1. Couldn’t ‘t resist reporting on this article about The Greek Tax Evaders….11/3/12 Held to Account. ” About 15, 000 people will receive a tax office summons this month asking why their declared incomes were significantly lower then the amounts they sent abroad? ($22bn)?
Yet political will is also required for a crackdown to be effective. Funds from tax evasion are used by Big Greek businesses to finance political parties. In return, companies are awarded State Contracts at overpriced rates. It’s clear that there’s an issue of social justice now because of the crisis, the question is whether the political class has the will to break with past practices?”.
2. Comment by Clive Cookson The positives about our preparedness for Sandy, is followed by thoughts about our future ability to forecast extremes in weather. Mismanagement and under investment threaten the US satellite program. The next US administration will need to increase investment in weather satellites as well as ” numerical weather prediction’ computers that turn data into forecasts. The European Center for Medium Range weather forecasts , in Reading, England was the first to point Sandy towards the US. The American forecasting computers fell into line a day or two later.
3. There will be no return to normal for investment banks. MartinTaylor discusses the reforms in Swiss Banking due to the angry protests of business leaders who believe that the financial sectors blend of incompetence and incontinence threatens to make the entire capitalist system unacceptable to the public. The Swiss National Bank is getting it’s way by policy action. It has hoisted capital requirements for the Swiss Banks , while work to ensure that Bank creditors can lose money when Bank’s fail , grinds it’s way thru Brussels and Basel.
4. LOL. Gregory Meyer ; Sandy’s effect on growth will run wider then dark storefronts. In the N Y region there is a palpable sense of lost time, as out of offices messages sprang up stating; trying to get my wife and family set up to survive with no power next week. Sandy could drag down growth by 1/2 of one percentage point. An infrastructure boom aimed at simply preserving what we have ” exposes the broken window fallacy”? ” As one trader , Dan Greenhaus, at BTIG stated, “you don’t shatter glass just to employ glaziers.” Let’s see what he proposes, now that the glass has broken?