America as a Horror Show

"The horror show is we are going to be slaves to profit. Some of us are going to be higher on the pyramid and we’ll count ourselves lucky and many, many more will be marginalized and destroyed” - David Simon, journalist and creator of the TV series The Wire, in an interview with Bill Moyers

WHERE EXACTLY?

RT

British banking giants have come under fire line from the US financial authorities. HSBC will pay a record $1.9bn to settle a money-laundering probe, with Standard Chartered getting a $327mn charge for violating US sanctions against Iran.

The fine against HSBC will include $1.25bn in forfeiture, as well as $655mn in civil penalties. In an attempt to cut costs and improve profitability, HSBC CEO Stuart Gulliver made the bank the matter for US probes and claims from UK clients. The lack of money-laundering controls at HSBC allowed terrorists and drug cartels access to the US financial system, according to Bloomberg.

The bank accepts responsibility for “past mistakes” and is “profoundly sorry for them,” Gulliver said.

Where exactly will the money ($2bn) go? To help America's health and education infrastructure? To helping feed, clothe and house the poor? To creating more and better jobs, etc...?

This is Your War on Drugs

Megan McArdle in THE ATLANTIC:--

"This is our nation's drug enforcement in a nutshell. We started out by banning the things. And people kept taking them. So we made the punishments more draconian. But people kept selling them. So we pushed the markets deep into black market territory, and got the predictable violence . . . and then we upped our game, turning drug squads into quasi-paramilitary raiders. Somewhere along the way, we got so focused on enforcing the law that we lost sight of the purpose of the law, which is to make life in America better."

USA - NEW AMSTERDAM - NEW YORK - 400

Today, Queen Beatrix will open the 60th jubilee edition at De Keukenhof, the largest and most beautiful garden in the world.

This year"s theme is "USA - New Amsterdam - New York - 400," and a contingent of New Yorkers has gone to Holland as part of a a yearlong celebration of the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s arrival in New York Harbor in 1609 aboard the Half Moon. There's a tribute included in the Keukenhof display, a likeness of the Statue of Liberty made out of 51,000 tulips!

Queen Beatrix today at Keukenhof.
Photo courtesy © PPE Agency/Buys.

UPDATED: More of today's photos here.

The photo (courtesy Keukenhof) below shows tulips asleep in their beds; the bulbs were planted last October.