The Untouchables

Watch The Untouchables on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

Why has no one gone to jail over the last financial crisis? Simple. Politicians from both parties are in bed with the mortgage lenders trying to juice up home ownership in the country to help more constituents achieve the American Dream, and proving intentional fraud is a high hurdle to clear when people are at least in theory following dumbed-down government lending standards and everyone knows the government will backstop the majority of their losses. As someone once said, capitalism without bankruptcy is like religion without hell. Where are the people with integrity? Most likely they quit these institutions before the implosion.

US Shale Gas Boom Now Visible from Space

Nassim Taleb Talks Antifragile, Libertarianism, and Capitalism's Genius for Failure

Taleb's new book is Antifragile: Things that Gain with Disorder, which argues that in order to create robust institutions we must allow them to build resilience through adversity. The essence of capitalism, he argues, is encouraging failure, not rewarding success.

Reason's Nick Gillespie sat down with Taleb for a wide-ranging discussion about why debt leads to fragility (5:16); the importance of "skin in the game" to a properly functioning financial system (10:45); why large banks should be nationalized (21:47); why technology won't rule the future (24:20); the value of studying the classics (26:09); his intellectual adversaries (33:30); why removing things is often the best way to solve problems (36:50); his intellectual influences (39:10); why capitalism is more about disincentives than incentives (43:10); why large, centralized states are prone to fail (44:50); his libertarianism (47:30); and why he'll never take writing advice from "some academic at Cambridge who sold 2,200 copies" (51:49).

A Day Made of Glass 2

Daniel Hannan Destroys the Occupy Wall Street Movement

My hero....... and notice he did this without notes or a teleprompter.

Calling BS on Hillary's Bengazi Testimony

I'm not going to spend a lot of time analyzing Hillary's self-serving testimony in front of the Senate yesterday. I will say the inadequate security at Bengazi had nothing to do with inadequate funding at the State Department. The State Department fritters away tens of millions, even hundreds of millions of dollars on foolish projects and should have used that money instead for enhanced embassy security in the worlds most dangerous places (hint, the Middle East (especially Libya and Egypt), and any predominantly Muslim country with a strong militant element). It is inexcusable and nothing less than incompetence for a Secretary of State to lack the situational awareness to recognize that extra security measures are required in those counties that are hostile toward the US, and especially on 9/11 of all days in the year following the take down of Osama bin Laden. How someone with their finger on the pulse of world opinion could have failed to see this coming is beyond me.

Moonwalk

Filmed from a distance of over a mile by Mikey Schaefer. Cathedral Peak, Yosemite National Park, July 12, 2011.

Quote of the Day: Cicero

Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and given him triumphal processions. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the new wonderful good society which shall now be Rome’s, interpreted to mean more money, more ease, more security, and more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.

~ Cicero