Bankers will take $5 trillion from American economy over the coming decade – Boing Boing

Bankers will take $5 trillion from American economy over the coming decade via Boing Boing

How to succeed by failing: be a banker. From CNN World:

For the American economy – and for many other developed economies – the elephant in the room is the amount of money paid to bankers over the last five years. In the United States, the sum stands at an astounding $2.2 trillion. Extrapolating over the coming decade, the numbers would approach $5 trillion, an amount vastly larger than what both President Barack Obama’s administration and his Republican opponents seem willing to cut from further government deficits.

That $5 trillion dollars is not money invested in building roads, schools and other long-term projects, but is directly transferred from the American economy to the personal accounts of bank executives and employees. Such transfers represent as cunning a tax on everyone else as one can imagine. It feels quite iniquitous that bankers, having helped cause today’s financial and economic troubles, are the only class that is not suffering from them – and in many cases are actually benefiting.

Article by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University and author of The Black Swan. Mark Spitznagel is a hedge-fund manager.

timestranscript.com - How far can you go to protect your property? - Breaking News, New Brunswick, Canada

‎45-year-old former military man and father of four charged of possessing a weapon for a purpose dangerous to the public peace while trying to protect his home, property and family from scum bags. Does it make sense that the only legal course of action is to stand there passively and be a victim till police arrive? Canada is long overdue on some clear cut rule changes that give good people the upper hand for a change.....

timestranscript.com - How far can you go to protect your property? - Breaking News, New Brunswick, Canada

"Most people wouldn't want to live in a land where guns are bandied about indiscriminately.

But as gun owners, there are darned few of us who haven't thought about what we would do if we were to end up in the position in which Lawrence (Laurie) Manzer found himself early last year.

Manzer, a 45-year-old former military man and father of four, got a call one night from a neighbour. There were prowlers in their backyards. No surprise there; the neighbourhood had been victimized for months by thugs stealing from and vandalizing people's property. Police could not or did not put a stop to it.

So the two men hoped to catch whoever it was skulking outside their bedrooms windows in the middle of the night. Manzer unlocked his legally stored, legally registered, legally owned 12-gauge shotgun, which he is fully trained and experienced to use safely, and stuffed a few shells in his pocket, then headed outside. He didn't load the gun. He didn't point the gun. He didn't hit anyone over the head with it. He just brought it with him on his own property.

It's an act that has changed his life and made him into an international symbol of Canadian laws that govern what you can and cannot do to protect your home, your property and your family, laws that have more grey in them than they do black and/or white.

His actions landed him before the Burton law court yesterday for the start of his trial on a charge of possessing a weapon for a purpose dangerous to the public peace. At the time of this writing, there is no news yet on the outcome of yesterday's court proceedings, which are slated to continue this morning.

It is interesting that Manzer was charged with a crime in which he doesn't get a choice of whether to put his fate in the hands of a jury. A skeptic might argue that the Crown realized there is no possible way a jury of Manzer's peers would ever convict him of anything other than being a hero, and thus chose this charge over some others that would apply equally to the same alleged offence but would have given the accused the option of a jury trial.

One has only to recall the case a few years back of the Sussex area man who was found not guilty after he shot and killed one robber and indirectly badly hurt his accomplice as the thieves fled his property after stealing from his garage, which had been victimized multiple times, to conclude that a jury might give Manzer the benefit of a reasonable doubt.

In another case, a Fredericton shop owner who put a load of bird shot into the back doors of a fleeing van that had just robbed his store was found guilty of a gun crime some years ago, even though anyone familiar with shotguns knows that unloading a fistful of pheasant shot into the rear end of a van is unlikely to hurt anyone - indeed the accused argued at trial he was merely marking the van to make it easier for police to find the getaway vehicle. That case was tried by a judge without a jury, if memory serves, just like Manzer's trial will be.

In New Brunswick, as in the rest of Canada, the law on how far you can go to protect hearth and home - and your children - is so foggy that it seems no one knows where the line is.

If nothing else, Manzer told Brunswick News this week, his case might help clarify that and at the same time help other law-abiding citizens who happen to own guns to know how far they go with those guns when there's an imminent threat to their children, their spouses and their worldly goods, prowling around just outside their bedroom windows in the deep dark of night.

As it turned out, Manzer's and his neighbour's particular threat ended up being three booze-swilling teenagers who the two men held until the police arrived (Manzer's wife had called 911,) one of whom got a ticket for open liquor.

It's Manzer, who some would argue is the victim in this crime, who ended up a few days later with the more serious charge - not to mention the seizure of his lawfully held property, his duck-hunting gun. (A charge of pointing a firearm was withdrawn and the "possession for a dangerous purpose" charge was laid in its stead later on; a charge against Manzer's neighbour of assaulting one of the young punks was withdrawn.)

It would be easy at this point to crack wise about justice being really, really blind, that the law is an ass, about cops being evil and how the Crown might better expend its scarce resources on real crimes. And I guess I just did.

The real issue, though, is that not a single gun owner I've ever met has a clue what he or she can and cannot legally do in the face of a threat either to their person, their loved ones or their property, other than a few who know the broad generalities of using minimal force to counter the threat and that you must truly feel threatened before moving to defend yourself, blah blah. You can Google sections 34 to 37 of the Criminal Code of Canada for the exact wording and educate yourself, if you're interested.

I don't necessarily pooh-pooh the argument that tragedy could be one step away if just anyone can run out of the house with a gun any time they perceive a threat. But can you imagine how you'd feel if you had the means, the training and the tools available to stop a threat to your family, yet didn't act, ending with personally tragic results?

Myself, I'd rather go to jail for defending my child than to her funeral because I failed to do so.

Given my choice of neighbours, the Manzers can move into my neighbourhood any time. I'll even help 'em pack.

Many New Brunswickers are helping Laurie with what could be a fairly substantial legal bill. If you'd like to do the same, send your donation in care of his lawyer at: Lawrence Manzer, In Trust of Brian McKay, 291 Restigouche Rd., Oromocto, NB, E2V 2H2."