Tag Archives: culture

Pick One

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A letter writer in The Wall Street Journal‘s Letters section wrote that FBI Director Christopher Wray is a good man, but that he was wrong for the job he had as Director.

Stipulated, arguendo, the first part.

Then, though, he closed with this:

Mr Wray should have been the insider who reformed the FBI and restored it to its former place of respect. Having missed that chance, the bureau may now be treated as another institution in need of disruption and a significant reset. This may or may not work out well for our nation’s premier law-enforcement agency.

An agency that is an institution in need of disruption and a significant reset due to its senior leadership’s involvement in interfering with the election of a politician of whom they personally disdained, as the letter-writer noted, cannot possibly be a premier law-enforcement agency.

On the contrary, the FBI is an agency badly wanting a thorough and widespread purge of upper and senior management or an outright disbandment and replacement with an entirely new agency completely devoid of the FBI’s existing upper and senior management personnel.

I Have a Question

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A Swiss Parliamentary report that is a post mortem on the demise as an independent enterprise of Switzerland-headquartered Credit Suisse blames lax controls by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority for the bank’s failure, a laxity that occurred despite that same agency’s repeated investigations into the growing weaknesses and failures to perform in the bank. The report also identifies weak bank management and managers as a major contributor to the failure.

Part of the correction to Credit Suisse’s failure was forcing Switzerland-headquarted UBS to “acquire” Credit Suisse. Only now, too, is the regulator proposing increasing capital holding requirements at UBS.

The report is largely correct on the agency reasons for the failure. Whether the forced acquisition works remains an open question: not enough time has passed to make that determination.

My question is this: why did Credit Suisse need saving at all, even if as a subordinate entity owned by another bank?

Leave aside my disdain for Government dictating to private enterprises what they must buy (or not buy), and leave aside the fact that our own government’s hands are unclean in that regard, vis., the Obama administration diktats during the Panic of 2008.

Why not let Credit Suisse simply fail and reorganize itself through bankruptcy or disappear altogether? Given the report’s identification of the weakness of the management team that was running Credit Suisse into the ground, the bank’s unfettered failure would have been an object lesson pour l’encouragement des autres that no bank, no business entity, was zu groß zum Scheitern.

Certainly the turmoil from the bank’s outright failure would have been large, but even at that, the outcome would have done far more to strengthen the Swiss banking system and its larger economy, and done it for a much longer duration.

So Long

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And no thanks for the memories.

Many government bureaucrats are leaving their jobs even before the Trump administration gets sworn in next month.

Government bureaucrats are abandoning ship ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House, anticipating either their termination or an intolerable upending of the status quo at their agencies.

Not merely leaving in consonance with the change of administration, but bailing out? Well, there is that bit about their Know Better agendas being deleted.

Some key government officials, including those whose posts are not necessarily tied to political appointments, have taken it upon themselves to exit government service in light of the initiative and Trump’s return.

For instance:

  • Christopher Wray is quitting as FBI director
  • FAA chief Michael Whitaker—even though he had widespread support and didn’t seem in line to be replaced before his term was up
  • Gary Gensler is quitting as SEC Chairman

Buh-bye, luv ya, mean it.

Cynicism of the Progressive-Democratic Party

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Former President and current President-elect Donald Trump (R) wants to deport, in phases, all the millions of illegal aliens that the Progressive-Democrat Biden administration has let flood across our borders. Included in that is the cancelation of the work permits that Biden and his syndicate have issued so many—potentially 3.3 million—of those illegal aliens.

The objections to that part of the broad deportation plan is illuminating.

Their removal from the workforce—which, because of the intricacies of federal immigration law, would take months or more to play out—would create fresh challenges for employers already struggling to fill open positions.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick American Immigration Council Senior Fellow:

It will have an enormous impact across the US in a wide range of industries, regardless of whether those people get deported or wind up leaving the US.

This has been Party’s and their Leftist supporters’ modus operandi from Obamacare to now: get folks hooked on the system while destroying alternatives (no, you can’t keep your doctor, no, you can’t keep your insurance plans, no you can’t have secure borders or sound immigration law or policy), leaving subsequent administrations hamstrung in efforts to stop the ongoing damage and undo the destructive systems.

It’s time to point out—loudly and often—the destructive nature of giving illegal aliens work permits and getting so many businesses across so many industries hooked on illegal aliens as cheap labor.

Then set about undoing those incentives for illegal aliens to continue flooding across our borders. It’ll be expensive and disruptive to do, but that price will only increase the longer we delay doing it. And it will lead to much better outcomes for our citizens, our society, and our culture on the other side.

The alternative to permits for illegal aliens? Making it easier to enter our nation legally, streamlining while making more thorough the vetting process for who we let in, raising or eliminating altogether visa quotas for those wanting to come in to work or to visit (while strictly enforcing the limits on visit duration).

Blame Someone Else

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Safeway is closing one of its San Francisco stores due to concerns about high crime rates and employee and customer safety in that store’s neighborhood. Oh, the hue and cry.

The Reverand Erris Edgerly, for instance, is crying foul.

It’s obvious the community has been struggling, but to just up and leave without calling a meeting, with no alternative for groceries, is upsetting. There was no community outreach at all.

It’s obvious that the crime rate in Edgerly’s community has been out of control for quite some time and the safety of his community members has been in the wind for all that time. From that, it’s just as obvious that community “leaders,” like the good Reverand, have contributed nothing useful to mitigating the situation (in truth, the city has done nothing, also, but that doesn’t excuse the community’s “leaders”).

Outreach would have been just more chit-chat and worse than pointless: advance notice of the store’s closing would have been too likely to trigger an accelerated spate of break-ins and lootings, exposing the store’s employees and customers to even more danger in that end game.

Maybe the Edgerlys of the neighborhood should look in a mirror to find some of the folks with whom to…outreach.