The Links:
Bank of America has settled with the feds to the tune of $17 billion dollars. Still no bankers in jail for fraud. I thought this was a good point to make:
A popular criticism of the modern approach to punishing bank misdeeds -- giant fines imposed on the banks, not much in the way of individual punishments and a preference for settlements rather than trials -- is that it turns the fines into just a "cost of doing business," normalizing misbehavior rather than preventing future wrongdoing.
Wolf Street posts a reader comment about how the economy is ruined for everyone. While it's easy to look at the relative privilege of the commenter and write it off as whining, I urge you not to do so. She is right to point out that people at almost every income level are having trouble living in ways that, even 10 years ago, would have been completely normal.
We have a reasonable good upper middleclass income and have never had a problem buying what we want, taking our kids abroad every year when they were young or buying cars or houses or pools etc. until the last few years when we looked at what was going to greet our kids when they were out in the world starting their lives and decided it was necessary to stop all unneeded major expenditures (and an awful lot of minor ones as well, like eating out) in order to be ready to assist our kids if needed.
When I wrote about Social Security a few months back, I argued that family will step in to become caretakers when/if the federal money runs out. It looks like this commenter is making the same point about how parents will care for their children if opportunities are absent.
Using Twitter to track unemployment in real time. I'd argue there's a significant selection bias at work.
Finns, meanwhile, spend about 8 years in college and most exit with a master's degree of some kind. Of course that means many are in their late 20s when they graduate, which this article argues is hiding from the labor market. I seem to recall a similar effect in the US during the great recession.
Forbes asks, have Americans fallen out of love with driving? I certainly hope so. Besides, who wants to live in the suburbs anymore anyway?
Microsoft is leaving ALEC, the right-wing lobbying and political action organization. I hope this is trend as businesses realize that funding the crazies isn't actually good for them because they tank the economies of every state they gain control of.
Over at 538, do young people really like Rand Paul? The answer is no. But a vocal minority of young people do so that's the message and he's sticking to it.
The man in charge of cyber security brags about having no computer skills. Hopefully they can enroll him in Udacity for a quick crash course.
Wonkblog looks at 12 years of data and determines that stop-and-frisk didn't really do anything to stop crime. You know what stops crime? Absurdly high property values that price all but the 1% out of the city.
Stop refrigerating your butter. I saw this linked like 10 times so I thought I'd share it.
Re/code has a $600 million plan to sell HBO online subscriptions free of cable companies. Oh please, oh please, oh please!
The Verge has rounded up a bunch of magazine covers from December 17th, 1989 when The Simpsons first premiered. I still think Sean Connery is the sexiest man alive. If you pay for cable, FXX is running a 12 day marathon of every episode in order.
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