I’ve got to admit I find that very silly.  The only benefit of using a debit card over a credit card is forced spending control.  This can easily be replaced with the slightest bit of willpower or a nagging significant other.

The costs, on the other hand, are somewhat significant.  First, if you use a credit card, you can probably earn 1-3% cashback on all of your purchases.  Thus, you only pay 97-99% of what the suckers using cash/debit/check are paying.  Over time, that really adds up.  Think about buying groceries for a family of four over the course of a year: probably $200 a week at least.  If you get 2% cashback on those purchases, you get $4 per week, or $108 per year.  That’s not bad for just grocery purchases.  Second, if you use a credit card, you can help build your credit, which is always a good thing.  Third, fraud protection on credit cards is better than on debit cards.  Fourth, if you have an emergency, a credit card allows you to buy things that you need.  If you cut up your credit card because you don’t have the self-control to use it, then you put yourself in danger of having no spending power when you need it.  If you try to spend more than you have with debit, you’ll get nasty overdraft fees.  Finally, credit cards allow you to take advantage of the time value of money – you don’t have to empty your bank account with every purchase; rather, you can keep money in your bank account, earning interest, until your credit card bill is due.  I know the time value of money is not super-significant, but it’s better than nothing.

Of course, all of this assumes that you have the willpower to only spend as much as you can pay for every month.  If you pay less than your full balance, then you’ll probably spend more than the benefits of a credit card.  But if you’re already doing that with a debit card, why not just spend as much with a credit card as you would with a debit card?  Is it really that hard not to go crazy with a credit card?

Dead last was Chrysler. CU recommended zero percent of the Chrysler vehicles they tested. That’s right–zero. Second to last was General Motors. CU recommended 17 percent of GM models. By contrast, most other companies had half or more of their models get the thumbs up. Honda was the top ranked brand; CU recommended 95 percent of its models.

Is it any surprise that Chrysler and GM are now in the process of going out of business? From the perspective of the Consumer Reports advice, it looks like their business model was to count on the ignorance of the buying public about the quality of their products. Their bankruptcy should perhaps be viewed as a success of the market system. (emphasis added).

Speech

Speech is extremely essential to any society.  The right to free speech is one of the most celebrated and long-lasting rights in America.  The First Amendment explicitly prevents the government from abridging our right to free speech.  Additionally, society generally shuns private individuals (who are not obligated to observe the 1st Amendment) who try to censor speech.

The purpose behind this celebrated right is that we recognize that humans are fallible, and that the government is not all-knowing.  We recognize that no single person or group of persons can always be right about everything.  Rather, we recognize that new, unpopular ideas may turn out to be correct.  See Galileo.  Simply because an overwhelming majority of scientists believe that climate change is man-made does not mean that we should censor the dissenters.  A belief of a large crowd can often be wrong, and if we refuse to believe that we could ever be wrong, then we risk severe harm to human civilization.

Additionally, speech is often the vehicle by which people can come to optimal solutions.  Theoretically, when we debate important ideas, and we allow many people to speak, the best ideas will rise to the top as more and more individuals become convinced.  Furthermore, speech can help us strengthen our convictions in our own beliefs.  If we learn the best and most convincing arguments of people that believe differently from us, but we can rationally reject those ideas, then presumably we must reject them because we believe our views are even more convincing.  We could not realize our own views’ strength if we did not compare them to those of others.

Although Notre Dame is not the government, and does not need to obey the 1st Amendment, Notre Dame should have been shunned if it decided to keep Obama away purely because some students do not like his views on one issue.  Keeping him away would be asserting a kind of infallibility in both the school and in the students themselves.  It would encourage students to believe that they do not need to recognize that any beliefs other than their own, and it would encourage students to shelter themselves only with those that believe the same things they do.  It would prevent the students from learning other ideas that could either strengthen their own convictions or change their mind.

Obama was not at Notre Dame to convince Catholics that killing babies was a good idea.  Primarily, he was there to say congratulations for graduation.  As a secondary matter, he was there to respond to the protests at Notre Dame, and say that although perhaps pro-lifers and pro-choicers will never agree on the issue of abortion, they still have to live with one another and be able to speak with one another.  Moreover, if there is ever to be any serious abortion-related legislation, both sides are going to have to work with each other.  If you never speak to the other side, that will never happen, and neither side will ever be able to compromise.

Tolerance

Obama’s visit also raised questions about tolerance in society.  By tolerance I do not mean that Catholics should believe that Obama’s pro-choice view is just as correct as their pro-life view.  Rather, they need to accept him as a human being despite having conflicting views with their religion.  I am a recently-confirmed Catholic.  One of the most important lessons that I learned in the Bible is that Jesus did not only associate with saints, but sinners as well.  Jesus did not fight with other people; he turned the other cheek.  Jesus loved his neighbor, and he loved his enemies.

Catholics who responded to Obama’s visit by handing out hateful pictures of aborted fetuses and calling Obama a murderer did not act the way Jesus wanted people to act.  Instead, they shut their minds and showered Obama with hatred.  The Golden Rule that not only Christians but many persons claim to obey is “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  Would a Catholic who had an opportunity to speak at a school that was very pro-choice have wanted to be showered with this type of hatred?

Conclusion

Those that are pro-life and pro-choice need to put down their weapons.  First, abortion is not the most important policy issue going on right now in the world.  Both sides are going to have to work together to deal with a number of other important issues.  If they refuse to talk to one another because of abortion, that will be a shame, and more important things will not get done.  Secondly, humans are not infallible.  Assuming that one is all-knowing is extremely foolish and risks a “Galileo situation.”  Finally, Catholics who treat others with hate, even those who are their greatest enemies, are contradicting Jesus’s teachings.  It sounds tacky to say this, but: can’t we all just get along?

And Rep. Maurice D. Hinchey (D-N.Y.) vowed to force the White House to accept delivery of a new presidential helicopter Obama says he doesn’t need and doesn’t want. The helicopter program, which cost $835 million this year, supports 800 jobs in Hinchey’s district. “I do think there’s a good chance we can save it,” he said.

I guess “save it” means extract money from the federal government that serves no purpose.  Instead of employing 800 people to do something worthless, why not just pay those 800 people money for doing nothing?  That would be more efficient.

However, the Democratic party is just as stupid.  When it comes to economics, all economists believe that free trade is a good thing.  However, the Democratic Party consistently stands for a variety of trade restrictions.

It’s incoherent for either party to criticize the other at not believing in science.  This is just one of the many ways that both major party platforms are incoherent.  I am glad not to call myself democrat or republican, and I never plan to do so.

The AIG bonuses now being debated in Congress and everywhere else represent about .001 percent of annual GDP. If a typical Congressman spent that fraction of a 2000 hour work year on the topic, it would consume only about 1 minute of his or her time.

Yes, I know, that calculation is silly in many ways, but here is my point: Regardless of how outraged you are about the AIG bonuses, it is probably not an optimal allocation of resources for our elected leaders to spend large amounts of time and energy on the topic. The economy has bigger problems right now, and it would be better to focus attention on those.

I’m not debating whether Steele was actually pro life or pro choice, or whether Limbaugh was being authentic when he stated he wanted Obama’s policies to fail rather than Obama to fail.  Rather, I just want to point out that no matter what Michael Steele believes, he is not allowed to say it, because he is owned by the Republican party.  Steele is the RNC chair – he is supposed to be a leader of the party – he is not supposed to just repeat what Rush Limbaugh says.  Steele should not be afriad to – gasp – suggest new ideas for the party or criticize long-held beliefs.  The same goes for any well-known politician in either party.  It is absurd that politicians have to be careful to stay close to the party platform in fear that they might upset “the base” of the party.  The two recent events involving Steele only emphasize how political parties stifle independent thought.

Your Honor, for many years up until my arrest on December 11, 2008, I operated a Ponzi scheme through the investment advisory side of my business, Bernard L. Madoff Securities LLC, which was located here in Manhattan, New York at 885 Third Avenue. I am actually grateful for this first opportunity to publicly speak about my crimes, for which I am so deeply sorry and ashamed. As I engaged in my fraud, I knew what I was doing was wrong, indeed criminal. When I began the Ponzi scheme, I believed it would end shortly and I would be able to extricate myself and my clients from the scheme. However, this proved difficult, and ultimately impossible, and as the years went by I realized that my arrest and this day would inevitably come. I am painfully aware that I have deeply hurt many, many people, including the members of my family, my closest friends, business associates and the thousands of clients who gave me their money. I cannot adequately express how sorry I am for what I have done. I am here today to accept responsibility for my crimes by pleading guilty and, with this plea allocution, explain the means by which I carried out and concealed my fraud.

The essence of my scheme was that I represented to clients and prospective clients who wished to open investment advisor and individual trading accounts with me that I would invest their money in shares of common stock, options and other securities of well-known corporations, and upon request, would return to them their profits and principle. Those representations were false because for many years and up until I was arrested on December 11, 2008, I never invested those funds in securities, as I had promised. Instead, those funds were deposited in a bank account at Chase Manhattan Bank. When clients wished to receive the profits they believed they had earned with me or to redeem their principal, I used the money in the Chase Manhattan bank account that belonged to them or other clients to pay the requested funds. The victims of my scheme included individuals, charitable organizations, trusts, pension funds and hedge funds. Among other means, I obtained their funds through interstate wire transfers they sent from financial institutions located outside New York State to the bank account of my investment advisory business, located here in Manhattan, New York and through mailings delivered by the United States Postal Service and private interstate carriers to my firm here in Manhattan.

I want to emphasize today that while my investment advisory business – the vehicle of my wrongdoing – was part of my firm Bernard L. Madoff Securities, the other business my firm engaged in, proprietary trading and market making, were legitimate, profitable and successful in all respects. Those businesses were managed by my brother and two sons.

To the best of my recollection, my fraud began in the early 1990s. At that time, the country was in a recession and this posed a problem for investments in the securities markets. Nevertheless, I had received investment commitments from certain institutional clients and understood that those clients, like all professional investors, expected to see their investments out-perform the market. While I never promised a specific rate of return to any client, I felt compelled to satisfy my clients’ expectations, at any cost. I therefore claimed that I employed an investment strategy I had developed, called a “split strike conversion strategy,” to falsely give the appearance to clients that I had achieved the results I believed they expected.

Through the split-strike conversion strategy, I promised to clients and prospective clients that client funds would be invested in a basket of common stocks within the Standard & Poor’s 100 Index, a collection of the 100 largest publicly traded companies in terms of their market capitalization. I promised that I would select a basket of stocks that would closely mimic the price movements of the Standard & Poor’s 100 Index. I promised that I would opportunistically time these purchases and would be out of the market intermittently, investing client funds during these periods in United States Government-issued securities such as United States Treasury bills. In addition, I promised that as part of the split strike conversion strategy, I would hedge the investments I made in the basket of common stocks by using client funds to buy and sell option contracts related to those stocks, thereby limiting potential client losses caused by unpredictable changes in stock prices. In fact, I never made the investments I promised clients, who believed they were invested with me in the split strike conversion strategy.

To conceal my fraud, I misrepresented to clients, employees and others, that I purchased securities for clients in overseas markets. Indeed, when the United States Securities and Exchange Commission asked me to testify as part of an investigation they were conducting about my investment advisory business, I knowingly gave false testimony under oath to the staff of the SEC on May 19, 2006 that I executed trades of common stock on behalf of my investment advisory clients and that I purchased and sold the equities that were part of my investment strategy in European markets. In that session with the SEC, which took place here in Manhattan, New York, I also knowingly gave false testimony under oath to the staff of the SEC on May 19, 2006 that I executed trades of common stock on behalf of my investment advisory clients and that I purchased and sold the equities that were part of my investment strategy in European markets. In that session with the SEC, which took place here in Manhattan, New York, I also knowingly gave false testimony under oath that I had executed options contracts on behalf of my investment advisory clients and that my firm had custody of the assets managed on behalf of my investment advisory clients.

To further cover-up the fact that I had not executed trades on behalf of my investment advisory clients, I knowingly caused false trading confirmations and client account statements that reflected the bogus transactions and positions to be created and sent to clients purportedly involved in the split strike conversion strategy, as well as other individual clients I defrauded who believed they had invested in securities through me. The clients receiving trade confirmations and account statements had no way of knowing by reviewing these documents that I had never engaged in the transactions represented on the statements and confirmations. I knew those false confirmations and account statements would be and were sent to clients through the U.S. mails from my office here in Manhattan.

Another way that I concealed my fraud was through the filing of false and misleading certified audit reports and financial statements with the SEC. I knew that these audit reports and financial statements were false and that they would also be sent to clients. These reports, which were prepared here in the Southern District of New York, among things, falsely reflected my firm’s liabilities as a result of my intentional failure to purchase securities on behalf of my advisory clients.

Similarly, when I recently caused my firm in 2006 to register as an investment advisor with the SEC, I subsequently filed with the SEC a document called a Form ADV Uniform Application for Investment Adviser Registration. On this form, I intentionally and falsely certified under penalty of perjury that Bernard L. Madoff Investment and Securities had custody of my advisory clients’ securities. The at was not true and I knew it when I completed and filed the form with the SEC, which I did from my office on the 17th floor of 855 Third Avenue, here in Manhattan.

In more recent years, I used yet another method to conceal my fraud. I wired money between the United States and the United Kingdom to make it appear as though there were actual securities transactions executed on behalf of my investment advisory clients. Specifically, I had money transferred form the U.S. bank account of my investment advisory business to the London bank account of Madoff Securities International Ltd., a United Kingdom corporation that was an affiliate of my business in New York. Madoff Securities International Ltd. was principally engaged in proprietary trading and was a legitimate, honestly run and operated business.

Nevertheless, to support my false claim that I purchased and sold securities for my investment advisory clients in European markets, I caused money from the bank account of my frauduelent advisory business, located here in Manhattan, to be wire transferred to the London bank account of Madoff Securities International Limited.

There were also times in recent years when I had money, which had originated in the New York Chase Manhattan bank account of my investment advisory business, transferred from the London bank account of Madoff Securities International Ltd. to the Bank of New York operating bank account of my firm’s legitimate proprietary and market making business. That Bank of New York account was located in New York. I did this as a way of ensuring that the expenses associated with the operation of the fraudulent investment advisory business would not be paid from the operations of the legitimate proprietary trading and market making businesses.

In connection with the purported trades, I caused the fraudulent investment advisory side of my business to charge the investment clients $0.04 per share as a commission. At times in the last few years, these commissions were transferred from Chase Manhattan bank account of the fraudulent advisory side of my firm to the account at the Bank of New York, which was the operating account for the legitimate side of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities — the proprietary trading and market making side of my firm. I did this to ensure that the expenses associated with the operation of my fraudulent investment advisory business would not be paid from the operations of the legitimate proprietary trading and market making businesses. It is my belief that the salaries and bonuses of the personnel involved in the operation of the legitimate side of Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities were funded by the operations of the firm’s successful proprietary trading and market making businesses.

Your Honor, I hope I have conveyed with some particularity in my own words, the crimes I committed and the means by which I committed them. Thank you.

Grade inflation does not simply exist in high school.  In college, many students expect A’s simply for doing their homework.  Many law schools have either changed to an entirely pass/fail grading system, or have moved up the median GPA from 2.9 to 3.3.  In all academics, a grade of “C” used to mean average.  Now, it seems like the average grade is a B+ or A.

The result is that it is extremely hard to differentiate high school students who apply for college, and college students who apply for graduate programs.  In the past, admissions programs could examine an applicant’s grades, extracurricular activities, and standardized testing results to evaluate the applicant’s merit.  But now, evaluating grades is a crapshoot [and extracurriculars are as well, as it seems that every motivated student signs up for every extracurricular activity possible].  Since grade inflation is so rampant, all motivated students’ grades are extremely high and extremely close together.  Rather than having some students at GPAs of 4.0, some at 3.5, some at 3.0, and many around 2.0, schools now have a majority of students between 3.5 and 4.5.  If you are an admissions officer, can you really make meaningful differentiations between students with GPAs that differ by only 0.1, especially when you realize that many school systems are quickly racing to the bottom to raise their median grades?  Is a student with a 4.5 GPA really better than a student with a 4.0 GPA?

This forces admissions offices, if they want to have some sort of common factor to compare students with, to use standardized tests to do so.  Thus, the SAT and the LSAT and the GMAT are now the way that students prove their worthiness as academic applicants.  But are these tests really reliable indicators as to the viability of the applicant?  There is no doubt that these tests are helpful in evaluating applicants, but I do not believe that these tests alone can prove the worth of an applicant.  Although these tests can show ability to work well under pressure and to use analytical abilities, etcetera, they cannot capture the information grades used to convey.  Whereas a standardized test is taken at one point in time, where good or bad luck can greatly affect the score on a particular day, grades are acquired over an entire academic year or academic semester.

Grades, in the past, used to require lots of hard work and dedication and, to some extent, an ability to connect with a professor to understand what the professor finds is important in the course.  These factors are extremely important in knowing whether to admit an applicant, because the applicant is going to be taking classes and earning grades in the new school.  One of the most important criteria to me, if I were an admissions officer, would be to know how well the applicant is going to perform in the classes that he or she is applying to take at my school.  As taking these classes is going to require many of the same skills that the applicant used in taking classes in an earlier level of education, I think it is very important to understand the class-taking abilities of all applicants.  However, because of grade inflation, this measurement is quite muddled, and basically forces admissions offices to overly rely on standardized tests.

The phrase “pull my finger,” and derivations thereof, are generally known and widely understood in American society to be a joke or prank regarding flatulence. The prank begins when the prankster senses the deep stirrings of flatulence.  The prankster then requests that an unsuspecting person “pull [his or her] finger.” The prankster extends his index finger to the victim.  As the victim pulls the prankster’s finger his flatulence erupts so as to suggest a causal relationship between the pulling of the finger and the subsequent expulsion of gas. In other words, the phrase “pull my finger” is understood to be a description of the act of passing gas.