Congress is cutting a deal to allow retiree benefits to be cut.  As you may recall, Congress responded to business lobbying by allowing their pension plans to make outrageously optimistic assumptions about future returns, so the corporations could divert more of their money from pension contributions to short term profits. Now that corporate profits are at record levels, someone has to take up the slack and that must be the retirees.

In a conversation today some were tut-tutting this decision. But after all, someone has to tighten their belts in hard times. It may as well be those pensioners. I hope they are so sanguine when the banks come to seize their assets to make up their derivatives losses, which emboldened they will almost certainly do. First they come for the pensions. It is a sign of the times.

Speaking of a sign of the times, the Manhattan based 2nd US District Court of Appeals knocked my socks off today, with a ruling that basically overturns 80 years of securities principles, and probably does more to erode the 14th amendment than Citizens United.

2nd US District Court of Appeals Issues the Equivalent of the Dred Scott Decision for US Securities Markets

Here is the money shot in the decision that overturned the insider trading convictions of the infamous ring involving SAC and what looked like a organized conspiracy to violate securities laws. 

“Although the government might like the law to be different, nothing in the law requires a symmetry of information in the nation's securities markets.“

Barrington Parker, 2nd U.S. Circuit of Appeals Judge

And I will wager that if you have not seen this here and a few other places in the blogosphere, you would not even understand what the heck was going on. The mainstream news stories made it seem like the conviction was overturned on insufficient evidence.

Well technically it was. Especially if you maintain the perspective of a servile tool of the corporate media.