Worse than Welfare

On one hand I do think a program like this has a chance to accomplish its mission, if executed correctly, and with private funds that’s all gravy - as good a charity as any. Unfortunately the article says that "If the experiment is successful, officials plan to make it a government-financed program." But why the hell should I give money to the poor for doing something that directly and immediately benefits them? Why the hell should I pay some random person because they went to the doctor when they were sick? Bloomberg compares this extortionist program to performance related bonuses on the job, which you get because you helped the firm make more money than it could have without you. The company is simply giving you a piece of the pie you helped bake. I really don’t see how some chump holding down a job at Mickey D’s for a year is going to translate into a return on my investment.

clipped from www.nytimes.com Seeking new solutions to New York’s vexingly high poverty rates, the city is moving ahead with a bold antipoverty experiment that will pay poor families up to $5,000 a year to meet targets like exemplary school attendance, going for medical checkups or holding down a full-time job, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said today. The incentives, he said, would allow struggling families who are often focused on basic daily survival to make better long-term decisions. “In the private sector, financial incentives encourage actions that are good for the company: working harder, hitting sales targets or landing more clients,” Mr. Bloomberg said in making the announcement at a family services center in Brownsville, Brooklyn. “In the public sector, we believe that financial incentives will encourage actions that are good for the city and its families: higher attendance in schools, more parental involvement in education and better career skills.”

London to overtake NYC as Financial Capital

Unsurprisingly the continued excessive regulatory scrutiny (i.e. SarbOx, legislation against PE and Hedgies, etc.), restrictions and general bias in the liberally-skewed culture against paying people what they deserve ("OMG, that guy got a $50 million bonus for doing something I can't understand! He must evil corporate swine!") is going to kill NYC's (and America's) stance in the world, and the repercussions will be dire at best. If America doesn't embrace true capitalism, and do it soon, it will perish as a power.

clipped from www.bloomberg.com March 26 (Bloomberg) -- London traders are raking in salaries and bonuses as much as 50 percent higher than their counterparts in the U.S. U.K. traders' earnings increased as much as 22 percent, while U.S. salaries and bonuses rose as much as 15 percent last year Growth in hedge funds has boosted employment and wages in London. The city accounts for about 40 percent of the industry worldwide Initial public offerings in Europe, led by listings on the London Stock Exchange, raised almost twice as much as in the U.S. in 2006 A study by New York consulting firm McKinsey & Co., commissioned by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Senator Charles Schumer, concluded that the U.S. would lose its place as the leading global financial center in the next decade without legal and regulatory changes. Europe's financial industry is approaching the U.S. in size, with investment-banking revenue of $98 billion last year, compared with $109 billion in the U.S.

BP bends over for Putin

UPDATE on the Below:
BP did exactly what it was told (from NYMEX Newswire):
Russian oil company OAO Rosneft beat Anglo-Russian oil firm TNK-BP Holdings in an auction for 9.44% of Rosneft shares held by the bankrupt OAO Yukos, placing a winning bid only 1.2% above the starting price. Rosneft agreed to pay 197.84 billion rubles ($7.61 billion), less than RUB3 billion above the starting price of RUB195.5 billion.
A spokeswoman for the former Yukos management called the auction a sham, saying the sale was part of a drawn-out and deliberate dismantling of the oil group for the benefit of state-controlled companies and the Kremlin. “We believe the whole process is rigged,” spokeswoman Claire Davidson said. “This is thefirst stage in the world’s largest expropriation.”
Auction organizers defended the sale, however, insisting the deal was transparent and legitimate. “I think this was an open process,” said Nikolai Lashkevich, spokesman for Yukos’s
official liquidator. Analysts said TNK-BP appeared to have participated in the auction as a diplomatic gesture to Russian authorities, who have sought to present the sale of Yukos’s assets
as open and fair. TNK-BP’s participation may have been intended to give the auction a sense of legitimacy, analysts said.
--------------------------------------------------
Russia needed another bidder, so they brought in BP. Here’s what’s going to happen: BP bids, BP loses to Rosneft, BP magically gets a favorable contract soon after. The good news is that at least Putin is still putting up some form of facade to appear legitimate instead of just taking the assets outright. Ultimately he's just putting the final pieces in place for when he steps down from running Russia from the Kremlin to running Europe from Gazprom.

clipped from www.nytimes.com MOSCOW, March 23 — BP said on Friday that it planned to bid against the state-owned oil giant Rosneft in a bankruptcy auction for assets of the Yukos oil company BP is bidding in the auction Tuesday through a subsidiary of its Russian joint venture, TNK-BP, which is half-owned by Russian partners. some analysts speculated that TNK-BP had leant its name to the process to allow the auction to proceed in exchange for favorable treatment in other energy deals in Russia. For the auction to meet Russian bankruptcy rules, at least two bidders must participate. Until Friday, only the Rosneft subsidiary had formally expressed interest the same day TNK-BP announced the offer, Mr. Browne of BP was in Moscow for his second visit in three weeks the overseas management of Yukos, said the meeting between the chief executives of Rosneft and BP — the only two bidders — so close to the auction date could create the appearance of collusion.

Devouring what's left of the Yukos' carcass...

Putin's hunger for power (in every sense of the word) knows no limits... How to finish off Yukos before the term ends? "Auction" its remaining assets to the two state-run energy companies who will pay for them with loans secured at ridiculously low rates, sealed with the approval of nearly every major global investment bank.

clipped from www.bloomberg.com March 20 (Bloomberg) -- OAO Rosneft, Russia's state-run oil company, will borrow $22 billion as it prepares to buy up assets from bankrupt OAO Yukos Oil Co., helping President Vladimir Putin seal control of the nation's energy industry. Putin bolstered control of the nation's resource wealth over the past three years as state-run Rosneft and Gazprom acquired assets from Yukos, which was crippled by more than $30 billion in tax claims. Yukos's assets were valued at about $26.5 billion, signaling Rosneft plans to bid for all its oil production, refining and retail assets The loans were organized by ABN Amro Holding BV, Barclays Plc, BNP Paribas SA, Calyon SA, Citibank, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley. The interest rates on both loans will be between 0.25 and 0.5 percentage point above money-market rates,