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The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as 'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”

Washington Post: The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare material, has undergone a major renovation. "The change to the building is pervasive, both subtle and transformational."

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Saturday
Feb122011

Familiar Bedfellows

Frank Rich: Irving Picard, the special bankruptcy trustee for the Bernie Madoff estate, may yet prove to be the man who exposes Wall Street -- and in particular, JP Morgan Chase -- for their criminal (or at least actionable) misdeeds that created the financial crisis. And Jamie Dimon, Chase's CEO is "sick of" the "constant refrain" of people badmouthing bankers.


Here's my response to Rich's column:


There’s a good reason Bernie Madoff is the only financier doing time. Sen. Dick Durbin explained it back in April 2009 when he tried unsuccessfully, at the height of the financial crisis, to get mild bankruptcy reform through the Senate:

And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.

 It is hardly surprising that the Congress is underfunding the S.E.C. – they don’t want the S.E.C. catching any big-time crooks. Those crooks are Congress’s bread-and-butter.

But the Congress needn’t have worried. Just as in the days when No One Would Listen to whistleblower Harry Markopolos, the S.E.C. is still pretty much sitting on its hands. Every once in a while, they nab some small-time (by Wall Street standards) crook in a $2,000 suit, but they keep their hands off the big boys. After all, the S.E.C. – in fact, all of the so-called “regulatory agencies” – are beholden to the crooks, too. Most of the high-ranking regulators come from Wall Street, and after they do their “public service” stint, they’ll be right back on the Street, raking in the big bucks.  Just yesterday, Eric Dash of the Times reported that "Joseph Jiampietro, one of the government’s top deal makers during the financial crisis, has joined Goldman Sachs as a senior investment banker covering the financial services industry...." Dash describes Jiampietro as the FDIC's "main liason to hedge funds and broader Wall Street community,” and he adds, “Mr. Jiampietro is the latest in a parade of top federal official to leave Washington for Wall Street." Prior to "his stint in Washington," Jiampietro was an investment banker. Do you really think Mr. Jiampietro's "stint in Washington" had anything to do with public service?

The chair of the S.E.C. – Mary Schapiro – has a long history as a regulator, beginning way back in the days when Ronald Reagan appointed her to sit on the S.E.C. You might think that would make her a tough cookie. Not really. Like the rest of her regulator colleagues, she’s in it for the dough. Back in 2008, her last year as head of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, Wall Street’s (ha ha ha) self-policing arm, Schapiro hauled in compensation of $3.3 million. According to Wikipedia, “on departure from FINRA, she received additional lump sum retirement benefit payments that brought her total package in 2008 to $8,985,334 (about the same as Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein made in that year.”

You might suppose that kind of payout would raise eyebrows in the Senate, which had to “advise & consent” to Schapiro's appointment to head the S.E.C. After all, the Senate regularly puts on hold for months or even years confirmation votes for minor appointments. But, no, in the wake of her big payoff and again during the height of the financial crisis, the Senate cleared Schapiro with a voice vote. The Senate in its wisdom Dr. Schapiro would follow that part of the Hippocratic Oath that reads “first, do not harm.” Just think of the great job Schapiro will get with all those marketable “on-the-job” skills she’s acquired at the S.E.C.

Which, to follow Frank’s structure, brings us back to Bernie Madoff. It is hardly surprising that Irving Picard is the prime mover in connecting the dots between Madoff and his enablers at JPMorgan Chase. Despite Mr. Markopolos’ many pleas to the S.E.C. and the extensive documentation he sent them, it wasn’t the S.E.C. that brought down Madoff. It was Madoff’s own sons who told the F.B.I. that their father was running a Ponzi scheme. Where was the S.E.C.? They had previously “investigated” Bernie Madoff. They didn't find a thing. They wouldn’t, would they?

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