The nomination of Mary Schapiro this morning to head the Securities and Exchange Commission was the clearest indication that President Obama is not bringing as much change as needed to the financial services industry. Financial industry insiders often do not make good regulators and supervisors- she is an insider if there ever was one. Even squeaky clean insiders who have been occasional outsiders have absorbed the culture, been ‘brainwashed’ by it, if you will. They have been to the Madrassa, they are essentially financial Wahhabis. So there is no real going back for these Wall Street Salafis, not without some serious re-education which may not be enough in any case.

What is needed is someone who was not on track to join an investment bank, unlike most regulators and supervisors. Someone who was not even head of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority which was an insider entity formed through a merger last year of NASD and the member arbitration, regulation, enforcement functions of the NYSE. The near-scandal of Dick Grasso (NYSE) and the very real scandal of Bernie Madoff (former chief at Nasdaq) should have been warning signals to look outside the box.

This is not what FDR would have done. This is not what he did.

Arab rulers consider banning shoes, among other things:

“A wag wrote in an Arab media outlet that the Arab rulers are considering banning their peoples from wearing shoes in public. That was a reaction to the famous shoe incident in Baghdad”. 
And I say it won’t take much to enforce that: many of the Arab peoples have been rendered shoeless by their rulers. They have also been rendered other '----less' by their rulers, but this is occasionally a family blog so I won’t get into details.
Still, to repeat a campaign legend: bitter people everywhere tend to cling to their guns and their religion for security and self-defense. Unlike Americans in places like, say, western Pennsylvania, bitter Arabs aren't allowed to carry guns legally, so they cling to their shoes and their religion.

Iraq coup report:
Iraq has arrested some 50 security officials who have been plotting a coup to bring back the Ba'ath rule. Four are generals who are secret member of the 'Return' movement of former Ba'athists. Maybe it wasn't such a hot idea to re-instate former Ba'athist officers. Or, then again, maybe it was, depending on one's political predilection, n'est-ce pas?

Now we know why Paul Bremer disbanded the old genocidal Iraqi army and its security apparatus in 2003. I always supported that move by Bremer, perhaps mainly because the regional ruling oligarchs opposed it. Now we also know why rulers of the moderate polygamous New Middle East were always angry about that disbanding- one military coup d'etat by some old Sunni general from Samarra or Takrit and 'happy times are here again' for the oligarchs.
Cheers
mhg