Juggling Dynamite

When I was a kid, people thought driving after a few drinks was fine and seat belts were superfluous.

Today they think driving while fiddling with their phones is acceptable.

The truth is that distracted driving is now causing more accidents, injuries and deaths than drunk driving.

Drivers should be aware that we are not able to ‘sneak’ use and deny it after the fact. Investigators routinely check phone records for evidence drivers were texting or talking at the time of an accident.  As with drinking and driving and seat belt use, what we need is a cultural transformation where distracted driving is denounced as a reckless activity.  In order to break the habit of reaching for our phone we can put it out of reach in the trunk or backseat before we start driving.

This week Ontario amended the Highway Traffic Act via the Making Ontario’s Roads Safer Act coming into effect this fall.  See:  Ontario approves tougher distracted driving penalties.  Changes include:

• Increase fines for distracted driving from the current range of $60 to $500 to a range of $300 to $1,000, assign three demerit points upon conviction, and escalate sanctions for novice drivers who are convicted.

• Apply current alcohol-impaired sanctions to drivers who are drug-impaired.

• Require drivers to let pedestrians completely cross the road before proceeding at school crossings and pedestrian crossovers.

• Increase fines and demerit points for drivers who “door” cyclists, and require all drivers to maintain a minimum distance of one metre when passing cyclists where possible, as well as allow cyclists to use the paved shoulders on unrestricted provincial highways.

With the Japanese Yen breaking its 30-year support of Y122/$ last week, the rest of the world’s exporters are under intense pressure to further weaken their own currency and/or lower prices to keep selling goods.  The net effect unleashes the next round of currency wars as everyone fights for their piece of reduced demand following the consumer credit bubble.  It also means deflationary pressures are gaining momentum.

Lower prices allow cash strapped masses to afford more, but they are generally negative for sales and earnings numbers (and stock and corporate debt prices at record valuations) as well as for the world’s many highly indebted corporations, governments and people who are trying to service loan repayments with shrinking cash flow.

All is not well on the global growth front, no matter how much the risk-sellers insist that the real economy is getting ‘better’ and that central banks are in control of everything.  They said the same thing in each of the shaded areas marked below and each time financial markets experienced major price shocks.

Waivers from the SEC that have allowed big banks to plead guilty to massive frauds and continue to do business–never mind continue receiving preferential treatment, government contracts and Treasury support–are an outrage and an abomination to the rule of law on which our society is predicated.

Smaller firms have been broken up and received lifetime bans and incarceration for the individual actors, for much smaller scale frauds.    We simply cannot afford to tolerate the big bank business model any longer.    Senator Warren and a handful of other lawmakers have called for public hearings on whether banks guilty of rigging foreign exchange and interest rates and commodity markets should be allowed to continue in positions of trust managing retirement accounts.

Yesterday Warren wrote a letter to SEC head Mary-Jo White (you can read it here) calling on White to do her job of enforcing securities laws against the big banks and stop granting them indefensible special concessions and waivers.  See:  US Senator Elizabeth Warren accuses SEC boss of weakness.

Today Better Markets, President, David Kelleher wrote a letter to Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Chief Robert Ketchum pointing out that as the head of an organization mandated with investor protection and market integrity, it is utterly indefensible that at the bequest of finance sales firms, Ketchum has voiced opposition to the Department of Labor’s initiative to require fiduciary standard of broker/dealers offering retirement financial advice.   Read Kelleher’s letter here in order to appreciate the clear authority that has long charged the Department of Labor with the power to set standards in this area.  The law is clear.  There is no gray area here, and yet still, the financial industry and its puppet regulators are continuing to block and denigrate this necessary standard.

Recall that it took relentless public shaming of the bank elites and their captured regulators in the 1930’s before meaningful reforms and break ups of the cartel were finally achieved.   We must do the same now–every day, in every way–until the act to reinstate Glass Steagall-like protections is enacted.  You can see the new act that has already been proposed here. 

Also see:  Stark facts on the nonsense of Too Big to fail safeguards and Pecora time has come again, and The Call to break up the big banks for a refresher on historical context for all of this.