zenpundit.com

Senator Chris Dodd (D-Connecticut) is working hard in Washington…. to make sure that only those who are already  Rich and Powerful   will have a shot at being rich and powerful.

From Rick Tumlinson at Huffington Post: 

• Start-ups have to register with the Security Exchange Commission and then wait 4 months minimum for it to review their filing. This is a lifetime in the fast moving world of start-ups. (Keep in mind you and your employees are living hand to mouth everyday there is no money coming in.)
• Accredited investors (those who can legally invest in start-ups) would be limited to those with assets of over2.5 million (up from1 million) or a personal income of450,000 (up from250,000). This knocks mom and dad and uncle Bill right out of the game for most entrepreneurs. How many multi-millionaires in your family and close friends?
• Removing the federal pre-emption which provides a single set of national regulations and forcing companies to deal with state-by-state variations in rules. Most start-ups are kitchen table corporations at first. We have no money to pay lawyers to figure things out for us. That’s why we are looking for funds in the first place. Duh!

This is so egregiously wrongheaded and economically counterproductive on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to begin. Even the big money Obama backers of Silicon Valley are calling this bill “insane” . There’s literally no upside to these provisions which limit the field of potential start-up investors to a professional insider’s club skilled at wheedling favors from the SEC behind closed doors. That may be the objective of these rules. 

You middle-class serfs can get back to the fields now. Creating start-ups and making investments are not for your kind.

From John Robb:

JOURNAL: Mexico’s Mercado of Violence Heats Up

Open source warfare often combines market-based functions to accelerate its innovation rates and expand its operations beyond the primary players.  These markets, or bazaars (as I called them) are very efficient.  For example: the price of violence plummets as the number of entrants increases and the capacity for violence improves as the market’s participants specialize and hone their skills.  

Usually, the military/law enforcement response to the surge in the sophistication and quantity of violence is to assume some outside source of training or support rather than something that is the natural byproduct of rapid marketplace development.  

So, it’s no surprise with the growing availability of the street/prison gangs (Barrio Azteca and the Artistic Assassins) as sources of cheap, violent labor the marketplace is heating up. Note the excellent quotes below from a WaPo article on the growth of the market for contract killings: 

From Joseph Fouche at The Committee of Public Safety:

Containing Mexico

….Mexico, showing more concern for its sovereignty than their northern neighbor, has launched a brave if thus far futile attempt to win control of its territory from large and powerful narco-traffickers. Large parts of Mexico are in disorder and large parts of Mexico threaten to descend into chaos. The Mexican Army has been brought in to take over from Mexico’s corrupt local and federal police. The well-armed and well-equippednarcotraficantes have counterattacked against the police and even the Mexican Army. The government is riddled with gang informants and corrupt officials. An already uninspiring government has pulled off the unique trick of becoming even more uninspiring.

In the long run, I believe the Mexican state will win. Colombia was in a similar pickle ten years ago but eventually found enough institutional resilience to fight back and win control of most of its territory. But the road back is long and, in the meantime, Mexico’s troubles will inevitably leak north, involving and corrupting American law enforcement even more than it already is, drawing entrepreneurs on both sides of the border to profit from America and Mexico’s shared misery, and applying negative pressures on Mexican residents in the United States to cooperate with the narcotraficantes. ¿O plata o plomo? (silver or lead?) the Colombian drug gangs used to ask their victims. Profit or death, a choice will be put to many Mexican Americans in the years ahead, or as Mexico’s own Porfirio Diaz put it, ¿Pan o palo? (bread or a beating?). Illegal immigration, perhaps deliberately induced by Mexican drug gangs in an ironic echo of the strategy of  Mexico’s incumbent elites, will destabilize American local governments and drain their resources. Violence in Mexican communities in America will increase and inevitably spill over to non-Mexicans. Political correctness and diplomatic niceties will paralyze American responses.

The historical significance of the War in Iraq will be revealed: COIN on American streets. Containment, if it can be described as such, will occur house by house, block by block, city by city, state by state. The traditional American response to crisis, the inspired muddle, will produce more corruption of American institutions and society, already weakened by the last round of containment….