ customers whose property it looks like your institution may be holding without their consent, I have loudly advocated for JPMorgan Chase to return this property. In response to this, rather than doing the right thing, you closed all of my personal and corporate bank accounts and my personal credit card. I have been told by multiple members of the media that JPMorgan Chase has called them and stated that if their media outlet has me on television again, that JPMorgan Chase will pull their advertising from the offending network.

These bully tactics have only strengthened my resolve to protect my clients whom you have knowingly wronged and continue to wrong by improperly holding their property. It has made me delve deeper into what I have found is a pattern of such malicious conduct across JPMorgan Chase’s business groups. JPMorgan Chase bribed officials in Jefferson County, Alabama, one of the poorest counties in the United States, to enter into a disastrous derivative transaction that bankrupted the county and caused an increase of 400% in sewage prices, forcing these poor people to have to choose between food and clean water. JPMorgan Chase designed an overdraft processing system that intentionally prioritized higher dollar transactions so that as many transactions as possible would overdraft, again generating usurious-like fees on the bank of those who can ill afford it. Let’s not forget about robo-signing, forging foreclosure documents, or, getting back to the futures world, failing to properly segregate customer funds.

Mr. Dimon, why do you impugn your character and reputation by allowing your firm to engage in these immoral activities? Sure, the regulators have failed to assess you any meaningful punishments that would deter you from this conduct on a strict, short-term dollars and cents analysis. Every penny of earnings counts, I get it. But, sir, you do not strike me as someone who is trying to pump your company’s stock price for a quarter or two. You are the face of JPMorgan Chase and, I would assume, you plan on being there for a while. Why intentionally destroy any and all goodwill your firm has to make additional revenue that is mostly insignificant in the short-term and, quite possibly, deleterious in the long-term? The only reason I can think of is: because you can. And, that, sir is where hubris starts.

Lately, it seems you’ve come to relish the role of antagonist, bully, and even, villain. You’ve gone on rants about tax rates, how gosh darn profitable you are going to make JPMorgan Chase, and even gone so far as to call out journalists for their share of salaries versus the revenue of news organizations. Put plainly, the confidence that enabled you to build JPMorgan Chase has now become arrogance. Mr. Dimon, I happen to have been a classics scholar and have read this story many times before. It never ends well.

While you have led your firm to a dominant position in the banking industry and record profits of late, you haven’t done it alone. You’ve had the benefit of taxpayer funds, whether you needed them or not (as you claim). You’ve had extremely favorable regulation and public policy that for years has prioritized re-capitalizing banks over the rights of Main Street Americans to be able to bear the fruit of their labor. Yet, you have begun to act like a megalomaniac, drunk on his own power ala Caligula, and attribute 100% of your success to your personal superlatives. People are starting to notice. While Occupy Wall Street has failed to articulate any clear message or goals, they have tapped into a rage in this country that is real and palpable. You have alienated many of your peers on Wall Street and in the hedge fund industry (yes, you have peers). And, now, you have alienated many members of the media that have the voices to spread the word of the ill conduct which your firm has repeatedly engaged in.

In the Niccomedean Ethics, Aristotle described the worst kind of man as the “Incontinent Man,” namely he who knows what he does is wrong and does it anyway. I believe somewhere deep down, you realize that a lot of what you and the bank that you lead do has become increasingly wrong. Why continue to go on like that? You’re at the pinnacle of wealth and power, and continuing to do wrong will not make you meaningfully richer or more powerful. It can only serve to hurt you. “For what will it profit a main if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?”

Based on all of your accomplishments, you may think you’re beyond reproach, that you will never have your comeuppance. But, there’s a reason that during Triumphs in Ancient Rome, a slave stood behind the Emperor whispering “all glory is fleeting” in his ear. Because, it is. And, one day, something bad will happen to JPMorgan Chase. I don’t know if it will be a blow-up of the bank’s some $500 Billion in re-hypothecation exposure or a squeeze on its rumored massive short silver position. Or, if the United States will again see a regulator that believes in, and enforces, stiff punishment for misconduct by banks. But, we will all find out should you continue down the path you are on.

So, rather than continuing to corrupt your soul to harm others for negligible gain to yourself, choose a different path. Use your intelligence and your leadership abilities and your charisma to do the right thing, and set an example for the rest of the financial industry by showing that it is better for all society, JPMorgan Chase and Jamie Dimon included, to not crush those weaker or poorer than you by exacting every last cent from them just because you can. Rein in your malicious activities and focus on the legitimate ones. Be just a little humble -- and remove the target you’ve placed on your own back.

Perhaps, you can start by voluntarily returning the returning all the excess overdraft fees JPMorgan Chase overcharged average Americans through mal intent. While you’re at it, give back the hard-earned property of the farmers, ranchers, retirees, and others who were MF Global clients before I come take it back in court. JPMorgan Chase can borrow at 0% interest from the Fed. Do you really need an illicit free loan borne on the backs of farmers?

Whether you realize it or not, you’re at a crossroads. And, I promise you, one Greek to another, I will ardently help you to come to the end of whichever path you choose.

James L. Koutoulas, Esq.
President, Commodity Customer Coalition
CEO, Typhon Capital Management

Source.

HT: Stone over at the Permanent Portfolio discussion forum.