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Greg Stevens, Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor Editorial Board How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500 words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@red bluffdailynews.com Phone: 530-527- 2151 ext. 112 Mail to: P.O. Box 220, 545 Diamond Ave., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FaCEbook.CoM/ rbdailynEwS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @rEdbluFFnEwS The need to regulate electronic cigarettes and the liquid nicotine that fuels them is obvious — there is nothing to stop children from buying them, and some are marketed with bright colors and flavors like vanilla cupcake and peach-mango. U.S. Sen. Richard Blumen- thal, D-Conn., has come out strongly against e-cigarettes, especially the flavored ones known as e-hookahs, and every legislator on the state and fed - eral level should join him. But a report in Monday's New York Times makes this is- sue even more of an imminent threat to health and safety. The liquid nicotine that is vaporized and inhaled is in fact a strong neurotoxin that can lead to seri - ous and even lethal poisoning if ingested through the skin. The Times quoted a poison control director in California as saying, "It's not a matter of if a child will be seriously poisoned or killed. It's a matter of when." Poisonings from liquid nicotine rose 300 percent between 2012 and 2013, reported the Times, based on information from the National Poison Data System. Even small amounts can lead to serious poisoning. It may be true, although there is no evidence yet, that e- cigarettes can be used to help quit smoking. And certainly adults should be able to buy and use them. But just as cigarettes cannot be sold to youths under 18, e-cigarettes and liquid nico - tine should be barred from sale to minors. Blumenthal issued a state- ment Monday in which he said, "Exploding use — misuse and abuse — of liquid nicotine make federal regulation even more vi - tal to stop poisoning and other public health hazards. … E-liq- uids are the new snake oil of cigarette marketing — with purity and potency varying widely, and no safeguards. The FDA must act immediately to forestall imminent public health threats from e-cigarettes and toxic nicotine e-liquids." The senator is correct. The Food and Drug Administration should issue regulations quickly to prevent sale to minors, and to regulate liquid nicotine as it does other toxins. This editorial was written by the New Haven Register. Editorial FDA must regulate e-cigarettes Cartoonist's take CAPtiOn "You have been warned, Vladimir. If you don't reverse your im- pending annexation of Crimea, you're going to pay a steep price." "Steep price, Obama? More silly personal sanc - tions placed on a handful of individuals, rather than sanc- tions on my energy industry and banks — something Vlad- imir actually fears? Sticks and stones may break Vladimir's bones, but unserious sanctions never hurt me!" "Don't you read the college textbooks, Vladimir? You are on the wrong side of history. The Cold War is over. Carrying on like an imperialist thug is so 1980s." "Vladimir greatly enjoys Obama's naive misunderstand - ing of power-hungry leaders. Vladimir will never tire of the pie-in-the-sky ramblings of America's faculty-lounge-mem - ber in chief." "But haven't you listened to my speeches, Vladimir? I her- alded a new, peaceful era across the globe. I promised to break the precedent of prior presi- dents and open a dialogue with our foes. I was going to change the perceptions other countries had of America." "You surely changed Vlad - imir's perception. That is why Vladimir is confident he can carry out his imperialist vision to rebuild the Russian empire — and Obama will do virtually noth - ing to stand in Vladimir's way." "You can't do this to me, Vladimir. You are making me look and sound weak and foolish on the world stage." "Sorry, but it is Obama's un - realistic world view, not Vladi- mir's bold actions, that is mak- ing Obama look and sound weak and foolish." "You think this is some kind of joke, Vladimir? You have no idea how much you will regret your actions." "What, Obama will draw a line in the sand? Like he did in Syria! Or, worse yet, threaten to give more rousing speeches! Obama's words have Vladimir quaking in his boots." "I'm telling you that if you do not pull back and recog - nize Crimea as an au- tonomous republic of the Ukraine, then you are going to have to pay the piper." "Pay the piper? What, does Obama threaten to expand ObamaCare to the Russian motherland?" "I'm talking to my allies in Europe, buddy boy. We are look - ing into possibly thinking about setting up committees to poten- tially explore taking additional steps that you might not like." "Ha, ha. Europe, who like Vladimir's supply of natural gas, is even more tepid than Obama." "Give it up, Vladimir. You are on the losing side of history." "Actually, Obama is on the losing side of history. History has long shown that weakness, not resolve and decisive leader - ship, is what invites chaos and aggression. Words, not backed by actions — a running gag in Obama's foreign policy — is why Obama is in mess he is in." "Can't you see you are losing this fight, Vladimir?" "Oh, really? Obama poll num - bers tank among his people, while Vladimir's soar among his. Poll after poll show Vladi- mir is considered much stron- ger leader than Obama! Mean- while, Obama's weakness is sending green light to bad guys in rest of the world." "What are you talking about, Vladimir?" "All the world's bad guys know you are all talk and no action — that you are unserious and not going to hurt us. Vladimir just might be licking his chops over annexing the rest of Ukraine and maybe Estonia, too." "I'm going to give you one last chance, Vladimir. Back off or it is game on." "Game on? What, Obama is going to tell Vladimir that if he likes Crimea, he can keep Crimea? Then again, that WOULD be one threat that would make Vladimir quake in his boots." Tom Purcell, author of "Misadven - tures of a 1970s Childhood", is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review humor columnist. Send comments to Tom at Purcell@caglecartoons.com. Commentary Obama talks to Putin Sounding off A look at what readers are saying in comments on our website and on social media. Sad.... but how do you drive and shoot yourself with a shotgun at the same time? kristal Todd: Comment about an Oregon man who shot himself while being pursued by police what an awesome night!!! Glad i got the chance to go Vickie bellus: Facebook comment about coverage of Ultimate Spelling Bee Challenge Tom Purcell "What a commentary on the state of twentieth-century cap- italism," mused "motivational speaker" Jordan Belfort as he looked back on his life of fraud, sex, and drugs. As head of the brokerage firm Stratton Oak - mont, he fleeced investors of hundreds of millions of dollars in the early 1990 s. I saw Mar- tin Scorsese's film The Wolf of Wall Street and was sufficiently intrigued to read Belfort's mem- oir, on which the screenplay is based. I learned quite a lot. For example, the scam known as "pump and dump," which net - ted Belfort and his fellow Strat- tonites their ill-gotten gains, comes into much clearer view in the memoir than it does in the film. The technique works by buying up the stock of worthless companies through nominees, selling it on a rising market to genuine investors, and then un - loading all of it. It was not just small investors who were ruined; what stands out is the greed and gullibil - ity of the rich who were sold the same rubbish by the "young and stupid" salesmen Belfort pre- ferred to hire. Belfort was (is) obviously a super-slick snake-oil merchant, brilliant in his trade until drugs ruined his judgment. Belfort, once again selling the elixir of success after a brief stint in prison, professes to feel shame for his behavior; but I suspect that deep down his con - tempt for those he swindled out- weighs any sense of remorse. In a recent book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, the econ- omist Thomas Piketty describes Stratton Oakmont as an exam- ple of "meritocratic extrem- ism" – the culmination of a cen- tury-long passage from the old inequality, characterized by in- herited wealth and discreet lifestyles, to the new inequal- ity, with its outsize bonuses and conspicuous consumption. Belfort has been described as a perverse Robin Hood, rob - bing the rich to give to him- self and his pals. The rich were the old-money Protestant es- tablishment whose members had lost their skills for protect- ing their wealth, which was therefore rightfully forfeited to street-savvy up-and-com- ers – mainly Jewish – amoral enough to help themselves to it. But Stratton Oakmont's pecu- lations were hardly an excep- tion on Wall Street. As a good friend, who was an SEC regula- tor for 20 years, told me when I asked about the extent of fraud, "I found it to be pervasive. The system simply makes it too easy, and human nature colludes on both sides. Greed is the source of all cons." The Wolf of Wall Street was a predator, but so were all those reputable investment banks that shorted the products they were selling, and the retail banks that offered mortgages to unviable borrowers, which they could then repackage and sell as in - vestment-grade securities. They were all wolves in sheep's cloth- ing. A decent banking system has two functions: to look after de- positors' money and to bring to- gether savers and investors in mutually profitable trades. Sav- ings are deposited with banks because they are trusted not to steal them, and custody has a price. The deals that banks ar - range between borrowers and lenders are the lifeblood of mod- ern economies – and risky work for which bankers deserve to be well rewarded. But any money that bankers earn over and above the cost of compensating them for providing an essential service represents what former British regulator Adair Turner calls "social waste," or what used to be described as "usury." It is not the extent of the fi - nancial system that should alarm us, but its concentration and connectivity. In the United Kingdom, an ever-increasing share of bank assets has been concentrated in the five largest banks. Standard economic the - ory tells us that excessive prof- its are the direct result of con- centrated ownership. Connectivity is the link be- tween banks. These links can be locational, as in Wall Street or the City of London. But they became global through the de - velopment of derivatives, which were supposed to increase the stability of the banking system as a whole by spreading risk. Instead, they increase the sys - tem's fragility by correlating risk over a much larger space. As a paper by Andrew Hal- dane of the Bank of England and the zoologist Robert May points out, derivatives were like vi- ruses. Financial engineers and traders shared the same as- sumptions about the risks they were taking. When these as- sumptions turned out to be false, the entire financial system was exposed to infection. Concentration and connectiv - ity reinforce each other. Two- thirds of the recent growth of banks' balance sheets in the UK represents internal claims among banks rather than claims between banks and non-fi - nancial firms – a clear case of money breeding money. Reformers want to cap bank- ers' bonuses, create firewalls between banking departments, or (more radically) limit a sin- gle bank's share of total banking assets. But the only durable so- lution is to simplify the financial system. As Haldane and May put it: "Excessive homogeneity within a financial system – all the banks doing the same thing – can minimize the risk for each individual bank, but maximize the possibility of the entire sys - tem collapsing." As long as banks can make a profit from trading, they will continue to expand derivatives in excess of any legitimate hedg - ing demands from non-banks, creating redundant products whose only function is to make profits for their inventors and sellers. How to curtail derivatives is now by far the most important topic in banking reform, and the search for solutions should be guided by the recognition that economics is not a natural sci - ence. As May recounts: "The odds on a 100 year storm do not change because people think that such a storm has become more likely." In financial markets, the odds do depend on what people think. The less thinking they have to do, the better. Jordan Belfort was partly right: people who go into finance should not be too clever. Robert Skidelsky, a member of the British House of Lords, is Profes - sor Emeritus of Political Economy at Warwick University. roBErt SkidElSky What 'Wolves of Wall Street' can teach us about risk OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Wednesday, March 26, 2014 » MORE At FaCEbook.CoM/rbdailynEwS AnD TwiTTEr.CoM/rEdbluFFnEwS a6