Taibbi is interviewed by Max Keiser. His segment starts at 12:30.

While the general public still doesn't understand credit default swaps, the MF Global ripoff is just plain old-fashioned criminal theft. When you use Peter's money to pay Paul, it's not complicated. Matt Taibbi points out that no one seems to want to do anything about it, and it's making him furious:

Almost every story written about MF Global by any financial news outlet will contain the word "chaos," and describe the bookkeeping challenges of the firm’s last days as just too overwhelming for mere human beings to handle. The sources are almost always unnamed, but they all say the same thing – it was just too much math, too much! The Times’s Dealbook page offered one of the most humorous examples:

A flurry of transactions engulfed the firm in the week before it filed for bankruptcy, as $105 billion of cash shuttled in and out. Amid the chaos, the employees became overwhelmed.

''It's like being at the bottom of Niagara Falls,'' recalled one employee in a meeting with federal authorities, according to one of the people involved in the case.

It’s incredible that people are offering as a defense the idea that a financial company could be so overwhelmed by transactions that it could just lose track of $1.6 billion. If you’re so terrible at managing money that you can honestly lose a billion dollars – especially after swearing up and down to the whole world that you were the right choice to manage the cherished millions and billions of scads of farmers, ranchers, and other investors – you should go to jail just for that, just on general principle.

But most pundits aren’t saying that. Instead, it seems like like every financial reporter both in this city and in Washington is talking to the same five or six defense lawyers, buying their weak arguments, and offering the same lame excuses for the missing money, which should tell you a lot about how the Wall Street press corps managed to miss the warning signs for 2008 and other disasters.

Somebody from MF Global has to be arrested soon. The message otherwise to middle America is so galling that it boggles the mind.

It would be one thing if this was a country with a general, across-the-board tendency toward leniency for property crime. But we send tens of thousands of people to do real jail time in this country for non-violent offenses like theft. We routinely separate mothers from their children for relatively petty crimes like welfare fraud. For almost anyone who isn’t Jon Corzine, it’s no joke to get caught stealing in America.

But these people stole over a billion dollars, right out in the open, and nobody is doing anything about it. Instead, we get a lot of chin-scratching legislative hearings, and an almost academic-style public discussion about whether or not a crime even took place. If there aren’t arrests in this case soon, ordinary people will correctly deduce that it simply isn’t a crime to steal in America, if the thefts are executed with a computer by white people in suits.

Just as it was incredible when Florida authorities dragged their feet in the Zimmerman case, it’s incredible that people in Washington don’t see the implications of this continual non-decision on MF Global. Apparently they hope no one notices. The sad thing is, they might be right.

On This Week with Christiane Amanour, she brings together a panel of economic interests to dicuss the economy -- with each of them, of course, pushing their own agenda. As Laura Tyson points out, the U.S. used to lead the world in education; now we lead in high-school dropouts:

AMANPOUR: Good morning. This was supposed to be the summer of recovery, but the effects of the so-called Great Recession continue to cloud this nation and much of the world. The number of U.S. workers seeking unemployment benefits rose unexpectedly to 484,000. It's the worst in almost six months. And in the housing sector, banks foreclosed on more than 90,000 properties in July, the second-highest total since the crisis began.

And these pictures speak to the desperation this week in Atlanta. Thirty thousand people waited for hours in sweltering heat to apply for 655 available spots of government-subsidized housing.

And I'm joined by four top voices on the economy. From Berkeley, California, member of the president's Economic Recovery Advisory Board Laura Tyson. From Chattanooga, Tennessee, Republican Senator Bob Corker of the Banking Committee. In New York, the former New Jersey governor and CEO of MF Global, Jon Corzine. And joining us here in Washington, chief economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Martin Regalia.

Thank you all for joining me. You've heard the figures. You've read about the figures. You can also probably palpably feel the concern and worry amongst the American people. And I want to read you something that was written about this joblessness, about the younger generation in the Atlantic recently. Look at what was written about unemployment.

"There is unemployment -- a brief and relatively routine transitional state that results from the rise and fall of companies in any economy, and there is unemployment -- chronic, all-consuming. The former is a necessary lubricant in any engine of economic growth. The latter is a pestilence that slowly eats away at people, families, and, if it spreads widely enough, the fabric of society. Indeed, history suggests that this is perhaps society's most noxious ill."

Let me turn to you right now, Martin Regalia. Do you agree with that? And do you think that that's what this country is in right now?

REGALIA: Well, I agree with it, and I think that is what we're seeing right now. We're seeing an economy that is growing, but growing in a very lackluster way. It's not generating enough demand, and therefore it's not generating enough jobs.

And on top of that, the last three or four recessions have given rise to longer terms of unemployment. More retooling is necessary to bring the displaced workers back into the workforce, and that retooling is taking a lot longer.

AMANPOUR: Let me turn to you, Laura Tyson. You're an adviser to the president right now. A recent Wall Street Journal poll of some 53 economists say they don't see the employment rate coming down below 9 percent, you know, at least until June 2011. What can be done about this?

TYSON: Well, I think that we have to do a number of things. I think we have to worry, first of all, about taking care of the people who are unemployed. And that's why I really have supported the extension of unemployment benefits and the extension of benefits to help people maintain their health insurance if they lose their job, very, very important. You have to deal with the reality that people are long-term unemployed, 7 million people long-term unemployed.

Secondly, we have to continue to do everything we can to stimulate demand in the economy. Let me give you two examples. We do have a payroll tax credit that has been offered to companies that bring on new unemployed workers into the workforce. I think we should continue that.

I think we should continue to look at major spending on infrastructure projects. You know, the good news here about the stimulus, it's said, well, the infrastructure projects haven't come on board yet. They're coming on board now, and they have high job-per-dollar-spent outcomes.

AMANPOUR: All right.

TYSON: And then, finally, we have to worry about the longer-run problem of this structural employment, because I'm going to point out one thing for this discussion. The unemployment problem is primarily a problem for people who have a high school -- who don't have a high school education or just have a high school education.

Unemployment for those with college educations is now 4.5 percent. Unemployment for those with more than a college education, below 4 percent. We have a problem of education in this country, and we have to educate more of our young people fully through college education. Let's take this as an opportunity to do that.

Continue reading »

This is going to happen more and more and more and I hope the Secret Service is making good money.

On the eve of the President's arrival in Newark, a private airport security guard is charged with making a terroristic threat against the commander-in-chief.

Police and secret service agents spent the day at Newark Liberty International Airport preparing for President Obama's arrival. It turns out one of the airport security guards is under arrest, charged with making terroristic threats against President Barack Obama.

As dozens of police gathered at the airport to protect the President, Port Authority police said they arrested 55-year-old John Breck for making what they say were disparaging and threatening remarks about President Obama.

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According to Port Authority, Breck made the threatening remarks to a co-worker. They said a third party heard the comments and that person along with the co-worker reported it to police. Investigators said Breck gave police permission to search his home and they found 43 weapons, some of which are legal.

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President Obama was in New York City on Tuesday applauding the efforts of the NYPD-FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. He then attended a couple fundraisers to raise money for the Democratic party.

Obama will be in New Jersey on Wednesday to campaign for New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine. Air Force One is scheduled to land around 4:30 p.m.

..read on

I love going back East, but come on. I wonder how long it'll take until we find out that Breck watches FOX News every day.