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They say taking a vacation without clothing can be an enlightening experience.

And what better way to dip a toe into the nudist lifestyle than by attending this year’s Nudist Clubhouse Nudist Expo 2012 on June 1 and 2 in Las Vegas.

At the expo, attendees will get a chance to speak to organizers and travel agents specializing in nudist retreats, cruises and other adventures.

To assist prospective nakationers, representatives from the American Association for Nude Recreation will be on hand throughout the expo.

While everyone has to cover up at the actual exhibit, they’re free to ditch the fabric at the planned barbecue and pool party in the evening, notes USA Today. And with tickets at just $65 a pop, who could resist?

To add the naturist experience, delegates attending the expo also have a designated hotel reserved for them where they’re free to wander in the nude. Not surprisingly, the name of the lucky hotel has not yet been revealed.

Looking for some possible nudist holiday destinations? Why not visit a nude beach near Will and Kate’s home in the U.K. or consider visiting one of the world’s finest nudest beaches.

The Social Security program… represents our commitment as a society to the belief that workers should not live in dread that a disability, death, or old age could leave them or their families destitute.

– President Jimmy Carter, December 20, 1977.

[This law] assures the elderly that America will always keep the promises made in troubled times a half century ago… [The Social Security Amendments of 1983 are] a monument to the spirit of compassion and commitment that unites us as a people.

– President Ronald Reagan, April 20, 1983.

So said Presidents Carter and Regan, but that was before 1996, when Congress voted to allow federal agencies to offset portions of Social Security payments to collect debts owed to those agencies. (31 U.S.C. §3716). Now we read of horror stories like this:

I’m a 68-year-old grandma of two young grandchildren. I went to college to upgrade my employment status in 1998 or 1999. I finished in 2000 and at that time had a student loan balance of about $3,500.

Could not find a job and had to request forbearance to carry me. Over the years I forgot about the loan, dealt with poor health, had brain surgery in 2006 and the collection agents decided to collect for the loan in 2008.

At no time during the six to seven-year gap did anyone remind me or let me know that I could make a minimum payment on the loan. Now that I am on Social Security (have been since I was 62), they have decided to garnishee my SS check to the tune of 15 percent.

I have not been employed since 2004 and have the two dependents… I don’t dispute that I owed them the $3,500 but am wondering why they let it build up to somewhere around $17,000/$20,000 before they attempted to collect.

Her debt went from $3,500 to over $17,000 in 10 years?! How could that be?

It seems that Congress has removed nearly every consumer protection from student loans, including not only standard bankruptcy protections, statutes of limitations, and truth in lending requirements, but protection from usury (excessive interest). Lenders can vary the interest rates, and some borrowers are reporting rates as high as 18-20 percent. At 20 percent, debt doubles in just three and a half years; and in seven years, it quadruples. Congress has also given lenders draconian collection powers to extort not just the original principal and interest on student loans but huge sums in penalties, fees, and collection costs.

The majority of these debts are being imposed on young people, who have a potential 40 years of gainful employment ahead of them to pay the debt off. But a sizeable chunk of U.S. student loan debt is held by senior citizens, many of whom are not only unemployed but unemployable. According to the New York Federal Reserve, two million U.S. seniors age 60 and over have student loan debt, on which they owe a collective $36.5 billion; and 11.2 percent of this debt is in default. Almost a third of all student loan debt is held by people aged 40 and over, and 4.2 percent is held by people over the age of 60. The total student debt is now over $1 trillion, more even than credit card debt. The sum is unsustainable and threatens to be the next debt tsunami.

Some of this debt is for loans taken out years earlier on their own schooling, and some is from co-signing student loans for children or grandchildren. But much of it has been incurred by middle-aged people going back to school in the hope of finding employment in a bad job market. What they have wound up with is something much worse: no job, an exponentially mounting debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, and the prospect of old age without a social security check adequate to survive on.

Gone is the promise of earlier presidents of a “commitment to the belief that workers should not live in dread that a disability, death, or old age could leave them or their families destitute.” The plight of the indebted elderly is reminiscent of the Irish immigrants who came to America after a potato famine in the 19th century, who were looked upon in some places as actually lower than slaves. Plantation owners kept their slaves fed, clothed and cared for, because they were valuable property. The Irish were expendable, and they were on their own.

It is obviously not a good time to raise interest rates on student debt, but they are set to double on July 1, 2012, to 6.8 percent. Many lawmakers in both parties agree that the current 3.4 percent rates should be extended for another year, but they can’t agree on how to find the $6 billion that this would cost. Republicans want to take the money from a health care fund that promotes preventive care; Democrats want to eliminate some tax benefits for small business owners.

Congress cannot agree on $6 billion to save the students, yet they managed to agree in a matter of days in September 2008 to come up with $700 billion to save the banks; and the Federal Reserve found many trillions more. Estimates are that tuition could be provided free to students for a mere $30 billion annually. The government has the power to find $30 billion — or $300 billion or $3 trillion — in the same place the Federal Reserve found it: it can simply issue the money.

Congress is empowered by the Constitution to “coin money” and “regulate the value thereof,” and no limit is set on the face amount of the coins it creates. It could issue a few one-billion dollar coins, deposit them in an account, and start writing checks.

But wouldn’t that be inflationary? No. The Fed’s own figures show that the money supply (M3) has shrunk by $3 trillion since 2008. That sum could be added back into the economy without inflating prices. Gas and food are going up today, but the whole range of prices must be considered in order to determine whether price inflation is occurring. Housing and wages are significantly larger components of the price structure than commodities, and they remain severely depressed.

There is another way the government could find needed funds without raising taxes, slashing services, or going further into debt: Congress could re-finance the federal debt through the Federal Reserve, interest-free. Canada did this from 1939 to 1974, keeping its national debt low and sustainable while funding massive programs including seaways, roadways, pensions and national health care. The national debt shot up only when the government switched from borrowing from its own central bank to borrowing from private lenders at interest. The rationale was that borrowing bank-created money from the government’s own central bank inflated the money supply, while borrowing existing funds from private banks did not. But even the Federal Reserve acknowledges that private banks create the money they lend on their books, just as central banks do.

U.S. taxpayers now pay nearly half a trillion dollars annually to finance our federal debt. The cumulative figure comes to $8.2 trillion paid in interest just in the last 24 years. By financing the debt itself rather than paying interest to private parties, the government could divert what it would have paid in interest into tuition, jobs, infrastructure and social services, allowing us to keep the social contract while at the same time stimulating the economy.

For students, at the very least the bankruptcy option needs to be reinstated, usury laws restored, predatory practices eliminated, and the cost of education brought back down to earth. One possibility for relieving the burden on students would be to give them interest-free loans. The government of New Zealand now offers 0% loans to New Zealand students, with repayment to be made from their income after they graduate. For the past twenty years, the Australian government has also successfully funded students by giving out what are in effect interest-free loans. The loans in the Australian Higher Education Loan Programme (or HELP) do not bear interest, but the government gets back more than it lends, because the principal is indexed to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which goes up every year.

Predatory lenders are keeping us in debt peonage through misguided economics and bank-captured legislators. We have people who desperately want to work, to the point of going back to school to try to improve their chances; and we have mountains of work that needs to be done. The only thing keeping them apart is that artificial constraint called “money,” which we have allowed to be created by banks and let out at interest when it could have been created by public institutions for public purposes, either by direct issuance or through publicly-owned banks. We just need to recognize our oppressors and throw off their yoke, and the good times can roll again.

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO, May 14 (Reuters) – Facebook Inc has raised the price range on its initial public offering to $34 to $38 a share in response to strong demand, a source familiar with the situation said, giving the No.1 social network a valuation exceeding $100 billion.

At the mid-point of $36, Facebook would raise $12.1 billion by selling 337.4 million shares. The company founded in a Harvard dorm room by Mark Zuckerberg, who turned 28 on Monday, had originally aimed for $28 to $35 a share.

Wall Street had expected the company to increase the price range, with investors keen to get in on Silicon Valley’s largest ever IPO that eclipses Google Inc’s 2004 debut. Its roadshow began last week and has drawn crowds.

The company plans to close the books on its IPO on Tuesday, two days ahead of schedule and in a signal that the landmark initial share sale is drumming up strong demand, a second source familiar with the deal told Reuters earlier.

The social network is scheduled on Thursday to price its shares, then begin trading on Friday.

The IPO is already “well oversubscribed,” which is why the company is closing its books earlier than anticipated, the source said.

The raised price range marks an increase of 21 percent on the lower end. A hike of more than 20 percent typically means the company would have to file an amendment with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Company spokesman Jonny Thaw declined to comment on Monday.

The IPO comes amid concerns from some investors that Facebook hasn’t yet figured out a way to make money from an increasing number of users who access the social network on mobile devices such as smartphones.

Facebook will continue with its roadshow for the rest of the week, said a third source familiar with the deal, and investors who haven’t yet attended a roadshow presentation will still be able to place orders.

Company executives met with prospective investors in Chicago on Monday and are slated to travel to Kansas City and Denver, before returning to Menlo Park, California, where Facebook is headquartered.

A host of Wall Street banks are underwriting Facebook’s offering, with Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs serving as leads. Facebook will trade on Nasdaq under the symbol FB.

CNBC reported the higher price range earlier, citing sources.

For public interest advocates fighting the David vs. Goliath battle to win meaningful reform of the financial system, there was a certain satisfaction in watching Jamie Dimon eat humble pie last week as he announced that JPMorgan has lost a little over $2 billion trading credit derivatives. After all, no one has been less apologetic for the role Wall Street played in triggering the 2008 financial meltdown that left millions of Americans jobless, cost millions more their homes, and brought the financial system to the brink of collapse. No one has been more dismissive of efforts to rein in the reckless bank practices that put the global economy at risk. And no one is accorded greater respect in the halls of power.

To his credit, Dimon has been nearly as caustic in his criticism of the bank’s “egregious, self-inflicted” mistake as he has been in the past toward those, such as former Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Paul Volcker, who dared to disagree with him on policy issues. But even as Dimon acknowledged that the trading strategy behind the $2 billion loss “was flawed, complex, poorly reviewed, poorly executed and poorly monitored,” he couldn’t resist a dismissive reference to the “pundits” who would seek to capitalize on the news to make the case for tougher regulations to rein in the banks.

There is, of course, a very good reason why reform advocates would make that connection. The trading practices that led to the $2 billion-plus loss are at the heart of a number of the most contentious battles that banks are fighting, and all too often winning, to gut reform efforts. The question is whether JPMorgan’s dramatic loss will be enough to change the terms of the debate.

• None of these battles has been more in the public eye than the fight over Volcker Rule implementation. So it should come as no surprise that Dimon was quick to state last week that the trading that led to the bank’s $2 billion loss didn’t involve the proprietary trading that the Volcker Rule is intended to ban. But what does and does not constitute proprietary trading is the number one question being debated as regulators struggle to implement this crucial reform. If a massive, complex gamble on the direction of the economy doesn’t constitute proprietary trading under the Volcker Rule, the question for regulators drafting the rule is, “Why the heck not?”
• Less in the public eye, but every bit as important to banks seeking to roll back reforms is the Lincoln Rule, a provision in Dodd-Frank that requires that risky practices, such as trading in uncleared swaps, be moved out of the insured bank and into separately capitalized affiliates. Banks fought hard to keep this provision out of Dodd-Frank, and they are now pushing legislation to drastically scale back this reform. As approved on a voice vote last month by the House Financial Services Committee, the bill would enable banks trading in all but a few types of swaps to keep their government backstop. (It is no small irony that the bill is titled the “Swaps Bailout Prevention Act,” since it would have precisely the opposite effect.) Will the members of Congress who have been all too willing to renege on reform learn from JPMorgan’s mistake and stop pushing bills to gut these crucial safety and soundness reforms?
• In a further irony, it appears that the trading strategy that produced the $2 billion loss was part of the bank’s risk management strategy. This distinction between trades designed to hedge risks and all other derivatives trading is an important one, since Dodd-Frank accords a lighter regulatory touch to risk hedging in a variety of different contexts, from the Lincoln rule, to determinations of who has to register as swaps dealers and major swaps participants, to end user clearing requirements. As part of their efforts to water down the rules, banks have sought a definition of risk hedging you could drive a truck through. The regulatory filing that disclosed the loss explained that the strategy JPMorgan had been using to hedge risks “has proven to be riskier, more volatile and less effective as an economic hedge than the firm previously believed.” In other words, JPMorgan’s risk hedging strategy sounds a lot like speculation. Will regulators take JPMorgan’s misfortune as a timely reminder that a narrow definition of risk hedging is essential to keep banks from once again putting the financial system at risk?

In leading the fight to fend off tough regulations, Dimon has argued not only that the regulations are misguided, but also that they are simply too costly. But, as Congressman Barney Frank pointed out in a news release last Friday, JPMorgan lost roughly five times as much in this one set of transactions as it has estimated its total annual cost of compliance with Dodd-Frank regulations to be. In other words, while regulation comes with a significant price tag, those costs pale beside the losses that banks can incur when left to their own devices. If the banks succeed in gutting regulations and winning passage of the many bills now moving through Congress that would blow a hole in financial reform, the cost is going to make $2 billion look like chump change. Will regulators take the hint that the cost-benefit fight is one they can win and stop cowering every time industry threatens to take them to court over a rule they don’t like?

Right now, the fate of regulatory reform hangs in the balance. And, make no mistake about it, the banks are winning. Before we can reverse this dangerous trend, Congress and the regulators must recognize that the arguments that Dimon and his fellow Wall Street titans have put forward to justify their assault on Dodd-Frank are just as “flawed” as JPMorgan’s costly hedging strategy. Given everything that is at stake, if JPMorgan’s $2 billion trading loss provides that lesson, it will have been well worth the cost.

BRUSSELS — Leading European Union finance officials on Monday pleaded with Greece not to renege on its bailout terms and to stay the course of its painful austerity program to prevent even worse economic hardship.

Greeks fed up with the painful austerity measures gave support to anti-bailout parties in last week’s elections. Many euro finance ministers warned, however, that Athens must stick to the terms of the rescue package if it wants to remain in the 17-nation euro currency.

Ahead of a meeting Monday, the ministers seemed unwilling to offer Greece any easier bailout terms to keep it in the eurozone, stressing that whether it leaves the common currency or not, it would take years of belt-tightening to ease its debt.

“An exit will solve nothing,” said Belgian Finance Minister Steven Vanackere.

His Austrian counterpart, Maria Fekter, noted that Greece was nevertheless moving closer to such an exit as the main political parties in Athens struggled for a ninth day to create a coalition government. They will gather for more talks on Monday night and if they fail, new elections will be called.

The main political parties that agreed to Greece’s international bailout do not have the majority to create a new government and smaller parties are reluctant to join them, noting that Greeks have clearly voted against the bailout and its related austerity terms.

`’The situation is serious,” Fekter said, adding that even if there were no provisions to kick Greece out of the euro currency union, there was a theoretical possibility it could be let out of the European Union.

The EU’s executive Commission said it was best for Greece to stay with the pack and bear the hardships with conditional aid close at hand.

EU Commission spokeswoman Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen said Greece should remain in the euro. “We believe that this is the best solution for Greece, the Greek people and Europe as a whole.”

The gentle tone contrasted with tough talk from her boss, Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, who told Italian television over the weekend that `’if a member of a club does not respect the rules it is better that it leaves the club, and this is true for any organization, or institution, or any project.”

Though the Commission noted Barroso was not referring specifically to Greece, his comments were among the closest a leading EU official had come to envisaging the country’s exit from the 17-nation financial project.

World markets dropped sharply Monday on fears of the fallout from a potential Greek exit from the currency bloc. The Athens stock index fell more than 4 percent, adding to a sharp drop last week, while European and U.S. markets sustained heavy losses as well.

`’Markets continue to feel the pressure and the stakes continue to rise as what was declared unthinkable a year ago or so now starts to permeate mainstream thinking in Europe,” said Michael Hewson of CMC Markets.

If Greece were to leave the euro, its banking system would collapse under the weight of foreign debt and the economy would suffer an even sharper downturn. The government would have to default on the euro-denominated money it owes other European countries, shaking the continent’s financial system.

Investors would worry that other European countries with weak finances – such as Portugal or even Spain – might eventually leave the eurozone as well, causing severe turmoil in the markets.

Unsurprisingly, no one at the eurozone finance ministers’ meeting was directly calling for Greece to leave their currency union.

`’I would like Greece to stay in the euro. It’s very important that the eurozone stays intact,” said Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan.

But a consensus emerged that the core demands of austerity had to remain intact, whatever the politicking in Athens over a new government or fresh elections.

`’We cannot come always back on the decision that we took. It is real tough for Greece,” said Luxembourg’s Finance Minister Luc Frieden, whose prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker chairs the eurogroup.

Prospects for a breakthrough in political talks in Athens were remote, as an anti-bailout party refused Monday to return to power-sharing talks.

`’Everyone realizes that to control debt, competitiveness needs to be increased, and – too bad for the population – it is translated into some form of impoverishment linked to lower wages,” Vanackere said.

He said a return to a national currency would not solve the problem, since it would be accompanied anyhow with strong devaluation.

This spring is a season of confrontation at the shareholders’ meetings of U.S. banks and other major corporations. And this week, Bank of America has been in the spotlight.

On Wednesday, about 750 protesters rallied outside the bank’s annual meetings in Charlotte, N.C., brilliantly rebranding the event “Bank vs. America.” The demonstration was remarkable in uniting people across a wide range of issues. As Laura Gottesdiener wrote at Waging Nonviolence, protesters are targeting the bank for

funding mountaintop coal removal, perpetuating student debt that has now surpassed $1 trillion nationally, laying off more than 100,000 workers in the last few years and, of course, foreclosing on millions of homeowners across the country. In anticipation, the Charlotte City Council has already passed laws criminalizing protest, as well as camping and carrying permanent markers.

The latter part of the quote, about the great lengths officials have gone to truncate rights to free speech and assembly, is unfortunately less remarkable than the activists’ coalition-building. There is no doubt more to come, since Charlotte will host the Democratic National Convention in September — and Occupy activists have promised to target that event.

In addition to outside marches, there were also critics of BoA inside the annual meeting, with dissidents introducing shareholders’ resolutions challenging the bank’s overseas tax havens and its support of environmentally destructive mining practices. As Zach Carter of The Huffington Post reported, Bank of America CEO and public enemy No. 1 Brian Moynihan

defended the company’s operation of subsidiaries in nations identified as international tax havens by saying, “We’re a global business,” suggesting that Bank of America needs its sub-companies in other nations because that’s where the business is.

“I don’t think there’s a whole lot of Bank of America operations in the Cayman Islands,” one disgruntled shareholder responded.

Later Bob Kincaid, president of Coal River Mountain Watch, spoke out:

“You are part of the poisoning of Appalachia and so is every one of your directors and so is every one of your shareholders,” Kincaid said. “You are part of the destruction of an entire region of the country.”

“Sir, our environmental team will take a look at it. We look at it all the time,” Moynihan said. The crowd responded with jeers.

The move to target corporate shareholders meetings is the outgrowth of an ad hoc coalition that is calling itself 99% Power. This umbrella campaign includes participation from community groups (National People’s Action, the New Bottom Line, the Unity Alliance), environmental organizations (Rainforest Action Network), and major unions (UNITE HERE, SEIU, USW) — and it overlaps very substantially with the groups that organized the 99% Spring trainings last month. Those trainings — an effort to provide 100,000 people will skills in nonviolent direct action — drew some over-the-top criticism. Adbusters magazine led the way with frantic cries of cooptation. It characterized the trainings as a scheme to make the Occupy movement a “re-election campaign for President Obama” and encouraged its readers to “Jump, jump, jump over the dead body of the old left!”

This was more paranoia than it was an actual effort to look at the 99% Spring agenda or to assess the range of groups involved in it. As I wrote in April, the trainings ended up getting some mixed reviews, but, on the whole, they could hardly be characterized as Camp Obama cheer sessions. Moreover, what some frame negatively as cooptation could easily — and more accurately — be framed positively as Occupy gathering needed allies and successfully setting the agenda for a far-reaching progressive movement.

In my view, the Bank vs. America protests provide more evidence for the baselessness of cooptation complaints. While the decision to focus attention on the spring meetings of major corporations did come out of a coalition of institutional left groups, you’d be hard-pressed to argue that the actions we saw last week do not fit comfortably within the established ethos of Occupy. And even if joining those confronting Moynihan was not your cup of tea, it’s hard to see how the Charlotte protests were mutually exclusive with other Occupy-related organizing. If anything, they helped to keep the movement in the press and generate a continuing sense that activists are coming back strong after a winter of semi-hibernation.

The more valid criticism is that it does not appear that 99% Spring, despite trying to ready tens of thousands of people for escalating civil disobedience, resulted in particularly disruptive actions in Charlotte. The reports I’ve seen suggest that there were six anti-BoA protesters arrested there — with a handful of other arrests occurring at solidarity events in places like New York City. That’s hardly an avalanche of civil resistance.

On the plus side, there’s still more than a month of spring opportunities left, and there are upcoming protests at Sallie Mae, Chevron, Target, and WalMart — not to mention the NATO summit in Chicago. Worthy targets all, I’d say!

Cross-posted from the “Arguing the World” blog at Dissent magazine.

Scott Thompson, who stepped down as the chief executive officer of Yahoo Inc. over the weekend, has reportedly been diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Thompson, 54, told his colleagues about the diagnosis just before tendering his resignation from the search engine giant.

In recent weeks, the former PayPal president has faced criticism from Daniel Loeb, a Yahoo investor and the founder and CEO of hedge fund Third Point, for allegedly embellishing academic credentials on his resume. On May 7, Thompson issued an apology to employees for the brouhaha.

Thompson was named Yahoo’s chief in January after the board ousted CEO Carol Bartz. With his departure, Ross Levinsohn has been appointed the company’s interim CEO, AllThingsD reported, and Fred Amoroso will take over as board chairman, replacing Roy Bostock.

NEW YORK — JPMorgan Chase is expected to accept the resignation of one of the highest-ranking women on Wall Street after the bank lost $2 billion in a trading blunder, a person familiar with the matter said Sunday.

The bank will accept the resignation of Ina Drew, its chief investment officer, the person told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the decision publicly.

Drew, 55, one of the highest-paid officials at JPMorgan Chase, had offered to resign several times since CEO Jamie Dimon disclosed the trading loss on Thursday, the person said. Pressure built on the bank over the weekend to accept.

At least two other executives at the bank will be held accountable for the mistake, the person said.

The casualties come as JPMorgan, the largest bank in the United States, seeks to minimize the damage caused by the $2 billion loss. Investors shaved almost 10 percent off JPMorgan’s stock price on Friday.

Dimon has said the mistake will complicate the efforts of banks to fight certain regulatory changes three years after the financial crisis.

JPMorgan’s disclosure has led lawmakers and critics of the banking industry to call for stricter regulation of Wall Street. Many post-crisis rules governing risk-taking by banks are still being written.

Drew oversaw the division of the bank responsible for the loss. She was paid $15.5 million last year and almost $16 million in 2010, making her one of the highest-paid officials at JPMorgan, according to a regulatory filing.

Drew declined comment through a bank spokeswoman. Kristin Lemkau, a spokeswoman for JPMorgan Chase, also declined comment. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier Sunday that Drew and two other executives were expected to resign soon.

The Journal also reported that Bruno Iksil, the JPMorgan trader identified as the “London whale” because of the giant bets he placed, was also likely to leave, but the paper reported that it was not clear when that would happen.

The surprise loss has been a black eye for the bank and for Dimon, who is known in the industry both as a master of risk management and as an outspoken opponent of some proposed regulation since the crisis.

Dimon said in a TV interview aired Sunday that he was “dead wrong” when he dismissed concerns about the bank’s trading last month.

“We made a terrible, egregious mistake,” Dimon said in an interview that was taped Friday and aired on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “There’s almost no excuse for it.”

Dimon said he did not know the extent of the problem when he said in April that the concerns were a “tempest in a teapot.”

The loss came in the past six weeks. Dimon has said it came from trading in so-called credit derivatives and was designed to hedge against financial risk, not to make a profit for the bank.

A piece of financial regulation known as the Volcker rule would prevent banks from certain kinds of trading for their own profit. Dimon has said the trading involved in the $2 billion loss would not have fallen under the rule.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., told ABC’s “This Week” that he hopes the final version of the Volcker rule will prevent the type of trading that led to the massive loss at JPMorgan.

Dimon conceded to NBC that the bank “hurt ourselves and our credibility” and expects to “pay the price for that.” Asked what the price should be, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said that banks will lose their fight to weaken the rule.

“This was not a risk-reducing activity that they engaged in. This increased their risk,” Levin told NBC.

“So we’ve got to be very, very careful that the regulators here are not undermined by this huge effort to weaken the rule by putting in a huge loophole” that includes the trading involved in the JPMorgan loss, he said.

Dimon said the bank is open to inquiries from regulators. He has also promised, in an email to the bank’s employees and in a conference call with stock analysts, to get to the bottom of what happened and learn from the mistake.

Dimon told NBC that he supported giving the government the authority to dismantle a failing big bank and wipe out shareholder equity. But he stressed that JPMorgan, the largest bank in the United States, is “very strong.”

Addressing public anger toward Wall Street, Dimon said he wants a more equitable society and does not mind paying higher taxes. But he said attacking all of business is “very counterproductive.”

* President to meet smaller parties from 1630 GMT

* Talks with big parties hit impasse

* Radical left seen gaining if new poll held

* Der Spiegel calls for Greek exit from euro

By Lefteris Papadimas and Harry Papachristou

ATHENS, May 13 (Reuters) – Greek political leaders on Sunday ignored a final plea from the president to form a coalition government to avert a repeat election, pushing the debt-stricken nation closer to bankruptcy and a possible exit from the euro zone.

Leaders of the three biggest parties met at the presidential mansion for a final attempt to bridge their differences, but the talks quickly hit an impasse as they traded accusations on a deeply unpopular bailout package tied to harsh spending cuts.

Conservative leader Antonis Samaras, who finished first in last week’s election, pinned the blame on the far-left SYRIZA party, which flatly rules out backing a pro-bailout coalition with Samaras’s New Democracy and Socialist PASOK parties.

“They are not asking for agreement, they are asking us to be their partners in crime and we will not be their accomplices,” said Alexis Tsipras, who has become an overnight sensation since leading SYRIZA to a surprise second place in the vote.

The other leader at the morning talks – Socialist leader Evangelos Venizelos – said he was holding on to hopes that a deal could still be salvaged, but warned time was running out.

“Despite the impasse at the meeting we had with the president, I hold on to some limited optimism that a government can be formed,” said Venizelos, whose PASOK party finished a humiliating third in the election, a shadow of its former might.

“The moment of truth has come. We either form a government or we go to elections.”

Both New Democracy and PASOK – which have taken turns in ruling Greece for nearly four decades and jointly negotiated a bailout that requires deep cuts in wages, pensions and spending – are eager to avoid facing the voters again.

Polls since the election show the balance of power tipping even further towards opponents of the bailout, who were divided among several small parties but now appear to be rallying behind Tsipras, a 37-year-old ex-Communist student leader.

Tsipras has injected a dose of enthusiasm into the squabbling left and offered hope to millions of austerity-weary Greeks by promising to rip up the bailout deal without abandoning the euro, saying Europe cannot afford to cut Greece loose.

European leaders have retorted that the country will not get new loans to stay afloat if it fails to honour its pledges, while banks and some companies like travel operator Kuoni have begun to prepare for a Greek exit from the eurozone.

But Greek voters remain unfazed. Indeed, they are expected to hand SYRIZA a first-place finish in a new election, winning the party an automatic extra 50 seats at the expense of Samaras.


ELECTIONS AGAIN

President Karolos Papoulias now meets the small parties that made it parliament from 1630 GMT onwards in a last-ditch bid to stitch together some form of a “national unity” government.

His final hope rests with the small Democratic Left party led by lawyer Fotis Kouvelis, which could provide enough seats to form a government with New Democracy and PASOK. But it says it will not do so unless the coalition also includes SYRIZA.

Papoulias’ list of meetings also include the far right Golden Dawn, which made it parliament for the first time in its history on an anti-immigrant and anti-politician platform.

In one of the unfolding drama’s many sub-plots, Greeks will watch with interest to see how the president, a revered 82-year-old veteran of the World War II anti-Nazi resistance, receives a group whose members give Nazi-style salutes.

The constitution sets no deadline for Papoulias to complete his search for a deal and he has given no indication how long he will spend trying before he calls a new election.

Greeks seem resigned to returning to the polls.

“Why would we believe they’ll agree on something? All they care about is being in power and we’re sitting here not even able to pay our electricity bills,” said Maria Kissou, 53, a corner shop owner in Athens. “Let us go to elections again.”

Kissou voted for Tsipras on May 6.

“He’s young, I like him because at least he’s trying to renegotiate with the Europeans,” Kissou said.

Supporters of the two establishment parties will be hoping that if a new election is held, Greeks will be frightened of the prospect of leaving the euro and return to the fold.

Polls show an overwhelming majority of Greeks reject the bailout but want to keep the euro – a position widely regarded as untenable. As many as 78.1 percent want the new government to do whatever it takes to keep their country in the currency, a poll by Kappa Research for To Vima daily showed.

In a sign of the shifting mood in Europe towards Greece, Germany’s influential Der Spiegel magazine suggested an exit from the euro zone may now be the best option in a front-page

Its front page headline read: “Acropolis, Adieu! Why Greece must leave the euro.”

“The Greeks were never ripe for the currency union and they still are not today,” the German magazine wrote in an editorial.

“Only an exit of Greece from the euro zone gives the country a chance in the long term to get back on its feet.”

NEW YORK — The class of 2012 is leaving college with something that many graduates since the start of the Great Recession have lacked: jobs.

To the relief of graduating seniors – and their anxious parents – the outlook is brighter than it has been in four years. Campus job fairs were packed this spring and more companies are hiring. Students aren’t just finding good opportunities, some are weighing multiple offers.

In some ways, members of the class of 2012 got lucky. They arrived on campus in September 2008, the same month that Wall Street investment bank Lehman Brothers collapsed, touching off a financial crisis that exacerbated the recession.

On campus, they were largely insulated from the collapsing U.S. economy. While older brothers and sisters graduated into a dismal job market, they took shelter in chemistry, philosophy and literature classes.

They used their college years to prepare for the brutal realities of the job market that would await them. They began networking for jobs much earlier, as freshmen in some cases. They pursued summer internships not simply as resume boosters, but as gateways to permanent jobs. And they developed more realistic expectations about landing a job in the ideal place and at the ideal salary.

On campuses across the country, spirits are more upbeat this spring, and the employment outlook is especially promising, according to interviews with three dozen seniors and career center directors.

“It’s just been such a dramatic change from what we saw in 2008,” says Mercy Eyadiel, who oversees career development at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. Back then, openings disappeared overnight and companies were calling recent graduates to rescind offers. “It was a very bad, ugly situation.”

The job market remains tough, even for those graduating from the best universities. Hiring is not back to its pre-recession level and plenty of seniors are leaving campuses without jobs. Yet this year’s graduates are less likely to face the disappointment of moving back in with mom and dad, or being forced to work at a coffee shop to pay off loans.

“I was nervous that my college degree would go to waste,” says Laura Mascari, who arrived on the University of Delaware’s Newark campus in the fall of 2008. Mascari, who received two job offers, will work in marketing – her major – for chemicals giant DuPont.

Between September 2008 and August 2010, 6.9 million American jobs were eliminated. In the last year and a half, 3.1 million jobs have been created. The strengthening job market has made a big difference to seniors who are job-hunting in their final semester.

The unemployment rate for college graduates 24 and under averaged 7.2 percent from January through April. That rate, which is not adjusted for seasonal factors, is down from the first four months of 2011 (9.1 percent), 2010 (8.1 percent) and 2009 (7.8 percent.) For all Americans, the unemployment rate is 8.1 percent.

Wake Forest senior Lesley Gustafson started her job search during her freshman year.

She met with a career counselor to discuss her goals. Gustafson picked a double-major – computer science and political science – that made her more marketable. And she found internships every summer that helped her build skills and a network of professionals to offer advice. Gustafson was aggressive in other ways, too: she took part in mock interviews offered by the campus career center so that she’d be better prepared for real employer interviews.

Gustafson’s work paid off. In March, she was offered a job with consulting firm Accenture.

“I knew I would find something,” Gustafson says. “I was more nervous finding something that I would be interested in rather than having to take a job just to take one.”

College career centers across the country are reporting seeing more students and seeing them earlier.

At the University of Chicago, just 46 percent of freshman sought advice in the 2008-2009 school year. This year, it is expected to be more than 80 percent.

Students’ expectations have also changed. That dream job might just be a dream. Seniors are instead focusing on stepping-stone positions that will hopefully lead to better opportunities.

Jonathan Fieweger, a senior at New York University, doesn’t have a long-term job offer. But he was able to turn a public relations internship with TV network Showtime into a year-long, post-graduation job.

Others are willing to move to less desirable locations and settle for lower salaries. Pay for new graduates fell 10 percent during the recession, according to the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University. Few expect it to climb back soon.

Despite the lower pay, students today have more confidence in the job market. Two years ago, career directors say, seniors were so afraid of the recession that they flocked to graduate schools to wait out the dark times.

“This is a generation of kids that got trophies whether they won or lost the soccer game,” says Farouk Dey, director of career development at Carnegie Mellon University. “They were afraid of being rejected. What would that say about them? Would their parents be disappointed?”

That trend is reversing. The number of U.S. students taking admissions exams for graduate business school and law school are down 8 percent and 16 percent.

This year’s grads also have an advantage over those a year or two out of school with equal qualifications. Employers would rather have somebody fresh out of college than somebody who spent two years working at a local book store waiting out the market.

“As a matter of convenience – and you can call it a bias if you will – a lot of employers have said: let’s get started quickly by going back (to campus) and getting the new graduates,” says Philip D. Gardner, director of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute at Michigan State University. Companies cut their recruiting staff during the recession. Instead of sorting through thousands of resumes, it’s easier to do targeted searches on a few campuses.

Gardner estimates that about 7 percent more college grads will find jobs this year than last year, based on a survey of 4,200 companies.

The recovery is not consistent across all majors. Students seeking jobs in architecture – hit hard by the collapse of the construction industry – are having a tougher time finding employment than those in education and health care, according to the Georgetown University Center on Education.

Colleges say the strongest growth in job offers has come from Fortune 500 companies, investment banks and consulting firms, all of whom make offers in the fall for jobs that don’t start until the summer. Most smaller employers hire much closer to when an employee is needed. That means graduates won’t get offers until late spring or summer. But college career directors say that, based on conversations with employers, it will be a strong year.

At Florida State University in Tallahassee, the number of job listings jumped from 1,379 last spring, to 2,299 this year. That is down from 5,000-plus listed before the recession.

At Arizona State University’s Tempe campus, 1,698 companies have attended job fairs or interviewed on campus, up from 1,357 two years ago but below the roughly 2,000 that visited before the recession.

“We’re about halfway back,” says Matthew Brink, director of career services at the University of Delaware.

Packed career fairs and increased job listings don’t necessarily translate into employment, warns Sheila Curran, a career consultant who used to run career centers at Duke University and Brown University. Companies might take the time to meet potential employees in case they start hiring again, but it doesn’t mean they are going to make job offers.

Those seniors who do have offers say they treated their search like a full-time job and, after some setbacks, managed to secure employment.

Max Gompertz, a senior at the University of Colorado, in Boulder, with degrees in psychology and communication, knows how hard it can be. Many of his friends who graduated last year are still nearby, working in bars and restaurants. Gompertz, however, got an offer in the middle of October for a job he’ll soon start providing customer support for financial data provider FactSet.

“I was lucky,” he says. “The stars aligned.”

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